The 20 Best Movies of the Decade

20) Kill Bill, Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino)



19) Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)



18) The Prestige (Christopher Nolan)



17) George Washington (David Gordon Green)



16) The Company (Robert Altman)



15) Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda)



14) Apocalypto (Mel Gibson)



13) The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola)



12) The White Diamond (Werner Herzog)



11) In America (Jim Sheridan)



10) 2046 (Wong Kar Wai)



9) War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg)



8) Hero (Zhang Yimou)



7) The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson)



6) Lilya 4-Ever (Lukas Moodysson)



5) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik)



4) The Man Who Wasn’t There (Joel Coen)



3) Munich (Steven Spielberg)



2) Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)



1) AI Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)


ADDENDUM:

Due to perceived conflict of interest, I no longer opine on Torque in any critical forums. Suffice it to say, it has impacted my decade significantly.

Update my heritage, Hollywood!

Night falls on Halifax.

I've been returned some DVDs that I loaned to a friend last fall, and decide to shelve them. The new Morrissey record, which I received in the mail this midafternoon, spins on my turntable. There is no thunder or lightning. This, dear reader, is the atmosphere of the setup for this particular blog.

As I proceed to alphabetize my movies (which is something all passionate people do, but only those at my level of commitment alphabetize them by their directors' last names), I notice that something is off.

My films no longer all fit on the shelves.

The time had come to weed out my VHS. This task surprised me. Why the hell do I still have 122 VHS tapes of movies that I haven't replaced on DVD or Blu-ray?

But more importantly, 122?!

I guess I never found the inclination in the DVD years to upgrade my copy of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. But there's no excuse not to have Face/Off or the first Austin Powers on DVD yet.

With my shelves given their long-needed VHS enema, I still have a vulgar amount of movies on them. I calculate the dough spent on these discs and feel some pride and some upset. That's money I could really use.

But at the same time, it's in my wiring to keep them. These movies are my heritage. They're integral to the fabric of my being. If I display my guts on the wall next to my television like this, that's worthy of respect. I'm just the most honest person in the universe like that.

What this is getting at is the notion of Pop Heritage. It's the reason people are so protective of their favourite movies being remade, and the comic book properties they love getting turned into movies.

I'm not completely against remakes. And I think literal comic book adaptations miss the point of comic books and of movies. But I understand the protectiveness.



Watchmen is a perfect example. It's not a book I've lived with for 20 years. I only first read it 2 months ago. So when I hear people saying, "They better not fuck this up," I think, yeah, that would be a shame. Because, of course, I hope it's good.

But I hope all movies are good.

And who knows, I explained, maybe we'll all be surprised and the great movie this spring will be something like Race to Witch Mountain. A great movie is a great movie. What does it matter which one it is?

I have conflicted feelings about Zack Snyder's Watchmen, enjoying it to some degree. It's faithful to the graphic novel to a fault where the faithful indulgence (yes, I know the specifics of the ending are different) makes the last hour a drag. And Snyder doesn't figure out how to make the comic heroes not appear silly in this medium. A lot of what's interesting about the movie was already interesting about the comic.

For a basically faithful adaptation, it sometimes has a sense of film style, establishing some interesting elements as a movie.

So what do the comic fans want from this?

The problem with a Watchmen movie is this: The only way the film won't be an artistic letdown is if it isolates some purists and finds its own footing. It has to blow minds the way the comic apparently did for all these people 20 years ago. That won't occur just by replicating the comic. It has to happen a whole other time, in another way, as a movie.

At the end we get something sort of all right. It shouldn't dignify anybody's 20-year obsessions. But it's better than it likely could have been.

So the best way to approach movies like Watchmen is not to invest in the hype. If it ends up sucking, it doesn't really matter beyond the time and money the consumer spent on it. The comic everyone loved is still around. Warner Bros. isn't sending a hit squad to take the graphic novel out of peoples' houses.

But, in another way, it does matter!

It matters because we all care too much about what other people think.

If the Last House on the Left remake is watered down ultra-slick baloney, the title is tarnished by the Friday night date crowd. They'll be going around for the rest of their lives saying " Last House on the Left was soo gay!," but they won't have seen the more hardcore other movie with that name that came first, and which looked like it was made by sociopathic junior high students.

That's the fear of remakes reselling one's heritage in "updated" versions that are BASED ON A TRUE STORY even when they didn't used to be.

The bottom line with remake-distaste is simply how they're titled. If Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes were called Showdown on Planet Monkey it would have a better reputation. It would be a ripoff rather than a remake, which is the acceptable way to go. Most movies that aren't acknowledged as remakes are remakes in disguise. There's not really that many stories left to tell in Hollywood, without getting weirder than Hollywood allows.

With the recent Friday the 13th, nobody much cared to protest on message boards, because the original wasn't that great anyway. It was heritage that not that many film geeks really geek out about. That movie's problem isn't inherent to remakes. It's the same problem that all sorts of films have right now. It has no personality. It doesn't feel like it was written by real people.

The established-property trend is lazy, but let's be open-minded.

It doesn't matter where movies come from. An adaptation might find its own way to be interesting. A remake can still be creative. And Fired Up! might really just be American Pie 9: Keep Bringin' It On.

