The Top 25 Films of 2013

Perhaps I've been wrong. Optimists tell you that viewing history as a series of ascents followed inexorably by irreversible decline is the wrong way to look at things. The optimists prefer the pendulum. They prefer thinking of history as something that swings one way only to reverse itself. In perpetuity. I have never been an optimist, but this year supports the pendulum idea.

After many years of drought, rain is falling. As I survey my favorite films of the year, I am struck by how many of them just 6 or 8 years ago would've usurped the top spot from whatever worthy film I cited. Is it the boom in quality TV? Has it shamed movie makers into getting their shit together to make films not justified solely by their profit margins? Maybe. Whatever the case, I am happy to report that 2013 was nearly a banner year for movies. 

As ever, I am doubtful this portends much for 2014, a year already overshadowed by the planned Tet Offensive Hollywood is gearing up for in 2015 (when almost every major movie franchise you've ever heard of is planning to release a deluxe episode). Then again, maybe resourceful producers and directors will make use of this moment when the bosses on high are focused on next year's blockbuster to get something good through the abattoir. 

No recap of the year is complete without citing Steven Spielberg & George Lucas' dire predictions about the future of the American film industry. Lucas imagined film becoming more like Broadway, pricing itself out of existence for many Americans with premiums and the lure of spectacle. Spielberg felt more on the mark for me when he imagined a studio being brought down by one or two unwieldy flops. 

It is impossible to say yet how much Spielberg & Lucas, the two men who have changed the American film industry more than any others and infected it with its unquenchable thirst for blockbusters, have changed the way the gatekeepers think with this gotterdammerung they see coming. Maybe it changed nothing. But as we enter 2014 and head to 2015 (a year that seems poised to deliver some hapless studio the deathblow Spielberg prophesied) I can't help but think those words echo. 

But rather than talk about the year to come, let's focus on the year that was. Third years are when decades really start walking on their own two feet having sloughed off the previous decade. Third years are the foundation. They set up the fourth year which typically is the first year the decade stands on its own. And what we saw this year was overwhelmingly preoccupied with a specific free-floating anxiety: institutions have failed us, and we are on our own. 

1. 12 Years A Slave - USA/UK - Steve McQueen

2. The Act of Killing - Denmark - Joshua Oppenheimer

3. The Wolf of Wall Street - USA - Martin Scorsese

4. Frances Ha - USA - Noah Baumbach

5. Top of the Lake - Australia - Jane Campion & Garth Davis

6. La Grande Bellezza - Italy - Paolo Sorrentino

7. Fruitvale Station - USA - Ryan Coogler

8. 56 Up - UK - Michael Apted & Paul Almond 

9. Enough Said - USA - Nicole Holofcener

10. Blue is the Warmest Color - France - Abdellatif Kechiche

11. War Witch - Canada - Kim Nguyen

12. The Attack - Lebanon/France - Ziad Doueiri

13. Before Midnight - USA - Richard Linklater

14. Inside Llewyn Davis - USA - Joel & Ethan Coen

15. American Hustle - USA - David O. Russell

16. Stories We Tell - Canada - Sarah Polley

17. Mother of George - USA - Andrew Dosunmu

18. The Punk Singer - USA - Sini Anderson

19. Spring Breakers - USA - Harmony Korine

20. Cutie & the Boxer - USA - Zachary Heinzerling

21. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet - France - Alain Resnais

22. A Band Called Death - USA - Mark Christopher Covino & Jeff Howlett

23. Like Someone in Love - France/Japan - Abbas Kiarostami

24. Room 237 - USA - Rodney Ascher

25. Blackfish - USA - Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Honorable Mentions: I'm So Excited, The Angels' Share, Apres Mai, No, Blue Jasmine, Dirty Wars, Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, Behind the Candelabra, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Mud

The Howard Hawks Directing Award: Guillermo Del Toro

No one is throwing awards at Pacific Rim, but its particular brand of heart-on-its-sleeve movie love stood out in an otherwise dreary summer season. Not everyone responded to this film, but no one can criticize the way Del Toro staged the outsized kaiju fisticuffs. Action directing is in many ways the ultimate test of a film director. And Del Toro rises to the occasion. 

The Nestor Almendros Color Cinematography Award: Bradford Young

This young cinematographer snatches the spotlight from the actors and the director of Mother of George, and delivered the most accomplished cinematography I saw this year. I didn't see Ain't Them Bodies Saints but the trailer makes it clear he's the MVP on that team also. 

