The Artist (2011)

Terry's Grade: B+

I could not have seen this movie at a better time. About a month ago Rachel and I watched Modern Times, and then a couple weeks ago we watched Singin' in the Rain, both of which deal with the end of the silent film era (the former by being a part of it, the latter by being about it). I don't and haven't watched a lot of silent films, but those two films really helped me put The Artist in some kind of context.

Briefly, then, The Artist is the story of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent-film star who loses his job when talkies arrive, then loses his fortune in the stock market crash. As he descends into lonesomeness and drunkenness, he is forced to watch younger, talking actors take his place. Namely, he encounters Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) at every stage on her rise from fan, to extra, to actress, to star. The story gets very dark, and very bright, helped along by a wonderful score (in the sense that it does its job wonderfully and otherwise stays out of the way), and expressive, emotive performances from the entire cast. Dujardin and Bejo, playing silent film performers, really ham it up for the camera. James Cromwell and John Goodman, in supporting roles, turn in comparatively understated performances that work perfectly on the silent screen. It feels like Missi Pyle deserved more screen time, but maybe I couldn't have handled that much more of her.

Thematically, this movie borrows plenty from Singin' in the Rain. I'm not just saying that because I  saw that movie recently; others have noted it as well. The story of how Valentin bumps into Miller on the street, then again on the set, then she gets kicked off the set by the producer, before Valentin convinces the producer to let her stay... well, it's not a stretch to connect the two. The end of the movie also calls back to Singin'. Where the two movies diverge is that Don Lockwood remains entirely in control of his destiny throughout his film (only faltering ever so slightly with his unfortunate "I love you, I love you, I love you..." improv). Valentin finds himself losing control, and too proud to take the one step that would help him get back on track. The resulting downward spiral is what makes The Artist interesting.

Stylistically, The Artist echos Modern Times by being a 95% silent film. Like Modern Times, the majority of the film is silent, accompanied by music with dialogue cards. At the same time, also like Modern Times, sound effects are deployed sparingly for effect. Spoken dialogue only appears very briefly, at the end of the film, and sound effects are deployed for a kind of Cool World / Pleasantville reality shift that, fortunately, turns out to be temporary.

The main reason my family decided to see this movie is that my sister is deaf, and lacking any decent foreign movies out (with subtitles) at the time, this seemed like the best option for a movie everyone would have a chance to enjoy. I'm glad we did, because this is a movie any film lover should see. The very idea of making a silent film in 2011 is somewhat pretentious and entirely preposterous, but the resulting product is a thoroughly enjoyable, watchable film. It doesn't feel like a great film, partly because by being a silent, black-and-white film, it inevitably invites comparisons to truly great early films. But it's a worth watching, and it's a reminder, in our 3-D THX CGI modern cinema environment, that film in its most basic form can still tell involving, entertaining stories.

Terry's Year in Film: 2011

(Consider this a work in progress for the next week or two, since I assume I'll need some time to remember things and fill in the gaps.)

My sample of 2011 films is hardly representative. I didn't get to a lot of films in theaters: the ones I've seen come mainly from Netflix, downloads, or (gasp!) TV.  (The TV ones are mainly things that were on Showtime when I got the free three-month signup after moving to Cleveland; a few of these are actually some of my favorites of the year.) Incomplete though it may be, I figured it's December, so why not make an end-of-year list. One other thing: these aren't all necessarily 2011 films. I assume nobody cares, since I assume nobody is reading this.

Here's some movies I wish I'd seen in 2011. Roughly in order of desire, and idiosyncratic as always:

• The Way Back (I really wish I'd seen this. Of course, I have no idea if it's actually good, but it sounded good)
• Take Shelter
• Drive
• The Interrupters
• Another Earth (but the more I heard about it, the less sure I was this would have been good)
• The Rum Diary
• Real Steel
• Beginners
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes (I'll watch any ape movie)
• A Dangerous Method (Not sure if good, but Michael Fassbender is in it)
• Shame (again, Fassbender)
• Project Nim (ape movie)
• Green Hornet

And, movies I wish I hadn't seen:

• Source Code (2011) Why, god, why?? Was this movie really released in 2011? My brain seems to have buried it so far down it feels like three years ago. I can't really do a Worst Movie of 2011 category, since I generally try to avoid watching the bad movies to begin with, but out the ones I've seen, this one wins.
• Mac and Me (1988) I thought it'd be funny, as a joke -- so bad it's good. Turns out it's just bad. Bad.

