thoughts on films

WGA 101 BEST SCREENPLAY LIST RECAP

2012-01-13T12:43:00.001-08:00

Here are 15 things I learned from watching and writing about these 101 movies:

1. There is a specific structure to great movies.
That structure is 4 acts, not 3. I will write a longer, more in-depth blog post about this in the next few weeks, but I think this was one of the most important revelations.

2. The films that last deal in life and death stakes.
In other words, the main character(s) must be in mortal danger for us to really care about what is happening to them. CHINATOWN wouldn't be nearly as good if Gittes didn't get his nose cut by a mysterious man in the second act. We wouldn't believe the cross-dressing in SOME LIKE IT HOT without the St. Valentine's Day massacre scene.

3. Story is change.
Look at the first scene and the last scene of the film: if the main character hasn't changed, it isn't a great movie. A good example of this is THE WIZARD OF OZ, where Dorothy is disgruntled, wants to get away, to see something else. She succeeds in that goal, and at the end, she is changed, she now knows she is home, and is happy about that. Or THE GODFATHER, where Michael Corleone goes from a returning war hero to the head of a Mafia family.

4. There must be a clean, clear, often tangible goal for the hero.
There are myriad examples of this: in THE MALTESE FALCON, it's the titular bird; in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, it's the titular ark. In other words, the goal is actually in the title of the movie! That's how important it is.

5. The best movies are thematically consistent.
They use a central idea as a nucleus for everything -- characters, plot, act breaks -- to revolve around. Coppola recently suggested boiling that idea down to one word:

What is the one thing to keep in mind when making a film?
When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.

The reason it’s important to have this is because most of the time what a director really does is make decisions. All day long: Do you want it to be long hair or short hair? Do you want a dress or pants? Do you want a beard or no beard? There are many times when you don’t know the answer. Knowing what the theme is always helps you.

I remember in “The Conversation,” they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn’t know, and said the theme is ‘privacy’ and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you’re not sure which way to go.

I personally don't believe you need to be that stringent, but look at one of Coppola's own films on this list, APOCALYPSE NOW. To me, the central theme is "War is not hell, war is insanity." Every choice made in that film seems to follow that idea: the main goal itself, to journey to and kill their own colonel; the Colonel himself, who has gone insane; the scene with the Playboy bunnies are the soldiers who attack them; surfing during a raid. Coppola took a central idea and squeezed as much as he could out of it.

6. Great films are great characters.
A high-concept premise or a heavy plot does not a brilliant film make. We care about the characters first, then the situation they are put into. The examples are legendary, and, again, often titular: BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, the wry, often incompetent cowboys; THELMA & LOUISE, the bored housewives on the run; JERRY MAGUIRE, the sports agent with scruples; ROCKY, the down-and-out boxer who gets a shot at redemption; FORREST GUMP, the simpleton whose sweet nature made him a silent participant in much of the 20th century.

7. The audience wants to be manipulated.
That's what they're there for. The typical filmgoer watches a movie for entertainment, and most of the time that means they want to feel something. Examples abound: Who isn't relieved when we discover Doc Brown's bullet proof vest in BACK TO THE FUTURE? Who doesn't cringe in horror when they see Steve Buscemi's foot poking out of the wood chipper in FARGO? Who doesn't share Bill Murray's joy at finally waking up to February 3rd in GROUNDHOG'S DAY?

8. Dialogue is overrated.
It is icing on the cake, but is nothing without structure, motivation, character arcs. Consider PULP FICTION, rightly known for Tarantino's dazzling dialogue. Something almost all of his imitators in the 90's never understood was that he always uses those words always in service of something else: building tension, setting something up, aligning us with a character. The beginning scenes with Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega discussing Tony "Rocky Horror" do this expertly. First, the interchange is funny, making us like these guys. Secondly, it introduces us to their boss, making their upcoming killing less offensive to us. Thirdly, the fact that a man was thrown out of a window for a foot massage makes us understand that Vincent better behave himself at his upcoming date (and again, makes us like him, because even though he's a hitman, he's now the underdog). Finally, since it begins with a discussion outside of how they "should have shotguns" and how they are about to go up against a room full of dudes, it begins a suspense sequence with us wondering what will happen next.
All of which is to say, Tarantino isn't just trying to dazzle us with how clever he can be and how many pop-culture references he can jam in, he's crafting a fantastic story.

9. Suspense involves the audiences in the story.
A good example would be from The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, and his NOTORIOUS. Alicia (Bergman) and Devlin (Grant) are in Alicia's husband's wine cellar, investigating a mystery. We see her husband coming down the stairs, and audience, who is already invested in these characters (having seen them fall in love previously, including an iconic kiss), want them to not get caught, especially since they have just discovered uranium in one of the wine bottles. The audience asks: what will happen next? In a pay-off to a previous set-up (the iconic kiss), Grant kisses Bergman, feigning drunkeness. We are temporarily relieved.

10. Set-ups and pay-offs.
In ADAPTATION, this idea is turned on its head in a brilliant way. The story is about "Charlie Kaufman", a Hollywood screenwriter who wants to write movies about real life, real people, low stakes. His twin brother, "Donald", is also a writer, but writes the kind of high-concept, high-stakes genre shlock Charlie detests. At his wit's end adapting a book about flowers, Charlie does two things: he pitches a version of the flower book that basically amounts to an art film, and he goes to a Robert McKee screenwriting seminar. The third act is Charlie Kaufman, the writer of the movie, systematically paying off these two setups by taking McKee's advice and breaking all the rules he set for himself in the pitch: he says there will be no drugs, no car chases, no heroic deaths. Then, his brother dies, Chris Cooper runs them off the road, and Meryl Streep gets high.

11. Reversals/switcheroos.
Han Solo, in STAR WARS, is a rogue. That's why we like him. He cares only about money, about himself (his last name is "solo", get it?). He's only aligned with the resistance and against the Empire because the revolutionaries hired him first. So we are bummed, but not surprised, when he leaves before the final battle against the Death Star. But he's a mercenary with a heart, so when he comes back to the battle, guns blazing, it is a reversal that we buy, and a satisfying one.
Of course, bigger reversals, those that come at the end of a film and make us rethink the entire movie, are called twists. If done well, they make a great movie legendary, such as Bruce Willis being a ghost in THE SIXTH SENSE or Verbal being Keyser Soze in THE USUAL SUSPECTS.
Note: Reversals are closely tied to set-ups and pay-offs. To be an effective reversal, it needs to be set-up so that the pay-off is both unexpected and somehow also inevitable. Not easy.

12. Comedy is largely subjective.
This might explain the Academy Awards' general aversion towards comedy, because they don't know how to judge it. It also might explain my surprise at the inclusion of BROADCAST NEWS, MOONSTRUCK, and THE PRODUCERS on this list. All well-crafted, all funny, none of them much to my taste.

13. The moments of a movie that linger in memory are often fleeting.
I've often been surprised to find that a moment from an iconic movie that is now in the zeitgeist is played subtly or without fanfare in the actual film. The moment's reputation precedes it. One example would be the line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" in GONE WITH THE WIND. It's a big moment in the film (and in Hollywood history, due to it including a curse word), but it is played like a small moment, and the narrative immediately continues to the next moment, does not linger.

14. Although I'm still not great at it, I'm much better at writing about film now than I was when I started.
Consider this analysis of THE GRAPES OF WRATH that spends half the time reviewing the screening at Facets, versus this more recent review of ON THE WATERFRONT, which discusses structure, motivation, and character, and also includes a clip from the film.

15. Sometimes I disagreed.
One thing about educating yourself on something is that you become accomplished enough or secure enough in what you've learned that you become independent in your opinions and skeptical of conventional wisdom. In other words, especially as I was approaching the finish of this list, I sometimes disagreed about whether a movie was well-written. Two recent examples were ALL ABOUT EVE, which I believe was not visual enough and would work much better as a play, and THE GODFATHER PART II, which I found to pale in comparison to the first film.

I realize that none of these are new lessons, and could be gleaned from reading screenwriting books, but there is something to be said for direct experience, for watching great movies and seeing how they work firsthand.

I should mention that many of these lessons were illuminated by the reading I did concurrent to watching the movies. Some of the things I read that furthered my learning about screenwriting:

* HITCH/TRUFFAUT

* MAMET'S BAMBI VS. GODZILLA, 3 USES OF THE KNIFE, Memo to writers of THE UNIT

* SAVE THE CAT

* TODD ALCOTT

* DAN HARMON'S CHANNEL 101 TUTORIALS

Here are my writings about the entire list, in numerical order:

1. CASABLANCA

2012-01-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

Story is change.

In this case, we have a character who changes throughout the course of the film for the better, for the greater good, against his basest instincts, and thus becomes noble.

"Everyone Comes To Rick's" was the original title, and while it's inelegant, it's correct: this movie revolves around Rick and his cafe. Rick, we are told by others, never has a drink with patrons, is attached to no woman, and is essentially a loner. Rick, by his own words, "sticks his neck out for no one." In this sense, Rick is a metaphor for America's isolationist policies.

But watch how things gradually change: from watching Rick brusquely escort a drunk one-night stand out of his cafe, to later passionately embracing Ilsa; from being business-like with his money throughout, to later helping a young woman cheat at roulette to buy passage out of Casablanca; from being resolutely apolitical, to helping a resistance fighter escape, risking his own life and giving up the woman he's pined for in the process.

There's another layer of change in this story, as well, the flashbacks to Paris where we see Rick and Ilsa in love. It is years prior, and they are carefree, the world is their oyster. That she leaves Rick with only a note at the train station is what changes him into the hardened, cyncical, jaded man he is at the start of the picture, and her reemergence in his life is what eventually spurns him to become a better man.

The changes continue at the end, where Rick has successfully risked everything to get Laszlo on the plane and sacrifices his own relationship with Ilsa for the greater good, for her to remain with Laszlo. To do all this required him to sell his cafe, so beyond changing internally, Rick must walk off into the uncertain future, a different and better man.

3. CHINATOWN

2012-01-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Lies. This movie is all about lies.

The story concerns LA private detective Jake Gittes, who takes a case from Evelyn Mulwray, who thinks her husband is cheating on her. Right away, we are caught in a lie, because after tailing Mr. Mulwray, a player in the city's water department, we discover that Mrs. Mulwray was a fake. The real Mrs. Mulwray reveals herself at Gittes' office and subsequently hires him to find out who impersonated her.

The lies continue, both small and big: Jake lies to access a police investigation at the reservoir, Mrs. Mulwray lies to Jake about why her husband and her father had a falling out, Jake and Mrs. Mulwray lie to get admitted at an old-folks home to ask questions.

And, of course, the biggest lie of the film is one of omission: "She's my sister. She's my daughter." Finally, Mrs. Mulwray comes out with the truth: "She's my sister and my daughter." And the ugly truth is revealed.

Here's the genius of designing a movie around a string of lies: you have no shortage of obstacles for the hero of the story, who must uncover lie after lie and sort the truth out from those. This is especially rich for a character like Jake Gittes, a smooth operator who always seems one step ahead of the game. It gives him a real challenge and tests his very nature, because as much as he discovers the truth behind one lie, that leads to another, and he's always playing catch-up.

Another great thing about designing a movie around lies is that you keep the audience engaged throughout, since they are aligned with the hero is trying to figure out what's real and what's a lie.

The title itself refers to a state of mind where you think you know what's going on, but you really don't. Where you dig deeper into something, and the more you discover, the more you realize you have barely scratched the surface. A big way to be put into this state of mind is through lies, and everyone in the film experiences it: Jake in various ways throughout with his investigation; Evelyn, who knows secrets about her husband and father but doesn't know what got the former killed or the extent of the power-grab by the latter; Escobar, lost at sea in his police work; the Cross daughter, who has no idea of her true identity but must know something that she can't quite articulate is dead wrong.

My movie year 2011

2012-01-11T15:18:00.001-08:00

Here are all the movies -- plus a few other things -- that I watched in 2011:

Get Him to the Greek

The Hurt Locker

The Usual Suspects

True Grit -- 2010

Four Lions

The Fighter

The Road

Guy And Madeline on a Park Bench

Night Catches Us

Marwencol

Somewhere

Boogie Nights

Say When -- rough cut

Blue Valentine

Smokey and the Bandit

The Third Man

The King's Speech

The Leopard

Jesus Camp

L'Atalante

After Last Season

Harry Potter and the blah blah blah

The Godfather

And Everything is Going Fine

Starship Troopers

Block of shorts -- Texas shorts

Wuss

The Innkeepers

The Catechism Cataclysm

Futurestates -- dystopian shorts

Dragonslayer

Silver Bullets

Septien

Bellflower

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

Convento

No Matter What

Sound of My Voice

Fambul Tok

Freakonomics

The Big Lebowski

Demolition Man

4192

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World

Surrogate Valentine

Your Highness

His Girl Friday

Rear Window

Unforgiven

Restrepo

The Terminator

Jurassic Park

Days of Thunder

Melvin and Howard

Philadelphia

Uncle Kent

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Shakespeare in Love

The Beaver Trilogy

Double Indemnity

There Will Be Blood

Bridesmaids

The Wizard of Oz

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Exodus of Charlie Wright

13 Assassins

The Tree of Life

I Love You, Man

Burn After Reading

Jackass

Vertigo

Hall Pass

Risky Business

March of the Penguins

Super 8

Monster's Inc.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

The Break-Up

Beginners

Double Team

Due Date

The Last Picture Show

Swingers

Page One

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Harry Potter and the blah blah blah Part 2

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Incredibly Small

The Incredibles

Ratatouille

Friends With Benefits

Incredibly Small

Easy A

Gone With the Wind

Crazy, Stupid, Love

Goodfellas

The Shawshank Redemption

Tabloid

Finding Nemo

Wall-E

North By Northwest

Attack the Block

Sixteen Candles

To Kill A Mockingbird

Another Earth

Stop Making Sense

Wattstax

Footloose - 2011

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

The Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Incredibly Small

Fingerman: Dr. London and the Triangle Force

On the Waterfront

Tootsie

Contagion

Act Naturally

Drive

Until the Light Takes Us

Soul Power

Pulp Fiction

Bronson

Valhalla Rising

Bridesmaids

Random shorts -- Jason Reitman, Spike Jonze, David Lynch, more

The Graduate

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Autoerotic

50/50

One Too Many Mornings

The Asphalt Jungle

General Orders No. 9

The Interrupters

Margaret

Moneyball

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

The Ides of March

Take Shelter

Meet the Parents

Beetlejuice

American Pimp

Halloween

Tchoupitoulas -- rough cut

Saturday Morning Massacre -- rough cut

Melancholia

The Godfather Part II

Jurassic Park

Network

Saturday Morning Massacre -- rough cut

A Mighty Wind

The Muppets -- 2011

The Descendants

Panic Room

Patrice O'Neal -- Elephant in the Room

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Shame

Sunset Boulevard

All About Eve

The Skin I Live In

Richard Pryor -- Live on the Sunset Strip

Louis CK -- Live at the Beacon Theatre

Richard Pryor -- Live in Concert

Kenneth Anger shorts

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark -- The Adaptation

Young Adult

A Christmas Story

Chinatown

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- 2011

Hugo

Citizen Kane

Casablanca

* Cincinnati to New Orleans By Water -- web series (not technically a movie, but still one of the best things I watched this year.)

I also watched pretty much every episode of FRIENDS, JUSTIFIED, and THE OFFICE.

4. CITIZEN KANE

2012-01-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

It's about the search for love.

Kane is sent off from his mother, "for his own good", to live with a rich guardian. He runs a newspaper, marries the President's niece. We see a decade of that marriage over the breakfast table. He meets his mistress, a would-be singer. He runs for governor. He builds an opera house to give his lady a place to perform. He buys art, surrounds himself with possessions. He throws lavish parties.

In all that he does, he is trying to fill the hole that was his initial rejection from his mother, who sent him away when he was young. With his newspaper business and run for office, he is looking for love from the public. With his marriages and his relationship with his best friend Jed, he is looking for love privately. And finally, with his building of Xanadu, his estate, he is looking for love materially. He never finds it.

One of the smart things about the movie is that it is structured like a detective movie. One of the even smarter things is that the objective of that quest: "Figure out what his final word, 'Rosebud", means" is actually fulfilled, and yet, it explains nothing.

Another reason this movie has endured is that it is uniquely American: it is about a Great Man who goes from rags-to-riches like Horatio Algiers, defying class conventions. The Great Man is a public man, but ultimately he is unknowable, a jigsaw puzzle, complex.

Like ALL ABOUT EVE, we get voiceover and perspective from multiple characters. By contrast, however, each of these stories constitutes a complete 3-act mini-structure inside the larger narrative. Accordingly, the narrative shifts around in time, non-linearly. This play with time was innovative in its day, and still holds up.

5. ALL ABOUT EVE

2012-01-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

This should have been a play.

It is really simple: a movie must be primarily visual. This film relies too much on dialogue to move the story along, together with pervasive voiceover (which, while innovative -- more on that later -- is still a crutch).

A good example is directly after the midpoint, when Margot (played by Bette Davis), a star in the theatre, arrives to the table reading of a new play late. Her assistant, the titular Eve, read in lieu of her and killed. And now the writing is on the wall: her suspicions about Eve trying to replace her are seemingly confirmed, and she continues to feel over-the-hill, old, expendable.

The problem is that we get this information through back and forth dialogue between Margot and DeWitt in the theatre lobby. It is a break of the age-old writer's maxim: Show, Don't Tell.

What if, instead of a scene of dialogue, Bette Davis comes in late and before, she comes through the door, hears the dialogue being read by Eve and stops short. What if she peeks through the door and watches Eve transformed, acting her ass off. She watches the admiring faces of the others at the table as this assistant is revealed to them as a new star. We see Davis watch them explode into applause at the end of Eve's reading, and we see Davis' face as she realizes her time is up. And then we see her wipe her tears away and compose herself, put her public mask back on as she barges through the door with panache to try to take the focus off Eve, trying to regain control of the room and, thereby, her future as a viable actress.

The above would be visual, would rely more on acting with the body than the mouth, and, I believe, would engage the audience better by letting them fill in the blanks.

That said, there's quite a few things to recommend the film:

* For a movie that leans so heavily on dialogue, it provides some great lines:
"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night."
"Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men."
"Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be."
"Don't cry. Just score it as an incomplete forward pass. "
"When you're a secretary in a brewery, it's pretty hard to make-believe you're anything else. Everything is beer."

* It's an archtypical story, an inside baseball tale about a simultaneous rise and fall, about ambition and fear of failure. It has been copied often because the tale of a young climber and an old timer barely hanging on a nerve in the zeitgeist.

* The innovative use of voiceover. The VO switches between characters throughout the film to various characters as needed. I'm not sure if that had been done before this film, but I don't think it has ever been done as effectively.

So, it isn't that the movie is poorly written. The problem with ALL ABOUT EVE is that it would be far better as a play than as a movie.

6. ANNIE HALL

2012-01-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

Three things come to mind when thinking about ANNIE HALL:

1) The unity of theme in the movie.

The working title of the film was ANHEDONIA, the inability to experience pleasure. Everything in this film, from the overall arc of the two main characters down to individual lines. Allen's character is miserable, and spends his romantic relationships trying to fill that hole. He never succeeds, but comes to terms with it. Annie Hall herself is similarly neurotic, but she is able to improve and begin to come to terms with herself and experience pleasure. Her increasing comfort with herself and self-actualization becomes serious conflict with Alvy. Finally, Allen is smart to create an opposite character as his best friend. Rob is Alvy's contrast, living only for pleasure, and doing so without regret.

2) The use of set-ups and pay-offs.

Set-ups and pay-offs are some of the most important and underrated script techniques. Allen uses this beautifully, most notably in the two lobster cooking scenes. In the first, Allen and Annie are at the beach house, having a great time bonding while putting live lobsters in pots. Later, when Allen is with a new woman, he tries to recreate this sense of fun, but the outcome is decidedly different and results in a disaster.
Another example, less poignant and more comedic, is Christopher Walken revealing his fantasy about crashing a car on purpose. We then cut to Allen in the car with Walken driving, Allen white knuckled. You can see the sequence below in its entirety:

3) The playfulness of the film's bending of film grammar.

Like PULP FICTION, this film bends the language of film in a way that conveys sheer joy from the filmmaker. The ways are myriad:

* Non-linear structure, cutting between Alvy's different relationships, starting in the middle of Alvy and Annie's relationship and doubling back.
* Breaking the fourth wall, Allen addressing the audience directly as a framing technique at the head and tail of the film.
* Use of fantasy, when Allen brings in Marshall McLuhen to argue a point for him, or when Annie floats out of her body to look for art supplies, or incorporating an animated sequence ripping off SNOW WHITE.
* Split-screens, to compare and contrast Alvy's rambunctious family with Annie's staid family.

I have a lot of problems with Woody Allen's work, but there's no doubt that this movie is a masterpiece.

7. SUNSET BOULEVARD

2011-12-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

A dead body in a pool. Intrigue immediately.
-- compare this with SOME LIKE IT HOT, which starts off with a car chase, or DOUBLE INDEMNITY, which begins with a gutshot Fred MacMurray announcing "I killed Dietrichson." Wilder's quote was "Grab the audience by the throat and never let them go," and he practiced what he preached.

A young writer who can't sell his stories. Repo men come to get his car. He's in dire straits, broke. He needs $300.

He goes to a producer he knows, tries to pitch a script to Paramount. He gets denied, is still out of money.

Gets on the phone, calls around to friends for the cash. Meets with his agent, who also refuses to lend him the money. Drives around, contemplates going back to (Dayton) Ohio, returning to the newspaper business (this comes from real life, I'd assume, since Wilder started out as a newspaper man before getting into the movies).

He sees the repo men while he's driving around, they give chase. Ends up in a random rich person's garage.

12 minutes in. He's somewhere new, at a huge white mansion. He gets called into the house -- they treat him like he's expected, even though he's obviously not.

Already we have a main character in a SERIOUS bind (he's broke), we have him taking actions to alleviate his problem, and we have scenes that end on intrigue, making us always wonder: what will happen next?

What happens next is that he meets a movie star: "You're Norma Desmond. You used to be big." "I am big. It's the pictures that got small." She's eccentric, theatrical, a has-been. She lives alone, only a butler with her, in this mansion.

He tells her he's a writer; she laments sound, tells him to read her script. Again, here's where we can discuss motivation: normally, a guy like this would get out of the creepy old mansion with the has-been actress, but two things are making him stick around: he's being chased, and he thinks she might able in a position to give him money. So he stays.

He finishes the script, has some thoughts on how to make it better. She hires him to do a touch-up/rewrite, so he stays the night. As he does so, he looks around the grounds: "It was all very queer, but queerer things were yet to come."

This is how Act 1 ends! With the writer basically telling us directly that we should wonder what's next.

So: Act 2. He moves in, begins working, she breathes down his neck. He tries to cut a big scene with her, she resists. "The public wants to see me!" She is narcissistic, has an inflated ego, is unreasonable. They watch silent movies occasionally, always ones where she was the star.

30 minutes in -- the repo men find him, tow his car away. Now they use her car. He is getting in deeper and deeper -- she buys him clothes, he moves into the main house from the garage due to a leaky roof in his room.

New Year's Eve party -- set piece -- she's trying to seduce him, he resists, she slaps him. He leaves, goes to a young person's party with other struggling entertainment world folks: his peers. He's made his decision: he will move back in with a friend, leave Norma's world, the dusty, ancient, dying world she inhabits, the lonely world. That's contrasted by the liveliness of the party and his reemerged libido, with which he tries to kiss his friend's lady, who likes his script.

He calls Norma's to get his stuff packed, finds out from the butler that Norma tried to kill herself, and thus he returns and is sucked back in to her world, a world he doesn't belong to and almost escaped. "Happy New Year, Norma," she says, and kisses her. He's locked in.

That's the midpoint. The girl calls, tries to find him, the butler denies her.

They all go to Paramount to see DeMille unannounced. She thinks this is her big break, but DeMille doesn't want to see her, even though the public flocks to her on the soundstage. She thinks they've been calling her about a role, but instead they've been calling her to use her old car for a period piece. "How did it go?" "It couldn't have gone better!" But DeMille never wants to see her again.

Act 3, it becomes almost all plot. She undergoes a montage of beauty treatments. Gilles sneaks out every night to work on script with the girl. The butler, Max, reveals that he directed her and was her first husband.

She finds his other script. Betty kisses him, is in love with him, wants to leave her boyfriend. Norma calls Betty, tries to tell her off. Betty comes over, he resists her, doesn't steal her, unlike what we thought he would do. She leaves.

He packs, prepares to go back to Dayton. He reveals the truth to her: There were no fan letters, DeMille doesn't want her, she's old and over-the-hill.

She cracks. She has built up an entire world where she was special, where she was relevant. That's gone now. She shoots the messenger.

Back to the opening scene, the cops come to see her and arrest her. She's completely insane now, no longer in the real world, completely consumed by fantasy. They get her to come downstairs and be arrested by telling her that she's wanted on set.

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."

10. THE GODFATHER PART 2

2011-12-21T10:41:00.001-08:00

This is not a great movie, nor is it a great screenplay. This was a cash grab.

It's not a bad movie, per se. How could it be? You have Coppola in his prime, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, even Lee Strasburg! You have a large budget, which allows a variety of top-notch technicians and department heads.

What you don't have is a compelling story, or one that comes remotely close to the brilliance of the first film. But it exists to give backstory to a character who doesn't need it and to further another character's story in a way that we don't require.

We follow two storylines, intercutting between them: Michael Corleone, who has taken over his father's mafia business and moved it to Nevada; and his father, Don Vito Corleone, as he immigrates to America and beings his rise to power in New York in the early 1900's.

The parallels between those two storylines are tenuous at best, the time frames don't match up (Vito's story takes place over many years, Michael's is shorter), and character arcs happen out of the blue.

On that last point, the arc of Vito from poor, hard-working immigrant to low-level gangster to killer to kingpin is too fast, unexplained, and unbelievable. We never see a lightbulb moment where he makes his choice. We never see him starving, or in peril himself. We never get a sense of his motivation, other than that we already know he becomes a mobster later. He becomes a killer because it's convienent to the plot.

Contrast this with the superior first film, where Michael's motivation to kill for the first time, thus changing the course of his life, are shown to us clearly, and are both primal and twofold: he's protecting his father; he's exacting revenge.

The final act, after a perfunctory Don Vito return to Sicily to kill the man that killed his mother, we get an intercut killing of all of Michael's foes, including Hyman Roth at the Miami Airport, as well as Michael's brother Fredo. This is an echo of the first film's intercut killing, contrasted with a baptism. Again, the first film is superior in this regard, because that contrast between good and evil, light and dark, works in the context of the film, and the character's motivations made that scene make sense: Michael was using the baptism as an alibi so that he couldn't be implicated in the slaughter.

Here, he's just being cruel, and in a way that doesn't make sense: he could have had Fredo killed in Cuba and been much less culpable, we're honestly expected to believe he's more eager to have Hyman killed in America, at a busy airport, rather than abroad, and he somehow has the power to have Tom convince someone to kill himself in prison?

And then we get Michael alone, with nothing but his memories of the time his father was to come home, the time he enlisted in the Army. I, for one, felt nothing for him. I watched the credits, dumbfounded about how this could be considered great cinema. A few weeks later, I was vindicated: Francis Ford Coppola: There Should've Only Been ONE 'Godfather' Movie.

Here are a few posts that echo my disappointment:

* Movie Rapture
* dfuse.in
* Roger Ebert

11. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID

2011-12-20T19:44:00.001-08:00

Here are my notes:

-- Credits - setting the locale, the main concern (trains, robbery).
-- Butch scene: we see who he is. Sundance, he's a quick draw.
-- They're silly, dopey, funny, not great at stealing.
-- Hole In the Wall Gang: more setup -- Bolivia/gold -- "I got vision and the rest of the has bifocals."
-- Gang trying to defect from Butch's leadership, must fight the gang's bully (he's a huge dude) to regain control.
-- Inciting Incident: Rob the Union/Pacific railroad -- E.H. Harriman -- they dynamite it -- they watch as sheriff unsuccessfully tries to form a posse to find them.
-- Sundance with woman -- switcheroo -- we think he's about to rape her, instead we realize they're together -- SUBPLOT
-- Butch takes her on a bike ride ("Raindrops" scene) -- payoff to bike setup -- huckster selling bikes to the crowd formed about starting a posse -- fill in the blanks -- he bought one, braving the posse that was trying to get him.
-- They rob a train again, use too much TNT -- posse chases them as they pick up the money.
-- They hide out but are found out, must steal horses to escape -- LIFE/DEATH -- all stories that last are about characters in life or death situations. There has to be that element of death for the audience to truly care about the characters.
-- Travel around trying to evade posse -- slow 2nd act shit. They do this for a long time, longer than you might think, longer than you would in a contemporary movie.
-- They jump off a cliff to avoid capture/certain death.
-- Discover they are still being chased by railroad guy, so they decide to go to Bolivia with their lady. "I won't watch you die," she says.
-- MIDPOINT: so, of course, there is a montage. There is so often a montage after the midpoint. And the midpoint is often a location change, a reset, a further lock-in after the lock-in at the first act break.
-- They go to a bank but can't rob it because they don't speak Spanish!
-- Montage of the salad days -- lots of clever robberies, learning Spanish, being chased.
-- Act 3 (25 minutes left): The old marshal (we recognize his hat) has tracked them down, so they decide to go straight, get jobs as payroll guards at a mine. We get another demo of Sundance's amazing shooting.
-- Ambushed with their boss -- he's killed -- first real violence we've seen -- IT'S SERIOUS -- we get a sense that they are in over their heads now -- they kill the banditos, a rare thing for these robbers.
-- Their lady leaves, goes back to the U.S. They rob dudes in the jungle who recognize them ("Banditos gringos").
-- They go back to town, a horse they stole is recognized, they get shot at.
-- BIG gunfight against the police -- they eventually get tagged.
-- Reinforcements arrive during a lull -- they're outnumbered by an absurd amount. Go out shooting with a freeze frame.
-- It shares a theme with THE WILD BUNCH (the death of the wild west way of life), but the particulars and the tone (much more light-hearted) set it apart. THE WILD BUNCH is better.

