2010 in the movies

It's nearly the end of 2010 and I thought I'd round up my favourite/least favourite films of the year and share this great video montage. I've written about quite a few of them already so I won't bore you and get repetitive. For those who just want the good stuff (ie- the part where I talk about the films which made me want to take every camera on earth to a very deep pit and throw them in just so that no similar monstrosities are ever realised) it's at the end.


Great films

Inception

A Single Man

A Prophet

Mugabe and the White African


Good films

 
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
Highly quotable and a treasure-trove of geeky fun. Michael Cera does a non-annoying performance (yay!) and the supporting cast are great. I love the way the comic book elements are brought to life visually and auditorily.

Easy A
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this teen comedy of lies and rumours. It was smart, funny and Emma Stone was a very likable character - self aware, not overly angsty and clever. Not a ground breaking film by any means, but very good at what it did.
 
Wild Target
Another surprise - I only expected this to be at best mildly amusing, but it turned out to be one of my favourite films of the summer. A very funny black comedy it's about a hitman (Bill Nighy) who falls for his mark (Emily Blunt) and takes on an apprentice (Rupert Grint). It's gentle and quite sweet and has a very happy ending in a way you wouldn't quite expect.

Monsters
I want to blog at length about this soon.

The Social Network
Aside from gazing in wonder at the depth of field (it's miniscule! the focus puller must have some kind of supernatural abilities!) and the effects used to make one actor into two (I genuinely believed the twins were played by twin actors, it was astonishingly well done) I loved the greek feeling of hubris and nemesis, the impending doom created by the clever structure. The thread with the girlfriend which began and ending the film felt forced (and is, apparently, erroneous) and I think we would have understood the theme without it, but that is one niggle in an excellent story of modern genius and greed.

Iron Man 2

Toy Story 3
At least part of the appeal of Toy Story 3 for anyone around my age is the intense nostalgia; I remember when the original came out, and how it spoke to me then. I love how in this superlative sequel it addresses how it's original audience and grown up and moved on, even if if they haven't really. I cried buckets at the ending. The 3D isn't astonishing but the overall quality of the animation is excellent, as one expects from Pixar.

How to Train your Dragon

I am not a Dreamworks fan, generally. I find their animation subpar and their films severely lacking in terms of script. It's surprising, then, that How to Train your Dragon was so thoroughly excellent. The human animation is still slightly dodgy but the story is lovely and the creative vision very strong.

Despicable Me
Another non-Pixar animation which nonetheless astonished me. I only saw this recently, and it was brilliant comedy: I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I cried a little bit, but then I laughed again.

Films which just didn't work

Legends of the Guardians
The animation is jaw-droppingly gorgeous - you can reach out and stroke the fluffy, perfect owl feathers - and it's one of the few 3D films I've seen which I wouldn't rather see in 2D (the others are Avatar and Up). However. There is no plot. None worth mentioning, anyway - it's a film about owls who have formed a civilisation, need I say more?

Alice in Wonderland
Tim Burton is suffering from a serious case of style over substance and when structural coherence isn't your strong point it's lunacy to adapt a book like Alice, which was written not to have a structure but rather to be an exploration of a fantasy world. The visuals are arresting, but at this point in his career hardly surprising, and Johnny Depp gives another "zany" performance which makes me weep to remember when he was a good actor.



Daybreakers
The concept for this is actually very good - vampires are now the majority of the population, but they're running out of humans to eat. The world is well imagined and realised and the cast is very strong. Unfortunately, the plot takes a turn for the disastrous and ends up with the weakest, most ill-considered ending of the year.

Legion
Paul Bettany as a disenchanted Archangel Michael? I'm intrigued. And he uses a machine gun? Mmmm... But wait... there's a whole weird second-coming plot, and the characters are mostly annoying? And the pacing is glacially boring and interspersed with tedious "character building" conversations? I'll pass.

Repo Men
Another interesting premise which is then executed in a bizarre way, and another case of a Jude Law film which failed miserably. Most of the film is actually pretty good, with interesting things to say about private medical care in the USA and Jude Law looking pretty attractive. But then it gets weird, with people barcode-scanning each other's innards. I wish I was kidding.



Films which I hated, nay, LOATHED

The Kids are Alright
I think I am in a minority of precisely one, here, because all the critics on earth apparently adored this tedious, ugly, meandering snooze-fest. I can't imagine why: the characters were universally despicable, the plot predictable and the acting belonged to the school of mumbling, going nowhere "realism". Urgh.

From Paris With Love
As much as The Kids are Alright made me want to lobotomise myself with an icepick, From Paris With Love is infinitely worse. It's racist in ways I thought Hollywood couldn't get away with any more (if you're not a white American you're probably a drug dealer or a corrupt French official) and sexist to boot. Why on earth an actor like Jonathan Rhys Meyers is involved I have no idea but John Travolta's creepy alien gastropod persona suits it perfectly. The problem with this film is not an over-abundence of realism but rather a gaping lack of it. An utterly despicable blot on the landscape of filmmaking.

