All Done: My answers to the latest movie quiz

Every so often, Dennis Cozzalio posts a new, fun, provocative, damnable, revelatory movie quiz, and last week came the latest. I highly recommend checking it out and posting your own answers. The best part about being done is getting to check out what everyone else said. So here are my answers. No cheating.

Youth in Revolt: Arrested development

Michael Cera finally got laid! It only took Dissociative Identity Disorder, the selfishness of adolescence, and a Hulklike resistance to any kind of message. At first Miguel Arteta's Youth in Revolt looked like a delicately offbeat Napoleon Dynamite-style romantic “comedy” that can’t decide if it prefers the characterization “quirky” or “twee,” set as it is in the hyperliterate, letter-writing sophisticate world of northern California, a magnificent land of all-French academies and nostalgic animation. I’m not sure what precisely made it bearable, but I was utterly won over by the end, my heart fluttering for the Tyler Durden-style Jean-Paul Belmondo wannabe alter ego who prances more than he runs, never as cool as he thinks he is, but then, that’s part of the joke. Every time the two Ceras appear together my face lit up, but even that fails to live up to the transcendent joy that is Jean Smart playing trailer mom. Someone get her a Showtime show and an Emmy, stat.

Tiny Furniture: Not a girl, not yet a woman

I kind of wish Lena Dunham had kept Tiny Furniture to herself. That way she could debut more fully realized.  As a practice film, it’s great, often stylistically creative and usually funny enough to keep us from noticing its simplicity. Dunham makes a winning heroine, whiny and selfish and sad without entirely alienating us. I don't know exactly how autobiographical it is, but the problem with Dunham’s film is the problem with her character: she lacks focus.

Please Give: Death and taxes

I was wowed by Please Give primarily because I had been under the impression that Nicole Holofcener was a crafter of lady pictures (chick flicks that demand to be taken seriously) like the dreadful In Her Shoes or something. Instead I found a remarkably complicated story about class in 2010 that has nothing to do with heartbreak—unless you count that gut-searing disappointment only family can induce.

The King's Speech: Radio silence

Tom Hooper's The King’s Speech was really something there until it ascended to the throne and conformed to all kinds of expectation. Not that it was ever really out there, exactly. But until the inheritance debacle, The King’s Speech was this bizarrely freeform collection of scenes that loosely followed the track of King George VI through the ‘30s. There was a constant juxtaposition of the ancient royalty with the modern world and an obsession with new technologies and a bulbous cinematography (including wide-angle close-ups) and a fetish for that multicolored Factory wall at Geoffrey Rush’s apartment. Not to mention a spirited montage of singing, swearing, and dancing. I’m just saying it wasn’t The Queen, for a while there.

Fair Game: A hill of beans

The facts of the case are pretty damn compelling. So why do we have to care about Valerie Plame’s marriage? There is a world historical scandal here, and yes it pivots on this one woman, but Doug Liman fashions an emotional climax not out of the invasion of Iraq or even the conviction of Plame’s malefactors but the reunion between Plame and that human-shaped container of smug she married and their decision to Fight Back!

The Fighter: White swan

Not to damn with faint praise, but The Fighter is basically Black Swan for boys. In that it’s an awardsy picture about an athlete’s struggle with a little to say and a lot of style. Wahlberg hardly lives up to Portman, of course, who hardly lives up to her hype, but Christian Bale and Melissa Leo and Amy Adams and Jack McGee and Christian Bale more than pay for the price of admission. Finally Amy Adams isn’t playing the princess; girl can act! And Bale’s greatness lies not in his approximation of addiction and withdrawal nor his chameleon faculty with accents but in his humanity, his depth, a fullness that pops him right out of the movie and into the real world.

True Grit: The rural juror

Comparing the Coen Brothers’ latest western, the chase film True Grit, to its predecessor, the camp classic (double entendre alert!) that finally won John Wayne his Oscar, is a triflin’ quarrel. Never mind that the original True Grit is dated by its tomboys with Mia Farrow voice, comic mugging accompanied by jaunty woodwinds, and all the mis-en-scene of a Star Trek episode. The Coens aren’t following in Henry Hathaway’s footsteps. They’re tracking Anthony Mann.

