The Best Things I watched in 2010

An end of year list - of course! Here is a run down of the films that I found hit the mark with me, excelled, etc. Some are new, some are old... 25 favourites in no particular order:

1. Where the Wild Things Are - (Spike Jonz, USA, 2009)
2. The Road - (John Hillcoat, USA, 2009)
3. A Prophet - (Jacques Audiard, France/Italy, 2009)
4. Kick-Ass - (Matthew Vaughn, USA, 2010)
5. A Serious Man - (Coen brothers, 2009, USA/UK/France)
6. Afterschool - (Antonia Campos, USA, 2008)
7. The House of the Devil - (Ti West, USA, 2009)
8. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - (Phil Lord & Chris Miller, 2009)
9. Lake Tahoe - (Fernando Eimbcke, Meixco/Japan/USA, 2008)
10. Do You Remember Dolly Bell? - (Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia, 1981)
11. Martyrs - (Pascal Laugier, France/Canada, 2008)
12. Diamonds of the Night / Démanty noci - (Jan Nemec, Czechoslovackia, 1964)
13. A Swedish Love Story / En kärlekshistoria - (Roy Andersson, Sweden, 1970)
14. Valley of the Bees / Údolí vcel - (Frantisek Vlácil, Czechoslovackia, 1968)
15. The Cremator / Spalovac mrtvol - (Juraj Herz, Czechoslovackia, 1969)
16. Libero (Along the Ridge) / Anche libero va bene - (Kim Rossi Stuart, Italy, 2006)
17. The Bridge / Die Brücke - (Bernhard Wicki, West Germany, 1959)
18. Box (Three... Extremes) - (Takashi Miike, Japan, 2004)
19. Picnic at Hanging Rock - (Peter Weir, Australia, 1975)
20. Valerie and her week of wonders / Valerie a týden divu - (Jaromil Jires, Czechoslovachia, 1970)
21. Barry Lyndon - (Stanley Kubrick, UK/USA, 1975)
22. House of Voices / Santa Ange - (Pascal Laugier, France, 2004)
23. Waltz With Bashir / Vals im Bashir - (Ari Folman, Israel (et al.), 2008)
24. The White Ribbon / Das weisse Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte - (Michael Haneke, 2008, Germany (et al.), 2009)
25. Deadwood - (TV: all of it)

What have I learnt from this list? That I apparently discovered the Czech new wave in a big way and that I obviously think Pascal Laugier is one fine horror director.

_____

And ten more of note that I liked or found of note -

Scott Pilgrim Versus The World

We Are What We Are

Four Lions

La Antea

Life During Wartime

The Girl Next Door

In The Loop

Pontypool

Moon

My Way Home / Így jöttem

___

And the worst that I saw this year... and yes, they are horror films.

The Unborn

Pirahna 3-D

Death Tunnel

TEN FILM MUSCIAL MOMENTS

ANIMAL FACTORY

~ Steve Buscemi, 2000, USA

"Rapture" ~ Antony

So you’re just settling into this prison drama with some top notch acting, and a terrible backdrop of decay, barely suppressed violence and rape, when suddenly there’s Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, crooning in his otherworldy quaver to a bunch of hardened convicts. Tony Trejo’s reaction is priceless. It’s a wonderful, almost surreal lull in an otherwise realist and straightforward character drama. Later, another band does a straightforward rock number, but it isn’t the same at all. One can only wonder what Anthony did to end up in that hellhole.

*

PARANOID PARK

~ Gus Van Sant, 2007, USA

"I Can Help" ~ Billy Swan

In "Elephant", Gus Van Sant has his teens walk the corridors of school to a underlying, unsettling, slightly industrial ambient bed of noise: the sound of impending nightmares. Here in "Paranoid Park", the tone of the film is dreamy and flowing so that when our troubled skater protagonist is called to the office and he steps out from class to walk the halls in slow motion, that he is accompanied by such a compressed gorgeous organ sound, such a fresh, bright blast of pop such as "I Can Help" is almost like painting the whole somnambulist world yellow and shaking a bottle of lemonade over it. The different tempos between the youth walking (artificially slowed) and the music provide a frission that is hard to put the finger on, but it feels inspired and almost novel as a choice, even if the song title is more a less-than-subtle metaphor for adults trying to reach alienated teenagers.

*

BLUE VELVET & MULHOLLAND DRIVE

~ David Lynch, 1986 & 2001, USA & France/USA

"In Dreams" & "Crying" ~ Roy Orbison

Firstly, I have traced my very first favourite song to be Orbison’s "In Dreams". At junior school age, I inherited my mother’s music collection, and I have always, always loved this song. It still floors me with its longing, it’s rising melodrama and Orbison’s peerless vocal delivery slowly rising out of the untypical arrangement. No chorus here. "It’s too bad it always seems it only happens in my dreams", he sings with a resigned sobriety that roots this operatic sorrow firmly down to earth. In David Lynch’s "Blue Velvet", Dean Stockwell gives a gloriously mannered karaoke performance of Orbison’s timeless classic. Creepy and funny and delicious all at the same time.