A Manifesto: Indulgent film-crit talk, part 1 of 14

Roger Ebert recently posted a list of guidelines for being a critic. These are his rules to live by.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/10/eberts_little_rule_book.html




It's an entertaining read, but Ebert is only scratching the surface. Some points, such as that critics shouldn't ask stars for autographs, have really no effect on one's reviewing capability, and are just about appearances. I don't care about that. Critics are free to act like sycophants, just as rock stars are permitted to snort coke off hookers. Let the work speak for itself.

A lot of his list seems obvious, but I like that Ebert points out how hyperbolic critics like to get. We should be careful when handing out words like "masterpiece."

I'll add some more. These are some of the words that I try to live by.

- Don't brag about how brave you are for watching a movie few people in your age bracket would generally go to. It's your job to keep up with movies, and most people envy your job. If you write about how when you went to see Pooh's Heffalump Movie by yourself, the parents all shielded their kids because they figured you were a pedophile, that's good. Just don't look for sympathy. Sometimes a day at a movie theatre is just like anyone else's office job. (Example: The AV Club: "I Watched This On Purpose," Ain't It Cool).

- Also, don't publicly complain about work conditions. Nobody feels sorry for Ebert and Roeper if there isn't an early screening of The Amityville Horror they can attend. I live in Halifax where I have to see most movies with paying customers after they're released. That is not the sound of me complaining. (eg. Ebert and Roeper)

- Never review a movie you haven't watched in its entirety. This is basic.

- Don't bash movies you haven't seen, even off-handedly. Any idiot can do that. The point of your job is that you're not supposed to be an idiot. (eg. Jeffrey Wells saying Pride and Glory was by far the best movie opening in its week when he clearly hadn't seen Saw V and High School Musical 3. Now, neither of those movies are that good, but I only know because I saw them. They're both better than Pride and Glory.)

- Have an open mind. Don't walk into Gigli planning to hate it. The more your prejudices rule you, the more you're irrelevant.

- Accept that "critical consensus" is swayed by hype. A critic should never use the phrase "that's supposed to be good" as a recommendation for a movie he/she hasn't seen.

- Understand that movies are artworks. I know that they're there to sell tickets, but it's not your job to look at them that way.

- Do not distinguish between highbrow and lowbrow art, you pretentious New Yorker wannabe. You should be able to recognize that there's more artistic merit in Resident Evil: Extinction than in Blindness.

- On a related note, important subject matter should not be mistaken for important movies.

- Stop worrying that a movie "doesn't know who it's made for." This is a marketer's concern, not yours.

- Nobody likes a hater. I make a conscious effort not to single out individual people for the reason a movie isn't working.

- Know why you're doing this job. Figure out what makes you different than the 500 other film writers out there. Have something to contribute.

- Know your subject. In the words of Armond White, "I'm not interested in the opinions of people who don't know what they're talking about."

- Know what the hell you're talking about.

- Have style. Memorizing these rules isn't going to teach you how to write.

However, I will give you the following three points:


-Don't write more than you think. This problem is huge amongst critics.

- Quit referring to stars you're not close friends with by their first names. This tends to sound dumb even when non-critics do it in conversation. "Oh, I loved that Dane and Jessica film, but thought Brad's new movie would have been better if they cast Angelina instead of Frances as his co-worker."

- Writing in cliche is a symptom of thinking in cliche. Avoid pseudo-intelligent phrases like "the fact that" when a "because" will suffice, and avoid backwards sentences like "explosions and nudity do not a good movie make."

- Be consistent. Don't pretend to suddenly hate Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull after the online community turns against it. Have some morals.

- Be honest. If your review of A Beautiful Mind ends with, "This movie taught me that schizophrenics are people too, and from now on I will always think about their plight," no one will take you seriously. (eg. A review of A Beautiful Mind that I once read. Author forgotten.)

- Be patient. Don't declare something "THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR" if it's still June.

- In fact, stop thinking of everything in terms of years. You just end up promoting the system that gets movies made so they can win Oscars.

- Realize that movies aren't invalidated simply because they're not tailored to your demographic. Case in point, IMDb voters who hate movies about sports and black people.

- Don't aspire to predict what people will think, or to reaffirm popular consensus. This forum has been given to you, not Joe the Plumber. Critics are being fired all across America because newspaper editors can just as easily hire the sports section guy to tell people what they think. I don't ask my dentist for opinions on sculpture. But every idiot thinks they're versed in movies.

- Remember why you liked movies in the first place.

The Once Halibut Theory

I've been cooking with habanero peppers lately. The habanero is the third hottest chili pepper in the world. It is so hot that if you don't wash your hands after handling one, your hands will start hurting in 20 minutes. And if you don't wash your hands and then have to go pee, you will begin to envy the monotony of female bathroom technique like never before.

Now, the reason I'm doing this isn't to defy Joseph Kahn's insistence that white people prefer food with no flavour. In truth, it's because I'm rather impatient and don't want to waste consumed calories on foods that are "subtle." I have a right to flavour-experiences. I will live in the extreme.