The Killer Inside Me: Blood simple and stupid

I don’t see what all the fuss was about. Maybe it’s because cinema has desensitized me so much, warped my brain so permanently, that the moments of violence here failed to send me fleeing to the nearest psych ward. Or maybe the film just isn’t all that significant in the grand scheme.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work: Year in the life

After all that acclaim, it would have been nice if Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work were, you know, well made. It’s not as elliptical as, say, The Hills, but it’s not exactly comprehensive, and structurally it’s almost as inventive as An Inconvenient Truth. That said, Joan Rivers is a spicy subject, and those of us who know her primarily for belittling stars on the Red Carpet to their faces—which alone makes her a national treasure—will find a fascinating history of one of our comedy pioneers. Directors Ricki Stern and Anne Stundberg aren’t to blame for the mainstream press’ juvenile lack of perspective, and their humanistic behind-the-scenes peek at the Renaissance workaholic is one delicious piece of low-hanging fruit.

Rabbit Hole: Don't look now -- ordinary people in the bedroom on Reservation Road by Mystic River

I’m not sure why people keep making this movie, but I only liked it the first time because I was cowed by the tempest. Ingrid Bergman, Mary Tyler Moore, and Sissy Spacek pulled it off; why not Nicole Kidman? But marriages surviving the death of a child is a subgenre that needs to stop. No offense to the cast and crew, none of whom should be ashamed, exactly, of their participation here: Nicole Kidman does indeed best her facework in order to change her expression a couple times, and Aaron Eckhart makes for an attractive grieving dad, and he has this one hot middle-aged friend, and the Rabbit Hole sequences are an interesting if obvious gimmick. But nobody has learned anything new about anything, least of all The Human Condition, from these pent-up marriage movies, and Rabbit Hole, despite exactly two moments of inspiration and no Tim Robbins monologues about vampires, doesn’t break any new ground, either.

Cyrus: A boy's best friend . . .

If nothing else—and rarely have those words strained so much—Cyrus was pretty funny until that last act. It’s the latest by indie stalwarts Jay & Mark Duplass, and it stars Jonah Hill as an earnest adult child whose relationship to mom Marisa Tomei is a bit too Dogtooth for mom’s new boyfriend, self-sabotager John C. Reilly. Hill scores some laughs but never feels human, and Reilly, who should really go back to working with classical auteurs, is still playing the doofusy stock character he’s been perfecting (or whatever you call putting the finishing touches on something horrible) with Adam McKay, but Tomei—surprise!—pulls off another great performance, this one with a healthy and relatable sense of embarrassment.

Dogtooth: Adventures in home-schooling

The night after I got to see Yorgos Lanthimos’ bone-dry Greek family comedy Dogtooth at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, that same room saw the Houston Film Critics Society name The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo the best foreign language film of the year. In the year Houston hosted Carlos, White Material, Mother, A Prophet, The White Ribbon, and No One Knows About Persian Cats, that’s a great disappointment. In the year Houston hosted Dogtooth, it’s a great joke.

See, Dogtooth is about shelter and the sheltered, as a trio of twentysomething children in isolation on a compound are educated and socialized only by their parents, who have decided to sequester their children for as long as they can in order to keep them safe from The Real World. It’s like that home-schooling scene from Mean Girls caught a snippet of Jersey Shore and boarded up the house for good. Dogtooth makes for a fascinating anthropological study, as the adult children behave impetuously like some familiar but alien tribe complete with its own dances and rituals, until you stumble over a hole, like why the son gets to his mid-20s before needing sexual gratification and why he needs it at all since masturbation is, um, discovered more than learned behavior.

That’s when you remember it’s fictional and there’s a point here about the authoritarian patriarchy. The son’s prostitute, brought to the house by Father, winds up planting the seeds for an open society, and in response Father finds her at her own home and smites her in a joke that uncomfortably (but unmistakably) places the US in the shoes of a closed society like China or Russia. This, by the way, is but one example of the film’s oil-black humor, which deftly mines culture clash, childishness, and sudden violence for a particularly unique mix of comedy that recalls a more painful Buñuel, a broader Kaurismäki, or a zanier Cristi Puiu. It amounts to an absurdist explosion defining authoritarianism as intolerable abuse while questioning the extent of freedom on both sides of the fence with one of the most perfect finales of the year. I don’t want to say the HFCS has some growing up to do, but one wonders whether they’ve ever ventured into the difficult territory outside and how they’d fare there if they did.

Black Swan: Hall of mirrors

Just once I’d like to see a film about an artist who achieves his masterpiece by seeking greater control. The popular fantasy is that artists are sensitive feelers who must completely lose themselves and let the spirit of Obi-Wan or whatever guide them to glory, not practicing communicators who ought to pinpoint precisely what they’re saying in order to express themselves best. So it is with Black Swan, where Natalie Portman’s perfectionist ballerina and Darren Aronofsky’s mathematical auteur get lost in all the crazy, both to exaggerated applause.