Finally, here are the movies I'm glad I saw. This isn't a list of all the movies I've seen this year, obviously. It's just a list of the ones I think are worth mentioning.

Terry's Best Films of 2011:

1. The Tree of Life (2011) Classic. Possibly one of the best movies I've seen. I'm still withholding judgment, but signs point to yes.
2. The Road (2009) Classic. Maybe the saddest move ever. It's not perfect, but I love this movie.
3. Inglourious Basterds (2010) Classic. Great script, great performances.
4. Midnight in Paris (2011) I love the fact that this movie doesn't need to explain itself. And I love the 10-second scene where the detective is lost in Louis XIV's France.
5. Sullivan's Travels (1942) See my review. Definitely a classic.
6. Win Win (2011) Paul Giametti is so hot right now. I don't always like him, but I loved this movie. The kid actor is great, P.G. is great, Amy Ryan is great. It's not really a sports movie, but it is, and it's one of those movies where you can't help but root for the protagonist.
7. Tron: Legacy (2010) First, I really wanted to see this. Then I heard it sucked, and I avoided it. Finally, it was on Showtime, so I recorded it. I has flaws -- mainly in being overly ambitious -- but it rocks. I was a Tron fan, and now I'm a Tron: Legacy fan.
8. Of Gods and Men (2010) Tense, emotional, based-on-real-life, drama about Christian monks facing religious violence in Muslim Algeria.
9. Croupier (1998) I love Clive Owen, and after watching Doctor Who, I now love Alex Kingston. And we all love Vegas movies, even if they if they take place in South Africa.
10. Dogtooth (2009) Totally insane bloody cat murder.
11. The Squid and the Whale (2005) Took me a while, but I finally saw this. Flawed and pretentious, but a good movie in the end.
12. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) One of the TV movies that I just finally watched this year. It's Star Trek.
13. Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) Some off-putting homo jokes, but an instant classic in the time-travel comedy genre.
    
14. Jack Goes Boating (2010) This movie has the feel of a mid-90's indie drama. I'm not as infatuated with PSH as others are, but he's pretty damn good in this movie. (Also, see Before The Devil Knows You're Dead.) Also, some people call this a romantic comedy. It's funny sometimes, but it's not a comedy. And yes, I love Amy Ryan.

Below, some random awards.

Best Sound Mixing
Tron 2 gets the nod for sound mixing (or is it sound editing? idk). There are numerous scenes where focus shifts between outside and inside (e.g. Flynn's arcade, when the jukebox kicks on on the game floor, and Flynn Jr. moves from there to upstairs then to the secret room; or the games scene which shifts between various game platforms and Clu's luxury box). Maybe it seems like a minor thing, but the way the sound shifts with the camera really helps move the action along with it.

Best Visual Effects
The Road. Imagine that the sun has been blotted out, and all life on earth is dying. If you're going to take The Road seriously as a movie, then you have to buy in to this premise. Fortunately, every scene in this movie visually convincingly conveys that idea. I heard they filmed parts of it on the slopes of Mount St. Helens, to get that fields-of-dead-trees effect. Watching a film that is unceasingly gray is not exactly fun, but it's not supposed to be. That's the point.

Best Soundtrack
Best soundtrack of the year goes to Daft Punk for Tron: Legacy. (That colon makes the title hard to parse in a sentence, so I'll call it Tron 2.) It is far from a perfect soundtrack, but it is objectively awesome. My main complaint is that it is repetitive (of course, the movie is too damn long, so any soundtrack is going to get repetitive trying to fill all that space). Also, it is relentless. Despite being just over two hours long (hmm, it felt longer), Tron 2 never takes a break. Daft Punk's soundtrack is continually thumping.