I try to eat a lot of fish. Fish have Omega Supreme Transformative powers, as well as the extraplanetary potential of Mercury Poisoning, and they're good for your skin or something. If you want to conquer Earth and shit diamonds, eat a lot of fish.

The problem is that some fish doesn't have much taste. I encounter this problem mainly with halibut. My mom claims that she remembers halibut used to pack more of a punch than it does these days. I won't vouch for the accountability of someone else's memory, but this got me thinking...

As a survival mechanism, wouldn't it be beneficial if species evolved to lose flavour? I mean, sure, we're several inches taller than the people our age were in the 1940s, but if we're ever in a plane crash with a bunch of rugby players in the middle of nowhere, something should have to protect us as soon as the fattest guy gets hungry. Those that would be picked to get eaten last would be those that evolved to have tasteless flesh. Like halibut.

From what I know about animals (speaking as an owner of a black lab, who knows enough to know that saying "My dog is black" is a poor way to win race relation disputes), I don't believe that animals are ever naturally spicy. One time I was at a party and some dude brought a tray of bison sausage, and I thought, damn, no wonder those bison got shot, they're spicy as hell. The guy informed me that those spices were artificially added later. This makes sense. It's also techniques like this that make it integral for beings to evolve to taste like as little as possible.

Having no taste makes survival easier.

How else could I have been thrust into a 9-month long Twilight Zone episode where people keep coming up to me and telling me that the movie Once introduced them to the concepts of Art and Humanity? There's one explanation: People are evolving to like boring shit. Don't try to be all open-minded by denying it. Be truthful, and admit it. Fans of Once display a scary passion where they'd kill for it.

If Once Lovers lived on an island commune, and I visited that commune, they would burn me in a Wicker Man.

In a way, I understand this passion. Raised without religion, the movies I love inform my identity. I'd rather talk in-person with people about movies we agree on than get in fights over ones where we don't. Some films are just too integral to one's identity. So when you say, Blue Velvet sucks, you're insulting me. I know what that's like.

It's also why it's so puzzling. What is it about Once that makes people look at it and think, "Yup, that's me"? When I watched the movie, I found it mediocre. I didn't hate it, but considered it too inconsequential to even be worth reviewing. Now that people in their 20s are losing their shit for it, I'm sort of embarrassed for them.

Nothing that makes movies incredible is contained in Once. The Irish drama stars Glen Hansard as a musician/vacuum cleaner repairman who falls for a girl played by Marketa Irglova. They record songs together, so the movie becomes a naturalistic musical--only director John Carney has not studied musical setpieces or short form videos, so his music and images create no emotional thrust.

The handheld camerawork doesn't leave room for thought-out compositions. And the songs themselves are dead-eyed indie rock boilerplate. Movies don't get more hermetically and stereotypically white than Once. It's anti-matter--a movie for those who wish to be manipulated, but in a naturalistic way so they don't realize it's happening, and who wish to define themselves through musical fashion, but try to steer away from rock star personalities. Did modern indie rock fans have any fun in high school, or did they listen to the mid-90s equivalents of City and Colour and Coldplay back then? Maybe they listened to the Fresh Prince and gangsta rap in junior high like I did, then they moved on to Soundgarden, KMFDM and White Zombie. Then it was Robbie Williams in their college years. Then Death Cab and the Once soundtrack. Tomorrow Yanni. That's not just a softening of musical style: Some of those acts are real artists.

Certain people evolve to tastelessness when they grow older. It's easier, I guess.

But I want to live.

I don't mean to pick on Once fans so much. It's just that they're fucking everywhere. When you review movies people you don't know always want to tell you about awesome movies they just saw. I recently did a year-end radio show where this was the whole premise for an hour.

As one of two guest critics, I was in the reverse-spot position of having callers tell me about the best movies of 2007. I like doing this show, but something was in the air that day. I knew it was gonna be a long hour when the first caller was raving about Mad Money. Other recommended best movies of the year were Shooter and A Beautiful Mind (which came out 7 years ago, but I let it slide.)

But the amount of people talking up Once eclipsed any other title. Even my perfectly sane co-guest was gaga for it. Genuinely curious (and determined to be polite), I responded to callers' raves with, "What did you like about it?" The answers would be along the lines of, "It was so beautiful. And when they're in the studio together, recording that song, that scene is just, ohh myyyy..."

OK.

Then last week, Sarah Riley, who usually has some of the best movie taste of anyone, just had to write me about Once.



"I cried like five minutes in. It's a beautiful film."



"Not you too!," I wrote back. There goes another one.




This much is clear. The movie Once does not care about me, for it has caused me much confusion about Darwin and halibut. For that, I cannot support it.


Never back down.

Stuff They Won't Teach You in School

A 10 year-old girl from Montana named Maryn Smith won a National Geographic contest for creating a mnemonic to remember the order and names of all 11 planets in our solar system.

11!?

I thought Pluto was cancelled as a planet, and it seems unfair that National Geographic would throw dwarf planets Ceres and Eris on top of that.

So what did Maryn Smith come up with?

"My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants."



I'm sure Ms. Smith is a nice person, or whatever, but her mnemonic is making the cosmos more confusing.

