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Best of Half-Decade: Pimping, Shilling and Bribing Thread


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Cold in July: I have to apologize to whoever it was I was discussing this movie with on here. This will probably be on my list, too.

Apology accepted. It didn't make my top 30 for 2014, but in hindsight, it could have easily taken the spot of 3 or 4 films that I eventually voted for, so I can't see voting for it this time. Really good film.

 

Birdman ended up as my #2 and it is a top 10 lock for the half decade.

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Is there anything that is really better than Whiplash? 

 

I don't think I'd have it as my #1, but it'd be up there.  It's got a pretty good shot at the consensus #1.  I'm not aware of anyone on here who didn't like it.

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Is there anything that is really better than Whiplash? 

 

I don't think I'd have it as my #1, but it'd be up there.  It's got a pretty good shot at the consensus #1.  I'm not aware of anyone on here who didn't like it.

 

 

It may be in my top 10. I'm not sure. I really haven't processed what I am going to have where yet. I'm 100% on what my #1 is going to be, and I am probably 90% sure on my #2, but I want to revisit it, as it's been 4-5 years since I've last seen it.

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So I had two days off in a row and I decided to start my watches/rewatches for this. In no particular order, I went through:

 

Big Hero Six: This was fine. I think Jingus earlier mentioned that it was cool but not groundbreaking, and that's where I am at with it. I have no complaints, I thought it was a pretty good film that could've been 10 minutes shorter. The action sequences were fun, the characters all worked, and I thought it dealt with loss in a pretty real if overly simple way.

 

Birdman: So people were talking about the score, so I figured I'd share my little weird sensory reaction to it: when Norton and Stone were talking on the roof, and the score starts up again with a real light touch on the cymbal, I immediately thought that an episode of The Wire was ending. My brain just took me right there. As for the movie, I think it's strong. I think the monologues work when you consider the film more as a stage show that was recorded, which it sort of is. I think there is a whole lot of filler throughout the B stories, and I think the movie suffered because it wasn't really sure what story it wanted to tell. It finds too many things more interesting than I did. Like, a character study on Keaton and his relationships with all the actors and his potentially deteriorating mental state is I guess what the movie is, but it stumbles when it gets more ambitious. I'm being too hard on it because it's a lock for my list, and probably will end up quite high, but I think its a tier below things that I would consider the true heavyweights of the half decade.

 

Inherent Vice: So, I guess this is as good a place as any to confess I really don't love any Anderson films other than Boogie Nights. I probably would've skipped this except for my dad watched it and keeps asking me if I have yet so I did simply so I could talk to him about it. It was....fine? It certainly had more of a sense of humor than I thought it would, and I really loved the sound track. I thought Brolin and Phoenix had great chemistry. I liked Newsom's voiceovers. All in all, I found myself drifting in and out of truly caring about what was happening. I've seen multiple people rave about the actress who played Shasta, which I thought was sort of a middling performance in a thankless role. This probably won't make my list, even though it will start on it. I think I'll probably just keep bumping it down as I go.

 

Grand Budapest Hotel: I have felt Wes Anderson's past few movies have been a bit of diminishing returns, but I truly loved this. Everything in it was beautiful, and it had great performances. Can Wes Anderson write a book on how to get such strong performances out of teen and children? It's truly a skill that is just as important to his films as any of his design work or self styled quirk, and it's one that other film makers could benefit from more than anything else he does. This will probably end up ranking quite highly for me, and I didn't expect it to. Even though it exhibited many of the usual tropes that Anderson films have, this felt much more personal than maybe anything he's made since Royal Tenenbaums. It felt as though we were getting a film on Anderson's personal views and philosophy and not just a series of obsessions and interests.  

 

Spring Breakers: This movie was garbage. I don't know why I keep giving Korine's movies a chance, but it's tiresome. I get mad at myself after watching his films. Not much else to say. You could tell while watching this that Korine felt like he was making something truly special, which I guess is admirable in it's own way, but he was so far off base. I'm sure someone somewhere would argue that's the exact reaction I'm supposed to have like all those people who say there is no such thing as X Pac heat. Those people are wrong.  

