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In Focus |
Monday, December 28, 2009Cinema of the New Millennium by Bob Clark
29) Speed Racer (Larry & Andy Wachowski) 2008
Okay, I’ll admit that this one surprised the hell out of me. After the positively room-temperature reception that greeted their flawed, but daring Matrix sequels and V for Vendetta productions, one might’ve assumed that the Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer would be a much milder effort than films past, an attempt to rekindle mainstream appreciation with a cartoon-classic adaptation geared with as wide and audience as possible in mind. Instead, we got the most delirious fever-dream put to screen since Coppola’s One From the Heart, and a piece of digital filmmaking to rival even their own Keanu-addled trips through the machine worlds. Holding steadfast to the corny-as-hell storylines and characters of the original cartoon while injecting a surprisingly effective strain of individualist philosophy into the mix, the brothers spend most of their creative energies devoted to the task of presenting breakneck races and narrative asides alike with a forward momentum that carries through transitions so fluid they appear to break the laws of physics. Shot by expert digital cinematographer David Tattersall, fresh off the visual fireworks of George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, the film comes with a candy-colored palate of brighter-than-reality primaries that at times blend into a kaleidoscopic range of sheer visual abstraction usually reserved for rereleases of Fantasia. While all this cinematic sugar-rush risks coming off as fishbowl-shallow, the film succeeds maintains a sense of credibility thanks to a dedicated set of performances from the altogether impressive cast (except for Emile Hirsch, who makes the mistake of not chewing the greenscreen scenery like everybody else does, as Speed). While it sure as hell isn’t for everyone (and maybe not even its target audience of kids, surprisingly), it’s a surprisingly daring piece of experimental Hollywood filmmaking.
28) Pan's Labyrinth (Del Toro) 2006
Guillermo Del Toro has a knack for repeating himself just enough times to get things done close to perfection. He’d already begun exploring the shadowy territory between fantasy and the fascist repression in the Spanish Civil War-set The Devil’s Backbone, and traces of this same eye for both dreamlike flights of fancy and historical reality can be found throughout his cinema as far back as Cronos and as recent as the WWII-origins of Hellboy. But he really outdid himself with this heartbreaking fairy-tale set in post-Civil War Spain, as a little girl and her pregnant mother are brought to the forest bunker of her new stepfather, a Captain in the new regime and dictatorial in his power over the household as Franco was to his country. Finding refuge and hope in a wondrous and dangerous new world of fauns, fairies and monsters of all shapes and sizes, the girl’s quest to complete the set of challenges that promise to reunite her with her true long-lost father, the king of a faraway land, provides an expertly crafted and achingly realized articulation of the reaches and motives for escapist fantasy, with the bloody brutality of her step-father’s iron-fist care a constant reminder of the stranglehold roots that inspire the most daring and liberating acts of imagination. Chief credit belongs to Del Toro, obviously, but not without mention of his able team of collaborators, from longtime cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and recent recruit Doug Jones to belle-of-the-ball Ivana Baquero, whose turn as the brave little girl who dares to dream and pays dearly for it evokes the same sad triumph of Ana Torrent in Spirit of the Beehive.
27) The Fog of War (Morris) 2003
When Robert McNamara passed away earlier this year, his death all-too-easily overshadowed by the epic period of mourning for pop-icon Michael Jackson, I couldn’t help but wonder if the former cabinet-member’s obituary might’ve gone even more unceremoniously disremembered had it not been for the recent reminder that filmmaker Errol Morris had given the world in this, very possibly his finest achievement as deadpan documentarian. In his epic, detailed interviews with McNamara, the man who served as Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnston besides heading and taking part in any number of other high-profile positions of state and commerce throughout his long life-span, Morris winds up violating many of the chief rules that followers of his have grown accustomed to over the years. Most especially, one finds the director himself a much larger presence in this film than any other. From around the time of The Thin Blue Line on, there have customarily been a spare moment at the end of his movies where Morris will break the self-imposed vow of silence he maintains by editing his portions out of the filmed interviews, and instead allows us to hear him asking a question or two to his subject before time runs out. In The Fog of War, however, Morris’ voice can be heard frequently on the tape, putting new questions or interrupting McNamara in the middle of a sentence to refute a point just made. Finally, the documentarian has met a subject who represents a match to his gamesmanship, if not altogether a superior opponent, and by letting us overhear the questions he asks or the comments he makes, he invites his viewers to join in the discussion as vicarious participants in the longstanding debate over McNamara’s controversial standing in modern history. It certainly isn’t about to settle any disagreements over whether the man was a civil-servant or war-criminal, but it does more than almost anything in the time since his departure from politics to reassert his position on the canon of world affairs back into the light of day, and provides a perfect forum for discussions to begin anew.
26) Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson) 2001
When Peter Jackson was awarded a record-matching eleven Oscars for 2003’s Return of the King, barely anyone questioned whether or not the director deserved the nearly unanimous acclaim bestowed upon him. A few voices, however, might’ve been casually observed to note that the awards might’ve been just a couple of years belated, and that no matter how fitting his concluding chapter to the epic cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was, perhaps the movie that really deserved all the fervent and appreciative accolades had already come and gone a few years back. After all, there are few fantasy films as richly and energetically realized onscreen as 2001’s Fellowship of the Ring, and for my money it’s easily the only installment of the trilogy that truly deserves the hyperbolic reputation it and its sequels have earned over the years, standing not only as a first-rate exercise in imaginative world-building and action-adventure storytelling, but also in an evocative cinema that comes close to rivaling the very best efforts of this or any other decade. In introducing audiences unfamiliar with the sheer overwhelming density of obscure arcana present in Middle-Earth, Jackson is forced to compress and streamline as much of the material as possible in order to maintain a balance of both narrative foreground and mythic backstory, jettisoning beloved characters and incidents wherever he must to keep the focus clear upon his protagonists and the forward momentum full-steam ahead on the story of the One Ring. With the quickest pace and most varied storytelling style of the trilogy, Jackson evokes an Oliver Stone-spirit of dispensing large chunks of vital information into bite-size chunks of exposition, turning his take on Tolkien’s mythology into a kind of legendary version of JFK. Far less repetitive than its sequels in their endless marches and redundant landscapes of largescale, impersonal battles, Fellowship of the Ring is easily one of the best fantasy films ever made, and one of the most successfully ambitious literary adaptations ever undertaken.
25) Attack of the Clones (Lucas) 2002
Of all six episodes of the Star Wars series, this one might just be the most disastrously flawed enterprise of them all-- its pacing and continuity are routinely botched by the inexpert hand of expert sound-designer Ben Burtt, the script is littered with poor writing that wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny of an undergraduate film-studies workshop, and the entire enterprise is crammed full of references so obscure and remote that even the most dedicated of fans can occasionally have trouble recognizing what they have to do with anything. And yet, in terms of pure cinematic thrill and visceral excitement, it might just be my favorite movie of the bunch. Besides the director’s usual visual mastery of epic set-pieces, imaginative action-adventure and stunning cinematography (supplied ably by David Tattersall, one of the new forces to be reckoned with in the modern-age of digital filmmaking), Attack of the Clones represents one of the most unabashedly post-modern blockbusters of the decade. Throughout the picture Lucas indulges in a game of cinematic quoting that would make Godard or Tarantino blush, dropping visual shoutouts to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, John Ford’s The Searchers, Stuart Cooper’s Overlord and the various works of stop-motion maestro Ray Harryhausen throughout the picture. But it’s in the echoes he collects from his own filmography that is where he does his most interesting work-- invoking the nostalgic naivety of American Graffiti with an alien-throwback to Mel’s Diner, the dystopian rumblings of THX 1138 in the all-white décor and camerawork on the planet where clone soldiers are born, and to the classic Star Wars films themselves as some of the series’ most venerated conventions are inverted one-by-one, repurposing Stormtroopers as dues ex machina heroes and the pacifistic Yoda as a lightsaber-toting master of disaster. Forget about the antique Tristan & Isolde romance and the squeaky-wheel screenplay, and what you have is the most bug-nuts crazy science-fiction film since David Lynch turned down Return of the Jedi to go out of his mind on Dune.
24) Gladiator (Scott) 2000
Blade Runner is his unqualified masterpiece in terms of visuals and basic themes, soaring high even amidst a divisive cast and an ambitious, occasionally broken-down script. But in terms of his command over every aspect of filmmaking, from production-design and on-set cinematography to set-piece choreography and the nuances of actors’ performances, Gladiator may very well represent the most solid and accomplished work of Ridley Scott’s career. In retelling a basic Spartacus-style story of a Roman general turned slave who fights to win his freedom and avenge the loss of his family as a champion of gladiatorial combat in the Coliseum, the film offers the world famous world-builder a chance to use his talents to recreate the atmosphere of Ancient Rome at its heyday of Imperial corruption and decadence, offering show-stopping spectacles on the battlefield and before the bread-and-circus crowd like nothing else in his filmmography. Though the story’s loose connection to history takes far too many liberties with the record to be taken seriously at times (if you didn’t know any better, the film’s conclusion might make you believe that the Empire ended shortly after the death of Marcus Aurelius and that Rome returned once more to a pure republic), it can be excused somewhat as one of many such operatic-takes on documented events, like Scorsese’s Gangs of New York or Snyder’s 300. Finally, in his first collaboration with Russell Crowe in his starmaking turn as Maximus, Scott has apparently found an actor with whom he has been able to forge a lasting relationship as director of tough, yet intellectual action-entertainment. In its extended cut especially, this is a powerful, accelerating ride worthy of the spectacle-driven cinema of old, and a fine early effort for the decade.