First off, it has a clear Earth-bias which I feel is inappropriate for the subject matter. As a mnemonic line, it's hard to remember. This may be remedied, as the mnemonic is now being made into a pop song by Lisa Loeb (best known as the girl who encouraged geeky guys to come out about their glasses fetish with the Ethan Hawke directed Reality Bites video "Stay").

Until the day when Loeb teaches us how to sing about sailing under palace elephants, Smith should be proud of her win. She just hasn't yet convinced me she's a great writer.

I know. She's 10. I'm jealous. I never got anything published at that age.

Smith isn't alone in her lack of mnemonic poetry giftedness. Most people talk in a way to reveal that they're their own bad writers. Their concept of good writing is generally wrong too. I believe Oscar winning screenwriter Diablo Cody can write well. She just doesn't consistently. That's what fuels her irrational haters to block out the bits of Juno that are well-written.

The exchange (scratch that, monologue) that strikes me as most awkward has the title character quipping that she'd give Jennifer Garner her baby earlier, but it would look like a seamonkey. It's the strangest thing, because nobody in the movie prompted Juno to begin this routine. It's a mistake on Cody's part--for the record, she wrote a better script than Tony Gilroy's overpraised Michael Clayton--and the clip is even in the trailer. This moment of a writer's indulgence rejects the natural flow of the situation.

I'd lend you $300, but I'm employed by The Coast.

See.

For all the Maryn Smiths out there, with bright futures ahead of them (perhaps writing films), here are some lines that should never be heard in a movie again.

"I'm ____, by the way."

This is how characters often introduce themselves in movies. I used this in The Killing of Kings, and then started noticing how prominent it was in everything else. It's a way to make the mandatory meet-and-greet exposition of two characters who the viewer is already aquainted with seem more casual. The "by the way" doesn't work. If you ever say this in life, it means you're narcissistic enough to consciously talk like you're in a movie script.

"God has nothing to do with this."

I was watching a season 1 episode of Battlestar Galactica last night, and this line came up. I've heard it in dozens of movies before, almost always following another character exclaiming, "Oh my God." When one writes, "God has nothing to do with this," it must look pretty badass on paper. When it's verbalized, it sounds like you're insincerely referencing a 1970s giant insect movie. The most hardcore line so far this year is in the otherwise uninspired Rambo. "Fuck the world!" It doesn't get more nihilistic than that.












"I'd like that."

Please, no.

"It's not what it looks like."

I've heard that one before.

Be careful not to try making every line of dialogue iconic, either. You'll end up writing Jerry Maguire.

"Good to meet you."

This one looks benign, just beware. Only ever write this in a Canadian film. Last time I was in LA, I kept shaking peoples' hands and saying "Good to meet you." They'd respond with, "Nice to meet you," and I was one-upped by their moral superiority.

I'm interested in where people get their voices from. I'm not gonna be an asshole and try to take credit for inspiring anything.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/63-expensive-sandwiches/#comments

But influences are revealed through the things one says.

A couple of Fridays ago, I went to a matinee showing of The Eye, a rote American remake of a Hong Kong thriller. It stars Jessica Alba as one of those blind violin prodigies that are all the rage.

The theatre had only about 25 people in it. Among them was an average-Shmoe middle aged dude, who sat by himself. I took note of this because while walking into the auditorium, I was whistling something and he shot me an incriminating look that suggested, "This guy's gonna be trouble." I felt bad for the guy anyway, because I had a scenario in my mind that he was going to a teen-skewing Jessica Alba flick alone to distract himself from a divorce. He sat on the aisle.

The real teens in the theatre sat still and watched for about 45 minutes before announcing their boredom. Two of them raced from the back of the theatre to sit in empty seats in the front. Their friends, still at the back, laughed.

Then, another one of them ran to the front of the theatre, making sure each step hit the ground as loud as possible.

I looked over at the middle aged dude. He was making some movement like he was shadowboxing the air.

The stompy kid immediately decides he liked his old seat better, and run-stomps back to it. This requires him to pass by the middle aged guy's aisle seat. As the sporty hooligan passes him, he stands up from his seat and bodychecks him. It did happen! The kid falls down.

Now pay attention to the naturalism of the resulting dialogue exchange. This great situation brought out the best in everyone's inner-writer.

Stompy: "Fuck! Someone bodychecked me."

Right off the bat, you know they're inspired. That would make a great opening line to a screenplay. You can't use it.

Middle-Aged Dude: "I didn't see you."

Stompy's Friend: "What's your fucking problem, man."

Stompy: "I got knocked the fuck out."

Middle-Aged Dude: "I was just going to the bathroom."

Stompy's Friend: "Oh yeah. You totally bodychecked my friend."

Angry man at the back of the theatre: "Shutup, you idiots! Shutup or leave!"

Middle-Aged Dude: "Now, I told you I was just getting up to go to the bathroom. I didn't see him there."

Stompy: "You decided to go the second I walked by."

Middle-Aged Dude: "It's very dark. But now that you mention it, you guys have been running around like a bunch of... MANIACS. People are trying to enjoy this movie."

Stompy's Friend: "Let's step outside."