 

The Taking of Deborah Logan: I'm a big horror fan, and I had heard good things. It was a fine little horror movie, with a better than average performance in the center of it. I think I was hoping for something a bit different than what I watched. I didn't dislike it, but I saw no reason for it to be on a list of best anything.

 

I'm going to make a separate post about my number one, which is the only thing I'm sure about right now, but I didn't want it to get lost in here.

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I've been rewatching The Dark Knight Rises as I picked it up for free last week while shopping and I know I'm probably its biggest fan on here, but I feel like it might be my favourite comic book movie period. 'Batman Begins' is rather tiresome, to me, and I've never liked the last third of 'The Dark Knight', while the Marvel movies all feel to me like a trailer for whatever movie is coming next (Save 'Guardians of the Galaxy' which is just terrific and even that falls prey to the "This bad guy is bad, but he's just subservient to this other bad guy who will turn up in a later movie" syndrome).  One of the things I love about 'TDKR' is that it gives the viewer a little bit of the wonder to beheld of the regular person when they see these massive heroes and villains battling it out or doing something extraordinary.  Like the faces on the cops when Batman flies away in his Batjet, or the kids faces when they see Batman flying off with the bomb etc. etc.  I've often thought that that is an underused angle in superhero movies, how their actions affect the average non super-powered person.  But, also, it's full of fun performances, particularly Tom Hardy's Bane (Bale's performance is a little...weird, though.  Every time he's groaning in pain, it sounds like he's having a rather aggressive...orgasm.  The scene where they try to fix his back, he makes the most bizarre sounds that sound not like someone in pain, but someone in ecstasy), has a great score, lots of great set-pieces, and I love the story arc that Batman/Gotham is brought down to the absolute brink of hopelessness before the comeback.  One of the criticisms I've seen is that it's a "Batman movie without Batman" but I think that's what makes it so good, like everything has to be completely bleak and hopeless before it comes back.  Like, I find the 'Iron Man' movies diminishing returns with each successive film, but they're okay, but I never feel, at any point, that Iron Man/Tony Stark is ever in any real trouble.  I'm not as sold on the 'Avenger' films, and I never feel like "Oh they might not get out of this one" whereas TDKR is so dark, so bleak, that you can honestly find yourself thinking "I wonder if Batman or his various cohorts are going to die here?!"

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I've been rewatching The Dark Knight Rises as I picked it up for free last week while shopping and I know I'm probably its biggest fan on here, but I feel like it might be my favourite comic book movie period. 'Batman Begins' is rather tiresome, to me, and I've never liked the last third of 'The Dark Knight', while the Marvel movies all feel to me like a trailer for whatever movie is coming next (Save 'Guardians of the Galaxy' which is just terrific and even that falls prey to the "This bad guy is bad, but he's just subservient to this other bad guy who will turn up in a later movie" syndrome).  One of the things I love about 'TDKR' is that it gives the viewer a little bit of the wonder to beheld of the regular person when they see these massive heroes and villains battling it out or doing something extraordinary.  Like the faces on the cops when Batman flies away in his Batjet, or the kids faces when they see Batman flying off with the bomb etc. etc.  I've often thought that that is an underused angle in superhero movies, how their actions affect the average non super-powered person.  But, also, it's full of fun performances, particularly Tom Hardy's Bane (Bale's performance is a little...weird, though.  Every time he's groaning in pain, it sounds like he's having a rather aggressive...orgasm.  The scene where they try to fix his back, he makes the most bizarre sounds that sound not like someone in pain, but someone in ecstasy), has a great score, lots of great set-pieces, and I love the story arc that Batman/Gotham is brought down to the absolute brink of hopelessness before the comeback.  One of the criticisms I've seen is that it's a "Batman movie without Batman" but I think that's what makes it so good, like everything has to be completely bleak and hopeless before it comes back.  Like, I find the 'Iron Man' movies diminishing returns with each successive film, but they're okay, but I never feel, at any point, that Iron Man/Tony Stark is ever in any real trouble.  I'm not as sold on the 'Avenger' films, and I never feel like "Oh they might not get out of this one" whereas TDKR is so dark, so bleak, that you can honestly find yourself thinking "I wonder if Batman or his various cohorts are going to die here?!"

