Vertigo

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) [8]

It may seem useless to review a film that has been cemented as a classic but how could this site live up to its name if it didn't? All kidding aside, I've never been a true believer in Hitchcock. Vertigo definitely falls on the better part of the spectrum but I have no doubts in calling this just a good thriller. It has all the standard Hitchcock elements (blondes, landmarks, rousing finish) but I've never found any of that impressive for myself. There is no doubt that Hitchcock is an expert craftsman, knowing when to pull his punches. I actually quite liked the revealing of the story as John Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) falls into his web of deception and vulnerability. There's a fairly predictable one-eighty to turn the story around and some of the visual tricks look like someone with a rudimentary knowledge of what experimental film should be about. Even so, what seals this as a favorable film for me is the performance that Stewart morphs into. Through years of popular thought saying how Jimmy Stewart always is the nice guy, there's a bit of surprise seeing him turn into an obsessive, somewhat crazy, unlikable guy. Credit should also be due to point out that the film doesn't let Ferguson off the hook for his behavior as the film ends with a less than favorable ending for films of the time. Vertigo isn't quite an impeccable film for me, but then again, I don't care much for Psycho and North by Northwest is my favorite Hitchcock film. Hitchcock seems to be one of those directors that I just can't form a concrete opinion on if I want to like him or not.

Listening Post - March 2010

It's been a while since the last listening post column, so here's the best of what I've been listening to recently or the best of what's just been released:

Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do
She & Him - Volume Two
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo
Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
Big Star - #1 Record/Radio City (for obvious reasons)

As for Mumford & Sons, they seem to be getting a lot of shit (especially from the holier-than-thous at Pitchfork) for being unoriginal and derivative of the Avett Brothers, Bon Iver, etc. So, what? They've made an engaging album that makes for any supposed deficiencies in the earnest belief in the music the group performs. I've been on the fence about going to Bonnaroo but after really getting into this album, going to see Mumford & Sons might be worth it.

Lorna's Silence

Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2009) [7]

I've never been overly infatuated with what I've seen of the Dardenne's work but after seeing Lorna's Silence, I'm beginning to get it. The Dardennes take characters, drop them into trying social circumstances, stand back, and examine what goes on. On the surface, it's seems very passive, minimalist cinema. Within their clinical, incessant examination comes a subtle, lyrical portrait of their characters, decisions, and societal norms. Lorna's Silence focuses on Lorna, a recent Albanian immigrant, played by Arta Dobroshi. Lorna is in a sham marriage to a junkie to get citizenship and then marry a Russian, all to open a snack bar with her share of the money. The film comes in as all the arrangements have been made and the plan is already started. What complicates the entire situation is that Lorna has grown compassion for Claudy, the junkie as he attempts to get clean. This new-found clarity of herself complicates everything else for Lorna, as well as her agreements with Fabio, the small change gangster arranging all this. The plotline here follows the same sign posts that have defined the Dardenne's cinema but they execute their films so well repetition is not really an issue. In fact, I like this film much more than their previous effort L'Enfant, mostly because I understand the brother's style a bit more but also I think the film, like Lorna itself, shows a bit more compassion for those involved. Lorna is the focus and Dobroshi plays her with the right amounts of stoicism and wounded spirit to make everything believable. The ending is up for a little debate if it fits the rest of the film. I find it intriguing but on further thinking, find it out of step with the social realism that defines most of the rest. Make no mistake, Lorna's Silence is still fairly bleak and unrelenting in its social accuracy but by opening up just a little from their previous work, maybe there's a new road coming through the brother's cinema.

