Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
moviegourmet To conclude my 2010 in Movies series, here’s another very fun trend: 2010 brought us more food-centric films than any year in memory: I Am Love (Io sono l’amore), Mid-August Lunch, The Kings of Pastry, Today’s Special, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle House and Soul Kitchen. The Movie Gourmet approves of this trend.
You can get the idea here from I Am Love‘s trailer. Check out the plate of glazed prawns about 58 seconds into the trailer.
Here’s my list of 10 Food Porn Movies.
2010 continued a trend of really good recent crime dramas. This year, most of them came from overseas: The Secrets in Their Eyes (Argentina) won the most recent Best Foreign Language Oscar and A Prophet (France) and Ajami (Palestine/Israel) were nominated.
All three made my list of the year’s best movies and my list of Best Recent Crime Dramas.
We also had other strong imports in this genre: the Mesrine films (France), Animal Kingdom (Australia) and Mother (Korea).
The best American crime drama was The Town, in which the rockin’ first two acts were betrayed by a sappy and implausible climax.
Here’s the trailer for Ajami, an ultra-realistic crime drama set in a scruffy neighborhood in Jaffa, Israel. The story weaves together Arab Christians and Arab Muslims and both religious and non-religious Israeli Jews. Everyone aspires to make a living and live in personal safety, but the circumstances and tribal identities make this very difficult at best. There are two trans-religious romances, but no one is going to live happily ever after. Ajami was co-written and co-directed by Scandar Copti, a Jaffa-born Palestinian, and Yaron Shoni, an Israeli Jew. After seeing the film, I was surprised to learn that it has no trained actors – all of the roles are played by real-life residents who improvised their lines to follow the story line.
In this 2010 thriller, George Clooney plays an international master assassin. He lives a life of crushing loneliness. Anyone who gets close to him will either die or betray him. He is exhausted by years of perpetual vigilance, unnourished by human affection. I remember this loneliness from my own years as an international master assassin.
Clooney’s character is written and played well. This is a smart, arty film that transcends its hackneyed set-up: the assassin takes One Last Job and encounters some beautiful, available and potentially dangerous women who may be Up To No Good. The climax reminds me of the greatest assassin movie, Day of the Jackal.
For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
1. I couldn’t see some of the Cannes and Sundance Festival favorites because they haven’t been released where I live: Poetry, Certified Copy, Uncle Boonmee, Cane Toads: The Conquest, Aurora, The Princess of Montpensier.
2. After director Niels Arden Opley’s super rockin’ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the second and third films in Stieg Larsson’s Milenium trilogy were dragged down by plodding director Daniel Alfredson.
3. The 2004 French action movie District B13 introduced us to thrilling parkour and was an original, offbeat spectacle. But this year’s sequel District 13: Ultimatum was cartoonish and very, very dumb.
4. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps: First of all, I hoped that the movie was going to be primarily about the Michael Douglas characterization of Gordon Gekko – which Douglas knocked out of the park yet again. Will someone explain to me why Shia LaBeouf seems to be a movie star? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Second, the screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking). Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout. The movie’s payoff (things will turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behave) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.
5. No one could find a better vehicle for the sublime Amy Adams than the execrable Leap Year?
6. Pirate Radio: Has Philip Seymour Hoffman been in a worse film?
7. From the trailer and the buzz, I thought that The Kids Are All Right was shaping up to contend for Best Picture. It’s a good movie with a wonderful performance by Annette Bening, but it didn’t fulfill its promise as one of the year’s best.
8. I really wanted to like Ireland’s animated The Secret of Kells, but it was a snoozer.
9. The German comedy Soul Kitchen had a fun trailer (that contained the actually funny three minutes in the entire film).
10. Shutter Island: Marty, what were you thinking?
One of the most rewarding aspects of watching movies is seeing the emergence of new talent. Here are some pleasant surprises from the past year.
With just her second feature, Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone) has emerged as an important filmmaker to watch. She presented an unflinching look at the Ozark meth dealer subculture without ever resorting to stereotype. Granik hit a home run with every artistic choice, from the locations to the spare soundtrack to the pacing to the casting. I’ll be watching for her next film.
20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence is in every scene of Winter’s Bone. With a minimum of dialogue, she creates a lead character of rarely seen determination.
14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld plays the main character in the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie. Without her performance, the movie could not have been the success that it is, and she has no problem standing up to the likes of Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Matt Damon.
The Swedish actress Noomi Rapace was new to us Americans when she originated the very original character of damaged, angry, master hacker Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Although Rooney Mara will play Lisbeth in the upcoming David Fincher versions, I’m sure that Noomi Rapace will fetch some Hollywood offers.
Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Jonah Hill (Cyrus) showed us that their acting ranges are far wider than previously evident.
Mia Wasilova had a very good year in The Kids Are All Right and Alice in Wonderland. I’m looking forward to see her work in 2011, starting with Restless.
Screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe tried a novel approach in Going the Distance that respected the audience – creating characters like the ones we know in real life, who talk and act like real people do. And, instead of an implausible set-up, the conflict was the real problem of a bi-coastal romance. He wound up writing the year’s best rom com.
Edgar Ramirez carries the 5 1/2 hours of Carlos. I’m sure we’ll see the Venezuelan star soon in a Hollywood vehicle.
Ajami was co-written and co-directed by Scandar Copti, a Jaffa-born Palestinian, and Yaron Shoni, an Israeli Jew. After seeing the film, I was surprised to learn that it has no trained actors – all of the roles are played by real-life residents who improvised their lines to follow the story line. Ajami is a unique project, but I hope that Copti and Shoni continue their collaboration.
Touching Home is a little movie with a big performance by Ed Harris The film was written and directed by and stars the Miller twins, Logan and Noah, who tell the story of their own alcoholic father. The authenticity of the writing and Harris’ performance make this an exceptionally realistic depiction of alcoholism. The Miller twins made the most of their debut, and I look forward to what they do next.
The King’s Speech was directed by Tom Hooper, who also directed John Adams and The Damned United. In this interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, Hooper gives us some nuggets about the making of all three films.
The King’s Speech is on my list of the Best Movies of 2010. John Adams is on my 10 Patriotic Movies. The Damned United is the best soccer movie on my Best Sports Movies.
The Winner: On the same airline flight, I watched the two worst films that I saw in all of 2010, Leap Year and The Tooth Fairy. I had always thought that I could watch the talented and adorable Amy Adams in anything, but the wretchedly written Leap Year proved me wrong. The Tooth Fairy is remarkable as an especially execrable comedy in a year of bad comedies.
Runner-up: Down the row from me at a preview showing of The Town (NOT a bad film), a woman had brought her three-year-old son so he could view the armed robberies, abduction, murders, head shattering battery by rifle butt, spraying AK-47s, the two scenes of sexual intercourse and the threatened rape. Oh, and how about the castration by pistol shot? And the car torchings – do you really want your three-year old to learn how to set your car on fire?
Note: I don’t have a Worst Ten Movie list because, unlike professional critics, I don’t have to see every movie. I do see 75-100 new movies each year, but I try REALLY, REALLY HARD to avoid the bad movies. So my worst movie going experience is always either 1) on an airline flight when I see a movie that I normally wouldn’t; 2) a hyped art film that disastrously falls on its face and/or really pisses me off (The White Ribbon); or 3) something I find on cable TV while channel surfing (Paul Blart: Mall Cop). But usually, the culprit finds its way aboard a long airline flight.
Here’s my list of the best films of 2010: 1) Winter’s Bone; 2) Toy Story 3; 3) The Social Network; 4) The Secrets in their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos); 5) Rabbit Hole; 6) Black Swan; 7) A Prophet (Un Prophete); 8 ) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; 9) Mademoiselle Chambon; 10) (tie) Ajami and Inception.
(Note: I’m saving room for some films that I haven’t yet seen, especially Mike Leigh’s Another Year.)
Continuing with my list of 2010’s best films: The Tillman Story, True Grit, The King’s Speech, The Girl on the Train (La Fille du RER), Inside Job, Fish Tank, The Ghost Writer, Carlos, Fair Game, Hereafter, The Fighter, Solitary Man, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and Sweetgrass.
You can watch the trailers and see my comments on all these films at Best Movies of 2010.
(Further Note: The Secrets in their Eyes, A Prophet and Ajami were nominated for the 2009 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but were widely released in the US in 2010.)
Happy Birthday to my oldest movie buddy. I remember going with you to see Jaws and The Deer Hunter. And Logan’s Run (waiting for Jenny Agutter’s flimsy dress to slip off or at least get wet). We saw The Paper Chase just before I went to law school. Nuggets like St. Jack. Every Jack Nicholson movie for a decade (even The Missouri Breaks and Goin’ South, I think). And, of course, high brow stuff like The Hangover. Lots of movies, lots of good times.
Now it can be told. Around 1964, Kiefer wrote a story about an adventurer archaeologist on a quest for the Ark of the Covenant – 17 years before Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s now on the Internet, so it must be true!
Ripped from the headline! Based on true events! 2010 featured an unusual number of movies based on real people and events, including two of the year’s very best – The Social Network and The King’s Speech.
But there were also Howl, 127 Hours, The Way Back, Fair Game, Carlos, the Mesrine films, Casino Jack and I Love You, Phillip Morris.
Here is the trailer from Carlos, the 5 1/2 hour miniseries on the 70s/80s terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Carlos begins as a playboy who thinks it would be cool to fight for the Palestinians, inadvertently gains some celebrity and LOVES IT. Carlos has a star making performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez who perfectly captures Carlos’ bravado, audacity, vanity, sexiness, delusion and dissolution. I strongly recommend waiting for the DVD release of the full length version (or watching for it to pop up again on Sundance Channel).