12. DR. STRANGELOVE

2011-12-19T15:49:00.001-08:00

Let's forgo the political issues and the fact that it's satire, because I know other people and writers could do a better job of covering that (here are a few examples: http://www.filmsite.org/drst.html, Lindley, Roger Ebert.)
Instead, let's discuss the way this film is crafted.

We have three connected stories, each with life and death stakes, each taking place over a short period of time (with a "ticking clock") and in few locations.

In other words, it could easily be a Roger Corman film.

This movie was designed like a low-budget exploitation film. And there's a practical reason for this: movies on war and politics don't usually do very at the box office. Sure, a movie that glorifies war does, and a movie that has surface-level politics but is actually a thriller does, but movies that actually condemn the madness that is our geopolitics (in this case, the utter insanity of the Cold War) have not and do not.

Story one: General Jack D. Ripper gives an attack order to one of his base's aircraft.
Story two: the code is received and carried out.
Story three: another General briefs the President in The War Room about the unauthorized attack, and the fact that they are unable to stop it.

We cut back and forth as these stories escalate: an underling trying to retrieve the recall code, a suicide, the reveal of a "Doomsday Device", an attempt to restore the damaged bomb bays before the bomb goes off. In each scenario, we are dealing with life or death situations, primal urges.

So, if you want to make a movie about war (that doesn't glorify combat) or politics, make sure you can do it on a low budget. And if it's funny, even better.

13. THE GRADUATE

2011-12-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

Anytime a movie captures the zeitgeist, it's a miracle. The movie business is a slow one, full of long shoots, overdone periods of development, edit jobs that last months. That any movie can capture a cultural moments seems impossible, and yet, some do. This movie, THE GRADUATE, exists so surely in the late 60's, in tone, technique, and theme, that it gives the viewer these 45 years later a window into those times.

We have a hero, Benjamin Braddock, just back in LA from college on the east coast. He defines two archetypes: the prodigal son returning, and the stranger comes to town (even though he's from there, college has clearly changed him enough that he's a stranger to his parents and to his environment). His desire is to get away from his parents, to be left alone to avoid worrying about the future, to "tune in, turn on, and drop out."

But he can't. And at minute 15, we find out why: the mother of a girl he fancies, Mrs. Robinson, seduces him. He resists, but only barely. She tells him to contact her if he changes his mind.

Here we have established the tone of the piece, which is comic and even manic sometimes, but has a heavy sense of seriousness to it. We will drift between those two tones throughout, mostly slowly, but sometimes quickly.

And here we go into the debate section, where we see him drifting: his birthday party, his absent-minded parents, scuba-diving in a backyard pool.

At minute 25, he goes to a hotel and calls Mrs. Robinson. She arrives, and he is fumbling, nervous, unsure; contrast that with her jaded and cool persona. They go to their room and he changes his mind, but she uses reverse psychology to get him into bed, accusing him of being inadequate with women, a virgin. He will not be emasculated, so he fucks her.

This is what's known as the point of no return.

And so now we have the theme: the idea that the younger generation sees the older generation as corrupt, without answers; they will seek their own way, no matter how much fumbling this will take. In other words, this film explores what we now think of as "The Generation Gap".

And now we have the fulfillment of the premise: instantly he's cool, wearing sunglasses, driving a sports car fast around town, smoking, drinking, laying in the pool. He has truly become an aimless member of his generation, he is malaise personified.

Watch how this idea of the Generation Gap is explored in the next section, where we finally see Benjamin interacting not with adults, but with a peer. The various parents insist that he take Elaine Robinson, his lover's daughter, out on a date. She's home from Berkeley and could use the company. He does so, and tanks the date on purpose, taking her to a burlesque show, making her cry. But Benjamin is a nice boy and feels badly, so he makes it up to her by taking her out for real, resetting the date. They have a great time -- and why wouldn't they, they are two similar kids in the prime of their lives -- and Benjamin makes a vow to break it off with Mrs. Robinson.

Before he can, Elaine finds out. She kicks him out of her house, and immediately begins seeing someone new.

Benjamin won't have it. At minute 1:12, Act 3 begins. He goes to Berkeley, stalks her. He discovers that Mrs. Robinson claims that Benjamin raped her, and Elaine is livid. He gets kicked out of his apartment due to her screaming at him, which makes her feel sorry for him, and they make up. He proposes, but she can't make the decision right away.

Finally, he discovers that she's getting married to her proper boyfriend, and he must find out where and stop it. This is the famous ending where he indeed does break up the wedding after speeding around and runs off with Elaine. This ending works so well because it acts as its own separate short film, with a proper beginning, middle and end, but also because it encompasses the film's tone so well (shifting between comedy and drama, and doing it by little more than looks on the actors faces) and gives us one last glimpse at the theme: sure, you have rebelled and called into question the status quo, but to what end? And what's next?

They get on a bus and laugh at what they just went through, until the laughter ends and their real future begins, one that's entirely uncertain.

17. TOOTSIE

2011-12-17T11:33:00.000-08:00

It plays like an old studio film from the 30's or 40's, in that there is a high-concept premise ("Out of work actor acts like a woman to get a role"), an economical set-up (he's teaching acting because he can't get any roles, dresses up as a woman to audition for a role his female friend wasn't right for), and it consists of a series of set-ups and pay-offs, many of which confirm with the 4-act structure. finally, there's a "moral", a thematic throughline that pervades.

Dustin Hoffman is a struggling actor in New York, who can't seem to land any roles. We watch him audition, but he doesn't get called back. To pay the bills, he teaches acting, but it isn't fulfilling. And then comes his surprise birthday party, which messes with his head, because now he's acutely aware that he's getting older and his chances of "making it" are getting worse and worse. On top of that, his roommate, Bill Murray, is trying to put on a play. It will cost $8,000, so money is pressing, too.

He talks to his agent. Nothing. He helps his friend, Teri Garr, audition for a part, but they are looking for a different type. Here's the most interesting choice of the movie: abruptly, with almost no fanfare, we see Dustin in drag, auditioning for the role that Teri Garr was not right for. Unlike the setting up and laying pipe that SOME LIKE IT HOT did to make us aware that Curtis and Lemmon had NO choice (they were completely broke and on the run from the mob), we get almost no insight into Hoffman's thought process, and we certainly know he's not doing this just to survive.

But that's how act 2 begins, with a flowering of the premise: the out of work male actor is knowing at work acting as a woman, and it's on a soap opera TV show.

The remainder is a series of set-ups and pay-offs: Hoffman is supposed to kiss a man on the show, improvises his way out of it -- the twist is that the actor kisses him anyway after they yell "Cut!". He has girl talk with Jessica Lange, his co-star on the show, who tells him what she would love a man to use on her as a pickup line; he meets her out of drag at a party and uses that line -- the twist is that she rejects him anyway. Jessica Lange's dad wants to fuck him, he is coy -- the twist is that he proposes to Hoffman anyway. And finally, the improvisations that he begins on the first day come to a head when they do a live taping of the show (in itself a set-up that is paid off here) and he improvises taking off his wig and make-up, coming out as a man, both to the cast and crew of the show and to the audience of the show.

It's about honesty. The whole movie is about acting like someone you are not, and how that is going to get you in trouble no matter how big or how small. Every character grapples with it to some degree: the show's director is a philanderer, Lange lies about what she wants a man to say to her as a pickup line, Hoffman has to have sex with Teri Garr to cover up that he was admiring her dress, not checking her out.

It makes sense that a film about honesty revolves around an actor. The very idea of inhabiting a fictional character is lying using your entire body. But he has to give that up, give a piece of himself away, to learn about how to live correctly, to become whole again. To wit: he only gets the girl at the very end when he comes clean about who he is and insists he'll never lie to her again. He has to stop acting.

18. ON THE WATERFRONT

2011-12-16T07:15:00.000-08:00

It's about a fall from grace, and a redemption. It's about the common man as Christ figure. A story that's been told time and time again, but not with these particulars.

Terry Malloy is a nobody. He works at the docks now, but he used to be a boxer. His world is a corrupt one, with mobsters, crooked union reps, longshoremen fighting each other over job chips, just so they can work for the day.

He unwittingly sets up a neighbor to get killed, a neighbor who talked to investigators about graft at the docks. When the investigators ask him about it, he refuses. For one thing, he doesn't want to get killed himself. But beyond survival, Terry is so beaten down by his own life that he just doesn't want to rock the boat, to make waves, to go out on a limb.

Father Barry doesn't have that problem. He knows the mob wouldn't touch a man of the cloth, so he is the modern-day court jester: only he can tell the truth. Through Barry, we as the audience learn how the longshore union works, how it is now controlled by the mob.

Here's where things change. Malloy meets a woman, Edie, who brings his own life into focus. He realizes he's treading water, that he's not living up to his potential, that he's "a bum." He wants to be better for her. And Father Barry continues to be a thorn in the side of the mob, so much so that they set up Duggan, he who was to be his right-hand man, who was to testify against the mob, to get a shipment full of booze dropped on his head at the docks.

So Barry gives a speech over the dead man's body. Watch:

This is where the film's themes come fully into view. It's fighting against greed. It's about the glory of the working man. It's about standing up against corruption. It's about making the unpopular choice. It's about redemption.

And this is when Terry Malloy realizes he has been wrong, and decides to change his ways. He does so first by coming clean: he tells the woman he loves that he unwittingly set her brother up to be murdered (watch how this scene is down without dialogue, the only sound those of foghorns).

And then he meets with his brother Charlie, who plays the part of the devil, who makes him a Faustian bargain: he offers him a job with the mob in exchange for not testifying. Terry is too far along to go for that, so Charlie pulls a gun on his brother. Terry still won't have it: he's a fallen man, and testifying, telling the truth, setting the record straight, coming clean, all those things are his only chance at redeeming himself.

Terry testifies against the mob boss, Johnny Friendly, and then returns to work. Everyone at the docks gets a job chip but him. He and Friendly get in a fight, Terry gets beaten senselessly. But eventually he is spared from death and, to the cheers of his fellow dockworkers and over Friendly's protests, he returns to work. He is changed, a better man, a new man, he is risen and reborn, and now there is honor and glory in that work, and he is a nobody no more.

19. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

2011-10-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

It's a southern film, and accordingly, goes along about its own leisurely pace. Although the film follows the traditional four-act structure that's standard in Classic Hollywood Cinema, it does so in it's own way, allowing for tangents. There are set pieces and side plots, and in many ways it is largely episodic.

We are introduced to Atticus Finch, one of our MCs (more on this later), when a man he has done legal work for delivers him some nuts in lieu of payment. This is the kind of man he is: he accepts food instead of money, he's a good lawyer (he won the case), and he tells his kid to accept the food herself in advance, because he doesn't want to embarrass the farmer.

And then we are introduced into Scout and the neighborhood kids. We get a setup about Boo Radley, the neighborhood shut-in. The kids are scared of him: he's a spectre, a phantom, a spook. There's a reason he's called "Boo": he's as fake and real to them as a ghost.

At minute 17, Atticus is appointed a case by the judge, although we don't immediately get the details. Both the judge and Atticus act as though the case is a big deal, and we as the audience are immediately curious. This is a great example of withholding information to get the audience involved and wanting to know what's going to happen next.

Then we get it: a black man, Tom, is accused of raping a young white woman. Atticus will defend Tom in court, as every man has the right to a fair trial.

More with Boo -- long set piece with the kids trying to peep on him.

Minute 37 -- "It's a sin to kill a mockingbird." -- all they do is sing.

The theme of the movie comes late, when Atticus tells Scout, "You never really understand someone until you consider things from his point of view." This is the key to this film and the book it is based on. It's a sense of conservative Christian values that is applied, in the main plot, to the progressive principle of giving a black man a fair trail in a racist society. But that sense of empathy pervades the whole piece and will come into play in the finale, with a big payoff to first act set-ups about Boo Radley.

Set piece -- a mob has formed, and they want to kidnap and lynch Tom. Atticus goes to the county jail and sits outside, effectively preventing this. Scout humanizes the whole event by recognizing and talking to the farmer from the opening scene, who is part of the mob. This is a brilliant pay-off to an earlier scene that we didn't immediately recognize was a set-up; it also serves as great subtext; finally, it's a clean line of action from the first scene of the movie to the last scene of the second act, and allows us to go to the midpoint break with grace.

Midpoint -- the trial begins. We are in court, and we finally get the facts of the case, and it's immediately obvious that the case is bullshit.

At 1:40, the jury comes back with a verdict. Guilty. The black crowd in the balcony, segregated, stand up to show respect for Atticus, who did his job the best he could.

Then the news comes that Tom tried to escape, and Atticus must go to his family and give them the news. Mayella's dad shows up, spits on Atticus.

And now we come to Act 3. Scout and Jem walk home from town together. Mayella's father attacks them suddenly. A life and death struggle. And then, all of a sudden, nothing. As audience, we're wondering what happened.

We discover that he has died. Scout explains to her father and the sheriff what happened, from her perspective: someone saved them. And then we reveal Boo Radley. The reversal: the boogeyman becomes the savior. Everyone is capable of good.

The sheriff covers the crime up: "Bob Ewell fell on his knife." This is called karma. And then Scout walks Boo home.

The most amazing thing about this movie is the way it sheds such a good light on what it is like to be a kid: their concerns, their fears, their point of view of the world. And then the movie is able to move seemlessly from that POV to Atticus'. This is tonally tricky, to shift between these two worlds.

And there are two main characters in the story. What seems unruly throughout the course of the narrative, the constant asides and tangents, comes into focus at the end with the finale with Boo Radley: the story is, above all, about the growth of a young girl seeing the world in new ways. The biggest person in her life is her father, so we see so much of him and his concerns that he seems to share the main character role, but more than anything, what we get is a sense of a young girl learning about the world.

If there were any criticism to make about this film, it would be this: Atticus is one-note. He's simply good, and that's it. That said, the above can explain this: it's about a young girl learning from and loving her father. She will never see him in a bad light. Neither will we.

21. North By Northwest

2011-09-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

"I just happen to be one of those irrational persons who think that a film cannot be any good if it isn't well written." - Ernest Lehman.

In analyzing and then writing about the films on this list, I've realized that the best stories are those that are primal and touch a very basic nerve. Often, this takes the form of the story being about survival, life and death.

With NXNW, it starts early. We are introduced to Grant, an ad man, who is led to a car at gunpoint around minute 6. He's in danger and we're curious about why. This is a perfect example of Mamet's dictum (from BAMBI VS. GODZILLA) that the audience can only undergo the journey the MC does: he's confused, and so are we. We only know what he knows, which is nothing, and this is what makes us wonder what happens next.

Also, in accordance with Mamet's rules, we notice there is no backstory, no characterization. We only know Grant through what he says, and, more importantly, how he acts in these extreme circumstances.

He's taken to a mansion and they call him Kaplan, but he is Thornhill. It's a case of mistaken identity; they got the wrong guy.

The plot-heavy set-up continues: he's given a mickey and is supposed to drive off a cliff, but he survives. He gets the cops to accompany him to the mansion, but the residents claim they don't know him. And finally, he is framed for a murder while investigating at the UN, which makes him have to go out on the lam.

And that was Act 1, and now we are locked in. They key here is that we've set up the main character, the problem, the villain (James Mason, who was the one who had him brought to the mansion), and the stakes: the people who are after him have no problem murdering people, and he could easily be next. Survival instincts kick in.

Here we get some explanation: the CIA made up a person, so now Grant must find the REAL Kaplan. He gets on the train and travels.

Subplot: meets Eva in the dining cart, she covers for him (she's running a con, sticking her neck out for him gives him her trust), she seduces him.

Here's the twist (which happens exactly at 1 hour in): we see, visually only, that she's actually in cahoots with Mason and co. And we realize that she can fall in love with him fast like she is because she knows he is no threat.

They arrive in Chicago and he gets a call to meet out in an Indiana cornfield, to wait for a car. Thus begins the chase against a plane. This sequence works for at least three reasons: 1) we were expecting a car, so the plane comes as a cool surprise. 2) most chases in mystery stories happen on city street, at night, in the darkness, through alleys. This one happens in a vast open space, in broad daylight. 3) the use of diegetic sound, with no music.

This is the midpoint. The stakes have been raised to a fever pitch -- he is being double-crossed by a woman he is falling for, and they will stop at nothing to kill him.

Now the auction scene. Eva is with James Mason, and Grant carries on like he fucked her when he hasn't, which upsets Mason. Mason has his goons block the doors. There is no way out for Grant. So, he becomes a drunken bore at the auction and makes them arrest him. The twist is: why would a wanted man try to get arrested? Because being arrested is a better fate than being in the hands of Mason's men. Again, we are talking life and death situations.

The CIA comes to collect him, and again we get exposition, which works because it is for both Grant and us as the audience. Eva is in fact a double agent, is now in grave danger. He cares for her, which is why he agrees to help.

Thus begins Act 3, where the new goal is to save the girl. We go to Rapid City, he fakes a shooting in a public place, tricking the audience and the other characters.

He escapes the CIA's controls, goes to Mason's mansion to find the girl. They've discovered that she's an agent as well, plan to kill her. There's a chase at Mount Rushmore, and, in an amazing bit of economy, Grant saves the girl, marries her, fucks her, and goes home, all in the course of about 10 seconds and 3 or 4 shots.

22. The Shawshank Redemption

2011-08-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

Let's discuss information: when to reveal it, when to withhold it, which characters get to know what and when.

Like in "The Terminator", we follow a MC from the beginning who we aren't sure is actually a good guy. In that case, we see the parallel action of Arnold with that of Michael Biehn. They both arrive from the future and promptly fuck shit up. They are both relentlessly pursuing Sarah Connor. We see Arnold commit murders, and then we see both characters confront Connor at a club and open fire. We are surprised to find out that Biehn is actually protecting Connor from Arnold, not trying to kill her. He's the good guy.

Similarly, we open with our possibly bad guy Tim Robbins. We intercut between him drunk in his car with a pistol on a rainy night and his murder trail, where we discover that he's being accused of killing his wife and her lover. He denies it, but the judge finds him guilty, and furthermore, tells him (and us) that Robbins is a cold man, a cruel man.

Now, in the latter case, we discover that Beihn is actually a good guy through a switcheroo where we see him, through an action, save our real MC's life from the true villain of the story. And this happens at the end of the first act, the twist revealed early and used to defuse a growing sense of suspense about the fate of our true MC, moving the story in a new direction.

By contrast, we are lead to believe, by omission of facts, that there's still the possibility of Robbins having done this crime, along with a running joke that "everyone in prison is innocent." Although, through a series of actions (Robbins starting a library, getting beers for his new friends, helping a con get his HS degree), we doubt that he actually is innocent because he is by nature a good man, it isn't until late in the second act that we discover this is true, and Robbins should be free. And immediately his way out, a character with the truth, is sniped and Robbins will never get out. This fulfills the well-known "Worst Time In the Character's Life", "The Whiff of Death", the bad times that culminate act two, that spurn the confrontation and resurrection of the final act. And any ill feelings we might have about someone escaping prison are neutralized because we know for sure now that he should be free.

Another point about Andy's escape. We are led to believe, through Andy's despondent nature and his procuring of a rope, that he is going to kill himself. The build-up in the beginning of the third act is all based on the suspense of knowing certain pieces of information and concealing others: Andy is upset, knowing that he is innocent and yet his only hope for getting out has been killed, and he has a rope. He talks to Red, who is worried about him, thinks he will kill himself. Here, Andy could tell Red (and us) that he's getting out that night, but he does not. We could also be shown Andy escaping that night, or even be given an inkling -- a flash of him. Instead, the POV shifts to Red's character, who worries about Andy all night.

We cut to the next morning, and the holding back of information continues. Red comes out of his cell for the count, Andy does not. We (and Red) are instantly worried. Our worst fears have come true: this man who we've suffered with in prison, who we now know was innocent, has killed himself. Again, if they chose to do so, the filmmakers could reveal Andy right then, in his suit, free. But no.

Then the CO's come into the cell and we realize he is simply gone. The Warden comes in and we are no longer upset as an audience, we are simply confused. The POV has shifted to the Warden, and we feel what he feels. And then he throws the rock at the poster, and the tumult of information flows after that, and we see (and through Red's VO, hear) everything.

In this revealing of information, I'm reminded of "Reservoir Dogs", which doles out the facts of the robbery so slowly that the audience is always engaged. We start with a man shot in the gut, probably dying. Why? No idea. We get to the safe house. We get exposition from a third man who arrives. They discuss a robbery, they talk about how it went bad. We don't see that the shot man got it in the gut until much later, nor do we immediately realize that he's actually a cop. By the end of the movie, everyone (including the audience) knows everything, so the only thing to do at that point is start shooting.

Another, different form of revealing information is the way information is shown, not told. Two examples of this: we never actually see Andy get raped. We see the build-up to the attacks, and we are told about his attackers, and we are left to imagine what happens to him in those awful back rooms. Likewise, and even more cinematically, when the Warden's graft is exposed and the police come to get him, he decides to kill himself. He sticks a gun under his chin. We see the crash of the window behind him, a loud bang, then a gun drop to the floor. We never actually see the shot, just what happens before and afterward. Information here is presented strictly visually.

Another example of this is the posters that Andy uses. First we have Rita Hayworth, then Marilyn Monroe, then Raquel Welch. We span decades simple by seeing who the hottest actress is. Simple, effective.

A final example: Andy helps Tommy get his diploma, often in spite of Tommy. Tommy is sure he's failed, doesn't even want to turn the test in. Andy does it anyway. He is sent to the hole for an outburst at the Warden. The mail comes, and Red opens Tommy's letter about whether or not he passed. Instead of revealing the information then, even to Tommy himself, we cut to a CO, who gives Andy his meal and tells him that Tommy passed.

This shows not only that information in a movie can be doled out to create suspense, to surprise the audience by turning a potential villain into a hero, or can be done visually, but also the importance of who gets the priority, the privledge, of learning a piece of information first. Andy is our hero, Andy helped another character out, so Andy deserves to be the first to know that his efforts to help were not in vain.

23. Gone With the Wind

2011-08-08T15:06:00.001-07:00

How do you make a movie whose main character is so vain, so self-centered, so bad? How do you make someone the object of desire when they seem on the surface undesirable?

Scarlett O'Hara seems palatable to me only in that the way she lived her life was a reflection of the time period the movie was shot in, not set in. To put it another way, Scarlett's actions reflected women of the 1930's much more than they reflected those of the 1860's, so audiences could relate to the general spirit of her character much more so than the details of the plot and her specific actions in it.

To wit: after intermission, we see a woman at work. She returns to Tara, her plantation, to tend the garden. She marries a man she doesn't love, starts a lumber company. She hustles men to get money for taxes.

In her "by any means necessary" spirit, particularly as it relates to sex and money, she was a proto-typical flapper. She loved men and she loved money, and she would have them at any cost, but always on her own terms. And she wasn't afraid to get dirty, literally or figuratively, to have them.

All of this is to say that I had very little sympathy for Scarlett O'Hara throughout the entire movie, from her problems with money to her pining for some men at the expense of others. But I write this as a man in the beginnings of the 21st century. For women in the middle of the 20th century, sympathy must have been in abundance, which is one of many reasons why this film was such a success when it was released, and why it has endured.

24. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2011-07-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

Joel skips work, meets a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the introverted, sensitive man's ultimate fantasy.

And then, a mystery. A big, ballsy skip in time. Elijah Wood shows up, asking weird questions, then Joel is crying in his car, Joel is doing pills. The audience asks: what's happening?

Minute 25 -- He learns about Lacuna, about Clem erasing him.

Act 2 -- He goes to Lacuna, decides to have it done to himself.

Fun and games -- He enters his own memories, and like lucid dreaming, he learns he can mess with things.

Elijah Wood starts dating Clem after her erasing. Fakes a meet cute.

In Joel's memory, we get some Act 2 badtimes: flashes of his memory of Clem: she drinks too much, he hides his feelings from her, they are incompatible. Parallel of them erasing his memory with their relationship and breakup.

Dunst obsessed with Wilkinson; Ruffalo obsessed with her.

After sifting through the bad stuff, Joel finds a few memories he likes, wants to keep: Charles River, under covers.

Midpoint: "I want to call this off!" The midpoint often involves a new problem the MC has to solve.

Joel and Clem have to outrun his memory now. Goes into childhood memories, loses Ruffalo and Dunst. They re-erase memories they already had gotten.

Joel, via Clem, decides to hide in humiliations. He's caught masturbating, for example.

Wilkinson comes over, Dunst quotes and then kisses him. This is a classic 2nd to 3rd act twist. His wife comes, sees them through the window, reveals that he already erased her memory of their relationship.

Dunst, devastated, finds her own tape, others.

We see how Clem and Joel really started. "So go." The movie fully embodies its theme: the fantast that you can go back and do things over, do them better, correct your mistakes, say the things you wish you'd said, do the things you wish you'd done.

The procedure is done, we repeat the original section, Joel and Clem in Montauk. This is the redo.

Dunst quits, makes a package for all their clients of their tapes. Joel and Clem listen to a tape, he kicks her out of his car. Vice versa happens. They decide to try again.

"OK."

25. The Wizard of Oz

2011-07-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

It's as archtypical of a hero's journey as you'll find, made unique by featuring a female protagonist and a classical Hollywood conservative renewal of our collective values: "there's no place like home", a message we needed after The Great Depression.

1. Ordinary world. Dorothy, an orphan, lives in Kansas, where she feels out of place. What's amazing about this part of movie is that it's a microcosm and a parallel to the later parts: the three workers on the farm rescue her and later become her companions in Oz, conflict with Miss Gluch/The Wicked Witch, and her balancing act on the fence is a metaphor for her adventures. Her desire for adventure is so strong, in fact, that it is manifested through song: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

2. Call to Adventure. Miss Gluch takes away her dog, so Dorothy runs away.

3. Rufusal of the Call. Professor Marvel, a mentor, tells her her journey is fraught with danger, and uses magic to show her that her Auntie Em is sick.

4. Meeting with the Mentor. She's already met with Professor Marvel, but immediately upon being swept away (the power of her emotions and desire for change and adventure have taken her all the way to a new world), she meets a new one: Glinda, the good witch, a new mentor for a new land. Glinda lays out the rules of the new world.

5. Crossing the first threshold. The storm takes her away from Kansas, the bland, black and white "home" she is tired of, and into Oz, a magical land that's even in color. This transition to color works wonders for two reasons: one, because it does come at an important structural point and two, because it is a technical showoff but in service of the story. It is similar to the steadicam shot in ROCKY, wherein Rocky runs up the steps of the museum and we circle around him, showing no dolly tracks. That worked because it signaled Rocky's accomplishment of conquering his loneliness -- he'd beaten the city -- and it also came at the end of act 2. So: if you want to show off, do it at an act break.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies. The Yellow Brick Road; The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion; the flying monkeys, The Wicked Witch and the Wizard.

7. Approach the Cave. They go "off to meet the Wizard", although it is never that easy. Toto escapes again, the Wicked Witch writes a warning in the sky, Guardians protect the Wizard's castle.

8. The Ordeal. The hero must face death and defy it. The Wicked Witch has Dorothy and her sidekicks tied up, and Dorothy simply throws water on her, melting her.

9. Reward. For killing the evil Witch, Dorothy gets her broomstick. She presents it to the Wizard, who is enraged at having his bluff called. Like he did before with Gulch's garden, Toto uproots the illusion of the Wizard's power. He's really an old man, not any more powerful than anyone else. And yet, he offers further rewards: a diploma, a medal, a heart. But these are placebos for their real desires. Fake it till you make it.

10. The Road Back. This is the third act. They prepare a hot air balloon. Because of Toto, is goes off without Dorothy. She is not yet ready to return, has not fully grasped her own lesson.

11. Resurrection. The Good Witch returns, tells her the secret of the ruby slippers.

12. Return with Elixir. She taps her heels, returns home. Whether or not it was "real", her elixir was the lesson she learned: "There's no place like home."

26. DOUBLE INDEMNITY

2011-07-26T14:11:00.000-07:00

A framing device: "I killed Dietrichson." Did it for money and for a woman, and didn't end up with either. Like one of his other classics, SUNSET BOULEVARD, Wilder subverted classical cinema conventions by giving away the ending at the beginning and keeping us guessing about how it happened.

The movie begins when MacMurray meets Stanwyck and is instantly smitten. They flirt, talk insurance.

Minute 19 -- she wants life insurance on her husband, reveals a bad marriage. He realizes her ruse, tells her she's bad, knows she wants to kill her husband.