 

I need to revisit it, but I felt in the theaters that it was the strongest of the three films up until that film's third act. (Nolan just seems to be plagued by recent third acts). Hardy probably gives the best supporting performance of the whole trilogy. For as good as Ledger was in the few minutes of on-screen time we're given with him, I think Eckhart's performance has aged into the better one in TDK in spite of the final 45 minutes of that film's flaws. 

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I have been revisiting most of Tarantino's catalog in anticipation for The Hateful Eight. Due to me being out of town, I canceled my plans of watching all of Quentin's films in order and revisited the two with which I felt were really due another viewing in the Kill Bill saga and Django Unchained. (I had also revisited Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction last week and will still watch Jackie Brown, Death Proof, and Inglorious Basterds at some point).

 

The final 30 minutes of Django still loses me and maybe falls off of my list, which is a bummer because the rest of the film is a strong contender for my top 50 and maybe even my top 20. I wrote the below small blurb on Letterboxd about it.

 

The fun and marveling Tarantino has on display with Django Unchained is something to behold. The viewer can sense the joy and energy Tarantino and Robert Richardson had filming this one through every frame, as the film finally allows Quentin to do a full tilt western that also gets to take a satirical approach to the genre and a pre-Civil War, pre-Restoration or even pre-Civil Rights south. The first two hours are an electric ride that one should expect from Tarantino by now. Waltz and DiCaprio chew scenery at every opportunity they're given, with Leo contending for maybe the best performance ever in a Tarantino movie. Where this film falls is the final 30 minutes starting with Candie and Shultz's final encounter in the Candyland parlor until the credits role.

 
You sense that Tarantino was going to let this one end on a more reflective commentary before not being able to let it be and instead opted for the explosive conclusion.
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I tried watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the second time tonight (The other night I was 40 minutes in before realizing I had no idea what was going on because I'd fallen asleep), got right into it, fell right asleep after about ten minutes and gave up.  I don't like movies about spies, it turns out.  I'll give it another try, largely because of the cast, but this one is just not doing it for me, so instead I popped in...

 

 Once Upon A Time in Anatolia and it blew me AWAY.  As it says on the back of the box, it's a bizarre mix of "cop movie and a road movie".  Basically, some cops, a doctor, a prosecutor and a couple labourers drive a suspected murdered out into rural Turkey looking for the site where he is purported to have buried his victim.  The first hour or so of the film is just the group driving places, stopping, walking around, realizing it's not the right location and driving to another location.  And it's 100% hypnotic and unforgettable.  Cops discuss yogurt, people discuss life and love, the wind rises and blows leaves around them and in one extremely long and improbably beautiful shot, an apple falls off a tree, rolls down a hill and is carried downstream and the camera follows it every step of the way and it's fascinatingly beautiful and affecting.  The convoy takes a break at the mayor of a small village's house, they talk some more, then go back out in search of the body.  Once they find it, it is this wonderfully heartbreaking and occasionally hilarious look at the minutiae of an active crime scene and it's totally engrossing.  Now, I'm always highest on a movie right after I've seen it, so I'm going to wait a few days before ranking it, but right now it feels like it could even squeak into my Top 10.  It's just so unlike anything I've ever seen just incredibly beautiful cinematography and terrific performances.  I really loved it.  Don't let the 2:47 runtime scare you away, it's incredibly meditative and the time just flies by once you get engrossed in the rhythm of the film.

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The only clear idea I have going in to this list is that my number one film is Upstream Color. It's basically locked in there at this point, it would take a true revelation to change it. I wanted to write a few words about it in case people were on the fence about watching it or needed to revisit it. 

 

I think one trait of American film over the past half decade or so is that storytelling has gotten very clean. We know what audiences like, and what they respond to, and while it makes for very easy film watching, and it clears the way to make film a vehicle for performance, it has an unfortunate side effect of making everything very easy. Upstream Color is the only movie I can think of that actively challenges the viewer and forces you to pay attention. The narrative itself is actually quite simple; it's about the relationship of two people as they struggle to recover from horrific events that have ruined them both personally and financially. There are fantastical elements that heighten the film, and since we only get brief snippets of moments the relationship can be hard to grasp at first. All that being said, this is not a film like Primer, where you essentially need a diagram to effectively follow the action. Very little out of the ordinary occurs in UC, but it stays just beyond our reach, and forces us to sit and learn with it. 

