Best of the Decade: Film

It’s been a pretty wild ten years, I already discussed some of the larger trends in cinema, but now it’s time to discuss the ten best films of the decade. Yes, there’s still a few more key films to see, but I’m going to go ahead and put the list out now. Read on to find out the best on 00s cinema.

10. Ghost World - This film is the best kind of cross media adaptation. Most movies fail for not getting enough of the book, others, like the recent Watchmen film, failed for bringing nothing new to the table. Ghost World doesn’t try to replace the great comic book on which it’s based, it chooses instead to further flesh out the universe of the comic, and in the process functions perfectly as both a standalone film and as in tandem with the book.

And the film itself is one of the most probing explorations of the way that people in our irony driven culture struggle to express themselves and find meaning in a world where any sincere expression of feeling is considered uncool. Thora Birch seems to have vanished from films, but she was brilliant here, showing us the divide between Edith’s cold, cynical exterior and the lively, emotional person underneath. It’s one of the best depictions of the teenage experience in film, and even as loser heroes and a disdain for the mainstream became commonplace as the decade went on, few films managed to bring the insight and emotion this one did.



9. Waking Life - I’ve been happy to see this film pop up on a few other best of the decade lists, since I sensed a kind of backlash against it in recent years. I love it as a dreamlike meditation on a wide variety of interesting concepts and philosophical issues. I love works that force you think about the way you view the world, and give you new ideas and concepts to ponder. I first saw this movie shortly after reading The Invisibles for the first time, and it was a great followup, bringing me more philosophy and ideas to ponder.

And, despite its non-narrative nature, there is an interesting build and emotional engagement in the film. When Wiley floats away at the end of the film, there’s a sense of transcendence, of surrendering to the dream that may be our entire reality. All this is even without commenting on the film’s strikingly varied visual approach. As one of the speakers says, the most transcendent experience is discussion between two people, to share a part of ourselves with others, and become something more.



8. Donnie Darko - Another film that’s gone through a wave of critical praise and cultural backlash, I watched the film again a few months ago, and while it was clumsier in some ways than I remembered, with a lot of awkward dialogue and some odd plotting choices, it’s still a phenomenal work, an exquisite fusion of the Tibetan book of the dead with a twisted John Hughes universe. It’s a film that elevates the everyday into a transcendent struggle and features a myriad of visual elements that have already become iconic.

On top of the endlessly debatable philosophical elements, the film has a great soundtrack, including fantastic moments set to The Church’s “Under the Milky Way,” and Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Kelly hasn’t quite fulfilled the promise of this film, but as it is, it’s one of the strongest debut features of all time.



7. Inglorious Basterds - I haven’t loved a movie the way I loved Inglorious Basterds in a long time. The film snuck up one, I love Tarantino’s previous work, but weak Cannes buzz and a premise that didn’t thrill me meant I went in with mixed expectations. But, I left with total love for the film. Tarantino’s rambling, episodic narrative style has never been used to better effect, with each chapter building on the next, and altering tones and subject matter while maintaining an intense mastery of suspense.

It’s the final chapter where the film ascends to the level of the sublime, drawing together the film’s many disparate threads into a perfectly staged action climax. The high point for me, and one of the most haunting and beautiful images in cinema was Shoshanna’s post mortem message to the Germans who killed her and her family. The cinema screen igniting as she laughs is an image loaded with endless metaphors, but most importantly is pure emotion in the moment. People talk about the 90s as the decade of Tarantino, but for me, his 00s output is vastly superior.



6. The New World - Terence Malick was hailed as a master after only two films, and it’s amazing that in his twenty year absence from filmmaking, very few people even attempted to make the kind of dreamlike, beautiful films that he specializes in. And, with The New World, he made his masterpiece, an articulate distillation of the themes that consumed his previous films. First off, The New World is as beautiful as any film you’ll see. The way the sun cuts through trees, or reflects off water is astonishing, he manages to so thoroughly immerse you in the edenic world of pre-colonization America that when we finally get to the British civilization at the end of the film, it feels like an utterly alien culture.

But, it’s not just the visuals yet. The romance between John Smith and Pocohontas becomes an allegory for the European romance with the idea of America itself, and in the passage of men like Smith from the world, we see the way that America changed from a blank slate world that could be anything, to an extension of the European society that Smith fled. Smith is someone who crosses between worlds, and through his eyes, we become part of a society that seems initially alien, but is quickly welcoming and beguiling. Colin Farrell is fantastic in the film, but the real star is Q’Orianka Kilcher, who gives one of the decade’s best performances and embodies the spirit of the world Malick created. This film is practically a religious experience, a communion with a world far removed from our own, a dream that echoes down across time and calls us back to an eden long gone.



5. Before Sunset - The second Linklater film on the list has the most of the strengths I discussed earlier with Waking Life, the interesting philosophical concepts and fascinating discussion, but it adds an intense emotional element to the proceedings, so that you’re fully engaged on both an intellectual and emotional level. Sequels have such a bad track record, and particularly with a film as time capsule perfect as Before Sunrise, it seems like there’d be nowhere to go but down. But, in exploring the impact of Jesse and Celine’s meeting in a very real way, the film itself functions as almost a meta comment on our fear that the sequel will ruin what came before. They want to preserve that moment in amber, and let it stand as was, even as they’re drawn back together again. And, so are we, and thankfully, the film eclipses even its stellar predecessor with its probing examination of the way that a great experience has become a haunting emblem of what could be for these characters.

For a film that’s literally just two people talking, it’s extremely intense, winding its way from surface pleasantries and general discussion of themes and issues to an intense examination of what their relationship could be and whether it’s worth the risk for them to try to be together. And, the film’s final moments are a perfect ambiguous coda for these characters, at least until a few more years pass and we hopefully check in with them again.



4. 2046 - Another sequel to an arty film about a man haunted by a brief, but potent love 2046 takes a less direct approach than Before Sunset, but is similarly powerful in its examination of the ghosts that haunt us all. Most people are hailing In the Mood for Love as Wong Kar-Wai’s best film of the decade, and I love that movie too, but for me, In the Mood for Love misses out on a lot of the things that make WKW’s movies so great. It’s much more controlled and unified than his work typically is, a far cry from 2046’s jumbled chronology and mix of allegorical future segments with its period setting.

The whole film is gorgeous, but the future segments in particular are just unbelievable. Faye Wong walking through the train her shoes lighting up as she goes is one of my favorite images from the decade in film. Ultimately, the film is a perfect distillation of WKW’s aesthetic, drawing in elements from all his previous films. It’s such a perfect summation of his talent, he had basically no choice but to do something different after, this is his greatest hits tour, and it’s one of his most enduring and brilliant films.



3. Irreversible - There are some films that are talked about more as endurance tests than as enjoyable experiences, and films like Requiem for a Dream or Fat Girl pushed the boundaries of what an audience can tolerate. But, even those films can’t match the reputation of Irreversible, a film infamous for its ten minute real time rape scene and gruesome fire extinguisher assault. And yes, those are brutal sequences, but just focusing on those scenes ignores the film’s greatest strengths.

Those scenes are brutal on a spectacle level, but they become even more heartbreaking, and powerful, after you see the relationship that Alex and Marcus shared before her assault. Thanks to the backwards narrative structure we watch them going through their daily lives, oblivious to the terrible events awaiting them. Every choice they make puts them closer to the spiral that will destroy their lives, and as you watch, you can’t help but ask what if just one thing had changed. I don’t think that Noe is interested in punishing the audience, so much as upending our typical approach to a revenge movie. Seen in chronological order, the film would be a nihilistic, but emotionally satisfying film. But, seeing it in reverse makes clear how hollow revenge is. Marcus and Pierre’s quest for revenge dooms them and does nothing to heal Alex.

But, in the final moments of the film, you also get some of the most tender and emotionally authentic moments between a couple in any film. Real life couple Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci are fearless throughout and make the film so much more with their performances.

And, I also have to comment on the technical virtuosity of the film. The one take sequences are like nothing ever seen in cinema to date, with virtually every shot in the film featuring some kind of impossible camera move that enhances your experience of the narrative. Noe pushes boundaries, but primarily with the goal of making you feel the story, not just watch it He immerses you in character subjectivity so strongly that it makes people uncomfortable, but it’s also what makes the film a masterpiece.



2. Mulholland Dr. - As I discussed with Wong Kar-Wai and 2046, Mulholland Dr. functions as a career summation for everything Lynch has done to date, incorporating the 50s style and naïve heroines of the Blue Velvet era and blending it with the experiments in narrative subjectivity from Lost Highway to create a perfect Lynch greatest hits film. That’s not to say that it’s redundant though, it’s a refined version of what he’s done before, and comes across as his most well realized film to date.