A Serious Man

A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2009) [8]

I've had my issues with the Coen's more serious material but have seen to turned a corner after loving NCFOM and finding Burn After Reading lackluster. A Serious Man is a bleak yet blackly comic story of a physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) who finds his life engrossed in a series of Job-like tribulations. His wife has divorced him, his tenure at the university he teaches at is trivialized by anonymous disparaging letters and a troublesome student, and his unemployed brother (in a great small role by Richard Kind) in legal trouble. It's a series of trying experiences that Larry can't comprehend and seeks guidance through a trio of rabbis, whose interactions are the comedic highlights of the film. The film has Jewish characters and is set in the Midwest of the late 60s so a lot has been made of it being somewhat autobiographical in regards to the Coens. Knowing their films, I don't see much other than using time and place to tell a standard Coen Brothers story. Judaism is prominent but is never the featured element of the story as the tenets of faith are used for Larry to question whether he is really a serious man. I happen to feel the film treats Judaism lovingly but isn't afraid to throw a barb or two in. The scene near the end with Rabbi Marshak and Larry's son Danny is superb. It circumvents the notion of this esteemed man being someone of great insight or resolution. The film ends with little explanation for Larry and the viewer for why he had to go through with this exactly. Questions are never answered and perhaps that's a good thing. Like the Uncertainty Principle, the closer the film gets to knowing one element, the less everything else becomes.

Crazy Heart

Crazy Heart (Scott Cooper, 2009) [6]

This one is a bit of a disappointment. Jeff Bridges's performance certainly is good, the whole film relies on him to pull it through. While Bridges instills Bad Blake with all that we expect to see in a broken down country singer, the flaws with the film rest in the character itself. It feels to me that every thing in Crazy Heart has been seen in any other musician picture. The problem is that going over the same territory again; Bad Blake is a faded star, struggling to get by, consumed by alcohol, with only a new relationship with a reporter (Maggie Gyllenhaal) to pull him out of it. It's pretty much the same old story, told with nothing new or innovative about it. It's a bit of shame because I'm a huge fan of Bridges and to not be impressed by his performance as Bad is pretty hard. The music is certainly one of the best elements of the film, especially Ryan Bingham's Oscar winning 'The Weary Kind' which actually has a key role in the film. These work to get me over the hump into liking it but the film never engages me much through plot or visuals. What's left is good performances left in a mix of standard plot points that make it much of nothing extraordinary.

Hunger

Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008) [10]

Living in a place like Binghamton can be hard when you really want to see a film. Even with an independent cinema in town, some films will always manage to slip through the cracks. Hunger has been on my radar for over a year and has finally seen the light of day on DVD. With no understatement, it is a masterful film. The best of 2008 as well as the best of the last decade. It is visually spectacular, no surprise considering McQueen's background. What makes it more than just visually striking is that McQueen tinkers with the idea of a message picture. Telling the story of IRA volunteer/prisoner Bobby Sands is going to fall in the realm of political picture. Yet McQueen never really makes the film solely about Sands and his ultimately fatal hunger strike. The film covers quite a bit of ground, giving a greater picture of "The Troubles" than just Sands' act of martyrdom. There's an examination of the stress and peril that the prison officials face, on the inside and the out. The film actually starts out focusing on other prisoners other than Sands. What I think McQueen is attempting to do is not make the Bobby Sands martyrdom picture that so many would expect and instead make a more nuanced, less black and white view of the situation. I approve of this maneuver even though some will not. Above all else however, the poetic nature of the visuals trump all themes and politics. The feces smeared walls of the prisoners' cells, the flying batons and crumpled bodies being beaten, Sands's (played with an act of physical bravado by Michael Fassbender) emaciated figure at the end, they're all ingrained in my mind with their visceral nature. There's a sixteen minute long take, between Sands and a priest, that is dazzling filmmaking, not just in its length but its composition of the figures bathed in shadows. For a first time feature director, McQueen has created an enviable result. Even days later, there are still moments I'm in awe over. I feel to really get Hunger, you have to really appreciate it a visual level, no matter how unsettling and jarring some of them may be. If you have strong feelings about Irish Republicanism, which I do, it may not be the type of film politically you'd expect. Yet, the film resonates for totally different reasons other than its main character.

