Best Films of 2010

I wasn't ecstatic about any films this year (of course I saw only a handful of films). The neurotic, affluent, white urban worlds of The Kids Are All Right, Please Give and Greenberg were among my favorites. Winter's Bone and I Am Love, both of which I liked at the time, faded into the background, the emotional resonance didn't last.

I"m looking forward to seeing Black Swan, Carlos, Another Year, Blue Valentine and Tiny Furniture.


Roger Ebert's Best of Films of 2010
The Social Network
The King's Speech
Black Swan
I Am Love
Winter's Bone
Inception
The Secret in Their Eyes
The American
The Kids Are All Right
The Ghost Writer

Stephen Holden's List
1. THE SOCIAL NETWORK
2. INSIDE JOB
3. INCEPTION
4. CARLOS Olivier Assayas’s 5 ½-hour docudrama about the life and times of the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal is a study of swaggering, lethal narcissism with an imposing lead performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramírez. Its great set piece reconstructs the kidnapping of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in December 1975.
5. ANOTHER YEAR The English filmmaker Mike Leigh is a contemporary, cinematic offshoot of Charles Dickens. His newest group study portrait of humble working-class lives is one of his best movies and features indelible performances by Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen.
6. VINCERE Marco Bellocchio’s portrait of Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Mussolini’s mistress who claimed to be his first wife and was imprisoned in a mental hospital, is a tragicomic little opera of a movie that savagely mocks the vainglorious Italian dictator.
7. WHITE MATERIAL In this Claire Denis film, Isabelle Huppert gives a typically crackling performance as the white French co-owner of a coffee plantation in an unidentified African country, who refuses to leave when civil strife erupts.
8. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT What does it say about our changing times that Ms. Cholodenko’s portrait of a nontraditional clan headed by a lesbian couple is the most believable and heartfelt film about an American family of the last several years?
9. TRUE GRIT Not a remake of the John Wayne classic, the Coen brothers’ adaptation of the Charles Portis novel leaches out most of the boisterous humor to treat the story as a stately black comedy with breathtaking cinematography by Roger Deakins.
10. MY DOG TULIP Narrated by Christopher Plummer, the exquisite hand-drawn screen adaptation of J. R. Ackerley’s 1956 memoir chronicles his late-life 15-year relationship with a beloved dog, devoting much attention to her bathroom and mating habits.
RUNNERS-UP (in no order): “The Ghost Writer,” “Fish Tank,” “A Prophet,” “Mid-August Lunch,” “Greenberg,” “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” “The Secret in Their Eyes,” “I Am Love,” “Toy Story 3,” “Winter’s Bone,” “Lebanon,” “Animal Kingdom,” “The Tillman Story,” “Boxing Gym” and “Blue Valentine.”

AO Scott's Best Films of 2010

1. INSIDE JOB (Charles Ferguson) The crisis of finance capitalism as a great crime story.
2. TOY STORY 3 (Lee Unkrich) The triumph of consumer capitalism as an epic love story.
3. CARLOS (Olivier Assayas) The failure of global revolution as farce, melodrama, erotic thriller and music video.
4. SOMEWHERE (Sofia Coppola) An eccentric, perfect poem about fame, loneliness and cross-generational need.
5. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Lisa Cholodenko) An eccentric, perfect comedy about love, betrayal and cross-generational confusion.
6. GREENBERG (Noah Baumbach) A deliberately imperfect comedy about an eccentric fleeing from love, running from betrayal and wallowing in cross-generational confusion.
7. 127 HOURS (Danny Boyle) It’s all fun until someone loses an arm. And then, strangely enough, it’s even more fun.
8. LAST TRAIN HOME (Lixin Fan) The future of global capitalism, in China and elsewhere: a family tragedy in the form of a documentary, as full of anger, dignity and pathos as a play by Arthur Miller.
9. SECRET SUNSHINE (Lee Chang-dong) A family tragedy from South Korea, in the form of a melodramatic crime story. As dense and gripping as a great novel.
10. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (Banksy) All of the above. None of the above. Everything and nothing. An elaborate art-world stunt in the form of a documentary. Or vice versa.

