How Do I Blog?

Pretty terrible year for movies all in all, if it hadn’t been for the (late) arrival of around 5 movies it would have been a complete write-off.

The Top Ten (in quasi-order but not concrete)

The Social Network
I’m still decompressing this movie and feel that I need another run through it to pick up on everything but even without a second viewing it’s unequivocally the best movie this year. The way the themes come through in the stellar performances, the razor sharp wit of the screenplay, the lightness of touch in direction and cinematography is really an example of how to make a compelling film.

Inception
The most pervasive movie of the year (and in some cases, divisive). A thrilling ride, not as deep or meaningful as it could have been (or people were expecting it to be), but still a cinematic pleasure.

Exit Through The Gift Shop
A clever and funny as hell combination of straight-faced doco on the merit or otherwise of the street art scene and delicious prank from the master of satirical understatement.

Toy Story 3
A surprisingly bleak view on life after love for the children’s toys we know from two previous adventures.

The Town
BEN AFFLECK. Doesn’t have the same ring to it as MATT DAMON… This one was a genuine surprise, wanton rip-off of Heat it may be, it’s so well crafted that it rose quickly to the top of my list. It’s not going to leave anything particularly lasting but it’s well worth your time.

Winnebago Man (technically an ‘09 release but wasn’t available til ‘10)
A documentary for the internet age, exploring the man behind one of the most hilarious internet viral videos of all time - a funny and often touching portrait of a man with a lot on his mind and very colourful ways of expressing it.

Four Lions
Suicide bombing has never been so funny, but the movie doesn’t stop there, nor does it pull its punches toward the end as you’re led into the consequences of their stupidity.

Ghost Writer
I’ve said a fair bit about this movie already, it’s got one or two holes but as a tightly wound mystery thriller you won’t find many better released in the past few years.

Winter’s Bone
Haunting backdrops of cold forests set the scene for this noir-esque tale of a daughter looking for her meth-cooking father, dead or alive, and venturing into the inbred underbelly of crime. Excellent lead performance and beautiful cinematography make this an easy recommendation though it can be a bit grim.

Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
Sparky and endlessly visually inventive, the third feature from Edgar Wright taps into unfamiliar material and as such there’s a distance to some of the wild over-the-top action (no stakes means no emotional involvement means no meaningful payoff for the audience), but a very enjoyable romp.

Still to come (and may possibly rock my world and the top ten): True Grit, Black Swan, 127 Hours, The Kids Are Alright, Animal Kingdom, Waiting For Superman

From Very Watchable to Unwatchable:

I Love You Philip Morris - Jim Carrey comes out of the closet again to remind us he can act, very funny and interesting little movie about a true life con man.

Hot Tub Time Machine - The only quotable comedy of the year, I think. Great white buffalo indeed.

How to Train Your Dragon - Fantastic kids fare, but nothing more than that.

Iron Man 2 - Pandering to a teenage audience is fine but at least try to have a point to your film not a half baked improv rehash of the first movie with a whole ton of shit that nobody but hardcore comic nerds give a fuck about.

Kick Ass - It can’t decide if it’s a parody of everything that comes before it or just a hyper violent rehash, but it was still largely watchable despite being tonally shit.

Easy A - Comedy about the girl who “gives it away” but not really, is sort of funny but mostly trite and un-involving.

The Other Guys - Will Ferrell trying to carry an entire comedy but proving his back isn’t up to the challenge, still a few solid chuckles throughout.

Shutter Island - (In the opening five minutes) Okay, so he’s obviously crazy… what the fuck, that’s the twist? Oh… it’s not… it’s about how “crazy” being crazy is. ok. … *tumbleweed*

Edge of Darkness - Not even putting Mel in a role that feels written for him can save this rote by-the-numbers conspiracy thriller.

Alice in Wonderland - Burton college art project let loose on the big screen without any consideration for how it actually functions as a movie.

The A Team - In 2010 a TV show got considered for a movie despite the fact it had been off the air for more than twenty years, no one can explain why the movie execs thought this would work, but if you have an average movie script and Liam Neeson needs a paycheque… maybe you can make The A Team.

The Losers - People who watch this movie.