She comes to see him at his place, breaking the unspoken rules. He knew she would, they kiss. She admits he was right: she does want her husband dead. He agrees implicitly. They are deep in it now, point of no return, act 2 begins.

At the act break, we are back to the framing device, the Dictaphone. He continues telling his story:

"You're going to do it and I'm going to help you."

MacMurray explains the concept "double indemnity": there's a double payout on life insurance for certain accidents.

They meet in a grocery, discuss the contract. The plan is off due to a leg injury.

Minute 43 -- Gets offered a "desk job" as a claims man. It's back on -- he'll take the train.

Minute 47 -- Set piece, the murder. VO of all the plans and prep. CU on her face as the murder occurs.

The problems begin -- their getaway car won't start, a harbinger.

"It was the walk of a dead man." -- his boss is suspicious.

Keyes agrees they will have to pay the claim.

Minute 70 -- Keyes comes to visit, his suspicions as Stanwyck is about to arrive -- dramatic irony.

Kid reveals she suspects Stanwyck killed her birth mom too.

Keyes reveals the whole plot, doesn't suspect MacMurray -- man on the platform of the train. MacMurray goes into Keyes' office and finds out who he suspects.

Plans to kill her, revealed in VO. And vice versa.

She shoots him, grazes him. He shoots her back.

He finishes his VO, Keyes arrives, collapses. They share a moment.

This one is also notable for hardboiled dialogue and use of voiceover, the intricate yet economical plot, the foundations of noir tropes, and the overarching idea that lust is as powerful as any drug (especially in a repressed society), and can drive you to murder.

28. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

2011-07-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

Opening image: the theatre, a playbill. We are in a fantasy, and we know our setting.

Rush needs a play to pay his debts. Goes to Shakespeare, who owes him one, but Shakespeare has writer's block, can't take the job.

Mentor -- his proto-therapist tried to help, gives him a bracelet which will allow him a muse.

Paltrow is a royal, suffocated by her status (think Rose in TITANIC), who wants real love, poetry, beauty. Not a glorified merger.

Shakespeare discovers his lady fucked by another dude, burns his play. He's single now.

Minute 22. Paltrow auditions, Shakespeare likes it, chases her: "Follow that boat", an update (a regression?) of that old trope "Follow that cab!"

Paltrow will bind boobs and wear a wig, an inversion of the male actors in Elizabethan theatre who would play women, since none were allowed as actors themselves.

Firth, the villain, getting set up with Paltrow as she and Shakespeare flirt, Firth threatens.

"Who's that?" "Nobody, he's the author."

The film's scenes mirror his play.

Paltrow is told she is to marry Firth, she's bummed. This is classic act 2 bad times.

Paltrow and Shakespeare in a boat. She's revealed finally to be herself, they fuck.

Midpoint: Queen reveals she's been fucked, Firth makes a bet. Burbage discovers Shakespeare's bracelet, a real swordfight breaks out during a rehearsal swordfight.

Act 2 bad times continue: Paltrow discovers he's married, real Marlowe is killed by Firth.

Minute 80: Shakespeare and Firth swordfight.

Whiff of death: Paltrow revealed as woman, theatre closed, play done. Burbage puts the play back on!

Act 3 -- Paltrow is married, the play day -- she returns, plays Juliet.

The Queen is at the performance, deems the play good, Firth loses bet.

Although the lovers cannot be together, their love lives on in a new play Shakespeare has begun writing.

This one is notable for some good plotting and parallels between a classical author's work and the work of fiction, and while I give them credit for sticking with the somewhat downbeat ending, I don't think it is one of the finest screenplays ever written.

30. Unforgiven

2011-07-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

The reason this movie is so brilliant is because it works on two separate levels: the actual storyline of the movie, wherein a reformed killer in the Old West goes on a quest to murder two men who mutilated a prostitute; and the higher plane, where that storyline is used to shatter myths about an entire genre of entertainment, as well as an important period of time in our country's history.

Like any good classical Hollywood cinema, the catalyst moment happens within the first few minutes: two cowboys cut up a hooker. The hooker was new to it, and hadn't ever seen a flaccid penis, and laughed at it. Like another great western, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, this movie explores how the traditional American man mutes all his emotions to squeeze them into anger and rage. In this case, the john was embarrassed, and chose to show that through anger. And so he destroyed someone's face as a result.

This is a man's world, and the women are property, so the only result is that "Skinny gets some ponies?!"

And now we see William Munny. A stranger comes to town. He's "The Scofield Kid", and he's heard the legends of Munny, wants to partner with him to kill the men for the reward the hookers have started to rustle up.

Debate: Munny refuses, but the subtext is that he is not really a hog farmer at heart, and he also desperately needs the money. He goes and forms his posse with Freeman as act 2 begins.

Set piece: Richard Harris is English Bob. His scene serves to show the ways in which power is exhibited by violence during this time. It's also a setup about the main conflict in town, which is that the sheriff and his men are the only ones allowed guns, and anyone else will be beaten. English Bob shows power through his insults about the president and through his flaunting of his hidden guns; Hackman shows his power by stripping away Bob's through violence. By extension, he shows his power to the hookers, to get them to call off their reward.

Munny and Ned meet up with The Kid, who can't shoot. He's all talk. They near town.

English Bob is in jail, and his biographer, Beauchamp, is working on "The Duke of Death". The myths about the Old West were already around during that time due to men like Beauchamp. Little Bill dispels the myths. He's didactic about it, but we buy his exposition in dialogue, his almost aside to the audience, because he's deflating a foe's ego while talking to a naive character (Beauchamp is a surrogate for the audience -- we learn while he's learning).

Besides, in learning, we get a great suspense scene about how fast drawing isn't what it's cracked up to be. It's more important to be accurate. And more importantly, we learn that (especially if you aren't drunk), it is difficult for anyone to make the decision to kill a man. Even if that man is the only thing stopping you from getting out of jail.

Midpoint -- Beauchamp is now with Little Bill, at his house, his biographer now. Munny and posse arrive in Big Whiskey, their guns on them. Little Bill comes to strip them of their guns, beats Munny to a pulp as the other two escape.

The set piece detailing the killing of the first cowboy happens in a beautiful canyon, and there's nothing glamorous about it. Even though he's a villain in the movie, he didn't actually do anything to the girl (he was just the cutter's friend), and even brought an extra pony for her. In many ways, he's a victim. But he's got a price on his head, so he is sniped. But he doesn't die quickly, he dies slowly. He's crying for mercy, for help. He's thristy. He's human.

Ned gets nervous. He doesn't have the taste for killing anymore, leaves, is found by the lynch mob that forms after learning about the murder of the first man. Freeman is tortured and killed by Little Bill.

The second man, the one who actually did the cutting, is killed by The Scofield Kid while in the outhouse. Two things to consider: The Kid is jittery as hell while doing it, and he murders the man while he's taking a crap. And he's the one who's supposed to be a hero?

Eastwood is back to drinking, and no wonder. "It's a hell of thing killing a man. You take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have."

They get the reward money and learn that Ned's dead. Thus ends act 2.

In act three, all bets are off. Munny is drinking again, he's got a taste for killing again, and he's got a reason to kill now. He claims he "ain't like that no more" and that he mostly used to kill because he was a mean drunk, but now he's killing for revenge.

One brilliant thing about this movie is the arc of Eastwood's character: he seems a broken man, haunted by the weight of the wrong he did in the world, reformed due to the love of a good woman but shouldered with the burden of her death and his need to raise his kids as a single father. He seems old, tired, beaten, and we almost don't believe the stories Ned and The Kid tell about how he used to be a cold-blooded killer, a ruthless man.

But then he comes back to Big Whiskey. And kills everyone. Beauchamp is excited to see a real myth in action, an actual bad man. Now he's got something to write about that's better than his embellishments.

Think about the ways this movie shatters our illusions about the romance of the Old West and Westerns in any medium: angry, almost psychotic men ruled everything; people like the Scofield Kid bought into myths and tried to live them out; drunkeness was the cause of so much of the violence; being a fast draw didn't mean as much as we think it did; horses aren't that easy to ride; the game of telephone used to embellish the hooker's injuries ("cut her eyes out", etc.); a supposed gunslinger who needs glasses, of all things; blacks and Indians as real characters, instead of background or villains; the treatment of the killings of the "villains"; the uprooting of the kind of characters Eastwood himself used to play. All brilliant.

More troublesome, however, is how the movie literally puts women into those two demeaning camps: Madonna (Munny's wife, now dead, who reformed him, and is seen as an angel) or whore (the prostitutes, who disobey the man who owns them, who give out "free ones" in advance of the killings they ordered). This is a man's world, that much Eastwood and Peoples could not deconstruct.

31. His Girl Friday

2011-03-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

The setting: a newspaper office. We've got Hildy and Cary Grant, who we discover are divorced. At minute 10, we get the stakes: she's quitting the paper biz and moving upstate with her fiancee, who she's marrying tomorrow.

By Grant's protests (and by the fact that the guy she's marrying is slow), we know that he's still in love with her. And he immediately sets his plan to get her back in motion.

This is smart: we have two characters who we like (because they are movie stars, because they have clever banter, because they work in a glamorous [at the time] profession), we have a main character with a goal (Grant, getting his lady back -- both to work and in his arms) and we also have a timeline.

Debate: he takes them to lunch, to stall, to coerce: "Hildy, are you sure you want to quit?" Time compresses further, as they reveal they are leaving on the train upstate in two hours.

Grant sets up a phony phone call, tries to get Hildy roped in to do an article on a murderer, and she discovers his ruse. Then they agree to a scheme where she writes it in exchange for her fiancee doing an insurance policy on Grant, which means big money for them for their move upstate. And further stalling by Grant.

So we are now at Act 2 -- the stakes are slightly higher (shorter timeframe), and there's a new task by Hildy, to write this story. Grant's goal remains the same.

We get some exposition about the murder case -- Hildy joins the boy's club that is the press room (poker, smoking, etc.). Her fiancee, Bruce, gets a check from Grant, puts it in his hat. Hildy visits the killer. He's crazy. Killer's fake girlfriend visits crass, jaded reporters in the press room. Grant has Bruce arrested on a fake charge to delay things further, Hildy picks him up, bails him out, and tells off Grant: she's done with the newspaper biz, is out the door.

The stakes are at their highest point now: the main objective of the movie, to get the obviously fated lovers back together, is now almost broken.

And then: midpoint. Jailbreak! The killer, Earl Williams, has escaped.

So Hildy immediately returns to work, because that is her nature, and Grant goes back to scheming, as that is his nature.

The police capture Williams, even though he's just been given a reprieve due to insanity. The mayor orders a shoot to kill, to show he's tough on crime.

At minute 60, Williams comes into the pressroom, gun on Hildy. So who do the police have trapped?

Killer's girl jumps out the window, survives, Grant shows up. "Tear up the whole front page!" Grant and Hildy are working together again, the rush of the story is their main connection, this is where they belong, where they are best. They fit. Bruce returns, is ignored. "I'm taking the 9 o'clock train." No one cares, he leaves.

Williams is in the desk. The cops come and discover him, put Grant and Hildy in handcuffs. The dimwit the politicians paid off returns, Williams is reprieved, Grant and Hildy could reveal the ruse so they are let go, they're going to print a morning edition fucking over the politicians.

Hildy remembers the good times, wants to stay. Grant lets down his guard, is honest and sincere for the first time the entire film. He tells her to go. A kiss. She will stay. And they go back to work.

There's a lot to examine here. The dialogue is certainly notable for being quotable, but as in Tarantino films, Mamet films and even "Juno", dialogue is just the icing on the cake, the little bonus after you've done all the real work of writing a movie. In other words, you have to create great characters, you have to have a tight plot, you have to use the proper structure, you have to setup and payoff, you have to escalate the action, you have to use dramatic irony, you have to keep the audience guessing. Only then will the audience admire the dialogue, otherwise it becomes empty.

Mostly, I'm enamored of classical Hollywood cinema like this due to the economy of character and plot. The character's actions drive the plot, the setup comes fast, and everything derives from it. And the action rises and rises, and then we end at the right time.

And finally, what's not to love about making the main character a trickster? They get away with it because a) it's Cary Grant b) because he has a clear objective that he's using his wily ways to gain and c) because that objective is love, and it's love with someone he's obviously destined to be with.

And, as the book says, tricksters make this world, and that's why he's successful, and why there is a happy ending.

Oscars 2010

2011-02-27T07:23:00.001-08:00

Best Picture
Will win: The King's Speech -- Weinsteins are back to their old tricks, making sure mediocre stuff gets the big prize.
Should win: The Social Network

Best Director
Will win: Tom Hopper
Should win: David Fincher

Best Actress
Will win: Natalie Portman
Should win: Jennifer Lawrence

Best Actor
Will win: Colin Firth
Should win: James Franco or Jesse Eisenberg

Best Supporting Actress
Will win: Melissa Leo
Should win: Hailee Steinfeld

Best Supporting Actor
Will win: Christian Bale
Should win: Christian Bale

Best Animated Feature Film
Will win: Toy Story 3
Should win: Toy Story 3

Best Foreign Language Film
Will win: Incendies
Should win: ?

Best Original Screenplay
Will win: David Seidler
Should win: Christopher Nolan

Best Adapted Screenplay
Will win: Aaron Sorkin
Should win: Aaron Sorkin

Best Documentary Feature
Will win: Waste Land
Should win: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Best Original Song
Will win: We Belong Together, Newman
Should win: We Belong Together, Newman

Best Original Score
Will win: Reznor/Ross
Should win: Reznor/Ross

Best Film Editing
Will win: Angus Wall
Should win: Whoever edited Inception

Best Visual Effects
Will win: Inception
Should win: Inception

Best Cinematography
Will win: Deakins
Should win: Jeff Cronenweth

Top Ten of 2010

2011-02-26T08:16:00.000-08:00

Usually these fall into one of three categories: movies that I felt were unjustly overlooked, movies that I feel will stand the test of time and be remembered instead of fading into obscurity, and movies that are just plain great.

Warning: lots of spoilers below!

My top ten of 2010:

"127 Hours" – Aron cuts his arm off, and there’s a beat where he almost can’t believe that he’s actually free, and says thank you.

"Buried" – The shock of the final twist as the voice on the phone apologizes and we are left with black immediately before the credits.

"Exit Through the Gift Shop" – Banksy showing us/Thierry his counterfeit currency.

"Four Lions" - The rap and "bombing" at the lecture.

"The Kids Are All Right" – Annette Bening realizes she’s being cheated on, comes back to the table, looks around with all the sound muffled.

"Lemmy" – Lemmy in a tank.

"The Social Network" - The regatta sequence.

"Somewhere" - Johnny Marco drives his Ferrari around a track in the desert, over and over and over again.

"Toy Story 3" – The toys realize they are goners, and accordingly band together right before they are to be incinerated.

"Winter’s Bone" – Ree Dolly cuts off one hand, and it is explained to her that she must cut off the other. The sound of the chainsaw.

Ten more great moments:

"Black Swan" - The final dance, where Natalie Portman sprouts wings.

"The Fighter" - Dickie watching "Lost Lives in Lowell" while in prison.

"Harry Potter 7" - Harry and Hermione's dance in the tent.

"I Am Love" - Tilda Swinton eating a prawn, literally lighting up as she chews.

"Incredibly Small" - Amir gives Anne his key to the apartment and they hug for too long, almost kissing, almost reconciling, before he finally leaves.

"Lovers of Hate" - Chris Doubek taking a bath at a car wash.

"Marwencol" - Mark Hogancamp lamenting not wearing heels, before finally putting them on and returning to the gallery.

"Pirahna 3D" - The fish eat Jerry O'Connell's dick and then burp it up.

"Putty Hill" - The shock of hearing the offscreen interviewer's voice for the first time, right after a rousing paintball match.

"The Town" - Jeremy Renner, knowing he's about to die, takes one last drink of a soda he finds on the street.

Edit: Movies I wanted to see but haven't yet

"The American"
"Animal Kingdom"
"Carlos"
"Dogville"
"The Illusionist"
"Never Let Me Go"
"Restrepo"
"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"
"Sweetgrass"
"The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia"

2. The Godfather

2011-02-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

First lines: "I believe in America." That's because, in so many ways, this story encompasses so many aspects of America: the story of immigrants who came from nothing to positions of power; the story of haves and have-nots, the haves taking what they have through the use of force; the story of family, both biological and adopted; and the story of capitalism being a higher power than a professed belief and fear of God.

In the end, this is a study of power, and the transference of power from a father to his reluctant son. The idea of power, and its fluidity, attend every single scene in the film. Coppola was so popular and acclaimed in the 1970's primarily, I would argue, because he was brilliant at distilling a film's essence and infusing it into every scene. APOCALYPSE NOW: "War is not hell, war is insanity." THE CONVERSATION: "There is no such thing as privacy in the modern world."

Vito Corleone has power, Bonasera does not. So Vito flexes his muscles, invokes social code to get Bonasera to see things his way. And he refuses him. What's more powerful than telling someone no?

These backroom scenes, darkly lit, claustrophobic, contrast remarkably with the bright, musical, colorful, open, loud party outside. Here we see the rest of the family: Sonny, the hothead. Tom, the diplomat. Fredo, the idiot. Michael, the prodigal. Michael is set apart from the rest through dialogue ("Where's Michael? We're not taking a picture without Michael."), through dress (he's in a war hero's uniform, fresh from the battlefield), and he has a pretty blonde WASP with him, in contrast to the rest of the dark-haired Italian women.

Kay Adams functions as a way for the audience to make sense of this confusing world. Michael gets to describe how things work to her, and, more importantly, insist that he is different, that he is a "civilian": "It's my family, Kay, it's not me". This is the key to the film, because, above all, the movie tracks Michael's transition from being a witness to the brutality of the mob, to a participant, to the leader.

Johnny Fontaine, seemingly successful, in truth has little power. He uses his charms to gain some from Vito for a later favor. This sets up the next sequence, which is Tom in LA. Again, a power struggle: the producer showing off his enormous house, his wealth, his way with women, his prize horses. He shows off the horse as an example of that power, a great setup, which is paid off with the horse's head in his bed. His power is gone because the mob has threatened him, killing the thing he loves and entering his personal space. He has no choice but to relent -- he can't refuse, as the saying goes.

The main plot of the movie begins, and it is this: The Turk wants to partner with Vito on bringing heroin into their portfolio of criminal enterprises. Vito is stuck in the old ways, doesn't want to get involved. Again, the power of saying no, of refusing. And so, The Turk begins a war: he kills Vito's man, Brasi, and attempts an assassination on Vito himself.

Michael, still unsure of his part in all this, visits his father, who is alone (powerless). Michael arranges to move his father, understands the threat, and enlists a baker to pose as a gunman/bodyguard when assassins roll by. They exercise power through potential violence.

A cop comes by and beats Michael. This whole sequence is the turning point for the movie. Michael sees his dad in a vulnerable state and, because of his love, must act. The only way to act is to become more involved in the family. In addition, his beating at the hands of the police lead him to seek revenge, that is, to murder both the cop and their main rival. He offers to do so, which sets up the second act climax: the murder.

Michael offers to kill the cop and The Turk. He is given a gun. He is given a location. The tension builds because of dramatic irony, of our concern for the character, of the setup which leaves us wanting a payoff, of the reversals deliberate suspense (Michael reaching behind the toilet, etc.). Finally, he kills the two men and walks out, never the same again.

Midpont: the mob war continues. As always with midpoints, there's a montage or a change of scenery, a breather. In this case, we get George Lucas' B&W photos of gunned-down mobsters, and Michael in hiding in Sicily. And Vito returns home from the hospital.

Michael meets and marries Appolonia, does so by acting like a mobster -- his power over the girl's father is diminished, so he reestablishes it by giving the man his confidence about his identity.

Meanwhile, Sonny is still in charge, discovers his brother-in-law is beating his sister, and he humiliates him in another display of power. Because of this, and because of his being shut out of the family business, Carlo turns sides and sets up Sonny, who is gunned down in a serious switcheroo.

Like Michael was in protecting him, Vito is called into action by his family being threatened, a primal concern. Unlike Michael, who was spurned to kill by a threat, Vito is spurned to call a truce: "This war stops now."

Michael's identity is no longer safe, and Appolonia is killed. The feud is finally in Italy, and Michael must leave.

Michael sees Kay, he's fully Mobbed up now (he's wearing a gangster's suit and he's wearing a hat). He now justifies his father's behavior to her instead of begging off, and insists that they are going to go legit.

Changing of the guard: Michael is now the head, Tom is out, Vito is not the counseliere, they are expanding to Nevada, and the other two captains can splinter off in due time if they desire.

Vegas. Fredo throws his weight around -- he's always been the loser brother, and in an attempt to show his power in this new locale, he gets girls and a party for Michael. This won't do. Michael, now the head, was never interested in such things, but as the Godfather, he has to present the right public face. He has Fredo get the girls out (delegating the job like a boss does), calls in his favor with Johnny Fontaine, and offers to buy out Mo Greene, the casino and hotel's owner. He is all business.

Vito reveals what we knew all along -- he never intended Michael to be in the mob, expected more of him, a senator, a governor. And with that revelation, Vito can now die, and does so, with his grandson at his side.

The amazing set piece of the baptism and the murder montage is legendary for a reason: it brings back the duality we saw before, it solidifies Michael's grasp of power, gives him an alibi for the murders, is a perfect joining of the two families (mob family and biological family), is the payoff for the previous setup about the power-grab (thus also touching on the main theme).

Carlo is killed due to his betrayal. Shock: we didn't expect this.

The movie ends on a note of transition -- the family is packing up to leave New York for Nevada, and Michael lies to his wife about his role in it. What Vito tried to present comes true: Michael is now The Godfather, with no looking back.

33. The Third Man

2011-02-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

Like so much classical Hollywood cinema, it starts with a simple, economical premise: Holly Martins comes to Vienna with promises of a job from his friend, Harry Lime, but upon arriving, he discovers his friend is dead. Martins suspects something is awry, and goes in search of answers.

This is an update of a classic setup or premise: "A stranger comes to town." You see this throughout literature and movies, wherein someone arrives in a hostile territory and manages to change everything. In this case, the setting does a lot of work: we are just past WWII, and Vienna lays in literal ruins. Beyond that, the city is divided into four areas, each controlled by a different country: US, UK, USSR, France. We learn all this through a VO over a montage of scenes of the city and an explanation of the black market, which gives us rich information that also sets up concerns for later in the story (the influence of the black market on the narrative).

Martins is an author, we discover, a writer of pulp fiction paperbacks. In ways, his fiction echoes the film's plot, the murder mystery, the layman doing detective work. Martins begins an investigation, questioning witnesses, much to the chagrin of the British MP, who warns him off, tells him that Lime was a criminal.

At min 20, Martins meets Lime's lady backstage at her job in the theatre. They discuss Lime as she removes her makeup and wig, a visual representation of her inner nature.

"I wonder if it wasn't an accident." The debate is over. Act two begins with Martins having Lime's lady on his side and a full desire to discover Lime's killer, and having successfully avoided being deported. He discovers that three men gave evidence about the death, and he has met two. Who is the titular third man? This question drives along the remaining two acts.

He meets the Romanian at a nightclub, who denies there is a third man. He sets up a meeting with the porter, but as he arrives, he discovers the porter has been killed. He is framed for the murder, escapes with Lime's lady to a movie (another part in the motif of fiction and reality intersecting).

Martins is picked up from the hotel, driven recklessly through the streets. The irony here is that we and he both feel he is to be killed. A twist: he's delivered to a lecture he's set to give, a switcheroo payoff to a setup in the first act (yet another fiction/reality intersection).

Midpoint. He's chased after the lecture, manages to get away (shades of Lime's eventual demise at the film's end). He meets up with the British MP, who reveals that Lime was diluting rationed penicillin, thereby directly causing deaths. Martins is at a low point, agrees to leave the city.

At 105 mins, he walks back to his room and realizes he is being followed. He stops in a plaza, yells out. In one of cinema's best reveals, we see Harry in a doorway, a Mona Lisa-like grin on his face. He runs off in the shadows, Martins following him to no avail.

The coffin is dug up at once, and indeed, one of Harry's underlings is in it. Harry is alive!

Martins realizes Lime was the third man all along, goes to the other two men and tells them to have Harry meet him at the Ferris wheel. As a good writer of fiction, he knows there must be a confrontation.

Harry arrives, his stomach pains, his focus on survival, his veiled threats, his famous cuckoo clock speech.

The final confrontation involves Harry scrambling through the sewers like a rat in a maze, sounds coming from every possible escape. He kills an MP, is shot. Gripping a sewer grate in desperation, Cotten confronts and kills him. A parallel can be made from Lime's desperation to that of the Allied countries after the war: they are focused on survival, clinging to any escape or reprieve; if they turn towards illicit or amoral activity, they should and will end up dead.

The end is a shade of the beginning: Martins goes to Lime's funeral. It is really him in the coffin this time. And in a glorious final twist, subverting the happy endings of the time, Martins waits for Lime's lady after the funeral, and she walks right by him, does even look at him.

Beyond the writing, the thing to remember about this film is the use of a location, which uses Vienna to such rich effect, and the amazing B&W cinematography, particularly the use of canted framing and focus on shadows.

35. The Usual Suspects

2011-01-02T18:32:00.001-08:00

Two New Year's resolutions that pertain to this blog. First, write about the films in more depth. I'm inspired by Todd Alcott and Harry Plinkett to write longer, more exhaustive pieces about these films.

Second, I plan to write these pieces more regularly so that I can finish the list by the end of the year.

So: The Usual Suspects.

A man lights a cigarette, then sets a trail of gas afire. We see it trail across a boat, some dead bodies, until a man on the upper deck pisses on it to kill the flame. The pissing man comes downstairs, confronts the smoking man, they have an exchange and the smoking man gets shot by the pissing man. There are a variety of shots of the rest of the boat -- a porthole, a stack of ropes. The pissing man climbs off the boat and we hear sirens in the distance.

This prologue does the three main things that a prologue needs to do: sets the mood/tone of the story, introduces us to the main character, and makes us want to know what happens next. The tone is that of a mystery, with crime and perhaps betrayal, as well as a bit of a noir edge. And we want to know what happens next because it seems important that a dude got killed on a boat and seemed to recognize the killer -- he calls him "Keyser" after asking him what time it is.

What happens next is:

a smoking man is telling cops/lawyers/The Man how this all started. "A truckload full of guns got stolen outside of Queens." He's in California, which we see from the seal behind him (also notice the duality theme emerging here by the framing). How did he end up there? The cops rounded up "the usual suspects" for the truck/gun robbery, starting with Stephen Baldwin.

Now begins the montage of the titular suspects. The introduction to Baldwin is exactly 10 seconds long and the very definition of economical storytelling. The cops barge in on McManus in bed (and we feel the excitement of this by nothing more than a quick dolly in), and, instead of freaking out, he ROLLS OVER. He's got bad tattoos, a week-old stubble, calls the cops "pigs" and tells them to fuck off. Within 10 seconds, we know exactly who this character is, we discover his name, and we like him for his chutzpah.

Hockney's introduction is similar. He's in a garage working on a car. Again, not freaked out by the cops, he reaches under the chassis ("what's going to happen next?"). Instead of grabbing a gun, he's wiping his face off. Their guns pointed at him result not in fear, but in a quip: "Sure you brought enough guys?" Again: in a matter of seconds we know that, unlike the blow-hard tough guy we just met, Hockney (who's name we also are able to catch) is a regular, blue-collar joe.

Switching gears, we then meet Del Toro's character in a silent scene. He's nervous, applying lip balm, grabbing his ear, putting his hands up for arrest before he needs to.

Finally, Keaton. He's in a business meeting pitching a "restaurant that will change with the times." This idea of shape-shifting is a theme in the movie: Keaton is trying to change into a legit businessman, not a criminal, Hockney is trying to act straight-and-arrow (his detailing business, not copping to the truck charges), someone is ALSO Soze. And at the end, the identity of Soze shifts from a Turkish man to Keaton, then finally to Kevin Spacey.

Anyway, the cops (who Keaton already knows) humiliate Keaton in front of his investors and bring him in, thereby meeting the main cop and who we think is the main bad guy, an aging guy who is trying to give up his life of crime (a cliche if there ever was one).

Notice: we never see Spacey get picked up by the cops. No one in the audience questions it because we've seen him already, being grilled by the cops and narrating to us.

They go in for their line-up and questioning.

Spacey, still on V.O., is there as well, even though it doesn't "make sense" for him to be there -- he's not a hardcore criminal like them. These scenes do several things: are the set-up for Spacey's handicapped limp, a visual cue that pays off in the last minute of the film; are a way to lead us off the path of thinking Kint is a bad guy ("I knew I didn't do anything they could do me for", which could have two meanings -- he's small-time; or he's so big-time he set it all up), introduces us more fully to the suspects, who we discover are funny (almost all comic relief is welcome in a serious film), and build a mythology around Keaton, who's made out to be a Big Man (Kint narrates that he was "the prize", the cops punch him, he sits apart from the others in the cell).

Here's where the meat of the red herrings come in: Keaton fakes his own death, he's trying to go straight as a businessman, avoids getting involved in McManus' new job.

The other undercurrent of this scene is: "who in the goddamn pisshell stole the fucking truck?" Hockney is later revealed to be the culprit, and watch how he avoids it throughout the cell scene: he changes the subject ("who's the gimp?"), accuses someone else, nervously rubs his face as the others discuss it.

