by
Walter Chaw I wish To the Wonder
had been
released this year–Take Shelter, too. The one
because I love Terrence
Malick and I'm excited that he's working so much, the other because I fear
that Take
Shelter is the last time Michael Shannon will anchor a
picture without
being instantly Christopher Walken-ized. It's his The Dead
Zone, and
he's amazing in a movie that takes big risks and pays off in a
meaningful way;
if he were to star in it now, I think it would be
mistaken
for camp. I also wish I'd seen Margaret in time
for my 2011 list. Alas, local publicity has never been terribly
interested
in my participation. Nevertheless, thanks mostly to Netflix
and FYC
screeners, I saw a great many great films this year.
I also saw Hitchcock. The Hobbit: An Unexpected
Journey, Cloud
Atlas, and Prometheus. There were
technically "worse" movies this year, but why stick another fork in Alex
Frost or
What to
Expect When You're Expecting? At the end of the day, when
we measure the
worst films of the year, shouldn't we focus on things we thought were
going
to be good that were all kinds of memorably awful? In other
words,
you
probably shouldn't have heard of every title on best-of lists, and you
probably should have heard of every title on the worst-ofs.
Great films need
champions,
like those little hole-in-the-wall restaurants you take your friends
to,
whereas awful films with broad impact (like Guy Fieri's Times Square
Frankenstein) need excoriation. Everything else is just wallpaper in
the rec room,
as it were.
You could argue that if 600 films were released this
year, 20-30 were probably wonderful, while 570-580 were varying degrees
of
not–meaning that if you're trolling for bad, you have a lot to choose
from.
When we talk about terrible, we should talk about socially damaging
pictures
like Beasts of the Southern Wild, maybe, or the
way that Cloud Atlas
presumes post-racial status by using rampant yellow-face to
almost no
mainstream censure while Tarantino's slavery flick prompts several
articles
about its use of the word "nigger." Again, a slavery
flick. I'm
imagining a Django Unchained where every
instance of the word is
replaced by "African-American." ("I counted six bullets, my
African-American brother." "I count two guns, my African-American
brother.") Besides, can we agree by now that Tarantino is commenting as
he's indulging? No?
Why not the same standard for Lincoln,
which
drops the "n" bomb once or twice? Because Spielberg hasn't been
criticized for it in the past? Because there are really no powerful,
driven
black people in it? Because it has white folk helping out black
folk, unlike
Django Unchained, which is a black guy killing everybody?
Then
why not go after Spielberg for his chronic, pathological exploitation
of
children in showing Tad Lincoln, unforgivably, get news of daddy's
death in
what is
essentially a bait-and-switch played dishonourable and loose to herald
another
of Spielberg's disastrous endings? Lincoln is
this year's The King's
Speech: milquetoast soaked in milk. Congratulations on your
third Oscar,
Daniel.
We should even take a moment to discuss what it's
like to watch a film shot entirely in extreme close-up with wide-angle
lenses. No, Tom Hooper is not suddenly a good
director, he has simply been validated just enough to make him believe
that all his
decisions are good ones. Imagine the reign of terror that would have
ensued had
Battlefield Earth been a huge success. Still,
Anne Hathaway is a
revelation. She dies thirty minutes or so into the picture. Once she
does, you are
free to
go. Or you could wait for the clip on the Oscar broadcast.
Congratulations
to you as well, Ms. Hathaway.
The worst films of the year were drag shows: bad
makeup, vampy performances, played to the rafters, with precious
little in
the way of self-awareness. If we look for commonality among the worst
of the
worst, we identify a slippage in film-craft–enough so that the tease
that maybe
a few more frames of Tod Browning's London After Midnight
have turned up was enough to send shivers down the spine of every
practical-effects
lover in the audience. And, by the way, last night I watched "Pawn
Stars" in 48fps. It looked so real.
But the best: the best films of 2012 were the best
critiques of the worst films of 2012. They examined the digital
revolution and
what it's wrought in the cinema. I had a lovely conversation one night
with a
projectionist friend of mine about the cost and consequences of digital
projection–and my key takeaway from it was that, like how we feel
about Global
Warming now, we're past the point of preventative measures and
well into the period where we should be hoarding water and digging out
a shelter in our
backyard.
The best movies of the year examined how we watched movies
and
understood them–they flattered our ability to understand human
relationships
by being quiet and showing it to us. They presented moments of real
nostalgia
and regret for things that are gone and not coming back.
I'm drawn to pictures like that, I know. It's a predilection
I'm done apologizing for; if you've stuck with me for any
period of
time,
gentle reader, you know what to expect from me by now in any case. I
look to
movies for personal revelation. I'm offended when they, Skyfall-like,
try to tell me the answer is, "Bitches, man." (Boy, Kate Winslet sure
did a number on ol' Sam. Good for her.) I'm gratified when
something
like Haywire says everything there needs to be
said about what's wrong
with The Bourne Legacy, more eloquently
than
any splash of digitized
column-width ever could. I like my echo chamber. I've decorated it with
posters
and bookshelves.
I also didn't like Moonrise Kingdom
much. And I
love Wes Anderson. And so it goes.
Things
I didn't see that I might have liked to
have
seen: Zero Dark Thirty, Amour,
The Imposter,
This is Not a Film, Barbara
Thing
I didn't see on
purpose, four times: Breaking Dawn 2.2:
Pedophilia and Pre-Arranged Marriage, LDS Edition
Things
I saw and was glad I
did: Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning,
Keep the Lights On,
Compliance, Chronicle, The
Tall Man, Bad 25, I Wish,
Headhunters,
Elena, Killer
Joe, Life Without Principle, The
Grey
Things
I saw and was sorry: Hyde Park on
the Hudson, Promised Land, Les Misérables
The
worst films of the year: Cloud
Atlas, Hitchcock, Prometheus
Here's
my list of the Top 20 films of 2012 followed by capsule write-ups
grouped thematically:
- Holy
Motors - Oslo,
August 31 - Once
Upon
a Time in Anatolia - The
Loneliest Planet - The
Master - Django
Unchained - Wuthering
Heights - Haywire
- Cosmopolis
- The
Turin
Horse - Killing
Them Softly - Beyond
the
Black Rainbow - The
Deep
Blue Sea - The
Kid
with a Bike - The
Snowtown Murders - Alps
- Magic
Mike - Harakiri:
Death of a Samurai - The
Dark
Knight Rises - Intruders
19. The
Dark Knight Rises
(d. Christopher Nolan)
11. Killing
Them Softly
(d. Andrew Dominik)
9. Cosmopolis
(d. David Cronenberg)
A mess narratively, Nolan's
films work because they're
emotionally coherent. They are operas, grand and melodramatic, and the
finale to his troubled trilogy carries as its payload an unquiet
argument for tearing it all down before siding with order, some would
say fascism. Our hero takes the easy way out, our heroine just wants to
escape, too, and the only people left are disenfranchised and revealed
for the venal, small things they are. It's an interesting thing to
suggest that the United States is in need of a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission after our financial collapse–even more interesting because
we've yet to ever address the class war that festers at the middle of
our ills. Where Bane is from, where Batman is from, and where they end
up with a new hero rising from the working class…it's fascinating,
and
it's ours.
Andrew
Dominik's The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford will
one day headline a forgotten masterpieces festival that I program with
Jonathan Glazer's Birth.
His follow-up, Killing Them Softly, is a metaphor
for the American financial collapse, overtly in the constant playing of
speeches delivered by George W. Bush and Barack Obama, staring into the
teeth of a hard decade, maybe more, of debt ceilings, fiscal cliffs,
and general insolvency. It opens to blowing papers that remind
instantly of the chits around the feet of Wall Street traders (who were
themselves brutalized in this year's Dark
Knight Rises), then focuses in on sad-sack criminals and
the sad-sack organized-crime bureaucrats enlisting the sad-sack
assassins to kill them. Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini anchor the
production with spot-on and, in the latter's case, devastating
performances, even if Gandolfini's medium-functioning lush takes a
backseat this year to Denzel Washington's high-functioning pilot. Two
scenes, both with Ray Liotta's low-level thug, are destined for legend,
the first an unbearably tense robbery of a card game he runs, the
second his inevitable exit in a fury of broken glass and traffic
signals. If it's occasionally too spot-on in its attempt to draw the
collapse of the United States money system before decades of graft and
slackening regulation, it's also artful in its outrage, almost amused.