The Duchess of Langeais

The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette, 2008) [7]

Rivette has always been a director willing to take his time to tell a story and The Duchess of Langeais is a perfect example of that. There are some extraordinary moments in this film but it also contains moments that can try your patience and become cumbersome. The story is really an examination the maneuverings of a relationship as well as a conflict between courtly high society in Europe and the more romantic ideals that were becoming popular in the mid 1800s. General Montriveau (Guillame Depardieu) falls for the married Duchess (Jeanne Balibar), who coyly exploits Montriveau's feelings knowing that the society she occupies will never allow the relationship. Rivette gives a subtle yet effective examination of the Duchess and Montriveau's back and forth, a clash of emotions and social standing. About midway through, the film switches its power structure, with Montriveau dictating the two's actions and revealing the way the Duchess really feels about him. It succeeds because Rivette keeps the camera fixed to capture the complexity of the two's relationship. The film takes its time to get to its finish but for only the occasional stray scene or two, it never loses its focus. There are some great moments of emotional sparring between the two leads. In terms of a character study, it's hard to do much better. Twenty minutes or so cut out would have made it classic.

Moon

Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009) [8]

Moon hearkens back to when Science Fiction films were challenging films that told human stories more than special-effects laden fantasy pieces. Existing somewhere in the realm of 2001 and Solaris, Moon is not quite in their realm but is a very accomplished film with a great performance by Sam Rockwell. Rockwell plays Sam Bell, who has been solitary stationed at a helium mining moon base, his only companion a HAL-like robot voiced by Kevin Spacey. It's getting near the end of Sam's three year contract and thing begin to go haywire. Sam's psychical and mental state being to deteriorate. Out on a routine maintenance mission, Sam's state causes an accident. Sam awakens in the base's infirmary with no memory of the accident, except with a hint that things may not be right. Sam ends up finding another version of himself and the rest of the film attempts to unravel the mystery of why there are numerous cloned Sams running the base. That that particular question is never concretely answered is both the appeal and confusion with Moon. The film addresses the notions of isolation and identity in a human way, not having any omniscient answers. Yet there are holes in the logic of the story that are frustratingly not answered (why the Sams life spans are only three years and why do they even need clones in the first place come to mind). For all its unclear answers, there's no denying that the acting and execution of the film are first rate. Rockwell's performance is surely underrated, playing at one point three different versions of Sam. That he occupies almost all of the film's running time and manages to keep rapt attention on his performance is a really good achievement. The film itself has the look of classic science fiction, down to the non-CGI special effects. Duncan Jones for the most part, has a command on the film and story that keeps its from delving into crackpot babbling. It's a superb effort in a genre that all too often is overly concerned with visuals and nonsensical characters or settings (this may or may not refer to Avatar).

The Hangover and Big Fan, A Pair of Sixes

The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009)/Big Fan (Robert Siegel, 2009) [6]
The Hangover is by no means the comedic masterwork that its word of mouth and box office had led me to believe. I had known Phillips is a one-note director, as his male bonding over crazy situation comedies all follow the same basic template. Here a group of various guys head to Las Vegas for the standard crazy bachelor party. Where The Hangover differs a little is in its structure, where it places the viewer in the same predicament as its characters in putting together the pieces to figure out what happened. Outside of that, the film is consistently amusing but has few truly hilarious moments. Not surprisingly, Zach Galifinakis provides the funniest moments, many of them ad-libbed or taken from his stand up act. In a testament to the sad state of Hollywood comedies, this passes for something considered hilarious where I find nothing that remarkable about it.


Big Fan features a great performance by Patton Oswalt but is bogged down by its lackluster direction. Oswalt is at times hilariously out of touch and tragically demented as Paul Auifero, a Staten Island parking garage attendent whose entire life is wrapped up in the New York Giants. A chance encounter with the Giants star linebacker ends up with Paul getting beating up which puts the Giants' season and Paul's alliegance in limbo. What Siegel does right is nail the fine line between being a die-hard fan and being a borderline delusional fanatic. This is highlighted best in Paul's calls to a sports radio show. Paul works all day on these rants/responses and the end result is nothing more than the nonsenical drivel that is spewed out daily on sports radio. But it also captures the idea that this these rants are the only element of Paul's life that he actually cares about and how his fandom overrules evertyhing else in his life. Siegel highlights these points well but the film offers nothing more than a blank space to show all this. The only instance where the film seems to grasp Paul's character and mental state is at the end, which has a amusing twist that saves Big Fan from being underwhelming. Where The Hangover mostly maxed out its potential, the main issue with Big Fan is that it could have a bit more visual substance to match its main character's performance.

