achance42

Fall is my favorite time of year.  Not just because it's the time of year when New York City is at its most beautiful, thus reminding us all why we continue in this abusive relationship with it, but because the movies start to get good again after the onslaught of big-budget blockbusters that are only occasionally watchable.
 
People seem to think that, with each passing year, the movies get worse and worse.  Well, if you're looking at crap like Transformers (the new nadir of megahit blockbuster quality), then yeah.  But there's a whole crop of ambitious, interesting films that come out every fall and - even if they end up being bad - you have to give them credit for trying.  Unlike Transformers.
 
So here's my list of 15 films that I am dying to see this fall.  Some are already out (and I'm negotiating with my wife to be able to find the time to see them) and some I still wait in painful anticipation for:
 
 
15.  American Gangster - Ridley Scott might have actually done something he hasn't done in a long LONG time... make a great movie.  I'm not talking about just a good movie, okay?  I got news.  Gladiator?  Not "great."  Just "good."  Alien is "great."  The director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven?  Very good.  Not great.  And I'm not even bothering to mention Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, and Matchstick Men (could that movie have been any more obvious?).  The trailer for American Gangster caught me instantly, if for no other reason than the re-pairing of Virtuosity stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, and it looks like it could be Ridley Scott's first great movie in... 25 years?  Can it really be 25 years now since...
 
14.  Blade Runner: The Final Cut - OK, despite my rabid love for this film, it's low on my list for two reasons.  First, I've seen a different version of this film before.  Four different versions, actually, counting the TV edit.  THIS is not only A great Ridley Scott film, it's his masterpiece.  Every science fiction film or TV show in the last 25 years that has had call to borrow from Blade Runner HAS borrowed from Blade Runner.  It's visually stunning even now and as perfect an example of genre mixing (in this case, sci-fi and film noir) as anyone can ask for.  But do we really need six versions of the film, counting the TV edit?  Let's hope so because I'll call bullshit if this "final cut," which Scott shot new footage for as recently as last year (my second reason for putting it so low on the list), doesn't deliver the goods.  But I'll be first in line at the Ziegfeld.
 
[EDIT: I was first in line at the Ziegfeld last week and my GOD, it was amazing!  More on that in a later post.]
 
13. (tie)  Juno/Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - Judd Apatow, for the umpteenth time, is comedic gold.  Everything he's been responsible for in the last few years has been successful critically or financially, usually both.  This year alone, he's responsible for two of the year's funniest movies (Knocked Up and Superbad) and is writing and producing what looks to be a third.  Walk Hard, a spoof of singer biopics such as Walk the Line and Ray, looks like a rare thing in the parody genre: genuinely funny.  Honestly, any comedy with John C. Reilly in a starring role has my money.  And whether it was intended or not (likely not), Apatow's sensibilities are being tapped into in a film like Jason Reitman's Juno, which will likely be described as "Knocked Up meets Superbad."  Whether or not that is an accurate description, I don't know, but considering it's about a girl who gets pregnant by her best friend and considering that the best friend in question is Michael Cera - the Mozart of comedic timing who also stars in Superbad - this is almost certainly how the movie will be sold to you.
 
12.  Cassandra's Dream - I'm hoping that Woody Allen is going to doing a "bad/good/good" alternation with his films.  Anything Else was bad.  Melinda and Melinda and Match Point were good.  Scoop was bad.  If the pattern continues, then this crime drama starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell should be a good one.  I'm hoping so.  On one hand it's got Ewan McGregor; on the other hand, it's got Colin Farrell (but he was good in The New World).  Pretty much the entirety of Woody's output this decade has been called into question by even his most ardent fans but I have faith.  He's 71 and working as hard as he ever did; you have to admire that. 
 
11.  John Rambo - I know, I know.  But screw you for judging me.  The trailer that popped up on youtube was the single greatest thing I have EVER seen Stallone take part in, and yes, I am counting Rocky IV.  In a post-9/11 world, if you're gonna do a Rambo 4, it's got to be the most balls-out movie you've ever seen or no one's gonna care.  The people want blood and lots of it.  It looks like Stallone heard the people and is giving them what they want.  Though I'm not sure why he's still fighting the Vietcong.
 
[EDIT: It looks like this is being pushed back to January.  I wept upon hearing the news.]
 
10.  Southland Tales - Richard Kelly has become, with only one film released to date, the most hyperbolized director of the decade.  Most people either think he's a genius or think he's a hack.  I really like Donnie Darko a lot but it's too soon to tell.  With Southland Tales' less-than-enthusiastic premiere at Cannes last year, the Kelly-haters felt vindicated and wasted no time in denouncing a film that they hadn't seen and knew almost nothing about.  A year and a half later, and with a 15 minute trim, the movie is finally coming out.  The trailer is interesting but I can't help but wonder if Kelly is going to be to apocalypse-minded sci-fi what M. Night Shyamalan is to the twist ending.  I'm not trying to fool myself but still, an interesting misfire will always be better than a piece of shit that hits the mark. 
 