RUNNERS-UP “And Everything Is Going Fine,” “Another Year,” “Black Swan,” “Boxing Gym,” “The Father of My Children,” “The Fighter,” “A Film Unfinished,” “Fish Tank,” “Four Lions,” “The Ghost Writer,” “Howl,” “I Am Love,” “Let Me In,” “Please Give,” “Solitary Man,” “Tangled,” “Tiny Furniture,” “Vincere,; “White Material,” “Winter’s Bone.” 

Quick. Name 5 Women Artists

1. diane arbus
2. frida kahlo
3. mary cassatt
4. fay jones
5. dorothea lang
6. alice neel

Those are the artists that popped up for me, the top three sprung from my earliest exposures to women artists. No georgia o'keeffe. no nan goldin. no barbara kruger. I had just read about Dorothea Lang so that's why she's in there.

From the film, Who Does She Think She Is? 70-80% of visual art students are female, but 80% of the artists in galleries and museums are male.

Ultimate Family DVD List

Andrew O'Hehir, the self-proclaimed "pretentious art-film snob" critic for Salon, asked his readers for family film suggestions that were off the beaten path, and likely to be enjoyed by both kids and parents. It's a great list, I plucked a dozen of the suggestions off and added them to our Netflix queue. Many films aren't appropriate for the under 8 set...Awesome Kids' Video Project

Top Four Family Films

1) The Iron Giant
We own this movie, Elliot loves it.

2) My Neighbor Totoro
Another great movie we own, both kids are big fans.

3) The Princess Bride
This is now in our queue.

4) Time Bandits
For older kids - 9+.

The Red Balloon

Over the past few months we've taken to watching films from the 50s and early 60s together as a family. Both kids seemed to like The Sound of Music, Dr. Seuss's The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, and Bye Bye Birdie. The Red Balloon perhaps because it's only a half hour or perhaps because there's no dialogue, really held Asher's attention. I loved seeing this young child walking confidently alone in a big city and the striking contrast of the red balloon against the grey buildings. The bludgeoning of the poor balloon was a shock, but the transcendent ending made sense. Believe in yourself, the power of imagination....

I want to show the boys Zazie Dans Le Metro but it's not out on DVD.

Family Films

In 1976, my mom took me to see Freaky Friday at the Picwood Theatre (I must have been 5), the mother/daughter storyline thrilled me and I was completely blown away by the big screen / big theater experience. Elliot has seen a few movies in the theater over the past few years, but Asher who could care less about TV (The Wild Thornberrys Movie is his sole exception) had never seen a big screen movie. We took the boys to see Alvin and the Chipmunks in December and the outing was a huge success. Asher sat through the whole movie. Both kids loved the chipmunk music and laughed continuously; my expectations were low, but I actually enjoyed it a little.

We were excited to see the Dr. Seuss movie Horton Hears a Who, which just released this weekend, so we swept the gang over to the theater this rainy afternoon expecting a repeat of the Chipmunks coup. However, Asher was not amused. The animation held little draw for him and he shouted, "When is this movie going to be over?" about ten minutes into the movie. So Danny ended up buying two bags popcorn throughout the movie to entertain Asher and escorted him out of the theater when he forgot his quiet voice. Good times! But Asher was right, the film was awful. The story was hard to follow, it was talky, unfunny and full of smirky pop culture references. It was boring. Even Elliot thought it was dull. Too bad, the story has a good heart, much more integrity than the chipmunks movie.

7 Up

The 7 Up documentary project which started tracking a group of 7 year old kids in 1964 is based on the Jesuit maxim: "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man." I just saw the 49 Up episode and I was amazed by how little difference there was between these people at age 7 and age 49. Resilience, low self esteem, confidence, ambition all seemed to be hard wired in these people. Only Neil had an extreme shift, at 7 he was bubbly and bright, but at 49 he was dour and lost. Everyone else seemed to have the same disposition regardless of their social class.