You, the Living

You, the Living (Roy Andersson, 2009) [10]

Some reviewers have stated that You, the Living is more or less part two of Songs From the Second Floor, Andersson's previously lauded feature. While the two have their stylistic similarities, You, the Living may be the better film, and I'm a huge fan of Songs. Andersson works in a very recognizable visual style, heavy on offbeat characters and situations, with a static camera and lots of long shots. While not as visually striking as Songs, You, the Living embodies with its look what its characters feel. It's full of lots of ugly, miserable people describing their ugly, miserable lives. The film is unrelenting as it depicts of the failures of life and love as almost all the characters are mired in depressing circumstances. What's most amazing is how Andersson makes these characters so physically unappealing, and how the manufactured landscapes these characters occupy only enhance the dour, absurdist elements of it all. Yet through its absurdities and depressions, the film is punctuated with fantastic moments of black humor, often with help from a brass band highlighted by a tuba. It's not an understatement how the music shapes the moments of humor in the film. The major difference from Songs is that that film was almost unrelentingly bleak and you get the feeling here that Andersson is much more sympathetic to his characters. That through all their trials and tribulations, the film attempts to get at a true understanding and appreciation of human nature. Andersson never treats his characters with contempt or flippancy. It's a fantastic blend of pathos and humor, absurdity and seriousness that makes it worth the time.

Blogger's note: I am counting this as a 2009 release because of its U.S. commerical theatrical release. Most sites list its release date as 2007 but I try to keep film organized by their commercial dates, since that's the only way I'm going to be able to see them.

Che

Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008) [7]

For a film over four hours long and split into two parts, Soderbergh's Che Guevara biopic is never boring or overly didactic. It's a testament to Soderbergh's craft that he created a very good visual film that has its striking moments. The film is very much defined by its two parts: part one, The Argentine, that follows Guevara's rise through the Cuban Revolution and the cementing of his legend and part two, Guerilla, which shows everything that went right in Cuba go wrong in Bolivia. Understanding the failure of Che in Bolivia clearly hinges on understanding what he accomplished in Cuba. Soderbergh also casts distinct look and feels for each part, as the vibrancy of Cuba is replaced in Bolivia with cooler hues of blue and green. All throughout, the film has an even-keeled tone of observation. The success lies in that is not an outwardly political film but gains its efficacy from its focus on Che and his actions. Benicio del Toro is solid as Che not playing him as an epic figure but as someone whose knowledge and understanding of Latin America made him an admired figure. His performance, like most of the film, is lack of any fireworks but very carefully goes along to get the details right.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009) [6]

The Hurt Locker may be a visceral, taut, well-made thriller that gives an in-depth and intense point of view of the soldiers charged with disposing IEDs. Yet I get the feeling watching this that Bigelow has sacrificed any nuanced discussion of the Iraq War and political policy in general in favor of all action all the time. The Hurt Locker does what it does exceptionally well - give a glance into a hectic situation with a good amount of formal accomplishment. Focusing mostly on the macho posturing of Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) and the idea of war being a drug, the film is practically stridently apolitical. And for what benefit? It apparently drags all sense of nuance out of what James and his crew are doing. They hop from situation to situation diffusing roadside bombs as if in a video game, with Sgt. James perfectly cast as the ballsy hero. The film asks no questions and has no willingness to probe into the geopolitical situation or even address the psychological nature of their characters except to assign traits on the characters. Bigelow has a background in large budget action films and this really operates no differently, the exception being that it has to deal with the Iraq War. Aside from the fact that it is a well constructed film, I have no idea why critics would fawn over this. If they're saying an apolitical film like this says more about the war than some of the other more strident films that have been released, they're wrong. At its core, the macho bluster of action pictures overtakes any keen political discourse The Hurt Locker may have had.