Middle-Aged Dude: "Yeah, we should go talk to the manager. Maybe we won't have to get 9-1-1 involved."

They leave. Stompy limps out. I don't know if he was faking.

Stompy: "THIS MOVIE SUCKS!"

Angry man at the back of the theatre: "SHUT THE FUCK UP!!"

This is a close approximation, to the best of my memory. I replayed it in my head many times so I wouldn't forget. The situation would have normally pissed me off, except it was by far the most exciting part of The Eye.

The passion and fury of their exchange was tight, motivated, and exciting.

When all else fails, throw in another photo of Jessica Alba.

Writers take note.

2007

(A portion of this entry was written for the upcoming issue of The Coast.)


2007 began and ended with audience disinterest. In April, the anticipated-on-the-Internet Grindhouse opened and quickly reminded everyone that people who spend their days online are not the real world. In November, Beowulf couldn't reach the audience an epic of its size depends on.

The response to both these movies is made worse because, as flawed as they are, they absolutely had to be seen in the theatre. Since Grindhouse's two halves were released as separate movies on DVD, the original continuity of the film is unavailable. Beowulf on IMAX 3-D is a movie-going experience more than it is a great movie. Though not among the year's best films, on the big screen, these were the most indispensible movie outings.

Let’s take this opportunity to look at what 2007 stood for. It’s a fallacy to complain that movies are getting worse. It just seems that way because it’s mostly good movies that are remembered from past years. It's equally deluded, or else just a huge difference in standards, to think '07 delivered a lot to be excited about. That it was a weak movie year is evidenced in its place in the cycle where Hollywood gets deathly scared of taking risks and makes sure most of its tentpole releases are part 3s.

THE THIRD IN A SERIES IS RARELY EXCITING

Ocean’s Thirteen was the best of its franchise. So was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. But neither film was especially good, as they arrived when both of those series were exhausted. Shrek the Third, Rush Hour 3, and Spider-Man 3 were likewise hits that didn’t inspire much enthusiasm. The threequel summer was a drag reflecting a lack of creative inspiration. It was surprising that a filmmaker of Sam Raimi’s esteem didn’t even visually distinguish Spidey 3 from part 2. Soderbergh’s lower estimation Ocean’s Thirteen was the only third chapter to reimagine itself in visual terms. The one threequel that was embraced by critics was The Bourne Ultimatum, a good movie nearly destroyed by its visual style.

BARF-CAM FOR DUMMIES

The Bourne Ultimatum may be celebrated as an adult thriller, but its attitude is patronizing. It’s part of an increasingly common approach in genre filmmaking where hand-held shakey cam is supposed to constitute realism. This is a problem for a number of reasons. For one, action movies like The Bourne Ultimatum by Paul Greengrass and The Kingdom by Peter Berg (who sells this same barf-cam “realism” on TV’s Friday Night Lights) assume their viewers are too cynical for the manipulation of classical filmmaking. So they make movies where no shot composition has to mean anything. It’s just spastic edits, random close-ups, whip pans, meaningless zoom-ins, and shaking. (The funniest audience comment of the year happened in The Bourne Ultimatum, when someone interjected during a fight scene, “I think that was a fist.”) I’m not sure how people began to equate barf-cam with realism anyway. The world simply isn’t that shaky. If you’re running, your head is moving with your sight line, so you can still tell what’s going on better than in most of Bourne, The Kingdom, A Mighty Heart and 28 Weeks Later. It’s a gimmicky approach to realism of which 2007’s less remarked-upon achievements in realistic drama, like Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Preston Whitmore II’s This Christmas, don’t succumb. Finally, it’s just not that hard to hold a camera steady.

THE HITS ARE ALRIGHT

Apart from the respectable box office of No Country for Old Men, Ratatouille and Hairspray were the two instances where hugely popular movies ranked amongst the year’s best. As for the event-films, the best in a usually soulless enterprise were Transformers, Michael Bay’s sundrenched Americana about boys and their machines, and Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend. Lawrence isn’t as distinguished, skilled, or (in some ways) as frustrating an artist as Bay, but his version of the Richard Matheson sci fi yarn makes up for its familiarity with actual emotion and social interest. The whole movie lives on the strength of Will Smith’s underestimated performance as the last man on Earth. As ideal and likable a movie star as he is, for all the bank it makes, the film may prove too slow and downbeat in the public’s estimation. Still, it’s exciting to see a blockbuster that at least has stretches of inspiration.

WORST THROWAWAY

Warner Bros. efforts to not let anyone see its best release all year, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, involved quickly yanking the movie from theatres after pleading ignorance about how to market a Brad Pitt film.

WATCH THAT C-WORD

2007 might be the momentary end to torture-based horror films. Dwindling interest in this year’s titles The Hills Have Eyes 2, Captivity, Hostel Part II and Saw IV (most of which were no worse than years past) indicates that viewers were beginning to question their own taste in porn. Yet there was a weird connection between the horror genre and Oscar prestige. Both the horror movies Hostel Part II and P2 (about a woman terrorized in a parking lot on Christmas Eve) as well as the Ian McEwan adaptation Atonement feature a violent dramatic shift around a female character reacting to a male using the word ****. Lesson learned from watching otherwise unrelated movies: Saying (or spelling) **** results in everything from military exile to castration.