The ingenious narrative structure has been widely dissected, but it’s notable that even as he plunges through layers of subjective reality, he keeps a coherent emotional throughline so that you can have no idea what happened, but you can understand exactly how it felt. The rambling narrative structure allows for some great vignettes along the way, and the post box sequence manages to cohere them all into a really satisfying single narrative. I love analyzing the film, but ultimately what I love most is Lynch at his best, crafting classic scenes like Betty’s audition or Club Silencio, the scene of the decade. INLAND EMPIRE is brilliant in its own way, but if Lynch never made another film after Mulholland Dr. this would be a perfect coda for his career.



1. Kill Bill Vol. 1 - All this talk of narrative structures and themes is great, but ultimately what we go to the movies for is the experience of singular moments, and no movie was more of a rush or featured as many perfect cinematic moments as Kill Bill Vol. 1. Yes, it’s not as ‘substantial’ as Tarantino’s other films, but it’s such an amazing in the moment experience that you don’t care about substance, you care about the perfect song choices for every scene, or the astonishing action sequences that are so much more satisfying than the typical bunch of cartoon characters fighting sequences we saw in many of this decade’s films.

Kill Bill for me hits that same place that Star Wars does, it’s mythic and archetypal, and a distillation of everyting that you want from a genre film. Most kung-fu movies disappoint you, they’re better in idea than conception. Kill Bill is the greatest kung-fu movie you can imagine and more, mashing up elements of countless other films into a thrilling new whole. I’ve seen the film seven or eight times at this point, and it’s still thrilling every time, best of the decade material for sure.

Best of 2008: Film

10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

This film succeeds both in spite of and because of its excess. At almost three hours, it’s about 20 minutes or a half hour too long, there’s a lot of material that while interesting in and of itself distracts from the film’s core. The center of the film is the relationship between Benjamin and Daisy, and that works wonderfully. The two actors are great as they deal with the frustrating impossibility of being together, as well as the joy of the brief moments when their lives overlap and they can be together. That stuff all works wonderfully, the material surrounding it ranges from strong to distracting. The old age Benjamin stuff works well, but goes on too long, and I found the constant cut backs to the present day framing story distracting. But there’s a haunting magic to the final hour or so that few films can match. I think it’s simultaneously been over and underrated by the film critic world at large, but it’s certainly a top 10 worthy film.

9. Wall-E

Pixar’s second best film (behind only Toy Story 2) is a remarkable piece of visual storytelling. Drawing on the visual language of silent comedy, the film is a cautionary tale about the world we live in, as well as a touching romance, and galaxy spanning sci-fi story. There’s moments of such pure joy in the movie, it’s more exuberant and exciting than anything else this year. I think the film does dip in quality a bit in its more conventional second half, but that’s only because the first half is so strong.

8. Synecdoche New York

Charlie Kaufman’s distinct cinematic voice goes in a more extreme direction than ever before in this film. I think it’s one of the best films of the year, but also extremely flawed in many ways. The second half goes rather off the rails, repeating the same beat over and over again, but the first half is uncanny in its ability to create a really unnerving vision of everyday life. There’s moments that are just disturbing, and the passage of time serves to disorient you in interesting ways. There’s very little difference between dream and reality here, is it a surreal world or are we experiencing the psychotic mind of the film’s protagonist? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The film is an experience, and I’ll definitely give it another look when it turns up on DVD.

7. The Wrestler

It’s less ambitious than the previous three films, but The Wrestler still stands out for its ability to make the everyday life of its protagonist into an epic struggle as large as anything on screen. Cinema can do so many different things, create so many different moods, and put you in different worlds. Most films you talk about in the context of world building are fantasy or sci-fi movies, but Aronofsky is as precise with his details as a Peter Jackson or George Lucas. The choice of music and props places you in this guy’s life, in the ever-growing distance from his glory days. It’s a really well made story that turns everyday life into something huge and meaningful.

6. The Dark Knight

I still have strong feelings against Batman Begins, but this film won me over, primarily due to the chaos incarnate performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker, but also Aaron Eckhart’s virtuous and troubled Harvey Dent. It’s an epic summer blockbuster done in the style of a 70s crime film, and the fusion really works. I don’t think all superhero films should have the self-seriousness of this one, but it works here. The story is epic, it doesn’t always make sense, and there’s some issues with the ending, but the overall takeaway is pretty phenomenal.

5. My Blueberry Nights

Yeah, there’s a lot of haters out there on this one. Even I will concede that it’s not at the level of Wong Kar-Wai’s other films, but there’s still wonderful moments that no one else can create. Wong Kar-Wai uses a different cinematic language than everyone else, and I love the chance to dip into his world for a while. I think he got a bit lost trying to capture some imagined idea of Americana, but there’s a great romanticism to the film, and some of the most beautiful images captured on film this year. And I still love the voiceovers that everyone else called pretentious or overwrought. Just get lost in the movie and then they’ll make sense.

4. Rachel Getting Married

Like The Wrestler, this film uses a ‘realist’ handheld aesthetic, but still manages to turn everyday events into consistently memorable film moments. It’s one of the most exciting and energetic films of the year, ably shifting from deep emotional moments to the simple joy of being together with everyone you know for a wedding. That’s what life is like, it’s not one tone, there’s a lot of emotion inherent in every experience, and we run the full gamut here. Great stuff.

3. Let the Right One In

Vampires have so much metaphoric resonance. On some level, we all exist as drains on the people around us, and the mix of violence and sex inherent in their bite has fueled millions of romances. This film de-dramatizes the traditional vampire narrative and uses it as a way to connect two isolated teenagers in Sweden. Visually, the snowcovered landscapes of the town are amazing, creating this incredibly stark world for everything to happen in. The relationship between the two kids is perfectly realized, and so subtle. It’s not played as a horror story, it’s just these two peoples’ lives, and there happen to be horror elements there. Things happen in a dreamy almost slow motion cadence, and that pace helps draw you in and lets you get lost in the film’s world. It’s one of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen.

2. Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone

This is a hard film to categorize. Is it something new? Is it a remake? Is it a sequel? I think to some degree, it’s all three. It’s a more focused, emotionally clear take on the series’ first six episodes, and it was one of the most exhilarating, emotional experiences I had with a film in 2008. It doesn’t reach the heights of End of Evangelion, but it does a great job of clearing up some of the strange logic issues the series had, and making the emotional arcs a lot clearer early on. I don’t think it replaces the series, but it’s a great supplement, and if I had to start someone with the show, I might just show them this movie first. The animation was beautiful, and the final moments of the film are as haunting a closing as anything on this list. I can’t wait to see where they go with Rebuild 2.0.

1. Australia

This is a film that didn’t get much love from the critical community or audiences, and it baffles me why. No film was a more absorbing emotional experience for me this year than this one. Baz Luhrman has an uncanny ability to create signature movie moments, building the images and music together to sublime emotional crescendos. It was three hours, but still zipped by, and even though the “two films in one” structure meant there was a slight drag in the middle, I was riveted for the vast majority of this film. I don’t think it had the deepest characters or most challenging narrative, but emotionally, the film hit me like no other, and that’s what the best movies do.

Wong Kar-Wai and Christopher Doyle at the Apple Store

Wong Kar-Wai and Christopher Doyle at the Apple Store

Last weekend, I went to see Wong Kar-Wai give a talk about the use of music in his films at the Apple Store in Soho. I was surprised when they announced that Christopher Doyle would be there as well. WKW’s films are so impressionistic, so centered around the moment and emotion that I think it’s hard for him to talk about them in a way that’s particularly revelatory. It’s like talking about how beautiful a sunset is, you can’t really add anything to what the sunset is. The language barrier probably doesn’t help as well.

But, it’s still always fun to hear him speak. His process is very intuitive, very in the moment, and it sounds like he and Doyle had some crazy times on set. Doyle claimed that they were very guerilla with their style, just running around and shooting. The mythology of their relationship is that Doyle and WKW worked together the most on Chungking Express, Fallen Angels and Happy Together, then drifted apart on In the Mood for Love. The frantic energy of those three films is largely about their in the moment capturing of city life, it’s very different than the more mannered approach of WKW’s more recent work.

I consider Fallen Angels the most well shot film of all time, full of shots that just burn themselves into your memory, and one of the examples they showed here was the final moments of the film, when “Only You” plays and the camera zooms along with a motorcycle then drifts off into a smoke filled sky. It’s a perfect fusion of visual and emotion. Doyle seemed like a crazed homeless man at times, it’s hard to connect him with the visuals he manages to capture, but I suppose that’s the paradox of art. David Lynch seems like a nice, normal guy, but his movies are crazy. I think it’s hard for some people to imagine a normal person making a movie as crazy as his stuff, but it makes sense to me. For me, making movies is about a journey through the subconscious, the process of writing is a matter of finding the ideas that stick in my brain, so strange things are always going to filter through to the stories, even if they don’t filter to the outside world.

I’m hoping that WKW and Doyle’s appearance here indicates Doyle’s return for the next WKW movie. My Blueberry Nights dragged a bit on the rewatch, it has great moments, but lacks the energy and life of the best WKW movies. I think he’s at a crossroads after 2046, which was a perfect summation of everything he’d done before. My Blueberry Nights added American actors and setting, but where will he go next? What will his next era of films be?