It’s subtle, but see if you can spot the common thread. Black Swan is a story simultaneously on parallel tracks, both well-worn—one, where an artist is killing herself for greatness, and another where a girl is coming of age—in a world of obvious dichotomies, doppelganger figures, mirrors galore, and more mirrors besides. Get it? If you liked Aronofsky’s Pi, then you’ll love his Two! It doesn’t add up to much but it makes one hell of a drinking game.

Unfortunately, mirrors offer only the illusion of depth. Here’s another dichotomy: Black Swan is intellectually wanting but emotionally overwhelming. Like fellow critical darling Winter’s Bone, Black Swan isn’t a great film so much as a singular thriller, with a twisted sense of reality, haunted dollhouse art direction, a couple of lo-fi Lynch moments, and the best grotesque close-ups this side of Polanski. Expressionism contorts Vincent Cassel into a domineering master at just the right moments, and Barbara Hershey is always a modulated monster, her every action underwritten by the sins of envy and pride. Black Swan is paranoid, delusional, and scary—though when I cringe in response to body mutilation, I’m feeling cheap revulsion, not earned fear—and both Aronofsky and Portman stick the landing or whatever metaphor a seasoned balletomane might come up with to describe the mesmerizing climax and Sunset Blvd. finale. Black Swan is absolutely excellent for what it is, hobbled only by the meaninglessness of the nightmare.

Eyeballs and Cliches: The Walking Dead Season 1

See? I told you The Walking Dead was Lost without the fun. Now we have to wait a whole year to watch more biped primates we’re meant to care about despite no development wind up in more threatening situations. Also, Lori’s pregnant. There, I saved you ten episodes. Look, I couldn’t be happier that AMC has their summer blockbuster so they can continue funding Zeitgeist Icon ™ Mad Men and Arthouse Indie ™ Rubicon, except they canceled Rubicon, so, you know, their next Rubicon, or whatever. But the only measures by which The Walking Dead surpasses those shows are eyeballs and clichés.

Take last night’s finale. This show has all the structure of a Girls Gone Wild star, but has there been anything remotely as contrived as the inexplicable wait-until-it’s-too-late sequence in the bunker? And then we’re spose ta get all misty over Black Chick suiciding despite the fact that the only thing she’s done since invoking her city planning skillz is silently contemplate the plight of black women on television while angling to get the next maid role on Mad Men. Poniewozik—an infinitely funnier and smarter writer than the rest of us—says the show has proven its commitment to high stakes, that anyone could go at any time. I, respectfully, call bullshit. I have no doubt that these people are safe: Love Actually, his wife and son, Laurie Holden, and Other Cop, and I’d put money down on Boondock Saints, too. That’s Boondock Saints, too, not Boondock Saints II. That shit’s even worse than The Walking Dead.

Other things that make no sense: Merle is still at large. Chekhov says he’ll come back, but if he doesn’t come back zombiefied, how does that not put so much strain on your credulity as to destroy it entirely? Oh, I’m well aware he’ll get a significant “The Other 48 Days” of his own, this being Lost and all, but that won’t make it any more believable. Not that they could write credible dialogue anyway. Did you notice that the only time anyone stopped to make an actually funny (ish) joke—as opposed to all that Hilarious Banter going on at dinner; did you catch all that laughing?!!! Hilarious, you guys—was when they were in an urgent life-threatening situation with the grenade and Shane “Pecs” McGee tells Lifetime her nail file won’t help. I know I’ve been asking for more comedy, since the End of the World won’t magically destroy our sense of humor, but Darabont, honey, that wasn't the time.

Last things last. The Walking Dead is the least cinematically interesting sci-fi show in history. They’re clearly not going for any heightened visual style, which is fine, if kind of a waste of a perfectly good apocalypse. But what are they doing? The look/editing/compositions are lazy as realism and weak as grit. I expect artistic unity from great drama, not to mention theme, but at this point, I’ll take panache if it’s all I can get.  The Walking Dead can't even pull that off.  Apparently zombies aren't the only ones content to be mindless.

Puff Piece: The Entertainers of 2010

If Entertainment Weekly can declare some very earnest elf the entertainer of the year, then surely it’s time for someone to swoop in and completely rebuild their list of the year’s top entertainers, right? Duty calls.

I know I can be all “German expressionism this” and “state of nature that,” but I’ve taken my marching orders with the seriousness of Taylor Swift addressing Kanyegate. These are the entertainers of the year, the people that have delighted me with comfort over the past eleven months, not (necessarily) the visionaries responsible for the most creatively fulfilling or intellectually fascinating works. Translation: they're more Rowling than Tolkien.