This isn't anything new, it says, and there's always another way to get
paid.
David
Cronenberg's astounding adaptation of Don DeLillo's "unfilmable" Cosmopolis
is
likewise about the Occupy Movement (literally this time), as a
billionaire mover of money attempts to negotiate sex with his chilly
artist wife; early detection with his very thorough proctologist; and
solvency with the man who wants to kill him on principle. It's
another undead Robert Pattinson character who wants immortality, sex,
and happiness, this one casting into harsh consideration what's really
important to all those "team Edwardians" out there. As biomechanical as
any of Cronenberg's tax-shelter bogeys, the creatures of Cosmopolis
are
melded with their technology, trading in lights and figures as the
world burns down, in search of one authentic thing even if it's Chinese
takeout, days old and cold, and a haircut from a trusted scissor. When
Cronenberg gifts his parasite with stigmata, he creates one of the most
disturbing satirical moments erupting from our entire mess.
18. Harakiri:
Death of a Samurai
(d. Takashi Miike)
17. Magic
Mike
(d. Steven Soderbergh)
13. The
Deep Blue Sea
(d. Terrence Davies)
6. Django
Unchained
(d. Quentin Tarantino)
Self-respect, dignity, and
the absolute
corruption of the ruling class mark Takashi Miike's brilliant remake of
Masaki Kobayashi's timeless Harakiri (1962).
The original undergoes extensive, essential changes (what it shows,
what
it doesn't), and in so doing engages the entire samurai genre in a
sign/signifier duality: It doesn't mean what it seems to
mean; it is the Heisenberg
principle as it manifests in film. It doesn't seek to be another
examination of the Bushido code, but rather a canny conversation about
its representation in modernity as it trails a long tradition behind it.
Miike, here and in last year's 13
Samurai, demonstrates that the United States doesn't have
the corner on Quentin Tarantinos. If only Tarantino were a quarter
as prolific.
Steven
Soderbergh's Magic
Mike has
the spirit and smarts of John Huston's Fat
City while
following a similar trajectory as Miike's crucible of blood and shame.
Matthew McConaughey's 2012 resurrection is captured in part here as he
plays the owner of a male strip club headlined by the titular stud
(Channing Tatum), who's just smart enough to know better but not smart
enough to know how to get out. It's a funny, thoughtful take on the
difficulty of "making it" and the peculiarity of male friendship,
whether success be measured in love, finances, responsibility, or,
finally, self-respect. Self-respect and dignity: major themes
in a
year that might offer some recognition of a need for both. It has
the tough core of a Seventies flick and walks an impossible line
between farce and tragedy to become, at its end, as likable as it is
unerringly contemporary. It's also the sweetest love story of the
year–yeah, I'm looking at you, Moonrise
Kingdom.
Rachel
Weisz plays Anna Karenina essentially, but a far more sympathetic one
than Tolstoy's spoiled child of privilege–if only because Weisz is a
singular, extraordinary talent and here gives, in Terence Davies's
rapturous, drunk, Wong Kar-wai-ian adaptation of Terence Rattigan's
play, the performance of a career. She's Hester, caught in a loveless
marriage to a much older mama's boy of a prig, engaged in adultery with
a younger man who doesn't love her like she loves him, doesn't need her
in the same desperate manner. Davies shoots the story in much
the same way he did his underseen Of
Time and the City: obliquely, in blues, in dreamy, swaying,
waltzing motions that speak at once to the rapture of this deep and to
the dangers of drowning.
A
love story of a slightly different shade, Tarantino's Django
Unchained provides
an appropriately savage, appropriately stunning look at the legacy of
slavery, at black-on-black violence, at the cost of vengeance. It
returns the Spaghetti Western to the United States that spawned it,
providing a sophisticated indictment of Reconstruction much like Inglourious
Basterds was
brutally frank about the establishment of a Jewish state
post-Holocaust. Tarantino's films, violent, glorious, prurient at
times, self-indulgent at others, are at their heart moral exercises
that have as their base a real questioning spirit. His only real rival
Sergio Leone as a master of soundtrack and score, consider his
use of a John Legend song followed not long after by Johnny Cash. Too
easily dismissed as a revenge film, Django
Unchained is instead
about original sin.
20. Intruders
(d. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo)
15. The
Snowtown Murders
(a.k.a.
Snowtown) (d. Justin Kurzel)
12. Beyond
the Black Rainbow (d. Panos
Cosmatos)
When the dust settles and
the smoke clears, I do wonder if guys like
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Pascal Laugier won't finally get their due
as the spearhead of a horror revolution, the two of them landing with
new films in the same year that Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon received a round of applause for their genre-hating The Cabin
in the Woods. Fresnadillo's is Intruders,
a Clive Owen-fronted piece about parents' inability to protect their
children from the disappointment of discovering that they're
flawed, helpless, and as frightened as their kids are of the things in the
darkness of the closet and pooling beneath the bed. Maybe they're even
responsible for them. It posits a truly awful antagonist in Hollow
Face–a thing that wants to steal faces to present as his own–and it
seems that only Owen's father character and the daughter he's trying to
protect are able to see it. It's the kind of movie Guillermo
Del
Toro would have made back in his Devil's
Backbone days;
and it certainly doesn't hurt that it knows enough about its genre to
make a knowing, haunted reference to Robert Wise's Curse
of the Cat People in
not just a tree-knot mailbox, but also the depth of its parent/child
relationship, all of disappointment and horror. Doesn't hurt that
it's really scary, too.
Scary in a different way is Aussie Justin Kurzel's debut The
Snowtown Murders. Based on a notorious serial killing spree
in little Adelaide, the film follows the exploits of affable, chubby,
bearded John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) as he seduces lost, abandoned
Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) and enlists him in his cleansing expeditions.
The spiritual cousin to Animal
Kingdom, it owes its icy mendacity to John
McNaughton's still-unequalled Henry:
Portrait of a Serial Killer. In
portraying evil as banal, charmless, and predatory, it essays without
much judgment how it is that the soulless find minions and the
rationales offered up for the necessary culling of imaginary flocks.
Its violence plain and unglamorous, the whole of it is presented
unadorned as this poison capsule of desultory, feckless malignance.
Human cancer doing only what cancer ever does, terrifyingly and
without malice or any hint of human emotion.
Panos
Cosmatos's '70/'80s throwback/existential horror trip Beyond
the Black Rainbow is
a singular achievement–equal parts homage and psychotropic atrocity.
It's about Elena (Eva Allan), sort of, prisoner of utopian
science
lab Arboria, a facility introduced in a video that reminds of David
Cronenberg's intro to the futuristic condo in Shivers
before
becoming something what a Cronenberg film would look
like in his mutations period if it were designed by Salvador Dali and,
why not, a young George Lucas. Elena plots to escape her captivity past
Terry Gilliam nightmares and the clutches of evil Barry (Michael
Rogers) into an impossible world of Tony Scott's immortal cadavers
housed in gauze and curtains. And there's something called "The Devil's
Teardrop," which is more or less exactly what it sounds like. The
Brood in
parts and Santa
Sangre in
others, it is, in other words, deeply disturbing and immanently
rewarding. It's madness. What's not to love?
8. Haywire
(d.