The Alain Robbe-Grillet Screenwriting Award: Shane Carruth

I did not love Upstream Color but I admired it. It's a vast improvement over the incoherence of Primer, and you have to applaud Carruth for doing what people claim they want: he's committed to telling unconventional stories in an unconventional way.

The Chris Marker Documentary Award: Leviathan directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel

This film achieves something truly unique without the usual documentary conventions of voiceover, interview or graphics. There are moments of beauty achieved through cinematography, sound design and editing. And you will never look at seafood quite the same way again. 

Great Moments

The ending of The Act of Killing.

The final shot of The Wolf of Wall Street.

The musical number from I'm So Excited.

The crime spree set to a Britney Spears ballad in Spring Breakers.

Solomon Northrup on his tiptoes in the mud.

Greta Gerwig running down the street to "Modern Love" in Frances Ha.

The combover in American Hustle.

The interminable party in which middle-aged European women on holiday thoroughly objectify a young Kenyan man in Paradise: Love.

Great Performances (in no particular order) 

Men

1. Matthew McConaughey (The Wolf of Wall Street)

2. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)

3. Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave)

4. Michael Fassbender (12 Years A Slave)

5. Andrew Dice Clay (Blue Jasmine)

6. Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station)

7. James Franco (Spring Breakers)

8. Christian Bale (American Hustle)

9. James Gandolfini (Enough Said)

10. Michael Douglas (Behind the Candelabra)

11. Rob Lowe (Behind the Candelabra)

Women

1. Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years A Slave)

2. Julia Louis Dreyfus (Enough Said)

3. Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)

4. Scarlett Johansson (Her)

5. Elisabeth Moss (Top of the Lake)

6. Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)

7. Amy Adams (American Hustle)

8. Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)

9. Sarah Paulson (12 Years A Slave)

10. Adele Exarchopoulos (Blue is the Warmest Color)

11. Lea Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Color)

Acting Purple Heart (for performances that are better than the films they're featured in):

Lindsay Lohan (The Canyons) 

Best Trailer: Spring Breakers with Only God Forgives a close second

Disappointments: The Canyons, Computer Chess, Only God Forgives, Elysium, Mad Men Season 6, Thor: The Dark World, To The Wonder

The Big Damn Genius Award: Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix

The company had a banner year with two original series that grabbed viewers forcefully, original stand up comedy specials and soon, documentaries. Netflix isn't just providing good content, it's changing the way we consume it. They're coming for you, HBO. 

Runner up: Vince Gilligan

Few pop culture phenomena were as huge and satisfying as the final episodes of Breaking Bad. Gilligan and his team set a new standard in serialized storytelling. 

Steel Drum Award: J.J. Abrams for his crass make-over of Star Trek which injected a dudebro 1980s ethos that reduced Kirk to a smug fratboy, belittled Spock until he started throwing punches and fairly betrayed Roddenberry's vision.

Runners Up: Ben Affleck- his bland mediocrity besmirched the DGA award.

Quentin Tarantino- 12 Years A Slave should make Tarantino issue a tearful apology for his childish crowd pleaser of 2012. He clearly has no idea what true horror is. 

The Top 25 Films of 2012

It startled my wife when I uttered the words "this really has been a pretty good year for films". But the truth is something unexpected happened in 2012. Could it be that cinema decided to push back against television's stranglehold on quality adult content? Could it be folks in the industry wanted to feel what it was like to be proud of their product? Who knows. Whatever the reason, 2012 ended up ironically signaling rebirth and not apocalypse.

It's hard for me not to see things like the firing of longtime Fox honcho Tom Rothman (famous for his "screw-awards-we-want-hits" approach) as the sign of some kind of sea change. Maybe a few people have finally begun to accept that movies have to be more than product if they are to take hold of the public's imagination. For once, the end of a year has me optimistic.

1. Holy Motors - France - Leos Carax
2. Amour - Austria/France/Germany - Michael Haneke
3. Moonrise Kingdom - USA - Wes Anderson
4. Looper - USA/China - Rian Johnson
5. Magic Mike - USA - Steven Soderbergh
6. Bernie - USA - Richard Linklater
7. Cosmopolis - Canada - David Cronenberg
8. Damsels In Distress - USA - Whit Stillman
9. Wuthering Heights - UK - Andrea Arnold
10. The Invisible War - USA - Kirby Dick
11. The Central Park Five - USA - Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon
12. Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present - USA - Matthew Akers, Jeff Dupre
13. Jiro Dreams of Sushi - USA - David Gelb
14. Skyfall - USA/UK - Sam Mendes
15. Killer Joe - USA - William Friedkin
16. The Grey - USA - Joe Carnahan
17. Once Upon A Time in Anatolia - Turkey - Nuri Bilge Ceylan
18. Oslo, August 31st - Norway - Joachim Trier
19. Killing Them Softly - USA - Andrew Dominik
20. Middle of Nowhere - USA - Ava DuVernay
21. The Deep Blue Sea - UK - Terence Davies
22. Zero Dark Thirty - USA - Kathryn Bigelow
23. Post Tenebras Lux - Mexico - Carlos Reygadas
24. 2 Days in New York - USA - Julie Delpy
25. Take This Waltz - Canada - Sarah Polley