Let the Reaganing begin:

1. They picked Taylor Swift, which is probably a very mean, very funny joke. So the pick to fill my arbitrary cover girl slot is:


Angelina Jolie – As Evelyn Salt, she pretty much singlehandedly saved summer cinema, and she absolutely sizzles in the trailer for The Tourist (publishing deadlines obviously preclude me from actually seeing the whole year’s entertainment before summarily declaring the entertainers of the year). As it stands, Salt is on my top ten for the year.

2. EW went with Jon Hamm, who was sporadically great in The Town and SNL and won television in this season of Mad Men. But me, I’m going with a middle-aged multimedia breakout with a slightly higher batting average this year:


Louis CK – Louie is a singular comedy that is among the most unified (i.e. perfect) series on television, and Hilarious is quite the aptly titled comedy special. (Also, I keep running into Shameless on HBO, which I have never yet been able to turn off before it’s over.)

3. Kanye West? The guy with the Twitter feed? I’ve got someone even crazier:


Julian Assange – What’s more entertaining than reading about Qaddafi’s buxom Ukrainian nurstitute or seeing the US and Afghanistan scramble to dispel any rumors that they aren’t total besties in light of so many documents that suggest otherwise? There was a fist-fight at a Latin American leadership conference, foreign contractors hired dancing boys in Afghanistan, and Berlusconi’s probably taking money from Putin. I couldn’t be more serious in my belief that there is a fantastic geopolitical real housewives-type show in here somewhere.

4. Of course EW would go with Christopher Nolan, the Stanley Kubrick of middlebrow bullshit. I’m gonna go with a mind-bending director who’s actually, um, good:


Banksy – Not only is Exit Through the Gift Shop really something to chew on, it’s hilarious, fleet, and absolutely thrilling. Then there’s Banksy’s credit sequence for The Simpsons, which many Very Serious TV Critics found unoriginal in its arguments, which in no way misses the point of film criticism. As I said then, Banksy, don’t ever change.

5. The kids of Modern Family are actually a great choice, excepting, of course, the unfunny dead weight of Lily. Talk about a diva. But I preferred the kids from another show:


The kids of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World – They are too numerous and Canadian for me to list here, but I will highlight Mae Whitman, who rocked in her episode The Revenge of Annabell Veal, Alison Pill, who rocked In Treatment last season, and Kieran Culkin, who stole the show.

6. Another excellent choice: The cast of The Social Network. I could get behind that, but I’ll take the opportunity to instead praise another cast:


The cast of Cougar Town – 2010 has been the breakout year for the unfortunately marketed show about weird middle-aged friends and neighbors who just happen to be the best comedy cast currently on the air.

7. I like “Bad Romance” as much as the next guy, but I have to admit I have no idea what Lady Gaga did this year other than wear some meat. But, as provocateurs go, I can do you one better:


Chris Morris – Four Lions is almost nonstop hilarity and then nonstop deadly seriousness, an essential War on Terror satire and one of the funniest movies of the year.

8. EW went with James Franco, who I will echo the world’s media profilers in saying has perhaps the most fascinating career of any young Hollywood star. The only way I can beat it is by slightly cheating with a different Franco:


Francophone auteurs – Olivier Assayas’ Carlos and Claire Denis’ White Material are among the year’s best (and most entertaining, and not perhaps coincidentally the most penis-full) films, and while I haven’t had the opportunity to see Godard’s Film socialisme yet, the crotchety auteur has been plenty entertaining in his own right with his reaction to an honorary Oscar.

9. EW picked Katy Perry, so I’m forced to finally just ask: while I’m not especially plugged in to the pop music world, aren’t all these music choices kind of, you know, a couple years late? In that spirit, here’s my choice:


The Beatles – They joined iTunes to reach the coveted Beatles-unfamiliar music-buying fogey demographic, but they were also featured in some of the year’s hottest media including Mad Men, Glee, and The Social Network. Meanwhile Rolling Stone made a top 100 Beatles songs issue, and I finally settled into my position that if any Beatles song tops “A Day in the Life,” and I’m not saying it does, it’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

10. And now Stieg Larsson’s on the list, so I assume dead entertainers are fair game as long as they’re entertaining people in the year 2010. Hence my choice:


Vic Chesnutt – Having discovered the gorgeous, pastoral, bittersweet, sardonic Vic Chesnutt this spring, it’s been a long wait to get to listen to the perfect winter music: “Isadora Duncan” is the song of winter, melancholy category, and “Soggy Tongues” is the song of winter, serene category.