Steven Soderbergh)
A singular film this year
and the perfect antidote to Sam
Mendes's fit of pique at Kate Winslet divorcing his unpleasant ass (Skyfall),
it's a spy/assassin movie broken down into its component parts and
reconstructed around an absolute kickass, sexy heroine who is betrayed
by every man not her father and so kills everyone. She's never the
victim, never the product of a broken home or a lousy upbringing, she's
just very good at what she does–yet still seen as
expendable by her peers and bosses. Soderbergh re-establishes
himself as one of the country's most vital filmmakers, shooting
everything in a way that is completely unexpected so that it owes a
greater kinship to the auto-critical, meta-gangster flicks of the
French New Wave than to its more obvious antecedents. Look at a scene shot
in an apartment where a character standing up and sitting down is
chronicled by a fluid camera, moving up and down in tandem but through
a shelving unit. It's not as arty as you might think, but it's more
brilliant than you probably give it credit for being. Take it as a
lovely companion piece to Anton Corbijn's The
American: artisanal films about artisans.
7. Wuthering
Heights (d. Andrea Arnold)
5. The
Master (d. Paul Thomas Anderson)
4. The
Loneliest Planet
(d. Julia Loktev)
Andrea Arnold's Wuthering
Heights is
bestial, filthy–it's the best Jane Campion film in a year without one,
and it joins Django
Unchained as the
conversation about race and its representation that Lincoln was
not. It's an eloquent explication of how Romanticism and Faulkner's
Naturalism are bridged by the Brontë, as well as the best
adaptation of
classic literature in a year that saw a really good try in Joe Wright's
fascinatingly askew Anna
Karenina. I've always loved Wuthering Heights,
loved its supernatural element, its lust, its hero so pitch in his rage
and desire for vengeance that he destroys everything he seeks to
preserve for a legacy that's not his to claim.
Then
there's Paul Thomas Anderson's The
Master. Essentially an adaptation of the first book of John
Keats's Endymion,
in which our hero relates his dreams and visions in preparation for his
descent
into deeps, his wakening of a long-imprisoned god, his pursuit of
beauty and love. It is a Romanticist text through and through, telling
of the slipperiness of identity and following a seeker in Freddie Quell
(Joaquin Phoenix) who is the quintessential evocation of the modern
figure lost, knowing only that he lacks.
I love the moment
where Freddie dreams to find that his "master," Lancaster Dodd (Philip
Seymour Hoffman), based not very loosely on L. Ron Hubbard, has shared
his dream–or that we're sharing their dream, or that the dream is
collective and not personal; by the end of The Master, the
separation between the audience and the product has become meaningless.
The entire film is one of Dodd's exercises in dissociation–in
accessing something collective and sublime in the beating of a man's
hands against a glass window.
The
biggest joke and the highest sublimity of the piece is Anderson
identifying Freddie's motivation throughout as one satisfying sexual
encounter. He offers Freddie a vagina made of sand, another underage
and out of reach to time, a dinner party of them subvocal and mocking.
Dodd gets the same treatment, a brusque handjob from his harridan wife his only
release. The only natural sex in the film comes in the final
scene as Freddie mocks his master's voice. He's won a sort of victory,
I suppose, but I wonder if the climax isn't when Freddie rides a
motorcycle on a salt flat…forever, and if that moment where Freddie
and Dodd have it out in neighbouring jail cells isn't actually the most
intimate in a picture striving for them. It's a film about
Keats's consummation sublime; Wuthering Heights
is
a
different evocation of the same.
Julia
Loktev's The
Loneliest Planet is
disappointment of another sort. Impossibly observant, impossibly
intimate, it is the second-best use of score (an existing piece by
Richard Skelton) in a film this year behind only Tarantino's, and the
picture, by
the end, establishes itself as a de
facto fourth film in Gus Van Sant's
"death trilogy." Set in Soviet Georgia's Caucasus mountains (where,
legend has it, Prometheus was chained for his sins against heaven), it
puts its young lovers in a natural state with and against one another.
It challenges notions of gender–identity, really–and does it
lyrically, gracefully, and, yeah, even poetically.
10. The
Turin Horse (A torinói
ló) (d. Béla Tarr)
3. Once
Upon a Time in Anatolia (Bir
zamanlar Anadolu'da) (d. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Elder statesman Bela Tarr's
The
Turin Horse, in
perhaps capturing the dead-horse-beater that anecdotally drove
Nietzsche mad, proceeds to beat a dead horse over the course of
increasingly deadening, though never less ferocious, cycles of
hardscrabble, meaningless existence. The well runs dry, the tempest
rages, frugal repasts mark the time spent fuelling for the next round
of pointless subsistence. There is a mad fury to Tarr's vision of the
apocalypse, of Sisyphus in his toils but focused in on the blisters,
the lame arm, the filth. Universal? Certainly universal, and
unabashedly
grand in its occasional pronouncements that "everything is lost
forever." There is nothing that matters in The
Turin Horse, and the extended shots of our hero (Janos
Derzsi) and his daughter (Erika Bok) staring into the endless eddy
outside their hovel's window have about them a certain entropic rage.
It's a film bout inference, and a horror movie by definition.
Watch it in a cycle with Melancholia and
Synecdoche,
New York with
a Lexapro chaser.
Nuri
Bilge Ceylan's Once
Upon a Time in Anatolia, his
astonishing follow-up to the underappreciated Three
Monkeys, is set against the gorgeous Turkish "outback,"
where
a small group of policemen and coroners and doctors accompany a
confessed murderer to a dimly-remembered grave where he's interred his
victim following a drunken row. That's it. Home to the most beautiful
landscape cinematography of any film this year (a close second: John
Hillcoat's too-conventional Lawless), it's about
the smallness of individual lives against all the crushing weight of
history and culture. Like The
Turin Horse, but
with a slower existential boil. The most spiritual film of the year,
watching it is a spiritual experience, anchored by a moment in the
middle where our sojourners, finding succour for a moment in a friendly
village, are served a candlelit nightcap by a young woman haloed
in her innocence and youth. The reactions our heroes have to her
are natural: some are smitten, some are appalled that they're smitten, some
recognize in her what they've bartered away in a second's
misconsideration–or a lifetime of them. It's about regret, and
routine. It's the year's most Kierkegaardian picture, and I can't shake
it.
14. The
Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo) (ds. Jean-Pierre
Dardenne & Luc Dardenne)
2. Oslo,
August 31st (Oslo, 31. august)
(d. Joachim Trier)
The Dardennes' best film
since The
Son, The
Kid with a Bike channels
Truffaut's Antoine Doinel films with the saga of poor little Cyril
(Thomas Doret), abandoned by his asshole father (Jérémie Renier) and
thrust into the foster care of hairdresser Samantha (unbelievably
beautiful Cecile De France) in an unquiet period of his life. Given to
uncontrollable fits of rage, Cyril falls in with the wrong people, gets
into bad trouble, and then tries to make amends. Through it all is
that streak of forgiveness and charity that marks the Dardennes as,
ultimately, perhaps more daring than dour Michael Haneke. Shot with no
affectation, the performances are likewise unaffected, while Samantha's
dedication to Cyril plays as the kind
of genuinely-earned salve to melancholy.
Compare
it to Joachim Trier's heartbreaking Oslo,
August 31st,
which features a remarkable, again completely unaffected, performance
by
Anders Danielsen Lie as Anders, an addict pushing 30 who finds himself
smart, briefly sober, and staring down the barrel of unconquerable
barriers. He wanders the titular city on the titular day, haunting old
friends and leaving messages for an ex-girlfriend we infer
he's
damaged irreparably with his penchant for self-destruction. He goes to
a job interview, goes to lunch, finds a girl who wouldn't mind going
skinny-dipping, and makes his way home. Along the
way, there are conversations and confessions, with the film opening
like
a divine revelation when Anders, who we see early on trying to kill
himself, asks a buddy what use are platitudes when everything has
passed you by and it's too late? Everything is lost
forever. There're no missteps here, only keen observations and quiet
epiphanies and recognition. It all feels like a message from a bell
jar. Its sense of regret, the ability to capture through script and
performance and image that fleeting passage of youth and what it really
means to be resigned to a bad end, is pure. It's devastating.