The High Watermark Special Award of Merit: The Avengers - USA - Joss Whedon
This film represents the beginning of a new epoch in the comic book film. This is the first film to equal the large scope that is a hallmark of the comic book medium and the characters weren't lost in the shuffle. I'm not sure the comic book film can top this, and attempting to do so may be its downfall.

Comeback of the Year: the Academy ratio
As 16x9 frames come to dominate our lives via tablets, HD TVs and smartphones, an intrepid band of filmmakers (including Andrea Arnold, Kelly Reichardt, Carlos Reygadas) have reclaimed the discarded squarish frame to tell their stories in such a way that the 1.37:1 aspect ratio has almost become synonymous with quality filmmaking.

Revival of the Year: Wake in Fright - 1971 - Australia - Ted Kotcheff
I haven't quite shaken this film since I saw it. Essentially it's a male answer to the "gyno-psycho-horror" sub-genre (e.g, Repulsion, Persona, 3 Women, Images). I'll never quite look at Australia the same way. Bravo to Cinefamily for extending the film's Los Angeles run.

The David O. Selznick Producing Award: Megan Ellison
Only time will tell if this daughter of privilege's gambit (1. find good filmmakers, 2. give them money, 3. let them make the movie they want their way) will break or expand her fortune. But I'm not her accountant so I don't care. In one year she's bankrolled some of 2012's most interesting and lauded films.

The Howard Hawks Directing Award: Steven Soderbergh
As he winds down his farewell tour to filmmaking, Soderbergh offered up two films that no one will nominate him for. And yet, the fight scenes in Haywire and the dance scenes in Magic Mike really sum up the kinds of challenges that separate good directors from bad. This kind of unsung craftsmanship and versatility strikes me as uniquely Hawksian, and in a way, classically American.

The Nestor Almendros Color Cinematography Award: Roger Deakins, B.S.C., A.S.C.
Skyfall was the best looking major release in recent memory. And because awards are often an opportunity for the mediocre to take revenge on their betters, Deakins has yet to win a statue from the Academy. This is shameful.

The Gianni Di Venanzo Black & White Cinematography Award: Fred Keleman
The Turin Horse (directed by Bela Tarr, he claims it is his final film) is ravishing. Not in the Bertolucci-Storaro school of beautiful cinematography by any means, Keleman's gorgeous camerawork lend a stark beauty to desolate space that is breathtaking. Since Tarr has denied us a narrative in any conventional sense, Keleman's imagery is truly the star of the film.

The Alan Robbe-Grillet Screenwriting Award: David Cronenberg
The WGA would sooner renounce three act structure than give Cosmopolis (based on the novel by Don DeLillo), a heady film of ideas, a nod. So I will. We tend to think of him as either an auteur or a director, but Cronenberg has always been one of the best screenwriters on the planet in my view. His wit and sense of language is literary in the best sense of the word, he eschews cliche and gets that screenwriting is a visual endeavor as much as any other discipline in the moviemaking process.

Best Performances (in no particular order)
Men:
1. Matthew McConaughey (Magic Mike, Killer Joe, Bernie)
2. Jack Black (Bernie)
3. Robert DeNiro (Silver Linings Playbook)
4. Denzel Washington (Flight)
5. Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
6. Omari Hardwick (Middle of Nowhere)
7. Samuel L. Jackson (Django Unchained)
8. Javier Bardem (Skyfall)
9. Denis Lavant (Holy Motors)
10. Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln)

Women
1. Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)
2. Shirley MacLaine (Bernie)
3. Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
4. Emayatzy Corinealdi (Middle of Nowhere)
5. Lorraine Toussaint (Middle of Nowhere)
6. Sally Field (Lincoln)
7. Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)
8. Michelle Williams (Take This Waltz)
9. Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea)
10. Amy Adams (The Master)

Acting Purple Hearts (for great performances that outstrip the films they're in):
Clarke Peters (Red Hook Summer)
Carmen Ejogo (Sparkle)

Snubs (i.e, I saw them, I just didn't like them):
The Dark Knight Rises, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Master, Django Unchained, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Ten Women Filmmakers You Need To Know Better

The following was tweeted on 3/31/2012, between 6:45 & 7:15 PDT.