 

Getting back to the plot of the film, I'm almost positive that there is some great think piece out there talking about how UC is a movie that perfectly encapsulates this generation. It hinges on our fears, it shows struggle in a very real way. I think looking at it purely through that lens would sell it short a little bit. It really is so much more. It is so rare to find art that rewards consideration, because shock has become currency at this point. UC may not have the bombast of Birdman, or the visceral performances of The Master, but it does have a care and craftsmanship that rewards the viewer for paying attention. As that seemingly gets rarer and our attention spans get shorter, I think UC deserves praise and reward. It is the film that I thought of immediately when I saw this thread, and it's the only film from the past five years I find myself going back to and still uncovering new aspects of. 

 

I urge those who have not watched it to fire it up on Netflix and give it a go. I think you will end up finding it worth it. 

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Upstream Color is on my to-watch list. I'll gladly take a peek at ANYTHING from the same guy who made Primer.

I just rewatched The Lego Movie for at least the tenth time. Oh yeah, it'll place on my ballot. And it shall place HIGH. Such a brilliant, meticulously-designed comedy with some pretty sharp shit to say about modern storytelling trends. The timing in this movie is incredible; look at simple jokes like Vetruvious's "secret knock" to enter Cloud Cuckooland, and the way that stuff is paced is just perfect.

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caley's last post is kinda funny for me, because I fell asleep multiple times during Once Upon A Time In Anatolia.  I don't blame the movie, though.  It was at an 8:45 am screening and I think I'd been up a little late the night before.  Probably deserves another look.

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Monsters University: nope. C'mon, Pixar, you're better than this. Rarely have I ever seen a movie which was so narratively broken on the level of fundamental plot. This might be the worst case I've ever seen of a prequel having its standalone stakes (which are pretty low in the first place) get rendered irrelevant because we already know precisely what's going to happen. We've already seen an entire movie about Mike & Sully, Best Friends & Professional Child-Scarers. That makes it awfully damn hard to suspend even the tiniest bit of disbelief when we're given a later movie with "will Mike and Sully ever pass Scare School, let alone become friends?". I mean, seriously, the existence of this franchise presumes that we're familiar with the first movie. And "how did things end up this good?" in a mostly-functional society is a boring damn question, compared to "how did things get so dark?" conceits that make real prequels tick. The movie practically moons the audience with a fuck-you ending montage that acts as a massive suspension bridge between the ending of Monsters University's plot and the beginning of Monsters, Inc, the two are thematically nowhere near each other. There's no reason for this prequel to exist. They should've thrown the whole thing out and started from scratch with a new adventure involving Mike and Sully, rather than essentially rehashing Young Sherlock Holmes.

And why another fucking college movie? Seriously, this doesn't do much besides rehash the same old jokes we've seen in every college movie ever. Gee, do ya think Mike and Sully might be forced to join a loser fraternity of total dorks, and then said fraternity must compete against the stuck-up preps in the popular frat? Fuck you, Pixar, don't be lowering yourself to that kind of shit! And no, having Nathan Fillion be the lead fratboy asshole and Helen Mirren as the pompous dean of the school is NOT enough of an apology for stapling them to this ponyloaf of a plot! Even most of the "do jokes about real-life school tropes, only with a monstrous twist" gimmick is played out. Harry Potter's been there and done that, along with seemingly dozens of televised cartoons.

And finally, I can't imagine anyone is trying that hard to avoid spoilers for a decade-old children's movie, but just in case you're that one guy:

The entire plot hinging on learning how to scare kids feels especially goddamned pointless in light of Monsters, Inc's ending. We saw that kids' LAUGHTER provides better energy than their screams, so the former monsters turn into comedians and revise their entire industry. So at times, the movie feels like we're watching Mike and Sully compete to become the best Betamax videotape player repairmen.