16. Alps (Alpeis) (d.
Giorgos Lanthimos)
1. Holy
Motors (d. Leos Carax)
Giorgos Lanthimos follows
up his incomparable Dogtooth with
another strange, narratively loose, emotionally dense picture, Alps,
that presents a team of caregivers who masquerade as the
recently-deceased in order to ease the suffering of the
recently-bereaved. (They name themselves after the titular mountain
range in the first of the film's philosophical feints and
presumptions.) Superheroes of a sort, they cast themselves as
emotional avengers, even when it's clear that there are not always
existential wrongs to be corrected. Alps is
a
film about playing roles until they aren't roles anymore–a film about
belief and suspension, even as it's about denial and avoidance.
Leos
Carax's astonishing Holy
Motors offers
its own transcendence in the act of creation and consumption. In
following Denis Lavant during an endless ride in the back of a
limousine ferrying him from role to role as he dons and sheds myriad
skins in myriad scenarios, it's the most exhilaratingly confounding
mystery of the year. It would be comfortable in a double feature with Mulholland
Drive. (Not many films would be comfortable there.) Too pat
to
say that it's a movie about movies, Holy
Motors is
a movie about belief and the almost sexual relationship between
spectator and art object in any medium. It's the most
accomplished
picture I've ever seen that goes about these things in this way that
wasn't directed by fellow film critic Godard. Carax's first full
feature in
thirteen years, Holy
Motors serves
a complement to the "Merde" section of Tokyo!; it's dangerous in a way that films aren't much anymore, challenging to say
the least, and feral/unclassifiable. It is the most satisfying film of
the year because it is the most cinematic film of the year; watch it
after anything and find it commenting on what you've just seen. Magic.
I’ve been reading the site long enough that I’m not completely surprised by these lists, but it was a nice surprise to see Killing Them Softly pop up. That film hasn’t gotten a lot of good press, but I’m willing to give Dominik the benefit of the doubt after Jesse James. I’m optimistic on that film–nice to finally catch a ray of hope.
I’m a unrepentant lover of feel-bad cinema but, glancing through the great films that came out this year, I’m sort of shocked by the unrelenting existential dread. Where was our head at this year?
I’ve been reading the site long enough that I’m not completely surprised by these lists, but it was a nice surprise to see Killing Them Softly pop up. That film hasn’t gotten a lot of good press, but I’m willing to give Dominik the benefit of the doubt after Jesse James. I’m optimistic on that film–nice to finally catch a ray of hope.
I’m a unrepentant lover of feel-bad cinema but, glancing through the great films that came out this year, I’m sort of shocked by the unrelenting existential dread. Where was our head at this year?
I’ve been reading the site long enough that I’m not completely surprised by these lists, but it was a nice surprise to see Killing Them Softly pop up. That film hasn’t gotten a lot of good press, but I’m willing to give Dominik the benefit of the doubt after Jesse James. I’m optimistic on that film–nice to finally catch a ray of hope.
I’m a unrepentant lover of feel-bad cinema but, glancing through the great films that came out this year, I’m sort of shocked by the unrelenting existential dread. Where was our head at this year?
I’ve also been reading the site long enough to be completely shocked by this year’s praise of bullshit “art for art’s sake” that can’t hold a candle to anything Lynch. And where are the mentions, good or bad, anywhere of Chaw’s boy Affleck and his “Argo”, or “Life of Pi”, “Looper” etc.? Too mainstream for you guys, or no, rather too obvious of contenders since Mr. Chambers actually wrote that “The Grey” is “The most emotionally authentic film about death since Rob Zombie’s Halloween II.” That is LMFAO, sexy and you know it pretentious wankery. Actually, I think I said best when I said:
“I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.”
Love ya,
Steve
I’ve also been reading the site long enough to be completely shocked by this year’s praise of bullshit “art for art’s sake” that can’t hold a candle to anything Lynch. And where are the mentions, good or bad, anywhere of Chaw’s boy Affleck and his “Argo”, or “Life of Pi”, “Looper” etc.? Too mainstream for you guys, or no, rather too obvious of contenders since Mr. Chambers actually wrote that “The Grey” is “The most emotionally authentic film about death since Rob Zombie’s Halloween II.” That is LMFAO, sexy and you know it pretentious wankery. Actually, I think I said best when I said:
“I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.”
Love ya,
Steve
I’ve also been reading the site long enough to be completely shocked by this year’s praise of bullshit “art for art’s sake” that can’t hold a candle to anything Lynch. And where are the mentions, good or bad, anywhere of Chaw’s boy Affleck and his “Argo”, or “Life of Pi”, “Looper” etc.? Too mainstream for you guys, or no, rather too obvious of contenders since Mr. Chambers actually wrote that “The Grey” is “The most emotionally authentic film about death since Rob Zombie’s Halloween II.” That is LMFAO, sexy and you know it pretentious wankery. Actually, I think I said best when I said:
“I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.”
Love ya,
Steve
I’d been waiting excitedly for this, and it doesn’t disappoint. Another great, surprising list from some great, surprising critics. Thanks!
I’d been waiting excitedly for this, and it doesn’t disappoint. Another great, surprising list from some great, surprising critics. Thanks!
I’d been waiting excitedly for this, and it doesn’t disappoint. Another great, surprising list from some great, surprising critics. Thanks!
@Steve
Calls someone pretentious then quotes himself. You can’t make that shit up.
@Steve
Calls someone pretentious then quotes himself. You can’t make that shit up.
@Steve
Calls someone pretentious then quotes himself. You can’t make that shit up.
delighted to see wuthering heights so high on walter’s list. 🙂 holy motors & this is not a film seem to be pretty unanimously the films of the year among the better critics knocking about, can’t wait for both.
what happened to ian pugh? i liked that guy.
delighted to see wuthering heights so high on walter’s list. 🙂 holy motors & this is not a film seem to be pretty unanimously the films of the year among the better critics knocking about, can’t wait for both.
what happened to ian pugh? i liked that guy.
delighted to see wuthering heights so high on walter’s list. 🙂 holy motors & this is not a film seem to be pretty unanimously the films of the year among the better critics knocking about, can’t wait for both.
what happened to ian pugh? i liked that guy.
this is pretty unreadably formatted BTW, just sayin’.
this is pretty unreadably formatted BTW, just sayin’.
this is pretty unreadably formatted BTW, just sayin’.
@ corym
yeah. I don’t doubt you can’t
@ corym
yeah. I don’t doubt you can’t
@ corym
yeah. I don’t doubt you can’t
Uh guys, I think that’s a quote from “the” Steve Martin. Guess he likes the site too, “The Jerk”. 😉
Uh guys, I think that’s a quote from “the” Steve Martin. Guess he likes the site too, “The Jerk”. 😉
Uh guys, I think that’s a quote from “the” Steve Martin. Guess he likes the site too, “The Jerk”. 😉
I had to forego the chance to see Wuthering Heights and meet Andrea Arnold at last year’s Foyle Film Festival in my home town of Derry-Londonderry. How I wish things had been different now. As an aside: did anyone catch A Royal Affair? It’s been very well received on these shores.
I had to forego the chance to see Wuthering Heights and meet Andrea Arnold at last year’s Foyle Film Festival in my home town of Derry-Londonderry. How I wish things had been different now. As an aside: did anyone catch A Royal Affair? It’s been very well received on these shores.
I had to forego the chance to see Wuthering Heights and meet Andrea Arnold at last year’s Foyle Film Festival in my home town of Derry-Londonderry. How I wish things had been different now. As an aside: did anyone catch A Royal Affair? It’s been very well received on these shores.
@Simon: I liked it. It’s…sturdy. And Mikkelsen gives good stern face. Should be a capsule by me in the TIFF archives.