As Women's History Month draws to a close, I thought I'd tweet a list of 10 female filmmakers you should know about.

This list will not include the great filmmakers you probably already know of.

Not on this list but superb directors: Agnes Varda, Jane Campion, Kathryn Bigelow, Chantal Akerman.

Not on this list but directors I have mixed feelings about (tho ultimately admire): Sally Potter, Julie Taymor, Catherine Breillat.

Not on this list because I can't abide them: Miranda July, Sofia Coppola, Lena Dunham. If I were Macbeth, they'd be the 3 Weird Sisters.

10. Dee Rees: Pariah wasn't perfect but a promising debut and an interesting new voice.

9. Maryam Keshavarz: Like Pariah, Circumstance makes some rookie mistakes but I'm very excited to see what she does next.

8. Kelly Reichardt: an old hand in the indie world, she carries the neglected torch for low key American Indies proudly.

7. Sarah Polley: Away From Her was an impressive debut. Looking forward to her follow up.

6. Ava DuVernay: a veritable one woman movement. Her arrival gives one hope Black Cinema will soon mean something again.

5. Tanya Hamilton: I pray to the God of Cinema that she gets to follow up Night Catches Us very soon.

4. Andrea Arnold: Red Road took days to shake, and Fish Tank is one of the best films in recent years.

3. Nicole Holofcener: Every inch the auteur and an excellent TV director as well. Very rare.

2. Lynne Ramsay: I would never have forgiven Peter Jackson if his hijacking of The Lovely Bones had driven her to retire.

1. Claire Denis: Arguably the best woman in film today. That French Cinema is finally dealing w/ non-whites is hugely her doing.

The Top 25 Films of 2011

It was a year in which real life (Gabby Giffords, Egypt, bin Laden, Qadhafi, Occupy Wall Street) threatened to make the cinema look boring. The medium continues to change radically. We now see the end of 35mm film as we know it on the horizon. The box office foundered but sequels ruled the day. Conventional exhibition continues to contract as new modes of consuming media continue to expand.

1. Mildred Pierce – USA – Todd Haynes
2. We Need To Talk About Kevin – USA/UK – Lynne Ramsay
3. The Tree of Life – USA – Terrence Malick
4. This Is Not A Film – Iran – Jafar Panahi (and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
5. A Separation – Iran – Asghar Farhadi
6. Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest – USA – Michael Rapaport
7. House of Tolerance – France – Bertrand Bonello
8. Drive – USA – Nicolas Winding Refn
9. Certified Copy – France – Abbas Kiarostami
10. Midnight in Paris – USA/Spain – Woody Allen
11. George Harrison: Living in the Material World – USA – Martin Scorsese
12. Hugo – USA – Martin Scorsese
13. Kinyarwanda – USA/Rwanda – Alrick Brown
14. Cave of Forgotten Dreams – USA/UK/Germany/France/Canada – Werner Herzog
15. Rise of the Planet of the Apes – USA – Rupert Wyatt
16. A Dangerous Method – Canada/UK/Germany – David Cronenberg
17. Young Adult – USA – Jason Reitman
18. Shame – UK – Steve McQueen
19. Meek’s Cutoff – USA – Kelly Reichardt
20. Melancholia – Denmark – Lars Von Trier
21. City of Life and Death – China – Lu Chuan
22. Crazy Stupid Love – USA – Glen Ficarra & John Requa
23. Circumstance – France/USA/Iran – Maryam Keshavarz
24. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – Thailand – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
25. Cinema Verite – USA – Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini

Special Award: this year’s Enter The Void award goes to Sucker Punch. I am convinced that whether he knew it or not, Zack Snyder dissected the id of Fanboy Culture and forced the audience to ponder why such tropes as cute girls with katanas and video game narratives are catnip to much of the ComicCon set. The film paid a price for being more than fan service.

Performances (a few performances that have stayed with me): Kim Wayans & the cast of Pariah, Albert Brooks in Drive, Ryan Gosling in Crazy Stupid Love, Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Reza Safai in Circumstance, the entire cast of A Separation, Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids, Patton Oswalt in Young Adult

Great Comebacks of 2011:
1. 3D- just as everyone had turned their back on the format as a gimmick or an excuse to gouge the customer, several filmmakers (minor figures like Spielberg, Scorsese, Herzog, Wenders) took up the format and proved that (like sound, color, or widescreen) 3D is a tool in the filmmakers kit that can be used very effectively.
2. Lynne Ramsay- after almost abandoning her craft after the heartbreak of having The Lovely Bones hijacked by Peter Jackson, the Scottish director returned, with a vengeance.
3. Iranian Cinema – The Green Revolution finally caught up with the beleaguered filmmaking of Iran. Some were exile films, one was a film about house arrest. But all are galvanized by the movement of the people against their government.