9.  The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Or the slow, thoughtful movie that everyone but the geekiest film geeks will hate with a passion right out of the Bible.  Previous winners of this award include Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line and The New World, as well as Steven Soderbergh's remake of Solaris (which gets none of the respect it deserves).  2 hours and 40 minutes of slow-moving Western starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck?  I am SO IN!
 
8.  The Golden Compass - Not much to say here except I can't wait for the Christian protests of this over its atheist overtones, and Eva Green... GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
 
7.  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Basquiat is one of my favorite films of the 1990s.  It captured a time and place, not so much of when the film was set as when it was made.  If you want a great example of American independent filmmaking in its golden age, Basquiat is one of the first ones I would recommend.  It made me a lifelong fan of director Julian Schnabel and I eagerly await every film he makes.  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is his latest film - only his third, after Basquiat and 2000's Before Night Falls - and it seems like Schnabel has a thing for biopics of people no one else would ever make biopics about.  This time, the subject is Jean-Dominique Bauby, a magazine editor who suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, with the exception of his left eye.  This performance might be a little bit harder of an Oscar sell than Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot (at least he could move his body some) but if anyone can make this into a compelling film without submitting to sap, Schnabel can.
 
6.  I'm Not There - The last time Todd Haynes made a movie about rock & roll, it was Velvet Goldmine.  And he turned it into a glam rock take on Citizen Kane.  I have no idea what he's going to do with Bob Dylan's life story besides casting several actors, including Richard Gere and Cate Blanchett, but whatever crazy shit it sounds like Haynes has planned, I have no doubt it will be effective.  After all, this is the guy who started his career by making a Karen Carpenter biography exclusively with Barbie dolls.
 
5.  The Darjeeling Limited - I think Wes Anderson is the Woody Allen of my generation.  Think about it.  He makes talky, quirky films; is an acquired taste; has been accused of making the same movie over and over; and no one can quite copy the formula that makes him so distinct.  Darjeeling is Wes' fifth film and unfortunately, the bulk of the reviews refer to co-star Owen Wilson's recent suicide attempt.
 
4.  No Country For Old Men - I actually liked The Ladykillers.  There.  I said it.  I liked it a lot actually.  It's not one of the Coen Brothers' best movies but if you're going to make a bad movie in comparison to the rest of your work, then that's the way to do it.  This new one was considered a dark horse for the Palme D'Or this year (it didn't win though) and is already one of the best reviewed films of the year.  If the Coens have truly returned to form with No Country, it's going to be one of the best films of the decade.
 
3.  Lust, Caution - If you really think that Brokeback Mountain won all those awards because of political correctness and a push from the "gay mafia," then I don't want to know you.  Seriously.  If your homophobia keeps you from being affected by that movie, then you're just beyond help, plain and simple.  Ang Lee, just like his Taiwanese brethren Hou Hsiao-hsien and the late great Edward Yang, is a master of putting real human emotion on film without exploiting his characters or manipulating his audience, unlike a certain unworthy film about racism that stole the Oscar from Brokeback.
 
2. There Will Be Blood - It's been five years since Punch-Drunk Love.  Five years.  Paul Thomas Anderson may be setting himself up to be the new Kubrick and, as long as the product justifies the wait, I'm okay with that.  In the two-and-a-half minute trailer that has been posted on the internet, it's obvious that everything we knew about PTA is out the window, with the exception of quality filmmaking.  It just screened a couple of days ago and already it's being hailed as a masterpiece.  So I can't read anything more about it until its release for fear of it being overhyped for me.
 
1.  Youth Without Youth - So how can a movie I've waited five years for be topped?  By a movie I've waited TEN years for.  Francis Ford Coppola is back!  Sadly, it's not with Megalopolis, his ambitious project that A) would likely have been deemed a colossal failure had he actually made it; B) would, in actuality, have been the most important science fiction film since Blade Runner; C) that is, if it didn't kill him first, so; D) he decided to shelve it in favor of his winery. 
 
But now, ten years after The Rainmaker (which was much better than people realize), he's returned to the business of directing.  From the sound of it, he has made the sort of personal project that he hasn't had an opportunity to do in over 20 years.  Word is it's not an easy film to watch but I remain firmly committed to the idea that, when someone like Coppola makes a film that is "difficult," it's up to the audience to find the film, not the film to find the audience.  And it's Coppola's first foray into HD (well, the last time he made a movie, George Lucas was still shooting on film, so...) and it will be interesting to see how that visually affects his work. 

