Screening Log: Goin' Up In Flames Edition

            Happy July 4^th week everyone! If anyone needs to borrow my DVDs of Armageddon or Independence Day, let me know. Both are required viewing in the Labuza household.

-Haywire, 2012. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Blu-Ray.

-Days of Heaven, 1978. Directed by Terrence Malick. 35mm projection at Museum of the Moving Image.

-Funny Face, 1957. Directed by Stanley Donen. Digital Cinema Projection at Film Forum. 

My Oscar Ballot: 2012 Edition

Certified Copy

While everyone gets hyped up about tomorrow morning’s Academy Award nominations, I could probably be less interested this year. While Oscar pundits get excited over some of the middling films that will populate the lists tomorrow, I’m hoping that some years down the roads, the films that dominate my own top films list will become cherished classics. For fun, I’ve submitted my own ballot, following the style of the Academy Awards (ten films ranked for Best Picture, five nominations for all other categories). I’ve presented it without comment—again, go to my top 15 list for commentary on most of these picks.

Best Picture

1.      Certified Copy

2.      Martha Marcy May Marlene

3.      A Separation

4.      Meek’s Cutoff

5.      The Interrupters

6.      Margaret

7.      Mysteries of Lisbon

8.      Take Shelter

9.      Tuesday, After Christmas

10.    The Tree of Life

Best Director

·         Sean Durkin, Martha Marcy May Marlene

·         Asghar Farhadi, A Separation

·         Abba Kiraostami, Certified Copy

·         Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff

·         Raúl Ruiz, Mysteries of Lisbon

Best Actor

·         Woody Harrelson, Rampart

·         Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

·         Brad Pitt, Moneyball

·         Peyman Moaadi, A Separation

·         Michael Shannon, Take Shelter

Best Actress

·         Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy

·         Kirstin Dunst, Melancholia

·         Elizabeth Olson, Martha Marcy May Marlene

·         Anna Paquin, Margaret

·         Kristin Wiig, Bridesmaids

This Is The End: The Best Films of 2011

            In probably the pitch-perfect cinematic moment of the 2011, Curtis, the tall and constantly in-check protagonist of Take Shelter, watches lighting dance across the sky while his wife and daughter sleep in the back of the car. “Is anyone else seeing this?” he exclaims. If this is the end, we need to know we’re not the only ones out there realizing the world is about the change.

            Which is perhaps what all these apocalyptic films—Margin Call (fiscal), Contagion (viral), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (special), and Melancholia (literal)—are all about. Even if we’re prepared to face the end, we can’t do it alone. We need to be sure of who we are and understand ourselves, which is why so many films not specifically about the end are about the minor apocalypses within our lives. The strange protagonist of Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In must come to terms with a completely new identity. Werner Herzog explored both the birth of spiritual life (Cave of Forgotten Dreams) and the end of an actual life (Into the Abyss). Attack the Block gave us teenagers who must redeem themselves and their way of life by defeating forces greater than our world. And so many films explored the state of the family and the trials and often failure resulting in those who cannot manage it: A Separation, The Descendants, Take Shelter, Margaret. Apocalypse isn’t about the end of the world, as the idiotic villain (Michael Nyqvist) from Mission Impossible — Ghost Protocol lectures. It’s about what comes after, which is why so many films have focused on our uncertainty to face something new.

            It was also a ridiculously excellent year for film, easily the best since I started writing in 2004. Perhaps not in the Hollywood sphere, where mainstream cinema continues to lead down a series of franchise reboots and post-3D conversions, as much as in the independent and world cinema. This year was simply impossible to narrow down to the best films of the year, and deciding where to stop (20? 25? 40?) made the usual business of top 10s even harder. I decided on 15 films, and any of the top six or seven would have probably been my #1 film last year, showing the quality of excellent cinema today, as long as you know where to find it.

            So for honorable mentions, any of these could have made the top 15 on a different day: The Arbor, Bridesmaids, City of Life and Death, Contagion, Coriolanus, Film Socialisme, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, The Ides of March, Jane Eyre, J. Edgar, Of Gods and Men, Melancholia, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, Moneyball, Pina, Project Nim, The Skin I Live In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and War Horse.

Take Shelter: A Coming Storm From Within the American Psyche

Take Shelter

Written and Directed By: Jeff Nichols

Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, and Tova Stewart

Director of Photography: Adam Stone, Editor: Parke Gregg, Production Designer: Chad Keith, Original Music: David Wingo

Rated: R for some foul language

            The wind blows in a strong direction across the plains of Ohio in Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter. Set among the ominous clouds, the landscapes of Mr. Nichols’s film seem to recall both the lost past of an untamed era, but also the possible future of a return to a land of restless violence. It only makes sense that the protagonist of Take Shelter, the good natured but easily corrupted Curtis, sees the visions of the end not in terms of fire and brimstone, but a storm of incontrollable magnitude. The past of both his own life, as well as that of the world he knows, is seemingly crawling back into his skin.

            And thus sets the stage for another great American drama with an independent and unique vision. I missed Mr. Nichols’s first film, Shotgun Stories, which also starred Michael Shannon, but it’s an immediate catch for me now, as Take Shelter gives us an intimate look at one man’s battle with his own personal demons in a setting of Americana. Bathed with gorgeous visuals on this harsh plain, and supported by electrifying performances, Mr. Nichols had made a film that speaks volumes about our American psyche but through a truly personal story.