More than simply a morality tale couched in 1960s post-war nihilism, Badlands is a timeless tale of the human search for significance and the resultant battle between rebellion (pride/significance through freedom of the will) and redemption (humbly submitting to something bigger and recovering that union with creation and the Creator).
Meek's Cutoff is the latest ponderous, gorgeously shot film from the minimalist indie director Kelly Reichardt, whose two previous films—2006's Old Joy and 2008's Wendy & Lucy—were striking examples of her delicately academic approach to cinema and interest in exploring journeying characters in moments of despair (existential, personal, psychological).
Until recent weeks, David Fincher's The Social Network won pretty much every major award of the season. It was named best picture by the National Board of Review, the Critics Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, and pretty much every major film critics circle. Then, all of a sudden, The King's Speech came on strong at the guild awards, winning top honors at the Producer's Guild, Director's Guild, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. The momentum shifted, and now Tom Hooper's royal costume drama seems poised for a rout of The Social Network at the Oscars.Which is really unfortunate.
The 2011 Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and as is typically the case, there are some hits and some misses. By and large I think the Academy got it pretty right, with a few good surprises (Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom) and some bad (no Andrew Garfield supporting actor nom?). If I were to have a say in the nominations, they would have gone something like this.
We live in a time when "authenticity" is equated with those things or those people who are forthright in their brokenness and messiness, while stable, happy people are sometimes looked upon with skepticism, as if their lack of apparent problems makes them phony or untrustworthy. Our jadedness leads us to a sort of self-reinforcing stasis of raw brokenness, because this is what we believe. This is what we know. But what we really need are models of goodness & virtue in our lives... figures of hope who can motivate us out of the cycle of dreary cynicism.
It would be cliched and redundant to say that Blue Valentine is a heartbreaking film. That much is clear from its title. It is heartbreaking, devastating, a punch-to-the-gut... all that. Yes. But this is also a deeply observant film, with things to say not just about one couple and their problematic relationship, but about how we as a culture (or at least a particular segment/generation of it) think about things like romance, chivalry, marriage, love.
But almost everything in our digitized, cut-and-paste world these days has a tenuous relationship to reality. Perhaps that’s why these dubiously “true” films are nevertheless enjoyed and embraced, particularly by younger audiences. The idea of black and white, “true or untrue” doesn’t make much sense to a generation who has grown up with a steady stream of mediated half-truths, advertising, made-for-TV reflections on the news, The Real World, etc. It goes without saying that something can be enjoyable, moving, resonant, but completely fabricated. Even if it touts itself, with a wink, as “real."
Though by now we’re all a little fatigued by the flurry of end-of-year best-of lists, I’m going to go ahead and add to the critical chorus with my picks for the best films of 2010. This is the list I think about the most and put the most hours into compiling. That’s because I love films, see a lot of them (I saw upwards of 60 new releases in 2010), and want others to see them too. I will be posting a more in-depth analysis of the year in cinema this weekend (in which I also try to make sense of Banksy, Facebook and flashmobs). But for now, here are my picks for the best of the year...
When most people think of movies for December/Christmas, they think Frank Capra, Christmas Vacation or Home Alone. Which are all great. But the season of Advent is not just about twinkling lights, feel-good family reunions, and Macaulay Culkin-burns-Joe-Pesci's-head gags. It's also about feeling the tension of waiting... for redemption, for justice, for the renewal of all things. It's about waiting with anticipation for better days, knowing they are coming because God became man and paved a way.
The Social Network is more than just a Fincher film. It's a time-capsule for our time—a document of a curious revolution in social communication, economics, and the shifting notion of "status" in a world where roots, tradition, and familial privilege are less important than the ability to navigate media and manipulate tech-enabled perceptions of one's digital self.
In the end, very little knowledge in this world is ironclad. Very little is absolutely proved or exhaustively understood. Vast mystery inheres in every moment of our lives, in all the minutia. But that doesn't debilitate us; we have faith in the functioning of the world. Faith is inescapable, even if we don't often recognize it as such.
Never Let Me Go is a film that sticks with you, packing a punch perhaps more in remembrance than in the actual experience of watching it. It's a startling, unexpected film, mostly in the matter-of-fact manner of its genre-bending exposition. It's a love story set against a sci-fi backdrop, with the elegance of an Austen novel and the quietly somber mood of an Ozu film. It's a jarring experience, and a profoundly moving one.
It's doubtless a strange thing to routinely bear witness to an external version of yourself in the media—watching yourself on YouTube, seeing yourself on Access Hollywood or in tabloids. Throughout I'm Still Here we see Phoenix watching himself on his laptop—glued to the screen like Narcissus looking into the pond. But is what he sees a familiar self? Or is it something as foreign as Commodus or Johnny Cash? Or is it ultimately all the same?
Unlike any film I can remember, Inception surely puts the psychological in "psychological thriller." This is a film that is about the mind, takes place in the mind, and will stick in your mind. It's energy comes not from explosions or cheap thrills but from the steady, deliberate way that it wraps itself around your brain, python like, a tighter and tighter coil as the film goes along.
Embodying a style critic Manohla Dargis called "postclassical Hollywood baroque," I Am Love is one of those films that reminds us why we love movies so much. It puts the beauty of the world under a microscope in a way that feels both familiar and foreign, real and imaginary. It universalizes the foreign and makes the mundane transcendent.
From the outset of Toy Story 3—where we discover that Andy is going off to college and must either give away, throw away, or relegate his toys to the attic—there is a profound and universal sense of loss. Things change. Nothing is permanent. Everyone grows up and must leave their childhood behind, once and for all.
So much of Exit Through the Gift Shop is shrouded in mystery. The documentary film’s (purported) creator, Banksy, is an elusive British graffiti artist whose identity is unknown, even though he’s the darling of the international art world who routinely sells screen prints for six figure prices. In his first foray into film, Banksy presents us with a characteristically enigmatic but well-executed piece of pop art, billed as “the world’s first Street Art disaster movie."
I just came from speaking about film criticism at the Biola Media Conference, on a panel with myself and Justin Chang of Variety. The topic of "Christian" or "redemptive" film was raised, and the moderator (Biola film professor Lisa Swain) asked Justin and I which filmmakers we thought were currently making the most "redemptive" films--were they Christians or non-Christians? Even in spite of the nebulous meaning of "redemptive film," Justin and I both immediately jumped to the films of the Dardenne Brothers as examples of some of the best "redemptive" cinema happening these days. But there are many others I could have mentioned. So, for those who were in the session this morning (or anyone else), here are some other recent films I would recommend that you immediately Netflix, if you haven't seen them yet.