Animation: Bad year for the medium, but Uncle Steven deserves special mention for doing things with MoCap that no one else has (sorry Zemeckis). Somehow Spielberg is the first filmmaker to make his MoCap figures not look like dead-eyed zombies (even though some idiot critics decided it was easier to dismiss them as such).

Big Damn Genius Award: Giorgio Moroder- the Austrian composer didn’t compose a note to any films in 2011, but his sound was inescapable.
Runner up: Kit Nolan didn’t release a single film this year, but the shadow cast by Inception was long and his trailer to 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises has caused a ruckus. He proves that great filmmaking is more important than marketing rainmaking alone.

Best Trailer: David Fincher’s crackling teaser to his ultimately unnecessary remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was far superior to the film itself.

Steel Drum (for the person who should be sealed into a steel drum and dropped into the deepest part of the ocean): Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix. What were they thinking? They cornered a market, put out of business much of their competition, then decided to implode. The corporate brand of capitalism is akin to a junkie’s need for drugs. It made Netflix damage their brand and overreach. Just gives us our DVDs and streaming and stop trying to conquer the world.
Films to also be placed in the Steel Drum:
The Artist – vacuous, manipulative dreck, sure to win Harvey another statue.
J. Edgar – facile, middle of the road, amoral nonsense by one of my idols.
Red State – woefully stupid, ideologically incoherent, the work of someone terminally immature.

Best Retrospective: Hands down, it was UCLA Film & Television Archive’s exhaustive look at the L.A. Rebellion. It was an embarrassment of riches that left a mark on me.

In Memoriam: LACMA’s Film Program (thanks Ian), Rocket Video, Laemmle’s Sunset 5.

In Praise of 1986: a re-evaluation of my least beloved decade of film.

It's officially the beginning of late summer. It's Friday. And despite my all-consuming passion for movies, I don't want to see anything new. It has not always been this way. Once upon a time, it seemed every weekend of the summer offered some new pleasures, whether they were just a good time or something more.

One summer in particular still resonates with me. Without really thinking closely about it until now it appears to me that 1986 was a watershed year for the movies. And for me, for the rest of my days, the summer of 1986 will always be the definitive summer movie season.

I turned 15 that summer. Part of why this summer has a special place in my memory can be attributed to my proclivity at the time for taping certain clips from TV on my relatively new VCR. I filled up countless tapes with music videos from Friday Night Videos on NBC (we didn't get MTV until 1989) and other music video shows of the day. In May of 1986, I taped Entertainment Tonight's summer movie preview, a montage of scenes from coming attractions. I watched it so many times that most of it is still fresh in my mind. So unlike most summers, there's a highlight reel for that summer playing fresh in my head even now.

I have a personal connection to 1986 for reasons only peripheral to the cinema (we'll come back to that later), but I think the first thing to be said about 1986 is that it's part of a decade I have for some time considered the nadir of cinema.

Shocking, I know. But the 80's for me were the decade without a great movement, the decade that seemed to surrender all the ground gained in the pre-Star Wars 70's, the fallow period between the Second Golden Age and the Indie Explosion of the 90's. Were there great 80's films? Of course. But compared to the 60's or 70's, I felt the Reagan Era was left wanting.

Lately I've noticed that filmmakers (some my age, some of Gen-Y) have begun to proudly proclaim their love for 80's American film, even in such august venues as Elvis Mitchell's The Treatment. It makes sense that the current crop of filmmakers and executives would look to the 80's, a period where serving the audience came first and efficient entertainment supplanted artsy ambiguity. That paradigm shift is most dramatic in the career of David Gordon Green, who ten years ago wowed critics with his Malickian 70's influenced freshman and sophomore efforts. Now he's made a series of unabashedly 80's style comedies, his latest a veritable remake of 1987's Adventure's In Babysitting.

The Eighties are in, The Seventies are, for the most part, out. 

But what's so special about 1986? I think it's because 1986 is that rare year when both popular films and critical darlings flourished equally. In '86, there were plenty of crowd-pleasers and the year also delivered some arthouse classics that could be spoken in my film classes without embarrassment even in the 90's when I was in film school. In 1986, whether you liked goofy comedy, action, challenging drama or art cinema, you got it all.