Either way, I’m eager to see Ashes of Time: Redux this weekend. I love the original, even after seeing it on the worst DVD I’ve ever watched. It needed to be restored, and will hopefully dazzle on the big screen. Expect a review after the screening.

My Blueberry Nights

I’ve been waiting a long time to see Wong Kar-Wai’s new film, My Blueberry Nights. It debuted at Cannes and suffered numerous delays on its way to American theaters. So, I took a detour to Hong Kong DVD. The film has been unjustly maligned by a lot of critics who just don’t understand how Wong Kar-Wai makes films. The reason I love his works isn’t because of the narrative, it’s the way he’s able to create moments like no one else. The images he captures, the feelings he creates, he speaks the language of film in a totally different way than virtually anyone else, and that makes every film of his an absolute joy to watch.

The American setting is certainly a change for WKW, at first it is a bit weird to actually hear his poetic dialogue spoken in English. Some initial exchanges come off a bit unnatural, but give it a couple of scenes and you get in the groove of the film, a place where people speak in flowery metaphors and simultaneously say exactly what they’re feeling and dance around the subject with great skill.

WKW’s previous film shot outside Asia, Happy Together, was consciously about the experience of living somewhere different, culminating in Tony Leung’s triumphant return to Hong Kong. This version of America feels like it’s in the same place as his previous films. Jude Law’s café could be right around the corner from the Midnight Express, and Norah Jones’ Lizzie could easily be the sister of the slightly unhinged Faye Wong character from Chungking.

So, you could argue that this movie is a retread of what he’s done before. Many scenes felt like echoes of his previous films, particularly Chungking and Fallen Angels. The thing is, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. This is WKW’s genre, tales of lonely people moving through cities, seeking connection. I absolutely loved his two 60s films, but it’s nice to see him mix things up and do a movie set in the present, with some of the visual energy of his 90s classics.

If you describe the narrative of the film, it doesn’t sound like anything particularly special, a woman tries to get over a breakup by traveling across the country. It’s in the execution that almost all the value comes from. Christopher Doyle is missing from the project, but his spirit is still here. It feels like half the shots in the movie are shot in the low shutter speed style I named “The Chungking Effect.” The Chungking effect is used to isolate moments, to seemingly freeze time and immerse you deep in the world. The colors in this film are just unparalleled, it feels like neon streaks just hang in the air everywhere we go. Motion blurs and abstracts, it’s absolutely gorgeous.

The visual peak of the film for me is the almost indescribably beautiful conclusion to the Natalie Portman segment of the film, as perfect a moment as film can create. Driving away from Las Vegas, Lizzie and Leslie wave to each other from their cars, the camera perched on the hood, we can see their faces, their emotions. The sun is setting, colors fill the air and Lizzie says something like “I tried to learn to not trust people. Thankfully I failed.” I generally speak about WKW as a visual filmmaker, but he has a way of cutting through the bullshit that we all speak and saying these profound human truths. I loved the sentiment of that phrase and it just cut through me at the end. It was an a really powerful conclusion to the story, a perfect filmic moment.

My one complaint about the visuals in this film has to do with the editing. The cutting speed is a bit quicker than I’d have liked. At times, it feels like he cuts between the beyond real WKW shots and more conventional cinematography, there were a number of times I found myself wanting to linger longer in a beautiful image only to be quickly taken away. That problem arises most during the early scenes with Jude Law and Lizzie, but recurs occasionally throughout. This might be a first viewing problem though, once I see the film a few more times, I won’t need to linger on those images as much.

Watching this movie really shows you what film can do. Virtually every movie, from the most mainstream garbage to Oscar winning acclaimed movies, speaks with the same old Hollywood grammar, focusing on using the images in service of the narrative. That’s a valid approach, but it’s not the only way. Wong Kar-Wai doesn’t use the images to tell you the story, he uses them to make you feel the story, to linger in the emotional moment and engulf you in the world of the film. The only other director doing this is Terence Malick, the two of them speak a totally different language, and it makes their films among the best in the world.

I speak a lot on here about how TV has surpassed film as the primary visual storytelling medium. That’s indisputably true, no two hour movie is going to match the narrative or character complexity of a work like The Wire. But, TV is a less precise medium, when you’re doing a sixty hour story, it’s impossible to make every shot a great one. In a two hour movie, it is possible, it’s possible to create an overwhelming mood that just can’t exist on TV. This movie uses what only a film can do, and that’s why it’s so satisfying an experience. There are so many breathtakingly gorgeous shots in this film, it’s the best shot film I’ve seen since either The New World.

Rather than delve into the story, I’m going to talk about a few scenes that I really loved. Other than that driving scene I mentioned earlier, my favorite scene in the movie is the brief interlude with Jeremy and Cat Power, a.k.a Chan Marshall, a.k.a Katya in the movie. This scene has such a feeling of import, of many years of emotion, and you really feel what the two of them are feeling. Chan reminds me of Tori Amos, she’s got this really zen, Earthy feeling about her. There’s no anger there, just an acceptance of what happened. Norah Jones was generally strong, but had a couple of shaky moments. Chan is right on the entire time and delivers my favorite performance in the whole movie. There’s something so soothing in the way she carries herself, and that scene alone keeps the Jeremy character in the emotional foreground, despite the fact that he’s absent for so much of the film.

Another really exciting moment for me was the sudden appearance of Frankie Faison, a.k.a The Wire’s Burrell. I literally exclaimed “Burrell!” when he appeared. He’s got a sleazier vibe here, and does a nice job. That whole section of the story, with the morning/night parallels was classic WKW.

The structure of the film is designed to show Lizzie that holding onto pain and sorrow only causes sadness, allowing her to free herself from pining for the guy and get together with Jeremy. The movie feels like it could be slotted into that year long gap in Chungking Express, where Tony Leung waits for Faye to return from her journey. It’s about Lizzie growing up and expanding her world. To do so, she has to deal with some very troubled people. She sees the pain in Arnie, the refusal to move on, and realizes that she could become the same. Life gives us pain, but we have to turn it into something better.

I loved the totally different feel of the diner and the bar in those scenes, the optimism of the day and the sad desperation of the night. I’ve heard some people cracking on Rachel Weisz’s performance in the movie, but I think she’s great. Wong Kar-Wai movies have a different kind of acting than others, one where the emotions float a bit closer to the surface, and I think all these actors do a great job with it.

And, Wong Kar-Wai is able to make people look beautiful and glamorous in a way no other director can. I love simple details, like Lizzie’s straw hat, Leslie’s red glasses, the way the hair falls over Sue Lynn’s eyes when she speaks to Lizzie at the end. He makes Norah Jones look like the most beautiful woman in the world, and at times, the saddest. WKW once said there’s nothing so compelling as a woman crying, and the way he shoots her, that’s true.

The casino section is another great one, pitting the totally cynical Natalie Portman character against the gullible and trusting Lizzie. I think the poker scenes have a touch of cliché about them, we’ve seen this kind of material before, but I love the second half of the story, when they’re on the road, and Leslie finds out her father has died. It’s the kind of moment that only WKW can do, she doesn’t behave like a normal person, her total disbelief that he could be dying heightens the emotional impact of what’s happening. I really like the scene where her and Lizzie lie in bed together and try to understand each other. I’ve already mentioned the closing bit, where they drive away from each other, but it deserves a repeat, it’s just unbelievably beautiful.

Watching a WKW film set in America makes you realize how much he transforms the places he shoots. His New York looks more like the fantasy Hong Kong of his previous movies than the place I live in, the blurred subway cuts through a city that feels a block over from the killer’s apartment in Fallen Angels. Even when he gets out of NYC, he keeps things inside, there’s not that much distinctly American about the environs. It’s the same dreamspace.

The one element of the film that feels distinctly American is the music. WKW uses music as well, if not better than any other director around, but this film felt a bit underscored. I’m not as big a fan of the rootsy American sound he’s got here as of the hyperpop scores for Chungking and Fallen Angels. I loved the scene set against Cat Power’s “The Greatest,” but there were a number of moments where I would have liked a bit more music.

Ultimately, this is a Wong Kar-Wai movie, and it has all the greatness that entails. People still have this misconception that great films must be about weighty things, about death and destruction and history being made. But, the emotional journey of a single human being can be as profound as any of those things when you’re allowed to emotionally engage with that journey. WKW shoots this film in such a powerful and engulfing way, it makes virtually every other film out there pale in comparison. I’m sure a lot of reviews will compare the film to the sugary, but substance free confection of the title, but in this case, the style is the substance because the style is what gives the film its emotional heft. Told in a ‘traditional’ style, this wouldn’t be a particularly notable movie, but a WKW movie is about the moment, not the arc, and the moments here are as wonderful as anything he’s captured on film.