I really can't find the right words to describe how I felt after seeing Gus Van Sant's Elephant.  "Violated" isn't quite right, nor is "manipulated," which I think has a negative connotation.  It's a disturbing film, which has left many of its viewers feeling violated and/or manipulated but those adjectives are much too superficial to explain how it made me feel.  Without a doubt, this anatomy of a school shooting, loosely based on the Columbine tragedy, is one of the most bold and brilliant American films made this decade.  But I can't say that I liked it.  I think it's well-made and I recommend it highly.  It's just wrong to say that you like a film like this.

The title of the film itself is as much a topic of discussion as its content.  The official answer is that Elephant was the title of a short about killings in Ireland and Van Sant named his film after that. That original short took its name from the adage, "the elephant in the room," something so big and horrible that everyone's too polite to talk about it.  And finally, my favorite, there is the Buddhist story about old blind men who were trying to learn about elephants from only touching its tusk.  Which is to say that one can learn about the reason behind school shootings simply by examining some aspects of one.  With a title like that, the film has a lot to live up to; frighteningly, it does.
 
Elephant runs on a fractured timeline but it's less of a gimmick than a necessity to show events that happen simultaneously.  We are introduced to many characters as they make their way to school in the morning.  To name them all now would be unnecessary, as their individual characters are not important.  Their personalities don't really stand out, nor are they supposed to; they're just regular American kids.  One boy has a father who is either an alcoholic or mentally ill (the ambiguity of which contributes to the surreal poetic tone of the film); another is a photographer looking to improve his portfolio; another is having problems with his girlfriend; a girl in gym class is uncomfortable with showing her legs and is hounded by the gym teacher to wear shorts.  These are kids we all knew or were in high school.

And then there's Eric and Alex, two friends who decide to take revenge on the kids who harass them in school by shooting them.  The single most disturbing thing about this film is the lucidity with which they put their plan into action.  There is a scene late in the film where we see Eric and Alex going over a map of the school, detailing where they will do what.  "Most importantly, have fun," Alex says to Eric before they drive to the school.
The shooting only takes up the last 20 minutes of the film.  The hour before it is comprised mainly of students walking from place to place in the school, very long takes following them as they go about their daily lives.  This refusal to look away from even the most mundane activities (we watch as one boy develops a roll of film he shot, which if you've ever developed film yourself, you know it's not interesting in the least) punctuates the fact that we're watching the final moments in these kids' lives.  If anything bad can be said about Elephant, it is that it assumes you know what the film is about ahead of time; otherwise, most viewers would ask themselves, "What the hell am I watching these kids walk around a school all day for?"

*SPOILER ALERT - YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP PAST THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS*

Van Sant is guilty of a little manipulation but only slightly and for good reason.  Late in the film, the character of Benny, one of the presumably few black kids in the school, is introduced.  Benny is tall, strong, with cornrows and a slow, confident gait.  In short, you think this big black man is about to kick some scrawny white-boy ass.  Wrong.  Benny dies trying to get the drop on Eric, who has the principal in his crosshairs.

Van Sant has two statements to make here, one about his art and one about his subject.  Benny is meant to conjure up images of the black hero, particularly of films like George Romero's Dead series (the shootings have already begun when we meet Benny, so Elephant has essentially become a horror film at this point).  Benny silently helps Acadia, a girl we meet briefly in the beginning, out the window before continuing his trip through the school, presumably to find the killers.  The audience is meant to think that Benny is going to stop this reign of terror but once Eric guns him down without so much as a second thought, it becomes clear that the point of having Benny in the movie at all was to set the audience up for that letdown.  Because in reality, the likelihood of an easy end to a situation like that is very low.  Like I said, it's manipulative, but Van Sant has enough of a reputation that he deserves a second thought for anything that doesn't sit right initially.

*END SPOILERS*

I was so shaken by this film (and you will NEVER hear Fur Elise or Moonlight Sonata without the hairs standing up on the back of your neck after seeing this film) that I had to run right to IMDb and check out how other people felt about it.  For the 7.2/10 user rating that it has, there sure are a lot of people that hated the film, or said that they did.  And I can understand it completely.  A film that leaves you so emotionally bruised is hard to enjoy, impossible even.  But whether or not it strikes a chord with you, you will not forget this film.

But this is the point of Elephant.  Violence is not something that should be easily dismissable.  Incidents like this don't resolve themselves easily and cleanly, as anyone who was present at Columbine High School in 1999 or Santana High School in 2001 (or even so much as watched CNN coverage of these) can attest to.  As a matter of fact, by ending the film where he does - unresolved on screen but with a grim certainty of the trajectory of future events - Van Sant lets us off the hook; it's such an abrupt ending that the only explanation for it is mercy.  