Seven year olds are sensitive about differences between themselves and others. They're competitive and hard on themselves. Social justice concerns and seeing issues from multiple perspectives are hallmarks of their development.
Child Development Tracker

Interview with Elliot about his life as an adult:

Will you have kids?
I'm going to have a big house with 7 kids.

Do you think you'll live in Seattle?
No, I'm going to live in California where it's warm. I'm going to live near Grandma Judy.

What will you do for job?
I'm going to be a race car designer. Fast electrical cars.

What will you do for fun?
I'm going to play football and play with my friends.

Music From Turkey

We saw an interesting documentary about contemporary Turkish music/culture called Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul by Fatih Akin (who also directed the amazing Head-On) and I became inspired to find out more about Turkish music. To know a place you must know its music. Istanbul is a mix of modern and ancient, east and west. Their music is an interesting mix of traditional folk, electronica, 60s roots rock, hip hop punk and psychedelia.

Siya Siyabend, the street band in this video are fun to watch they're passionate idealists, talking about how music is the biggest toy of all. How music brings together the guy with the laptop and junkie on the street.


It sounds like Steve Malkmus was inspired by this song, it's very similar to Baby C'mon.
Özdemir Erdoğan

Pippi Longstocking Lyrics

We were trying to remember the pippi lyrics today and we were completely off. Here are the English lyrics for pippi theme song.



Freckles on her nose
diddle diddle di
a girl came riding
into town one day
diddle diddle di
she was quite a sight
it's pippi longstocking
say ho ho he ha ha
it's pippi longstocking
there's no one like her
happy as can be
diddle diddle
pippi tells you stories
you just wait and see
tra la la la
she's quite a girl
she's got a house
an older funny house
a monkey and a horse
a suitcase full of gold and coins
you'll never ever ever find
a girl so strong
the grown ups here in town
tra la la la
pippi's world is fun
she makes kids happy
her make believe
the grown ups here in town
tra la la la
she is such an imp
tra la la la
you'll love her too.

Children in Babel, Half Nelson, Sherrybaby

We watched Babel, Sherrybaby and Half Nelson, all 2006 movies that received oodles of accolades, back-to-back last week. Half Nelson (Ryan Gosling plays an addict) and Sherrybaby (Maggie Gyllenhaal plays an addict) share obvious similarities, but Babel also fits into the theme of troubled adults and their relationships with children. Children are often idealized in storytelling - they're bland or cute stand-in's for purity, innocence, salvation, wilderness, the future, hope (Little Miss Sunshine) so I was interested to analyze how well developed the child characters were and what purpose they served in each of the above films.

Half Nelson
Ryan Gosling (swoon) is fascinating to watch as Dan, a charming and immature middle school history teacher on crack. As extreme as the plot sounds, the story was subtle and unsensational, and the actors were magnetic. It doesn't follow the standard redemption myth - nothing is idealized or villainized, we don't know if this guy will ever recover, we don't understand why he's an addict - he has self respect, passion for social justice and really connects with kids. He has periods where he isn't using and he's got it together. So we're devastated each time he relapses, over and over again. Dan is self centered and charismatic - as popular teachers generally are (cult of personality) - and his complicated friendship with his lonely student Drey, who ends up selling him drugs - is the crux of the film. Drey isn't a wise child, she isn't cute or innocent, bucking the stereotype.

Half Nelson works well as a Jungian coming of age story. Dan's mask is crumbling, he's steeped in his shadow, then he recognizes his anima (Drey) who represents the feminine aspects of his persona, she's forgiving, she accepts him even though he's a wreck. She is his soul image, his guide out of his shadow unconscious. The film is satisfying because he has made progress toward individuation, integrating aspects of self.

Sherrybaby
Maggie Gyllenhaal was excellent as another self centered (but not charismatic) addict. Sexually abused as a child, Sherry is completely unconscious, immature, sexually inappropriate, and competes for attention with her 6 year old daughter. We see her grow and recognize that she needs help, but the tone is rotten and seedy thoughout the whole film. She lacks self respect. Children save her several times. Getting a job as a preschool assistant keeps her out of prison. Her desire to be a mother to her daughter also keeps her from making some really bad decisions. The children in Sherrybaby symbolize purity; they serve as mirrors, reminding Sherry she is still a child. The film ends with Sherry acknowlegding that she can't do it alone, but she hasn't met her animus. She's still swimming in her unconcious and far from individuation.