So, he’s far beyond pretty much every other filmmaker out there, how does this film stack up against his own work? I don’t think it’s his best work, it lacks the total emotional devastation of 2046, and can’t quite match the reckless pop energy and exhilaration of Chungking and Fallen Angels. I’d say it’s closer to something like Days of Being Wild. Unlike a lot of people, I think 2046 is one of his best movies, but it was so consumed in a specific aesthetic, it’s nice to see him scale back and do something else. I’d been waiting for this one for years, and I wasn’t disappointed at all. He’s still the world’s best filmmaker, and in my opinion, the best filmmaker of all time.

With no new project yet confirmed, it could be a while before we get new WKW. What I’m really waiting for now is that new cut of Ashes of Time. I love that movie so much, but I feel like I haven’t really seen it, due to the unbelievably shitty DVD transfer of the only available version. Hopefully they’ll get that together, and get Blueberry a theatrical release here in the States, I’d love to see it on the big screen.

Film in 2007: A Medium in Flux

The past few years, I’ve made a bunch of posts about the changing relationship between cinema and television, and with each passing year, the visual works that have really amazed me have been more and more on TV. This year is being called a great year for movies, but I haven’t seen one movie that I really loved, a movie that I could wholeheartedly recommend to people as a great cinematic experience. We’re approaching the end of the year, and I haven’t seen one truly great movie, and only a few really good ones.

Last week, I saw No Country for Old Men, a movie that’s being called the best film of the year by a wide range of critics. Personally, I liked the film better the first time the Coens made it when it was a pop, scrappy B movie called Blood Simple. No Country isn’t a bad movie, but it never gave me a charge. The plot wasn’t predictable, but the film style was. Once I figured out there was no music, and they were shooting from a restrained, objective style, I just sort of settled in, and was never really wowed again. Was I surprised by developments late in the film? Yes, but the problem is, as a two hour film, it’s hard to make me engage with the characters in a way that makes me really care about that surprise.

It’s a loose connection, drugs mainly, but watching the film, none of the characters had half the pizzazz of even minor players on The Wire. The thing that long form TV shows can do that features can’t is let the characters just exist. In screenwriting, tightness is admired. If you put a gun on the wall in the first act, it’s got to go off in the third act. The mother in this film has to factor in later because she’s talked about early on. At this point, it takes a truly fucking amazing story to make me care about the characters in a film.

The thing that changed that was watching long form TV series. The best TV shows create fully realized world. In The Wire, a character can just be there, not serving a narrative purpose, rather existing until he’s needed again. Someone like Bodie doesn’t need to be in the show after the first season, but he’s an interesting character, and it’s nice to spend time with him. The gun on the wall doesn’t have to fire in the third act, maybe it just looks nice on the wall.

I think Bodie, to choose a random example, is a more interesting character than Welyn because Welyn is always subject to the needs of the narrative. Because the film is only two hours, shortcuts are used to show us who he is. We see the truck, we see his home life, we know the guy. But, we don’t really. We’re dropped in at a point in his life when something interesting happens. The longform nature of The Wire means that we can really become a part of the characters’ lives, and understand their entire world. There’s story that happens, but the real point of the work is to create a world.

Those shows have been so successful that they’ve turned narrative cinema as we knew it in the past into a second rate medium. It baffles me that a film like No Country could get so much enthusiasm, is a competently executed film enough to make people go nuts, to be ranked the sixteenth greatest film ever made on IMDB?! The filmmaking is solid, but solid isn’t exciting. I don’t get a charge out of watching a “well made” film because I can watch a well made epic in The Wire. On TV, there’s less of a need for showy craft because they can create truly interesting and fully developed characters and worlds. In a movie, just telling a story in well done way doesn’t do it anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love movies, I just think they have to operate in a different way. TV has taken over stories, that’s gone as we knew it. What movies can do is tell stories in a way that TV can’t. That’s where style comes in. Wong Kar-Wai is the template for me, his films are not narrative based, instead they are about using film style to represent character emotion and create a really visual filmic experience. His movies could not be done on TV because they are about perfectly executed dazzling setpieces that immerse you deeply in platonic concepts of emotion. Looking at 2046, there is a narrative in there, but the specifics are stripped back to instead leave you with this overwhelming emotional force. It’s a perfect use of what only cinema can do.

Miami Vice is another great example of this, a film that also falls in the territory of The Wire. However, unlike The Wire, it chooses to dwell in an emotional place. The camerawork draws you into the characters’ lives and provides a constant string of visual spectacle. The visuals and music are entertaining, without any narrative attached to them, but the real purpose is to use these enveloping visuals to make us feel the relationship between Isabella and Sonny.

Looking at this year, the best movie so far has been Death Proof. What Death Proof did was decentralize the narrative and instead let us just hang out with the girls in the first half. The specifics conflict is not really spelled out, instead we just get the emotion of moments like Julia texting her boyfriend. And, throughout Tarantino is wowing us with the spectacle of his dialogue and the pitch perfect cinematography and musical choices. He is showing us a place and letting us hang out there. Narrative occasionally enters the film, but the real focus is the hanging out.

Planet Terror, its grindhouse counterpart, is another fantastic film. This was a movie that went so far over the top, the joy is in watching Rodriguez push his film to comical, grotesque heights. In both Terror and Death Proof, there’s so much joy in the filmmaking itself, such a love of the material, it’s infectious. It’s this pop fantasia that separates those films from most horror films.

Other than that, there’s not much to speak about for this year. I saw There Will Be Blood the other day, which I can’t fully review for a couple of weeks thanks to a press blackout, but I’ll just say that it lacks the pop dynamism of Anderson’s other films, and is marred by an awfully hammy Daniel Day Lewis performance. Rather than use film technique to let us feel character emotion, as in Magnolia, Anderson just lets Lewis go nuts, to the point that he completely loses touch with reality. I never at one point got the sense that this was not a performance, that it was a real person. It baffles me that he’s in consideration for a best actor award, the guy should get some cheese to go with that ham.

It disappointed me because there were some great moments in there, but again, critics are hailing Anderson for the film’s “maturity,” which is a code word for boring, unobtrusive filmmaking. When you can do much with the medium, just sitting back and letting things happen is pointless. I don’t want minimalism, I want filmmaking that creates stirring emotional moments, the sort of filmic crescendos you can only get in movies. Look at a moment like Pocohontas’s arrival in England in The New World, that is a just awe inspiring moment because of the full combination of screenwriting, shot choice, music choice and performance. You couldn’t get that awe if you used a more minimalist style.

To use Anderson’s own work, what makes Magnolia so special is the way cinematic technique is used to make us emotionally engage with these characters. Look at the audacious “Wise Up” sequence, that sequence gets to me so much, and just those elegant, silent push in shots of the characters do so much. Blood lacks that grandeur, it’s like Anderson saw his sets and decided he didn’t have to do anything more, just sit back and film it. Coming off the formal experimentation and virtuosity of his past three films, it’s distressing to watch him retreat to a more hands off style.

It’s not mature to make movies like that, it’s that adolescent notion that ‘realism’ is somehow more valid than fantasy. Wong Kar-Wai movies may not look like the real world, but they feel like my subjective experience of reality. There are moments in Miami Vice that feel like what I’ve done in my own life, and that’s what cinema can do, that TV cannot, capture our internal feelings. But, it can only be done through the use of film technique that can be considered “showy” or “intrusive.” But, believe me, the unreality of the “Wise Up” sequence pales in comparison to the unreality of Lewis’s film closing histrionics. It’s particularly disappointing coming off the lighter, but still magical Punch Drunk Love, a decidedly underrated film.

So, if this is a great movie year, what are the great movies? What do I need to see that I missed? People who’ve read the blog know my taste, so perhaps they could recommend this year’s Domino, the kind of crazy, but great film that can slip through the cracks.

There's Only One Sun

This film dropped out of nowhere for me. I was going around online, saw a link to it on Youtube and figured I’d check it out. Ten minutes later, I was once again in awe of the greatest filmmaker in the world. Making what’s ostensibly an advertisement for a flatscreen TV, Wong Kar-Wai delves back into the robot world of 2046 and spins another dizzying tale of identity and ennui under gorgeous neon lights.

If I was to ask someone to make a short film for me, I don’t know that they could make something perfect for this. It consists almost entirely of elements that I love. For one, Wong Kar-Wai is directing, with a ton of his signature elements in place. The voiceover ponders identity questions and lulls you into a moody haze, perfectly complimenting the music and visuals to build atmosphere. Watching Wong Kar-Wai movies always makes me want to use voiceover in my own work, since he pulls it off so effortlessly, these beautiful words flowing from the characters.

The plot revolves a female robot operative who poses as a blind woman to track down a man called The Light. The story doesn’t really matter though, it’s really about the desire she has, to see him even after he’s gone. The light is secret, and she can only find him in her memories, represented through the screen. Much like the jukebox in Fallen Angels, the TV screen here becomes a center of erotic desire. The woman is practically fucking the TV at the end of the ad, literally trying to get lost in her memories. This ties in with the themes in all his work, 2046 in particular. That work was all about living in memories, and the inability to deal with the present.

