When you look at my list of favorite screenings this year, you may well conclude that Miss Susie doesn't get out
much. All but one film I've listed is from another year gone by.
I'm not lazy or disinterested in current cinema: it's just that most NEW films I saw the past twelve months, plain stunk-- or were oddly unfinished.
Michael Clayton, Into the Wild, No Country for Old Men, The Simpsons' Movie, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead-- I went into all of them with such high hopes.
But then something would fall off the picture like an old hubcap. Did someone lose their completion funds? Strangle the screenwriter in a fit of pique?
Meanwhile, the physical experience of theater attendance continues to go the way of the dodo bird and the tolerable Coach flight.
I am so happy to eat chocolate bread pudding, sprawled on my sofa in a lace slip with a White Russian on the side-- bathing in the ambient light of my Epson projector lighting our pull-down screen. It takes an Act of Zeus to drag myself to the pits that pass for film theaters in this town.
I will recommend a couple exceptions, in case you're ever in Santa Cruz. The Del Mar art-deco theater is a 1930s restored palace, which is heaven to sit in, while enjoying your Black China Cupcakes with an excellent cup of coffee. Still no hash bar, though.
The same owner screens great movies at the Nickelodeon, around the corner, but you need back pillows to make it through a 80 minute flick.
Our fantastic drive-in and swap meet site, the fifty-eight-year-old SkyView just closed down last weekend, forever. I watched one final terrible movie on Saturday, in the back of my van, stuffed in a double sleeping bag. It was still swoon-worthy. I don't recommend "Fred Claus," that's for sure-- but I sob over the demise of this joint. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the last drive-in I have the privilege of making out in.
I am determined to see, in a theater, before the New Year: American Gangster, Enchanted, Gone Baby Gone, Darjeeling Ltd., This is England, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, and Juno. Please advise me if I am making a terrible mistake!
What have been your favorite movies you've see this year, regardless of when they first came out?
And now... the very, very best of my 2007 Netflix Queue:
Killer of Sheep:
I bought this DVD after reading the many critics who fainted in rhapsodies with their accolades. Michael Tolkin wrote, "If Killer of
Sheep were an Italian film from 1953, we would have every scene
memorized." Could he be exxagerating? After one spellbound evening, I'm afraid I agree with him.
The storyline takes place in Watts in the early 1970s, when
the neighborhood was actually semi-rural. The title is based on the lead character's occupation: he works in a
local slaughterhouse.
In those days, even as late as the early 70s, you could order a chicken at the butcher shop, and they'd kill and pluck it right there on the spot. The South was still so much alive in the older generation. In one scene, one of the "grownups" stares mystified at a plastic-wrapped set of drumsticks from the supermarket.
The filmmaker, Charles Burnett, was a student at UCLA with no
money, influenced by French and Italian New Wave. He was also a Southerner
who'd moved to South Central, as a kid, like many of the characters in his
film. The adults in the movie are exactly as I remember the parents
of my friends from the same era.
When you first watch this "day-in-the-llfe" picture, you first think to yourself, "Hmm... never see movies about black life in America like this."
Then you realize you never see American movies about ANYONE'S life like this-- so poignant, so attentive to the unconscious little moments that move throughout our day. There's one scene with the director's little girl ... she looks about four... who's playing with her doll and half-singing Earth Wind & Fire's "Reasons" to her "baby," in company to a scratchy record. It slayed me. This man says more with his camera in one minute than most people say all day.
There's no plot to speak of. It's a series of haunting vignettes. The dance between the husband and his wife, who longs for his touch, is the most memorable erotic heartbreak I've seen in a long, long while.
I waited, bracing my tears, for the final installment of Helen Mirren's genre-changing police mystery drama.This time Jane is nearing her retirement date, drinking herself into a stupor, yet determined to catch one more sick killer if it takes every last onery nail in her body. This is the best script about a passionate woman in chauvinists' territory that's ever made the big screen. If you've sneered at police dramas all your life, this show will take you by surprise. You have to start with Season 1, fall in love, and then let Mirren take you to the fifth circle of hells' bells. One day I'm going to get the flu, crawl in bed, and watch the whole thing all over again.
The most satisfying "Bang!" of the year. It's the only new big-budget feature I saw that I Loved Without Reservation.
I wanted to watch nothing but Westerns for weeks afterward, trying in vain to capture the thrilll one more time. Come back Shane!
The story by Elmore Leonore pulls you right into the grave. Acting by Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, and Peter Fonda would make John Huston proud. Ben Foster is the nastiest homosexual villain in cowboy chaps... since I don't when. I spilled a scalding coffee in my lap right in the middle of the second act, and just whimpered through my pain so I wouldn't miss a minute.
CANDY! Talk about living up to the hype. Bond has never been tastier. I could watch the parkour chase scene that opens this film every morning before breakfast. Daniel Craig is my lover, Daniel Craig is my lover, but I wouldn't throw Sebastien Foucan out of bed either. He's the free-running star who plays Bond's initial nemesis. After my opening brunch, I'd like to skip right to the sadistic whipping scene... which blew me away when I found out it was taken verbatim from Ian Fleming's original story. Verged on Pasolini-esque. It certainly was the "sex" of the film, notwithstanding Eva Green's beautiful face and decolletage.
So often the Foreign Language Oscar goes to a film that outclasses anything in the English-speaking "Best Picture" category. This was one of those mouth-droppers. The story is about the consequences of unrelenting spying into people's lives that went on in Eastern Germany during the Soviet years.