Babel
Babel was the weakest film of the group, preachy and pessimistic. I completely lost trust in the movie at mid point, but it also has some interesting child characters. Each of the 3 stories in Babel features parents and children. The parents are emotionally and/or geographically distant from their children. The children in the Moroccan story are well developed, the father favors his youngest son, the brothers are competitive. I feared they would end up shooting each other. The deaf Japanese girl is an interesting character, acting out her grief and angst, fabricating stories. She pushes her father away and he's not available to her either, yet she's protective of him. The theme of miscommunication (how different rules apply to the wealthy and powerful) works especially well with the Japanese and Moroccan stories. But the idealized white American children kill the movie. They're symbols of purity and innocence and nothing more. They're sacrificial lambs meant to illicit our tears.

Films We Saw + Liked in 2006

It's amazing I even have a list, considering I haven't seen more than a handful of films in the theater this year. The list would have been very slim if Netflix wasn't in my life. I do have standards, I won't put everything on the list. I saw The Queen recently and although I enjoyed it and Helen Mirren inhabited the role admirably, the story didn't transcend TV movie status. I liked Little Miss Sunshine and Thank You for Smoking, but I couldn't put them on my list either, they were problematic and didn't stay with me.

I'm looking forward to seeing: Duck Season, Inland Empire, Half Nelson, Heart of Gold, The Painted Veil, Marie Antoinette, Iraq in Fragments, A Prairie Home Companion, An Inconvenient Truth, Jonestown... Everyone seems to be crazy about Pan's Labyrinth which looks like a high brow horror movie.

My Top 4 Films of 2006

1. The Science of Sleep
I love underdogs, the genius and beauty of this film was unappreciated by the critics and misunderstood by all, but Danny and I found it to be the most original, emotionally complex stories this year.

2. Borat
Brutal satire that hits it right on the nose and made me howl with laughter.

3. Little Children
I expected LC to be a smug / campy parable about hypocrisy and self indulgence, but it really surprised me with its sharp look at adults who are in various stages of arrested development. Each character was stuck in some corner of childhood, morally complex, no judgment, well unified.

4. Scanner Darkly
Still vivid since I saw it last summer, I was pulled in to this universe and saturated for hours after the film ended.

Other Top 10 Lists
Salon.com Best Movies of 2006 List
Metacritic.com 2006 Film Critic Top Ten Lists

Pippi Longstocking Film Festival

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend we introduced the boys to the world's strongest person (not just the world's strongest girl - she's stronger than any man): Pippi Longstocking. We spent four days watching and rewatching the original 1974 films "Pippi Longstocking" and "Pippi in the South Seas." Elliot was sold immediately because Pippi is strong and smart and has a pet monkey. Asher we can assume was into Pippi because he said to us, "Quiet, it's European."

I'm happy to report that Pippi is just as strange and refreshing as I remembered. I was viewing her as a responsible adult and parent, yet she was still charming. She picks her nose, belches louder than any pirate and is probably the worst tea party guest ever. Pippi is rude and a little chaotic, but generous and full of integrity. She's a punk rock girl full of good cheer. Anything is possible, it's all about freedom, who cares if it's messy or not perfect.

I loved the flying bed and balloon scenes as a kid. What's better than waking up over the sparkling ocean in a warm, comfy bed and kicking back with a yummy sandwich for breakfast? I noticed that food plays an important part in the films, supporting my theory that food is a crucial ingredient to success in children's literature and film.

Interesting fact: according to Wikipedia Pippi's full name is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim's Daughter Longstocking.

The Science of Sleep

Danny and I went to see the Science of Sleep this weekend in an actual theater (our first movie in 4 months). We thought about seeing crispin hellion glover's "what is it?" (surely bizarre with an all down's syndrome cast) at central cinema the movie theater with a full bar and dinner service. I suspected "what is it?" would be sold out on a saturday night but I also feared it might be too depressing.