Back to California and the boat. We see bodies, cops everywhere, the boat smoking. A new detective is on the case. Kujan comes to CA, wants to talk to Kint, exposes to us the extent of the crime: 27 men dead, a huge dope deal. The other detective visits the only survivor on the boat, now in the hospital. He's burnt, and keeps repeating a name: Keyser Soze.

Kujan gets his wish: to talk to Kint. Here's where the movie gives it away, and does so visually. What we think are simple little establishing shots showing a cluttered office and a bored criminal are instead small set-ups for tall tales. Kint is taking in details to weave his story to Kujan.

The red herrings continue, and it's smart by Kint. He throws in tons of anecdotes to confuse and annoy Kujan: picking beans in Guatamala, barbershop quartet. The coup de grace is how nervous and stupid he acts, and how he plays up his disability so much so that he drops a lighter on the floor. How hardass could he be? Isn't he the last you would suspect of being a mastermind? How underestimated is he, especially by a blowhard cop who's "smarter than you"? Finally, the last shot of the scene is the set-up for Kobayashi -- he looks up at Kujan's cup, piecing more together (which we later see in fragments at the end).

The end of the first act is here: the suspects are released from jail, Keaton's fate as a legit businessman is no more ("every investor in the city will be walking away from us"), and McManus' proposal is accepted by everyone but Keaton.

So act two begins by Kint trying to convince Keaton. They won't let Kint in without Keaton (again, shades of Kint being ineffectual), and Keaton is convinced because a) he has no legit business options and b) Kint's plan calls for "no killing."

New York's finest taxi service. Action sequence, we learn something clever (the idea that the cops collude with criminals), and fire motif continues.

They need to see their fence in CA, so away they go. But first, Keaton watches over his lady. Another red herring: we're thought to believe Keaton is in love, wants to change his ways. Kujan exposes more: Keaton was a crooked cop before he was a criminal, faked his own death. The mythology continues...

Back to the hospital, the Hungarian man mentions Soze again. The way everyone discusses Soze, we know he's a big deal.

Kujan continues about the Keaton myth. "There was a lawyer, Kobayashi."

They meet the fence Redfoot in LA. They make their exchange, Redfoot gives them another job. Again, the Keaton myth continues: Keaton killed a man in jail, Keaton only wants to do "one job."

They take the job, we see them at work. Another action sequence. It goes wrong, and Keaton, who was reluctant to kill, gets them into the jam. Kint kills Saul to make it right. Instead of being money or jewels, the briefcase is filled with dope. The job was given to Redfoot by Kobayashi, who they decide to meet.

Back to Rabin's office. Kujan and Jack Baer meet, Baer gives Kujan more info (there was no dope on the boat), tells him to mention Soze to Kint.

Midpoint. We meet Kobayashi.

A new job emerges, the story refreshes itself -- they must steal drugs from a boat (which is where we see the story end up. Again, Soze is mentioned, and he's A Big Man. Kobayashi knows everything about them (i.e., Hockney stole the truck), so they have no choice but to go along with the plan (if they know everything, they can always get to them).

And now, we get the story of Soze. Some say he doesn't exist, Kint says he's Turkish and tells a myth story about him, that he kills his family and the men who raped and tortured them. Soze is a spectre, a tall tale, a "spook story". Again, we're told -- by the guy who is actually Soze, and who is disabled -- that Soze is larger-than-life.

Fenster freaks out, leaves. They discover his body and decide to take revenge on Kobayashi, without deciding yet on taking the job. This is the classic 2nd act debate section. Kint tells Kujan that he wanted to run -- again, he's a coward -- and insults Kujan: "to a cop, everything is simple. There's no arch-criminal on the street."

So: revenge on Kobayashi. They kill his bodyguards, offer him one last chance. Then, the tables turn. Kobayashi has Keaton's lady upstairs, working on a case. The subtext is that if Kobayashi doesn't return, Finneran will be killed by her "bodyguard".

And thus, the threat of death to their loved ones makes our men decide to take the offer and they scope it out. It's Keaton's one last score, an impossible score, another big cinematic cliche. The reason these big twist movies work is they play into tropes we've seen time and time again, and once the audience is comfortable in them, the filmmakers yanks you into seeing everything a different way (see my review of THE SIXTH SENSE for another example).

Act three -- the boat heist.

The suspense works because we know they are going to kill everyone on the dock, and there's a timer on a bomb, and we cross-cut between the men, and Keaton is in the belly of the beast, surrounded by tough guys. The bomb explodes as a man lights a cigarette (more fire motif).

Hockney is shot. By who? Back to Kint. Kujan reveals that "there was no dope on that boat."

And so it is. Keaton and McManus look for it, find nothing. The suspense here rests on the question -- will they get killed searching the boat? Will they discover Soze and have it out with him?

The man on the boat, the witness Marquez, is killed.

By who? Soze? McManus is literally stabbed in the back, Kint discovers Hockney's body, "Soze" shoots Keaton.

A replay of the opening scene -- Keaton killed, the ropes, the black-clad man fleeing, flames. The implication that Kint was there watching it all.

Kujan tells Kint that Marquez was the reason they were on the boat -- it was a hit, not a dope deal. "Keaton was Keyser Soze." A twist. Everything Kujan says seems true, makes sense in a montage -- Keaton was a crooked cop who could engineer the line-up, the immunity for Kint, etc.

The sketch artist has finished their drawing of Soze from the Hungarian survivor. They fax it to Kujan as Kint leaves.

The pacing switches, slows down. Kujan sees the bulletin board that Kint took in earlier: Redfoot, Quartet, Kobayashi. We review the whole film, and the earlier set-up is paid off: Kint made it all up.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." And, finalizing the fire motif and the theme of duality, Kint/Soze shifts shape, lights a cigarette, and then extinguishes an imaginary flame.

36. Midnight Cowboy

2010-12-23T09:08:00.000-08:00

This is a story of friendship, how unlikely individuals come together when they have nothing else.

Joe Buck, a handsome aspiring hustler who dreams of seducing rich women, takes the bus from Texas to New York with little more than a portable radio, his cowboy clothes, and a painful naivete. Joe has an active fantasy life, remembers bad incidents in his life, imagines women describing him when they describe their male ideal.

Joe is not a good hustler. He fails often before his first success, and the next morning when he asks the lady for money, she cried and screams at him until he relents, tells her he's joking.

The subplot at minute 24 is Ratso Rizzo, a sickly city-dweller. His name is appropriate: this is a man who lives in filth, who is just barely surviving. Ratso tells him he'll hook him up with a man who will pimp him out, but only for a fee. Joe meets the man, and the bait and switch is the guy is a Jesus freak who wants to save Joe.

Joe is broke, eats crackers at a diner, is locked out of his room. Sees Ratso randomly, and their uneasy friendship begins: Ratso offers him a place to stay, brings him in on dreams of escaping the city for Florida.

The writing could use work. The flashbacks are distracting: the overeager grandmother, the rape, "you're the only one, Joe." They tell us how Joe came to be who he is, but who cares? Likewise, Joe's latent homosexuality might have been shocking at the time, but now it plays out in obvious ways: he's weirded out at a gay bar, brutalizes a gay john in a sketchy hotel room. Finally, we see Ratso's death a mile away: he's always been sickly and we sense his Florida dreams will be out of reach to someone so small. And so they are. Ratso dies on the bus as Joe realizes, "Hell, I ain't no hustler".

It essentially starts on a bus, and that's how it ends.

This is an interesting case wherein the directing does a disservice to the writing (which, despite many problems, is at its core a solid story), making it less of a film than perhaps it could have been. Oftentimes on this blog I have implied that the director elevated the material (particularly in regards to Scorcese, Spielberg, Hitchcock). Here, the dominate and poorly-aged stylistic tricks of 60s mod cinema just get in the way: the flashbacks, the heavy cutting, the zooms. This is, above all, a story that ought to have been told simply, and it was not. Luckily, the core of the writing and the acting shine through.

37. The Philadelphia Story

2010-11-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

It's a screwball comedy, so there will be witty banter, there will be simple characters in battles of will, there will be complications of all kinds, most especially in love.

In a dialogue-free scene, we see a rich, spoiled Katherine Hepburn kicking out her husband, Cary Grant. The set-up gives us everything: later we see her debating whether or not to get married to the next man, who she clearly doesn't fit with. Jimmy Stewart and his photog sidekick are set to cover the story for the society pages, and Cary Grant comes along to get in the mix and try to win Hepburn back. Guess how it all works out?

Like I said: complications. Hepburn, who never gets drunk, gets drunk. She hooks up with Stewart. Grant blackmails Hepburn. A mix-up -- who is the uncle and who the father? Grant writes Stewart's story. Stewart proposes, she dismisses, takes Grant in the end.

The reason the writing works so well, besides the crackling dialogue, is that it depicts a high-class society life that many wish they were able to live, and it structures the story, all the way to the absolute end, making the audience wonder what will happen next. This is the screenwriter's primary concern: always keep them guessing.

27. Groundhog Day

2010-10-23T11:25:00.001-07:00

Set-up -- he's an asshole, as only Bill Murray can be.

Point of no return/inciting incident -- he was WRONG about something -- there WAS a blizzard, and it means he can't leave the place he hates the most. He's stuck in his assholery, and will be forced to change.

18 mins -- switch to act 2 -- his first repeat day.

Trying to get out of it -- goes to therapy, asks around. Doesn't believe it. This is the classic "denial" part of screenplays, where a hero/MC tries to wiggle out of their destiny until they are thrust into act 2.

33 -- Now, like Spiderman with his webbing, he gets to test out his "powers", test out the limits of this new world he finds himself in. He gets to play: seduces Nancy Taylor, outruns the police, eats a meal of desserts only, steals from the bank truck.

Additionally, at this point we've established the repeating of days well enough, so we don't need to see it anymore. Good economy here.

Subplot kicks in -- relationship with Rita (Andie MacDowell) -- says her name when seducing Nancy.

43 mins -- Getting philisophical with Rita -- she describes her ideal man, and he jokes about being close. He goes about seducing her (buying her drinks, chocolate, building a snowman, reciting french poetry), but it's a con. He's not sincere about it, he hasn't changed at his core, he hasn't earned her love, and that's why he's still trapped.

Midpoint -- he tells her he loves her, she turns on him. "I could never love anyone like you because you don't love anyone but yourself." Montage of her slapping him. He's at a standstill with her because he's still the same dude but faking like he's changed. His new goal in the second half of the film will be to truly improve himself. First he will have to go through hell.

60 -- He's at his lowest, decides to steal the groundhog. Another chase. Montage of him killing himself in various ways, all to no avail.

70 -- "I am a jerk." But he's leveled with her about his problem and he's starting to soften, to become a better person and to see the good in others. He's learning to love, so he's going to get to receive love, and that's going to break the "curse".

75 -- Act 3. The payoff to the setup -- he finally interacts with the old homeless guy, gives him money. Also brings coffee to his coworkers, helps out larry with camera eq.

Decides on self-improvement -- learns piano, poetry, ice sculpting, helping the homeless man out. He can't help him, so he helps others:
saving a kid from falling out of a tree, saving a choking man, fixing a flat tire.

91 -- Rita chooses him -- buys him at a bachelor auction. This is key -- we see he had seduced her, so she must do the same with him now for the audience to accept the fundamental change in his being.

95 -- Is truly content, gained the love of a woman. The curse is broken. Time to celebrate -- he has changed so much he wants to buy a house there!

I defy you not to cry at the small short story of Bill Murray finally recognizing the old homeless man and giving him money, then subsequently trying -- in vain -- to save the man's life by offering medical care, soup, and CPR. It's a small gesture, but a microcosm of the movies concerns, when Bill Murray gives up on trying to save him with a brief glance up to the sky. Amazing stuff.

Many consider this film to be one of the most spiritual films ever made. I would amend that to say that it is one of the most spiritual Hollywood films ever made. Like the great "It's a Wonderful Life", this film uses a fantastical premise in a classical Hollywood fashion to show a damaged man improving himself, accepting the status quo, and living with what he has to the fullest. In that sense, it is both very conservative and subversive at the same time, a tension that makes the film ever more fascinating.

What Pixar does right

2010-09-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

I read the article about Pixar in the 18.06 issue of Wired, and learned a few things about how they are as successful as they are:

* They provide a regular system of brutal review. Everything gets picked about by everyone so mediocrity isn't allowed to seep in (think peer reviewed academic journals).

* A deliberate focus on classical storytelling techniques. 3-act structure, heros vs. villains, etc. If the story doesn't work, no amount of fancy graphics will help.

* Previsualization. They do animated storyboards to see if the story works in motion. To wit: they make a movie before they make the movie!

* Self-motivated employees. Like Woody Allen said about how he hires actors: "I choose good people and let them do their work." There are no incentives, no carrots and sticks -- everyone is motivated to do their best work internally.

I am eager to apply these techniques to my next production.

38. American Beauty

2010-08-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

This movie does what all good movies must do -- every scene focuses on making us wonder what will happen next. And it mostly accomplishes this by setting things up and paying them off.

It starts from the beginning when we see grainy home video footage (unique for the time) of an almost nude girl talking about how she wants her dad dead. We see the opening credits, then we helicopter in to a typical suburb. The VO introduces us to our hero, Lester Burnham, who informs us that, within a year, he will indeed be dead. Within the first two minutes or so, we're already wondering: did that girl, his daughter, kill him? Did she have him killed by the other voice in her video? Or did something else happen?

Because of this, we're engaged in the story, we're actively participating, we're curious and we will follow.

The first ten minutes or so set up everything -- the first time we see Lester's wife, she's pruning rose bushes. This sets up the movies main color -- red -- and sets up the rose motif, which will play into Lester's journey later in his fantasies about Angela. We see the neighbors, a gay couple, and we see the new neighbors, Ricky and his military father, all of which will be important later. Finally, we see Lester, asleep in the backseat of a car being driven by his wife. This sets up two things: another visual motif -- jails or cages (seatbelt, reflections on Lester's face) -- as well as Lester being metaphorically asleep or dead inside, and his wife being the one controlling the relationship.

In these ways, the first ten minutes of the movie set up so many things that later get paid off. And they get paid off in spectacular fashion throughout. For example:
Lester meets his daughter's friend, and the rose motif continues. The color red remains throughout, with their front door, Lester's sports car, his toy car, and blood on the wall.

The subplot is Wes Bentley's character, Ricky. He comes in right when he should, at 24 minutes in. Another set-up and pay-off -- his dad runs a tight ship, and he talks about how he hates their gay neighbors. Ricky's response speaks volumes. The two main things this sets up: Cooper's latent homosexuality that gets paid off big time in the third act, and Wes Bentley's character, who is the key to the movie in that everyone else is trapped and playing a role, wherein Ricky (when not with his father) is the only person who seems comfortable with who he is, and is the most free. How remarkable that the key to the movie is with an unrepentant weed dealer!

And how remarkable that the midpoint of the movie, the traditional reversal, happens due to masturbation -- masturbation fantasies by a grown man about an underage girl at that! Lester has become sexually unleashed due to his attraction Angela and is acting accordingly. His wife calls him out and he becomes defiant. This is the beginning of him breaking out of his cages and becoming free. In short order, he quits his job, buys a new car, starts working out, breaks a plate at dinner, generally becomes the man he wants to be.

The third act of the movie -- all compressed to one rainy day -- is a mini-masterpiece in keeping the audience wondering what will happen next, mostly through paying off set-ups and creating red herrings that allow us to imagine ANY of the characters killing Lester. The truth is a big payoff and when it is revealed, it incredibly is done only visually and only in a few seconds. At that point, the murder mystery is besides the point, and the only thing we care about is that a character we liked finally broke free, even if for a little bit. That's transcendent.

So even though this film hasn't aged particularly well in terms of its message about the suburbs being a place where men lead lives of quiet desperation (countless TV shows have mined this theme since) and many of the styles of filming and costume have become dated, it is still spectacularly constructed and satisfying from a narrative standpoint, in addition to the great work from the actors, DP, composer, and director.

32. Fargo

2010-08-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

opening shots -- a car coming through snow -- that's the movie in a nutshell

opening scene -- lots of exposition in dialogue. dude is in a tight spot, hires two others to kidnap his wife. one is talkative, nervous. the other doesn't talk, is quietly menacing. the main dude is a pushover.

he comes home. the fact that we know about his wife makes the domestic scene that much more surreal, tense. as well as the clearly strained relationship he has with his father in law

his father in law decides to do a deal with him, so he tries to stop the kidnapping. he can't -- they are coming ever closer

min 15 -- we understand a little more what his plight is -- he borrowed $300k against vehicles that dont exist. another example where he's being 2-faced. the tension between his cherry minnesota nice accent and diction and demeanor and what he's gotten himself into is what's compelling

min 18 -- the banality of her everyday suburban life with the kidnapping. ends on a question -- is she dead?

jerry's deal with the parking lot -- the panacea -- is dead for him because he's an idiot. and to make it worse, his hated father in law will cash in on it

comes home to find the remnants of the kidnapping, realizes the gravity of it, rehearses talking to his father in law

meanwhile, the bad guys are pulled over and have to kill a cop, then passersby, so they don't get caught. they are in deep now, point of no return for everyone. it's fully revealed how bad the quiet one is

subplot -- the cop investigating the murder. it's novel because she's a pregnant woman, and she's the opposite of hardboiled even though she's clever and resourceful, also nice - dlr license plate gag
-- her husband is a compelling minor character because he has his own arc with the stamps

terms of the deal - wade will pay, realizes his kid is involved and has to confront his kid and lie

symbolism -- dead tv static symbolises meaninglessness, a wrong turn. cut to marge and her husband watching tv and it's about bugs taking care of their young -- something she and her husband will be doing soon. they are DOING SOMETHING with themselves, not out committing crimes and being a burden to society

midpoint -- they want the entire 80k because they had to kill people. immediately after he gets a call from the gmac guy wanting the money as well -- the noose is tightening.

wade decides he's going to make the drop, not jerry. he bowls jerry over all the time, and this will be the last time

she comes to investigate shep and talks to jerry. he lies.

she meets with her old classmate, and he lies to her a ton. two purposes to this scene: to show the breakdown of social niceties in this area, and to have him lie to her and have her realize that people do lie -- that gets her wanting to investigate jerry

end of act 2 -- shep beats up steve b., so he decides to end it. wade drops off the money and they shoot each other. steve b. gets away -- he's a murderer now -- he's turned a corner

act 3 -- marge & her people investigate more. bartender tells them about steve b. and his hookers

steve b. buries the money. he's a murderer now and even greedier than before, which is his downfall.

marge discovers yamamoto lied to her. payoff to the confusing setup. it's an epiphany. she goes to visit jerry, who is filling out the form for the cars. she presses on him and he flees.

steve b. returns, splits the money, insists on the car. quiet guy doesn't like that, says they split the car. he kills steve b. he has already killed the wife

marge finds the car. tense scene because we know what quiet guy is capable of, and because we like her. he's feeding steve b. into a wood chipper -- shown only visually. he runs, she shoots him in the leg. important -- she's not a killer like them

she tells the theme after capturing him -- "there's more to life than a little money, you know. don't you know that?"

they catch jerry. he's been reduced to an animal.

epilogue with her and their little life. "we're doing pretty good."

here's what makes this movie good:
* it brings us into a world that's specific and familiar, but also somewhat foreign (the world has its own diction and social mores)
* it's grim and brutal but levened by comedy
* the novelty of cops and robbers in the rural midwest; the novelty of the cop being a pregnant woman who is anything but hardboiled
* it's a thorough and specific examination of a timeless theme: it's about where greed leads -- usually to death.

The Sting

2010-07-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves a good twist, right? The audience gets enormous pleasure out of being manipulated, and they get lots of pleasure out of trying to figure it out. In other words, the audience wants to be involved, and wants to feel smart. This is not a small consideration.

Think about all the big "rug from under you" moments here: Luther out the window, Redford turning turnout on the train, the black glove man turning out to be a savior, Redford and Newman shooting each other at the end. Every one of these moments gives an audience an extreme amount of pleasure and is a booster rocket that keeps them involved in the story and wondering what will happen next. In a very real sense, that's the essence of storytelling: giving the audience engaging characters and making us wonder what will happen to them next.

So the fun in these movies is the not-knowing, being swept away like waves of complications in the plot and trying to figure it out, but mostly trusting that the characters are smarter and act better than we ever could.

While the structure of the narrative is a little more unwieldy than a traditional 3-act structure (it's more like a five-act film), it works because it roughly follows the structure of a sting or a big con itself. And there's no sense of complaining either, because it hits all the big notes: set-up (Redford is a con who robbed the wrong dude), act two of no going back (Luther killed, wants revenge), reversal at midpoint (Redford as turncoat), act two complications (Snyder closing in, Feds involved, Lonnegan wavering), and the time-compressed third act with a resolution -- in this case, a happy one.

What's remarkable is how light the movie is, and yet how complicated the plot machinations are. To keep those in balance, and to add the sense of danger necessary for us to take it seriously, is a serious feat. Remember: as a filmmaker, you still have to take your "fun" movie seriously, and George Roy Hill clearly did. And won the Oscar as a result.

The writer's maxim, so much a maxim that it is now a cliche, is to "write what you know". Accordingly, like a lot of great movies, it's actually a thinly veiled view of what it's like to put on a movie or a play -- the large ensemble of con men is like an acting troupe (the supporting players even come, hat in hand, to "audition"), the style of the film is purposefully exaggerated, the sets a little too fake-looking, the costumes a little too garish, the transitions a little too similar to a red curtain dropped down. And once they finish their con of Lonnegan, like in any play, they immediately start striking the set.

40. When Harry Met Sally

2010-06-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

Look at the structure: they meet cute, their relationship unexplained, when they go on a roadtrip together and he's making out with someone else, hardly noticing her. They are opposites: he eats grapes, she doesn't like to snack; he talks death, is casual; she's uptight, rigid. It's all subtext, but it's there: opposites attract. Even more buried subtext: a continuation of something Woody Allen (and many others) explored a lot -- the Jewish gaze of shiksas, the split between Jews and WASPS in relationships.

At about ten minutes in, the inciting incident: "You're attractive", he tells her. She resists. Followed by the theme: "Men and women can't be friends." So now we spend the rest of the film, all the plot points, zeroing in on whether or not this thesis statement is true, and whether opposites do indeed attract.

In between the action, which takes place over a few decades, we get interludes with "real couples" in their old age, reflecting on the various plot points. It's almost musical in the way these sequences comment and reflect on the action, but in this case the music is comedic. The pay-off for these is that, at the end of the film, they are the old couple on the couch discussing their relationship.

Structurally, everything fits. I find films that take place over too long a time are much more unwieldy than those that are constrained, but this does well with the long timeframe. Everything is there: second act complications wherein they are older and wiser and divorced and hating single life; the subplot (Kirby and Fisher) as their best friends who get together and are a foil to relationship; the midpoint setpiece -- a NYE party where they kiss and realize concretely that they are attracted to each other; a compressed third act where they fight and makeup.

An examination of the "orgasm" scene: it works for a variety of reasons:
* it's right before the midpoint, so it's showing them growing closer
* it shows her character growing, opening up -- this is something that we would never believe of Sally in act one.
* it shows Harry learning something new, unexpected; it shows him getting comeuppance.
* teaches the audience something (possibly) new about life -- how many men STILL don't realize women do indeed fake orgasms?
* public showing of a private matter -- inherently cinematic, visual
* great acting (both action and reaction shots of the two MCs)
* great editing (reactions of the other customers)
* great writing -- punchline

Something to think about: to create a scene that stands the test of time, you have to structure it just right in the story, have it show the audience something new, make it technically well-done, and have it do several things at once.

41. Goodfellas

2010-05-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. It is just about flawless in the way it examines a theme, the way it uses extreme mastery of film technique and language to express mood and emotion, the way it uses genre to explore a personal story near to the director's heart. This is a masterpiece.

Opening scene -- looks up, smart, ironic, action -- leaves us wanting more

first scene -- EYES -- he's watching what's happening in the neighborhood -- he covets what he sees -- parallel to scorsese's life

opening scenes -- teaching us about how the mob works on a LOW level, on a street level -- this is a big change from the old mob movies, which were larger than life and about the men at the top, not the middle men guys. and in teaching us how this works, so much information is packed in -- VO contrasting with visuals. RICH visual world, hitchcockian. parallel to beginning of jules et jim.

examination of POWER, RESPECT, being SPECIAL -- usually through violence.

guy getting shot -- henry is different because he offers HELP.

never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut. -- SET UP is finished.

new thing/new job -- heist. we see the preparation and the aftermath, but no set piece. why? because it isn't needed here.

joe pesci am i a comedian story -- why is it so good? he's charming, turns on a dime. he's a sociopath. creates tension with very little, and then diffuses.

30-40 -- subplot -- lorraine bracco. she takes over the VO -- he likes her spunk.

famous tracking shot -- apex of his power, and he gets to show it off -- he's bypassing a normal existence, and the world unfolds before him, and he's showing that off.

air france -- we walked out with 400,000 without using a gun -- this is big for him -- he's not a violent guy. that separates him from the others.

set-up for a big payoff a few scenes later -- ray liotta CAN get pissed and fuck shit up. shown so well -- we see the gun, we think: uh oh. the tension builds as he walks over. at the end, we see her WATCHING the whole thing, thus implicating her. she's in on it now. that's also their connection -- she's a watcher too.

billy bats scene -- midpoint -- where the good times start to unravel. again, it's about power, respect, status, being special. joe pesci has used violence to be special, to be somebody, and billy bats tries to take that away. pesci can't take it, so: murder.

domestic scene -- dramatic irony -- the irony of what we know vs. what the characters know, and the contrast of how plain and NICE it is from what we saw them just do. plus, we already knew about the knife, and now we see where it came from -- his sweet old mother.

billy bats murder is a set-up to a later payoff of tommy getting killed.

further characterization -- henry is the one who pukes when digging up bats...he's the less violent one.

classic second act stuff: things continue to go bad -- spider situation, karen knowing about cheating.

karen waking him up with gun scene -- TENSION -- what will happen next? -- rhythm and release

then: jail.

IRONY -- showing us how mobster do prison -- MUCH different than we usually see with prison

getting involved in drug trade -- paulie warns him. but he's too far into it. again, shown visually. and then he's getting way too into the coke himself -- repeat of scene with his wife where she gives him BJ, but this time with a mistress.

new score -- morrie's thing. EVERYONE is involved. lufthansa = huge hiest. EVERYONE is spending money left and right, which is an indicator of the heist -- again, we don't see the heist. WHY? because henry isn't involved, that's why. so: no set piece. and the point isn't the heist, but what happens afterward -- the fallout. DON"T BUY ANYTHING, but greed is too powerful and people start fucking up and getting sloppy, so everyone has to die.

samuel l. scene -- surprise -- we don't see it coming that he kills him, it starts like a normal scene and then twists. we see why.

"there's weird moments of tension and negative space where the viewer's wondering what's going on, what's going to happen next." -- conan.

morrie's murder -- "it's off" and then it's a regular scene -- talking about going to get coffee and danish, etc. and then kill him as a surprise. THEN: everyone's dead.

again, a surprise -- we're set up to expect a certain result and the worst possible opposite happens -- they set up to make tommy, and instead kill him. the rug is pulled out from under us, and we love that. OH SHIT moments.

3rd act: almost all of it in one day. the shit is hitting the fan.

aftermath: the last thing we would ever do is rat on these people, but he's completely alone, they won't have anything to do with him and he's proabbly going to get killed. it's not real until karen almost gets killed in a visual, subtextual scene (storefront thing).

He did the opposite of what Jimmy said when he first got pinched: ratted them out. And his reward is suburban mediocrity -- he is no longer special, no longer respected.

so much rhythm and release throughout. tension built up and dispersed, then brought back to surprise us.

here's why joe pesci won the oscar: he's the worse piece of murdering psychopathic shit, and yet, when he dies, we are left breathless because he's also charasmatic.

In the end:
It's about using violence as a way to be special, to be respected, to have power.

It's about showing the mafia world on a ground level for the regular guys and how they lived, not the bosses.

It's about showing how, in this world, violence is so commonplace that it co-mingles with domestic scenes like having your mother cook you a midnight meal.

It's about being able to go in the backdoor of a popular nightclub and having them put a table out for you right away. It's about the singer in the nightclub buying you champagne.

And it's about having it all taken away.

43. Taxi Driver

2010-05-08T17:17:00.001-07:00

Great exposition: "What do you wanna cab for?" "Can't sleep nights." We see from his jacket he's ex-military.

Water motif: hydrants, rain, alka-seltzer (which is also clever foreshadowing), "some day the rain will wash all the scum off the streets."

Set-up is over at min 10, so now we need a task: "My life needs a sense of purpose." -- He sees a girl.

Classic alienation -- "he's a walking contradiction". She rejects him -- "she's just like the others." He is completely alone.

Minute 50 -- The people are beginning to rise -- watches this ALONE, takes it as a message to him. This is classic schizo behavior. Sees Jodie Foster again, takes this as his new mission. He's a military man and must have a mission.

"Suddenly, there is a change." And that change is violent -- buys gun, suits up, prepares for battle.

Full break now -- goes to a Palatine rally (where we don't see Palatine's face -- he's turning him into a figure, not a real person that he's actually met and talked to), VO is getting crazier, "are you talking to me?"

Kills a stick-up man, no consequences. Sport: "Yuou're a real cowboy!" -- inverting notions of american heroism/justice and it's consequences -- shades of modern-day THE SEARCHERS.