In the first four months alone, we got Hannah & Her Sisters, Lucas, At Close Range, Salvador, Pretty in Pink, and even The Hitcher. On May 16th, the year's number one film was released. It was called Top Gun, and in many ways it is the apotheosis of the Simpson/Bruckheimer style that has since conquered the summer. This is significant. It marks '86 as a turning point, the end of the post-Star Wars era, the beginning of Bruckheimer's more aggressive brand of audience service. Soon the spawn of Top Gun would proliferate and kill off anything that isn't already carrying its particular strain of virus. But in 1986, it was just one part of a diverse population.

The same month Top Gun came out, Roland Joffe's The Mission (that touchstone of middlebrow quality, with a soundtrack that in many ways outlived the film) was released. One month, two films. One a bellweather of things to come, one instantly a relic of another era.

Top Gun wasn't the only monster hit of the year. The end of the summer would bring Crocodile Dundee. If those bookends depress you, consider what came between- June: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Mona Lisa, Back To School; July:  Aliens, Big Trouble in Little China, Under The Cherry Moon; August: The Fly, Howard The Duck (I know it's bad, but it has to be mentioned), She's Gotta Have It, Stand By Me. August also brought a small animated feature called Transformers: The Movie. It was not a box office champ, but its presence undeniably portends things to come.

[Quick aside: Siskel & Ebert also debuted in 1986, which clearly marked a change in how movies were perceived. I leave it to you whether "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down" helped the medium, harmed it or neither.]

Because film seasons actually meant something once, the fall and Christmas season brought even more lasting favorites: Down By Law, The Mosquito Coast, Blue Velvet, Captain Eo, True Stories (yes youngsters, Warner Bros. once distributed a film by the Talking Heads guy), Three Amigos, Star Trek IV, Something Wild, Sid & Nancy, River's Edge, and the Oscar winner Platoon. 

There are other films I've failed to list that may be a favorite of yours. And I don't pretend that all of the above are masterpieces. But they do reflect a period when filmmakers could make quirky challenging films, get distribution from majors and be seen on the big screen (In at least limited release). And perhaps, popular films could deliver their payload without assaulting the senses or the intelligence of its audience.


There are other, more obvious great years in cinema; 1974 immediately comes to mind. But right now, as I look at another uninspired weekend of studio fundraising barely disguised as cinema, I long for 1986 more because it is just beyond our fingertips. We'll never get back to 1974, we've devolved too far as a culture, but 1986 seems like a reachable goal, if only our filmmakers, and audiences, demanded better.

Two more points: in early 1987, the Academy Award winner for Best Live Action Short was Chuck Workman's stirring tribute to American cinema Precious Images. Set to a rousing pastiche of orchestral music, it splices together the most indelible moments, lines, and images of popular cinema. Is it significant that this short was made in '86? It seems so to me but not in a way I can intellectualize. It was commissioned by the Director's Guild of America on the occasion of its 75th anniversary. I'm sure they had no intention of making it as a monument to a peak cinema would never quite achieve again, but I fear that is precisely how it will come to be seen. It's hard not to agree that precious little since then has achieved the status of the films in that montage (it was recut in 1996 to include more recent films, hardly necessary).

Lastly, a confession. I have a unique emotional attachment to this summer, not just because it was the beginning of my taste changing to more sophisticated fare, but also because it was the last summer with my father, who died by his own hand at 39 the following February.  I inherited my obsession with films from him, and in fact this was the summer we saw our last films together (he loved Top Gun, no lover of subtitled films was he). This summer was the end of an era for me, by the time summer came again I was in many ways another person. So you'll have to forgive me if I've conflated the way 1986 signaled the end of one chapter for me and how perhaps it signaled the end of something in the medium I've loved all my life.

The Eighties are king now. All the hand-wringing and love of Cassavetes can't change that. So if we must live under their yoke again, perhaps filmmakers can look more carefully at the year and learn how to pull off what in 1986 seemed so easy. Raunchy teen comedies, macho action and slasher pics ruled the decade, but middle ground still existed for people who wanted more from the movies. As I dream of a better crop of films, I now dream of getting back to middle ground. The high ground is gone for good.

The Top 25 Films of 2010*

*Originally published on 1/1/11 on another site.

Peter Greenaway posits that the remote control killed the cinema. If that’s true, iTunes and Video On Demand are finishing the job. I don’t mean that to sound bitter, the medium is changing.  But having everything at your fingertips and available through your iPad is going to change the way films are made and consumed forever.