A lot of the sci-fi ideas from 2046 crop up here. We’ve got those amazing shoes that light up when they touch the ground. Those shoes alone have more style than pretty much every other film I’ve seen this year. Nobody makes his characters look as glam as Wong Kar-Wai. I love the red trenchcoat, and the black outfit the woman’s wearing when sitting on the bed. Even the odd future headcovering at the end works. And, the hair style is fantastic, looking like 1920s Edith Manning from The Invisibles, the hair has a kind of plastic quality. She’s gorgeous, in a specifically Wong Kar-Wai kind of way.

But, it’s not just the woman who’s gorgeous, the cinematography here is just so lush and moody. Even on a crappy Youtube video, you get lost in it. The neon lights and colors seem to hang in the air, palpable mood. I love those halls filled with neon colors and the out of focus shadows drifting through them. Combined with the same haunting songs from 2046, and we’ve got a lost chapter of that movie.

It really frustrates me that we’ve never gotten a definitive DVD, with deleted material from those future segments. The robot story with Faye Wong is my favorite thing in any Wong Kar-Wai movie. As this film shows, he approaches the genre in a really unique way. He turns it into an allegorical playground for emotion. The odd characters maximize the feelings involved, turning individual romantic conflicts into emotional drama that plays on the nature of humanity itself. That’s what the genre at its best can do, and Wong Kar-Wai has proved himself the heir to classic 70s sci-fi cinema.

It had been a while since I’d seen new Wong Kar-Wai material, and this one just popped out of nowhere to dazzle. It’s a perfect short, and I really hope to get a DVD quality version at one point so it’s even easier to get lost in.

2007 Movie Preview

2006 was a pretty good year for cinema, a lot of my favorite directors had projects coming out, and most of them turned out quite good. And next year looks like it should have an equally exciting plethora of new films to delight and enthrall.

10. Electroma - This is Daft Punk's film about a robot's quest to be human. It's supposedly very experimental, and seems like the kind of thing that could be either great or tedious depending on your mood. But, I love the trailer and I'm very curious to see what they do as film directors. I'm not sure what the status of this is, it showed at Cannes back in May, but I havent' seen much since. Hopefully it will re-emerge and get a 2007 release.

9. Smiley Face - This year, Gregg Arkai became one of my favorite directors, and I'm eager to see some new work from him. that said, this one sounds like a much more straight ahead mainstream comedy than he's done in the past. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, as long as he maintains his own voice in there. The plot, surrounding a woman who eats some pot brownies and has a crazy day offers the potential for some Doom Generation or Nowhere style craziness. After the intense drama of Mysterious Skin, he's earned a lighter film.

8. Be Kind Rewind - Another director's lightening up for a more accessible mainstream comedy. However, with Gondry at the helm, it's sure to be idiosyncratic and full of weird, wonderful images. The premise, that a guy who work sat a video store gets zapped with a magnet, erases all the tapes, and has to remake them himself, is absolutely ridiculous, but full of comic potential. Jack Black is great in the right role, and this sounds like it has the potential to harness that School of Rock go getterness. The combination of him and Gondry should be brilliant.

7. Grindhouse - Tarantino has never made a film that's less than great, and he's only gotten better as time passed. So, I'm going to check out anything he does. That said, I feel like this film will allow him to indulge all his worst instincts, and the premise, a slasher film with a car as the killer, is pretty inane. Without considering the director, the Robert Rodriguez side of the project looks a lot more interesting, Rose McGowan with the machine gun leg is genius and we've even got Freddy Rodriguez, Six Feet Under's Rico, in the film. Ultimately, I think this will be a joycore film, full of so much love from the creators, you can't help but get caught up in it.

6. Sweeney Todd - Burton made a virtually unmatched run of quality films from 1988-1994, but since then he's been a bit underwhelming. After the good, but not great Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I said that he should do a musical, so I was excited to hear he'll be adapting Sweeney Todd. I haven't seen the show, but the subject matter fits perfectly into his visual world. Rarely do you see a musical that fully uses the possibilities of cinema, I'm really excited to see what Tim brings to it. On top of that, there's a fantastic cast, Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen and even Anthony Head. This has the potential to be Burton's best film in a long time.

5. I'm Not There - Normally, I would be disgruntled that we're seeing yet another musician biopic. These films are usually boring reenactments of culturally iconic moments that give no real insight into the person they're interrogating. The only two musician biopics that really worked were Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Velvet Goldmine, both directed by Todd Haynes, and what do you know, he's directing this film as well. Haynes is a conniseur of pop culture, using cultural trends to examine the direction of society as a whole. Superstar and Velvet Goldmine are more about a time and place than specific people and I'd imagine this film will be the same. The fact that there's seven actors playing Dylan could potentially be gimmicky, but it makes me think this'll be a crazy, surreal film and that's a good sign. He's never made a bad film and I doubt he'll go wrong here. Plus, the cast is just fantastic: Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Heath Ledger to name just a few.

4. There Will Be Blood - Finally we're getting a new Paul Thomas Anderson film. Magnolia is the best film of the past twenty-five years, PTA the rare person who's equally adept at writing and directing. Paul himself said he didn't think he'd ever top Magnolia, and I'd agree, but I'm still eager to see new work. There's not too many details out on the project, but I've got to say, a period piece of this nature is not what I'd really want to see from him. Still, all his films are amazing in their own way, and someone with his talent is going to make films that are full of compelling details even if the whole doesn't work. I'm eager to see some stills or a trailer because right now I really have no idea that this movie will be like. It's just PTA's name that earned it this place on the list.

3. I'm a Cyborg (But That's OK) - After wrapping up the Vengeance Trilogy in spectacular fashion, Park Chanwook moves on to a lighter, but still odd, comedy. The premise of this one is great and I think it has the potential to be that rare kind of movie that is simultaneously very funny and very touching. It's difficult territory, but the hard edged sensibility of Park means we won't drift too far into melodrama. And, as the trailer shows, virtually no one working today can make images as striking as Park's.

2. Southland Tales - Many of my favorite films have been described as self-indulgent messes, so I wasn't too wary when Southland Tales got savaged at Cannes. I'm increasingly less concerned with narrative coherence, instead interested in seeing moments of cinematic transcendence, and even the bad reviews concede this film offers those. Kelly's Donnie Darko is one of the best films ever, even though every re-edit and comment he makes about the film makes it sound like he has no idea why it worked in the first place. But, I still believe in him, this one sounds so over the top weird, I can't wait to see it. If Inland Empire showed us anything, it's that a three hour, barely narrative piece of directorial self indulgence can be utterly satisfying. Of course, Kelly isn't Lynch, so this one could really just be bad, but there's only one way to find out.

1. My Blueberry Nights - Wong Kar-Wai is the best film director of all time, he has redefined the way the medium can be used, inventing a totally different, more emotional, language for cinema. No one works like he does, and no one makes films like his. So, a new Wong Kar-Wai movie is an event. 2046 was a great closer to one part of his career, and My Blueberry Nights offers a lot of changes. The major one is that he's shooting in America, in English, with an American cast. I love the Hong Kong cityscapes his characters usually inhabit, but Happy Together worked well in Argentina, pushing WKW to even more visual experimentation. Perhaps shooting in America will do the same. An article I read about the shooting made it sound like this will have plenty of classic Wong Kar-Wai moments, though they're taking place in a Midwestern diner instead of a Hong Kong fastfood stand. He's got a fantastic cast, and the way he works, he seems to push people to their best work. And, it'll be great to have my first viewing of this movie in a theater instead of on an import DVD.

In addition to films, there's a few other things I'm eagerly awaiting.

True Blood - Alan Ball's work on Six Feet Under is some of the best writing ever, and I was thrilled to hear he's doing another HBO series. This one involves vampires. A supernatural conceit like this should allow him to mix things up a bit from Six Feet Under. Rarely do you see a TV auteur like Ball do a second series, primarily because a series uses up so much story, how much can one man have left? Clearly, SFU was very personal, and I'll be curious to see how the way he reimagines his trademark themes to fit in this new genre context. I'm not sure if the show will actually premiere this year, but whenever it starts up, I'll be there.

The Sopranos - More HBO, we're going to finally see the end of The Sopranos in April. There are a select group of TV shows that I consider to be in the pantheon, the absolute best series, and The Sopranos is the only one is still on the air. I'm really curious to see what happens in the final season, will Chase continue the lethargic, introspective style of the second half of the sixth season or will things rev up and end in fire? I'd guess it'll be more of a fade away than a burn out, but we'll see. Even when it's frustrating, there's no current show that can match it.

New Babylon 5 - I've still got a lot of material to go through, but I'm happy that JMS is doing some new stuff in the Babylon 5 universe. The direct to DVD format has been much discussed as an option for continuing cult shows with a small, but devoted fanbase. I would love to see the movies become wildly successful, and possibly open the door for the Buffyverse direct to DVD movies Joss wanted to do. He claimed it came down to a budget issue, so maybe some success here would inspire Fox to do an about face and fund those movies. Maybe it's been too long, but if Babylon 5 can return after eight years, why can't Buffy after only three?