Big reveal of mohawk at rally. He fails at the assassination, so he goes and kills Sport and tries to save Foster. Classic 3rd act -- compression of time and space, the logical/surprising conclusion of what has come before. He's been leading up to an extreme act of violence, and now it comes. Foster's reaction, rightly, is horror.

Showing WE THE PEOPLE outside the bloodbath -- this is NOT what they want.

Viewed as a hero by the papers, Foster's family. Actions misconstrued. And we come full circle with Betsy as his last passenger.

Few use color as well as Scorsese (Almadovar comes to mind), so: the use of red. Traffic lights, neon lights, Sport's coke nail, blood. Red is used for sin. This is textbook Catholicism.

44. The Best Years of Our Lives

2010-05-08T17:15:00.001-07:00

MC -- he's just a dude trying to get home. has to wait around until he is called, signs at the same time as a sailor. SHOCK: he's got hooks for hands.

they talk about how he came to have those hands, and how it's going to be when he gets back -- he's scared his girl won't like him, will be weirded out.

all three dudes come home to notes of uncertainty -- homer's lady & folks are unnerved; banker's wife seems a little insecure, not entirely glad he's home; captain's wife is living on her own without his knowing. he goes out to find her.

sarge interacts with his family -- doesn't know his own daughter, gives his son gifts he doesn't appreciate, is distant with his wife. he takes them out to a series of nightclubs to get the excitement back.

homer/hands is next. just wants to be treated as normal.

all three meet up at butch's. it's clear that they are more comfortable with each other than with civilians -- they can't leave the war behind.

1st act done when they pass out.

act 2 -- picking up the pieces of their drunkenness.

freddy/captain goes to see his sexy ass wife at her own apt.

freddy goes to try to get a job at his old place, which has been bought out and has no real need for him: "the war is over, mr. deary."

banker/al goes back to the bank to see his old boss, mr. milton. significance of name. he's offered a promotion.

freddy's wife has never seen him not in his uniform. she wants to see him only in his uniform. she's used to him being a solider, not a civilian.

back to homer after a LONG break. he's doing target practice. fiancee still loves him, he beats himself up, feels like a freak.

1:30 -- freddy is broke. his wife wants to live the high life, he can't find a job.

freddy and al's daughter go out together -- they're clearly gonna fuck. kisses her.

classic 2nd act complication stuff -- al is giving a loan to a fellow GI, freddy is trying to cheat on wife, his house is a mess and wife is a nag. peggy is in love with Freddy.

1:52 -- supper club set piece honoring al. he's drunk. counting the number of drinks on the table with a fork. GREAT little visual. he subtly insults his boss and shows where his head is really at -- GREAT TENSION because we don't know whether or not he's gonna lose it or keep it together.
-- good set-up and pay-off

dance afterwards -- freddy's wife reveals herself as a money-grubber, vain, etc.
-- great use of mirrors

2:00 -- ""i'm going to break that marriage up"

where is HOMER? -- totally lopsided narrative, and where does he fit?

3rd act -- 2:05 -- back to butch's, freddy and al. "are you in love with peggy?" he's gonna keep his daughter away from freddy.

homer's back. playing piano. tells peggy off.

homer has finally embraced his disability, has a sense of humor about it. some random talks shit on the futility of the war, freddy punches him out. like classical hollywood cinema, it is conservative in that it reaffirms god and country with homer's ripping the flag pin off and taking it for himself (also the importance of marriage with homer's situation). freddy sacrifices himself by fighting the guy, loses his job.

homer is trying to push her away.

freddy's love with peggy, esp. last lines, is an allegory for america's relationship with the war.

it's about how hard it is to come home from war and be a regular man again. this is always going to be a big theme, and as slowly paced as this film is, is stands up today because of the theme and because of the documentary-like nature of the mise-en-scene.

Best of the Year, Best of the Decade list (plus more)

2010-03-05T09:45:00.000-08:00

I'm late on this, I know, but it took me awhile to see all the stuff I wanted to see (and there's, of course, more I'm missing).

Top 10 movies of 2009:

45365
500 Days of Summer
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Humpday
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Sita Sings the Blues
Trust Us, This Is All Made Up
Up
Up In the Air

Top 10 Performances of 2009:

Colin Firth in "A Single Man"
Jim Broadbent in "The Young Victoria"
Emily Blunt in "The Young Victoria"
Nicolas Cage in "The Bad Lt."
Matt Damon in "The Informant!"
Jeremy Renner in "The Hurt Locker"
Christoph Waltz in "Inglourious Basterds"
Patton Oswalt in "Big Fan"
TJ Jagadowski in "Trust Us, This Is All Made Up"
Dave Pasquasi in "Trust Us, This Is All Made Up"

Top 15 Movies of the 2000s:

1. The New World
Adaptation
All the Real Girls
Brokeback Mountain
Cache
Children of Men
The Dark Knight
Jackass
Marie Antoinette
The Royal Tenenbaums
Spartan
Tarnation
There Will Be Blood
Wall-E
Y Tu Mama Tambien

EDIT: Whoops! I forgot "In Bruges" -- I guess it's Top 16 now...

Top 15 Movies of the 1990s:

1. Goodfellas
American Pimp
Boogie Nights
Breaking the Waves
Children of Heaven
Dazed and Confused
Fight Club
Pulp Fiction
Out of Sight
Schindler's List
Silence of the Lambs
Sling Blade
The Straight Story
Unforgiven

Oscars

2010-03-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

The Oscars are this weekend. Here's my will win/should win:


Best Motion Picture of the Year:
"Avatar"
"The Blind Side"
"District 9"
"An Education"
"The Hurt Locker"
"Inglourious Basterds"
"Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire"
"A Serious Man"
"Up"
"Up in the Air"


Will win: Avatar
Should win: The Hurt Locker


Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role:
Morgan Freeman - "Invictus"
Jeff Bridges - "Crazy Heart"
George Clooney - "Up in the Air"
Colin Firth - "A Single Man"
Jeremy Renner - "The Hurt Locker"

Will win: Jeff Bridges
Should win: Colin Firth


Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:
Meryl Streep - "Julie & Julia"
Sandra Bullock - "The Blind Side"
Helen Mirren - "The Last Station"
Gabourey Sidibe - "Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire"
Carey Mulligan - "An Education"

Will win: Carey Mulligan (this is my big upset pick)
Should win: Gabby Sidibe (the acting was the only good thing about PRECIOUS)


Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:
Christoph Waltz - "Inglourious Basterds"
Christopher Plummer - "The Last Station"
Matt Damon - "Invictus"
Stanley Tucci - "The Lovely Bones"
Woody Harrelson - "The Messengers"

Will win: Christoph Waltz
Should win: Christoph Waltz


Performance by Actress in a Supporting Role:
Penelope Cruz - "Nine"
Vera Farmiga - "Up in the Air"
Maggie Gyllenhaal - "Crazy Heart"
Anna Kendrick - "Up in the Air"
Mo'Nique - "Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire"

Will win: Mo'Nique
Should win: none of these.
PS: This category is a complete fuck-up.  They chose wrong and wronger on these nominees.


Achievement in Directing:
James Cameron - "Avatar"
(Kathryn Bigelow - "The Hurt Locker"
Quentin Tarantino - "Inglourious Basterds"
Jason Reitman - "Up in the Air"
Lee Daniels - "Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire"

Will win: Katheryn Bigelow
Should win: Katheryn Bigelow


Adapted Screenplay:
"District 9" by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
"An Education" by Nick Hornby
"Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire" by Geoffrey Fletcher
"Up in the Air" by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
"In the Loop" by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Ian Martin and Tony Roche


Will win: Up in the Air
Should win: Up in the Air


Original Screenplay:
"The Hurt Locker" by Mark Boal
"Inglourious Basterds" by Quentin Tarantino
"A Serious Man" by Joel and Ethan Coen
"Up" by Pete Docter and Bob Petersen
"The Messenger" by Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman

Will win: Inglourious Basterds
Should win: Inglourious Basterds

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year:
"Up" - Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
"The Princess and the Frog" - Ron Clements and John Musker
"Coraline" - Henry Selick
"The Fantastic Mr Fox" - Wes Anderson
"The Secret of Kells" - Tomm Moore

Will win: Up
Should win: Up or Fantastic Mr. Fox


Best Documentary Feature:
"Burma VJ" - Anders Ostergaard and Lise Lense-Moller
"The Cove" - Nominees to be determined
"Food, Inc." - Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein
"The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" - Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
"Which Way Home" - Rebecca Cammisa

Will win: The Cove
Should win: Not Food, Inc.


Best Foreign Language Film of the Year:
"Ajami" - Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani, Israel
"A Prophet" - Jacques Audiard, France
"The Secret of Her Eyes" - Juan Jose Campanella, Argentina
"The White Ribbon" - Michael Haneke, Germany
"The Milk of Sorrow" - Claudia Llosa, Peru

Will win: The White Ribbon
Should win: A Prophet

Achievement in Art Direction:
"Avatar" - Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; Set Decoration: Kim Sinclair
"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" - Art Direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; Set Decoration: Caroline Smith
"Nine" - Art Direction: John Myhre; Set Decoration: Gordon Sim
"Sherlock Holmes" - Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer
"The Young Victoria" - Art Direction: Patrice Vermette; Set Decoration: Maggie Gray

Will win: Avatar
Should win: A Single Man


Achievement in Cinematography:
"Avatar" - Mauro Fiore
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" - Bruno Delbonnel
"The Hurt Locker" - Barry Ackroyd
"Inglourious Basterds" - Robert Richardson
"The White Ribbon" - Christian Berger

Will win: Avatar/Fiore
Should win: The White Ribbon/Berger


Achievement in Costume Design:
"Bright Star" - Janet Patterson
"Coco Before Chanel" - Catherine Leterrier
"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" - Monique Prudhomme
"Nine" - Colleen Atwood
"The Young Victoria" - Sandy Powell

Will win: Coco
Should win: A Single Man


Achievement in Film Editing:
"Avatar" - Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron
"District 9" - Julian Clarke
"The Hurt Locker" - Bob Murawski and Chris Innis
"Inglourious Basterds" - Sally Menke
"Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire" - Joe Klotz

Will win: Hurt Locker
Should win: Hurt Locker


Achievement in Makeup:
"Il Divo" - Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano
"Star Trek" - Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow
"The Young Victoria" - Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore

Will win: Young Vic
Should win: Young Vic


Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score):
"Avatar" - James Horner
"Fantastic Mr. Fox" - Alexandre Desplat
"The Hurt Locker" - Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders
"Sherlock Holmes" - Hans Zimmer
"Up" - Michael Giacchino

Will win: Avatar
Should win: Fan Fox


Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song):
"Almost There" from "The Princess and the Frog" - Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
"Down in New Orleans" from "The Princess and the Frog" - Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
"Loin de Paname" from "Paris 36" - Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyric by Frank Thomas
"Take It All" from "Nine" - Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston
"The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" from "Crazy Heart" - Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett

Will win: Crazy Heart
Should win: Crazy Heart


Achievement in Sound Editing:
"Avatar" - Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
"The Hurt Locker" - Paul N.J. Ottosson
"Inglourious Basterds" - Wylie Stateman
"Star Trek" - Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin
"Up" - Michael Silvers and Tom Myers

Will win: Avatar
Should win: Star Trek


Achievement in Sound Mixing:
"Avatar" - Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson
"The Hurt Locker" - Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett
"Inglourious Basterds" - Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano
"Star Trek" - Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin
"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" - Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson

Will win: Avatar
Should win: Star Trek


Achievement in Visual Effects:
"Avatar" - Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones
"District 9" - Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken
"Star Trek" - Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton

Will win: Avatar
Should win: Avatar


Best Documentary Short Subject:
"China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province" - Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill
"The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner" - Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher
"The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant" - Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
"Music by Prudence" - Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett
"Rabbit a la Berlin" - Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra

Best Animated Short Film:
"French Roast" - Fabrice O. Joubert
"Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty" - Nicky Phelan and Darragh O'Connell
"The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)" - Javier Recio Gracia
"Logorama" - Nicolas Schmerkin
"A Matter of Loaf and Death" - Nick Park

Best Live Action Short Film:
"The Door" - Juanita Wilson and James Flynn
"Instead of Abracadabra" - Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellstrom
"Kavi" - Gregg Helvey
"Miracle Fish" - Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey
"The New Tenants" - Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson 

Don't know any of these.  Don't care.

45. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

2010-03-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

It's about what we think being an American is about: being a free spirit, a rugged individual, against a system bent on conforming you. The filmmakers tip their hand near the beginning, in the first group therapy scene, where everyone else is wearing white and McMurphy is wearing jeans.

Our villain -- first scene -- Ms. Ratched. Our hero -- 5 mins, right after the setting is established. We don't know who he is -- is he crazy too?

We meet the Chief -- can't talk -- this is a set-up for a later payoff. Then we meet the others -- Billy, the rest playing cards, a motif.

Exposition in dialogue by Spivey -- it works because it's exposition rooted in the reality of the scene. "I fight and fuck too much." -- He's a classic anti-hero, a rebel

The set-up -- is he crazy or is he not?

30 mins -- votes to change a rule to do something American -- watch baseball. This is voted down.

"Lunatic" -- an inmate says that to McMurphy
-- He bets everyone he can lift the sink and throw it out the window to get free -- shades of "I can eat 50 eggs."
"I tried, didn't I? At least I did that."
This is a set-up that's paid off in the last scene.

Subplot -- Billy and his control under Ms. Ratched. This is an interesting subplot because it's a microcosm of the rest of the movie -- the control she shows here is a smaller example of the larger control, so the subplot here is an deepening of the theme, instead of another take on it or a release from it.

Besides being entertaining, McMurphy's baseball narration shows that if we have our rights taken away, we can't help but go crazy.

He escapes -- instead of leaving for good, he takes the men on a tour around town and a fishing trip
-- this is the midpoint -- they catch a fish, billy fancies a girl, a taste of freedom.

Back to the question -- is he dangerous or crazy? What do you want to do with him? -- "I want to send him back to the work farm." Ratched says no. She wants to finish what she's started, which is in her very nature.

68 mins -- a twist -- he's committed and can't get out -- when we see him next, he's not wearing jeans anymore, he's wearing the proper uniform.
-- he's one of the few committed -- the rest are voluntary

The inversion of the 2nd act -- now he wants to behave because it suits him, but he's now opened up a can of worms that can't be contained -- hence the fight and Cheswick's cigarette rant

80 -- another twist -- Chief talks!

McMurphy comes back -- acts like he's a vegetable -- set-up

89 -- "I gotta get out of here", "I can't take it anymore" -- fuel for the beginning of act 3, momentum

90 -- the girls come -- 3rd act
-- a call back -- they set up the medicine from before and pay it off with booze now
-- they have a party

100 -- he goes to leave, but does a good deed for Billy instead -- this is why we like McMurphy -- he's not interested only in himself, he wants to set free the rest of the men, show them how to live.

110 -- Billy stutters no more, until she guilt-trips him, references his mother -- another microcosm of the theme of people being free until authority smashes them.

115 -- McMurphy goes to get away, is interrupted by his concern for Billy again. He goes to kill Ratched and is subsequently lobotomized.

120 -- McMurphy comes back, he really is a vegetable this time. A once free spirit is no more, so the Chief kills him and does what he couldn't -- uses the sink to smash the window and become free -- McMurphy sacrificed himself for the good of the whole, something we think of as a very American ideal.

47. The Maltese Falcon

2010-02-02T12:16:00.001-08:00

Here's what I mean when I reference the structural economy in Classic Hollywood Cinema: there's no set-up at all. There's no prologue scene where we get a sense of the main character, there's certainly no backstory, there's no exposition other than a sign on the window that reads: "Spade and Archer". And we see our (Anti) Hero, rolling a cigarette and accepting a task. His partner comes in and he's taken a shine to the lady who gives the task (which is itself economical set-up that's later paid off), and then we see him on that task, and he's murdered.

This murder happens six minutes into the movie, and structurally speaking, it marks the end of the first act, the "point of no return". At only six minutes in!

We find out Bogart was fucking his partner's wife, we find out the lady isn't who she said she was, we see Bogart being stuck up in his office by Peter Lorre. He marks the B Plot: The falcon. We get a long scene here to describe it and to show how much it matters here.

Complications in Act 2: Bogart avoids a tail, he's falling for the mysterious lady against his better judgement, the cops are coming after him for the murder of his partner.

At minute forty, the A & B plots merge with Cairo and Bridget getting together and discussing the falcon. She explains how she came across the falcon.

At minute 51, Bogart meets with the Fat Man. He plays both sides -- he's in it for himself. He storms out, he's acting.

He comes back, and we learn even more about the falcon, the ultimate McGuffin. There's tons of exposition in dialogue, but who cares? It's Sydney Greenstreet! Bogart is slipped a mickey -- a twist after we thought Greenstreet was a good guy.

The third act, like a lot of them, is contained and compressed in some way. Like in "Humpday", the third act is almost entirely in one room, Spade's studio apartment. We learn the rest -- the double-crossings, the secrets, the shifting alliances, who was responsible for the murder, and finally, that the coveted falcon that resulted in death and intrigue and money and everything else, is a fake.

Everyone gets caught except Bogart because he killed no one and kept his code intact. That's the secret of anti-heros: they have to be consistent and good at the core, especially compared to the others they come into contact with.

Like a lot of great movies (especially ones with an anti-hero), the hero is his task and how he manages his task. We don't care about how he got there, his backstory, or anything other than the task that we see set-up, and that we want to see wrapped up in a way that satisfies us. Anything else we're given makes us groan: there's almost no room for emotions, for subplots that aren't pertinent, for random characters. Stick to the task at hand, throw in some twists to make it fun, wrap it up like a bow with some quotable dialogue, and it'll all come together.

48. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2010-01-30T13:27:00.000-08:00

Like Scorsese and Spielberg movies, we marvel at David Lean because he's a masterful director. The dialogue free introduction introducing us to the dangerous setting, the simple exposition in a shot of a Japanese flag, the constant shifts in tone, the parallel narratives of explosives wired with a bridge matched with a vaudeville-style variety show, the proper casting and work with the actors (Holden, Guinness and Hayakawa are all fantastic), the blocking and staging that takes full advantage of Cinemascope, the tension built by train whistles and footsteps on planks of wood overhead.

But yes, of course, it's also well-written. It has classical Hollywood economy in setting up our three main characters (that itself is a mean feat): Holden digging graves, Guinness a stiff upper lip British officer, Hayakawa a crazy, corrupt taskmaster.

And then we get the task: build a bridge. And immediately we get the main conflict: Officers don't do manual labor. So it becomes a question of power: if Guinness works, he becomes like any other grunt. If he becomes like any other grunt, he can't order his men on his command and hiearchy is lost and they'll all become "slaves". "Without law there is no civilization," he says, and he believes in this order.

Holden escapes, the bridge must be built sooner than expected, Guinness is taken out and we get a great dramatic example of this power struggle: Saito wants Nicholson to cooperate, bribes him with Scotch and beef, camraderie about his homeland. Guinness then makes the bridge building a personal project, which turns Saito inside out with envy.

At the midpoint we get a new mission: bombing the bridge. Holden doesn't want to go but gets blackmailed. This is a GREAT midpoint, a perfect reversal and twist. And structurally it works well, too, because there isn't much more for us to watch with the bridge being built -- we need something else narratively, because otherwise we'd be basically watching paint dry.

All that's left is for the mission to be completed. And it is. But at what cost?

Coppola clearly stole a lot from his film for "Apocalypse Now". He took and deepened the idea of war being insanity, and he stole structural ideas and how to stage things in this SE Asian environment. In other words, he took this movie to it's logical extreme.

What's remarkable about this movie is how much the three main characters change, how we see them broaden beyond their original characterizations, how we get glimpses of them beyond their roles as soliders. Holden is shown, instead of being a jaded POW, to be a cowardly playboy imposter. Guinness, instead of a stand-up officer, is shown instead to be an obsessive egomaniac. And Saito is seen to be a scared company man, an unwilling officer who's bound by duty and country. Is it any wonder that they all have to die at the end, and that the last lines of dialogue are "Madness! Madness!"?

9. Some Like It Hot

2010-01-24T19:38:00.001-08:00

The prologue, like the best ones do, sets up everything. We see a hearse driving down the street, then a cop car starts chasing them. They begin shooting. Why? Instantly we're curious, involved. The funeral workers are actually gangsters -- they open a secret compartment in the ceiling stocked with guns and they start shooting back.

The cops spin out and the chase ends, but not before doing damage. The "casket" is leaking because it's filled with booze. And we get a beautiful joke in the title card: Chicago, 1929.

Here's what's great about this beginning: 1) It sets up the film's main concern, that of deception and disguises, "Things Aren't Always What They Seem". Everyone in the movie is either deceiving themselves or disguising themselves or both, just like the gangsters are doing with their bottles of booze. 2) It is exciting, filled with action, which immediately gets the audience involved. 3) It gives us the setting in a fun, unique and economical way. 4) It does all of this without any dialogue.

The theme is expanded and deepened in the next scene -- the "funeral home" is actually a rowdy speakeasy. A cop comes to shut it down: "Give me 5 minutes, then hit 'em with whatever you got." This is smart, because like the opening tracking shot in "Touch of Evil", by giving us a time limit with something, we as audience are immediately on the edge, tension is created, and we wonder the most important thing an audience member can wonder: what's going to happen next?

We meet our heros, two musicians, right before the raid starts. They immediately discuss two main concerns: money and women. By their back-and-forth dialogue, we get a sense of who they are and how they interact -- Curtis is a gambler, a risk taker, a horse-better. Lemmon is a bit of a nebbish, easy swayed. They see the raid coming, evade it. But because of it, they don't get paid and they have to hock their overcoats.

Now they are really destitute. They find out about a job, but it's only for women. Lemmon considers it, Curtis says no. A thousand times no. Two important things happen here: Curtis is shown as a serious womanizer, and he initially resists the idea of cross-dressing as crazy. Both of these establishments are key to making this movie work. If you want your characters to do something crazy, it has to be their absolute last option.

And it is, because they subsequently witness a massacre, and the only way to really get away from it is to disguise themselves as women and travel down to Florida -- it solves all their new immediate problems, as well as the old less pressing ones of being cold and broke.

So: they are now women, and they are now on a train. They meet Sugar Cane. The character shift a little bit, and the previously randy Curtis has to curtail the now-overwhelmed Lemmon, who is horny and wants to get with Sugar or anyone. Again, they re-establish the fact that these are men and can hardly be contained. Just because they're cross-dressing doesn't mean they're gay.

There's a set-up where Sugar tells Curtis everything she wants in a man, which is paid off several scenes later when they arrive in Florida and he reveals himself as a Shell Oil magnate, a Cary Grant clone. And he does something smart: he is rude to her, plays hard to get, makes her seduce him.

Curtis' ruse is uncovered by Lemmon, and another deception occurs: Curtis must come upstairs, beating both Monroe and Lemmon and cover himself in bubbles in the tub so he can act like Josephine to Monroe.

The rest of the plot plays out like clockwork, perfectly constructed. Curtis makes Monroe seduce him, Lemmon gets engaged to Joe E. Brown and does his maracas bit, Spats comes back and discovers their disguises, there's a chase and musical numbers with Monroe and at the end, our main men have to give up their disguises and become who they are to get what they want.

And we get one of the great closing lines in movies, which you either know or don't know. If you know it, you're smiling right now, and if you don't, you shouldn't have it spoiled by me.

Note: I'll be teaching this film as part of Facets Film School starting next month. More information at: http://www.facets.org/pages/filmschool.php.

49. Schindler's List

2010-01-10T19:54:00.000-08:00

This past year has allowed me to look at Spielberg in a new light. In the past, I had a knee-jerk reaction to his films, thinking I was clever for not liking them because they were popular. I was wrong.

As I mentioned in previous blogs about his films (and, correspondingly, about Martin Scorsese's films), they are almost always written exceedingly well, but the writing is almost always beside the point. This makes sense -- one of the many traits of a strong, legendary director is the ability to pick good material, a script that he can personalize and make his own. Going further, that director takes the script, casts it impeccably, and then discovers visual means of manipulating emotions, of telling the story economically, of getting the point of the story across. Spielberg does so in spades here.

This is a big story and one that can be endlessly dissected, so let's just look at a few examples relating to the above. The rumor has it that the "Ghetto Liquidation" sequence was only about a page of description in the script, but Spielberg turned it into a sequence, a set-piece, a filmed testimony of oral history by living witnesses. It consists of countless characters with little arcs, myriad locations, special effects, visual beauty and well-crafted editing to hold it all together. This is a prime example of the power of this story told visually (there are very few words throughout, and most don't matter) by the director, not through the writing.

Another example of the power of the filmmaker over that of the writer. Fiennes wants his tub scrubbed. The concentration camp kid can't get the soap scum out. Fiennes thinks about what Schindler said and he lets the kid go. We see the kid walking away. We see Fiennes back in his bathroom: "I pardon you," he says to himself, wondering if there is power in that. We see the kid again, being shot at (is it a warning shot?), we see Fiennes again. And then, we see Kingsley walking past the kid's dead body. The power in that sequence is that of a master storyteller using editing, acting, camera angles and movement (notice the dolly shot used as punctuation at the end) to show the horror of a psychotic man acting inside the guise of war. It's written well, yes, but that's not where the power comes from.

That said, there are several things to admire in the writing. While Fiennes is a sociopath and a distinct villain, Schindler is shown in shades of grey. He's a complex man, not a pure hero and thus we are able to identify with him. He drinks, he cheats, he gambles, he's greedy. In short, he's a human, and characterizing him as such is powerful because we come away with this: a mere man, not a hero, was able to save these lives.

I also like the slow reveal of information about his factories. Throughout, we think he's simply a war profiteer. Even though he's helping, it's really because he's got a bottom line and the secondary notion is to rescue Jews. Then we see a room stocked with pots and pans to the ceiling, and we see Kingsley tell him he's broke and Schindler remark "I should be very unhappy if this factory makes one usable shell" that the extent of his con game with the Nazis is revealed. It wouldn't have the same impact if we had known this from the get-go.

However, what I most appreciate about the writing here, particularly, is that the script is structured in a traditional Classical Hollywood style, yet it also contains many small, almost self-contained set piece that could basically be stand-alone short films. The above example is one. The hinge bit is another. The one-armed machinist who thanks Schindler and is later killed shoveling snow is another. The "gas chamber bed-time story", followed by the Hungarians arriving, is another.

Like the best Hollywood work, this is economical storytelling above all else. It allows us into many lives, into many aspects of Nazi sadism, into a more complete picture of the horror of this war.

There's much more to say about this remarkable movie, but the last thing I want to mention is this: this has to be one of the best lit movie I've seen in my entire life. Unbelievable cinematography, always beautiful, and always in service of the story.

50. The Sixth Sense

2010-01-01T19:54:00.001-08:00

This is a bit of a Sylvester Stallone situation in the sense that, because M. Night Shymalan sucks so bad now, it's actually hard to remember why he was ever thought of as a wunderkind beforehand. Then you go back and watch the movie with a critical eye and realize that those labels only come about because of talent, or at least lightning striking once.

This is a good screenplay. Here's one mark of a pro: there's lots of exposition in dialogue, but its always buried in something else so we don't see it. In the very first scene, it's buried in Olivia Williams reading her husband's award to him, which tells us everything we need to know both about him and his strained relationship with her. Another example: Willis comes to Osment's house and plays a game: step closer if I'm right, step away if I'm wrong. Because it's in the context of a "game", we get to learn lots about Cole without feeling forcefed. Smart.

There are other things to admire as well: many good movies teach you some little facts, and this one gives the audience a window into Philadelphia history and free association writing; there are effective uses of ice breaking comic relief ("cheese dick" comes to mind, although that plays like an adlib); it is also structured tightly, with a prologue that ends up being more important than we realize, a classic "task" in the first act set-up, a big trailer-moment revelation at the midpoint ("I see dead people"), another task for the 2nd part of the 2nd act (the Mischa Barton bits, which show whether or not Osment can use his powers for good and not become another Damien "Omen" child), and then a short and satisfying 3rd act that wraps it all up, with Osment in full control of his powers ("The Sword and the Stone" is surely no thematic accident) and a twist.

About that twist. There are film grammar reasons is works, mostly in that they used a big star with screen presence who doesn't have to say anything in a scene and we still sense that he does, but it also works due to the writing because Shymalan uses and inverts a standard movie trope: the overworked man who neglects his family. We buy that this is yet another guy in a movie who is working too hard and too obsessed with his job because he failed at it in the past, and we buy that because we've seen it in other cliche-ridden movies with a big emotional scene at the end where he realizes the true value of his life: his family. Shymalan takes that and uses it, and when the actual truth is revealed, it's shocking enough and enough of an inversion to go down in history as one of the biggest movie twists ever.

So that's the writing. A few other things I want to discuss: first is Tak Fujimoto's cinematography. The lighting in the film is wonderful and effective, but I was mostly impressed with the long, slow dolly shots that, similar to a Woody Allen film, encompass entire scenes. These work because they build tension (they're often seen when Willis is with his wife), but they also work because they're constantly moving and are dynamic enough for the layperson not to notice. They also effectively employ handheld tracking shots (the trick cabinet shots being a particularly fun one), much like Fujimoto has done with Jonathan Demme. This is no accident: as much as Shymalan was being hailed as the next Spielberg (I think mostly because of his control of tone and his great directing of a child actor), I think he looked to Demme, and "Silence of the Lambs" in particular, for ways to visually convey scenes and themes.