Lynch uses another Orbison classic to send "Mulholland Drive" into otherworldly bliss. This time, Rebekah Del Rio steps onto a stage, unaccompanied, to sing "Crying". In Spanish. With a showstopping voice and a little reverb, this acapella version brings time to a standstill and acts like a black hole for all the sadness in the world.

*

WEST BEIRUT / West Beyrouth (À l'abri les enfants)

~ Ziad Doueiri, France/Norway/lebanon/Belgiun

"Rock Your Baby" ~ George MacCrae

The use of "Rock Me Baby" comes so without warning that it is a total tonal shock halfway into "West Beirut". In this war-torn setting, one of our young rascalish protagonists puts needle to vinyl and out comes this blast of Western disco joy. To these characters, it’s a foreign promise of another world and the promise of good times, a mid-tempo shake-and-boogie of adolescent desire, dance and easy-going fun. It feels out-of-place contextually, so alive and free and totally jubilant. Both sweet and defiant. But rather then taking the neon-drenched night by storm, the guys pop out to the market in the afternoon. Nevertheless, this musical interlude ends with Tarek going to bed smiling at the day, and the song has been the soundtrack of his casual happiness and hope. It was a good day.

*

MAGNOLIA

~ PT Anderson, 1999, USA

"Wise Up" ~ Aimee Mann

I love "Magonolia": it has one of my favourite opening sequences; lots of clever camerawork (he is good at long, mobile takes) and I dug it as overstuffed drama with some nice acting. It’s okay to like Tom Cruise in this one, honest, because he is good. And then… and then the whole thing to stops to become a Aimie Mann music video for "Wise Up" (as featured in "Jerry Maguire"??). One character sings. So does another. They all sing, telling themselves to wise up. A corpse sings. What the hell? And as if someone has turned over from American Masterpiece channel to MTV, the artifice is made clear, suspension of belief and engagement are batted out the window. A bold move? An incalculable error? I am sure PT Anderson thinks it is the emotional crux of the film, but it’s an aesthetic faux pas that shines the drama into light of self-regarding angst affectation. No… I can’t go with it. I just wait until the film starts properly again. Thankfully, it is almost redeemed by the outrageousness of the frogs.

*

[.REC]

~ Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, Spain, 2007

"Vudú (Extended Version)" ~ Vudu

The sound of the horror film is, apparently, rock music. If you are Oriental horror, it is often slightly creepy pop, but mostly it’s rock. Frequently metal of the old or new school kind. And more often than not, it is not of the atmospheric kind. In those crap teen horrors, you expect it. The use of rock seems to say "HELL YEH!! FUCKIN’ SCARY! FUCKIN’ GORY!! LET’S KICK IT!" A kind of crude egging on from your peers.

That ".Rec" ends with the most inappropriate rock song is nearly an act of total sabotage. It's "Vudú (Extended Version)" by Vudu. Carefully and consummately, the film has cultivated a spiralling into the claustrophobia of horror. It starts with freely walking in airy hallways and ends with scrambling through the dark in corners with no way out… rarely has the finale of a film been so nerve-wracking. It doesn’t have many options available and it doesn’t manage the bluff and odd emotional pay-off of "The Descent", but it ends in real horror. And then the rock song comes and all the atmosphere, mood and horror is dumped as if they really didn’t care after all. A stunning final misstep for an otherwise excellent little horror.

*

8-10...AND REALLY, THEY ARE MUSICALS….

LOLA

~ Jacques Demy, 1961, France
… there are no actual musical dance numbers, but the lightness of touch, and all those sailors, p-leeeessee…

*

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

~ Stanley Kubrick, 1968, UK/USA

The Universe is classical.

*

THE WICKER MAN

~ Robin Hardy, 1973, UK

The sound of horror is folk music. Who knew?

THE MIST

On the story "The Mist"

Stephen King adaptations are a sub-genre unto themselves, and contribute some of the very best and the very worst to horror. I always considered King a kind of Spielberg to horror literature: incredibly popular, evidently artful storyteller and almost completely hobbled by key flaws. In Spielberg it’s the infamous sentimentality; in King it’s a broad crassness and borderline narcissism. Spielberg’s crassest excesses are to all to be found distilled into his one directorial effort so far: "Maximum Overdrive", an ode to dumb popcorn horror so unapologetic, it’s like the dumbest pal you ever had throwing that popcorn at you for feature length between calling you stupid made-up names, laughing obnoxiously and telling you, himself, how dumb and unapologetic he is. That King often misjudges his own strengths is evident simply by comparing Kubrick’s "The Shining" and King’s proposed corrective, his own TV series of the same considerable novel. That King didn’t like Kubrick’s film, and purloined Kubrick’s treatment of key moments, is surely a warning sign that he can miss the point. The whole ending of "It" is also another indicator: it is quite simply one of the most jaw-droppingly bad showdowns in the history of literature.