Predators - When fanboys write scripts… they threw everything at this sequel and it still barely had a pulse.

Get Him To The Greek - What feels like a 10hr long comedy (slash drama wtf) about a wild frontman confronting his demons with a fat guy after spending 9 hrs doing drugs and talking shit.

The Book of Eli - Denzel kills dudes in a movie as boring as it sounds.

Greenberg - Dramedy where Stiller doesn’t play a character with a name that sounds like a swearword… but is actually an unlikeable asshole. Good central performance but boring movie.

Red - Masterclass of veteran character actors showing you how NOT to make an engaging action-comedy.

Frozen - Three friends get stuck on a ski-lift and two of them die slowly… wish they had all died quickly.

Wall St 2: Money Never Sleeps - But you will, a sleeping pill in movie form.

Others that I’m still due to see (but aren’t likely to rock my top list): Centurion, Valhalla Rising, Going The Distance, Carlos, I’m Still Here, Catfish

2001: A Space Odyssey.

Very late to the party, clearly.

I’ve seen this movie probably twice before in snippets caught haphazardly over the years but permanently hamstrung by my staying power to get through the sheer length of it. For a 2 hour 20 minute movie, it feels a whole lot longer - minutes worth of black screen where strings and voices swirl threateningly are great for atmosphere in short doses but here end up bordering on torture treatment not unlike a less interesting version of A Clockwork Orange.

Ponderous doesn’t begin to capture it really, does it? Glacial comes close but is probably still too expedient sounding a term. That said, I do feel conflicted criticising the movie on the basis of its pacing. While it may deliberately take its time in drawing the scene and giving a sense of scale to the events, narratively the movie positively blisters through millions of years worth of story.

Kubrick gives a sense of gravitas to almost every scene, which is appropriate in spades where it aligns with the thematic content but is utterly bewildering and frankly, fucking boring when it doesn’t. The level of care in the detail and science of how deep space exploration works was revolutionary for its time, I imagine. I don’t think any movie has come quite this close to depicting the true banality of space travel as well as this, yet not made the entire thing a waste of the audience’s time by boring the living fuck out of them - though it did come perilously close to losing me more than once.

In terms of brave storytelling the dawn of man sequence seguing into modern man’s next awakening or stage of evolution is still powerful today, even if the message gets somewhat muted in the delivery by a whole series of fairly pointless scenes on the circling doughnut space station. I get that Kubrick likes to portray almost all facets of human interaction as meaningless bureaucratic twaddle while the interactions of machines and the emptiness of space are filled with a childlike wonder and sense of true beauty, but what that does is distance the audience from any human core in the storytelling and makes the experience cold yet enjoyable, like an academic pursuit.

The ending is ultimately a source of concern for me though, and I can’t help thinking it fails to satisfy what comes before it. In building a picture of man’s evolution through alien and machine interaction in such bold, broad strokes that then gives way to a bad acid trip and playing with the perspective of time in a disco floor hotel room through the lens of one man (who we never really know and hence can’t care terribly about) feels like the grandness of the tale lost its way in the conclusion.

Also, Kubrick’s unwillingness to spell anything out causes needless confusion… is the monolith over Saturn the same one that was on the Moon or a different one? Did he “enter” the monolith or did the alignment of the planets (a sequence repeated twice before) trigger the “beyond the infinite”? Is there something in the planetary alignment that speaks about a higher force yet again? Is mankind bound to evolve into Star Children or is it the new “monolith” for the next evolutionary step? I don’t know, and no one does clearly as evidenced by the number of theories that abound on the internet.

Ultimately it was an interesting but unmoving experience. I doubt I’ll ever revisit it and while I can appreciate the level of technical craftmanship involved in the project, it doesn’t feel complete to me.

RED: More like dead… on arrival; inert action-comedy is let down by script, tone and direction despite a cavalcade of veteran character actors.

The Town: In essence it’s diet Heat; a smart, tense and surprisingly funny action thriller, which through Affleck’s combined effort in directing, starring and writing almost makes up for the atrocities he committed in Pearl Harbor.

The Ghost Writer: Polanski nails this one like a drugged up fifteen year old model, an example of character actors firing on all cylinders under expert direction to produce a genre pic that does all that it should.