Inception (2010)

A warning from the get go: I cannot talk about this film without spoiling it to bits, so if you haven't seen it, look away now. Yes, even if you don't plan on seeing it, I will force you to because you need to see this film.

I've loved Christopher Nolan for years now, since I first saw Memento, his second film. I've lost count of the number of times I've watched it and his others since. He is a genius and I have a massive platonic love for him. I don't need to wait to see a trailer or even for an announcement of any kind to be excited for a film of his, I'm automatically looking forward to his next film, the one after that and so on until he's raptured back from where he came from. (Or until the mothership comes back for him, whichever theory proves correct.) Going to see his films is as close to church as I'll get.

Why this devotion? Plainly, he's my role model. He makes intelligent, meaningful films which are simultaneously exciting as hell and which make millions.

Inception is no exception. It features a very attractive cast (Leonardo diCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon Lovett, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cottiard, Cillian Murphy), brain melting special effects (screw you Avatar) and as many car chases/crashes/explosions as you could possibly want. It even has a fight sequence in a rotoscope, which is pretty much the most amazing thing ever.

But as well as that, there's the cleverness. It creates a world, and fills it with interesting characters and philosophical questions. Not only the main character develops. While Dom Cobb is the protagonist, and his decision to accept reality is the arc of the story, the supporting characters have their own trajectories. Arthur learns to use his imagination, Ariadne grows up, and Robert Fischer becomes his own man.

I know the plot isn't perfect, because I've seen this film four times now and that's sufficient to spot a couple of plot niggles, but I absolutely don't care because compared to the magnificence of the whole, it's immaterial. Why did they need a week on the first level? Better safe than sorry, right?

The ending is my favourite part. On first viewing, by that point I felt wrung out already (I was crying, big surprise, it was the paper fan which did me in), and then, the last shot-! My heart skipped a beat. Several, in fact. Thinking about it now, my stomach has decided to take up residence in feet. It's the perfect ending, and pretentious as it is, I can only liken it to the piece of Mozart which ends on an imperfect cadence (and which I have been wracking my brain trying to remember the name of, no luck yet). It ratchets you up to the most extreme point and then leaves you there. I had to sit through the titles just to get my breath back and even then I was wobbly on my legs, and things felt artificial for a while.

It's worth mentioning that Hans Zimmer is brilliant, and I want him to write the soundtrack to my life. I am, in fact, listening to the Inception soundtrack right now even though it's deeply unhealthy. Foghorn blares will never be the same again.

Lastly:

Iron Man 2

And, because I know not everyone leapt to see this at the first possible opportunity, this is a spoiler free zone.

I really did see Iron Man 2 at the first opportunity: I woke up early on Thursday morning when we didn't have class to see the first preview at 10am. Flick? Voluntarily giving up morning sleep? It must be serious. I was surprised to find a queue outside the cinema, and so was an ordinary member of the public who just wanted to see The Blind Side and found themselves surrounded by disreputable geeky types.

The problem with any film you're looking forward to is that it can let you down painfully, so I'm very glad to report that I enjoyed it. Very much. In fact, I had a fixed grin throughout the whole, only excepting the sad bit which I won't elaborate on but which is heartbreaking, mainly because of what a genius performer Robert Downey Jr is. Yet again he balances the inherent arrogant bastardness of Tony Stark with his heroism. The action scenes were very good, there was sufficient Tony-inventing-stuff and I continue to hope that someone will invent a computer like the one he has because wow, that is cool. Almost as cool as the suitcase armour.

On thing which irritated me was that Jon Favreau gave himself a bigger role in 2 than in the first, because while I adore him as a director (Iron Man and Elf? What's not to love?) as an actor he gets on my nerves for some indefinable reason. Still, it's a very little thing.

It made me very happy that every single person in the cinema stayed during the credits expecting a bonus scene and that there was a cheer when you saw the SPOILER GOES HERE.

On Saturday me and Harry went to see it in the imax and while I still enjoyed the film, I wasn't particularly blown away by the cinema experience. It was big, yeah, but not all that much bigger than cineworld's screen 3 (where it's screening anyway) and it's a whole lot more inconvenient. So, not really sold on imax.

I'm Here (2010)

It's not in me to turn down the offer of a free film with free cocktails, so this weekend I found myself sipping Absolut vodka and espresso (it's dynamite by the way - a depressant and a stimulant all at once) in a basement and bearing witness to the most theatrical film screening I've ever seen.

The route in was paved with bubblewrap and the walls were decorated with a mixture of books, car doors and old fashioned office furniture. In front of a back-projected screen there was a carpet of AstroTurf with cardboard boxes dotting it; five minutes before the show they bloomed, revealing electric blow up mattresses to sit on while you enjoyed your drink.

All this was very impressive, and it made the experience that bit much more special.