There are also many things to admire in the directing. For one, Willis has hardly ever been better. He's restrained, he's hang-dog, we believe him. And it isn't easy to work with a child actor and to treat them like an equal, to not subtly coach them. Those scenes between him and Osment make or break the movie, and they work. Osment too, was cast well and never let the tone slip. This is a tough role for a kid to play, but he was given good material and a sure hand to work with in Shymalan.

There's also something that's hard to articulate and harder to achieve, and I call it "switching gears" and it's something that good directors always are able to do well. It's when a scene starts out as seemingly one genre and moves into another effortlessly. A good example would be the "why am I so funny scene?" with Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas". It starts out seemingly innocuous, with Pesci telling a joke and everyone enjoying themselves. Then it turns into menace in a second. Then back to joking and then to menace again when the manager comes over and the threat of violence is realized. If movies are about manipulating emotion (as I'm increasingly inclined to believe), then a director's role is to do her best possible job at visually conveying to the audience how they should feel at any particular moment (you could make the argument that this heavy-handed and close-ended approach is a particularly Hollywood thing, and I wouldn't argue with you -- but I wouldn't say that's a bad thing either). An example from this picture would be the prologue scene wherein we're set-up to believe that Willis and Williams are drunk and are going to fuck to celebrate his award, and instead we get a broken window and an insane old patient of Willis'. The tone changes in an instant and in the same scene, we're in a different genre. That's hard to do, and it's done more than once in this well-directed movie.

Finally (and I'm only pointing this out because I'm paying more attention to it), the costume design is great. Collette always wear lower-class clothes and big sweaters, Osment always wears a tie, and if all that red around the mise-en-scene and all those narrative clues didn't clue you in to the twist, here's another thing to consider: Willis wears the same suit the entire movie.

51. Broadcast News

2009-12-19T12:59:00.001-08:00

It's a modern-day retelling of "Cyrano de Bergerac" with Brooks as Cyrano (his Jewishness substituting for the big nose), Hunter as Roxane, and Hurt as Ragueneau.

We get glimpses of them as kids -- the somewhat dumb but attractive kid laments his bad grades and wonders what he can do when he grows up and a subtitle tells us he's a "future news anchor"; the valedictorian gets roughed up and becomes a reporter; the pen-pal writer who argues semantics with her father becomes a producer.

And then they are thrown together when Hurt is promoted and comes to work with Brooks and Hunter in their Washington Bureau, where a love triangle emerges and the behind-the-scenes view of modern news is shown satirically.

There are things to admire: repurposing an old tale in a modern setting; the action based on circumstance and character rather than out of a need for a beat (I'm thinking mostly of Cusack taking the tape to the control room); Brooks' boozing after being thrown off a story; Brooks' anchoring marred by flop sweat.

That said, I didn't care for the movie. It wasn't funny enough to be a comedy, nor was it dramatic enough for me to be involved. The characters were more "types" than fleshed-out folks (here's how I know: I don't remember any of their names) and the ending jumped ahead with no regard for the audience.

80s James Brooks just isn't my thing.

53. All the President's Men

2009-10-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

The movie starts and ends with close-ups of a typewriter giving us the equivalent of title cards. Thematically this makes sense, but Pakula does us one better: he layers the sound of the typewriter with whips and bullets: words can be weapons.

This is a long movie (over two hours), but it is nonetheless tightly structured and scripted. Like "Zodiac", it's about process. Watch how Woodward and Bernstein go from task to task, from roadblock to roadblock, how they cajole and investigate, building upon small pieces of information to find a larger whole. This movie does the most simple yet most difficult thing a movie can do: it makes us wonder what will happen next. It does that by embodying the the suspense genre, but goes one further: we know the outcome -- Nixon resigned just a few short years before the movie was made -- but the writer and director have made us wonder how we get there.

Like "JFK", it's overflowing with the information given to the audience. We get character after character coming at us as audience, we get phone numbers, dates, names. To include a subplot, personal lives or a love interest would be ridiculous. Goldman keeps us with the task at hand, and then he's done.

And it doesn't hurt that he included some amazing dialogue on top.

As much as Goldman did a great job on the script, Pakula is great here. There's so much to admire here: His expert use of casting, with the two main character being the biggest movie stars of the time (so that we identify with them and go along on their journey), with character actors in supporting roles (Robards, Holbrooks, Balsam) and no-names in cameos; his expert sense of pacing, keeping the movie flowing from scene to scene with none wasted; his intercutting to doodles and other office detritus during phone conversations to keep the audience interested; his sense of mise-en-scene; his use of Gordon Willis' dual-focus and long lens cinematography that's
always in service of the story, often in subtle but profound ways.

Everyone loves William Goldman (as well they should), but Pakula is always underrated.

29. Sullivan's Travels

2009-10-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

The thing I find most admirable about studio pictures of the 30's and 40's is their economy of narrative. Here we get the beginning, a patently false action scene: a train chase to end a picture, and then the lights come up in the studio office and the heads (commerce) duke it out with the director (art) -- a parallel with what the director was trying to represent with his fight, and a tip of the hat to the audience that Sturges has already made up his mind about the subject: he plans to give the audience what they want.

This is rich stuff already, and we're only in the first five minutes.

The director wants something that Robin Williams, Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey can relate to: he wants to make people think. Making them laugh is not good enough, not honorable enough for him anymore. He wants to discuss The World, he wants to make a picture about the poor, the common man, about Trouble. The problem? He's never had to work a hard day in his life, nor does he know from the poor. So: he'll LARP a hobo.

Within 10 minutes, they're off. He's tramping with an old-timey RV behind him, clad with a doctor, a photographer, a PR man. The director resents this entourage, because he desires an authentic experience. He wants no hand-holding, and gets away from the rest by hitchhiking with a boy in his derby car. Thus: a chase. The audience gets some laughs and some excitement, but there's a reason for it.

He heads off again, promising to meet them in Vegas. He has a run-in with a widow (and there's a great gag with her husband's portrait).

He meets the girl: Veronica Lake. Boy, is she beautiful. Boy, does she have great dialogue. But she also displays generosity, and his new desire in act 2 is to help her fulfill her dreams of being a working actress. His ruse is up with her eventually, and they go off again together, tramping at the train station. In this, she's doing more acting than she's probably previously done.

He gets sick on the train, so they hop out at a lunch counter. Again, generosity in the form of a counter-owner who gives them coffee and cakes for free. He is repaid when they spot the RV. They must return -- he is sick and must be bedridden. The counter-owner gets $100.

Once he's well, they're off again, this time locally. They goes to where the destitute, showering with them, eating with them, sleeping in piles with them. He trades boots with another man who's feet are freezing. All of this we're given almost as a silent film, with no word, just music. It's too long to be a montage, and it conveys everything we need to know about the poor. As such, it's what we would imagine Sullivan would want to make himself, if he could.

With this, he's done. He feels he's seen enough, but he goes down one last time to pass out money to the poor. A greedy old hobo notices and knocks him on the head, drags him off into a train car and steals his boots and money. The train takes off and the hobo is killed while trying to retrieve the cash.

Note: this above section with the old hobo is almost a small story unto itself. It remains me immediately of the Chris Tucker section of "Jackie Brown", which played as a small aside, still within the larger narrative, that could play without it. Again, the economy contained within is breathtaking -- we see an entire arc, are given a moral, and get a great image of fluttering dollar bills over a boot. Incredible.

The 3rd act begins. Now he's not longer acting -- he really is down-and-out. He commits assault and is sent to prison. Now he knows how the other half lives and, gaining that wisdom, he wants to return to his real life.

And why not? This life is hard, stuck in a sweat box, manual labor all day, a terror of a boss/warden. The only relief the men get is going to a church where they put a sheet down to play movies. A cinema in the church! The conceit is too great: this little bit of release is their salvation. Again, the generosity of people is too much -- they give up the front rows and sing "Let My People Go."

The show is a simple cartoon, but it allows them to do what is missing in their lives otherwise: laugh. That's when the lightbulb comes on over Sullivan's head: movies work best as entertainment, as escape, and there's no shame in giving people pleasure.

54. Manhattan

2009-10-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

The photo essay at the beginning, besides being beautiful, sets up (via voiceover) our character and setting: we're dealing with someone indecisive who idolizes intangible things, and he lives in and loves New York.

Now, the meat comes in the next scene. He's 42 and in a relationship with a 17 year old girl. This is played straight with little emphasis on it being illegal, and mostly focusing on him using their age difference to convince her that they should break up.

His best friend is having an affair. We met her at 15 minutes in, and she's the dissenting opinion. She slowly grows on him, and he gets with her. He crushes his teenage lover in a sofa fountain shop (an irony setting) and thus begins their short love affair.

But she's indecisive as well, as is the Yale, the man she was having an affair with. For the first time, Isaac wants to be with someone, but she doesn't want to be with him. And so, having no other options, he tries to return to the teenager, but she's off to London. And then we get a coda, a repeat of the beginning montage of beautiful New York.

It's actually more complex than my scant summary, but it is, like John Gardner said, "sophistication that lies beyond simplicity." It is a slight tale that is significant for being so contained.

Two main drawbacks about the writing: Allen's dialogue isn't ever as clever as he thinks it is, and even when it is, his punchlines never seem to fit the narrative and stick out like a stand-up comedian punching up a script. Also, the movie starts out with Isaac beginning a book. We see him quit his job impulsively to write the book, but the very idea of him finishing is absurd and it becomes a MacGuffin. Remember: gun in first act has to go off in the third act. And this one doesn't.

Two other drawbacks: Allen has thankfully learned, over time, that he shouldn't act. It's not that he's terrible (there's actually some subtle stuff going on in this movie, especially in the last scene, that I like), but he's relatively one-note and not nearly as charming as he imagines he is. The other thing is that he has Meryl Streep is his movie and hardly uses her. Inexcusable.

Besides the writing, the obvious thing to adore about this film is the cinematography. There's a lot to love here: the graceful dolly shots that allow the actors to do entire scenes in one shot, the amazing 2nd unit work that makes New York look delicious, the fact that when characters are moving apart they are always seen in close-up singles, the wide-angle deep-focus of the static shots. More specifically, look at the movement that's allowed when Isaac comes down the spiral stairs to see Tracy alone on the couch, reading under the light. She "lights up" his otherwise self-obsessed life and gives it a different meaning. Or watch Keaton and Allen in the planetarium, the lighting corresponding to their dialogue, sometimes bright when they are in sync, sometimes dim, backlit or in shadows when they are hesitating, and sometimes, courageously, completely dark.

55. Apocalypse Now

2009-05-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

"War is hell" is an old, outdated maxim. This movie makes it plain: War is insanity.

This film is about going crazy. More to the point, it's about breaking points, the points at which those in extreme circumstances -- in this case, war -- turn the corner and become enveloped in their insanity. It's about driving off a cliff.

For those who think "high-concept" movies are inherently dumb, this is an exception to the rule. The high-concept here is: a decorated soldier is sent on an assassination mission -- to kill one of his own! Like Lorne Michael's said: "Write it good, it's Hamlet; write it bad, it's Gilligan's Island." Coppola and Milius wrote it good, and that's why it's on this list.

Luckily, they had help. The script is loosely based off of "Heart of Darkness", the classic novel. But the adaptation is loose in the very sense of the word -- Campbell's book was not about war, didn't have scenes of soldiers surfing. But somehow, like a lot of the best adaptations ("There Will Be Blood" and "The Shining" come to mind), this looseness is part of the movie's power in that the director is able to take certain characters and thematic concerns and infuse them with his own sensibilities, pacing, music choices, and mise-en-scene.

Unluckily, they had some problems. Sets were destroyed by weather, actors were constantly on drugs, other actors had to be replaced or shot around due to creative differences or medical issues, the Phillipines military was uncooperative. All this leads into one of the most remarkable aspects of the movie that you can actually glean from the narrative but that really is illuminated by Eleanor Coppola's documentary "Hearts of Darkness", which is this: the physical production of the film matched both the narrative as well as the theme. In other words, everyone went crazy making a movie about people going crazy.

Structurally, it's works well. I believe that Coppola, like a lot of great filmmakers, was stealing and inspired by one of the best filmmakers ever: Terrence Malick. He made a dreamy, otherworldly movie that's structured in vignettes. But what makes them work so well is their economy: Our main character, Willard (Sheen), is given a task (think Starling in "Silence of the Lambs") and puts it into motion (act 1). In doing the job that he is given with no questions asked -- a Puritanical notion more than anything -- he meets these other soldiers and gets into a variety of scenarios (act 2), leading to the final confrontation with his object of desire (act 3). That's it in a nutshell, and the narrative is simply filled with a variety of bits to fill in the blanks.

The most famous of these, rightly so, is with Kilgore (Duvall). Willard and his boat crew meet up with Kilgore and Kilgore discovers one of the men is a professional surfer. He insists they go surfing together, raiding and clearing out a village with good waves to do so. Again, a task is set-up and completed to a satisfying pay-off, and in the meantime we get the theme illuminated in a different way and as the audience we get the pleasure of a great actor speaking iconic lines: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", "Charlie don't surf", "You know, one day this war is going to be over".

The thing to take away from this movie -- the thing it does remarkably well that we could learn from -- is that it takes a theme ("war is insanity") and stretches it to the absolute limit. We see the aforementioned Kilgore, obviously insane, but who relishes the chaos -- he's insane but in his element. We see a raid on a peaceful village just to surf -- a crazy thing to do, but the reasons or justifications for murder don't mean much to the dead. We see a stoned character, Chef, walking through the jungle to collect mangoes and is almost killed by a tiger -- this is an insane thing to do, and the result is Chef's breaking point reached. The soldiers go crazy from seeing the prurient dances of the Playboy bunnies -- their sexual breaking point is reached.

And, of course, Kurtz' compound is the ultimate, physical manifestation of insanity, rolling all of the previous craziness into one big ball and one built-up character. Kurtz' is out of his mind, but that's because he embodies the spirit of the warrior. And war is insanity.

Battle at Kruger

2009-05-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

I saw this for the first time last night and was enthralled. Then I noticed it had been viewed over 40 million times, and I realized that the reason this video was so popular and well-known is because it is the absolute essence of the 3-act dramatic structure, just played out with animals in the wild instead of actors or characters on the page.

To wit: everything you need to know about structuring a narrative is in this eight minute wildlife video.

56. Back to the Future

2009-05-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

Another one from the 80's Spielberg camp, which I am warming up to as I get older. This one takes a high-concept idea -- what would it be like to go back in time and meet your parents? -- and pushes it to the limit by mixing comedy, action/adventure, science fiction and period tropes. Most highly successful/classic movies either mix several different genres together (think "Jerry Maguire") to give us something fresh and new, take a genre and embody it so thoroughly that it becomes the epitome of that genre (think "The Maltese Falcon" with film noir), or deconstruct a genre (think "The Searcher" with westerns). Zemekis is a proponent of the former stategy, to great effect.

The thing that's most remarkable about this movie is how wrong it all could have gone. If the tone wasn't just so, if it weren't so good-natured like a modern, twisted version of a Capra fable, it would have gone off the rails from the get-go. We're supposed to empathize with a whiny, skateboarding "slacker" from a barely functioning Valley family whose only friend is a corrupt, bizarre 50-something scientist and whose mother falls in love with him. It's a testament to how well the tone is controlled -- and how likeable the public finds Michael J. Fox (can't imagine Eric Stolz in the role at all) -- that the thing works at all, and that the tone changes and boundry-pushing even works.

It's also a good example of visual storytelling -- the opening tracking shot (shot in close-ups!) gives us so much: starts with a clock, gives exposition on Doc Brown, shows burnt toast from a Rube Goldberg foreshadowing the lightning and things going awry, and finally that case of plutonium.

Another visual storytelling example is the whole Doc Brown/Harold Lloyd reference. He hangs from the clock and we understand exactly what is at stake, what goes wrong and how it is fixed. And no words are used throughout the whole side of his sequence.

Sometimes less dialogue is more.

House of Games

2009-05-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

This is not on the list, but it is too fucking good to pass up writing about. Here are my notes verbatim:

-- "Do you think you're exempt from experience?" -- theme at min 3/4
-- Set-up -- her client -- "What kind of help is your promise?" -- she's not living in the "real world" -- must get out into direct experience -- a gun in 1st act...
-- min 11 -- goes to The House of Games -- underworld/intrigue
-- we're taught what a tell is -- learning [the best movies teach us something]
-- min 18 -- enters the game -- a job, a task -- he gets her into it by conning her -- tit for tat
-- stakes raised -- a big bet, lots of money
-- oh shit -- he lost the hand and now SHE'S out the money -- he conned her
-- the jig is up -- she discovers its a squirt gun -- a con -- reversal [rhythm and release: the tension is lifted]
-- 30 mins -- act 2 now -- he explains the short con and debt to her client is forgiven
-- 35 -- doubt about her position in life [typical 2nd act stuff]
-- 40 -- she goes back out to find that excitement
-- she propositions him to write about him
-- the con game explained -- short con -- shown -- 43 mins. [this is the William H. Macy scene]
-- "Don't trust nobody."
-- 52/3 -- They fuck -- midpoint
-- 57 -- setpiece -- another con
-- 60ish -- a reversal -- mark is a cop -- DEAD -- she's all in now
-- 70ish -- steals a car
-- briefcase is gone
-- she'll give it to him [the money, that is]
-- he's gone -- end of act 2
-- 1:15 -- visits old professor again -- 3rd act
-- 1:22 -- discovers Billy's been in on the con -- same car
-- 1:25 -- goes to tavern -- everyone there from previous scenes -- JT Walsh is alive
-- he cons her -- by showing her the con game!
-- she comes to find him and con him -- she fails -- he recognizes it
-- 1:35 -- she kills him
-- she's got a taste for thievery now -- steals a gold lighter like the one her old friend has.

42. Raiders of the Lost Ark

2009-05-12T08:31:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of folks, I have a knee-jerk reaction to Steven Spielberg. When I heard about his movies, I think, "Ah, whatever. Fuck that guy. He's overrated."

I think I'm just starting to get over that.

Between watching "Jaws" for the first time and now watching this movie with fresh eyes, I can see the appeal. Or maybe I'm getting older and less pretentious and I realize that a movie can be entertaining and broadly appealing and still artful.

The main thing I like about this movie is what I like about older, classical Hollywood shows: it takes interesting, idiosyncratic characters and puts them in an economically told story. They make it look easy when it is anything but, but that's Hollywood in a nutshell from what I can tell.

The movie starts out with intrigue, mystery. Where are we? Why are we in the jungle? Who is our hero? He doesn't talk much, gets a great introduction, and already we're into the story, searching for an artifact. Throughout this 10-minute set-piece, we're also LEARNING ABOUT THE CHARACTER. This is becoming more and more important as I watch these movies: they are planting things that will later pay-off. Like what? Like the bullwhip. Like the snakes. Like Indy going to ANY lengths for an artifact. Like Belloch besting Indy again.

Notice also: there's the rhythm and release. And they escalate it so that it happens almost every few seconds. Tension is built, diffused; Indy gets away, only to find it isn't that easy. He removes the idol, takes a breath, then the walls come crumbling down. He jumps across a chasm, then slips down, then grabs a branch. We know he'll always make it in the end, but we never know if he'll make it moment to moment.

In other words, the beginning of the movie is a microcosm of what will happen in the rest of the film. It's almost like the film's thesis statement: this is what I'm going to show you, and if you're paying attention, it will all be right here for you. So relax: with Spielberg, you're in the hands of a master.

The reason he's a master is because he is constantly fucking with you as an audience member. He's playing games with you at every moment, and he knows how to do it well, and he gets great joy out of it. And so do you. Nothing wrong with that.

So: we get the great 10 minute intro, and then the reveal: he's a professor! He wears glasses! He's like Clark Kent to his previous incarnation of Superman. Great. We get a long exposition in dialogue scene, but it works because we've just had our hearts racing already with the previous stuff, so we could use a breather. Plus, he's a professor. Of course he's going to teach us something!

He gets the go-ahead, and at the end of act 1, he's off to find the Ark. And he does, but not before he reconnects with his old flame, a hard-drinking woman in Nepal; not before he almost eats a poisoned date; not before he has to confront his snake issue head-on; not before he has to fight a German strong-arm; not before he shoots a swords-man; not before he hops on a submarine; not before he gets the girl again. In short, not before he becomes -- or remains -- a hero, and all the twists and turns of the rollercoaster that entails.

You know the details and I don't have to fully recap it for you, but watching it again with my pen and paper and my copious note-taking, I was struck with how well this movie was plotted and structured, how expertly we are played. There was recently released a .pdf of Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan talking about the creation of this movie, and it is a doozy. You realize how much thought, how much effort, how much work really goes into something that we think of as puffy, light and fun. But they knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it well: after all, a mere piece of "entertainment" is considered one of the best screenplays ever written, and thus is on this list.

16. Pulp Fiction

2009-05-01T09:25:00.000-07:00

Upon watching "Pulp Fiction" again, the one thing I was struck with -- beyond the dialogue, beyond the non-linear narrative, beyond the intersection of violence and comedy -- was the simplicity and clarity of the storytelling. This movie gives us a few stories, sets them up economically and well, and follows them to conclusions that seem both surprising and inevitable. Set-up and pay-off. Rhythm and release. This keeps us wondering what will happen next and makes the 2:30+ runtime seem to breeze by.

Watch:

Some foreign hoods in a coffee shop discuss their crimes, and decide, somewhat spontaneously, to knock the place over. A previously mousy woman stands up and gets ultraviolent. A good start. Then?

Two hitmen. Where did they come from? What is there connection to the previous scene? Quickly we start to forget about the foreign folks, because these guys are funny, and we're curious about what they're up to. One has just gotten back from Europe. They get guns out of a trunk. Who are they going to see? They talk about anything but that. They are casual. They fuck with each other. They banter. One thing they talk about is their boss' wife, how someone gave her a foot massage and was thrown out of a window. This is a set-up, and it is exposition in dialogue, but it works because it is funny and violent and it happens so early that we forgive it.

The hitmen come into an apartment and, after more humorous dialogue and a good bit of tension-building, they kill everyone. And then they get shot at. And they kill that guy too. And now the whole movie is in our hands.

Next: after a set-up of a on-the-take boxer and our hitman trading words, our hitman takes the lady on a date after buying heroin. Again, set-up and payoff: we see that she is indeed beautiful. We want to give her a footrub ourselves. And we see that she's got a bit of a thing for coke. And, based on our previous knowledge of what can be done if you fuck with her, there's a built-in tension: be nice, do what she wants, keep it safe. And he does: he buys her food, gives her a cigarette, laughs at her jokes, accepts her invitation to dance. Then: she finds his heroin, snorts it, overdoses. If giving her a footrub results in being thrown out a window, what would allowing her to OD do? Thus, the needle in the heart.

Now: a Christopher Walken monologue. Again, it is good and funny. It's a dream from our boxer, who was supposed to take a dive. He doesn't. He kills his opponent instead. He and his girl are in a motel, ready to flee to Tennessee. They packed up everything, didn't forget anything. Except: the watch. The watch traveled so far, means so much -- he can't leave it. Set-up. So he goes back to his apartment. No body is there. How is that possible? The tension is diffused. Then: he sees the gun. A man is in the bathroom. He shoots him. It is the previously rude hitman.

He's free. He drives away singing. It can't be that easy, though -- he sees The Boss. They fight. They get knocked out in a store. They are put in the basement, stuck to endure the wrath of Zed (by the way, can anyone explain this sequence and what it means? Particularly in relation to The Gimp? It works within the story, I guess, but it mostly seems weird for the sake of weird...). It doesn't work that way. He saves The Boss. The Boss spares him in return. They're square. And he gets a motorcycle -- sorry, a chopper -- out of the whole deal. Pay-off. Like Soderbergh says: rhythm and release, always.

Finally: We're back to the hitmen again. We come full-circle to the beginning scenes. They kill the bathroom dude, then take Marvin. The other hitman believes they've witnessed a holy act. He believes he's got to change (this is why he is the hitman who isn't killed). They accidentally kill Marvin. Set-up. They have to get the car off the road. They take it to Jimmy's. There's a time frame due to Jimmy's wife getting home. Stakes. The Wolf is called. He comes. They clean. They get out of the scrap, but just. Release: they go for breakfast. The original robbers. Rhythm. They handle it, and our redeemed hitman lets them go because he is a changed man. He will live, and he will allow them the same gift. Pay-off. Release.

End.

58. Ordinary People

2009-04-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting one. It is peculiar in a variety of ways, a messy script about a messy family and a messy situation.

The plot is this: a son is back from the hospital after having attempted suicide. This was his reaction to the death of his brother, who was clearly the favorite of their mother. The question of the movie is: can they hold it together and remain a family, or does their unit tear apart?

It is messy like this: the structure isn't solid. It's not bad, it just isn't as clear-cut as a lot of the other scripts on this list. The inciting incident happens early, at minute 8, and it's a weird one: the mother dumps french toast down the sink. That's it -- no fireworks, no yelling, blink-and-you-miss-it. But that's the point: these are ordinary people, and the things that affect their lives are small, deliberate, and cut to the bone. The mom decides she can't live with the pain of losing her favorite child, doesn't know how to deal with her other son and the silence and tip-toeing going on in the house, and this is her rebellion: I will not bend to another's problems.

It's also messy because it is about Love. Look at this, a line from a play within the movie: "I've never been out of love with you." And then the mother asks, in the car driving away: "Did we like it?" They are a unit -- they stand or fall together, and they all falling. And when they fall, it becomes heart-breaking: the mother yells on the golf course: what mother doesn't love her child? Her, she realizes, and has to leave the frame. And the father sits at the table at the end and says, "I don't love you anymore, and I don't know what to do without that." What else is there?

Since it is about a family, there is no real main character. More messiness. We think it is Hutton, but I'd argue that Sutherland is the real main character. He's the patriarch, for one, and he's the one who brings the movie to it's climax: the mother leaving. And throughout, he's the glue that tries to make it all stick together, from trying to find common ground in fights, to going to therapy himself.

Still, she leaves. Will she come back? This is ordinary life with ordinary people, so there's no way to tell. It's messy, a contrast to all those pretty, clean houses with those well-kept lawns.

59. It Happened One Night

2009-04-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

Those old classical Hollywood comedies look so easy, so effortless that we quickly dismiss them. We shouldn't. While it might seem old-fashioned now, this film basically invented the romantic comedy road trip movie and did it better than pretty much any other in that genre. They "meet cute" on the bus, and instantly we see they are an odd couple. We're not stupid -- we know they are going to get together. How? By inches -- he's a newspaper man, so he decides to skip the bus she missed to get her story. In his gruff manner, he tries to show her the way of a middle-class man: how to dunk a donut, how to hitchhike. Especially in regards to hitchhiking, she can teach him a little something herself.

One thing that particularly sets this movie apart is it's social significance. Like the modern-day "Medicine for Melancholy", we realize with this movie that a love story doesn't need to eschew society. Here we see, in the first words spoken, an acknowledgment of the Great Depression: "Hunger strike, eh? How long has this been going on?" Colbert's father is oblivious, and she decides to free herself from her sheltered life. Like an Okie, she goes on the road, living like the other half in motor-lodges, traveling in crowded buses, pinching pennies and waking up hungry. So we like her.

Mostly what I would like to say is this: just because a movie is from the 30's and in black and white with old-fashioned acting doesn't mean you should change the channel. We can learn a lot from these old movies, maybe this above all: you can make a movie that means something and have it be entertaining at the same time. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

60. L.A. Confidential

2009-04-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

Spoiler warning: I will be discussing the use of twists in the following films: L.A. Confidential, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, Traffic. If you haven't seen these films and don't want them spoiled, don't read below.

Let's talk about twists. The more I go along, the more I realize how important a twist is, because it makes the audience do what we, as filmmakers, want them to more than anything else: keep guessing what is going to happen next. And when I use the word 'twist', I'm not necessarily talking just about big, rug-from-under-you, end of the movie twists like "Luke, I'm your Father", Bruce Willis is a ghost, and Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze. Those are all great and makes us reconsider almost everything we've seen (economically wonderful, considering it makes the viewer want to buy another ticket or pick up a DVD), but you can do smaller twists throughout the movie to give us a new perspective on a character or make us advance the plot in interesting ways.

I just finished Robert McKee's "Story", and he calls this phenomenon The Gap. It's essentially "the rift between expectation and result". To build a successful movie, give us a character we care about, and then put them in situations where the world, the other characters, or the circumstances of the story (the plot) react in different ways than they expect. That's The Gap, and every time it opens, we as audience are pleasantly surprised ("Oh yes!") or not pleasantly surprised ("Oh shit!"). This is the essence of entertainment. Thus, this happens in a big way in movies with twist endings, but in any quality, entertaining movie, it happens several times throughout the course of the narrative in little ways.

In George Saunders' essay "The Perfect Gerbil" from his book "The Braindead Megaphone", this aspect of storytelling is described as such:

When I was a kid I had one of these Hot Wheels devices designed to look like a little gas station. Inside the gas station were two spinning rubber wheels. One's little car would weakly approach the gas station, then be sent forth by the spinning rubber wheels to take another lap around the track or, more often, fly out and hit one's sister in the face.

A story can be thought of as a series of these little has stations. The main point is to get the reader around the track; that is, to the end of the story. Any other pleasures a story may offer (theme, character, moral uplift) are dependent upon this.