Best Animated Short
The Eagleman Stag. I am absolutely not qualified to make a selection for this type of category, but since I watched the animated shorts presentation at the Ann Arbor film festival, I'm going to. This is an utterly engrossing short. The animation is entirely black-and-white, so that everything feels like it's been folded out of printer paper, and there's no dialogue, only voice-over. The story isn't confusing; it's about confusion. I think it's great.

Best Actress
Amy Ryan? Gosh, is she the only real actress in any of the movies I have listed? Either there aren't enough good roles for women, or I don't watch enough of the movies with strong women characters. I guess I could add The Kids are All Right to my list, and then nominate Julianne Moore... Alex Kingston was good, I guess.

Best Actor
I'm tempted to give this to Brad Pitt for The Tree of Life and Inglourious Basterds. What a combo. Those two movies definitely show some range, but neither one on its own is really a best-actor performance.

Best Screenplay 
Inglourious Basterds. 

Best Director
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life. I'm not sure exactly what directing this movie entails, honestly. There's some crazy shit in here, though, and I'm assuming it all comes out of Terrence Malick's brain. I can only hope that the CG scenes in this movie stand the test of time, because if they do this movie will eventually get on some seriously-great-movie lists.

Best Film
The Tree of Life.

The Descendants (2011)

"You're supposed to stare at me. I'm a good-looking cliche, dammit!"

George Clooney plays George Clooney awkwardly attached to some daughters and a lot of entrusted land by his ancestry. The only truly interesting scene comes when George Clooney realizes that selling this land will enrich a realtor who had an affair involving some unrequited feelings with George Clooney's wife, who is now in a permanent coma awaiting death after a boating accident. We are in a bar with happy Hawaiian musicians out of focus beside Clooney's distraught and enlightened profile. As he sits back in his chair, we cut to his point of view as his daughters attempt consolation and seeking answers for their own confusion.

George Clooney may have proved himself in Syriana (2005), but he still feels more like a personality. This character rarely feels authentic or believable. It's almost an attempt to cast him against type, and it fails. He just stumbles through a series of predictable cliches that try to demand laughs, sighs, and sobs. Never mind the fact that the first...who knows how many minutes...of the film are just a bland voice-over (I thought that was strictly taboo in film unless necessary...).

Alexander Payne made a string of intelligent films full of dark humor and insight: Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999), and Sideways (2005). This is his first film since then, and it's unfortunately disappointing. The humor is so on-the-nose, it's embarrassing to hear the audience laugh at such cheap attempts at humor from the youngest tomboy daughter whose trademark is giving dad the finger to the hanger-on stoner (whose purpose in the story seems nil; he just seems there for entertainment value) who says stereotypical stoner things. Yeah, that's so edgy and layered.

The good: Robert Forster and Matthew Lillard give great (small) performances. It's nice to see the latter still able to get a different role after being typecast in the 1990s. I probably would have rather seen whatever story there is here from their perspective. At least their characters were convincing.

Frankly I'm shocked at the glowing, positive reviews for a movie that breaks no new ground and offers very little in style or emotional involvement. Likewise, Clooney's other 2011 film The Ides of March was cinematic garbage--phoned-in performances by usually great actors, cringeworthy dialogue, and characters so flat you won't care. It's just an ill-informed, malformed attempt at dissecting political figures in an unoriginal way, and it feels like it was made in the 1990s--dated already. Of course this all leads me to the prelude of a 2011 end-of-year compilation of sorts, though I haven't seen many films from this year yet, so this is pointless, but so far...

The Best:
The Tree of Life
We Need to Talk About Kevin

Both made by directors whose films are intensely personal, fiercely stylistic, and few and far between. They both commit to a unique style that makes their films unforgettable despite their shortcomings.

Best Leading Performance: Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin

Is there any film she graces that doesn't benefit from her presence? Just last year I probably would have given the same honor to her performance in I Am Love.

Best Supporting Performance: Hunter McCracken, The Tree of Life

Maybe "supporting" is demeaning, but as far as child actors go, and an amateur at that, he really made it work. Whenever the film hinges on understanding the childhood perspective, he delivers.

My list of 2011 films to see:
Carnage
Margaret
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Weekend
Take Shelter
The Interrupters
A Dangerous Method
Shame
Project Nim

"Hey, I'm, like, being totally serious right now. Seriously...............I'mGeorgeClooney."

The Descendants (2011)
Directed By: Alexander Payne
Written By: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash, based upon the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Grade: C-

Casablanca (1942)

Terry's Grade: A

I probably don't need to say much about this movie, since everyone's already seen it and written about it. I'd seen it before, probably twice before, but it'd been a while and of course there's always more to appreciate any time you re-watch a good movie. That's what makes good movies good.

Yes, this is the movie that inspired the naming of Rick's American Cafe in Ann Arbor. Never has so good a movie inspired the name of so bad a bar/club/vomit-production-center.

Also, this is a movie that has thoroughly permeated the culture we live in. Here are some of the more famous lines that I remember:

• Here's looking at you, kid.
• Play it again, Sam.
• We'll always have Paris.
• Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world...
• Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow...
• Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I think pretty much everyone in America has been exposed to those lines through parodies or just everyday usage, even if they've never even though about watching Casablanca.

But sometimes "great" movies don't live up to the hype. I wasn't a fan of Casablanca when I saw it as a teenager. Of course, when I was a teenager I liked way too many movies that were all style and no substance; Casablanca has got plenty of style, but it's 1940s style. I think one of the ways in which I've grown the most as a film-watcher is that I can enjoy watching older movies with a little more suspension of disbelief, overlooking the sets and effects, and even some bad acting, to really appreciate the message that the film is trying to convey. Casablanca is a love story, and so of course it also helps if you're old enough to have been in love before to really appreciate that aspect of the movie.

Casablanca also has a number of bit characters and subplots (or mini-plots) that I'd forgotten about; of course there's Peter Lorre at the beginning of the film, but there's also Sascha the Russian bartender, Yvonne the floozie, and my favorite, Annina Brandel, the Bulgarian refugee whom Rick saves from disgrace by helping her husband win at the roulette table. These all help round out the depiction of Casablanca, the town. After all, the movie is named "Casablanca", not "Rick and Ilsa."

Either Humphrey Bogart is good at playing expat Americans, or maybe my sample size is just skewed, having watched Treasure of the Sierra Madre just a few weeks ago. I suppose he was the quintessential American man at the time, though. Exotic settings always make for interesting movies, and Casablanca is both of those.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Terry's Grade: B

First the basics, because I didn't really have any idea what I was getting into with this movie. Dr. David Huxley (Carey Grant) is a palaeontologist about to marry a cold, sexless woman who informs him in the opening scene that they will not have a honeymoon, since he needs to get to work completing his brontosaurus skeleton, adding " I see our marriage purely as a dedication to your work." The disparity in their sexual motivation is apparent when he nearly mounts her to give her a kiss, and she pushes him away. Fortunately, he runs into Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn), a hurricane of a daughter of  wealthy parents, who derails his life for about 24 hours. "Baby" is the leopard that Vance's brother has sent home as a gift and motivates most of plot by getting lost and found, etc. The leopard gets loose, a dinosaur bone gets lost, and Huxley runs into danger of missing his own wedding. How does it end? You can figure it out.

This movie started out strong, but I found myself less and less interested as it went on. The plot is pretty transparent and predictable; most of the enjoyment I got out of it was from playing "I Spy" with the 1930s-isms and trying to read a lot of subtext. That said, I did enjoy the movie. Like all good comedy, the best jokes in Bringing Up Baby are the ones that aren't the most obvious. It's possible that I was Room-ing it, basically inserting jokes that weren't there. Whatever it was, Rachel and I definitely watched this movie differently; I thought it was entertaining, and she just couldn't wait for it to be over. Well, it was her turn to suffer after I had to sit through A Night at the Opera.