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caley's last post is kinda funny for me, because I fell asleep multiple times during Once Upon A Time In Anatolia.  I don't blame the movie, though.  It was at an 8:45 am screening and I think I'd been up a little late the night before.  Probably deserves another look.

You know what, on the right evening, I can entirely understand this one putting you to sleep.

 

BTW, on the third try I finally completed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  Not a big fan.  It's the first time in a while I've had to repeatedly wiki a plot to figure out what's going on (Still don't really understand who/what Karla is) and still ended up kinda baffled.  I thought the ending was kind of anticlimactic, as well.  I mean, I guess it's well-made and looks nice, but it just didn't hit with me on any level really.  Maybe I really just don't like spy movies.

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Interstellar: probably not. There's a lot of neat individual moments, but the total is way less than the sum of its parts. Nolan's editing bugs me; the way the guy's movies tend to be cut, it jumps back and forth between way too many different places. There's a time and a place for that, but he always does it; oh yeah, please, be my guest, keep cutting away from the beautiful space mission to a bunch of people arguing over a cornfield. And for a movie which isn't afraid to get bluntly literal with the explanation of the "ghost" knocking the girl's books off the shelf, it sure does turn shy when it's time for anyone to actually explain what's going on, in the dialogue. I know that Nolan was heavily cribbing from 2001 here, but to the movie's detriment I was also heavily reminded of Armageddon and Pandorum
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Upstream Color is on my to-watch list. I'll gladly take a peek at ANYTHING from the same guy who made Primer.

 

 

I don't want to color your viewpoint too much, because I think it's important to go in to the film as a blank slate, but since you brought up Primer, I think you should look at UC as Carruth's direct response to his first work. Primer is a film that is a tremendously byzantine story that is filmed in a clear, direct and concise way. It's presented scientifically. Upstream Color is essentially an inversion of that: It's a very simple narrative that is filmed in a layered, unreliable style. We get snippets and memories, just like we do when we are remembering feelings and emotions. It's quite clever, and I think it's a credit to Carruth to want to work on a project that shows he can do the exact opposite of what people lauded him for in the first place. 

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Meek's Cutoff: Pretty good, probably not making my list.  Really liked the cinematography and score, very Boards of Canada-esque.  Everything else, although it certainly seemed all set to go somewhere very good, didn't quite get there for me.  Zoe Kazan, who I usually like, was annoying.  Feel like I gotta rewatch the first 30 minutes and look more closely at all those figures on the horizon.

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Lincoln: yeah, probably somewhere in the bottom half of the list. Spielberg's getting comfortable and predictable in his old age, but this is still a fun enough platform for a who's-who of great character actors to tear into a meaty subject. Although I wish it had ended two or three scenes sooner, without all the "what luck, I have only two days left until retirement!" followed by outright hagiography at the end.
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Tom at the Farm: Was really awesome.  Tom is a young man who decides to visit his deceased lover Guillaume's family home only to realize that said lover's mother has no idea that her son is gay.  She asks him to stay the night (Which is a great subtle little scene where you can see Tom flinch when she suggests he can just crawl into her son's bed, not knowing how deep their connection really was and how difficult it would be to crawl into your deceased lover's bed in his childhood bedroom) and in the middle of the night, Guillaume's brother Francis attacks him in his bed and threatens that if he reveals his real relationship with Guillaume that he will hurt him.  It turns into this amazing, beautifully shot, really intense psycho-sexual drama with Francis' intentions never being entirely clear.  Sometimes he seems to be in love with Tom, other times he treats him almost like a surrogate brother, and then he just bullies and belittles him, while Tom finds himself alternately repulsed and enraptured by Francis.  It's really well-acted, occasionally brutal, sporadically beautiful little film.

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Meek's Cutoff:

Hey, you or anyone else who's seen it: when you watched the movie, was its aspect ratio really square-looking? Like, the opposite of widescreen? I tried to start it, but I'm worried I got a gimpy copy and don't wanna watch an entire movie if it's got some kind of weird cropping going on.
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Meek's Cutoff:

Hey, you or anyone else who's seen it: when you watched the movie, was its aspect ratio really square-looking? Like, the opposite of widescreen? I tried to start it, but I'm worried I got a gimpy copy and don't wanna watch an entire movie if it's got some kind of weird cropping going on.