Buffy Season Eight Comics - Speaking of Buffy, if we can't get DVD movies, at least there's something coming in. I'll be picking up a monthly comic again for the first time in a while. It's been too long since I spent time with these characters and I'm eager to see what they're up to. The preview pages indicate we're still in a season seven millieu, which doesn't thrill me, but I'm sure there'll be some great stuff in there as well. I don't know that a project like this has ever been attempted, a canon continuation of a series in comic book form by the original creators. I'm excited to see how it works.

Morrison/JH Williams Vertigo series - This one is the most hypothetical. In a recent interview, Grant said he was working on an original series for Vertigo with JH Williams on art. The two of them did amazing work on the two Seven Soldiers bookends, in the first creating an entire universe of believable characters and then destroying it in only thirty pages. The second was a hypercompressed pop speed pill, one of the most dizzying, awe inspiring single issues I've ever read. Morrison's projects are frequently riddled with artist problems, the few times all has gone well on art, as with Flex Mentallo, We3 or Kill Your Boyfriend, he's made masterpieces. The thought of JH on a long term project with Morrison is almost too much to handle, I just hope that it happens.

The New World: Redefining Cinematic Language

To celebrate thanksgiving, I rewatched Terence Malick's The New World. I saw the film last New Year's Eve and loved it. I was really disappointed to see the film get critically savaged, but thankfully a small online cult of admirers has risen up, and I think future viewers will rank the film right alongside Malick's 70s work. I think it's easily his best movie, and also one of the greatest films of all time.

The thing I love about the film is the way it thoroughly immerses you in a world. Most films are designed to tell a story, and they use a language that was codified in the classical Hollywood era. Films may be paced faster and less narratively cohesive than they were then, but it's still the same basic structures, shot/reverse shot dialogue, and all style and technique designed to move the narrative forward. It's like this is what film must do, and you very rarely see films that manage to tell a story in a totally different way. The New World is one of them.

Days of Heaven was Malick's first masterpiece, a film that was revolutionary in its focus on visual storytelling. There's very little dialogue in his work, rather, he uses music and voiceover to convey meaning. He's at his best when working with very simple stories, one of the reasons The Thin Red Line is his weakest film is that there's too many characters and events, no chance to just get lost in the emotion of the moment. In The New World, the story is a simple cultural myth, and that means most of the basic work is done for him. Doing a straight adaptation of the Pocohontas story would be horribly misguided because we already know what will happen. To try to build tension in traditional ways just wouldn't work. Because we already know what happens, Malick chooses to focus on immersing us in the world, and making us feel what these characters felt at the time.

In doing so, Malick helps to pioneer a new time of filmmaking that has emerged in the past ten years or so. I think the originator is Wong Kar-Wai, a director whose mid 90s work uses incredibly over the top stylistic techniques to construct uniquely emotional moments. I think Fallen Angels is the most beautifully shot movie of all time because not only are the shots well composed and aesthetically pleasing, each frame illuminates the characters' emotions. The best moments in film are almost always about a fusion of visual and music, and virtually every moment in The New World is just that, a visual narrative with musical accompaniment designed to create an emotional reaction. This is his goal with every moment of the movie, to make you feel. The voiceovers aren't so much about conveying information, it's a spell designed to immerse you in the world the characters are experiencing.

As the film opens, Pocohontas says "Come spirit, let me sing the story of this world," invoking a mystical storytelling power to help create a reality. This is very much in line with what Alan Moore or David Lynch talk about, the idea that the storyteller is a vessel through which some the collective unconscious expresses itself. The editing of the film makes you feel that you're being taken on a kind of hallucinatory journey, experiencing many years of history in a state of reverie. It uses dreamlogic or drug logic, moments stringing together outside of time, rising and falling like music.

The best example of this is near the beginning of the film, after Smith is spared. We experience the essence of his relationship with Pocohontas through a series of perfectly chosen moments. What makes it different than a typical montage is the way the characters seem to step outside of time. The events are arranged into a beautiful pattern of rising emotion, culminating in the unbelievable shot in which the camera rotates around Pocohontas, lightning crashing on the shores behind her. To watch the sequence is like experiencing a compressed dose of pure love, the sequence is a dream of a world that could be, and we spend the rest of the film wanting to return to this pure state.

We finally return there at the end of the film, when Pocohontas comes to terms with the loss of the life she had. The film is largely concerned with growing up, and in her son, she sees the same sense of wonder that she once had. Running through the garden, she rediscovers the passion, culminating in the fantastic scene where she cartwheels across the grass in her formal dress. With the music swelling, we experience her death not as sadness, but as passage, a return to whence she came, and it is good. The editing returns us to that moment we thought lost.

A lot of complaints about The New World claim that it was all style, no substance. In cinema, style is the substance. No other medium can so thoroughly affect your perception and immerse you in a completely different world. This film made me feel like I was there at the birth of contemporary America, and through it, I understood the conflicting emotions they felt at the time. That is a more substantial experience than comes from passive engagement with a traditional narrative. Most films are concerned with making you feel for the characters. This film makes you feel exactly what the characters are feeling, and I think that's a more valuable endeavor.

There are moments in this movie that are among the most beautiful in cinema history. They are beautiful not only from an aesthetic point of view, it is also an emotional beauty. Q'orianka Kilcher in particular conveys such pure joy, it doesn't feel like acting at all, she is completely in that moment. Seeing her joy is infectious.

So, I feel like this film is creating a new cinematic language, one that relies on visuals not words as the foundation point. Film was at first inspired by theater, and then by novels, but in recent years we've seen movies that are not governed by traditional scripts, rather they're governed by the possibilities of visual connection. This film, Wong Kar-Wai's work, Miami Vice and David Lynch's Inland Empire all function in this respect, neglecting traditional, outmoded forms of characater development, preferring instead to focus on putting you in a world and making you feel that way. This film has images so powerful, they touch something primal. It is one of the greatest films of all time, and a critical moment in the evolution of this new cinematic language.

Eros

Eros is an anthology film featuring segments by Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michaelango Antonioni. I'll watch anything that Wong Kar-Wai makes, so I was eager to check this out, and the bonus of a short by Soderbergh made it even more enticing. However, the film varies widely in quality.

There's been all kinds of rumors lately about Wong Kar-Wai's next project, but one thing is clear, it's going to be in English, with American actors and shot in the United States. 2046 functioned as in many ways the ultimate Wong Kar-Wai film, taking elements from everything he'd done before and combining them in a story that touches on all his favorite themes. The end of that film seemed to signal the end of an era,and from here he's moving on to new stuff.

That's what makes Eros a bit weird, it's so entranced in the same emotional and physical space of In the Mood For Love/2046 that it feels almost superfluous watching it after seeing the two more extended treatment of the same themes. It's not that it's not a good film, it's just that it feels like Wong Kar-Wai on autopilot, there's no real innovations in the film.

That's how I felt for the first half hour or so. Chen Chang's Zhang is a fusion of Tony Leung's character in 2046 and Ziyi Zhang's in the same film. He's trapped by this one experience of passion, which holds him back, and at the same time the woman he loves so overtly rejects him by flaunting her other men when he's around. This was profoundly emotional territory in 2046, but here it feels like there's at once too much and too little story. The basic events are very simple, as in most Wong Kar-Wai films, but the beauty of most of his work is in the moments between the plot, the acute observations of everyday.

By fitting the whole story in 40 minutes, we lose the sense of these characters as fully developed people, and instead they exist more to move the story forward. Yet, at the same time, it's such a simple idea that I was hoping for some more layers or complexity. Even the style for most of the film was WKW on autopilot, using the same style as in ITMFL, obscuring characters behind objects, not allowing us to see their faces, and showing only one side of a relationship.

That's not to say there isn't some good stuff, the music is still fantastic, and some of the shots, most notably the long slow motion shot of Gong Li fixing her hair. That was a moment that only WKW can do, but most of the short moved too quickly to allow us to luxuriate in the moment.

However, in the end all the emotions come to the surface and we get some of the rawest emotional pain in any of WKW's work to date. The final scene with Zhang and Miss Hua is very powerful, the way that this expression of love becomes incredibly painful for both of them. Zhang running his hand over the dress, trying to breathe life into it is a perfect image, one that encapsulates everything that the film is about. He feels like he has made her into what she's become, he's been a part of life by making her clothes, but without her, it's just fabric.

I like the ambiguity of the ending, not telling us that Gong died, but leaving us to assume that this is indeed what happened. I think it's tough to make a 40 minute film work, because it falls in that void between feature and short. You need a lot of material, but at the same time, there's not enough time to really flesh things out, leading to an inevitable feeling of unfulfilment. It's a good film, but in terms of WKW's canon, it's never going to be anything more than a minor work.

Soderbergh's film is also a minor work, one that's jokey rather than painful. The opening dream sequence is beautifully shot, I love the blue color scheme and the way props from the dream crop up later in reality. Very cool stuff. The psychiatrist scene is funny, but the whole thing feels a bit lightweight, especially positioned after the really affecting finale of 'The Hand.'