The Science of Sleep lends itself well to a Jungian individuation / coming of age interpretation (it's easy to read the film as if all the characters are aspects of a single person). In college I took a Jungian Film class where we analyzed a film a week including Repo Man, Thelma and Louise and Blue Velvet through a Jungian lens - archetypes, collective unconscious, shadow, anima, animus, process of individuation - great fun. Anyway, the Science of Sleep was very funny, poetic, full of emotion, risk taking. Stephane, a boy / man who just lost his father to cancer, meets his female counterpart (anima) Stephanie. At the center of the film is the romantic push pull, all of the emotions in the film are grounded, easy to relate to and reflect our modern romance neurotic dance.

Stephane / Stephanie is insecure, afraid of rejection, creative, very cerebral, still very immature. On the surface of the story, it looks like Stephane alienated his love interest with his strange (schizophrenic? psychotic break?), unpredictable behavior. But because nearly everything in the movie is set in an alternate reality dream world, we can't distinguish real events from imagination. 99% of the film is from Stephane's perspective. Danny felt that Stephane's dream world really wasn't pathological, it was all symbolism. The film works both ways. He's grieving, he's disoriented, jet lagged, speaking a language in which he lacks fluency, he's trying to define who he is. The emotional core is that he's trying to establish himself as an adult: wearing his father's old suit from the 70s, taking a job, breaking away from his mother, creating art and making inventions. The one second time machine was totally hilarious. He says he really wants to be an inventor - he's inventing his adult self.

In the end he reveals himself to Stephanie, curling up in her bunk bed, "I like you because you're different. Because you understand. Because you make things with your hands."

La Cienega

I've wanted to see the Argentinian film La Cienega for 4 or 5 years, so I was excited when it finally out on DVD. It was worth the wait.

Side note: How fitting that La Cienega (which I didn't realize means the swamp in english) is a major arterial in LA. I never gave much thought to the non-english names of the streets or cities where I grew up. The lagoon. The swamp. The tar. Succinct and declarative like a horror movie title, perfect for a romantic decaying city.

La Cienega so oozes a southern gothic type of steamy sensual rot. The storytelling is elliptical but not surreal, it cuts into the dailiness of their lives evenly. It's a meditation on loss of control, entropy, nostalgia for a long gone social order, squandered youth/wealth/opportunity, what happens when you give up.

A sense of entitlement permeates the walls of a dilapidated country home of fair skinned european decendend Argentinians. The class struggle between the indians and europeans is a primary focus. One of the teen age daughters (who refuses to bathe or change out of her bathing suit) is obsessed with her young dark skinned maid, she thanks god for her, follows her around but the maid is annoyed and indifferent and runs off pregnant with her boyfriend in the end.

There are young kids running around laughing and shrieking while pickled adults are bumping into walls, falling, bleeding. Red wine on ice; ice clinking against glass; blood on the edges. The central image is a green swampy pool lurking in every scene waiting to consume a child. Everyone is in danger, their vulnerability is highlighted constantly. The kids have scratched faces, broken noses, wounds on their legs and arms, one child lost an eye. Their mother falls and cuts her thin, boney chest on broken glass. Any sense of nurturing completely lost.

A cow is stuck in the mud as little boys wander the hills with guns. The mother lies in bed all day as the kids wander around the town. A brother and sister act more like lovers. A six year old falls off a ladder and may or may not be dead. All very dark, but it seemed to say get ready for the new order.

Somehow the whole portrait felt refreshing, the young were ascendent. They weren't calcified, their environment was wild, but they didn't fight it. They didn't try to control anything, they were wounded but resilient. Connecting with each other in their odd fragmented ways.

Teen Angst: Brick, Blue Car, Somersault, Fat Girl

While reviewing my current netflix queue (61 movies) and rental history (250 movies in 2 years including a 3 month hiatus) I noticed that nearly all of my recent netflix rentals have been portraits of troubled teenagers, mostly girls. I must be missing Veronica Mars. I can't wait for the V Mars season premiere on Tuesday. Here are some mini reviews of a few lost girl coming of age films.