Off the top of my head, one recent movie that does this very well is "Traffic". Think about all the times in that film that characters act in ways that we totally don't expect: Del Toro busts drug-runners, only to have the federal police take over his investigation; Del Toro digs his own grave, ready to die, only to find it was just a test; Ferrer is given a breakfast, only to discover another breakfast has come and he has been poisoned; Collins Jr. is about to assassinate Ferrer, only to be assassinated himself; Douglas is set to give a big speech about the drug war, only to realize he can't do it because his own daughter is a drug addict and he'd be a hypocrite.

Throughout the movie we are constantly shown something that is set up to go a certain way, and it is then shown to go another way that is both surprising and yet logical and seemingly inevitable. And that's what you have to accomplish if you want to play with the big boys.

One of the big boys of the 90's was the movie of this post, "L.A. Confidential". This script does many stellar things, including: gives a great, old-fashioned tone and setting establishing prologue; follows three leads (!) with a distinct set of other supporting characters; gives us a sense of a period (and a glamorous one, at that), but a period in flux; shows us a world from low-to-high class, equally comfortable in each; gives us a twisty plot that we always, somehow, seem to understand. And, like I wrote before, it twists on us, always and always without fail.

The two big ones are great: Cromwell kills Spacey as he's drinking coffee, and Pearce accuses Lana Turner of being a whore. They work because they are set up properly -- Cromwell is never seen (and never plays) as a villain, and the scene is constructed like any regular expositional scene we've seen in movies before, where one character tells another a recap of the plot. Not this time. And the Lana Turner scene works because we've spent a good chunk of time learning about this wonderfully sordid idea of high-class, movie-star look-a-like hookers. And Pearce plays it offhandedly: of course she's a hooker, she's hanging out with Johnny Stampanano! Again, no.

So those are the big ones, but think about the other ones too: Cromwell killing DeVito, using his catch-word; Pearce letting Cromwell go before killing him; Crowe hitting Basinger, thus becoming what he hates the most; Crowe playing "bad cop" by throwing the DA out the window; Crowe saying "Senator" to a politician leaving the hookers house.

In every case, certain expectations are set up, and they are knocked down. If you're a filmmaker, this is what you have to do. "L.A. Confidential" does, and that, along with many other reasons, is why it is on this list.

61. Silence of the Lambs

2009-04-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

A masterpiece. We'll examine the writing first, and then move on to the rest of the piece.

The structure is solid. In the first five minutes or so, we're given everything: our main character, Clarice, is shown to be a go-getter, struggling to make a name for herself in a male-dominated world, the FBI. The plot moves forward when she is given a job, a task -- interview a serial killer, Hannibal Lecter, and try to figure out what he knows about another serial killer, Buffalo Bill. What's amazing about this set-up is that it is done with little dialogue; instead, we are shown through the camera and the cutting. Watch as Clarice struggles up a hill in our first shot, symbolizing her struggles. We sense her determination in climbing through an obstacle course. We are given exposition about her occupation by her superiors hat that reads "FBI". We are shown the male-domination of her chosen occupation by following her to an elevator and surrounding her with tall men. And we get to know about Buffalo Bill through newspaper clippings on a wall. Finally, a hard/match cut introduces us to Lecter's reputation as a monster, and then we descend down stairs into hell (blazed in red lights), the editing slower know, the camera in Clarice's POV as the tension increases and we meet Lecter.

And, of course, Lecter is given a great introduction and a long scene of juicy dialogue to chew on. After a paucity of dialogue, we are given a filmed conversation. Following that, we are given a short montage, changing the pace again.

"I'll help you catch him, Clarice." This question ends the first act, and then we go into the subplot at about 30 minutes in -- Buffalo Bill and his ruse, patterned after Ted Bundy's.

We get a new victim and a continuation of themes -- the importance of her father in her life, the misogyny of law enforcement, her determination to help the victims, with whom she identifies. The autopsy ends in a mystery, along with the revelation of the kidnapping gives haste to make a deal with Lecter. This happens when it should -- at one hour in. A change of location, which often accompanies the midpoint, is given when Lecter is moved.

"Some people will say we're in love." Lecter knows what the audience is just starting to discover: that, along with the horror, thriller, and crime drama elements of the film, it is also a very twisted love story, consummated finally but nothing more than a brush of fingers.

Again, where it should happen (at minute 70), we get what we've gotten in dribbles before: a complete backstory and motivation from our main character, which also explains the title. Once Lecter gets this, he is done with her and can move on with his task: escaping. We see this is a gory set piece, where Lecter does something clever and engages in a switcheroo, which audiences love and which fully embodies the Dark Night of the Soul, an 85th minute event. This event, along with Clarice continuing her investigation, start act 3. 2nd acts usually end with a question, and because this movie is so masterful, we actually get two: will Lecter get away with his escape? and will Clarice catch Buffalo Bill?

At 90 minutes in, she goes to Ohio to investigate. She visits a victim and is given the bad news -- they found the guy and she's 400 miles away. In beautiful cross-cutting, we get another switcheroo and realize they got the wrong guy, and that Clarice is at the real killer's house. And she is completely alone.

A final set-piece, this one mirroring her meeting of Lecter -- a descent into hell. Her motivation for this is layered: she knows there's a victim downstairs, she's eager to prove herself in a man's world after getting treated poorly for so long, she wants to finish the job she's started, because she's a pro.

And she does. And we get an epilogue to cool off.

The movie is structured with genuine craft and control. The writing is absolutely solid. What's more remarkable, though, is the directing, the cinematography, the editing, and the acting. Demme is fond of formal composition, where a character is framed perfectly and symmetrically, and he employed POV cameras and characters talking directly into the camera. This allows us into Clarice's plight and lets us empathize with her. It also, in her dealings with Lecter, shows us her connection with him. Watch the scene where she tells Lecter about the lambs: He asks, she starts telling him, and the camera goes through the bars so that the connection between the characters is complete. From then on, the scene plays in extreme close-ups of their faces, as they are closer to each other than each have been to any other human in a long time. We get match cuts to connect dots, the aforementioned cross-cutting of the climax, expert pacing taking us from long conversations to montages, and the release of a long crane shot for the finale.

And don't get me started on the acting...both leads won Oscars, and if you can find other actors that year (or many others) who deserved it more in tackling such potentially pulp material while being as intense, charming, likeable and determined, I'd love to hear it...

SXSW Recap

2009-03-23T11:42:00.001-07:00

I went to the South By Southwest Film Festival this year, strictly as a spectator.

And it was fucking awesome.

The cool thing that the festival does is that it really seems to foster a community for like-minded filmmakers. Most festivals promise this, aspire to this, pay lip service to this, but SXSW actually succeeds. I was able to attend mentor sessions, where I got 10-15 minutes to talk one-on-one with other filmmakers and industry folk to share war stories, get advice, or just talk shop. There were several panels, including one regarding distribution schemes with employees of Oscilliscope (Adam Yauch's distribution label), Magnolia Pictures and more; all the panelists were uniformly approachable afterwards. Jeffrey Tambor did an acting workshop with Jess Weixler and Mark Reeb, from "Alexander the Last" and "The Overbrook Brothers", that was insanely inspirational and thought-provoking, because Tambor talks about the intersection of art and life, and about how if you're doing your art honestly, they should be one and the same. And there are also parties, and the parties are fucking great, and it gives you the opportunity to relax, have some drinks, unwind after watching 2-3 movies throughout the day.

And the movies were good. I saw a lot of stuff, notably:

* "45365" -- The Ross Brothers are making Ohio proud with this one. Imagine a Robert Altman movie with less narrative, more characters and great cinematography, all set in a small Midwestern town. It won an award, and it fucking deserved it.

* "Alexander the Last" -- Joe Swanberg keeps growing, both in his filmmaking technique (working with trained actors, becoming more experimental and less tied to realism in form, better cinematography) as well as in his business sense (he's pioneering a VOD/festival strategy via IFC). Can't wait for the next one.

* "Humpday" -- A great concept executed well. "Mumblecore", I guess, although it is more strictly just a low-budget comedy, and it is structured with real skill, considering it's improvised nature.

* "I Love You, Man" -- Good studio comedy, with small insights into modern relationships, both between men and women, and men and men.

* "It was great, but I was ready to come home" -- Kris Swanberg does a travelogue, a testament to missing her husband, her relationships with her female friends, and her complex feelings about her Cuban heritage. Short and sweet with some great images.

* "Objectified" -- I have a friend who is a product designer, and this movie makes me understand her much better. Design is something I rarely think about, but is fascinating when I do.

* "Rene" -- Haunting small doc from the Czech Republic about an alienated criminal/writer who bounces between prison and straight life from age 15 - 40ish. Similar to "Hoops Dreams" in scope and access, but even more depressing.

* "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" -- Todd Haynes came in for a panel and a secret screening of his banned film, introduced by Richard Linklater. Like the bastard child of Kenneth Anger and...I''m not sure. Definitely grateful to have caught it to see what all the fuss was about.

* "Trust Us, This Is All Made Up" -- TJ and Dave star in a concert film, and they are fucking funny. Long-form improv is one of the most remarkable performance forms active today, and this movie captures that.

Didn't see but wanted to:

* "Beeswax"

* "Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo"

* "Best Worst Movie"

* "Medicine For Melancholy"

* "That Evening Sun"

* "You Won't Miss Me"

62. Moonstruck

2009-03-11T07:24:00.000-07:00

Subplots.

The main plot of the movie concerns Cher's character, a bookkeeping Italian widow who believes she is cursed to be unlucky in love. She gets a proposal from her longtime suitor, played by Danny Aiello. He has to visit his dying mother back in Sicily, and they will marry when he returns. In the meantime, can she go see his estranged brother and invite him to the wedding?

Sure she can, and while she does that, let's find out what the subplots are. The first concerns Cher's father, who we find out has a mistress who he regales with tales of his plumbing work. We find out about this affair just before Cher's affair with her fiancee's brother, which lessens the blow. This main plot and subplot come together at the opera, at Puccini at the Met, when Cher discovers her father with his mistress, and he discovers her with her fiancee's brother. This is a subplot that compliments the main plot.

At the same time, Cher's mother is having dinner alone, seeing as how her husband is out with another woman. Her subplot involves her stumbling into a dinner with a cad, a college professor who can't stop bedding his students. They have a lovely time together and he walks her home. He tries to invite himself in, repeatedly. She declines: "I'm married, and I know who I am." This is the anti-thesis.

And that's all you need to do with subplot. Find the theme and the action of the main plot, and either compare or contrast (or compare AND contrast) that main arc of action with your subplots, and you've got it.

63. Jaws

2009-02-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

This is a very well-structured film.

We get an intense opening scene -- a shark kills a drunk hippie girl, and we see her yell and struggle and the tone of the piece is set.

We see our main character, Brody, and we get a sense of this small island town. But the girl's death is uncovered and we get a grisly glimpse -- this is the inciting incident.

The debate section involves Brody wanting to close the beaches and keep the people safe, but the Mayor wants to keep the beaches open for the 4th of July celebration. And we meet Quint, who gets a great introduction.

The subplot is Dreyfuss and his fussy, intellectual ways. And we have a bit of fun and games with Brody and Dreyfuss getting to know each other, getting drunk, having dinner together and going out on the boat while wasted.

At the midpoint, we have another shark attack, but this time it directly affects the main character and the Mayor's kids. So:

We change venues. We are now on the water. We finally we see the shark for real: The Bad Guy Is Closing In. More set pieces and problems -- the shark is too strong, the boat is falling apart -- and All Is Lost as the shark gets away.

Finally, the third act: the shark comes back stronger and angrier than ever, the subplot and main plot come together as Dreyfuss goes in the water and Quint dies, and the boat fully fails. Our main character overcomes his problem -- he is afraid of the water -- and he kills the shark. Man vs. Nature has a victor. The end.

And throughout it all, there are action scenes or set pieces every 10 to 15 minutes, which keep us on our toes at all points. We can't stop watching, because we never know what will happen next. This is all that a drama needs to do, and it does that in spades.

Other things beyond the writing: there are some surprisingly beautiful shots in this movie. The opening scene itself is gorgeous, with the young girl and young boy backlit by the rising sun. Also, Spielberg got some fine performances from Dreyfuss (as his doppelganger) and Shaw, who kills as Quint. Finally, Spielberg made a choice to show very little of the shark until near the end, which adds to the air of danger and scares us to the bone.

Top Twelve Of The Year, plus a bonus list

2009-02-11T09:52:00.001-08:00

These are my favorite films from this past year. Everyone has their own way of determining which are "best", and my criteria is usually 1) recognizing that which I believe will last, 2) recognizing that which I feel got overlooked, 3) recognizing that which was so good that you can't help but comment.

These are those:

* Che. I bought into it. I appreciate that it was mostly about process, and therefore largely eschews the standard tropes of war films, as well as most of the controversial politics that have emerged from Che's life and likeness. Moreso, I think Soderbergh was interested in the parallels between building a revolution and working on a film set in a far off land. And finally, the whole sequence where Che gets captured is fascinating, as is the astonishing POV death scene.

* The Dark Knight. The first shot says everything: society is a calm, smooth surface until something unpredictable shatters it. And then all hell breaks loose. You've either seen this movie or you're dead, and it is remarkable. Deserves to be with the billion dollar boys for all of the reasons you already know.

* Dear Zachary. Melds the best things about two of the most influential documentaries ever: the investigative journalism/private detective work of "The Thin Blue Line"; the four-track, home recording vibe of a life overdocumented from "Tarnation". This is a movie so heartfelt and personal, so unobjective, that the filmmaker actually starts crying during voiceover narration. And it is totally justified. Find it, watch it, be awed by the plot twists, and get fucking mad.

* In Bruges. So underseen. The kind of movie you tell people about, they watch, then exclaim "Why didn't I hear about this movie?" Because the studio is stupid: they didn't realize that they had gold with a tightly structured screenplay, an exotic location, copious Catholic guilt to fuel it all, and great performances from Clemence Poesy, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes playing against type as a madman, and revelatory work by Colin Farrell, who is at turns tortured and damn funny.

* Indestructible. Ben Byer was a struggling actor and playwright who, in the course of feeling his body betray him, finally made a lasting piece of art. That he acknowledges this fact late in the movie makes his courage that much more remarkable, considering his courage becomes quickly apparent. This is a ramshackle documentary, but an utterly honest and touching one. It addresses some of the same topics about the intersection of art and death as "Synecdoche, New York", but, considering this story is a non-fiction one, it makes Kaufman's film look like the fussy, narcissistic, undisciplined exercise it is.

* Lakeview Terrace. The trailers would have you believe this was some dumb by-the-book thriller. It is so much more than that: an examination of systemic racism in LA that explores the topic in much more interesting, complex, subtle and entertaining ways than did "Crash". It echoes the Rodney King beatings and the riots in a respectful way, and gives us an adriot final shot for us to contemplate the past and the future of the problem.

* Man On Wire. Like "Harlan County, USA", this documentary uses narrative devices to tell a non-fiction story. In this case, the structure and suspense of a heist movie. And then we get the glory of a man on wire, suspended above the world like no one before or since, on a building that doesn't exist anymore (a fact the filmmaker gloriously neglects to mention, so that we bring our own emotions of 9/11 to the table). The complete joie de vivre exhibited by the subject, Petit, is a marvel to watch.

* Rachel Getting Married. A home movie about a wedding that never happened but that I would have loved to have attended. A certain subset of folks are going to be using this movie as a template for their own weddings, and it's probably a larger group than you realize.

* Slumdog Millionaire. Just like "Amelie", in that it marries classical Hollywood cinema structure and techniques with motifs and archtypes from another dominant world cinema, in this case India. The melding is so successful and we westerners learn so much about the other culture -- and their cinema -- in the process that we are thankful. And we get crackerjack entertainment and social commentary in the bargain.

* Standard Operating Procedure. Errol Morris is one of the best directors working. Not in documentaries, but period. Here he examines Abu Grhaib from an angle most would never consider -- that of the process of how those famous photographs came to be and how they were used to scapegoat those subjects -- and gives a more chilling view of our war than before.

* Wall-E. Pixar makes classical Hollywood cinema that takes bold risks, and they get away with it because, as Andrew Stanton says, they focus on "story, story, story." Puts a new twist on the apocalypse scenario, gives great satire about where we're headed as a culture, and it doesn't hurt that Wall-E is utterly fucking adorable, a great hero. This movie is a masterpiece and it will last.

* The Wrestler. A simple story, well-told, which gives us a new glimpse into a world we only think we know: professional wrestling. Performance of a lifetime by Rooney, with a great, enigmatic ending that echoes the fate of another 80's rocking New Jersey anti-hero: Tony Soprano.

Bonus list!

I went to several film festival this year. Here are some fine performances in films I saw during my festival rounds:

* Ben Gazzara in "Looking For Palladin". From his thin frame and crusty cigarette voice, Ben Gazzara almost certainly is in his last days. But he gave a fine performance in his small movie, playing an aged actor in South America who just wants to be left alone. His work here is so thorough, so lived-in, that when he finally gets the space he continually requests, he's earned it.

* Dana Delaney in "Route 30". I can't get the image of Delaney's chain-smoking, hard-drinking, rumspringa-remembering Amish lady dancing and deancing to Scott Joplin out of my head. She gives life to a character that could have been an easy cliche.

* Wesley Murphy in "Boys of Summerville". Wesley Murphy's first scene is him smearing cake all over his naked body due to his despair over losing his girlfriend. He owns this little film from his first frame, and never lets go, never fails to get a chuckle from his moustache or his accent or trying-to-be-tough mannerisms every time he comes back up on the screen.

* Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig in "Nights and Weekends". Art imitates life as a couple's relationship dissolves, then doesn't, then finally does. Gerwig is her usual neurotic self, but in a much deeper way, letting us more into her loneliness and hurt. And Swanberg does his watchful, playful thing until the very end, when finally he can't stop crying.

64. Terms of Endearment

2009-02-04T08:22:00.001-08:00

I couldn't get into this one.

There's something about 80's films that makes them age poorly. They become horribly dated in an unpleasant way. They reek of Reagan.

In terms of the writing, I have some misgivings. I think one of the biggest problems is that the film spans a long stretch of time -- about 30 years, I'd guess -- and that span of time is inelegantly handled. We start with Winger as a baby, which is fine, and then we go right into her father dying, then right into her getting married. Minutes after that, we're about 5 years later and Winger and her husband are moving to Iowa. We know this is years later because in the previous scene, she's pregnant; now, she's got a kid. And no explanation is giving, and we're left to piece it together. That means we as audience actually sit there wondering "is that their kid?" These kinds of things take us out of the movie.

Another example is MacLaine and Nicholson. He's a rogue, a charmer, a skirt-chaser. He insults her while asking her out -- to the White House, no less. She says no. Several scenes later, after a bad birthday dinner with her various admirers, she goes back over to his house to feel young again and asks him if the date is still on. He's confused. She clears it up: "a few years ago you asked if I'd like to go have lunch with you." That's how we know it is years later. Again, inelegant.

Probably the biggest problem in relation to this time span is how it affects the relationship between MacClaine and Winger. MacClaine is a self-centered, narcissistic, lonely woman at the beginning of the film, and her daughter has a rare joie de vivre that MacClaine seems to try to squash at all points. By the end of the film, they have clearly reconciled and have come to appreciate each other -- we see them on the phone talking about their love lives, MacClaine offers to take the kids -- but I never got a sense of when or how they came to appreciate each other. The scenes skip from one to another and all of a sudden they are friends. I don't need some big emotional breakdown, but I need something more than what we are given to see how they meet in the middle with their largely differing personalities.

I'm sure this film is lauded often because it changes tone often. However, save for Nicholson's scenes, I never thought of it as a particularly funny film. There are some fine dramatic scenes -- Winger in the supermarket, for example; Winger confronting her husband on the chair about his adultery -- but the two tones don't come together as well as I think was intended.

Now, it terms of content, I didn't like MacClaine, and I had problems with the adultery. MacClaine comes off as a really bad parent at the beginning, and I never got a sense of how she overcame that, both in the story sense as well as to us as the audience. I never felt for her, never empathized with any plight she was in. Her character arc was supposed to be her going from being cold to warm, but I never bought it. And in terms of the adultery, I really disliked Daniels' character for cheating on his wife, who we can agree is a nice woman who just wanted to do right by her man and make their marriage work. But all that goodwill goes out the window when she herself enters into an affair -- and does so with a weepy, wussy banker. On top of that, when her husband admits his mistakes in full on her deathbed, she refuses to do the same. Unforgivable.

Beyond the writing, I had other problems with the film. One, the music was awful. The maudlin piano and flute score is so overblown, and it does little to link the disparate scenes together. Two, Debra Winger is technically a good actress, but I personally don't like her -- her voice and face are unpleasant to me, and she tries to toe lines that I'm not sure she's able to. For example, I found her confrontation scenes lacking in life or passion: when she confronts her husband's mistress I felt the drama of the scene, but not her embodiment of that drama. In other words, she was able to be quirky and free-spirited, but she couldn't do the heavy lifting of the drama. Same goes for her death-bed scene with her kid.

All of this adds up to the fact that I felt nothing watching this movie. I know this is a notorious "weeper", but when Winger dies at the end, I felt nothing. Nicholson walks away with the kid, and the blue-background credits pop up (see what I mean about the 80's dating things?), and all I could do is shrug.

65. Singin' In the Rain

2009-01-28T07:34:00.000-08:00

This is the best musical ever.

Let's examine a sequence, the dance of the title track. It's called "Singin' in the Rain" and it features just that. It's absurd, like most things in musicals. But we believe it here -- we believe that a grown man, a movie star -- would dance around and sing in a pouring storm, because he's utterly in love.

Who hasn't left a girlfriend or boyfriend near the beginning of a relationship, your heart almost screaming with affection, your bones and skin wanting to leap out of your body to dance? The difference between us and Gene Kelly is that he does.

And you know what else he does? He eventually becomes so overwhelmed that he just starts stomping in a puddle, around and around until a cop stops him. So he walks off towards home, and as he does so, he gives his his umbrella to a stranger on the street.

Perfect cinema.

66. Jerry Maguire

2009-01-20T21:27:00.000-08:00

This picture is a good example of mixing genres. There are loads and loads of shows that mix genres, but usually they stick to mixing two or three to provide a new context or contrast, such as "Brick", which mixes 40s film noir with high school melodrama; "Some Like It Hot", which mixes gangster dramas with slapstick or screwball comedy; "Dancer in the Dark", which mixes Dogme films with musicals.

On my count, however, "Jerry Maguire", to one degree or another, mixes at least six (6!) different genres, necessarily in small degrees.

It is primarily a comedy, and that's due to various jokes and gags throughout, such as most scenes with Rod Tidwell and his outrageousness. But it is also a comedy in the primary, classical sense that it ends happily for all involved. Even the main villain of the film, Bob Sugar, gets off lightly.

That said, there is enough drama that it can't be considered ONLY a comedy. By definition, there are a series of episodes that are turbulent or highly emotional -- Jerry goes through an initial breakthrough (breakdown?), loses his job, his wife, his main client. He can't be alone. He gets involved with his secretary, a single mom. He gets married without being in love. And, most notably, he changes from super-slick and highly cynical to wearing his heart on his sleeve. Sure, it ends well, but he goes through the wringer to get there.

It is also a romantic comedy. You don't shoot a slapstick scene with pasta on the shirt, a declaration of love over morning coffee and dramatic irony, and a three minute neck-kissing scene without being interested in how romantic comedy works. And you certainly don't include "You complete me" without being a complete softie.

So, it's also a chick flick. It concerns the concerns of women, and their problems with men. By definition, it was designed, in part, to appeal to a female target audience. That's why you see Tom Cruise cry so often. That's why you have the voice of Bonnie Hunt, the surrogate voice of many of the women in the audience, so front and center. That's why we see the living room bitch session. And that's why, in the end, love conquers all.

It's also a buddy movie, about the initial animosity and subsequent respect and friendship between Rod Tidwell and Jerry. Rod teaches Jerry about the importance of family and your relationships, and Jerry teaches Rod that there's more to your career than making money at it. And they meet in the middle to become buddies.

And finally, of course, it is a sports film. The third act is almost entirely concerned with The Big Game (Monday Night Football, in this case), a standard sports film trope. And, like almost all sports films, it ends predictably...

52. The Lady Eve

2009-01-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

Some movies are so good and seem so effortless that you take them as a given, letting them glide by you without really thinking about them in depth -- about the craft you just saw, or about how economical and tight the storyline was, or how good those snappy lines sounded rolling off the movie stars tongue. Comedy is especially easy to dismiss in this way, because somewhere in our bones we as audience feel that it isn't difficult to be funny, it doesn't take real skill.

My love for classical Hollywood cinema from the 30's and 40's is near absolute. A lot of that has to do with two aspects (not surprisingly, all outlined by Billy Wilder in Cameron Crowe's book): the correct use of glamorous movie stars, and the complete mastery of screenwriting craft so that every script is a thing unto itself: economical, no backstory, no wasted moments, complicated plots, and short third acts that end without fanfare.

And few filmmakers embraced the classical Hollywood model more than Preston Sturges.

David Mamet is a smarter man and a better writer than me, and he wrote well about "The Lady Eve", which he calls "a perfect movie", in his book Bambi vs. Godzilla:

Here we have Barbara Stanwyck and her father, Charles Coburn. They are cardsharps and confidence tricksters plying the liners.

Here comes Henry Fonda, an amateur naturalist and the filthy rich son of Eugene Palette. He's been up the Amazon for a year and is going home.

Everyone on the liner is angling for his notice or favor. Stanwyck, of course, wins out. And she and her father set out to fell Fonda.

This is called a premise.

Stanwyck, however, makes the mistake of actually falling in love with him.

This is called a complication.

Her love is reciprocated, and Fonda proposes marriage.

But wait -- before she can accept, she must confess to her life of sin, and before she gets to do so, the ship's purser warns Fonda that she is a criminal.

He is heartbroken and tells her that he knew it all along and was just stringing her along for the entertainment value. She, now, is heartbroken.

...What keeps them apart?

Aha. The lovers are now kept apart by loathing on the part of Fonda and, upon the part of Stanwyck, by a desire for revenge.

Enter act 2.

She decides to impersonate a wealthy British countess or something, gets introduced into Fonda's family's rich Connecticut set, and win him all over again.

She, of course, does so, and they get married.

We now have act 3. They are together, but the notional forces have not been propitiated. He has not been won through love but through actual chicanery (the very method she disdained in act 1), and Stanwyck must have her revenge.

They proceed on their honeymoon. About to consummate the marriage, she confesses first to one and then to a very lengthy run of sexual encounters, and he dumps her.

She has had her revenge, his family proposes a fat settlement, and she turns it down. All she wants is for her husband to ask outright for his release.

Note, she has won the prize of the first act (money) and that of the second (regard) but finds that revenge is empty -- that she has, in fact, gone too far...

Fonda, she learns, is going back down the Amazon.

In a fit of inspiration, she boards his boat in her old persona as the rejected con artist.

He is overjoyed to meet her again and calls her to his bosom. Great story. And we may reflect that its description contains none of what the ignorant refer to as "characterization", nor does it contain any of their beloved "backstory". [italics mine]

...A director could (indeed, did) shoot the story above. It was simple and straightforward enough to allow him to make simple choices about clothes, costumes, camera angles, music, and so on.

Actors could act upon those directions he gave them based on the script.

The resultant film, though made by a master, would probably have been watchable if made by a journeyman. Why? Because we, the audience (those in their seats at the cinema and you, gentle reader, no less), wanted to know what happened next. That is more or less the total art of the film dramatist: to make the audience want to know what is going to happen next. [again, italic mine]

Now, I've just told you the whole plot of the movie, and it is beautiful in its simplicity, structure, and tightness. But I didn't give the movie away. Because a movie like this is a classic not just because of the narrative economy (in which case it would simply be nice to watch and study, but not to savor), but because of the cleverness and playfulness of the individual scenes and lines:

Watch as Stanwyck uses a small mirror to scope out Fonda, alone at his table with his book, as she provides voiceover of his various failed vixens.

Watch as Stanwyck sticks her stockinged legs in Fonda's face as she demands he bend down and put her shoes on for her.

Watch as Stanwyck forces Fonda's face next to hers as she purrs, getting to know him before she moans and kicks him out of her room.

Watch as Fonda loses to the Colonel at cards before Stanwyck pulls an ace and saves him.

Watch as Fonda is led through five pratfalls in one minute after meeting the Lady Eve.

Watch as Fonda finally takes the lead -- grows up and becomes a man -- by grabbing Stanwyck by the hand back to his room. And watch those delicious last lines.

To paraphrase a line from "Dead Poet's Society", the narrative structure is noble and necessary for a well-built movie, but the contents of the scenes, the dialogue, and the interactions between the movie stars -- that's what we live for.

67. E.T.

2008-12-03T11:53:00.000-08:00

I've become a big fan of Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat". So I will break down "E.T." via his beat list.

1. Opening Image (1): a spaceship comes to Earth. "A stranger comes to town". Something we thought could never happen happens.

2. Theme Stated (5): You have to believe in magic, in the supernatural.

3. Set-up (1-10): We see E.T., and then we see the other E.T.: Eliot Taylor. He's a lonely, picked-upon kid from a broken home -- the kind that might be inclined to have an active fantasy life, who might be a little more inclined to believe in something magical.