Monthly Listening Post - January/February 2010

The new year is off to a busy start as a number of favorite bands have already released or planning on releasing new material in the next couple of weeks. Here's what I'm listening to:

Spoon - Transference
Beach House - Teen Dream
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Up From Below (there's always one album that never quite makes my best of the year list and 2009's would be this)
Sam Cooke - One Night Stand - Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 (may be the best live Soul recording ever)
Lucinda Williams - Little Honey (I know it's from 2008 but I just recently got it)

On a music related note, tonight are the Grammys, which happen to be the most ridiculous and worthless awards in anything. The Grammys either award popularity over artistic achievement or act as some kind of lifetime achievement award for established acts. Going over the nominees in the major categories makes my head hurt. This steaming pile of shit is the best music of the year? I know the Grammys actually want people to watch and the music busyness has become so fractured and niche driven that it's hard to find anything good that appeals to everybody, but this is terrible. There's the worthless throwaway pop of Lady GaGa and the Black Eyed Peas. You have the Kings of Leon, a once promising band that threw away any credibility they had with me by wanting to be the next U2. The Dave Matthews Band is nominated and will probably win for Best Album even though they haven't made an album worth listening to since I was in high school ten years ago. That leaves the ubiquitous Taylor Swift, who is apparently a country act, even though none of her music actually sounds like country music. I don't begrudge the girl for having success and the amount of records she's sold in this age is astounding but her shtick has worn out its welcome. Playing the puppy dog, lovestruck teenage girl gets a little worn out after a while, especially when you have a flat, uninteresting singing voice. She is the musical equivalency of the teenage girl who makes a masturbation video and sends it to the boy she wants to like her.

Adam

Adam (Max Mayer, 2009) [4]

Dear Fox Searchlight and Mr. Mayer,

Please immediately stop releasing this schmaltzy pablum and passing it off as having an independent sensibility. Adam is nothing more than a standard romantic comedy with characters that just happen to be a little different than what is see in Hollywood pictures. This goes for all your films Fox Searchlight, which have fallen into an all too predictable formula that gives real independent cinema a bad name. This film in particular is full of cloying moments and dialogue, all under the guise that it's a little different because one of the main characters has Asperger's Syndrome. Mr. Mayer does his best to manipulate Adam's disability to garner sympathy not just from the female lead but from the audience also. Your film was nothing more than trite fluff that was almost redeemed at the end when you actually tried to seriously address the problems with your characters. Instead you wrapped it up a little too perfectly, mostly because it makes the audience feel good. That is the easy way out sir. It's seems all too simple and shallow that everything worked out for Adam and Beth when something as complex as Asperger's is used as a plot crutch. Mr. Mayer, you also deserve some shame for not making me able to hate this as much as I want because I can't direct that hate towards a character with Asperger's. Mr. Mayer, I expect better. As for Fox Searchlight, will you please stop making me so mad with your films. There's only so many films I can reluctantly like but deep down want to hate so much more. Choose one or the other.

Thank you,

Useless Film Snob Reviews

Up

Up (Pete Docter & Bob Peterson, 2009) [9]