XENOPHOBIA REIGNS

I often suggest that people watch movies that aren’t aimed at their demographic. The reasoning is that one of the basic values of movies is their ability to show how people are the same—the ways in which people whose lifestyles seem different than your own are in other ways a lot like you. This connection brings insights into humanity, and then to ourselves.

But it’s an ideal that gets buried when studios assume viewers are ignorant and then sell them movies about themselves. The malebashing in Waitress only reaffirms stereotypes of Southern men as abusive and uneducated. It’s an annoying but familiar prejudice that’s somewhat forgiven by the film’s goodwill toward female uplift. The light comedy in Waitress has distinct attitude. As a movie, it’s good TV. That’s far preferable to Shoot ‘Em Up, the most blatantly misogynistic movie this year. The 15-years-out-of-date action spoof has Paul Giamatti fondling a female corpse, not just to establish him as a villain but because somebody on board thought it was cool. You can almost picture a bitter movie exec doing lines of coke while watching it.

Superbad actually got adults to see a movie about teenagers, which is an amazing feat. I say this because teens are the one group that most people think it’s dignified to complain about, as though they themselves were never 17, and as though adolescents don’t have a more powerful foothold in cultural trends than they do. I think about it everytime I hear people in their late 20s bash emo kids. But because Judd Apatow and Seth Rogan want to believe there are no Hispanic or Black people in Southern California, and that the hottest girls in school will inevitably fall for the dorkiest guys simply because the guys want it, Superbad’s achievements aren’t worth too much.

Juno, another comedy about teenagers I'm mostly positive on, is guilty of some of the same casual racism. I don't know how a movie this universally white can justify that its most despised characters are the supporting parts of the East Asian pro-life high school girl, and the nurse who gets told off by Juno's mom. Then again, people are so used to it, I'm sure not many will notice.

If you’re a 40 year-old white male who likes Velvet Revolver, you should go to a crowded Friday night showing of This Christmas. If your whole idea of action-adventure is Heroes and Live Free or Die Hard, rent Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn. If you like bashing Tyler Perry or Amanda Bynes, try watching one of their movies first (neither Daddy’s Little Girls or Sydney White is completely without interest.)

28 year-old Sarah Polley directing Away From Her, a movie about senior citizens, means she’s probably rather strange. But she’s reaching beyond herself.

MUSICALS WERE BETTER THIS YEAR

This connective value of movies had been lost in recent bloated movie musicals. The award-winning Chicago celebrated petty narcissism, Rent faked edginess, and Dreamgirls fumbled music history.

In 07, they got their mojo back. Hairspray adapted the stage musical of John Waters’ cult film without many theatrical bearings. Adam Shankman’s version moves like a movie, carrying its tunes through levels of nostalgic comedy, teen empowerment and social drama.

The stripped down DV look of Once complimented its realist folk music love story. If only its director John Carney had studied the cutting rhythms and visual expression of real music videos beforehand (and not just conservative indie rock ones) its quaint approach would have left a deeper impression.

This lack of music video directing experience conversely helps Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe—she’s such a gifted visual filmmaker, she lets the numbers speak their own language. As everyone loves to say, Across the Universe is a mess. But that doesn’t invalidate the rush of its best moments. Even small touches, like the vocal quality of T.V. Carpio’s rendition of“I Want to Hold Your Hand” were movie-year standouts.

Most bigtime filmmakers don’t have a good ear for pop music. That’s why “Kung-Fu Fighting” shows up in so many action sequences. And it’s partially why new movies by Wes Anderson and The Farrelly Brothers are to be valued, even in a year when they only give us The Darjeeling Limited and The Heartbreak Kid.

Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Anton Corbijn's Control also notably stretched the resurgent musical format.

2007 HAD NO ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE

Not yet. But 2 films came close.

5 STUPIDEST MOVIES THAT ACT SMART

1) Into the Wild
2) A Mighty Heart
3) Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
4) The Mist
5) Smokin’ Aces

5 SMARTEST MOVIES THAT ACT STUPID

1) Hot Rod
2) Stuck
3) Bug
4) Captivity
5) Freedom Writers

5 STUPIDEST MOVIES THAT ACT ACCORDINGLY

1) Epic Movie
2) Dead Silence
3) Bratz: The Movie
4) License to Wed
5) Balls of Fury

*********

Now here's every 2007 movie I saw in 2007, ranked. The list will be updated until at least January 1. Everything given a B- or higher, I overall liked. Films that are considered 2006 North American releases that were made unavailable in my market until 07 (such as Little Children and The Curse of the Golden Flower) are not ranked. Otherwise, Idiocracy and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer would have made my top 10.