 

 

Yes it was.  Apparently it was done because the women wear bonnets and that cuts off their peripheral vision..

 

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/14/135206694/going-west-the-making-of-meeks-cutoff

 

The idea of the bonnet — and of cutting off space — was also the main reason Reichardt says she chose to shoot Meek's Cutoff in a 4:3 aspect ratio — rather than a wider perspective.
 
"I felt like the square [aspect ratio] gave you an idea of the closed view that the women have because of their bonnets," Reichardt says. "You'd be traveling in this big community where you'd never have privacy. But also, it's a really lonely journey. And I think cutting out the peripheral, it does leave you with the idea that something could be there that you don't know about — and so it offers that kind of tension."

 

 

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The Arbor - This is a documentary about Andrea Dunbar, who wrote three successful plays that were based largely on her lower-class life, and also covers the lives of Dunbar's children. The hook is that the documentary-makers have interviews with everyone involved, but just play the audio from those interviews, and have actors lip-sync to what's being said. This probably sounds strange.  Like The Act Of Killing, you really have to see the movie to completely get it.  It makes sense to do it that way, because it ties back to Dunbar's playwright work, which involved taking dialogue from her real life and putting it into the mouths of actors.  It allows for staging of the interviews, giving the impression that you're walking around Dunbar's neighborhood and running into people telling you her story, but it also unexpectedly adds a lot of poignancy when you see actors trying to convey the emotions of very difficult stories that aren't actually theirs. It almost becomes like a Charlie Kaufman movie - very sad, but also playing a little with the nature of reality.  Definitely making my list.

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Thanks for reminding me to add The Arbor to my list, S.K.O.S. I too finally knocked one off of my unseen list, which is one that I have constantly put off for one reason or another. Here were my quick Letterboxd thoughts on it.

 

Upstream Color - I am not sure one viewing can properly grade this movie. I am wrestling with how to articulate the experience of Director Shane Caruth's second feature length film. It's one that I would hope to have a better handle on after a second or third viewing. My immediate thought is that I do not think a film has ever made me so depressed from scenes involving pigs, but a lot of the scenes with swine carry an emotional weight and jarring punch to them. This is a film that obviously wrestles with a few issues abstractly and incoherently: depression, addiction, self destruction, post dramatic stress disorder, and broken, fractured-minded people attempting to piece their lives back together.

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Apparently it was done because the women wear bonnets and that cuts off their peripheral vision..

 

The idea of the bonnet — and of cutting off space — was also the main reason Reichardt says she chose to shoot Meek's Cutoff in a 4:3 aspect ratio — rather than a wider perspective.

 

"I felt like the square [aspect ratio] gave you an idea of the closed view that the women have because of their bonnets," Reichardt says. "You'd be traveling in this big community where you'd never have privacy. But also, it's a really lonely journey. And I think cutting out the peripheral, it does leave you with the idea that something could be there that you don't know about — and so it offers that kind of tension."

That... sounds... staggeringly pretentious. Maybe I dodged a bullet by skipping this one.

Riddick: nah, probably not. It's not bad, but it's more "a tolerable way to kill 2 otherwise-empty hours" good, rather than "best of the decade" good. It's basically a remake of Pitch Black, except with a weaker script and less-interesting monsters. Now don't get me wrong, that still puts it a HUGE step above the miserable Chronicles of Riddick; and the whole cast seems to be acting a lot harder than they really need to, which was appreciated. Too bad about the sheer amount of time and effort they put into setting up a follow-up to goddamn Chronicles and the who-asked-for-it return of the Necromongers, though.

Ironclad: nope. It's too bad, because the opening promises something pretty cool: a medieval swashbuckler with a "small force of good guys bunker down to defend themselves against an overwhelming army of villains" story, which is a plotline which can be reliably counted on for better-than-average thrills. For a mid-budget picture, it does a good job of stretching every dollar and putting all the money up on the screen. And while James Purefoy makes for a damp slice of white bread in the spot where a compelling protagonist is supposed to fit, otherwise it's got a damn good cast: Paul Giamatti is the sneering Prince John, with faithful old hands like Brian Cox, Charles Dance, and Derek Jacobi on hand to play the various supporting lords.