The ending is a bit nonsensical, the way I interpreted things, it's that Robert Downey Jr. is struggling to compete with the inventors of the snooze alarm, and as a result, has a dream that he was the one to come up with it. The ending feels a bit goofy, but I do like that final shot, the repeated throwing of the airplane out the window.

But this film looks like a masterpiece compared to the finale, Antonioni's 'The Delicate Thread of Things.' I haven't seen any other Antonioni films, and though I still want to check some out, I'm hoping this film isn't representative of his work. I heard it was really bad, I heard people were walking out, but I thought, it's only 40 minutes, plus it's got a lot of nudity so how bad could it be? Very, very bad is the answer.

This movie is almost a parody of European art cinema, the characters have ambiguous, vaguely philosophical dialogue, a man wanders into a stranger's house and has sex with her, then two women run around naked on a beach. It's a good looking movie, but the narrative is really lacking. There's no character motivation and there's no sense that these characters exist in anything resembling the real world. It's like an art film set in the universe of a porn film, that's the only way to make sense of the behavior.

These are good looking women and the film is enjoyable on that level, but overwhelming that was the fact that there was no real reason for them to be doing anything. Maybe I missed something, but there didn't seem to be any themes, it was just a bunch of stuff that happened, and the final image seemed like it should be important, but there's no real significance from the story. It just doesn't work.

So, on the whole, this wasn't a particularly good film. I'm glad I saw it because the Wong Kar-Wai piece is strong, but they're all clearly minor works from otherwise excellent directors.

Running a Film Series

This summer, Jordan and I ran a film series at the local library. We used the projector from LMC-TV, and back at the beginning of the summer chose eight films to show people. I was expecting to get a twenty or thirty year old demographic, and chose the films accordingly. Also, one of the points of the thing was that there was a discussion afterwards, so we chose films that would be conducive to discussion.

Once the screenings started it became apparent that we were not getting the younger demographic. At the vast majority of screenings, we had people who were basically fifty and up. And in a lot of cases, the films we had programmed were not in line with their tastes.

The screening that went the worst was when we showed Safe, the 1995 Todd Haynes film. This was a film I loved, and hadn't heard about until this year, so I figured it was the perfect film to show and get more exposure for. However, the film is apparently glacially paced. It's not fast, but I didn't really notice any dragging, however at this screening, we had four old people in attendance and apparently they felt watching the film was not a good use of the time they had left on this Earth and an hour and a half into the film, one of them said "I can't take it anymore" and walked out. So, this was a low point.

However, the next week we were screening Oldboy. I was anticipating a lot of awkwardness, but this one went really well. We actually got a younger audience for this film, about ten people, and it hit the audience exactly as intended, getting a huge gasp at the revelatory moment at the end of the film, as well as a lot of "Augh"s during the nastier moments.

At Waking Life we got an older audience who were bored by the film, so we stopped it halfway through. They claimed it was too 'college' and left then. But, we did have an interesting discussion, so it was a success on the whole.

Then we screened Fallen Angels, the Wong Kar-Wai film. We had a big audience for this and the movie went over pretty well. People might not have loved it, but there were no walkouts and we had a solid discussion afterwards.'

The last film we were set to show was Irreversible. At the beginning of doing this, I was thinking that we could challenge the audience, show them this really challenging film and push the boundaries of the way people think.

I'd always wondered why TV networks didn't show more challenging program, and why movie studios pushed to make movies more likable. Now I can understand that mentality. Doing these screenings I saw slow paced arty movies fail to connect with an audience, who always seemed bored and on the edge of leaving. As time went on, I was wishing we had shorter films that would go over better with the crowd. I moved away from more challening stuff, and rather than thinking about showing the best film, I wanted to show stuff that would appeal to the audience. It's so easy to say in theory you want to challenge the audience, but when you actually have to sit there with them, it's not so easy.

So, Jordan and I had basically decided we couldn't show Irreversible. It was too graphic and intense for people. But, we arrived there and three people said they were there to see it and wanted us to show it. Unfortunately we also had three old women who thought we were going to show American Beauty. So, we decided to go through with Irreversible, after warning them that it was incredibly intense and that they could feel free to walk out if they needed to. I was expecting the old women to go sometime between the start of the Rectum scene and the scene where Pierre bangs the man's head in with a fire extinguisher. However, they stuck around, and I figured the rape scene would end it for them, but they sat through that.

We reached the end of the film, throughout which there was such palpable awkwardness in the air I couldn't even really enjoy it. I was stunned that the old women had made it through the movie, but they had and the three people who had requested the film liked it. So, it was a success and I had achieved my original goal of challenging people's ideas of film.

We may not have gotten that many people, but at the end of most of the screenings I felt pretty good about how it went, and if we bring it back next year, I think we will program a little differently, some more accessible, quicker paced films that can still challenge the audience. I guess you do sometimes have to make concessions to how the audience feels and not just show what you like.

Tomorrow: Look for my reaction to the final episode of Six Feet Under!

Wong Kar-Wai Day

Well, tomorrow finally sees the domestic release of Wong Kar-Wai's brilliant film, 2046. I saw the film back in January, on an import DVD from Hong Kong, and then I saw it again in June, at the Wong Kar-Wai Q&A event at Lincoln Center. Still, despite having seen the film a number of times, I'm going to go back for another viewing on the big screen. I'd never seen a WKW movie in the theater before, and it was an incredible experience, you truly are immersed in another world of glamour and sadness.

Wong Kar-Wai is probably the world's best director right now, his films are incredibly beautiful, and tell stories that are linked more by visual and musical connections than a strict narrative, and in that sense he's taking full use of the storytelling properties of the medium. So, if you haven't seen 2046, or even if you have, go back for another viewing on the big screen, and be dazzled by the images.

I've been reading some of the reviews of the film here in the US press, and most of them like the film, but express the feeling that it's somehow superfluous, that he's not doing anything new. This is a valid complaint, 2046 is largely a summation of everything that WKW has done to date, and on the surface it is. This film is virtually a remake of Days of Being Wild, but while the plot is roughly the same, the emotional state of the characters is totally different. For one, there's the spectre of Chow's relationship with Su Li-Zhen, Maggie Cheung casts such a shadow over this film, that despite only appearing in it for roughly a minute, her presence is felt in every scene, and we view all the women Chow meets in terms of how they compare to Su Li-Zhen. That's the point, this guy is trapped in the past, he constructs a fantasy world in fiction, where he can recapture his lost memories, but when he tries to recapture the same memories with real women, he finds they can't live up to his idealized memory.

So, this film is much more tragic than Days, which despite the main character's death, has a sense of youthful optimism with the other characters, you feel like their lives will go on and get better after the film. In this film, Chow's unfeeling treatment of the women has scarred them and with Zhang Ziyi, he has created a new version of himself, someone who will use men in the same way that Chow uses women. The ending of the film is almost apocalyptic, as Tony Leung lies slumped over in a cab, completely alone, a sad contrast to the scenes in Happy Together and In the Mood where he's riding with someone.

Basically, what I'm saying is this is a film that on the surface seems similar, but beneath is totally innovative and new, with much more scope than any previous WKW flick. It's also a film that demands multiple viewings. On the first viewing, it's confusing, and this can dull the emotional impact, but if you watch it again, and are aware of the chronology, it's much more powerful. That's one of the problems I have with film critic reviews, they've only seen the film once, I don't think you can truly evaluate a film until two viewings. 2046 is going to be a film that'll be much more appreciated in the future, once it no longer has to deal with the expectations created by its five years in production. But, right now, I'd call it WKW's third best film, and a film that takes full use of the possibilities of the medium. Other than Revenge of the Sith, it makes every other movie released this year look like it's not even trying.

So, as I did with Richard Linklater a few weeks ago, here's an index of all the stuff I've written on Wong Kar-Wai here on the blog. There's quite a few articles, and you can see my journey from WKW newbie to WKW expert. But, you could know everything about the man, there's still some mystery in those films.

Days of Being Wild Review (First Viewing): 11/21/2004
Fallen Angels: 12/10/2004
2046 Review (First Viewing): 1/4/2005
In the Mood For Love (Deleted Scenes): 1/9/2005
Chungking Express Review: 1/14/2005
Ashes of Time Review: 4/20/2005
Days of Being Wild (Second Viewing): 4/28/2005
Happy Together: 5/5/2005
2046 Review: Screening with Wong Kar-Wai: 6/16/2005

Those are the core posts, then here's some more articles that mention WKW films.

My Favorite Actresses
My 2004 Oscar Nominations
Top 10 Films of 2004
What makes an action movie work?

2046 Screening with Wong Kar-Wai

Yesterday I attended a screeing of 2046 with Wong Kar-Wai in attendance. I'd seen the movie two times before, but it was a completely different experience on the big screen. I'm not someone who usually makes a big deal about seeing a movie on 35mm in the theater, but this movie was a completely different experience in the theater than on DVD. I'd never seen a WKW movie theatrically before, and I'm not sure if all of them are like this, but it was almost too much, getting lost in this world that he built.