There is a moment very late into Ratatouille - almost towards the end, in fact - when it becomes irrevocably clear that Pixar is light years beyond any other animation house on the planet, respectfully with the possible exception of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.  This moment comes courtesy of Peter O'Toole, who delivers a monologue posing as a food critic's latest review.  During the entire two minutes that O'Toole is speaking, we only see his computer generated character pacing back and forth in his study, nothing more captivating than that.  There is no other action whatsoever in what is actually, without putting too fine a point on it, the final showdown.  And yet, it is as engrossing as any action sequence in any previous Pixar film.  I can say without hyperbole that the review itself is one of the finest pieces of writing in American film since Network.  The last 10 minutes of this film are worth the price of admission, so it's pure cream that the prior 100 minutes are only very slightly less brilliant. 

 

To put it succinctly, if Billy Wilder had ever ventured into animation, he might have written something very much like Ratatouille.  Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) is a rat with a highly developed sense of smell and taste and yearns to be a cook.  After being separated from his family, he finds himself in Paris and lives out his dream by turning a young (and human) plongeur into a world class chef.  Hilarity ensues.  Not since Big Night has there been a film that makes you so in love with food (make sure you see it after dinner) and not since Amelie has there been one that makes you so in love with Paris.  The moment in the film I keep going back to is such a small one, the first reveal that Remy is in Paris.  Remy looks out over the Paris skyline at sunset and the lights towards the horizon don’t twinkle but swirl dreamily.  I was done for after that. 

 

The voice casting for a Pixar film is an award-worthy achievement unto itself.  Brad Bird, however, has the strongest gift of the whole Pixar team.  Whereas any other studio working on The Incredibles would have cast the likes of Scarlett Johansson or Zooey Deschanel as the angst-ridden teen daughter of retired superheroes, Bird picks NPR goddess Sarah Vowell instead.  And in Ratatouille, he pulls off the casting coup of the decade with an unrecognizable Janeane Garofalo as Collette, the only female chef in the restaurant.  Most people are so used to Garofalo's New Jersey hipster drawl that only someone with true recognition of talent would even think to cast her so far against type.  And my God, it works! 

 

Ian Holm, as the main villain Chef Skinner, is perfection as well; his French accent touches a special place in my heart since I first saw him as Napoleon in Time Bandits, my favorite film as a child.  And the aforementioned Peter O'Toole, as Paris' most feared foodie, deserves a supporting Oscar for his work here.  Not a nomination.  A full-on award.  In fact, his work here instantly gave me a deeper appreciation for his entire body of work.  He may look like he's at death's door but his vocal performance proves that he is as full of life as he ever was. 

 

But let's talk about the real star of this film: writer/director Brad Bird.  There was a great deal of concern about two years ago, when it was reported that Bird was hired to solve the story problems that the original Ratatouille team was having.  The fact that Cars was less than stellar made everyone more nervous; was Pixar beginning to spiral downwards just as Disney did in the mid-90s starting with Pocahontas?  Definitely not.  The director of The Incredibles wasn't about to let that happen.  He was hired to make Ratatouille work and that's exactly what he did.  Between his two Pixar films and his debut, The Iron Giant, he may have moved his way into the upper echelon of American auteurs.  He has a lock on what makes a great animated film and knows how to put those goofy little moments that make kids laugh into his films without dumbing the whole thing down.  If anything, Bird raises the collective IQ for kids' films.  There's not much in the way of silly pratfalls or fart jokes that the youth of today have been conditioned to expect in their animated features; instead, there are lessons on the duties of the personnel in a French kitchen, as well as the bold (but not always untrue) suggestion that even our families and friends may put obstructions in our paths to success.   This is pretty heavy stuff for a children’s movie and thankfully, Bird refuses to make something more comfortable and easy for the sake of selling tickets.  Bottom line: if your kid loves this movie, pat yourself on the back.

 

You can put eight people in a room and have eight different and valid opinions about which Pixar film is the best (well, actually I can't seen anyone justifying a vote for Cars).  Time may or may not change things for me but I am inclined to vote for this one.  If Beauty and the Beast, the pride of Disney's second golden age of 20 years ago, can get a Best Picture Oscar nomination, Ratatouille is undoubtedly deserving of one as well.  We all know that every film with an admission charge is a product of some sort - animation being the most blatantly so, what with all the merchandising that comes along with it - but Bird does his absolute best to make his products with the finest quality materials and you see and feel the results of that labor on the screen. 

 

I don't want to end on such a cornball note but here I go: you must try the Ratatouille... it's to die for.