So imagine my crushing disappointment when we get to the first big battle, and the movie promptly loses its shit and displays EVERY common sin of shitty modern action scenes. Shaky handheld camerawork that seems like it's actively trying to keep you from being able to see what's going on. Hyperactive stroboscopic editing which seems equally determined to prevent the viewer from getting a good look at anything. Phony-looking CGI blood spraying all over the place. For the love of god, can we please STOP making movies like this?! It disgusted me so much that I turned the film off at the halfway point, after seeing that bullshit I don't even care how the movie ends.

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The Last Stand could sneak onto somewhere around the tail end of my list. Schwarzenegger movies that are any better than "eh, it wasn't too bad, I guess" have become sadly rare things within the past twenty years; let us celebrate that we've got a competent one here. Everyone and everything about this movie seems like it's trying just a little bit harder than it really has to, and the effort is appreciated. This is the sort of action flick which goes "eh, why not cast Forest Whitaker and Peter Stormare in nice big parts?" in between the much-more-expected likes of Luis Guzman, Harry Dean Stanton, and Johnny Knoxville. But then again, what the hell are we SUPPOSED to "expect" from an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick directed by the guy who made I Saw the Devil?

The movie does have one rather glaring flaw: until the end, this is practically two different movies which feels arbitrarily spliced together. In one film, we're watching a sleepy comedy with Arnold as a country sheriff in a small desert town; in the other film, we're watching some slick fast-&-furious shenanigans with a fugitive escaping from the FBI in a sports car. Both interesting, but they hardly even feel like they're both part of the same coherent motion picture. The hero and the villain never even meet each other before their big final confrontation. But the weird part is: despite noticing this problem, I didn't really mind it. The movie works well enough overall anyway.

Above all, an action movie must simply bring the thrills. Anything more is appreciated, but unnecessary; and anything less is strictly intolerable. The Last Stand brings the thrills, and does so in a surprisingly low-key fashion. The movie's budget of $30 million would barely be enough to pay for pyrotechnics and catering on many of Arnold's bigger epics. This one picks and chooses its moments; rather than overwhelming us with a deluge of spectacle, it waits for its moment and hits us with cool little things here and there. The action scenes all have a nice sense of geographical clarity; that is, it always makes sure that we understand that These Guys are all Over Here, while Those Guys are all Over There, while This Thing is in between all of the above, and we understand where everyone is in relationship to each other. (This is the polar opposite of the unwatchably incoherent bullshit which made me turn Ironclad off.) The movie always goes to great pains to show us the physical aftereffects of getting into a fight (sometimes even some psychological ones too), never letting our heroes doing that Hollywood bullshit where they beat up twenty guys and jump through ten windows and stand at ground zero of a massive explosion and then no-sell all that shit like John Cena taking Colin Delaney's offense. And at least a few of the individual action setpieces are frankly brilliant in their sparse execution: a tense handicap-match gunfight on a super-cramped narrow stairway, a hide-and-seek car chase through a cornfield, and the inevitable climactic fistfight taking place on the most perfectly appropriate of symbolic locations.

And finally: did I miss something, or was there no CGI whatsoever in this entire movie?! At least, no obvious digital crap that I spotted; either way, that's impressive in this day and age. Refreshing, too. Maybe some of the gunshots and squibs were digital, but if so, they did a damn fine job hiding it. That would just about force me to give a good rating to any modern action flick even if it were otherwise a total piece of garbage; and, this ain't garbage at all. Damn shame it was such a bomb at the box office, Arnold deserved a better turnout for this one.

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21 Jump Street and Rango: yeah probably to the first one, yes definitely to the latter. You gotta admire Gore Verbinski for being one of the very few, incredibly-rare directors who can work equally well in live action and animation. And any children's Western which is willing to slow down for great big homages to Chinatown, The Road Warrior, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is A-okay with me.
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