11. EW is on Team Glee, which I can understand, considering the episode “Dream On,” the performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and all the jokes. But I’d like to highlight a better television musical:


Team Treme – There’s more great music in an hour of Treme and more genuine love of music (e.g. long shots of the musicians, higher stakes) than whole seasons of Glee. And no autotune.

12. Boy they really liked The Town, eh? Sorry, but Ben Affleck is the end-all and be-all neither of be-abbed thirtysomethings onscreen this year nor muscular B-movie auteurs. Taking his place are two of my picks:


Michael Fassbender, or more specifically, Michael Fassbender’s body – Fish Tank came out here this year, and boy looks good in some low-hanging jeans and an Irish accent. But then there’s Centurion, and you ain’t seen nothing till you’ve seen Fassbender star in Neil Marshall’s Roman 300 with meaning.


Roman Polanski – But as B-movie directors go, Polanski remains the year’s king with The Ghost Writer, one of his best films and another essential War on Terror thriller.

13. They went with Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, and at last, I can but ratify:


Suzanne Collins – Franzen who? I keep forgetting to review Mockingjay, the best book in the series and an unapologetic look at not just contemporary America but government in general.  The Hunger Games will be required reading for my progeny.

14. EW’s choice—the men of The Good Wife—sounds decent. But I think we can all agree there’s a much more scintillating arbitrarily gender-segregated portion of a drama cast on television this year:


The women of Mad Men – Elisabeth Moss consistently delivered the strongest lead performance on any show while the series’ scope expanded to make significant time for not just Joan and Betty but characters like Sally, Allison, Miss Blankenship, Dr. Faye, Megan, Joyce, and a pregnant Trudy, not to mention brief if powerful turns from old friends like Anna, Midge, Peggy’s mom, and at long last, Carla.

15. Last up, Jaden & Willow Smith. WTF? These are people? And they “entertained” this year? Ugh. My turn:


Adam Reed – In case you're not aware, and the ratings suggest you're not, Adam Reed created the year's funniest television series Archer, about the world's most belligerent idiot master spy, which returns at long last this January!  Because how hard is it to poach a god-damn egg properly?!

So who are your entertainers of the year?

White Material: Stay the course

Boy, there’s nothing like watching a Claire Denis film to make a guy feel thankful. Especially if that guy happens to (perhaps secretly) love Cold Mountain, as White Material has at least as much in common with Denis' cinematic cousin Olivier Assayas and regional relatives like Hotel Rwanda as it does with the Minghella story of a woman running a farm in Civil War country. Only this particular farm is a coffee plantation in unnamed, untimed Africa—the better to vault into myth—and the woman is no reluctant waif. She’s Isabelle Huppert, and she is hellbent on reaping one last harvest before she and her family are churned up by the coming storm and strewn about the African scrub like so much detritus.

That’s what the title refers to, actually, all those relics of western white society that the turning tides toward black empowerment are roiling. So we linger on a lighter, that mass-marketed Promethean bringer of fire, that powerful destructive force we keep in our pockets with our spare change; a wayward flip-flop, the shoe of someone with no motivation; a dress, a necklace, and lipstick, the accoutrements of Huppert’s managerial presence rendered somewhat lower on Baudrillard’s object-value system by the end of the film.

If I’m being evasive, it’s no more than the film itself. As is Denis’ wont, White Material is typically elliptical, but the gist follows Huppert’s complicated family—and here Denis follows Desplechin in taking a cue or two from Bergman—on the plantation as the civil war between the state and a rebel army largely comprised of child soldiers comes increasingly close to home. Foreign nationals have been urged to evacuate, her workers have already quit, and her ex-husband is preparing to sell the plantation. Why won’t she do the smart thing and leave? Well, that’s the question.  The film provides two answers, and the more likely is the one not supplied by Huppert herself, but it’s really the heart of the film, and like Huppert, Denis refuses to give it away so easily.

Like Denis’ greatest hits—Herman Melville update Beau travail and last year’s pinnacle, which is the yin to White Material’s yang, 35 Shots of Rum—White Material is a marvel of multivalence: it operates effortlessly and simultaneously as thrilling entertainment, intimate fable, grand myth, objet d’art, and geopolitical essay. And like those films, you could unpack it for days. Most clearly the film illustrates the white reaction to third wave democratization, relative demographic decline, and economic overthrow: Huppert is Ahab, so monomaniacally bent on her mission that she becomes inexorably consigned to her fate, and her son (read: the next generation) is so lost and powerless in the face of such mighty forces as to be the Ishmael floating away. Neither will be especially victorious in the coming years, but Denis isn’t weeping for the end of white power. She’s relieved.