23) No Maps for These Territories (Neale) 2000
Of all the modern science-fiction writers whose work has reached the silver screen in the past twenty years, perhaps none has been more deserving of a comeback than literary visionary William Gibson, the man who famously coined the term Of all the modern science-fiction writers whose work has reached the silver screen in the past twenty years, perhaps none has been more deserving of a comeback than visionary William Gibson, the man who virtually invented the cyberpunk genre with the novel Neuromancer and has gone on to bring his pioneering literary voice to post-modern sci-fi fare like All Tomorrow’s Parties and diverse genres like alternate-histories in The Difference Engine (co-authored with Bruce Sterling). When looks at the quality of his written work, it’s sad to see how the only time his stories have come close to being expressed adequately onscreen was in the disastrous Johnny Mnemonic, a film which failed to capture anyone’s imaginations or attention beyond its obligatory half-life as a mild cult-film, despite a script from Gibson himself and an occasionally impressive direction from visual artist Robert Longo (the guy who did those weird paintings in Patrick Bateman’s apartment in American Psycho). Though the recent novel Pattern Recognition was almost adapted by Peter Weir later on in the decade, Mark Neale would provide an exemplary look at Gibson’s worldview in this 2000 documentary which puts the writer into the backseat of a taxi-cab with no other direction than to speak about his life and creative work as relaxed as possible, and go on from there. As a free-form documentary, it stretches the boundaries of what is possible with the medium almost as much as Gibson himself does with his science-fiction, and as a look as a one-of-a-kind author right smack at the dawn of a new age which he himself has had a large hand in influencing through his cyberspace-literature, it’s a near essential look not only at a singular author but also at the dawn of the new millennium itself.
22) Irreversible (Noe) 2002
Christopher Nolan rewrote the rules of narrative convention with his famously backwards-unfolding Memento, but it was Gaspar Noe who put them to their most devastating and impressive use in the nightmarish revenge-drama Irreversible. Throughout the first half of this shock-and-awe sucker punch of a movie, Noe besieges our senses with some of the most degrading and dehumanizing acts of violence ever put to screen, especially sexual violence, as he retraces the steps of a pair of men out to avenge the brutal, life-threatening beating and savage rape of the woman they both love, Monica Bellucci, who herself is shoved into the movie’s garish spotlight during its centerpiece horror of a ten-minute long, single-take rape scene. It is, without a doubt, one of the single ugliest and most morally repellant things I’ve ever seen put on the screen in my viewing life, but at the very same time it deserves a large deal of credit for achieving a feat that few filmmakers have been able to do, or even dared to try-- de-eroticize the portrayal of rape. Unlike controversial scenes from movies like Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, which takes ambiguity far enough for audiences to believe that Susan George implicitly gives consent to her sexual assault, Noe’s persistent static-shot and Bellucci’s constant, painful cries for help never allow viewers to mistake what is happening onscreen as anything but an egregious physical violation. Providing the fuel for the rest of the film’s savage and tragically misdirected eye-for-an-eye violence and pre-attack comedy of lost love and jealous attachment, it stands alone as one of the most harrowing moments put to celluloid since Kubrick followed Alex and his droogs in the misogynistic backwaters of A Clockwork Orange, and does one better than that film’s guilty thrills by allowing its audience no inroads for vicarious pleasure-seeking of the lowest order. Time may destroy everything, but a film of this bloodstained quality can stand its test, instead.
21) Metropolis (Rintaro) 2000
20) The Power of Nightmares (Curtis) 2004
With an ever-escalating scale of tragic events unfolding in the international spotlight of mass media, the past ten years have been a boom-time for documentary features, shoving masters of craft and propaganda like Errol Morris and Michael Moore alike into the foreground, with only barely enough room for the likes of Al Gore every now and then, as well. Though largely unseen in America, one of the most important works of non-fiction cinema to find its way onto screens both large and small over the past decade is this work from British television-journalist Adam Curtis, which traces the eerie similarities in the parallel rises of both militant Islam radicals like Osama Bin Laden in the Middle East and equally militant Neo-Con radicals in the United States, charting how their paths crossed and mirrored one another in their twin courses towards a post-9/11 world. Relying mostly upon stock-footage and ironically samplings of music with occasional interruptions of expert interviewees, Curtis maintains a look at two of the most controversial and influential political movements of the 20th century, showing with crystal clear focus and persuasive arguments how both have shaped the dawn of the 21st century to meet similar, perhaps even mutually beneficial ends. While he never operates without a well-maintained thesis, he manages to maintain a degree of journalistic objectivity that films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and even Standard Operating Procedure often lack, even while injecting a far greater dose of personal inflection than one would ordinarily find in non-fiction work. By remaining upfront and honest in his convictions and agenda from the outset, Curtis manages to keep a distance between his subject matter and his conclusions just long enough to keep his work both intellectually stimulating and entertaining. Definitely a must-see, no matter how difficult that may be on this side of the pond.
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