I've already written a whole lot about the film here, but it felt like a very different film theatrically. WKW's films always have very heavy atmosphere, and you can definitely catch that on the DVD, but in the theater, you get completely immersed in a different world. Because none of his films take place in the USA, they're all in sort of alien worlds, but 2046, with the future stuff, takes this to the extreme. In the Mood for Love is a move towards more traditional narrative, but 2046 takes this away, and is right up there with Fallen Angels as WKW's most abstract film. Most movies settle into a sort of routine, there may be a strange opening, but eventually, you get the idea of what's going on and the scenes all feel roughly the same. 2046 never does this, it constantly bounces between all sorts of events, musical montages, abstract images and the story within a story. The use of music is absoultely amazing, really enveloping you in this world. The scenes where Tony moves through the club with his entourage tell you everything you need to know in one image, and knowing what we know from ITMFL, we are aware of how unhappy he is.

Despite barely appearing in the movie, Maggie Cheung's Su-Lizhen dominates this film, no matter what he does, Tony can't escape her influence. Every action he takes goes back to his relationship with her in some way. People who say the change in character is inconsistent clearly miss the point of the movie, which is that as a result of losing his one true love, he has given up on love and decided to live a purely hedonistic lifestyle. Only when he sees something of Su-Lizhen in the women he meets does he give any serious thought to commitment, as in the relationship with Faye.

It's this sadness that makes Tony's character here much more sympathetic than Leslie Cheung in Days of Being Wild. Leslie seems to be cruel only because of his confusion about his paternity, but Tony has real deep wounds, and as a result, he is unable to reciprocate Bai-Ling's love for him, and in the process, he continues the cycle, and creates another person who is too scarred to love.

But, watching on the big screen what really gets you is just how beautiful the film is. The production design is phenomenal. Old Hollywood movies generally had a strong focus on being stylish, fantasies of what life could be if you were a star. WKW recaptures this fantasy element by making the coolest looking environments for his characters to move through and putting them all in incredibly stylish clothes. The future stuff is the best example of this, but the club scenes are also just saturated in beautiful design. This was one of the most immersive theatrical experiences I've ever had, the film completely pulled me in and let me get lost in its world.

I loved the film the first two times I saw it, but this viewing took things to another level. I would now place this as WKW's second best film, behind only Fallen Angels, and in a lot of ways, this is even stronger than that one. This is a film with an admittedly narrow audience, but if you've seen his other stuff, this is one of the most rewarding theatrical experiences you can ever have. I'll definitely be taking in a second theatrical viewing when the film is released here in August.

So, after that great screening, WKW came out to take some questions. I've read a whole lot about the film, so there wasn't that much new in the Q&A, but there was still some really good stuff. WKW was wearing his trademark sunglasses and pulled off the leather jacket despite it being pretty warm out. Most of the questions were actually continuity related, like whether this Tony Leung character is the same one from Days of Being Wild and whether Gong Li is the same character from 'The Hand.' Tony Leung is the same, and he went as far as to say that the last scene of 'Days' could actually take place during the scenes with Gong Li in 2046. That's why he made the character a gambler in this movie, to get a chance to do some of the material they would have originally done in the Days of Being Wild sequel. And, Gong Li is not the same character from The Hand, though they are connected in some way.

Strangely, he was pretty upbeat about his working relationship with Chris Doyle, I'd read that Doyle shot very little of 2046, but WKW made it seem like he shot the whole movie. Regardless, he claimed that he chose the framing, lighting and movement of the shots, though at times Doyle would ignore what WKW told him to do. I'm not sure if just went by quickly, but it seemed like he answered very few questions, and after the screening WKW wasn't around for one on one discussion. I guess I've been spoiled by my experience meeting Joss Whedon and Jean Pierre Jeunet, who was just hanging out in the lobby after his Q&A.

But still, it was really interesting to hear him speak. I liked how quick he was with his answers. Someone asked him if he was influenced by French film on 2046 and he just said "No." One word, straight to the point. Part of that may have been the language gap, but generally speaking, he seemed pretty solid conversing in English.

So, overall it was an excellent experience, I would have liked some one on one with WKW, but that was not to be, and he pretty much covered most of what I was wondering anyway. Sadly, no one asked him the obvious question about his next project, with Nicole Kidman. But, I'd assume there's not too much he could reveal that I haven't already read.

Artists I've Been Listening To...

First off, the North American trailer for Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 is now available here. It looks great, and really captures the feeling of the film. I suppose I'd be inherently partial to it because it focuses so much on the stuff from the future sections of the film, which I'd consider to be the best thing WKW has ever done.

The film drops on August 5, but I already have the DVD. However, I will be seeing it in the theater very soon. On June 15, Wong Kar-Wai is appearing and doing a Q&A at a screening of the film at Lincoln Center. I've never seen a WKW film in the theater, and 2046 is a really astonishing visual experience, so that alone is worth it, but it's also WKW live. I always like to meet film people and hear them talk about the process, especially if they are total storytellers. While Martin Scorsese may have made some great films, he doesn't usually make the stories himself, so you can't get a sense of his whole process, whereas with WKW or Joss, they do everything, and are a lot more interesting to talk to. In the past few years, I've met a lot of my idols, and this is another one to add to the list. I'd still really like to meet Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, though that's not likely to happen unless I make it over to the UK.

So, that should be very cool. Now I'm going to quickly go over some of the music I've been listening to lately because I've definitely been branching off in some different directions.

Electric Light Orchestra - I've been listening to a lot of the Electric Light Orchestra, a band from the 70s that is most famous for their songs "Mr. Blue Sky" and "Evil Woman." When I was very young I remember hearing "Evil Woman" on some Disney special, over a montage of their villains, but I could never remember what the song was. This was when I lived in my old house before 1990, I don't know how I could have remembered this for so long, but last year I heard the song in Mocon and it came back to me. The song had remained with me for 15 years, it's a great song, but even so I found that pretty strange.

Anyway, I grabbed the song and some of their other stuff, but only started listening to the albums recently. I've been listening to a lot of A New World Record and Out of the Blue, both great albums, though I prefer Record. Electric Light Orchestra is an ancestor of a lot of the current artists I love most. Perhaps the best description of the band I could give would be a combination of Daft Punk and The Polyphonic Spree, probably my two favorite current artists, so ELO is understandably a favorite of mine. From Daft Punk they drew a synth based, quasi-dance sound, with frequent use of vocoder, the Electric part. From The Spree they draw the frequent use of big orchestration, with a ton of different instruments at work, the orchestra part. On their best songs, they rock hard, while sounding unlike any other band around.

Their most bizarre song is "Mission," about some aliens who come to earth. It's all over the place, and has the sort of over the top hyperbole that only 70s rock can provide. If you recall "Stonehenge" from Spinal Tap, this is the sort of song that was parodying. Definitely worth checking out. Other standout tracks are the really rocking "Do Ya" and "Livin' Thing," as well as the more subdued "Summer and Lightning" and "Turn to Stone."

Annie - Annie is a relatively new artist, who has put out just one album, Anniemal, which actually hasn't even been released here. Said album is awesome, an amazing pop confection, where pretty much every song is catchy, solid listening. She hails from Iceland, and has more electronic based production than your average album made here. I love the electronic stuff found in much of Europop, and this is one of the best examples of it. Her voice isn't that great, but woven into the music, it's phenomenal.

Her best song is "Heartbeat," which uses a pounding drum over the chorus to simulate her heartbeat as she gets to know someone over the course of a night. I love driving repeated riffs in a song, and the hearbeat drumming just propels the song forward. I think pop has gotten a bad name, and the perception is that albums that sound like this are just "commercial," while darker, less instantly accessible albums must be more artistically relevant. However, music is ultimately about sound, and this album just sounds great all the way through, perfectly constructed pop.

Belle and Sebastian - I really liked their soundtrack for the movie Storytelling and I finally caught up with their albums. So far, I've heard If you're Feeling Sinister and The Boy with the Arab Strap. I really like their sound, it's got a lot of varied instruments and similar to The Smiths, an interesting mix of heavy subject matter and light music. It's really pleasant sounding music, with a bit of 60s flavor. Their best tracks are "Stars of Track and Field" and "Like Dylan in the Movies."

Rachael Yamagata - She's another fairly new artist, with only one album to her credit, Happenstance, and it's a great album. Yamagata reminds me a bit of Aimee Mann in that she is a singer/songwriter, but places a lot of emphasis on the backing tracks and overall production. Too many singer/songwriters focus only on the lyrics, but her tracks are fully realized songs. She rocks pretty hard, and has a great range of darker stuff, like "Under My Skin," and light, poppy tunes, like "1963."

She does a great job of writing lyrics that sound good when sung. "Be Be Your Love" has a great chorus that might not read well, but sounds great in the context of the song. Similarly, "I'm loving you like it's 1963" paints a picture of the world the song is trying to evoke and sounds great as a chorus. While I do love Aimee Mann, her songs are rather similar, while these have great variety, both in terms of music and in terms of theme and atmosphere they are trying to evoke.