It's rivieting on two counts: a), it feels like the United States, NOW, and b), the mesmerizing performance by the chief "spy" turns out to be played by the late actor Ulrich Mühe, who himself was betrayed by his wife to the Stasi when he was a young actor.
Mühe knew the power of the state to destroy one's life, firsthand, and then turned it around to play one of its most conflicted villains, who inexplicably finds redemption. The ending is so perfect, you'll curl in a ball like a potato bug.
I didn't see this film for the longest time, because I am a wuss-- and I was spooked by the reports that Christian Bale starved himself to play the psycho guy/lead role, a man who hasn't slept in a year.
But this wasn't a horror film, not in any conventional sense. It's Bunuel meets Dostoyevsky with a dash of Memento.
It's so beautifully photographed, I could've stop every frame and sighed with bitter pleasure. Bale is devastating as a young man whose consciousness has lost its way, due to an event he can barely recall. The machine shop, itself, where our antihero works, is pitch perfect-- reminded me of the auto plant scenes in Paul Schrader's Blue Collar.
Finally, a HOWLING satire of what it's like to live in a politically correct, Marxist, lesbian-feminist, polyamorous, beyond-vegan, commune with a real bad case of no one minding their own business. --In Sweden!
Yes, this movie, which everyone in the US keeps saying they're going to make-- but never does-- is brought to belly-shaking life in the icy urban landscapes of Swedish socialism. If you have ever had even a five-minute left-wing episode in your life, you must see this movie and be healed with hysterics.
Deadwood's Last Season
I'm one of the stunned creatures who wandered around saying, "Why did HBO kill this?" I love these characters. I'm ready to move in as a full-time slut into Al Swearengen's saloon, or carry Calamity Jane's knife and flask into battle. I'm making a hat with veil to honor Madam Joanie Stubbs. It's maddening to watch the screen and whisper back the beautiful dialog in your mouth, only to remember some TV know-nothing pulled the plug. Still, I wouldn't have missed one cocksucking Shakespearean syllable.
Here's another film I avoided for years, because I'm such a snob! It's based on Charles Bukowski's novel of the same name, plus glimmers of his other short stories. I loved those tales so much that I couldn't imagine Matt Dillon, who I think of as pretty boy, doing them justice. I am a prick! Dillon pulled it off-- there's moments littered from beginning to end where you feel the scotch pour right off the typewriter. Just to hear my favorite lines out loud was such a pleasure. Lili Taylor, who plays Hank's drinking partner and lover, is incredible. The way they capture Bukwoski's patented attitue toward the innate absurdity of holding a job, when all you want to do is get laid and get high.. is priceless.
Wow. Again, I was late to the party, because I thought, "How am I going to endure a pic about the bloody raptures of Idi Amin?" Well, it's because this story is off the hook, and even if you know the history, you are caught up in one surprise after the next. A young white dilettante, who doesn't know what he's doing in Africa, ends up as Amin's personal doctor, and grows up: REAL FAST. Forest Whittaker chews up everything in sight, with power to spare. Of course, last year, I wanted Peter O'Toole to win the Best Actor award for Venus, because he was superb, and he's dying... but you can see why this role, for Whitaker, took the cake.
Films with great women's point-of-view have been slim to nothing this year. This state of affairs has gone from cliche to snuff-like tragedy.
Have you heard of the "Mo Criteria" for finding authentic female characters to watch in the movies? As my beloved Alas! blog describes:
[Mo Movie Measure] is an idea from Alison Bechdel's brilliant comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. The character in the strip explains that she only watches movies in which:
1) there are at least two named female characters, who:
2) talk to each other about:
3) something other than a man.
Itâs appalling how few movies can pass the Mo Movie Measure.
Sherrybaby was my own personal "MMM Winner" on my Netflix queue. Why didn't Maggie Gyllenhaal win EVERYTHING for this? She plays a young woman who's just gotten out of prison on a drug conviction, and imagines she's going to swoop in with a big stuffed animal to take over caring for her little daughter, who's been raised the past three years by her brother and his wife.
Riveting.
A unique pairing: Notes on a Scandal and The Killing of Sister George
Well, if you're going to do sick, caustic lesbians tearing each other to bits, you'd better get it right. Notes on a Scandal is superb, but then you have to get out the black and white source, 1968's notorious Killing of Sister George, which in a fascinating historical note, features the first live footage of life inside a British dyke pub. Beryl Reid and Judi Dench, bulldaggers on rampage... how I'd love to see them together.
I lived in Echo Park in the 1970s and this movie gave me such sweet nostalgia. It's about a knocked-up teen who really is a virgin, and her gay brother (decidedly not) trying to survive their family's outrage, plus their confrontation with some of the more damning consequences of gentrification in their neighborhood. It's packed with new and non-actors who are so fresh you could spread butter on them and watch it melt. Best coming of age anything I've seen in ages.
The Very First Episode of the Larry Sanders Show
The Larry Sanders Show, finally came out on DVD. I enjoyed very minute, cackling at every rerun as if they were old "I Love Lucy" episodes.
It's the very
first show, however, "The Garden Weasel," that tickles me with infinite
viewings. My delight is the corporate bitch from "the network, " Melanie Parish, who comes to
close to ruining Larry's show forever, with her inane advertising campaigns. In her epic battle with Larry's
producer, (embodied by Rip Torn), he screams at her, "I killed a man like you once, in
Korea." Mano a mano, baby!
I find myself repeating this line everywhere from the post office line to Apple's Technical Support representatives.
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