Brick
High school film noir (based on the Maltesse Falcon) with great snappy dialogue. The two female leads are broken and manipulative; both girls hide their power. The lost girl's ex-boyfriend tries to save her but she doesn't want to be saved. The femme fatale just wants to be loved, but ends up causing a blood bath. The angst and awkwardness of teenagedom is polished and stylized but it somehow manages to freshly communicate raw longing and loss.

Blue Car
It's hard to compare the sophisticated artifice of Brick to Blue Car which is incredibly earnest and ham fisted. As a child of divorce, I thought I might relate to the lost girl who is bitter about the break up of her family, but the adults in the film are too cartoonish to make the film believable. The girl in this film has daddy and mommy issues. When she latches on to her lecherous English teacher after some over the top plot developments, I wasn't surprised. We're meant to think the main character is a good girl (she doesn't use sexuality to get what she wants) but lacking inner resources for success. Blue Car champions standing up for yourself and individuation, but is consumed with an after school special, see-this-is-what-happens-to-latch-key-kids-from-broken-homes moralism.

Somersault
An arty Australian film featuring a 16 year old lost girl who runs away from home after she kisses her mother's boyfriend. She's resilient, but relies on her sexuality to get what she wants which of course means trouble. Trolling for guys or anyone who might feed her. Reminded me a little of Agnes Varda's Vagabond. The message is clear that a girl alone in the world automatically means that she's slutty trash. The focus on sex is more prominent in this film than the others, but it also moves in unexpected directions. She has a great emotional vocabulary and clearly explains how she feels. Coming of age in Somersault means understanding why people do the things they do, forgiveness.

Fat Girl
Fat Girl is the most sensationalistic of this genre. French movie about a chubby 12 or 13 year old and her older beautiful teenage sister. The "fat girl" sees clearly how shallow her family is and how corrupt their values are. The older sister subjects the fat girl to witnessing her nightly trysts with her older scummy boyfriend. Similar in tone to Larry Clark's Kids; a cold clinical look at a train wreck. Ignorant parents, mean selfish people all around. Punishing sexuality in the way that Friday the 13th does with an abrupt murder in the final scene of the movie. I felt really bad for the young actresses who are put through some horrible situations. In the director's commentary, she proudly explains that it was hard for the girls, but it's good for them, they'll become better actors because of it. Fat Girl is cynical, none of the characters grow, there is no coming of age, only death.

Sybil Gave Me Nightmares for Years

I just read that Sybil, the 1976 TV movie starring Sally Field which gave me post traumatic stress as a child, is now available on DVD. Apparently, I was 5 years old when I saw it on TV. I remember sneaking into the den because I couldn't sleep and crouching next to the door watching the movie. The slacker baby sitter (who was this terrible baby sitter? My dad?) let me watch more than a few scenes. The scene that terrified me most was Sybil's scary grey haired mother locking her in a trunk.

The baby sitter's decision to let me watch that movie ended up giving me nightmares for years. In my dream I would run from the crazy lady who was trying to put me in a trunk. How could I get away? Slow motion molasses legs etc.

I can't imagine ever letting Elliot watch something like that. Disney movies are off limits. Everyone knows about the powerful influence of moving images on the mind, especially when we're passive. Fantasia scared millions of young kids in the 70s. At least I was safe in a theater with my mom. Sybil and child abuse in my living room was far worse.

I read Sybil in high school because I had to come to terms with my fears. I found it fascinating. I saw the movie on video. It wasn't as terrifying I had remembered.

Amazon Plane Crash. Flesh Eating Worm Movie.
Another movie I saw when I was around 5 or 6 that profoundly affected me was about a woman who survives a plane crash in the amazon (I don't know what it's called). It was dubbed in brazilian accented english which added to the strangeness.

A woman is alone, stumbling bloody and hungry in the jungle. She narrowly escapes a piranha attack while she's bathing in a river. My most vivid memory is of this woman squeezing worms out of her wound encrusted arms. I'm starting to think transformer cartoons aren't so bad.