But to the good: at his best, at his least-self-referential, King is an immensely satisfying read, with a handling of broad character types as sure-footed as Dickens. However illogical and unfocused his stories can be, however annoying and distracting some of his literary tics are, he serves up some solid and highly memorable concepts, conceits, scares and stories. He has a wide enough scope and an irrepressible desire for prose, regardless of actually how good he is. You know, he tries, and he tries hard. He is not, as the CEO of Simon & Schuster once said, "non-literature", no matter his flaws and failures. He is an erratic, unreliable but always tempting brand.

"The Mist" is the novella that opens his anthology "Skeleton Crew", a collection that is dense and full of treats (as opposed to "Night Shift", which is, by the way, a collection of badly written and under-conceived horror snippets). "The Mist" benefits from the briefer length: it lacks those aforementioned tedious tics you find in much of King’s work: for example, the italicised repetitions and catchphrases which trip you up when you are happily trying to walk on. After a violent and destructive storm, a man and his son head for the supermarket to get supplies and find themselves stranded there by a mist full of monsters from ols B-movies, Bosch and Lovecraft. But these monsters are not what King is particularly interested in: rather it is the reaction of a group of people thrown together, trapped and subjected to fear and an undefeatable enemy. The story is populated by standard King-types, all quickly drawn and immediately both broad and convincing, who are then subjected to a sequence of increasingly nasty and upsetting set-pieces. The monsters attack, hysteria sets in, the monsters attack again; some of the people make a failed attempt to get further supplies; more hysteria sets in and there are murmurings about sacrificial offerings… The story is streamlined and meanders only for visions of God and a little angst-of-the-artist: our protagonist is an artist who muses on why does it feel like dying when you realise you are only a good rather than a remarkable artist. But in this piece at least, King seems to know his limitations and leaves the piece open-ended: not in that annoying, "it’s-not-really-over" manner (e.g., "Pet Sematary"), but more like Hitchcock’s "The Birds". There is no conclusion, just a wandering out into the unknowable apocalypse.

On the film "The Mist"

Ever since the cinematic revolution of post-Vietnam unhappy and ironic endings freed by the likes of "Night of the Living Dead", "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Easy Rider", we know that the worst might happen. Frank Darabont’s adaptation of "The Mist" takes King’s concept to its logical conclusion, one that King hints at but did not bring himself to render. The original story leaves itself open-ended: "but you mustn’t expect some neat conclusion", King says, trying to offer up the inconclusive as subversive storytelling. But Darabont takes a throwaway hint, a single sentence, and runs with it. You’ll know the sentence when you read it.

The film has all the ingredients mentioned from the original story and takes its time filling out the set-pieces and turning the screws. It works as a nod to old fashioned monster movies and feels especially resonant of the bright fun-chew horror flicks of the '80s, and not in a bad way. But there are no hammy or camp inclinations here, despite the scenery-chewing of prime villainess Miss Carmody and dodgy CGI tentacles. "The Mist" is deadly serious and ultimately a more successful post-9/11 film than Shyamanlan’s "Signs". "Signs" erred on the side of ‘faith’, and "The Mist" comes like a corrective, carrying a weight of conflict-weariness and the dangerous properties of fear and fear-mongering. There are solid performances, both broad and subtle; some fun if conventional monsters; a real claustrophobia; a credible escalation of character behaviour and drama; some nasty gore; but it’s the ending that elevates "The Mist" into something more troubling and worth discussing.

In going one step further than its source material, Darabont’s "The Mist" (he is also the screenwriter) offers an escalation of bad luck, bad decisions and a sense of deeper horror than just crazy evangelical women and monsters: it offers the horror of your bad luck and your bad decisions occurring when knee-deep in fear and trying to survive an unstoppable threat, if not the end of the world.

It is from this argument - that Darabont is attempting to evoke deeper layers of horror - that I cannot agree with those criticisms that ending of "The Mist" is cheap nihilism, pointless and a cop-out. There is no big showdown, just an excursion into a real feel-bad ending, alleviated only by a beautiful, surreal vision of a gigantic God-like Lovecraftian monster wandering in the mist. The fear is that being saved may not be enough, that it may come too late. This conclusion troubles because it is unfair: in more 'spiritual' terms, they give up hope too early. When we know how test screenings and the pressure for happy, emotionally conclusive endings have ruined many films - not least, the Will Smith "I Am Legend" - Darabont’s insistence on a double-edged resolution seems audacious. I’ll venture that some commentators dismissal of Darabont’s ending stems from a refusal to accept its injustice. But, as I have already said, injustice and bad luck are deep, profound dreads, and that is why Darabont’s "The Mist" adaptation generates emotional horror from a more conventional source.

Note: firstshowing.net reports that King approves of Darabont's ending. The official statement is: "Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead." -