Catching up with 2011: The Descendants

The Descendants is a collection of entertaining – sometimes even great – moments that never comes together. It’s like I kept waiting for something to happen; that typical Alexander Payne-like swerve that throws the entire film under a new light, but it doesn’t happen. Nothing happens in this movie. And I’m not a person who needs something to happen in a movie for it to be entertaining or worth my time (one of my favorite movies is Stranger Than Paradise where not a lot happens), but there has to be some kind of mystery or intrigue or ambiguity about these characters that keeps us interested in following their journey. Everything just seems kind of telegraphed from the first moments of the lazy voiceover to the bedside emotional scenes that resound with a speciousness found in the worst offenders of the Oscar bait season. Payne seems more interested in holding the hands of the audience through every phony step of the way.

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Catching up with 2011: The Ides of March

If it weren't for Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March would feel more like a great episode of television than a movie one really needs to go out of their way to see. Gosling is, as everyone knows by now, one of the best young actors working today (alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon I'm hard-pressed to find three better young actors working right now), and he really saves this movie from being pretty, "meh." Don't get me wrong, though, Clooney (who stars, directs, and co-writes) is more than adept at making this kind of cerebral, political thriller. Loosely based on the Howard Dean campaign of 2004, The Ides of March fits neatly into the type of film Clooney the director seems drawn to: movies about men of high intelligence and energy (and are somewhat idealistic) who have their worlds close in on them until they reach their breaking point. It's not that The Ides of March is ineffective or even bad; it's just that in the end, it's wholly forgettable. The film doesn't tell the viewer something they don't already know about the soul-crushing endeavor of working on a campaign (and politics in general...it kind of reminded me of Charlie Wilson's War in this respect), but it is filled with great performances (the aforementioned Gosling, of course) from the likes of Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Marissa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, and Max Minghella. It won't make any end-of-the-year lists, but it's certainly worth your 100 minutes when it comes out on DVD.

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The American (2010)

The American may be indebted to the existential crime cinema of one Jean-Pierre Melville, but it also owes a great deal to Sergio Leone, and I don't think director Anton Corbijn (who directed the great Joy Division biopic Control) is shy about the fact that even though he's trying to make an existential thriller, he's also making a Leone-esque western that takes an oblique approach to telling its classic story about a protagonist who says more with his eyes than with words. As Herbert Grönemeyer's score guides the viewer through the action of the un-action, I couldn't help but think of last year's fantastic, and similarly deliberately paced "thriller," The Limits of Control. Both films require the viewer to be patient with their hired-killer tropes as the film washes over the viewer instead of attacks them with a barrage of phony action scenes and quick cuts. Apropos to how we feel watching this film, the opening shot, a slow push-in, invites us to ease into this meditative world where ambiguity should not be misconstrued as laziness. There are problems with the film's script (written by Rowan Joffe who penned 28 Weeks Later, the better of the two infected films), yes, but I think they're only pressing if you go into The American expecting another hyperactive spy thriller a la the Bourne films (and, man, how boring would that have been).

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Revisiting 1999: The Top Ten Films of the Year, #4 --- Three Kings (David O. Russell)

Sorry this one is so short and more like an outline. I just knew that if I didn't get this posted soon I never would. So here's some brief, and somewhat unorganized, thoughts on one of my very favorite films of the 90's. Here's where I've covered so far in case you've forgotten:

The Top 10 Films of 1999:

Intro: Introduction: The Best Films of 1999

10 - The Limey (Steven Soderbergh)

9 - Affliction (Paul Schrader)

8- American Movie (Chris Smith)
7- Rosetta (The Dardenne Brothers)

6- Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze)

5- The Insider (Michael Mann)

1999 was the revival of American cinema. It marked a new age, a revolution spear-headed by the likes of Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, and David O. Russell. It was also a revival for their masters like Martin Scorsese, Terrance Malick, and Michael Mann. This mix of young and old reminds one of the 60's and 70's, a time in film history that most consider being the acme of filmmaking. These two signposts of film history show filmmakers taking Hollywood films, and conventions, and turning them on their ear. David Russell, director of the brilliant Three Kings, was one of the most impressive to come out of this movement.

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