@Simon: I liked it. It’s…sturdy. And Mikkelsen gives good stern face. Should be a capsule by me in the TIFF archives.
@Simon: I liked it. It’s…sturdy. And Mikkelsen gives good stern face. Should be a capsule by me in the TIFF archives.
Well, at least Walter acknowledges that he’s got an echo chamber. That he loves it is no surprise to anyone who has ever visited his Twitter account. Why listen to constructive criticism when you and your simpering Chawlettes can spend all day ragging on the bumpkins? And yes, I have stuck with you for a period of time, and yes, unfortunately, I do know your predilections. So much promise, so much ego. Now eviscerate my post quickly and then go back to passive-aggressively re-tweeting negative reviews of movies you profess not to care about for the next six months.
Well, at least Walter acknowledges that he’s got an echo chamber. That he loves it is no surprise to anyone who has ever visited his Twitter account. Why listen to constructive criticism when you and your simpering Chawlettes can spend all day ragging on the bumpkins? And yes, I have stuck with you for a period of time, and yes, unfortunately, I do know your predilections. So much promise, so much ego. Now eviscerate my post quickly and then go back to passive-aggressively re-tweeting negative reviews of movies you profess not to care about for the next six months.
Well, at least Walter acknowledges that he’s got an echo chamber. That he loves it is no surprise to anyone who has ever visited his Twitter account. Why listen to constructive criticism when you and your simpering Chawlettes can spend all day ragging on the bumpkins? And yes, I have stuck with you for a period of time, and yes, unfortunately, I do know your predilections. So much promise, so much ego. Now eviscerate my post quickly and then go back to passive-aggressively re-tweeting negative reviews of movies you profess not to care about for the next six months.
ego is the only plausible motivation behind the snark in your own post, chris.
ego is the only plausible motivation behind the snark in your own post, chris.
ego is the only plausible motivation behind the snark in your own post, chris.
Gee Chris, heaven forbid Walter might have been using “echo-chamber” as a metaphor for art as a mirror to the soul, as opposed to a metaphor for internet argument. Let me guess which one is more important in your world. And as for passive-aggressive, methinks you could do with a mirror yourself….
Gee Chris, heaven forbid Walter might have been using “echo-chamber” as a metaphor for art as a mirror to the soul, as opposed to a metaphor for internet argument. Let me guess which one is more important in your world. And as for passive-aggressive, methinks you could do with a mirror yourself….
Gee Chris, heaven forbid Walter might have been using “echo-chamber” as a metaphor for art as a mirror to the soul, as opposed to a metaphor for internet argument. Let me guess which one is more important in your world. And as for passive-aggressive, methinks you could do with a mirror yourself….
I agree with you about the nature of Top 10 lists, Walter, so I’d like to nominate Berberian Sound Studio as one of the best unknown films of last year. I don’t think it had a wide release outside of the UK, apart from being available to view online (which would undermine the point of the film, I think). Features a great central performance by Toby Jones (the ‘good’ Capote, and apparently also the ‘good’ Hitchcock now), and a wonderful use of sound design. I think watching it would be an even deeper experience for someone steeped in 70’s Italian horror cinema, but I found it immensely satisfying.
I agree with you about the nature of Top 10 lists, Walter, so I’d like to nominate Berberian Sound Studio as one of the best unknown films of last year. I don’t think it had a wide release outside of the UK, apart from being available to view online (which would undermine the point of the film, I think). Features a great central performance by Toby Jones (the ‘good’ Capote, and apparently also the ‘good’ Hitchcock now), and a wonderful use of sound design. I think watching it would be an even deeper experience for someone steeped in 70’s Italian horror cinema, but I found it immensely satisfying.
I agree with you about the nature of Top 10 lists, Walter, so I’d like to nominate Berberian Sound Studio as one of the best unknown films of last year. I don’t think it had a wide release outside of the UK, apart from being available to view online (which would undermine the point of the film, I think). Features a great central performance by Toby Jones (the ‘good’ Capote, and apparently also the ‘good’ Hitchcock now), and a wonderful use of sound design. I think watching it would be an even deeper experience for someone steeped in 70’s Italian horror cinema, but I found it immensely satisfying.
Gee, Justin, I guess I don’t see the difference. But that must be because I don’t use words like “metaphor” and “mirrors to the soul” enough. And if you think Walter is above Internet arguments, “methinks” you have probably spent less time reading him than me, or willfully ignoring certain aspects of his character. But I’m sure that’s different because they all had it coming (just like me… but not like Walter who, clearly, is above reproach). I on the other hand just love arguments and hate those nasty soul mirror things. You want to prove you’re the bigger man? Put your money where your mouth is and let me have the last, bitter word.
Gee, Justin, I guess I don’t see the difference. But that must be because I don’t use words like “metaphor” and “mirrors to the soul” enough. And if you think Walter is above Internet arguments, “methinks” you have probably spent less time reading him than me, or willfully ignoring certain aspects of his character. But I’m sure that’s different because they all had it coming (just like me… but not like Walter who, clearly, is above reproach). I on the other hand just love arguments and hate those nasty soul mirror things. You want to prove you’re the bigger man? Put your money where your mouth is and let me have the last, bitter word.
Gee, Justin, I guess I don’t see the difference. But that must be because I don’t use words like “metaphor” and “mirrors to the soul” enough. And if you think Walter is above Internet arguments, “methinks” you have probably spent less time reading him than me, or willfully ignoring certain aspects of his character. But I’m sure that’s different because they all had it coming (just like me… but not like Walter who, clearly, is above reproach). I on the other hand just love arguments and hate those nasty soul mirror things. You want to prove you’re the bigger man? Put your money where your mouth is and let me have the last, bitter word.
btw, Justin, I believe it’s “I think”.
btw, Justin, I believe it’s “I think”.
btw, Justin, I believe it’s “I think”.
for what it’s worth, i’ve seen walter admit he was wrong on multiple occasions, i’ve seen him accept criticism gracefully and i think he shows a greater capacity to have his mind changed, even humbled, by cinema than most other critics around. guy’s nothing if not in love with the medium, in touch with his emotional responses and brutally honest to a fault; he’s in this for the right reasons.
i’ve also seen him be unnecessarily provocative, snarky or dismissive, and he can be oversensitive in situations when a level head would better serve his arguments, but personally i’m willing to take the bad with the good. it’s not obvious where ‘ego’ stops and ‘passion’ begins; rather have both than neither. also, let’s face it, twitter brings out the worst in everyone. xD
for what it’s worth, i’ve seen walter admit he was wrong on multiple occasions, i’ve seen him accept criticism gracefully and i think he shows a greater capacity to have his mind changed, even humbled, by cinema than most other critics around. guy’s nothing if not in love with the medium, in touch with his emotional responses and brutally honest to a fault; he’s in this for the right reasons.
i’ve also seen him be unnecessarily provocative, snarky or dismissive, and he can be oversensitive in situations when a level head would better serve his arguments, but personally i’m willing to take the bad with the good. it’s not obvious where ‘ego’ stops and ‘passion’ begins; rather have both than neither. also, let’s face it, twitter brings out the worst in everyone. xD
for what it’s worth, i’ve seen walter admit he was wrong on multiple occasions, i’ve seen him accept criticism gracefully and i think he shows a greater capacity to have his mind changed, even humbled, by cinema than most other critics around. guy’s nothing if not in love with the medium, in touch with his emotional responses and brutally honest to a fault; he’s in this for the right reasons.
i’ve also seen him be unnecessarily provocative, snarky or dismissive, and he can be oversensitive in situations when a level head would better serve his arguments, but personally i’m willing to take the bad with the good. it’s not obvious where ‘ego’ stops and ‘passion’ begins; rather have both than neither. also, let’s face it, twitter brings out the worst in everyone. xD
I actually can’t believe this is the first time I’m saying it, and it might not be the last, but…
FUCK YOU, WALTER – You and your overtly destructive criticism, which you can shove right up your (presumably) fat ass.