The film itself was very Jonzey: earnest and occaisionally silly. The story concerns a robot in an American city where robots are second-class citizens. He meets and falls in love with a rebellious but accident prone girl robot and she brings excitement to his life, introducing him to all the fun a robot can have and bringing him out of his shell. Gradually, however, he loses more and more of himself to her.

I'm not sure what to make of that message, and that ambiguity could be because the short running time doesn't allow the theme to fully mature. But it's pretty bleak if what it means is that women will cut away at you until there's nothing left and give nothing back.

The whole was a very interesting look for me at alternative marketing. There is no traditional market for a thirty minute film, but this partnership with Absolut has brought it to a fairly large audience already, and the marketing it will be able to provide outstrips what an ordinary indie film could achieve by far. You could see it as selling one's artist soul, but there was no product placement in the film, just an association with a cool film, making them look cooler, and the opportunity to reach a market which may not normally buy their brand (because of it being so expensive!).

Everyone wins. Especially me.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch

Iron Man (2008)

I think I get Andy's pleasure in watching us watch his favourite films, since on Friday night I got to see Dilara watch Iron Man for the first time. It was brilliant!

Iron Man definitely falls into the category of films which I saw and loved instantly, the circumstances under which I saw it inextricably linked with that. I had seen the trailer - one of the best comic book trailers for ratcheting up excitement - and decided on one of my few days in Glasgow that I just had to go and see it, lack of willing company be damned! So I was by myself in the middle of Cineworld's biggest screen and from the get-go it just blew me away. Back in Black! Robert Downey Jr! Banter! Explosions! Yay!

The second time I saw it was two days after I bought the DVD; I'd seen it sitting on a shelf in Tescos and just couldn't resist (though I did buy the cheapskate's vanilla version). Unfortunately, at the time of watching I had just crashed my scooter and was in shock. Suddenly that scene on the freeway was the most terrifying piece of cinema ever. Especially this bit:

Ouch.

Since then, I've watched this film far, far too many times to be healthy. Once, I even watched it twice in a weekend. I just keep coming back!

Part of why I love it undoubtedly is that I'm a comicbook nerd, and also that I'm a comicbook nerd who likes comicbook films (or at least good comicbook films). The last decade or so has been a sequence of some really brilliant superhero films from the two big publishers aimed at a broad market. I put this down to a combination of the comics generation coming of age and getting the power to make movies, and the mainstreaming of "graphic novels". You can now find a graphic novel section in most Waterstones, stocking everything from manga to Moore alongside the eminently respectable books such as Persepolis. It has even been rumoured that girls have been found in Forbidden Planet!

As an adaption, Iron Man is very, very good. It takes the Batman Begins approach of casting a serious actor, rationalising the science* and having genuine character development. Watching, we DFTV-ers spotted (and remarked on, much to the amusement of the random vet student also watching) that it has a classic three-act structure, with a Protagonist and Antagonist, a Helper, clearly defined Goals and Obstacles and a Final Confrontation where it all comes together. Important plot points are signposted and the comic relief does its job without interfering with the tone. It's simple, effective and I love it to bits.

It hits all the points a mass audience wants: who is this guy? what's he doing? yay, explosions! and still manages to appeal to the central geeky part of the audience who can laugh over Jarvis being a computer, and go crazy at the hidden scene with Nick Fury after the credits. We can spot the latest Stan Lee cameo and get excited about Rhodey possibly-maybe being War Machine in the sequel.

But if it was just a film ticking off a list of fanservice, or just an exciting bunch of CGI fight sequences, I wouldn't care. I genuinely believe that Iron Man is in a tradition of films which have something important to say and by being populist get that message to as wide an audience as possible - in short, it's exactly the kind of film I want to make. If out of the millions of people who watched a few hundred thousand were made to think about the arms trade, then surely that's an achievement worth making.

It's also a peculiarly American perspective, which is why I think some people don't like it. In the film's moral world, the problem isn't America having weapons, it's everyone else. So Tony Stark can swoop in and save the day, using his judgement and superior technology; it's double dealing and greed which needs to be stopped. It's intensely patriotic and pro-military, in other words really American, and not quite to British tastes. A British Tony Stark would take up knitting, or possibly arrange a tea-party with the terrorists.

But aside from all the deep themey bits, I just love the look. The CGI is fantastic, the actors are good-looking, the design is beautiful (my architect sister fell in love with Tony Stark when she saw his house) and the fight scenes are well choreographed. I was thinking about what Andy said about the geography of editing, and I think Iron Man does a good job of maintaining a clear through-line of action.

And if all that wasn't enough, Robert Downey Jr was fantastic. The whole purpose of our evening was an RDJ night (Chaplin reminded a bunch of us that we absolutely love him to itty bitty pieces) and he really doesn't disappoint. He can do comedy, emotion and action equally well, and he even has the right sort of look for the comicbook Tony Stark. Shallowness aside (difficult as that may be considering:

but I'll do my best) he is a brilliant actor: likable through his playboy habits, believable as a genius engineer an above all:

*though my science student friend next to me laughs at this - I mean it's internally consistent