4. Catalyst (12): He and E.T. meet, and their responses to each other are mirrored.

5. Debate (12-25): Eliot hangs out with E.T., introduces him to his brother and sister, hides him from his mom. Eliot goes to school, E.T. gets him drunk and we see that they are linked together, symbiotic.

6. Break into Two (25): E.T. sees a commercial and wants to "phone home."

7. B story (30): The government men come after E.T., breaking into the house.

8. Fun and games (30-55): Halloween, hanging out with E.T. in the neighborhood. E.T. allows Eliot to fly on his bike.

9. Midpoint (55): Eliot wakes up in the forest and E.T. is gone.

10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75): Do they ever. They literally close in, coming in through ever orifice in the house as Eliot and E.T. are dying, and the Bad Guys completely take over.

11. All Is Lost (75): Eliot and E.T. get sicker and sicker, and eventually E.T. separates himself from Eliot so that he alone can die. Eliot loses his only friend.

12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85): E.T. dies and/or goes into a coma.

13. Break Into Three (85): The adults leave. Eliot hangs out with E.T. alone, tells him he loves him and believes in him. E.T. wakes up and is ready to phone home.

14. Finale (85-110): They get E.T. out of the house and go on a chase, outwitting adults. They fly again. They get E.T. back to the forest, the spaceship comes.

15. Final Image (110): E.T. goes home after Eliot says goodbye. We end on Eliot, who loses his friend but is no longer alone.

The most remarkable thing about it is how, like a Peanuts cartoon, the movie is entirely from the point of view of children, and, by extension, E.T. It gives us the perspective of a child, something we seemingly all want to be again on some level.

68. star wars

2008-11-26T14:44:00.001-08:00

This is a big movie in all ways. It is big in that it creates a world unlike we had previously seen in cinema (the now iconic "galaxy far, far away") and subsequently created a monster of a franchise that changed cinema forever, in distribution schemes to merchandising to using actors as puppets and more. But mostly what I mean when I saw that is it big is that it is a movie concerned with Big Ideas, while not eschewing the necessity of a tight plot as the engine to drive those Big Ideas along.

Big Idea One: Spirituality is just as important as science and maybe more so. Obi-Wan is spirituality, Han Solo is science, and Luke is in between. They duke it out on the ship while Luke practices his saber skills. True to the machinations of how Hollywood plots work, at the end of the 2nd act, Luke uses his science skills (piloting) along with his spiritual skills (The Force's ability to harness telepathy) to shoot down the Death Star. Considering how much discussion of The Force there is in the film, and the fact that Luke is able to continue to communicate with Owi-Wan after he's already dead, we can guess which side Lucas is taking in the face-off between spirituality vs. science.

Big Idea Two: The Hero Myth. Just as "The Matrix" synthesized influences ranging from kung-fu films to anime to vampire movies to cyberpunk books, Lucas took the melting pot that was his cinematic canon and combined it: 50's westerns, tv serials, soap operas, 50's sci fi, Kirosawa films, "Lawrence of Arabia", and especially, the ideas of Joseph Cambell in relation to the myth of the Hero. Here's a summary of the myth:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

The first trilogy is the process of how Luke Skywalker becomes a hero by defeating his father, who represents the Dark Side of the Force by way of the Empire. In this, the first film, he comes from a desert planet, decides to leave when his guardians are killed (bonus points for being an orphan), encounters a world of scary-looking space creatures and ships that either go light-speed or can blow up whole planets, and uses his newfound Force, along with his previous piloting ability, to thwart the Empire. Then he wins a medal from a cute girl (doesn't know she's his sister yet).

He is a hero by specific design, and becomes even more of one in the subsequent films.

By contrast, the second trilogy is the process of how Anakin Skywalker goes through a much similar course, but becomes a villain instead. He is a virgin birth (!) whose mother (?) is killed. He is a fine pilot and student of The Force, but becomes seduced to its Dark Side due to his desire for power and, especially, revenge.

He is a villain by specific design, and becomes even more of one in the subsequent films.

Big Idea Three: The role of the underdog and outsider. Lucas is interested in characters on the fringe, outside of the mainstream. Luke is from a planet on the far edge of the galaxy; Leia is a princess who, in our political parlance, has "gone rogue" and is "palling around with terrorists"; Han Solo is a pilot-for-hire whose last name is, well, Solo. These folks band together to take on the Empire, a highly scientific and powerful group who have developed technology sufficient to explode entire planets. How dare these ruffians try to compete with that, or to bring that down? But they do, because as the outsiders and the underdogs, they are hungrier.

I've heard the argument that this is actually Lucas' secret comment on the world of independent film vs. the Hollywood studio system. If so, I like that, because it means that he started out as Luke Skywalker and then became Anakin, and only wants our forgiveness for the mess he's helped make of the movie business in the process.

69. Dog Day Afternoon

2008-11-26T13:36:00.001-08:00

Let's talk about improvisation. It probably doesn't mean what you think it means. What it doesn't mean is actors making up the story. What it does mean is actors using a very specific structure with very specific limits to world-build -- with their own dialogue (often corollary to what is already written), their own actions, their own character traits -- in aid of a very specific goal. In cinema, oftentimes that goal is naturalism.

That's the case here. We get a montage of a hot summer day in New York to set the stage, and we get a pretty little Elton John song on the soundtrack. Whoops! Turns out the music is actually diegetic: it is on the radio of a car with three men in it, parked in front of a building.

Those men are robbers, and that building is a bank.

The director, one of our absolute finest, Sidney Lumet, had a screenplay that he liked. That's because the screenplay is good -- the set-up is economical, the structure is quite sound, it represents the true events in a purposeful way, the twists and reversals are startling, and it is even pretty damn funny at times. But what Lumet wanted to do is make the film as realistic and ground-level as possible. He wanted to put the audience inside the bank with those men to show that, even though these men are not to be admired, there are reasons for them to do what they are doing and they are humans too. To get us into the moment with those men, there are various cinematic tricks used: an almost real-time narrative, no soundtrack, natural lighting.

But the most important is the improvisation.

Lumet rehearsed his actors for weeks before the shoot began. He stuck them in a room and worked with them over and over to embody the characters and know them inside and out. He gave them a scene, maybe like this: "Sonny says goodbye to his male lover over the phone" or "Sonny dictates his will to one of the bank tellers" and had them work the scene out from the ground up, figuring out blocking, movement, action, and sometimes, new dialogue. By the time they shot the film, some things had changed from the shooting script, but it was still the same movie that Pierson wrote -- the same intentions, the same structure, the same story beats and character arcs. Now it was fleshed out and the actors were able to embody the characters as closely to flesh-and-blood human beings as you can get in filmed cinema, with tics and stammers and mood swings and sweat stains and spontaneous bursts of language and humanity.

And that's improvisation.

70. the african queen

2008-10-31T14:41:00.001-07:00

the main thing i've been focusing on in movies lately, both in my own writing and in watching other's films, is structure. i remember long ago, when i first dipped my toe in the screenplay waters, reading someone write, "the most important part about writing a screenplay isn't the dialogue, it is the structure" (that paraphrased, by the way). i didn't understand what they meant and it took me a long time to figure it out, but at least i palpably feel at this moment like i'm on the right track.

there's a very specific form that classical hollywood cinema -- and even most cinema that's considered "independent" -- takes. this goes beyond the vague outlines of what we think of as the "3-act structure", too. in movies, we have very specific, often unconscious beats that we as audience respond to, and these include the way we set things up in the first five minutes to how we must use the midpoint as an apex of the narrative to when we first see the b-story.

john huston was a good director, but he was also a hell of a writer. he understood this structure, and we see that here. we are introduced to our main character, katherine hepburn, who is a proper british society lady in a foreign lady. this is the first image. a stranger comes to town: bogart. he is dirty, his belly grumbles, he is not like hepburn. the war comes to town, her brother is killed, the village pillaged. there is nothing for her to do save go with bogart on his boat, "the african queen", and hope for the best. there is debate, but very little of it.

this is act one. act two begins on the boat, and we see the b-story about using "the african queen" as a torpedo with the exposition cleverly buried in "getting to know you" and map-reading. the a-story consists of her shedding her society image and lifestyle and becoming more in tune with the world that surrounds her, not to mention her falling in love with bogart.

this is an action/adventure movie, so every 15 minutes or so, there's a set piece. in this case, shooting the rapids. hepburn doing something visceral and physical, perhaps for the first time, actually works within the storyline as part of her letting her hair down and embracing life. the set-piece accompanies the story; it doesn't sit apart from it.

the third act is their failed attempt at using the torpedo and their time on the german boat. they fail in that, but they end up married, so all is not lost. as a final twist, they are saved and because comedy and adventure are so closely entwined, they are able to live happily ever after. like billy wilder's good advice, once that's established, they don't linger, the movie is over.

71. the lion in winter

2008-09-24T16:41:00.000-07:00

i love a good first shot, and this was is a doozy: we see a beautiful blue sky, tranquil and clouded-filled, and then two swords clash.

this is the movie in a nutshell.

this is a movie about family being a battle where the balance of power is constantly shifting, just like in any other family. everyone wants power, everyone wants attention, everyone wants acknowledgement, everyone wants to be special -- and you don't have to be royalty for those feelings to be accurate and for them to come to the surface.

this is a movie about the bonds of family, so there's a reason this movie is set during a holiday.

this is one of the most entertaining pictures i've ever seen, if you use the term "entertainment" to mean a piece of work that you have to keep watching and keep engaged with, simply because you never know what will happen next and you have no idea how it will end.

and the dialogue! holy shit! i thought "sweet smell of success" had some juicy lines, but this trumps it and trumps it hard. there are too too many to run down, but here are just a few that jumped out at me:

* "in a world where carpenters get resurrected, everything is possible."
* "i never heard a corpse complain of how it got so cold."
* "my finest angle. It's on all the coins."
* "i could peel you like a pear and god would call it justice."
* "power is the only fact."

finally, i know it seems silly and out-dated now, but i love that characters used to laugh uproariously in old movies. you see this seemingly at the end of every scene in "the wild bunch" and many others (that example is the first that comes to mind), and i can't intellectualize it -- i just like it. in this case, the king and the queen laugh their way through the last scene, and it is a choice that seems to make sense -- they rip each other apart throughout the entire thing through matters that are literally life and death, and yet, to them, on some level, it is all a laugh.

short cuts: smart summer blockbusters

2008-09-23T11:17:00.001-07:00

short cuts:

we just had a summer full of smart blockbusters. here's a recap:

* the dark knight
i'm pretty happy that a movie like this is one of the highest grossing ever, because it is a good example of what steven soderbergh calls "artful entertainment": pictures that are well-written, technically excellent and have a point-of view and an intellectual backbone while remaining entertaining. that, to me, is the apex of hollywood cinema, and this film qualifies.

the story starts with a bang, literally. the window is blasted out, the bank robbery starts, and a whole line of criminals gets killed. the chaos has begun, and that's what this film is about: the thin line between the order we all agree to participate in, and the chaos that a few folks (the joker in this fictional case, terrorists in the real world) can create to destabilize that.

is it pretty great knowing that, due to the success of this film, christoher nolan now has carte blanche to do just about anything he wants. what he wants, i'd imagine, is to continue fucking with one of the most basic of storytelling conventions: the hero and the villan. in all of his movies (that i've seen), he blurs that line, and that's a line that, in our modern world, should be blurred.

* wall-e
a masterpiece. i can't really be articulate about this one, i just think it is great. it continues to amaze me that, for the last 10 or so years, some of the best, smartest, and most human hollywood films have come from an animation studio.

this film features pointed satire about our society of fast food, commerce and laziness. it has amazing sound work, both in voice work and in sound design. and the beginning silent section is gorgeous and sad and funny all around, making us care about a robot.

and it looks gorgeous. did i mention that?

* tropic thunder
the silliest and least smart of the whole bunch, this hollywood satire has some fun performances and great moments, but doesn't add up to much. that said, the more i go along, the more i realize that, when someone is satirizing hollywood and it seems over-the-top, it probably isn't. going to those lengths to get an actor tivo? probably close to the truth. an executive having an inexperienced director punched by the key grip? if he lost him $4 million, it wouldn't surprise me. a storied memorist who turns out to have made it all up? definitely.

and on top of that, robert downey jr. continues to have a great year, and gets to have fun, nick nolte gets to play on his grizzled persona, and tom cruise gets to...be a shouting, grotesque, unrecoginizable mess -- and run away with the movie in the process.

* the pineapple express
i love david gordon green. he is and has been one of my very most favorite current working director, and this movie shows that he can pretty much make any type of movie that he wants.

i like that this movie was a stoner movie that doesn't cop out at the end and renounce pot. i like that the movie was an ode to friendship and male bonding. i like that this movie had crazy action sequences. i like that james franco got to be a goofball and seth rogan had to play the straight man. i like all the little 80's details, from rosie perez to clothing choices to "227". i like that the plot is silly as fuck. i like that they shot a foot off a dead body.

i like that tim orr didn't do a damn thing differently save shoot on super35.

* lakeview terrace
this picture is really a lot better than the trailers make it out to be. it is much more a portrait of contemporary race relations than a thriller. able is a complex man (doesn't want to have his daughter to booty dance in a bikini, but is still down with having a drunken, stripper-laden bachelor party), and as bad as he turns out to be, you understand it because of his background in south central and his relationship with his dead wife.

maybe you wouldn't allow this fiction if it were a white man instead of a black man, but because it is a black bigot in the lead (and someone with the star power of sam jackson), you buy it. and then it becomes about power -- pure power, the kind that can hide behind a badge. and the power plays that exist in the script are very classically done, very by-the-book, almost as simple and economical as a great short story.

and that final image after the ambulance speeds away gives us the past and the future: the fires are a direct symbol of those that swept los angeles after rodney king in 1992, and the fact that they are still burning shows that we continue to have a lot of work to do.

72. thelma & louise

2008-07-21T14:06:00.001-07:00

i watched this one with two women, which was the right thing to do. when louise kills harlan outside of the club, the women cheered and pumped their fists in the air. the same thing happened when louise said "go fuck yourself". and again when they put the cop in the trunk.

needless to say, this is a movie that makes women feel empowered.

i think it is more subversive than most people even give it credit for, because it is actually a modern western instead of what it is usually categorized as: a road movie. instead of horses, our heros -- our female heroes, of course -- are in an old car. instead of killing a man for money or something else due to greed (a typical western trope), they kill a man for true justice. and our heroes head west, a typically american symbol of freedom: "go west, young man."

it also features, as part of the climax, one of the most potent sexual symbols since slim pickens rode a bomb -- stuck between his legs! -- at the end of "dr. strangelove". thelma and louise, after having fully embraced themselves as females free from a patriarchal society, drive a car into the grand canyon, which here represents the vaginal. they go back into the womb to die.

73. amadeus

2008-06-16T13:29:00.000-07:00

"why would god choose an obscene child to be his instrument?" -- salieri

the movie is about a man obsessed. not mozart. he is shown to work extremely hard at his music, but he is also shown to have his vices -- chasing women around when we first see him, but also trying on wigs, holding court at parties, and drinking, always drinking.

the man obsessed is salieri, and he is obsessed almost exclusively because he has no vices as mozart does. he see salieri doing nothing except music. he lives music, breathes music, loves music. the tragedy of his character is that he is merely mediocre at it, and therefore hates that mozart is a genius and that it comes so easily to him.

titles are important! and the title here gives an insight into what the movie is really about. "amadeus" is loosely translated as "god's love", and, in salieri's opinion, mozart has indeed received god's love, while he, salieri, was foresaken. and he is jealous. salieri feels that god has given up on him, so he tries his best to get back at god by giving up on religion, burning his cross, tempting mozart's wife to commit adultery. of course, all these schemes fail, just as his final plan to steal mozart's deathbed requiem, and later, his attempt to kill himself. and in the end, mozart has (literally) the last laugh.

"forgive me, your majesty. i'm a vulgar man, but my music is not." -- mozart

the acting in the movie is remarkable. the main thing this movie does well is that it creates a realistic period piece, and uses casting to make it seem contemporary and to humanize the characters. certainly we see this in the writing (mozart's scatological word games), but tom hulce makes mozart a living, breathing man with faults and charms, money problems and social foibles, and a ridiculous laugh. in other words, he was a man in the flesh before he became a legend in the memory.

f. murray abraham also gives a remarkable performance as salieri. he makes us understand, if not empathize, with a man teeming with jealousy and envy. after all, who hasn't done something we love but been bad at it? in salieri we have yet another character who is utterly reprehensible, butwe indentify. and abraham's acting is a model in restraint. his choices in making the character largely reactive were smart -- we see him squirm at almost every interaction with mozart while he silently seethes underneath the surface. and we see him shatter at the end when mozart forgives him on his deathbed, and then shatter ever more when his scheme to steal the work is locked up shut. even in his final looney-bin absolving, he plays the character small. many actors these days should take note to not always go over-the-top.

"is it modern?" -- emperor joseph

it is also directed so well. for one thing, since the movie is from salieri's perspective and the narrative is from his memory, everything is shown in either medium or long shots. we get almost no close-ups to speak of, and are always kept at a distance. salieri wants to get close to mozart's greatness, but he's always at arms' length. we also have graceful use of flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks. always cut with great sound design and music placement, never jarring.

and most wonderfully, we see, in purely filmic terms from a juxtaposition of images and sound, how the creative process works, from inspiration to realization. watch as mozart is berated about his treatment of his wife, and how with two simple zooms and an audio mix, followed by a quick cut, we see a nagging lady's words turn into an opera singer's stagework. and in the deathbed requiem scene, we hear mozart dictate and hum the words and notes as the soundtrack plays what follows. all economical ways to show this process of making great music, a process salieri comes close to, but never quite understands.

"all men are equal in God's eyes." - father volger

as salieri responds, are they?

short cuts: iron man, forgetting sarah marshall, forty guns, all that heavens allows, young american bodies

2008-06-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

iron man

if you're going to make big hollywood blockbuster, make it like this. start with a good cast, including a star who takes character roles like robert downey jr. does. pepper it with other talent, such as paltrow, howard and bridges. give them a structure for the story, but let them improvise a lot of the dialogue, often to comic effect (paltrow after their dance: "that was weird"). make sure the storyline actually makes sense and is grounded in reality, and tie it in to current world events and concerns (weapons proliferation, terrorism). geek out with the technology and computer graphics (tony stark's lab), but don't let it overload the story. have great set pieces (flying into the clouds). and make sure everyone knows there will be a sequel (wait through the credits).

those are some of the things jon favreau did with this movie, and that is why it was so successful.

forgetting sarah marshall

how fun is it that judd apatow ushers through smart comedies starring largely unknown folks? this is a good, fun summer movie with a grounding in pain, which gives it heart. they rope us in with a twist on an old premise (dude gets dumped, becomes depressed -- but he's naked!) and then send us into sunny hawaii. normally that's a paradise and is always seen as such on film, but we get hawaii from the perspective of a man depressed -- weird locals, whacked-out surf instructors, drinking all day out of anger instead of joy.

i know certain people think the apatow formula is getting old. i don't. i will take a smart hollywood comedy with legit emotions and sketched-out characters before i'll take a lowest-common-demoninator comedy from mike myers. i also disagree with charges that its a sexist, scumbag's fantasy: pretty girls with scuzzy good-for-nothing dudes. in the case of "knocked up", she was STUCK with her man because of her pregnancy, and she old got with him because she was drunk and he was funny. in the case of this movie, our main character is a bit of lay-about, but he's also successful at his music work, and their relationship before the movie starts works because he serves to ground her. we see this in the scene directly after sarah marshall finds out her show got cancelled, and she goes into a monologue about how she "happy to move into features." he tells her: "you're not on the view, you can talk to me." the scene is great, because it shows how their relationship worked (she needed him to keep her in check from becoming too much of a hollywood asshole) and we see her, perhaps for the first time, as a real human with real concerns about her life and career. it reminds me of leslie mann's scene after she finds paul rudd playing fantasy baseball in "knocked up": "just because you're not yelling doesn't mean you aren't being mean."

not every comedy is as generous to its females.

forty guns

forty guns = forty dicks. this is a hollywood picture at its most subversive to the code. we see stanwick riding through the plains with men behind her -- they could be chasing her, but they really are stuck on her like glue.

what struck me most about the movie beyond the double entendres ("may i feel your gun?" "it might go off in your face.") is the technical mastery. fuller stages amazing tracking shots -- dollies down a table to see all forty guns, a crane from inside a building, across a town, and panning over to see horses galloping. that's why the french loved it.

all that heavens allows

another 1950's subversive one. this is a model of the auteur theory's posit that you can plant a personal tone on any picture, even a hollywood studio genre picture. this movie is scathing social commentary on the mob mentality that led to conformity in the 50's that dictated how you could live, who you could see, how you should dress, who you should love. its a thinly-veiled reference to rock hudson's homosexuality (wyman's character's name "cary scott" is a reference to two of hudson's lovers, including cary grant), mccarthyism, television's influence on society (and the film business, natch), and the fact that conformity can shape even the most strong of individuals -- after all, ron slowly transforms his rustic old mill into a virtual reproduction of cary's suburban house.

again, the production is glorious. the production design and costumes are period-perfect, the music is just right, and the color and lighting are beautiful and thematically exact right.

young american bodies

i'm a guest star in season 3 of joe swanberg's web series young american bodies, from ifc and nerve. check it out!

74. being john malkovich

2008-05-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

and so begins the real career of charlie kaufman. i remember not liking this much when it came out, although that was almost 10 years ago and now i can't remember why i felt that way. looking at it now, it is of course remarkable.

the step-up is quick and great. it hooks us in -- a puppet show! cut to see the master puppeteer alone in his studio, looking dishevelled and drinking a beer. he's broke, and his dowdy wife's work at a pet store doesn't help. he needs a job, any job. and so: the 7 1/2 floor, at which point he finds the portal and eventually becomes able to puppet a real human being.

the movie is really about the artistic process of any kind. our hero is a starving artist before he finds his muse. then, the portal to malkovich is described: "it's a god-like thing." it a literal way to describe what writers, actors and others do: they get into someone else's skin and see the world through their eyes.

because it is about the artistic process, it also hits on a theme that kaufman discusses in "adaptation": staying true to your vision. by staying in malkovich for good, cusack is using someone else's fame to advance his art. not bad to put puppetering into the mainstream, but he doesn't do it himself, so it doesn't count as a victory.

that's why he's stuck in another body at the end, still longing. he'll never be satisfied unless he does it on his own terms. so, like so many artists, he'll never be satisfied -- he's stuck forever.

75. high noon

2008-05-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

the above image is the key image of the film. as the train comes in and the tension built in the movie is at its apex, we get a big, obvious crane shot showing how completely alone our hero is. in most action or adventure films, westerns being the biggest genre in that category during the 1950's, we have a hero character who is alone in a certain fight because they are prinicpled, they have honor, they must do their duty. see subsequent examples such as john mcclaine in "die hard", john rambo in "rambo", william wallace in "braveheart". all those heroic traits are here, but this never before and never really since have we seen a hero go to everyone they know for help -- beg for help! -- and get rebuffed; never have we seen such deserting. cooper's character comes back to town initially on principle, but in the end he fights out of sheer desperation and survival. that's the difference and the deflating of the western myth -- unlike most classical hollywood films, the movie is less a celebration of the community (think "it's a wonderful life") and more about how the community fails him. that's why, when cooper and kelly get sent off at the end and ride off into the sunset in that iconic way, it is less a celebration and more an indictment.

it is well-recorded that this film is an allegory for the HUAC situation at the time. the filmmakers clearly intended to show how every single person in the country and in the hollywood community must stand up to the tactics mccarthy and others were perpetrating, that they all must stick together or else risk their survival. everyone must be a hero, or else the whole community falls apart. john wayne thought that was an utterly anti-american idea, and that's why he made "rio bravo" with howard hawks.

in strict craftsmanship terms, the movie is a marvel. it contains no dialogue for the first few minutes while giving us a sense of dread and tension, introduces us to our hero and his wife and their conflict (he must commit acts of violence, she is a quaker), and gives us a more realistic and vibrant portrait of a small western town in short order. it also manages to give us important information -- cooper's relationship with the mexican woman, cooper's fear of the killer -- in a piecemeal fashion that allows for the audience to remain stringed-along and interested. and, as aforementioned, there is the ending shootout, and then, without fanfare, the end. it reminds me of billy wilder's maxim that you "shouldn't hang around" after the 3rd act is over. this does that.

what it doesn't do is age well. there is much too much exposition in dialogue, and even those the movie was subversive and genre-bending at the time, we have since had "unforgiven" and other westerns which make this one seem creaky. the real-time chronology is still a good trick, and i can't think of a movie that has done that one better.

14. lawrence of arabia

2008-03-17T19:21:00.001-07:00

like hitchcock and scorsese movies, the exciting thing about this movie isn't the
writing, it is the directing. movies are a director's medium, and few filmmakers
understood that better than david lean. his attention to detail is everywhere, and his stamina and dedication to a subject, and the filmic interpretation of a subject, is evident in this film.

that's abstract, i know, so let's see what we mean. what we mean is that lean chose to make a film about a british war hero out in the desert. so, you have to show why the man was a hero, and how he led others into battle and made them accept him as one of their own. he also had to show the utter brutality of the desert, and how it swallows men whole (sometimes literally).

he did this in several ways. one is that he chose a relative unknown, peter o'toole, to play the lead. this was a smart choice because lawrence was a mysterious man, even to those who knew him. he was eccentric, eerily driven in battle (and choice of location to battle), and probably gay. by casting an unknown in the role, lean kept the audience off-balance about the line between the character and the actor.

lean was also exceptionally bold in his insistence on shooting in the real deserts of north africa and the middle east. in this way he was able to capture the real desert winds that exist there, and to gather the myriad extras required for such large battle scenes. this is no small matter and no small feat -- the logistics of such a production drive me crazy just imagining them.

and on top of that, there must have been sand in everything -- sand in the cameras, sand in the lens, sand in the makeup, sand in the catering. but in filming in the real deserts of those parts of the world, lean was able to capture the hallucinatory effects the oppressive heat and wind and dust and sun would have had on a british man. and made us wonder why he loved it so.

again, the strengths here are in the directing, not the writing. the writing is fine -- it is spare, with no wedged-in love story, no comic relief, no subplots for no reason. but we don't watch an epic film -- a film that runs for nearly 4 hours -- because of the writing.

8. network

2008-03-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

it is really about globalization and the continuing corruption of our culture due to corporate takeovers of everything, but it uses television as a conduit to examine that. so the nature of the title is two-fold: it is about UBS, sure, but it is also about that web that intersects and blurs the line between show-business, news, politics and business, and how those forces have turned into conglomerates to crush the individual voice. that's why "the world is a business" and "the human being is finished", and that's why big business has become God.

and when everything is part of a corporation, everything becomes a commodity to be exploited. howard's genuine anguish about his alcoholism and declining popularity becomes a studio slogan to be chanted at the start of a show; revolutionary leaders become sitcom characters; crime footage becomes popcorn entertainment.

as such, the movie is so prescient. years before jerry springer and bill o'reilly and all the myriad reality tv shows, we have howard beale screaming about how mad he is, we have a psychic on the news, and we have an assassination from the hands of so-called revolutionaries. all these things are so outrageous that the news, which has become another form of entertainment, becomes the a topic in the news, which becomes a feedback loop. and that's why howard beale is on the front page of the new york times when "hard news" is happening all over.

it does everything a good screenplay -- and a good movie -- needs to do. it captures the zeitgeist and the ever-changing mood of the audience; it makes the audience feel smart, like they are learning something; it features great quotable dialogue ("i'm mad as hell" and many more); it has a simple, classical 3-act structure (literally referenced in the film); there are power struggles and characters acting complexly due to their desires; it is predictive of the future; it is written largely as a series of monologues, so it gives actors juicy words to work with.

and it is fucking funny. who knew something this bleak and this true could make you laugh this much? it is gallows humor, but that counts too. maybe in our world, that's the most potent and significant form of humor available.

46. the treasure of sierra madre

2008-02-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

it is about greed, which is the oldest theme in the book. what can movie do to men's souls? ask daniel plainview from "there will be blood" and he'll tell you -- first he'll talk about milkshakes, but then he'll tell you. and then, with a bowling pin, he'll show you.

i mention that movie because this one was a clear inspiration for this. we get that great old hollywood economy -- a foreign setting sets up our (anti-)hero and we watch him hatch a plot to get out of his destitute ways, and then we see the inevitable downfall from his subsequent strife, paranoia, and overreaching.

this is something we've seen before and we'll see again, and probably that is The Way It Should Be. it is a good thing to be reminded that the search for more money and more money and ever more money is a fool's quest. so we've seen this, but as always, the details are what counts. in this case, the details involve walter huston's wonderful play on The Old Prospector character -- his husckster-style speech patterns, the knowingness in his eyes, that wonderful little jig he dances. he earned that oscar. and let's mention bogart, who is known more as an icon than an actual Actor, but who plays a corrupt madman so well, and with such an admirable lack of vanity.

this is a movie that is done so well that you remember moments ("we don't need no stinking badges!", bogart's soliloquy after the murder, the aforementioned jig) and the outline, but it mostly just glides right over you.

Eastern College teaser trailer

2008-02-11T17:49:00.000-08:00

Remember that feature film I wrote and directed that I mentioned before? I made a trailer for it which is now online: