The Romantic 00's

The Best Romance Films of the 2000s - Part 10 of our ongoing series

Before Sunset (c) 2004 Warner Independent Pictures

 
Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you didn't think I was done with these Best of the Decade -lists? I have plenty still to go, so here's the 11 Best Romance Films of Last Decade

(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Director: Marc Webb


500 Days Of Summer Dance Scene from Randy Beeman on Vimeo.

In a love story that has a broken narrative, we take glimpses here and there of a romance between Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel). The boy is deeply in love, but Summer is whimsical by nature and when it seems the relationship is getting too heavy, she breals it off. Tom is having a hard time adjusting. It's a film a lot more about the pains of love than the good parts movies tend to focus about. But it is also an optimistic film about coping with loss and a broken heart.

This isn't the kind of movie that'll cheat you with false premises of love. Rather, it is one that'll make you feel better about relationships that don't work. It's funny and charming, but also painfully real at parts. The empty or overwhelming feelings felt inside when in a one-sided relationship are brought out especially well. The music and athmosphere is still a bit too indie for its own good. This isn't overtly analytical about relationships but if you want that, you can go watch Woody Allen instead. For us with a warmer heart this is a real treat. Even if it doesn't give us easy, simple solutions. 


Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo, 2005)
Director: Carlos Reygadas



This might be a story of an unrequited love, or not. The film seems to be a lot of things. At least it contains a lot of sex, from the opening scene featuring a blowjob on. The middle-aged chauffeur Marcos (Marcos Hernéndez) dreams about the young general's daughter Ana (Anapola Mushkaditz) who he drives around. Ana works as a prostitute, which increases Marcos' desperation and horniness both. Marcos also carries guilt for having kidnapped a baby which has died.

Mostly the film seems to be a portrayal of a middle-aged man's mind coming to pieces. It's not easy to say what is Marcos' fantasizing and what is real. At the scene where he finally has sex with Ana, for example, his mind begins to wander and the camera goes slowly around the neighbourhood. Could this all be just a daydream or is it that just to show just sex won't satisfy his hopes towards Ana? The Christian religion also plays a major part in the crushing guilt Marcos is feeling (it's in the title), and that is probably what makes him do the things he does in the end. It won't end happily for those concerned, but the film in all its difficulty is well worth multiple looks.

Before Sunset (2004)
Director: Richard Linklater



Before Sunset is one of the biggest miracles of the decade. How is it that Linklater was able to create such a perfect sequel to his 1995 Generation X romance? It's largely thanks to the actors, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. They helped out with the script, and as a result, both characters pour their hearts out at their frozen thirtysomething lifestyles in a painfully realistic manner. Hawke's marriage in the film is crumbling, although he has a young child. In real life, Hawke was soon divorced from Uma Thurman.

Celine (Delpy) hears Jesse (Hawke) is in paris to promote his new book and seeks him out. The couple haven't heard from each other since the last film - neither arrived at the rendez-vous. But they have a lot of catching up to do before Jesse's flight back home. The story follows the couple in real time as they wander around the streets of Paris, talking about their lives and everything else. The talk is more down-to-earth this time as 30-year-olds are more practical than 20-somethings. Linklater cuts the film perfectly and makes the whole film seem effortless. The couple starts to see the affection they had the last time around but were too scared to follow. The film ends just perfectly, not saying too much but giving us just the right amount. Will there be a third one in a few years? If there is, that would need to have an all new kind of magic as well.

Far From Heaven (2002)
Director: Todd Haynes



You could call Far From Heaven an anti-romance film, as it depicts a couple whose marriage is falling apart. But there's also a lot more subtle romance going on. In 1950's American suburbs the husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) drives around going around in bars not knowng what he's looking for. The lonely housewife Cathy (Julianne Moore), on the other hand, grows friendly with a black man, Raymond, son of her late gardener. This raises up all sorts of rumours among the suburb's other housewifes.

Later on it becomes obvious that Frank has homosexual urges. He tries to act as a real husband but with no avail, which makes him drink and rage. Poor Cathy is ever in a worse situation, yet her friendship with Raymond deepens with their common interest in art. The blooming romance is spoiled by the racist athmosphere of the times and the will for Cathy to keep her face. Also it can create danger of violence on innocents, like Cathy's daughter has to face. Only at the very end she realizes that she deserves happiness as much as Frank, but by then it's too late. Director Haynes nails the old Douglas Sirk formula of making melodramatic dramas, yetmanages to make an issue film that's easy to follow, yet doesn't feel it's pandering its audience with a hard-handed message.

In The Mood For Love (Fa yeung nin wa, 2000)
Director: Wong Kar-wai



One of Wong's finest deals with an apartement block where a man and a woman meet. They are both married, yet their spouses are never there and the couple feel lonely. As they start to spend more time together, they start to realiye their spouses might even have an affair among themselves. This puts a stop to them wanting to have a deeper relationship with each other as they both "don't want to sink to the same level" of a homewrecker.

Christopher Doyle does tremendous photography here and creates vivid and colourful images that are melancholy and deep at the same time. Likewise Wong has a great film that doesn#t have any easy answers nor anything extra within it. A must see.

I'm a Cyborg, but That's OK (2006)
Director: Park Chan-wook



This list's black horse is a fantasy-romance set to a madhouse, directed by the Korean wonderboy Park Chan-wook. It hasn't been as critically acclaimed as many other of park's films, but I simply love its whimsical nature and giddy funniness. It is a love story between a woman who thinks she's a cyborg, and a masked cleptomaniac. He prefers to walk backwards, she talks to lights and vending machines and sucks batteries. And of course dreams sbout brutally murdering all the nurses in the clinic with her fingertip machineguns. It's rare that a romantic comedy is so violent, even though in actuality, only one person dies in the film. But nevertheless, the core romance is touching. The man doesn't try to change her love, but rather works with her on the same rules as she plays to get her to eat and do other things she really needs to survive. That's basically what every great love is all about, but this one comes as a bonus for having fantasies to shrinking so small as to ride a ladybug around.

Lost in Translation (2003)
Director: Sofia Coppola



I think this list might show off my view of romances as being by definition complicated. Indeed, very few of these are straightforward boy-meets-girl -stories that have a happy ending. Well, a boy meets a girl here - if you can call 50-something Bill Murray a boy. He plays Bob Harris, a 50-something actor, out in Tokyo to shoot a Japanese commercial. Bob meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a beautiful young newlywed, whose husband is a photographer and always out to work. Both people, left alone in a big city, find console in each other. It's not entirely clear whether it is a depiction of your typical romantic love, but some sort of mutual admiration is found between the pair.

Tokyo is depicted as full of everything, all of which is worthless. Bob can't get inside the Japanese culture, which causes more alienation. The only downsides in the film are some racial tones, which Coppola uses to emphasize this contrast. She would later get more skillful with it. Yet Bob also has differed from the youth of his own homecountry, as told by his costume choice when out to meet young people.

As it is, LOT is a pretty gripping piece of work that perfectly captures the comfort we get when we get remedy for aching loneliness. The main characters may keep on having pretty much the same kind of lives, but it is heart-melting to watch them ease up even just a little.

Love Exposure (Ai no mukidashi, 2008)
Director: Sion Sono



Love Exposure is so much unlike any other romance film there is. At four hours, it feels like a short music video and by the end the viewer is left wanting more. The punk music, below-the-navel humour and cool fight scenes help a lot, I suppose. Love Exposure is to love what 2001: A Space Odyssey was to the development of mankind - it includes it in its entirity. Celibacy, first love, sexual relationships, homosexuality, late bloomers, perversity and, of course the never-ending frustration are vividly brought to life by Sono's imagination.

Yu Honda (Takahiro Nishijima) is a preacher's son. As a devoted catholic, he's promised to keep his virginity until he finds the perfect lady. He also is interested in finding out about the worlds of sin, just so he could have something to confess to his father, who's lost the will to live after his wife's death. One day, after losing a bet to his friends, Yu is forced to dress up as a woman. He soon gets into a major street brawl, where he first meets Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima). He falls head-over-heels in love and so does Yoko - but she to the female character Ms. Scorpion Yu was dressed up as. Things get even more complicated when Yu's father marries Yoko's stepmother and they become siblings. In addition to that, Yoko's friend and cult leader Aya Koike (Sakura Ando) has some reasons of herself to keep the couple away from each other. And that's just the setup, about the first hour of the film.

Even though the film doesn't shy away from such bad taste, it also has a ponderous side of the nature of love and how one creates it. And it has also a darker side. All the characters are three-dimensional as they have skeletons in the past, which helps to understand why they do the things that they do, and how hard it is to get to a happy ending. Sono directs it all with a wonderful, weird touch and plenty of great ideas.

The Man without a Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä, 2002)
Director: Aki Kaurismäki



The most internationally acclaimed Finnish director has made a long career of brilliant films, but this one is one of his best. It is a romance told with small nyances and scenes. A rewatch revealed that it was also a lot more. A man (Markku Peltola) arrives by train to Helsinki and is soon brutally beaten. The man is pronounced dead at the hospital, yet he escapes without remembering who he really is. He starts working at the docks and falls for a Salvation Army worker Irma (Kati Outinen). The man, now known as M makes friends with the poor, but has troubles with the authorities as he can't remember his name. He's been told that the government isn't interested in knowing anything other than his name.

Kaurismäki makes no mistake he would miss the Finland of the olden days where a man was measured by his friends, not by papers and a bank account. He tells the story in his common style, with a lot of dry humour and deadpan delivery of literary lines. No single line is used that doesn't have use for the story. The film is funny as hell and has great musical numbers in between. The central romance perhaps isn't the deepest part in the story, but has great captures of moments, such as the part where M and Irma go out to collect mushrooms. This is the sort of image I'd like foreign people to have about Finland.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson



An Adam Sandler movie worth watching? Now I've seen everything. Yet the greatest American Actor's Director Paul Thomas Anderson nails it again. Sandler does have some of his manners, but is not playing his moronic man-child image purely for cheap laughs. Instead, he is a mostly symphatetic person that has his darker sides that we as viewers feel uncomfrotable with. Does a borderline mentaly ill person deserve a romance or should he need some help? Sandler's character Barry Egan is a novelty item salesman, constantly tortured verbally by his seven sisters. Barry's lonely, desperate and prone to having bursts of rage. To the outside world he's something to take advantange of, and he tries to do the same thing himself, with poor results. Barry has a string of bad luck that gets him chased by some shady men. But then he meets Lena (Emily Watson) and it all seems to finally go OK. But the people bossing Barry around aren't going to let him go that easily.

Anderson mixes just the right amount of weird real life quirks (such as the pudding scam to achieve free air mails) to a love story that's dark around the edges. I find it strange that the film is not more acclaimed. It's smaller in scale and a lot more intimate than the puffed-up and overrated Mangolia.

Wall-E (2008)
Director: Anderw Stanton



I may have already used Wall-E in these lists (in Sci-fi one), but I just don't have the heart to leave it out. For I truly think it's one of the most touching romance films of the decade. And probably the most identifiable for me, as well. A lonely garbage disposal meets a high-tech scout droid. Against all odds such different beings do find common ground. Wall-E falls for EVE in a second, but part of the film's magic is watching the process in which EVE learns to love Wall-E too. All without saying no more than each character's names. Now THAT'S dialogue minimalism that would impress Kaurismäki. It is not a perfect film, as all scenes not concerning the love of the two robots seem to belong into another film, more noisy and idealstic. I would've been happy just to watch these two the whole time, stranded on wasted Earth with each other.

Bubbling under:
Brokeback Mountain (2005), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), The Fountain (2007), Let The Right One In (2008), Mister Lonely (2007)

To be seen:
The Dreamers (2003)
Intimacy (2001)
Innocence (2000)
The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste, 2001)
Shortbus (2006)

Oscars 2011

I'm not terribly excited about the Oscars this year. Of course, every movie fan worth his salt knows that the awards are by definition, worthless. But still they usually offer at least some entertainment to me. No, the problem this year is that we've had TOO good a movie year. There's no drama in following a good film and a bad film battle it out. Our worst case scenario is 127 Hours winning Best Picture, and that was an OK movie that was still a lot better than Slumdog Mllionaire and more award-worthy than any of the other 2009 Best Picture nominees.

Still, for the first time in history, I've actually seen all of the 10 Best Picture Nominees this year, so I figure I owe it to you to share my thoughts on them. As the movies matter, and awards not, the guess on which awards they will win will follow a short review. The films are in my preferred order.

Black Swan
Director: Darren Aronofsky

This is the darkest film of the nominees, and that's why it's difficult to believe it winning the big gong, great though it is. Personally I think this might be Aronofsky's best film to date, and that's saying a lot. The Polanski-inspired mind-fracturing psychological thriller follows a young ballerina Nina Sayers. Nina, brought to life by Natalie Portman's wonderful performance, dreams of being perfect in her dancing. Yet she is kind and timid, and her director believes too shy to show off her true passions in her dance. Nevertheless, Sayers gets a double role in the production of Swan Lake as a good White Swan and the evil Black Swan.

For a person with a poor self-esteem forcing herself to be nasty and ruthless is a project that has scary consequences. Nina starts uncovering her deepest passions, sealed tightly within. And this starts fracturing her mind, causing different sorts of paranoia and fears. If there's one problem with the film it's one single scene where Aronofsky feeds us jump-scares and other dire horror clichés. But this can be forgiven, as it really happens in the mind as a reaction to earlier experiences. Black Swan is a frank film about our true selves, personalities and passions. Also the need for perfection within us, which denies an individual to actually adapt to problems and mistakes. It is well shot, edited and scored. The operatic scale of all of this is stunning and if one sees this in a huge canvas, one leaves the theatre utterly aghast. But as it is such a dark film, I suspect it will win only the Actress Oscar for Natalie Portman's utterly believable turn from a nice young lady into a raging monster.

Awards it will win: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Natalie Portman)

True Grit
Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen

If last year at the Oscars were a celebration for women being able to direct, this year's films have plenty of strong female characters within them. The strongest of them are True Grit's Mattie Ross and Winter's Bone's Ree. Both are strong teenaged girls grown on a tough and ruthless areas, and who will go to far lengths to balance their father's legacy. Mattie, played by the brilliant young Hailee Stanfield, here is a little tougher, more vengeful and more adamant to do as she wants. The film is told from her point-of-view, just like in Charles Portis' classic western novel, of which this is a good adaptation.

Mattie comes to a small western town to haggle a sum of money from a bank, that owed her murdered father. She uses the money to hire a county sherriff to help her hunt down the murderer. She chooses the toughest one she can get, Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), an old drunkard that has a habit of shooting first and asking questions later. The film is shot on grey and brown tones, so reminiscent for the westerns of today. Nevertheless, the wintery prairies look genuine and one can also feel the creeping coldness as snowflakes start slowly falling. I say it's high time the Coens' genius cinematographer Roger Deakins will win a recognition for his wonderful work over the years.

I waited a lot from this film and was definately not disappointed. For one, this might be the first time ever that I've watched Jeff Bridges in anything and didn't think of a single Big Lebowski quote in appropriate places. He owns that role, John Wayne ain't got nothing on him. Yet with all the Grit, the Coens still bring sackfulls of their trademark black humour to the film, faithful to the book. Rooster defending his actions in court, the unfair hanging and of course Rooster getting drunk and showcasing his shooting skills tickle my funny bones just right. Yet the film doesn't shy away from the meat of the book, either, and make it a straightforward redemption story so beloved by Hollywood. It is to me a story about how trying to be too tough can get you old and bitter and leave you out of touch from your friends. We need a little warmth, not just vengefulness. There's not an ounce of sentimentality or forcefeeding this thought. It is given subtly and anyone can find also other things in the film.

I believe executive producer Steven Spielberg is responsible for the few flaws of the film, including changing the book's narrative to have the obligatory group feuds and fallings apart in just the right places for the basic Hollywood story formula. And while the film keeps the book's ending, I kind of miss the minor part where Mattie starts judging old criminal Frank James in her mind for crimes he had been suspected but not condemned. It shows that, as the narrator of the story, Mattie's judgement might not have been the best possible one, as it's been based on feelings rather than facts. Yet for these minor grumbles it is still a class act from the Coens and one of my absolute favorites this year.

Awards: Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Best Art Direction (Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh)

Toy Story 3
Director: Lee Unkrich

Now that there are 10 Best picture Nominees, Pixar's nomination is pretty much a given. They probably still won't ever win the big gong - that's what the Best Feature Animation Oscar is for. But the most-crossing film of the year is still great work. Woody the Cowboy, Buzz Lightyear and other toys try to adapt to retirement from being playthings - yet they want to retire with style. That's something the local Daycare Centre doesn't offer them, so they must do something about it.

Pixar really wanted to end this film with dignity, and succeeds probably better than anyone before them with a third installment. The ending is so perfect, I really hope there won't be any more of Toy Stories. Yet the heartless Disney executives will probably demand one more once their stocks go down enough. I recently rewatched the film from Blu-ray. I found that when you know that the moving on part in the end is coming, it's even harder to handle. The two most touching films nominated this year are animations - the other is The Illusionist. So I find it's a bit unfair that only the other one can win an award for its troubles.

Awards: Best Animated Feature Film, Best Original Song ("We Belong Together" - Randy Newman)

The Social Network
Director: David Fincher

Ah, it is about time for Fincher to get some recognition. For the competition seems to be mostly between The King's Speech and The Social Network, and Academy tends to award those directors with the more impressive back resumé. It ain't Tom Hooper. I think TSN will be the big winner in other categories too, come February 27th. The Social Network is not bad at all as a film, either. It would take a genius like Fincher to liven up something as mundane as Facebook, but he nails it. The rich tones of mahogany and the noble university enviroments surrounding petty and childish persons sqabbling in a film that is perfectly directed and cut. Fincher mostly forgets the actual programming - in fact computer programs could be switched to almost anything else, and the storytelling and the drive of the film would still keep on being just as interesting. But of course the real treat in the film is the contrast between a website which is supposed to bring people together, that only further divides people who are not that good with relationships to begin with.

Much of the praise of the film goes to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, too. Sorkin is used to writing great machine-gun dialogue to government officials, so to make equally unlikeable hermit-like programming nerds interesting is a task he alone can accomplish. And what characters we have! The film's cast is brilliant in that we can see them think their next move as the story progresses. Nothing is a given, so one can read all sorts of messages from their performances. Jesse Eisenberg is great as the lead, but as social ineptitude is not a curable illness compared to a speech impediment, he'll be left without an award. Even better in his role is Andrew Garfield, who didn't even get a nomination. Film music win for Trent Reznor is also entirely possible, but to be fair I don't recall any pieces of music from the film, unlike I do with Inception and its "BRRAAAH"-tones.

Awards: Best Picture, Best Director (David Fincher), Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Best Film Editing (Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter)

The Fighter
Director: David O. Russell

I suspected that David O. Russell wouldn't be out just to copy Rocky and I was right. Like any good sports film, The Fighter is barely at all about the sport itself. Rather, it's about a family living in a small community. This family is more a burden than a support to promising boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg). His older brother Dicky (Christian Bale) brags about punching out Sugar Ray Robinson, but his glory days are clearly behind him. Today he does shady deals and crack in addition to coaching his brother. The Ward family, that includes a demanding mother with her new pushover spouse, a seedy douchebag brother and a seemingly well-balanced but actually as-as-bad-as-the-rest protagonist reminds me of Arrested Development. And the family also includes plenty of Patty and Selma-like hag sisters. Like The Bluths, the Ward family thinks they are big shots while each of them is actually a foul human, looking only after their own benefits. The community doesn't look up at them, but rather laughs at them. But later the family does get a change for redemption by pulling the same rope together. The problem is how to lure them to do so. The inevitable final boxing match comes more of an afterthought than an actual climax.

I view this almost as a comedy, although that is a bit unfair to the dramatic portion of the film. A little fame in a small town can lead to a big fis-syndrome. That, in turn can make life go totally askew, although the film has an optimistic tone. Much of the hilarty as well as the weight of the film is thanks to Christian Bale's brilliant performance. I think it's easily his best since American Psycho, no doubt. His Dicky is the kind of guy that would jump from the second storey into a dumpster when his mother is ringing the doorbell, just in case. His finest moment is probably raising money for his brother by getting his girlfriend to turn tricks for cruisers and then posing as a policeman to rob them. Bale nails the small nyances, untrustable nature of crack-addicts, yet his Dicky is also highly symphatetic, at core well-meaning character. There's a beautiful part where he realizes the downside of his fame-seeking bragging - being a poor father and role-mother to his daughter.

I really hope The Fighter could be the Black Horse of the awards. It's been ages since there came a boxing film as good, but probably it will go the way of Raging Bull, collecting the actor award and that's it.

Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Christian Bale)

Winter's Bone
Director: Debra Granik

Winter's Bone is almost a companion piece, or a modernization of True Grit. Both have strong teenaged girls fighting their way through frighteningly cold and cruel American wilderness, where truly evil men hide. Director Debra Granik directs the film as more down-to-earth, matter-of-factly. This emphasizes of the coldness and one can draw any kind of allusions to this world where people are hostile to those that most need help.

The protagonist Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) isn't out to avenge her father, she's just out to find him, alive or dead. If she doesn't, the bank takes the home away from her, her two younger siblings and mentally ill mother. But Ree has to do this all all by herself, almost completely without help from the other occupants of her village. Instead of help, Ree is met with threats, mistreatment and open violence. The reasons for this vary from fear of the local kingpin, or the authorities, or just plain emotional coldness. This coldness of the is emphasized by the wintery grey landscapes. It is also contrasted with Ree warmly playing with her siblings and teaching them how to hunt and cook. She's trying to teach them how to take care of themselves - something she must've probably learned by herself, not from her absent father. Ree is a complex character that has her fears too, but she won't allow them to cripple her and her will to do what she must is much stronger. We have a real, three-dimensional female main character in a good movie after a while.

Because Winter's Bone has the smallest budget of the nominees, it also has the least money to campaign. I think it will be overrun by bigger films in the Gala and left without a single statue. Even Natalie Portman will annihilate poor Jennifer Lawrence (who will still have a pretty great career ahead of her anyway). All this probably couldn't interest director Granik less, as she's not interested in the Mainstream in the least. And that's probably for the best, for otherwise we wouldn't have gotten such a great film.

Awards: None

The King's Speech 
Director: Tom Hooper

The King's Speech is the most obvious film straining for awards of the bunch. Historical subjects and overcoming a crippling feature are what many, many previous award wins are made of. But even if The King's Speech is also pretty common in its plot, it is still a lot better than most other films of the same kind. It is basically a buddy film, between King George VI (Colin Firth) and his speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). There's also a very British quality in the film, and it doesn't feel like a Hollywoodization of a historical subject. The film benefits from a good script and great actors, who manage to flesh out droll historical characters. They have their own goals, joys, grievances and most poignantly, skeletons in the closet. As it's usual for these kinds of films, it takes huge liberties with history, but it all works.

The film is pretty hilarious at its first half. The brits sure know their dry humour. To see a person born to luxury getting humbled by a common therapist makes me chuckle. Nevertheless, when things get serious it takes a whole new agenda. The film plays pretty much on the symbolic value of a king. It is also situated in a point in history, where mass media started to gain global signifigance. Both of these switched at the same time, which is noted within the film. A king must be ready to motivate his subjects at hard times, or he's not a leader with authority. Being a good leader is compared to be a good actor, which is why Logue uses methods that make use of Shakespeare's plays. Hitler is shown on film as an example of how masses can be raised with the right kind of speaking at the right time and the right emphasis. George (or Bertie, as he's more commonly called in the film) must forget his personal troubles, which have caused him to stutter in the first place. In other words, he must stop being a private person and start being a king, a leader to the people. As simplistic and against my democratic views the ending is, where the King finally delivers his idealistic WWII speech, I found a tear in my eye. Well done for making me actually care about one of the royal family.

Awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Colin Firth), Best Costume Design (Jenny Beavan)


Inception
Director: Christopher Nolan

Is it really true that I haven't talked about Inception in this blog yet? If I had made a Top 20 list of the best films last year, or maybe even Top 15, Inception surely would've been on it. It's a big, silly summer shoot 'em up, but still ridiculously entertaining and has a few interesting thoughts somewhere in there, too. It's the first film to use Kierkegaardian philosophy of reality simplified for a popcorn movie since The Matrix (which is referenced at one of the dream stages). Inception is by no means a super-deep masterpiece, but maybe at least it can lead a whole generation to films where everything in a narrative isn't always a given. And for that it at least deserves its nomination.

Inception concerns a group of corporate thieves who steal business ideas from dreams. Why anyone would dream about detailed business ideas is not entirely realistic, but Nolan's dreams in the film are complicated structures that have a strict sense of rules in them anyway. The film spends most of its running time explaining these, although for dreams they should be more surrealistic and things morphing and whatnot. Instead, the dreams are like stages in a video game about the greatest action films ever filmed.

But the overwrought exposition and the inability to properly utilize all the possibilites a dreamworld offers are the only minus points the otherwise fine film has. While Nolan's dreams don't work like one's subconscious does, it at least allows for some stunning secuences where cityscapes self-destruct in a unique way only possible with a huge budget. The film has nice characters, too, although by no means any deeper than in any of the Ocean's films. They have basic personalities and as it happens their leader (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the romantic, whose pining for a lost love almost destroy their complicated job.

Nolan compares love to living in a dream pretty accurately. We all build our own little worlds to our head and it's funny to show someone actually living in them. But in love one must also face some hard realities, that are symbolized here by eascaping the idea of one character's earlier death. Mixing reality and dream is disastrous to the dream and often to the reality too, which has caused big traumas for Di Caprio's character. There's also the even more obvious metaphore for the dreams as being the world of cinema. Nolan has also spent years in perfecting a world of his own where a specific set of rules apply and to break these rules would be disastrous for the entity.

Nolan uses different sounds and music very well for an action film. Listen how, for instance slowed-down music is used in the main theme. As this is the film I best remember the quality of the athmosphere created by sound, I'll have to pick this to win these awards too.

Awards: Best Original Score (Hans Zimmer), Best Special Effects, Best Sound Editing (Richard Kindl), Best Sound Mixing

The Kids Are All Right
Director: Lisa Cholodenko

It seems to me that The Kids Are All Right is the token Minority Nominee. Oscar has been flirtatious with gay films before but they've been so far denied from the big gong. And probably will again. TKAA is not a bad film by all means. Heck, it is nice to see an independent comedy about a family that is FUNCTIONAL. All the characters are basically happy and content. What starts to drive this family of two mommies (Annette Bening & Julianne Moore) apart is when their children's father-figure arrives. Mark Ruffalo is wonderful as the hapless sperm-donor that lives one day at a time, never thinking of long-term consequences.

But for a film for sexual minorities, there is some pandering, too. A common myth about lesbians is that they can be converted by a heterosexual male. While I suppose there are a lot of bisexual women living in homosexual relationships, the convertion happens a little too easy here. Likewise, the film has a habit of forgetting characters and arcs. For instance, the teenaged son gets rid of his douchebag friend easily, and after the confrontation of Bening with Ruffalo and Moore about the latter's Ruffalo is scarcely heard of again. Did he learn anything from this? But maybe it's better that the film doesn't try to forcefeed us with any strong morales, it would be nice for the film to at least acknowledge there has been a change rather than to just go back to status quo.

Awards: Best Original Screenplay (Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg)

127 Hours
Director: Danny Boyle

I've summed pretty much of what I think about 127 Hours earlier. On a weaker year it would have better chances of winning, but now everyone just keeps remembering: oh yeah, THAT was nominated too. Not a bad film, still, by no means. There's always next year for James Franco.

Awards: None

Oh, and I'm hoping the legendary Aussie actress Jacki Weaver wins a Best Supporting Female award from Animal Kingdom. So there you go. As I'm an insomniac and easily amused, I still will be following the 83rd Academy Award broadcast live. I won't comment on it here, but you can follow me on Twitter to get my thoughts. @pmihal

The Best of 2010 - Part I: The Films

Another year over, and what have you done? Well, watched a load of films, which means that I'm contractually obliged to give out a top 10 list of the best films the 2010s have seen so far. So here it is, a look back on the best films of the year. This list is based on the films which peremiered in Finland during 2010. Thus you may find a number of 2009 films also included.

It was a very good year for film. I had real difficulties on what to include on the list and what to leave out - plenty of good films were left out (even from the bubbling under-section), and I still had to divide this post into two. I have to do various other Year-best lists, yet as I get the instructions later, I'll put it out early next year. I'll also put in a list of the best DVD releases as a compensation, then. But now, let's just have the top 10 Theatrical Releases:

Bubbling Under: Armadillo, A Good Heart, Inception, Rare Exports, The Town.

10. Enter The Void
Director: Gaspar Noé



There are a number of faults in Gaspar Noé's latest film. It is way overlong and promotes a little too much the Buddhist philosophy on which its story is based on. But damn it, if it isn't one of the most captivating movie theatre experiences I've had probably ever. A real trip, and I wouldn't reccommend anyone to watch it anywhere else than a movie theatre. If you can turn your gaze away from the screen, you will. It's part of the Trip to accept these hard-to-watch moments as well. If 2001: A Space Odyssey had only a trippy end, Enter the Void is something like that from beginning to end.

The story is about the drug-shooting Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), who drifts along the streets of Tokyo, making drug deals and reading Buddhist philosophy. When a friend sells him out, the main character gets killed during the first half hour. The rest of the film he begins a Buddhist Spiritual Journey, looking back on his life and the world without him. Oscar's mournful and long Journey is cast heavily in japanese neon-lights with dirt and grit. Not to mention the unique directing style which is unmistakably Noé, and wouldn't benefit from me trying to explain it any more. He's treated the camera as a character before as well, and now uses this idea in the story as well. The film is nerve-wrecking, and seizure-causing and repetitive. yet it is also hauntingly beautiful and probably the ugliest movie about the beauty of life I've ever seen.



9. Jackass 3D
Director: Jeff Tremaine



Every time a new Jackass film is announced, I feel like the joke has gotten too old, as have the stunt performers. Yet when I see the final film, I can't help but laugh. I feel like Jackass 3D might be the best of the trilogy. I at least got the best laughs this year watching this. A film which makes Bam Margera cry can't be a bad one.

It is also probably the only film this year, where the 3D feels appropriate. It shows that many scenes are shot with expensive, high-def cameras. Besides that we get cool slo-mo impact shots when people get a fist to their face, we get to realize just how far away a jet turbine throws a football. We have then a good idea of the force which sends the football to the groin soon afterwards. I think the jet turbine prank with the clumsy waiter might be the best skit. Or, of course, the money shot that is the poop shoot in 3D. Or can music tame the wild beast one. Or, or, there are many good ones to choose from.



8. A Prophet (Un Prophete)
Director: Jacques Audriard



A Prophet is one of the most brutal prison movies ever made. Not so in violence, but because in its world prisons rather create and inspire criminals than cure them. A shy boy is sent to prison for reasons never explained. There he must run tasks for a mob boss in order to survive. This game he is forced to play soon starts to rot him to the core. It is a sort of Godfather story build inside four walls. It's not the first time Audriard takes ideas from an American crime classic and turns it into something undeniably French.

The violence itself is disturbingly realistic. The murderer is left shaken, stirred and changed forever. It might give him the vivid nightmares which come to earn him the nickname Prophet. Respect in criminal world still does only come from carnage. The base of criminal operations is not even limited to the prison. As the prisoners goes outside for vacation now and then and spread the Prison gospel of crime and murder there as well. As the main character's emotions are usually not that clear, one can easily reflect their own emotions there. It's not so much a character as an Avatar or a vessel for us to project ourselves in the same situation. Prison has been depicted as the ultimate place where the rules of survival of the fittest goes for us humans. A prophet shows us there is a way to make it, even if you are not physically strong, if at least you are quick-witted and ready to do bad things. But the cost is of course your whole former identity. Once you are ready to play along the Animal rules, you have to become one as well.



7. Four Lions
Director: Chris Morris



Four Lions shouldn't work. It is a comedy about a group of bumbling terrorists planning a major suicide bombing. Yet the film never feels like it tackles this difficult subject just to be edgy, nor treats its characters as one-dimensional Jihad-monsters. Maybe wisely director-screenwriter Chris Morris downplays the religious aspect of the terrorists to avoid discussion on irrelevant subjects. It's not by any menas a film about a war between religions. It is a film about humanity in general, and a search for a cause.

The terrorists are as multi-dimensional characters as any one of us. They could come from any background, and as a matter of fact they do too in the film. They make a lot of mistakes, and are also seriously misguided, trying to channel their various emotional traumas and hardships into something destructive. On the journey some of them find the joy of living again, but some get even more thirsty for blood because of the previous failures. As the subject isn't an easy one, there isn't also an easy way out for our characters. It is a comedy-faced tragedy, which feels especially bad as you've both laughed at and with these characters during the course of the film. Chris Morris is an infinetily skillful as both writer and director and I for one can't wait what he'll come up with next. Probably something completely different.



6. Kick-Ass
Director: Matthew Vaughan



OK, mostly this is just here because it is a kick-ass movie. Matthew Vaughan is a good genre director, and directing action he knows to use just the right amount of awesome, ridiculous, and ridiculously awesome. Most action films are so pussy these days that the action feels like something you're forced to sit through to get to the meaty part (like in, say, Iron Man 2 or A-Team). Not so in here. Guns, clubs, canes and swords are swung and they cause actual wounds and bruises and burns, oh my. It's a really violent film in case you didn't know. But damned entertaining at that. The perfect casting of both silly archetypes, and over-the-top specialities helps immensively as well.

Kick-Ass is a story about a regular nerd deciding to become a vigilante superhero, which means to beat people up for justice. He soon finds out he's taken a larger bite than he can chew. Kick-Ass is also a really postmodern super-hero film. The characters have also seen Spider-Man and act accordingly. The parody goes as far as the viral internet campaigns of superhero films. As a fan of the genre it is fun to see its pretty formulaic plot patterns, costumes and even dialogue mocked. As a parody, it is one that moves to be ever more outrageous. It starts pretty realistic but soon develops into an actual nerd-boy power fantasy, yet made to be so over-the-top that one can't help but to smile. The only part which doesn't quite fit the part is the romantic and sexual awakening, which I feel was in the end too close to the formula. Maybe Vaughan will pick up the pieces in the sequel. Good job for comic creator Mark Millar's world. Now, if we could only get a film as faithful to the ideas of Garth Ennis...



5. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Director: Werner Herzog



There was much fighting going on before the release of Werner Herzog's latest, about who has the rights to a classic film. Abel Ferrara famously disowned this film because he felt it tainted the legacy of his own 1992 film, Bad Lieutenant. Luckily, Herzog is smart enough to take an entirely different path on a familiar story. It is not a religious redemption story of a black sheep gone astray, but rather a black comedy about someone who should screw everything up, but in the end comes out of every mess victorious. The end result stands on its own and is different enough that one can easily embrace both films.

In Nicolas Cage Herzog has found the closest Hollywood representative of the manic acting style of his departed muse Klaus Kinski. Cage plays the loony Lieutenant Terence McDonagh who is seen as something of a hero, despite he doing things pretty impulsively due to him being high on painkillers and various other drugs pretty much all the time. The scene where he threatens an old lady is a classic in its own right. Herzog's pitch-black sense of humour hasn't gotten such a good channel for a while now, and it's nice to see the maestro kick back with absurd imagery. True, it also has a few hard-handed metaphors, but then Herzog has never been one to rely solely on deep metaphors. Instead, we get a layered piece that still has an air of mystery around it - like is Val Kilmer's character actually real? He only seems to appear to torment McDonagh to do the wrong thing, yet those moments the only time he decides to do the right thing and gets rewarded. Bad Lieutenant can only exist if there is an even badder one to defy. Much like the film itself.



4. The Social Network
Director: David Fincher



I had nearly no expectations about this one. I felt like Fincher had sold himself off by making the dreadful Benjamin Button film, and that the idea of making a film about the finding of Facebook was probably the dullest idea for a film that I had ever heard. Shows what I know. The end result is a class act all the way, from Aaron Sorkin's great machine-gun dialogue script to the performances of great young cast who fit to their roles prefectly. The film is not so much about developing technology as it is about the modern times, where we use websites to maintain our relationships. As much as Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is (portrayed as) a withdrawn, lonely and socially inept figure, he has turned us all into his own image.

This could've so easily been a film where a nerd gets a taste of the sweet rich life, but in the end learns a valuable lesson in friendship and such. Instead, the characters are like Seinfeld characters: however extraordinary their adventures are, none of them learn anything from any of that. They start out with claiming to wnat money and fame. Some get it, some don't. All want more. Even if they wreck their own relationships, they are essentailly the same characters from beginning to end. The film tries to tell that if we freeze our social experience online, there shall not be any room more to develop it. It is clearly the best film about turning yourself inwards I've seen in a long while.



3. Toy Story 3
Director: Lee Unkrich



Another film, about which I was a tad nervous beforehand. Pixar shall one day make another lacklustre film like Cars (Cars 2 next year?), but I sure as hell am glad this is not it. I've heard a wise reading of the Toy Story films (probably in Empire) in that they are all essentially about working life. The first one is about a new co-worker who you fear will replace you. The second one is about getting a promotion you don't want. And this third one is about retirement, whether you have served your purpose during your life and watching children grow up. Andy's toys, featuring Woody, Buzz and Rex, decide they won't go quietly to spend an eternity in the attic, but rather to investigate the retirement possibilities at a local Daycare Centre.

True, it repeats some themes from TS2, but this happens mostly at the beginning of the film. Even if the cast is packed to the rafters with caharacters old and new alike, the balance between all of the ingredients is handeled masterfully. The film is also incredibly swift in changing its tone, but it never feels forced that it does so. So, we get a good hour and a half of excitement, character-based drama, plotting, thrills, laughs, shock and horror and finally the best goodbye a film franchise could ever have. I didn't cry like I did watching Up and Wall-E, but I sure got misty-eyed and walked out of the theatre happy-sad. Well played, Pixar, well played.



2. The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)
Director: Michael Haneke



Were things really so good in the olden days? Seems like people's lives were much narrower and pre-set, not to mention living constantly in fear of parents, priests, officials, the law and of course, God. The Evil That Men Do lives on and on, as Iron Maiden so wisely put. Haneke seems to suggest that the Evil within also increases generation by generation. By setting his story before the First World War, he is essentially telling a story about the childhood of the Nazi Generation. No wonder the children here are so cruel.

The film is called to be one of the easiest Haneke film to access. I'd say in fact, that at least this time the director restrains from giving straight answers and spelling things for the viewer along the way. The black-and-white colour as long as the setpieces are as traditional as can be, yet the viewer's attention never goes astray. Haneke also handles his ensemble cast very well; there may seem to be multiple stories going on in the village at the same time yet it is all part of the bigger picture. As is usual for the director, there is no easy ending with a catharctic climax. This just leaves a more hauntic taste in the viewer's mouth. Multi-layered, thought-provoking, brilliant. It's The White Ribbon.



1. Somewhere
Director: Sofia Coppola



I've just realized that this list begins and ends on highly dividing arthouse films. Well, I'd say Somewhere deserves all the acclaim the film got at the Venice Film Festival, and then some. Sofia Coppola brings us another story about a loss of identity, getting lost in the modern society and a redemption which is highly reminiscent of her earlier masterpiece, Lost in Translation. But Coppola is a good enough artist to take two similar premises and deliver something intriguing both times. The slowly unravelling story is aabout the middle-aged actor Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) who feels bored and lost in the middle of all his playboy antics. Everyone knows fame and wealth surely doesn't bring happiness, but it's hardly ever been pictured as clear and matter-of-factly as it is here. The slow storytelling and repetitive scenes are in favour of thescript here. I love how the usual macho Hollywood thrills such as fast cars and beautiful women are portrayed as mundane, even sleep-causingly boring in the near silent opening sequences. That is some of the most unerotic stripping I've ever seen on screen. A life where you can get anything just for yourself doesn't have big thrills, however you look at it. Marco's attempts to handle his life on a here-and-now basis don't really lead to anything (or at best, just some meaningless sex), like when he tries to follow a lady in a convertible.

However, when his twelve-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) comes to visit, he starts to get a new grip on life. The moment when Dorff watches her ice-skate is the first time he shows any emotion in the film. And it comes just after another boring striptease scene, which emphasizes that the feminity in his pre-teen daughter is already stronger than in two money-hungry strippers who don't have any identity whatsoever, save for their names, which tend to get mixed up.

Coppola might have highly obvious symbolism in her film, but it is handeled with such confidence that it can't help but to bring a smile to one's face again and again. For example, in one scene Marco gets cast into plaster to create a make up for his upcoming film. Both the viewers and the actor wait ages for the plaster to be removed and out emerges an old man. Life can get by pretty fast if all one is concerned is yourself. Happily, Somewhere is an optimistic film and Marco does seem to have a chance to make his life worthwhile yet.

Much is being read into the relationship Coppola had with her own father, the acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola. I myself am not that interested in such trivial matters. Somewhere is a film about finding one self's worth and will to live. It isn't in material and shallow things we usually lust for, but rather finding little adventures with your loved ones, and maybe create them for ourselves as well. That's why I think this is the best film of the year.



The Best New Release of An Old Film

I realize this category might not have too many contestants each year. But I figured it shouldn't be on any of the other lists and I want to mention it. Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke got its theatrical premiere in Finland in 2010.




Like Miyazaki tends to do, he tells another story about the relationship between men and nature. The story is pretty epic and rough and thus aimed more clearly to older children and adults. Yet it might also be the biggest canvas of Miyazaki's creativity alongside Spirited Away. Visually, the film is nothing short of breathtaking. Miyazaki is at least on par with Satoshi Kon's Paprika in creating uniquely vivid animation. The forest gods, pixies, the fortress of ladies. The whole shebang leads to the pretty good question on why we humans tend to waste our vast resources on futile things like war and not to learn live more peacefully with nature and among ourselves.

Top 11 Festivals & Not yet in Programme

I'm gonna let these pass without a bigger comment, because most of these are already introduced in posts such as the HIFF-introduction. I'll return to them if there is any need to.

10. Winter's Bone
9. Mother
8. Animal Kingdom
7. Exit Through The Gift Shop
6. Symbol
5. Dogtooth
4. The Illusionist
3. Love Exposure
2. Sons of Cuba
1. Black Swan

High-rated films I didn't get to see in time:

Fantastic Mr. Fox, Heartbeats, How to Train Your Dragon, In A Better World, The Other Guys, Shutter Island, Submarino, Up in the Air

The Worst Film:



I actually didn't see anything really bad this year. However, I can tell what the most overrated film is: I Am Love. Even though I do love Somewhere, there is a fine line on how much drama I can take from the lives of the rich and the priveledged on film. If the characters are not right, the whole thing feels tedious, forced and all around uninteresting. All the characters in I Am Love might as well be replaced with planks. Tilda Swinton plays a rich housewife who begins an affair and blah blah blah yawn. This overlong episode of a daytime soap opera is never as steamy or clever as it think it is. Milan is an overrated city, yet the landscapes pictured in the film are the only thing of the remotest interest I could get from this. I really just couldn't get critics who put this drivel into their best-of-the-year lists. Maybe I should be an upper-class housewife to learn to understand this. The film wipes us in the face with its metaphor of making food = making love. Christ, everything else in our life is already sexualized. At least let us eat, drink and shit without having to constantly think about sex!

So here it is. I wish you A Happy New Year, and stay tuned for more hijinks here at the Last Movieblog!

Espoo Ciné 2010 report

I got my first accreditation to a film festival to this year's Espoo Ciné. It's the third most important international film festival in Finland, yet I hadn't visited it before. They had renovated their main theatre, Kino Tapiola, which was in its cave-likness perfect for various genre pictures. In fact, uring the festival a jury awarded the Mélies d'Argent award for the best european fantasy movie of the year. The winner this year was Amer, more on which later. I'll do a short review on each of the eight films I saw.

The extraordinary adventures of Adéle Blanc-sec
(Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec)
Director: Luc Besson

Besson used to be the hope for european genre films, but since The Fifth Element, very few of his films have even sounded interesting enough for me to check them out. According to the reviews, I've been ignoring him rightfully. But his latest film at least sounds good on paper. In early 20th century Paris, a feisty reportress is trying to solve the mystery of a loose Pterodactyl and trying to revive an egyptian mummy to revive her deceased sister. Why she wouldn't just revive her sister straight away isn't exactly clear, but then again this film has plot holes big enough for a giant Pterodactyl to fly through.

French comedies are certainly not my cup of tea, as their sense of humour is second only to the germans in badness. The jokes in Adéle Blanc-sec are particularly cringe-worthy. It also doesn't help that the characters aren't that lovable, but rather selfish types who'll thrive towards their own goal without having any consideration for the others. Particularly bad is Mathieu Almaric's (who is masked to look exactly like a Trash Humper) loony professor, who'll revive a dinosaur just for the hell of it even if it does kill people and run havock. And he's supposed to be a good guy. The film has certain fun ideas, such as the cute revived mummies close to the end of the film. Also nice is to see the 19th century Paris, but I love the city itself more than its depiction in films.

The film is based on a somewhat obscure cartoon (I love european comics but hadn't even heard of it before). I might check them out for the premise.

★★

Centurion
Director: Neil Marshall

If films like 300 had any ambition, this is what sort of historical action films we would get to see more. In the 2nd century, Romans are fighting the picts in Scotland. A group of Romans gets caught behind enemy lines and tries to make their way back home before they are all brutally slaughtered. Essentially, this is a film about a group of uber-machos who get de-masculinated by two strong female characters in two different ways. It's also a metaphor for the Afghanistan-Iraqi wars. I know the latter has been done a few times already, but this at least show both blame and goodness in both sides and in the end, the mighty attacker might be a whole lot worse than the savages they are trying to fight.

Neil Marshall is the same kind of filmmaker as Tarantino and De Palma. This means that he's willing to steal entire scenes from other films, but crucially, can make them work differently on his own context. It's also nice that he has time in the beginning to show the characters happy in introduction. The fact that most of them won't make it will give a bigger emotional punch this way. Of course, showing threatening situations is Marshall's best skill. It's a very gory and violent film, but it doesn't linger on the carnage. It's over as fast as it started, leaving behind only the corpses. Those were violent days and there's no need to sugar-coat it. The despair of the main characters just shows through better. Yes, I'd say this is the best Marshall flick after The Descent. And I like all of his films. I can't wait what he'll come up with next.

★★★★

Toy Story 3
Director: Lee Unkrich

I was wrong to be worried. While TS3 starts off by mirroring some themes and settings of TS2, it soon shifts to its own gear. Yeah, I think it's the best of the three. On Pixar's whole catalogue, it's the third ot fourth-best. Which isn't bad at all. In the story, Andy's toys are divided between staying loyal to their (now grown up) owner and finding a new place to get played with. This has more adult themes than would first appear. In fact, if one would replace "playing" with "having sex", this could be a melodramatic relationship drama. Woody feels guilty by being played with someone else than his owner, even if he likes it. And that's just in the first 30 minutes. The second 30 are a kick-ass prison movie, not unlike Chicken Run, but at least equally funny. And the last 30 minutes are the best part, from a truly scary climax to a heartfelt ending notion. It's good to see that the philosophy of the previous films hasn't changed anywhere, even if the beginning got me a bit worried.

Toy Story 2 lingered a bit too close to the human world. I'm glad they didn't have the toys interact with humans (other than with kids playing). This one peeks more closely to the Toys' secret society in a Kindergarten. The amount of characters is overwhelming, yet the film can concentrate on the ones we care most sufficiently. And it's also funny to boot. I had the misfortne of having some heckling kids in the same screening. Even they were quiet during the last few minutes of life moving on. I didn't cry this time, but got misty-eyed. I also began to wonder that these Pixar films might be too good for children. Oh well, as I'm still not seeing Cars 2 next year, it'll be a long wait for the next animation as good as this.

★★★★

The Door (Die Tür)
Director: Anno Saul

This german sci-fi film has a lot of interesting themes and poses relevant questions. David, played by the always-charismatic Mads Mikkelsen, is screwing around. One afternoon when he's supposed to watch for his daughter, he goes to his next-door neighbour. When he comes back from this booty call, the kid has drowned in his pool. Five years later his life is a wreck and his ex-wife hates him. But he finds a cave that takes him five years back. He can now save his daughter's life. The only problem is that timeline's other David.

The time-reaveling with its paradoxes mixed to the cold, naturalistic and character-driven european film style brings to mind the spanish masterpiece Timecrimes. This isn't quite as good, as it lingers too long in the middle. The end brings up a lot more fucked-up ideas, which is a little too much a little too late. It is still a quite fun little morality tale. Changing the past won't work without victims, you know.

★★★

The Lake (Un lac)
Director: Philippe Grandrieux

I have to be very careful when reviewing art films I don't quite get. Usually I at least find some particularly good part where to build up some good points about the film's quality. Not so with this. At the risk of being ignorant I'll have to say that this was not a very good film. In fact, The Lake feels more like a parody of an art film than one.

This isn't a film about a plot, it barely even has one. The dialogue is minimal and when there is some (every ten minutes), it's just very flat clichés, like "the cold wind goes through my heart". This sentence is then met with a single tear from another person. There isn't any music. The film is shot on either close-up shots or blurry close-up shots. There is a couple of wider shots, but they rarely show any characters, only boring snowy landscapes. Thus, it is often hard to tell who does what.

It's not totally rubbish, as the opening sequence of a lone boy cutting down a tree with the camera shaking with each blow is quite effective. But I would just like to warn people that like movies as an entertainment as well as an art, that this is something pretentious film-buffs will probably bring up in a conversation. It is as bad as many finnish art films.

★★

Vampires
Director: Vincent Lannoo

Vampires are pop right now and I for one am sick of the blood-suckers in media. Both as emo-boys and as CGI-generated video game monsters. This belgian mockymentary shows promise in its depiction of the creatures of the night. The silly opening sequence where vampires trick a couple of fimmaking crews to feed off, is quite hilarious. It's too bad the rest of the film can't follow it too well.

We meet a normal vampire family, who have the mummified corpse of clown in their house (hilariously underplayed "the previous owner of the house"), a refridgerator (a russian prostitute kept alive to get constantly blood to drink) and a childless pariah vampire couple living in their basement. Too bad the films jokes are either stolen (the family's daughter, wearing pink and wanting to kill herself "like humans" is straight from the pages of Terry Pratchett) or flat (vampires order takeaway and get African immigrants delivered to their door). In the mockumentary style jokes should be underplayed, but in this, it's hard to tell there is even supposed to be any jokes at all. The audience in the screening laughed precious little.

★★

Amer
Directors: Héléne Cattet, Bruno Forzani

Ah, good old italian giallo-style. How I've missed thee. Amer makes even the films of Dario Argento and Mario Bava look mundane, so frantic is the mixture of the greatest hits of italian pop-cinema's iconography. As is suitable for these sort of films, it's clearly style-over-substance. Iconography is everything, dialogue is scarce and the characters wafer-thin.

Amer tells the story of a young girl's growth to a sexual being. As it happens, it goes as bad astray as it can. From the strict mother to the death of her grandfather, she connects sex with death and violence early on. The film plays with various sensual situations later on, making the athmosphere almost unbearable. It's a hot and heaving picture with very little actual sex, but some gruesome violence to counter-balance that. The problem is that most of this has been already done before. It's a very good pastiche, and works well enough, so I'm willing to let that pass.

★★★ 1/2

Lebanon
Director: Samuel Moez

Lebanon is also coming to the Helsinki International Film Festival this September so consider this my second recommendation from the programme (the first being Scott Pilgrim vs. the World). The director Samuel Moez was fighting for Israel in the first Lebanese war in 1981. He has had trouble living with the horror of these experiences ever since, so he decided to make a movie out of it. The film takes mostly place in a single tank. A group of Israeli soldiers are sent to an easy search mission to a small town, which turns into total carnage later on.

Moez certainly has a strong mission in his work. In fact the horribleness of war threatens to go overboard from time to time. It is a very melodramatic movie, but luckily it also depends on the dynamic between the men in the tank. They have various views on the war from fear to anger and apathetic. The film doesn't go quite to the depths of the superior Waltz with Bashir, but for fans of Das Boot, this is something definately worth checking out. Even if it does leave a world-weary feeling.

★★★★

The Super 00's

The Best Superhero Films of the 2000s - Part V of a series

The Dark Knight (c) 2008 Warner Bros.

One would be amiss to dismiss superhero movies as a genre. They have really risen up during the last decade, mostly because they have made tons of money. They have partially made the classic one-man-army action movies obsolete. Their heroes may be powerful, but they are ordinary and vunerable at the same time. It is easier to identify oneself with Spider-Man than with John Rambo. As nowadays war movies have to be serious and westerns don't sell any more, it's the last of the classic boy's own adventures the young 'uns still have.

In fact, a superhero movie has in a way become the new century's answer to westerns. The stories in both bear strong similarities, namely in that they usually deal with an individual that brings order to chaos. The superhero genre's movies usually follow a tight pattern, that leaves few twists. As they are made to be franchises from the first film on, they can take time to deal with origins in the first, on why to sacrifice oneself for the innocent in the second and the darker side in the third.

In case you didn't figure already, I really dig the genre. I am a nerd, and mentally on the level of a 14-year-old, so there's that. But for children's movies, the recent superhero movies have given plenty to chew even for adults. To say there's something wrong with the genre essentially is to go on complaining about how superheroes are essentially stupid or how bendy the movies' logics are. Honestly, some people are such boring grumps. The studios have gotten great independent directors to do the films of the popular characters. The risk must be smaller than in completely original big-budget films as the superheroes' names are already familiar to large audiences. Thus the films practicaly sell themselves. The genre is divided enough that I've in purpose left the superhero movies out from my other lists. What troubles me is that most of the good superhero movies feature male protagonists, while Catwoman, Elektra, etc. are usually crap. I wonder why Hollywood can't make reasonable female protagonists.

So what follows is a sort-of top ten of superhero movies of the decade.

Batman Begins
2005, Dir. Christopher Nolan



In advance this was claimed to be hyper-realistic. Not so. It simply has left the Tim Burton-fantasy world and Joel Schumacher neon-vomit behind it, and happens solely in the clinical Nolan-verse. Simply because it doesn't have any elements which couldn't exist in our world doesn't make it realistic. It is the only Batman film to fully explore, what makes the character tick, and intimidation is the name of the game. It's great that as rare as it is for a superhero movie, the protagosist is morally a bit ambiguos. This will be more properly examined in the sequel. I love the scenes that are like a horror movie for petty criminals. The final third is pretty generic super hero stuff, but this is a huge step into the direction Nolan has headed head first to this day.

Big Man Japan (Dai Nipponjin)
2007, Dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto



Oh man, this would actually fit more into comedy or sci-fi, but seeing as I forgot to include it, here it is. It fits the superhero bill good, too, as it is about a normal schmuck, who occasionally heads to a power plant to get electrocuted. This makes him to grow into a giant and battle some utterly surreal monsters. It is shot as a fake mockumentary and the comedy comes from settings and enviroments. The jokes are hilariously underplayed. Even the bad CGI is utilized well to this purpose. And the main character sure is a lovable loser, working at a dangerous job and hated by the people he has sworn to protect. He is also in his father's shadow, who was a national hero in the same job. This is a truly batshit crazy Japanese Kaiju comedy, and telling anything more about it would just ruin the surprises. And you wouldn't believe me if I did. Find it.

The Dark Knight
2008, Dir. Christopher Nolan


By the way, this trailer has become a classic of it's own and one of the most well-known of all time. It has countless variations on YouTube.

Everyone loves this, as no one could've anticipated just how good this was going to be. Like Burton's Batman Returns, this is one of the rare occasions where the director didn't have to do any pandering for children, and could introduce adult themes into the superhero world. Nolan uses a bit of all sorts of great recent adult films in building this film's athmosphere. It's part Heat, part Se7en, all post-9/11, creating an astonishingly cold and grey dog-eat-dog world. But some goodness is to find in even the streets of Gotham. This surely was THE blockbuster with brains AND balls before Inception rolled along. It is a bit structurally uneven, but nevertheless damned entertaining. And not to mention the best description of American traumas in the George W. Bush era. It is a product of its time, but one that one would picture future people looking back on.

Hulk
2003, Dir. Ang Lee



This is an underrated gem. Granted, a comic-book like telling of the story of a great green ogre and a slow-moving father-issues drama aren't the pair made in heaven, but they do work surprisingly well together. This is a film so dark, that the gritty reboot looked tame in comparison. It's almost a shame this has to be a franchise movie of a popular comic book character. If it was an original creation, everyone would hail this film. Hulk's a too stupid a character to deserve a treatment this deep. Nick Nolte steals the show as the father from hell, and the movie's creations, such as Hulk-dogs, are pretty sick. The film could use a little more humour, though.

Alas, Hollywood saw that this didn't have enough action and made a sequel so stupid Hulk himself could've wrote it. In the upcoming Avengers movie they will take away the only thing that made it even a bit interesting, Edward Norton.

The Incredibles
2004, Dir. Brad Bird



Even though Pixar showed how to do it first, Hollywood couldn't tell a proper story of a superhero group as a family dynamic (Fantastic Four - although the first one isn't quite as bad as everyone says) or superheroes in a society that wants to control and limit their powers (Watchmen). The Incredibles succeeds in both of them and manages to be also funny, charming and actually exciting. And to boot, all the family characterizations are pretty spot-on, too.
Brad Bird would've wanted to have a symphatetic character that would've been killed to create an athmosphere of real danger. Pity this didn't materialize. It would've been just another slap to the face of live-action superhero movies, who can't even kill Spider-Man's girlfriend, even though it would be essential to the character. The Incredibles is one of the most sequel-worthy Pixar movies to my mind, but given how much we have other superhero movies, it's probably better they stick to more original subjects.

Iron Man
2008, Dir. Jon Favreau



It is sad that the blockbusters in the noughties were either so dark, or so crap, that whenever a decent light-hearted romp appeared, it generated a huge buzz. So was it with this and the first Pirates of the Caribbean. But still the studio execs force-feed us that Dark Knight-light crap over and over again. Yuck.

But this, along with the Spider-Man franchise, are the closest people have gotten on to realize how the Marvel characters work. Superheroism is supposed to be fun as well, as witnessed by Tony Stark in this. And the whole cast, including Jeff Bridges, seems to have had heaps of fun making this, too. The plot is generic and the story has a few worrying implications (can Iron Man truly kill terrorists just like that without anyone ever addressing the issue?), but the quality one-liners cover the stuff pretty good. Plus, the characters have actual development and SOME moral issues during the movie as well. The film embraces it's boy's own roots by not only centering the movie on technology, partying and hot chicks, but also totally metal music like AC/DC and Black Sabbath. Iron Man Rocks! I hope the sequel does too, haven't seen it yet.

Spider-Man
2002, Dir. Sam Raimi



This is a real cornerstone of the genre, side-by-side with Donner's Superman and Burton's Batman. It set the genre's archetype for this decade. Thus the film has been parodied, referenced and reproduced dozens of times already. It, as the character does, deals with an everyman, who gets the gift of great powers. Like people would, he first tries to exploit them for profit. But the bitter irony of not taking action gives him a punishment by getting an innocent man, his father-figure, killed. He wovs to use his powers for good as you might've guessed.

The film tells a quite good growing-up story as it is, even without the explosions. I also love the Green Goblin villain by Willem Dafoe, although I would've liked to save him later in the franchise to get him to be more vicious. Now he has little chance of getting the girlfriend or the mother-figure killed.

I have made it clear in this blog that even though I quite like the film, I don't think it is the Ultimate Spider-Man film. 1 & 2 feel like Burton's Batman films compared to the better, Nolan films yet to come. Let's have them, Marc Webb!

Spider-Man 2
2004, Dir. Sam Raimi



This, however, is at least closer to it. The only problems with this stem from the poor romance-dialogue (MJ's monologue at the end is particularly cringe-worthy). Also Spidey isn't nearly as concerned about maintaining his secret identity as he is in the comics. But hey, enough about the problems. What works:
This is a romance film about two people who can't work out how to be with each other and aren't sure of the other's feelings, either. This doesn't overplay the action, and has Peter Parker unable to use his powers due to low self-esteem for much of the movie. This leads also to pretty hilarious slapstick scenes. When the action finally arrives, it's pretty kickass, but never forgets who are fighting and what their personalities and dilemmas are. Also once again the villain works very good. I didn't like Dr. Octopus that much in comics, but Alfred Molina's version works fine in this. It's just that I would wish him to be a little more nefarious, too. Like in that Evil Dead 2-homaging surgery scene. Hm. Nevermind.

I'd also like to say, that this one's game version is one of the very, very, very rare tie-in license games that is fun to play.

Unbreakable
2000, Dir. M. Night Shyamalan



Ah, back when M. Night still made somewhat tolerable movies. This is actually a pretty good one, in that many people (including me) didn't realize this was a superhero movie any more than Bruce Willis's character did. It's silent, coldlighted world sold itself pretty well as a real world at the beginning. The end twist makes sense to me in the universe the movie built up to, and it was meant to work as a prelude to two more films of the franchise. Sadly, this tanked, whereas Signs and probably some other crap Shyamalan films have succeeded. The audience isn't always the smartest.

X2: X-Men United
2003, Dir. Bryan Singer



The first X-men film is overrated in my book, and the third one underrated. But everyone gets it that this does it just right. In case you didn't know, the series deals with the society's hatred of people who are different. The intolerance against mutants is compared to hatred against Jews, communists and especially homosexuals. In this the character Iceman "comes out of the closet" with his mutant powers to his family, who react by saying "Have you tried not being a mutant?"

This movie handles the big cast better than it's predecessor. The story's focus is on Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who will find out more about his past, as hinted out in the first movie. Another primary character is Professor Xavier (Patrick Steward), who is being used against his will as a tool to destroy all mutants. As people often are in these cases in real life too. The bad guy isn't Ian McKellen's Magneto this time, but a greedy general William Stryker. Not only is he power-hungry, he holds a personal grudge against the mutants because of his son, who is also a mutant.

This movie has more action this time, but fortunately it doesn't interfere with the plot. This is how more action movies should be made; the action alongside the story, not only neat CG-sequences. Consequently, the movie's CG is quite nicely made, especially considering the diminishing returns in this series (Wolverine looks as crap as The Phantom Menace). My favorite scene would have to be the lead-up to Magneto's cunning escape from prison. "Never trust a beautiful woman. Especially one that's interested in you". Ian McKellen is easily my favorite villain on this list, surpassing even Heath Ledger's Joker.

Dammit, now I mentioned Him. I tried to write the only Dark Knight review in history that didn't. He did a good job, him.