I'm sure that people who know more about this sort of thing could comment on the historical context of this movie; it came out in 1938, just before World War 2. When I played the game of imagining what this movie would look like if it were made today, I decided it would be a lot dirtier. There's already plenty of sexual references in the movie, from the hump/kiss I mentioned above to the famous bathrobe scene: Huxley has eventually ended up at Vance's house and takes a shower to clean up. Vance decides to hide his clothes, then herself take a shower. It's obvious that he'd be happy to barge in her, and she wouldn't mind it if he did, but the conventions of 1938 filmmaking does not allow that possibility. Instead, we end up with what might be the first use of the term "gay" meaning "homosexual" in a Hollywood movie. (Interestingly, that line is the third-oldest usage of "gay" listed in the OED, with the one earlier example coming from Gertrude Stein, in 1922, and another from the lyrics to a Noel Coward song from 1929.)

I really don't know what to say so I'll wrap this up. In the end this movie just had too much Baby. When Hepburn's character starts wooing Grant at the beginning of the movie, I thought it had the potential to be a smart romantic comedy, but it ends up just being a lot of conventional "screwball comedy," definitely not one of my favorite genres. The scene where Hepburn does a gangster routine in the jail is pretty funny. On the other hand, I didn't think the jailer was funny even though he was obviously supposed to be. The drunk Irish gardener is funny, if you want to trace the roots of Groundskeeper Willy (although I suspect the drunk Irish gardener is a stock character in plenty of other movies too). Otherwise it's offensive. I guess the kind-of-ditzy, so-in-love-I'll-do-anything Vance could be viewed as offensive too; the idea that women just lose their minds when they come across a Cary Grant is kind of insulting. I really do wish that Hepburn's character had been a bit stronger (not headstrong); the movie would have been better off.

Basically, I can't recommend this movie to anyone who isn't sure whether they'd like it or not. If you're into black-and-white screwball comedies, watch it. If you've got free time, watch the first 20 minutes, and then you can decide whether you want to finish it or not; you'll have a good idea of what's coming by then.

Modern Times (1936)

Terry's Grade: A

Modern Times is Charlie Chaplin's last film featuring his famous "Tramp" character. The DVD sleeve that came from Netflix also stated that this film is Chaplin's last "silent" movie (with the quotation marks). The quotation marks are there because the movie isn't exactly silent; it has sound effects, music, and even some spoken dialogue. Apparently, Chaplin wasn't sure that the Tramp would succeed as a speaking character, so he made Modern Times in the style of a silent movie, even though the silent era was pretty well dead by 1936.

Chaplin's voice does appear in the film, however, towards the end. After proving pretty useless at numerous jobs throughout the film, it appears that the Tramp is about to screw up another one; he's been hired as a singing waiter, though we suspect he can neither sing nor wait. He can't memorize the words to his song, so he has them written on his shirt cuffs. But as soon as he comes out and does a couple dance moves, the cuffs go flying from his wrists, taking the lyrics with them. What follows is an amazing and entertaining routine, in which Chaplin sings his own foreign-sounding lyrics (which are in fact utter gibberish) to the tune "Je cherche aprè Titine" by Léo Daniderff.

That scene alone made this movie worthwhile for me. It's perhaps hard to appreciate out of context;  the entire movie leading up to that scene has built up the expectation that the Tramp is going to screw up this job somehow, but instead he succeeds spectacularly.

Since I'm not really a big fan of silent movies, nor am I a big fan of physical comedy, I didn't expect to enjoy watching Modern Times. But I really did enjoy it. I guess I like Chaplin better than the Marx Brothers. There's something timeless and relevant about the plot; an unemployed man looks for work, meets a girl, and they try to survive together. It's not sappy, even though it's comedy. The girl is played by Paulette Goddard, and she's actually kind of cute. Her character is a devilish gamin (a new word to me, which basically means a street urchin), perpetually stealing food and getting into trouble for it. Chaplin is funny, but the two of them together are brilliant.