A RATINGS

1) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik)



2) No Country for Old Men (Ethan Coen & Joel Coen)




A- RATINGS

3) Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)



4) Stuck (Stuart Gordon)



5) Hairspray (Adam Shankman)



B+ RATINGS

6) Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)



7) Ratatouille (Brad Bird)



8) Hot Rod (Akiva Schaffer)



9) Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton)



10) Control (Anton Corbijn)



11) Paris, I Love You
12) The Lives of Others
13) Redacted
14) Beowulf
15) Grindhouse (Planet Terror C+; Death Proof B-; Full experience B+)

B RATINGS

16) The Orphanage
17) Hot Fuzz
18) Transformers
19) Across the Universe
20) Reign Over Me
21) Bridge to Terabithia
22) Bug
23) The Wind That Shakes the Barley
24) Freedom Writers
25) The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
26) Lucky You
27) I Am Legend
28) TMNT
29) The Tracey Fragments
30) This Christmas
31) 28 Weeks Later
32) The Simpsons Movie
33) The Lookout
34) Dan in Real Life
35) Knocked Up
36) Scott Walker: 30 Century Man

B- RATINGS

37) The Darjeeling Limited
38) Zodiac
39) Amazing Grace
40) The Bourne Ultimatum
41) Juno
42) Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls
43) Alpha Dog
44) Paprika
45) Waitress
46) Halloween
47) Vacancy
48) Awake
49) Atonement
50) Captivity
51) The Nanny Diaries
52) Disturbia
53) Superbad
54) Enchanted
55) Live Free or Die Hard
56) Elizabeth: The Golden Age
57) Norbit
58) Zoo
59) Talk to Me
60) Ocean’s Thirteen
61) Black Snake Moan

C+ RATINGS

62) 1408
63) The Host
64) Michael Clayton
65) You Kill Me
66) Sunshine
67) American Gangster
68) Eastern Promises
69) Fido
70) Bee Movie
71) Once
72) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
73) Shrek the Third
74) Sydney White
75) The Heartbreak Kid
76) 3:10 to Yuma
77) Murder Party
78) Nightwatching
79) Arthur and the Invisibles
80) Meet the Robinsons
81) I Think I Love My Wife
82) Reno 911!: Miami
83) The Astronaut Farmer
84) The Messengers
85) Ghost Rider
86) Resurrecting the Champ
87) The Invisible
88) Mr. Bean’s Holiday

C RATINGS

89) Weirdsville
90) 300
91) In the Land of Women
92) Spider-Man 3
93) Are We Done Yet?
94) Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
95) The Golden Compass
96) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
97) The Reaping
98) Evening
99) Stomp the Yard
100) Shooter
101) Wild Hogs
102) Music & Lyrics
103) Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
104) I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
105) Fred Claus
106) Year of the Dog
107) Hunting and Gathering
108) The Stone Angel
109) The Hoax
110) Next
111) Gracie
112) The Brave One
113) Alvin and the Chipmunks
114) P2
115) Who Loves the Sun
116) Lions for Lambs
117) Balls of Fury
118) Rise: Blood Hunter

C- RATINGS

119) Sicko
120) Perfect Stranger
121) War
122) Severance
123) Hostel Part II
124) Blood and Chocolate
125) Catch and Release
126) Primeval
127) Dead Silence
128) A Mighty Heart
129) Fracture
130) 30 Days of Night
131) Lady Chatterley

D+ RATINGS

132) Mr. Brooks
133) Nancy Drew
134) Blades of Glory
135) National Treasure: Book of Secrets
136) The Hitcher
137) The Hills Have Eyes 2
138) The Last Mimzy
139) The Number 23

D RATINGS

140) Smokin’ Aces
141) Bratz
142) Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
143) The Mist
144) License to Wed
145) Shoot ‘Em Up
146) The Kingdom
147) Into the Wild

D- RATINGS

148) Good Luck Chuck
149) Southland Tales

F RATINGS

150) Because I Said So
151) Hannibal Rising
152) Happily N’Ever After
153) Saw IV
154) Epic Movie

Lessons of Stupid

Last week I was in Vegas, because my friends were going and I'm trying to uphold my rep as the Nicest Guy in Hollywood. In my 2 day stay, I discovered that Las Vegas is at once America at its finest (and by finest I mean lowest), and kinda cool provided you can ease yourself into a level of stupidity that lets you get off on its extravagance.

Since I have high empathy levels, and can usually engage in non-condescending discourse with people far dumber than me, this wasn't really a problem.

Joseph and I are in the hotel elevator when a drunk guy strikes a conversation. (Take note: He was holding a glass of whiskey. I wouldn't typically accuse someone of being drunk just for lacking social inhibitions.)

"Software guys, huh?"

"Pardon?"

"You're software guys, right? I can tell."

"Yeah, Microsoft," Joseph lies.

"See, I knew. You guys dress however the hell you want."

I'm wearing a Disneyland t-shirt and Joseph is wearing a Star Wars tee and shorts. Admittedly, this is not proper fancy hotel attire in a city where everyone is trying to prove they're high stakes players. But it takes a level of stupidity to openly negatively stereotype someone based on their wardrobe.

Today's topic of discussion: The Stupid.

They may be the most unfairly, routinely, and without the aid of rights-activitists, universally bashed legal group in the world that isn't founded on sociopathy. For some reason, it's considered alright to bash midgets in movies too. But midgets have some activists on their side. Nobody likes The Stupid. It's politically correct to hate them. Even stupid people hate other stupid people.