We’ll have to use our imaginations on that last one, since not one picture of you has shown up anywhere online in the last 10 years, at least none I’ve taken the time to find, but I’m betting dollars to donuts that you’re fat, ugly, or both – the bitter, angry kids who think too much usually are. I know I was – once (and then my Dad got a job).
At least Kael had the balls to show off her wrinkly countenance, and Ebert had the courage to show off his missing jaw. But then, those are courageous people, non-reactionary thinkers who will, thankfully, be far more read than your all-or-nothing, black and white diatribes – love letters to utter bullshit, and shit-flinging at works that – let’s face it, man – you really wish you were fearless enough to make.
So, to kick off 2013, and in case you missed it –
GO FUCK YOURSELF.
I finally said it, but it really doesn’t feel good, because for so long I’ve been praising your critical analyses as potentially worthwhile creative works in themselves. For so long I’ve believed you were the sole light in the darkness of anti-intellectualism in film reviews. But I realize now what a fucking fool I was, and what a fucking tool you are. This last year finally pushed me over the edge.
To be so so so so SO criminally wrong on at least one of your “Worst” list (and on several of your “Best”) that it defies logic really shouldn’t come as a surprise, yet I’m still reeling. What’s going on here? Why do I give a shit what you think? Why does it get my goat? I’m sure my therapist could tell me, but right now I’m at a total loss.
It’s no secret “The Dark Knight” and the two Soderberg films you loved were utter twat – no one whose opinion I respect thought different. And after skirting the issue forever, to finally “admit” that Nolan films are “a mess narratively” should have been something of a humble revelation – if you weren’t such a condescending prick about it.
“Prometheus” was awful in many ways, but at least it was *interesting*. At least it made me think – and not just about its terrible and needlessly convoluted screenplay. It was also visually arresting, a truly cinematic 3D experience that was worth the extra time and money, not to mention putting up with the terrible acting. I’m loathe to admit it, but it stayed with me, much as “Les Mis” will undoubtedly – and maddeningly – stay with me.
“The Hobbit”, on the other end of the spectrum, I intentionally avoided in 3D, was geared up for the worst, and actually enjoyed the hell out of. Of course it’s an overlong mess (nobody said it was going to be anything else), but it’s a fun, entertaining, popcorn mess, and I had a blast. Not everyone can just let go and have a good time – or at least not everyone can only do so with pretentious pus that no one else likes.
But all of this is just warm up for “Cloud Atlas”, easily the only movie from 2012 worth talking about that I saw (the jury’s always still out on those obscure art-house pics you and your staff are always jizzing about). To be so inexorably offended at something so grand and beautiful is one thing – but instead of just saying “hey, not my thing” (like you did with that piece of shit “Moonrise Kingdom,” and that I *always* have to with *everything* by the Two Andersons) that you felt the need to *attack* based on your own insular ideas of what constitutes “socially damaging” (likely brought on by what I’m guessing is a truly woeful self-image) is so pathetic that it’s just downright sad.
Since I’m sure you missed it before (and knowing you’ll probably miss it again) here’s an “anyway” repost of my reaction to your reaction – ego talking to ego most definitely, but, you know, I gotta talk to people in their own language.
It’s there, just past this piece from The Onion that you (and I) should take a long look in the mirror after reading.
I actually can’t believe this is the first time I’m saying it, and it might not be the last, but…
FUCK YOU, WALTER – You and your overtly destructive criticism, which you can shove right up your (presumably) fat ass.
We’ll have to use our imaginations on that last one, since not one picture of you has shown up anywhere online in the last 10 years, at least none I’ve taken the time to find, but I’m betting dollars to donuts that you’re fat, ugly, or both – the bitter, angry kids who think too much usually are. I know I was – once (and then my Dad got a job).
At least Kael had the balls to show off her wrinkly countenance, and Ebert had the courage to show off his missing jaw. But then, those are courageous people, non-reactionary thinkers who will, thankfully, be far more read than your all-or-nothing, black and white diatribes – love letters to utter bullshit, and shit-flinging at works that – let’s face it, man – you really wish you were fearless enough to make.
So, to kick off 2013, and in case you missed it –
GO FUCK YOURSELF.
I finally said it, but it really doesn’t feel good, because for so long I’ve been praising your critical analyses as potentially worthwhile creative works in themselves. For so long I’ve believed you were the sole light in the darkness of anti-intellectualism in film reviews. But I realize now what a fucking fool I was, and what a fucking tool you are. This last year finally pushed me over the edge.
To be so so so so SO criminally wrong on at least one of your “Worst” list (and on several of your “Best”) that it defies logic really shouldn’t come as a surprise, yet I’m still reeling. What’s going on here? Why do I give a shit what you think? Why does it get my goat? I’m sure my therapist could tell me, but right now I’m at a total loss.
It’s no secret “The Dark Knight” and the two Soderberg films you loved were utter twat – no one whose opinion I respect thought different. And after skirting the issue forever, to finally “admit” that Nolan films are “a mess narratively” should have been something of a humble revelation – if you weren’t such a condescending prick about it.
“Prometheus” was awful in many ways, but at least it was *interesting*. At least it made me think – and not just about its terrible and needlessly convoluted screenplay. It was also visually arresting, a truly cinematic 3D experience that was worth the extra time and money, not to mention putting up with the terrible acting. I’m loathe to admit it, but it stayed with me, much as “Les Mis” will undoubtedly – and maddeningly – stay with me.
“The Hobbit”, on the other end of the spectrum, I intentionally avoided in 3D, was geared up for the worst, and actually enjoyed the hell out of. Of course it’s an overlong mess (nobody said it was going to be anything else), but it’s a fun, entertaining, popcorn mess, and I had a blast. Not everyone can just let go and have a good time – or at least not everyone can only do so with pretentious pus that no one else likes.
But all of this is just warm up for “Cloud Atlas”, easily the only movie from 2012 worth talking about that I saw (the jury’s always still out on those obscure art-house pics you and your staff are always jizzing about). To be so inexorably offended at something so grand and beautiful is one thing – but instead of just saying “hey, not my thing” (like you did with that piece of shit “Moonrise Kingdom,” and that I *always* have to with *everything* by the Two Andersons) that you felt the need to *attack* based on your own insular ideas of what constitutes “socially damaging” (likely brought on by what I’m guessing is a truly woeful self-image) is so pathetic that it’s just downright sad.
Since I’m sure you missed it before (and knowing you’ll probably miss it again) here’s an “anyway” repost of my reaction to your reaction – ego talking to ego most definitely, but, you know, I gotta talk to people in their own language.
It’s there, just past this piece from The Onion that you (and I) should take a long look in the mirror after reading.
I actually can’t believe this is the first time I’m saying it, and it might not be the last, but…
FUCK YOU, WALTER – You and your overtly destructive criticism, which you can shove right up your (presumably) fat ass.
We’ll have to use our imaginations on that last one, since not one picture of you has shown up anywhere online in the last 10 years, at least none I’ve taken the time to find, but I’m betting dollars to donuts that you’re fat, ugly, or both – the bitter, angry kids who think too much usually are. I know I was – once (and then my Dad got a job).
At least Kael had the balls to show off her wrinkly countenance, and Ebert had the courage to show off his missing jaw. But then, those are courageous people, non-reactionary thinkers who will, thankfully, be far more read than your all-or-nothing, black and white diatribes – love letters to utter bullshit, and shit-flinging at works that – let’s face it, man – you really wish you were fearless enough to make.
So, to kick off 2013, and in case you missed it –
GO FUCK YOURSELF.
I finally said it, but it really doesn’t feel good, because for so long I’ve been praising your critical analyses as potentially worthwhile creative works in themselves. For so long I’ve believed you were the sole light in the darkness of anti-intellectualism in film reviews. But I realize now what a fucking fool I was, and what a fucking tool you are. This last year finally pushed me over the edge.