The film feels long, at only 87 minutes, because the scenes are so short, and by the end of the movie we've seen Chaplin as a factory worker who has a nervous breakdown, gets fired, gets mistaken as a communist leader, gets arrested, does cocaine in jail, helps foil a jailbreak, gets pardoned by the sheriff, works as a shipbuilder, gets fired, works as a department-store night-watchman, gets fired, works as a mechanic's assitant, gets fired, gets mistaken as a rioter, gets arrested, etc. etc. etc. Somewhere along the way he befriends the gamin and they fall in love. They share a shack together (though Chaplin modestly sleeps separately, in the woodshed), and she makes him ham sandwiches on the thickest slices of bread I've ever seen.

I don't watch a lot of silent movies, and I think this might be the first Chaplin movie I've ever seen. I have a suspicion that it's probably his best, and although I really enjoyed it I'm not sure I'm going to rush off to see any other of his films. I'm sure I'll see them eventually, though, and based on my experience with Modern Times, I'll probably enjoy watching the others too.

Of Gods and Men (2010)

Terry's Grade: B (aka, I really enjoyed this movie, but it's not a classic)

Of Gods and Men is one of those movies that is a better story than a film, but is still a pretty good film as well. The screenplay is based on the true story of a group of French Trappist monks living in a monastery in a village in Algeria. (I'd speculated they were Fransiscans, since in one shot we see a monk studying the writings of St. Francis of Assisi alongside the Koran, but I know next to nothing about monks so I'll defer to Wikipedia.) As religious violence against non-Muslims in the country continues to rise, the monks must decide whether to flee or stay at the monastery and continue to serve the community, where they are an important source of medical treatment, among other things.

The story is powerful, and the monks are for the most part very likeable characters. The audience wonders why anybody would ever want to hurt them, of all people. The movie does try to avoid Muslim-bashing, providing several moderate Muslim characters who voice their own disgust at the violence of the extremists. But in the end, when the film's antagonist is a bunch of Muslims who like to kill non-Muslims and any girl who doesn't wear a hijab, and the protagonists are a bunch of peaceful Christians who only want to provide medicine to the villagers, well, you can draw your own conclusions about what message that sends. While it may not be intended as such, it's easy to see this movie as another piece of anti-Muslim propaganda, particularly coming from France. Needless to say that's not how I viewed it, and perhaps it's best viewed as a historical piece, since the original events occurred in 1994, and not try to connect it too much to the current world situation (except that it's impossible not to make that comparison).

When a film has such a strong story, it can afford to be weak in other areas, and in many ways this film is unremarkable. Some things I really enjoyed were the scenes of the monks' daily lives. In particular, there is a shot of the chapel (is that the right word?) where the monks perform their ceremonies, which is repeated several times throughout the film. Each time, the camera angle is exactly the same, but the positions of the monks varies, conveying the repetition we expect to be a part of monastic life with a sense of progression and change at the same time. In other scenes, the filmic qualities are a tad heavy-handed. When a monk stumbles along a path, at night, in the dark, with the hand-held camera jerking behind him, it is a not-so-subtle tip that something bad is about to happen. My favorite of the monks was Luc, the old hunchbacked physician monk played by Michael Lonsdale (a familiar face which I can't quite place but others will: among numerous others, he's appeared in Moonraker, The Name of the Rose, The Remains of the Day, and Ronin -- all movies I've "kind of" seen before). When Luc arrives to a supper near the end of the movie, toting two bottles of wine, he pops on a tape of Tchaikovsky for dinner music. As the music grows more and more menacing, the camera cycles over the monk's faces, each more and more despondent. Clearly, this is not a supper; it is the last supper. At least we're spared any Michelangelo-esque shots.

Criticisms aside, this is a film I really wanted to see when it was in theaters, but it passed me by. When Rachel noticed it on the list of On Demand movies, I didn't even recognize the title anymore. I'm extremely glad she did, though, because it's worth a watch. Especially if you (like me) like movies about monks. I'm still waiting for the right time to watch that three-hour epic monastic documentary, Into Great Silence.

P.S. This movie is in French (with some Arabic) with subtitles!