While not quite leaning on the auteurist side of thing like Ratatouille and WALL*E, Up may be the most sincere, funniest, and most entertaining film Pixar has produced. It's really the first Pixar film to focus primarily on human characters, and yet the film has heavy elements of fantasy and adventure, which to say the least, test the waters of believability. That the film can move through its variety of action and adventure and still connect with an audience on a human emotional level is its greatest testament. Up focuses on Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Ed Asner), who we see from an adventure loving young boy to his long marriage to his wife, Ellie, to her death, to Fredrickson being alone, his home engulfed by commercial development. The first ten minutes of the film, which tell Carl and Ellie's backstory, is the best work Pixar has ever done and are the best moments of anything I've seen from a 2009 release. It's emotionally resonant and it does it all with a minimum of explanation. It's a bit of real life that feels a bit out of place with the rest of the film, the only reason I didn't give this a 10. The rest of the film follows Carl, his house, and an interloping child, Russell, head for Paradise Falls, Carl and Ellie's dream destination. There, they run into Carl's childhood explorer hero, who has been in the falls attempting to capture a bird that ruined his career. The story is a mix of old adventure serials, fantasy, and humor (the scenes with the dogs are sure to get laughs out of any dog lover). Through all of it, there's still real character development as Carl starts to become a father figure to Russell, and while their relationship may be nothing that couldn't come out of a Spielberg picture, it still roped me in. The animation may have a lot to do with it. The vibrant color scheme as well numerous sequences where the action looked like live action show how advanced Pixar has become in making superb animation. That they consistently put out quality stories to go with that animation (this will be the 3rd consecutive Pixar film to make a top ten list for a particular year), only makes this as well as all they do so remarkable.

In the Loop

In the Loop (Armando Iannuci, 2009) [8]

Good political satire is a difficult accomplishment, and In the Loop succeeds because of its verbal fireworks. Following the path of a partially incompetent British cabinet minister (Tom Hollander) as he continually sticks his foot in his mouth in the run up to war with a certain Middle Eastern country, the film borders on sharp satire and vulgar absurdity. The film is filled with big talkers and cutthroat political opportunism and is big on profanity and laughs. Peter Capaldi steals just about every scene as the extremely foul-mouthed Scottish press officer attempting to wrangle the minister's gaffes. Often it feels that a lot of the political action of the film gets taken over by the mesmerizing profanities, but since they are the funniest moments of the film, it's hard to say they aren't the best part. The seemingly useless scenes with Steve Coogan as a near-crackpot concerned about the minister's constituency's crumbling wall offer some of the funniest moments. When the film does get the political points right, from David Rasche's arrogant neo-con to the nuts and bolts of fudging the intelligence to get to war, it reveals the chilling cynicism behind its colorful characters and language. The best satire reveals an uncomfortable truth behind its humor and in its simplest execution, In the Loop does just that.

The Limits of Control

The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009) [6]

The Limits of Control is certainly a film to be examined on its surface. It's a character study that never really delves into its character. The story is filled with quite a bit of existential discussion on seemingly nothing and a lot of repetitive actions and dialogue but never moves anywhere with any immediacy. Lone Man (Issach De Bankole) is a perpetually suited hitman planted in Spain to carry out a job, the pieces revealed by a series of eccentric characters. Lone Man' activities are structured round a series of repetitive actions, drinking two espressos in seperate cups or exchanging match books with his auxiliaries. The repetition suits the style of the film to a T, as it blends effortlessly with Jarmusch's minimalist style. Christopher Doyle's cinematography adds a vibrancy of color and a tone of coolness to the proceedings. But the real question is what comes out of the film? Outside of its impressive structure and images, there is a void of anything substantial in the film. Lone Man gets his instructions and carries out his mission and nothing seems that important about it. If it was Jarmusch's intention or not, the film ends up feeling completely void of any lingering sentiment about what was just seen. Even though it looks good, The Limits of Control vanishes almost as quickly as the credits roll.

Taking Woodstock

Taking Woodstock (Ange Lee, 2009) [5]