To be so so so so SO criminally wrong on at least one of your “Worst” list (and on several of your “Best”) that it defies logic really shouldn’t come as a surprise, yet I’m still reeling. What’s going on here? Why do I give a shit what you think? Why does it get my goat? I’m sure my therapist could tell me, but right now I’m at a total loss.
It’s no secret “The Dark Knight” and the two Soderberg films you loved were utter twat – no one whose opinion I respect thought different. And after skirting the issue forever, to finally “admit” that Nolan films are “a mess narratively” should have been something of a humble revelation – if you weren’t such a condescending prick about it.
“Prometheus” was awful in many ways, but at least it was *interesting*. At least it made me think – and not just about its terrible and needlessly convoluted screenplay. It was also visually arresting, a truly cinematic 3D experience that was worth the extra time and money, not to mention putting up with the terrible acting. I’m loathe to admit it, but it stayed with me, much as “Les Mis” will undoubtedly – and maddeningly – stay with me.
“The Hobbit”, on the other end of the spectrum, I intentionally avoided in 3D, was geared up for the worst, and actually enjoyed the hell out of. Of course it’s an overlong mess (nobody said it was going to be anything else), but it’s a fun, entertaining, popcorn mess, and I had a blast. Not everyone can just let go and have a good time – or at least not everyone can only do so with pretentious pus that no one else likes.
But all of this is just warm up for “Cloud Atlas”, easily the only movie from 2012 worth talking about that I saw (the jury’s always still out on those obscure art-house pics you and your staff are always jizzing about). To be so inexorably offended at something so grand and beautiful is one thing – but instead of just saying “hey, not my thing” (like you did with that piece of shit “Moonrise Kingdom,” and that I *always* have to with *everything* by the Two Andersons) that you felt the need to *attack* based on your own insular ideas of what constitutes “socially damaging” (likely brought on by what I’m guessing is a truly woeful self-image) is so pathetic that it’s just downright sad.
Since I’m sure you missed it before (and knowing you’ll probably miss it again) here’s an “anyway” repost of my reaction to your reaction – ego talking to ego most definitely, but, you know, I gotta talk to people in their own language.
It’s there, just past this piece from The Onion that you (and I) should take a long look in the mirror after reading.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/im-sorry-but-ive-had-just-about-enough-of-me,30925/
———————————
This movie was beautiful, exciting, and it moved me greatly. I’ll take an incredibly mounted, flawed amalgam of both pretentious and sentimental philosophy with beautifully-paced action (such as this or “Watchmen”), over excrescently boring, pretentious dogshit about absolutely nothing (like “The Fountain”, “The New World”, and “The InnKeepers”, all of which Walter seems to love because they… why? Actually, I’m sorry. Seriously. Why the fuck?) any day of the week.
And the reason the same actors played different characters is – ya know – kinda built into the premise of cyclical human history and reincarnation? Not always successfully done, but not real difficult to understand why it was attempted. Yes, the philosophy is simple, though not all of it naive – just as simply because something is convoluted and complicated on the surface doesn’t automatically make it inherently worthy of study.
I agree with Kevin that there was no Magic Negro. He was a good sailor, and a perceptively good (not to mention hot) friend who changed someone’s mind about slavery. That’s it. How is that offensive? And when contained within it is commentary that seems intrinsic to the overall themes of the whole movie, how is that storyline not worth pursuing?
There was, of course, no need for black face. But in all honestly, I wouldn’t have been opposed to it, though I am white so admittedly disqualified from even proffering that as an option. The only reason they didn’t do it while continuing to do yellowface was not because they couldn’t have done it without being culturally insensitive, but because Al Sharpton and Spike Lee would have had a field day, and there are (fortunately) no Asian equivalents to those ass-clowns.
That the Wachowskis self-financed this gives me a little fucking hope that someone, somewhere is committed to making large-budget movies that challenge us with big ideas wrapped in equally challenging, but always exciting, narratives – not just commercial monstrosities that challenge us to keep our IQs, or to stay awake.
The fact that Walter has the nerve to make comparisons to reference to Solzhenitsyn’s imprisonment in the middle of this as a form of irony, but not the nail-clawing actual prison sequence in the middle of horrendously interminable – and boring as all shit – “The Dark Knight Rises”, is selective fucking memory if I’ve ever seen it.
Oh, and “The Field Where I Died” might have made even *me* cry, but that was rightfully considered one of the worst, most boring episodes of “The X Files” produced during the Duchovny years. I’ll give him this – for the kind of work he heaps praise on, at least Walter’s consistent.
Just didn’t realize he was so sensitive about critics being attacked. There, there, Jon Lovitz. Perhaps we should all grow a thicker skin.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/im-sorry-but-ive-had-just-about-enough-of-me,30925/
———————————
This movie was beautiful, exciting, and it moved me greatly. I’ll take an incredibly mounted, flawed amalgam of both pretentious and sentimental philosophy with beautifully-paced action (such as this or “Watchmen”), over excrescently boring, pretentious dogshit about absolutely nothing (like “The Fountain”, “The New World”, and “The InnKeepers”, all of which Walter seems to love because they… why? Actually, I’m sorry. Seriously. Why the fuck?) any day of the week.
And the reason the same actors played different characters is – ya know – kinda built into the premise of cyclical human history and reincarnation? Not always successfully done, but not real difficult to understand why it was attempted. Yes, the philosophy is simple, though not all of it naive – just as simply because something is convoluted and complicated on the surface doesn’t automatically make it inherently worthy of study.
I agree with Kevin that there was no Magic Negro. He was a good sailor, and a perceptively good (not to mention hot) friend who changed someone’s mind about slavery. That’s it. How is that offensive? And when contained within it is commentary that seems intrinsic to the overall themes of the whole movie, how is that storyline not worth pursuing?
There was, of course, no need for black face. But in all honestly, I wouldn’t have been opposed to it, though I am white so admittedly disqualified from even proffering that as an option. The only reason they didn’t do it while continuing to do yellowface was not because they couldn’t have done it without being culturally insensitive, but because Al Sharpton and Spike Lee would have had a field day, and there are (fortunately) no Asian equivalents to those ass-clowns.
That the Wachowskis self-financed this gives me a little fucking hope that someone, somewhere is committed to making large-budget movies that challenge us with big ideas wrapped in equally challenging, but always exciting, narratives – not just commercial monstrosities that challenge us to keep our IQs, or to stay awake.
The fact that Walter has the nerve to make comparisons to reference to Solzhenitsyn’s imprisonment in the middle of this as a form of irony, but not the nail-clawing actual prison sequence in the middle of horrendously interminable – and boring as all shit – “The Dark Knight Rises”, is selective fucking memory if I’ve ever seen it.
Oh, and “The Field Where I Died” might have made even *me* cry, but that was rightfully considered one of the worst, most boring episodes of “The X Files” produced during the Duchovny years. I’ll give him this – for the kind of work he heaps praise on, at least Walter’s consistent.
Just didn’t realize he was so sensitive about critics being attacked. There, there, Jon Lovitz. Perhaps we should all grow a thicker skin.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/im-sorry-but-ive-had-just-about-enough-of-me,30925/
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This movie was beautiful, exciting, and it moved me greatly. I’ll take an incredibly mounted, flawed amalgam of both pretentious and sentimental philosophy with beautifully-paced action (such as this or “Watchmen”), over excrescently boring, pretentious dogshit about absolutely nothing (like “The Fountain”, “The New World”, and “The InnKeepers”, all of which Walter seems to love because they… why? Actually, I’m sorry. Seriously. Why the fuck?) any day of the week.
And the reason the same actors played different characters is – ya know – kinda built into the premise of cyclical human history and reincarnation? Not always successfully done, but not real difficult to understand why it was attempted. Yes, the philosophy is simple, though not all of it naive – just as simply because something is convoluted and complicated on the surface doesn’t automatically make it inherently worthy of study.