The year’s big story may ultimately be the death of the modern movie star. Even Will Smith, the last actual movie star, sat ’10 out. Big stars are no a guarantee on box office returns. And bigger than that, the two films that really captured the imagination of the audience were Avatar (a 2009 release but it made most of its money in 2010) and Inception, both of which were original films (non-remake, non-sequel). This sent a clear message to the studios that we can all rejoice over even if Cameron and Nolan’s films weren’t your favorite.

But of course, the studios will ignore the audience’s clear reference for new stories and continue to give us remakes and films based on board games in 2011. They have had to accept that the story is now more important to the audience than stars.  And that may in the end be the ray of hope delivered by 2010.

1. Carlos – France – Olivier Assayas
2. The Tillman Story – USA – Amir Bar-Lev
3. Poetry – S. Korea – Lee Chang-dong
4. I Am Love – Italy – Luca Guagadino
5. Mesrine (Killer Instinct & Public Enemy No. 1) – France –Jean–Francois Richet
6. Animal Kingdom – Australia – David Michod
7. Night Catches Us – USA – Tanya Hamilton
8. Exit Through The Gift Shop – UK - Banksy
9. The Social Network – USA – David Fincher
10. How To Train Your Dragon – USA - Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders
11. True Grit – USA – Joel & Ethan Coen
12. A Prophet – France – Jacques Audiard
13. Toy Story 3 – USA – Lee Unkrich
14. Vincere – Italy – Marco Bellocchio
15. Another Year – UK – Mike Leigh
16. Inception – USA – Christopher Nolan
17. The Other Guys – USA – Adam McKay
18. The Kids Are All Right – USA – Lisa Cholodenko
19. The Fighter – USA – David O. Russell
20. Please Give – USA – Nicole Holofcener
21. Women Without Men – Iran - Shoja Azari & Shirin Neshat
22. Fish Tank – UK – Andrea Arnold
23. Soul Kitchen – Germany – Fatih Akin
24. The Ghost Writer – UK/France – Roman Polanski
25. Agora – Spain – Alejandro Amenabar

Special Award: Enter The Void – I didn’t love Gaspar Noe’s film but he undeniably did something unique and bold that stayed with me. Noe may annoy you, but you gotta respect what he’s done with his three films. Dont’cha?

Big Damn Genius Award – RED Camera: this HD camera can now do virtually anything that 35mm film can. Several times I saw films last year that Id have sworn were on film and was amazed to see that they were shot on this format.

Runner-up- Marky Mark Wahlberg: as an actor and an executive producer he’s becoming one of the most reliable brands in Hollywood.

Steel Drum Award (for that which I’d like to see sealed in a steel drum and thrown into the deepest part of the ocean)– the Iranian Government: Among its myriad abuses, the current regime has committed a crime against cinema by sentencing Jafar Panahi to six years in prison and a 20 year ban on filmmaking. Disgusting.

Runner-up: M. Night Shyamalan

2nd Runner-up: 3D

The Top 50 Film's of the 2000's*

*The following was originally published on 5/28/2010, on another social networking site.

The first decade of the 21st Century has been rough with the cinematic medium. The century has announced very clearly that it belongs to another medium: the video game. You know the stats, games are selling in ways that make studios envious.

And the 2000’s are also the decade when television outstripped the cinema. The best episodes of The Sopranos, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men rival anything at Cannes or Sundance. It seems that a paradigm shift has occurred. TV was once the domain of family and film was where more adult stories were told, but that has finally been reversed.

Technology has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, but the paucity of great films this these technological breakthroughs has yielded is very telling. Digital Video and 24p Hi-Def seemed to be the way of the future in 1999. Many directors experimented with these formats. Now it seems that with a few exceptions (Michael Mann, David Lynch), DV has failed to really payoff creatively or launch any movements. In other words, this is a decade when anyone, even this filmmaker, could make a feature-length movie. That makes the paltry product seen since 2000 all the more depressing.

On the international scene, we lost many of our last remaining titans in this decade. The filmmakers that made being a cinephile chic in the late 60’s & 70’s have all but disappeared. We also saw the rise of Israel, South Korea, Romania, Nigeria, Thailand, the Philippines, & most recently South America on the festival circuit. Iran & Taiwan, so vibrant in the 1990’s, seemed to have lost their respective ways. France continues to produce important films and keep its film industry viable. A film without any White characters won the Academy Award for Best Picture. A new kind of art film, which I call Critic-Bait Cinema, emerges in which nothing much happens in long takes.

And despite all of our losses, the cinema gained its first centenarian filmmaker in the 2000’s.