It's near ridiculous to make a film about Woodstock. Michael Wadleigh's documentary is such a landmark piece of cinema, essentially creating the Woodstock mythology, that anything else is going to pale in comparison. Lee has the right idea in Taking Woodstock, in that he goes into a specific person's interesting story of how Woodstock came to Bethel, New York. The problem with the film is that it can never decide if it wants to be a dysfunctional family comedy or a larger, more profound coming-of-age story with the biggest musical event of the 60s as the backdrop. Demetri Martin plays Elliot Teichberg, an interior designer who has packed up and headed back to help his parents run a dilapidated Catskills motel. Elliot lucks into finding that the Woodstock festival needs a new location and he just happens to have a permit and knows of available land. The film plays out as partly the telling of how Woodstock took shape and the happening at the motel, with Elliot trying to get his stereotypical Jewish parents to lighten up and accept these Hippies. There's just too much going on in the story with too many minor characters that no aspect is that effective. Lee is smart to keep the action on the periphery of the festival, showing no concert footage, to differentiate Elliot's story from the festival. The problem is I never found his story that interesting. His story arc follows the standard coming of age storyline with his homosexuality tossed in at times but never examined deeply. Martin is o.k. in the role but his comedic background interferes with seeing him ingrained in the character. Lee does his best I guess, and his re-enactment of certain iconic images in the Woodstock film are intriguing one level but serve no real purpose in his film. The air of nostalgia and near sickening idealism hangs over everything involving Woodstock, making it hard for anything involving it to escape from its large shadow. Taking Woodstock definitely got swallowed up in that cloud.

Film Decade List #1: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, USA, 2004)

2004 was a pretty good year, wasn't it? Both my music and film choices happen to come from the same year, which I didn't realize until to preparing to write them. Anyway, I may claim to be a film snob but the films that really get my attention are the ones that still can tell a good story with some feeling to it. Through all its visual gee-wizardry by Gondry, ESOTSM has a really authentic story at the heart of it. Charlie Kaufman's script still has its outlandish and mind-bending moments but at its core, the film is really a simple love story well told. Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) have gone through a devastating breakup. Joel finds a company that has the technology for the user to have painful moments removed from their memory. This leads to the unspooling of Joel and Clementine's relationship and the realization in Joel that perhaps those memories aren't better off erased. Both Winslet and Carrey give career best performances in roles that seem almost opposite their know screen persona: Winslet as a outre spirit, and Carrey as a brooding sad-sack. Gondry's visual flair add that something to the film that make it jangled last half work extremely well. Both of those only go to enhance what is again, the hear of the film, Kaufman's screenplay. It carries the offbeat elements that can be expected out of a Kaufman script but underneath its uniqueness are some fairly good points about love and memory. The nature of wanting to banish painful memories is something familiar in just about everybody but they can also be beneficial, to help live out what's ahead. That Joel comes to a recognition of this and realizes that the bad memories will take out a lot of the good ones is important. It could have been told in a flat, cynical way with a lot of Gondry fireworks and been a complete bomb. Eternal Sunshine succeeds because no one in it was afraid of being sincere with the material. That it told its fairly standard love story with a exuberance and inventiveness not really seen in mainstream cinema, it deserves to be the best of the decade.

Music Decade List #1: Ray LaMontagne - Trouble (2004)

Ray LaMontagne doesn't deviate that far from the singer-songwriter norm. There are elements of and a familiarity with classic artists all over Trouble. Yet, none of it sounds tired and stale, mostly due to the emotion LaMontagne pours into his songs and his belief in what he's doing, whether it's original or not. That, his voice, and the material itself all make Trouble the album I've spent more time listening to than any other this decade. A lot of initial comparisons of LaMontagne were to Van Morrison vocally but musically, the album has a lot of similar elements to Morrison's early 70s output. These are folk songs accented subtlety, as strings on the title track and 'Shelter' demonstrate. Producer Ethan Johns does a great job in knowing where the power of the songs lies in LaMontange's emotional delivery, highlighted by 'Burn' and 'Jolene'. It is in these more intimate songs that the power of the album really comes through and not just because of Ray's voice. I have no real good way of describing it but it creates a visceral reaction that very few albums of this decade have. I really, really like every song here That's pretty much it. If I was going to pick my favorite album of the decade, it would be an album where every song's good. Trouble is that album.

Blogger's aside: No matter how many people want to shit on him, Zach Braff gets some credit on this one. Around Garden State time, I was following Braff's blog and he wrote a little blurb about Trouble. I went and checked it out and here we are. Some of Braff's musical choices I couldn't disagree fast enough with but thanks on this one. Give the guy a break.