Let's start by distinguishing 3 prominent groups of stupid people. (For the sake of brevity, I'm leaving out purely hateful idiots: Terrorists, racists, etc.)

1) Those who know better but choose to be stupid anyway.

These are the people of whom it's most OK to disapprove. They're the university kids who go out on city streets at night and think they're being clever by yelling "Drugs!" really loudly. They think it's cooler to not care about anything, and write letters to the paper complaining that my reviews aren't dumb enough. They're the people who have been alive for 80 years, and still haven't found the time to learn what side of the street they're allowed to walk on. Fuck these people.

The second group isn't much better.

2) The stupid people who try to sound smart in really insincere ways.

In some ways, this group ranks among the most horrible people on Earth. We call em pseudo-intellectuals ("pseuds" for short.) You can identify one right away if he or she claims to have no regrets. No sane person has "no regrets," and the majority of people who say they don't just talk without thinking. Anybody over the age of 3 who sincerely doesn't regret anything either has no life experience or is a narcissistic asshole. The people in this group also talk about movies like they're quoting things they read out of a magazine. They give their opinions loudly in public places so everyone can think they don't kowtow to the party line if they adore Wes Anderson and hate Spielberg. They love the idea of "indie", but secretly despise truly independent thought. They use backwards sentence endings like, "Explosions and nudity does not a good movie make." And they throw around the always unnecessary pseud-phrase "the fact that" verbally and in writing.

(If you want to work at hiding your pseud-status, I'd also recommended always saying "I feel" in place of "I think." "I think" indicates uncertainty; the way you feel can't be wrong. I'm just helping out my fellow man.)

I remember when I was 19, standing in a short line with 2 friends to take in Bride of Chucky on a weeknight. This line was parallel to a much longer line. In the longer line, a guy was trying to impress his girl by snickering at our line's apparent poor taste in entertainment. What was that other lineup lined up for? Practical Magic! The movie about Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sister witches with dating problems. At least going to see Bride of Chucky is an honest stupid way to spend 2 hours.

The third group is the most innocent.

3) People simply of below average intelligence.

They don't want to be stupid any more than the blind want to be blind. But people hate them for it, as though they can magically start being smart. It's like when clinically depressed people are told to just snap out of it. Or like asking a wheelchair-bound person if they've ever tried walking. No. They can't do that. With those groups, we realize such attitudes are wrong. The Stupid, on the other hand, are treated as a blight on our well-being.

Let me add to this that I truly believe that most people are smart in their own way. There are people you think are dumb that are better in some situations than you are. On the other end of things, people who are basically smart are stupid about certain things. For instance, just because you major in biology doesn't mean you know how to get a date. And just because you can crush a beer can on your head doesn't mean you can program a computer.

But people who are thought of as stupid are usually stupid frequently and in pronounced ways. And it's not curable by just accumulating more knowledge. They're dopey like some people are clumsy. It's a poor sign of one's character to hate them for it. There are other qualities as valuable as intelligence.

The irony here is that society is designed for The Stupid. You don't have to look around much to see this is true. Just turn on the news and listen to commentators theorize that Barack Obama has no chance of being President because some people consider him too smart. Being too smart is an issue?! If you're smart you get what they're skating around: Obama has no chance because some people consider him too black. The media doesn't need to be truthful, because it has already assumed you're an idiot.

This is an example of why the smart fear the social influence of The Stupid. And as Yoda taught us, fear turns to hate.

But can't we just accept that some stupid people are not malicious and just lack the brain-function of the rest of us? So long as they're not ruling a country, just put up with it. Our basic humanity accepts that the ugly are valuable, so why not The Stupid? My dog isn't evil because he isn't as smart as me.


Perhaps my altruism comes from feeling a kinship with many stupid things. I know some episodes of Beavis and Butt-head line-by-line. I enjoy twisted stoner movies, humour, and cartoons in a sober state. Within limits, I enjoy hanging out with drunk friends. At the same time, I hate elitist elegance, and anything stupid that's trying to appear smart.

I have, however, always had some problem with Jackass that I couldn't pinpoint at first. Now I know. It was a show designed to kill The Stupid.

Copycat Jackass stunts have resulted in death and injury to many stupid people. This is usually defended by people saying it's a way of cleansing the gene pool, or it's evolution in progress. The old to-the-point standby in dismissing an accidental death is, "Well, that person was stupid for doing that anyway." The problem is there is no level of stupid that's too stupid for Jackass. The Stupid is an ideal audience for that show. It preys on them. So of course idiots will watch it and die. Just because you're stupid doesn't mean you don't deserve to live.

The supposedly educated public (ie. the ones whose prefered topics of discussion are the things they read on Perez Hilton that day) secretly enjoys it when unstable celebrities die. They take it as a win for intelligence whenever this happens. This smug elite killed Anna Nicole Smith. They created a demand for a reality show about how stupid she is, which made her lose any shred of her self-esteem, leading to an increased negative media spotlight, and then to her suicide. Score.

But sometimes the world surprises you...

To Be Continued in LESSONS OF STUPID: PART II - MARK PALERMO GOES TO A MORRISSEY CONCERT AND OBSERVES DIFFERENT THINGS.