I agree with Kevin that there was no Magic Negro. He was a good sailor, and a perceptively good (not to mention hot) friend who changed someone’s mind about slavery. That’s it. How is that offensive? And when contained within it is commentary that seems intrinsic to the overall themes of the whole movie, how is that storyline not worth pursuing?
There was, of course, no need for black face. But in all honestly, I wouldn’t have been opposed to it, though I am white so admittedly disqualified from even proffering that as an option. The only reason they didn’t do it while continuing to do yellowface was not because they couldn’t have done it without being culturally insensitive, but because Al Sharpton and Spike Lee would have had a field day, and there are (fortunately) no Asian equivalents to those ass-clowns.
That the Wachowskis self-financed this gives me a little fucking hope that someone, somewhere is committed to making large-budget movies that challenge us with big ideas wrapped in equally challenging, but always exciting, narratives – not just commercial monstrosities that challenge us to keep our IQs, or to stay awake.
The fact that Walter has the nerve to make comparisons to reference to Solzhenitsyn’s imprisonment in the middle of this as a form of irony, but not the nail-clawing actual prison sequence in the middle of horrendously interminable – and boring as all shit – “The Dark Knight Rises”, is selective fucking memory if I’ve ever seen it.
Oh, and “The Field Where I Died” might have made even *me* cry, but that was rightfully considered one of the worst, most boring episodes of “The X Files” produced during the Duchovny years. I’ll give him this – for the kind of work he heaps praise on, at least Walter’s consistent.
Just didn’t realize he was so sensitive about critics being attacked. There, there, Jon Lovitz. Perhaps we should all grow a thicker skin.
lol. somebody forgot to take their meds
lol. somebody forgot to take their meds
lol. somebody forgot to take their meds
Dan, if you’re trying to be taken seriously and not just venting then the cheap jabs about Walter’s presumed appearance (and…lack of pictures on the Internet?) as well as the angry yelling don’t help. Even if you have a point worth making there’s no way anyone’s going to pay much attention when you’re screaming.
Dan, if you’re trying to be taken seriously and not just venting then the cheap jabs about Walter’s presumed appearance (and…lack of pictures on the Internet?) as well as the angry yelling don’t help. Even if you have a point worth making there’s no way anyone’s going to pay much attention when you’re screaming.
Dan, if you’re trying to be taken seriously and not just venting then the cheap jabs about Walter’s presumed appearance (and…lack of pictures on the Internet?) as well as the angry yelling don’t help. Even if you have a point worth making there’s no way anyone’s going to pay much attention when you’re screaming.
@RJH,
At this point, I don’t care to be taken seriously on this or any site, especially since I doubt anyone gives a shit what I think. Which is as it should be – I’m not a published writer (presently), and I’m certainly no movie critic (thank fucking God).
But speaking of “seriously,” you honestly think *I’m* yelling and screaming? Good lord, have you read what people write on these things? Go on Yahoo! and read any average forum response and try to maintain your respect for human decency. At least I’m not a fucking halfwit. I would say, in fact, that while I’m nowhere near his intellectual equal, I’m just as bitter, mean, and spiteful as Walter is in virtually every one of his reviews – except for the ones where we need tread carefully, lest we slip on his spilled semen.
Oh, and I did finally find a picture of our dear old critic. Just as I suspected – Big fat fucking shocker.
I might feel badly pointing this out, except that I have to hear how hot he thinks every other actress is (I distinctly remember him commenting on how much he wanted to fuck someone – probably Naomi Watts. The image is not a pleasant one.) Shallowness abounds, and I’m not above pointing out the fat nerdy asshole for what he is. Because, as I said, that used to be me. (Maybe the asshole part never went away – but if not, then I’m in very good company).
The bottom line is that I actually care a LOT about film (hence all the vitriol and emotion), so if my open divorce letter to Walter was bitter and mean, it’s because I clearly care that much.
And on that note… I’m off to write movies and shows that I now truly, genuinely hope Walter totally hates. ‘Cause if and when that happens, I will feel vindicated not only that I’m making stuff *I* like, but that I’ll actually have made something – not just pissed all over someone else’s shit.
@RJH,
At this point, I don’t care to be taken seriously on this or any site, especially since I doubt anyone gives a shit what I think. Which is as it should be – I’m not a published writer (presently), and I’m certainly no movie critic (thank fucking God).
But speaking of “seriously,” you honestly think *I’m* yelling and screaming? Good lord, have you read what people write on these things? Go on Yahoo! and read any average forum response and try to maintain your respect for human decency. At least I’m not a fucking halfwit. I would say, in fact, that while I’m nowhere near his intellectual equal, I’m just as bitter, mean, and spiteful as Walter is in virtually every one of his reviews – except for the ones where we need tread carefully, lest we slip on his spilled semen.
Oh, and I did finally find a picture of our dear old critic. Just as I suspected – Big fat fucking shocker.
I might feel badly pointing this out, except that I have to hear how hot he thinks every other actress is (I distinctly remember him commenting on how much he wanted to fuck someone – probably Naomi Watts. The image is not a pleasant one.) Shallowness abounds, and I’m not above pointing out the fat nerdy asshole for what he is. Because, as I said, that used to be me. (Maybe the asshole part never went away – but if not, then I’m in very good company).
The bottom line is that I actually care a LOT about film (hence all the vitriol and emotion), so if my open divorce letter to Walter was bitter and mean, it’s because I clearly care that much.
And on that note… I’m off to write movies and shows that I now truly, genuinely hope Walter totally hates. ‘Cause if and when that happens, I will feel vindicated not only that I’m making stuff *I* like, but that I’ll actually have made something – not just pissed all over someone else’s shit.
@RJH,
At this point, I don’t care to be taken seriously on this or any site, especially since I doubt anyone gives a shit what I think. Which is as it should be – I’m not a published writer (presently), and I’m certainly no movie critic (thank fucking God).
But speaking of “seriously,” you honestly think *I’m* yelling and screaming? Good lord, have you read what people write on these things? Go on Yahoo! and read any average forum response and try to maintain your respect for human decency. At least I’m not a fucking halfwit. I would say, in fact, that while I’m nowhere near his intellectual equal, I’m just as bitter, mean, and spiteful as Walter is in virtually every one of his reviews – except for the ones where we need tread carefully, lest we slip on his spilled semen.
Oh, and I did finally find a picture of our dear old critic. Just as I suspected – Big fat fucking shocker.
I might feel badly pointing this out, except that I have to hear how hot he thinks every other actress is (I distinctly remember him commenting on how much he wanted to fuck someone – probably Naomi Watts. The image is not a pleasant one.) Shallowness abounds, and I’m not above pointing out the fat nerdy asshole for what he is. Because, as I said, that used to be me. (Maybe the asshole part never went away – but if not, then I’m in very good company).
The bottom line is that I actually care a LOT about film (hence all the vitriol and emotion), so if my open divorce letter to Walter was bitter and mean, it’s because I clearly care that much.
And on that note… I’m off to write movies and shows that I now truly, genuinely hope Walter totally hates. ‘Cause if and when that happens, I will feel vindicated not only that I’m making stuff *I* like, but that I’ll actually have made something – not just pissed all over someone else’s shit.
One day, Walter Chaw, I’m gonna be a big time movie writer (even though I am not a published writer, presently), and I’m gonna write movies that will make so much money that your piddly one-star reviews won’t even matter! And then you’ll be sorry! You’ll be sorry!!!!
One day, Walter Chaw, I’m gonna be a big time movie writer (even though I am not a published writer, presently), and I’m gonna write movies that will make so much money that your piddly one-star reviews won’t even matter! And then you’ll be sorry! You’ll be sorry!!!!
One day, Walter Chaw, I’m gonna be a big time movie writer (even though I am not a published writer, presently), and I’m gonna write movies that will make so much money that your piddly one-star reviews won’t even matter! And then you’ll be sorry! You’ll be sorry!!!!