And then there was “The Man Who Couldn’t…” My first feature was made in the middle of the decade for less than $10,000. I don’t bring this up to promote it, but to say that in this decade, I changed as a cinephile, as a filmgoer. Making a feature was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It has changed me as a filmmaker and as an artist. It also means that from now on, I will always view features (especially those by young, or more pointedly, younger) filmmakers with a certain defensive competitiveness. Making a feature probably made me a more forgiving film-goer, but it also made me a protective parent of a child loved by a few, but ignored by the many. So let that serve as an honest declaration of the baggage I tote as a cinephile.

With all our disclaimers out of the way, let’s take a look at the best that “The Noughties,” as the Brits call it, offered up.

1. INLAND EMPIRE – 2006 – USA – David Lynch
2. Yi Yi (A One & A Two…) – 2000 – Taiwan – Edward Yang
3. The Royal Tenenbaums – 2001 – USA – Wes Anderson
4. Silent Light – 2007 – Mexico – Carlos Reygadas
5. George Washington – 2000 – USA – David Gordon Green
6. Secret Sunshine – 2007 – S. Korea – Lee Chang-dong
7. Ghost World – 2001 – USA – Terry Zwigoff
8. All About Lily Chou-Chou – 2001 – Japan – Shunji Iwai
9. Lilya 4-Ever – 2002 – Sweden – Lukas Moodysson
10. 25th Hour – 2002 – USA – Spike Lee

Why “Inland Empire?” It is not the most entertaining film of the decade. It is not a film that I pop in the DVD player at any given moment and enjoy like a visit from an old friend. But it is a towering work, a singular artistic vision of purity rarely seen in the cinema (Laura Dern’s performance is arguably the decade’s best turn by an actress, it must be said). It is also an example of what could be produced only in this decade (thanks to advances in consumer hardware & software), and a reminder of how few artists of Lynch’s caliber took up the challenge given by new technology. The top 3 films are all outstanding and could be rearranged easily. But of the three, only Lynch’s film is uniquely a product of this moment, not a project with roots in the previous decade like Yang’s or consciously timeless like Anderson’s.


11. Synecdoche, New York – 2008 – USA – Charlie Kaufman
12. I’m Not There – 2007 – USA – Todd Haynes
13. Gangster No. 1 – 2000 – UK – Paul McGuigan
14. The Circle – 2000 – Iran – Jafar Panahi
15. Beau Travail – 2000 – France – Claire Denis
16. The New World – 2005 – USA – Terrence Malick
17. The Dark Knight – 2008 – USA – Christopher Nolan
18. Los Angeles Plays Itself – 2003 – USA – Thom Anderson
19. The Corporation – 2003 – Canada – Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott
20. A.I. Artificial Intelligence – 2001 – USA – Steven Spielberg

21. Code 46 – 2003 – UK – Michael Winterbottom
22. Shortbus – 2006 – USA – John Cameron Mitchell
23. Donnie Darko – 2001 – USA – Richard Kelly
24. Kill Bill (Volume 1) – 2003 – USA – Quentin Tarantino
25. L’Emploi du Temps (Time Out) – 2001 – France – Laurent Cantet
26. Surfwise - 2008 – USA – Doug Pray
27. Street Fight - 2005 – USA – Marshall Curry
28. Mystic River – 2003 – USA – Clint Eastwood
29. The Squid & the Whale – 2005 - USA – Noah Baumbach
30. La Ville Est Tranquille – 2000 – France – Robert Guédiguian

31. Grizzly Man – 2005 – USA – Werner Herzog
32. The Gleaners & I – 2000 – France – Agnes Varda
33. The Incredibles – 2004 – USA - Brad Bird
34. Manderlay – 2005 – Denmark – Lars Von Trier
35. Million Dollar Baby – 2004 – USA – Clint Eastwood
36. Before Sunset – 2004 – USA – Richard Linklater
37. Knocked Up – 2007 – USA – Judd Apatow
38. Ocean’s 11 – 2001 – USA – Steven Soderbergh
39. The Filth & The Fury – 2000 – UK – Julien Temple
40. Brokeback Mountain – 2005 – USA – Ang Lee

41. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy – 2004 – USA – Adam McKay
42. A History of Violence – 2005 – USA – David Cronenberg
43. Peppermint Candy – 2000 – S. Korea – Lee Chang-dong
44. Nobody Knows – 2004 – Japan – Hirokazu Kore-eda
45. The Departed – 2006 – USA – Martin Scorsese
46. Children of Men – 2006 – UK – Alfonso Cuarón
47. Sicko – 2007 – USA – Michael Moore
48. Pulse – 2001 – Japan – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
49. Zodiac – 2007 – USA – David Fincher
50. Mooladé – 2004 – Senegal – Ousmane Sembene