Movies of 2013 Part 4: 80-61

No preamble this time, aside from this.

80) The Machinist (2004, Brad Anderson)

Another of my local library acquisitions and quite an enjoyable one. Perhaps most famous for being the film for which Christian Bale lost an enormous amount of weight to become roughly the width of a blade of grass, in my opinion this film deserves a lot more recognition. It has all the best qualities of a Fight Club or Memento-style thriller, and its couple of faults lie only really in being a little too ambitious stylistically and maybe not being quite innovative enough to be really surprising. Just shy of utterly compelling otherwise though, I certainly found it an enjoyable and underrated film.

79) Sunshine (2007, Danny Boyle)

Another Danny Boyle film, and another critical flaw. For the most part this is a great bit of sci-fi filmmaking: sparse, isolating; claustrophobic, with a subtle underlying menace throughout. Farbeit from me to repeat what every critic ever has said about this movie, but the fact remains the final thirty minutes of this film are very different from the remainder. I won’t go so far as to say that it’s a weak ending, but the trouble is it makes this a very different film, so it forces the viewer to reassess. Alfonso Cuaron showed just this year how captivating it can be to use space as its own character, and using that as a comparison point, the first 90 minutes or so of Sunshine are the far more gripping parts. I didn’t dislike the ending, but it didn’t quite sit comfortably with what preceded it.

78) Damage (1992, Louis Malle)

So there’s another general rule in ‘filmmaking to please Sam and Sam alone’: if you’re going to put a trashy soap opera on screen, have the decency to cast Jeremy Irons. Honestly, to list all the things that are tacky and bad about this film would take half a page. However, Irons is never bad value, even when presented with material, and on-screen chemistry, as poor as this. Without giving too much away as I’m sure you’re all chomping at the bit to watch this now, there is one scene in particular (and it’s the obvious scene) which is just such a hideous horror even to conceive, and I think Malle handles it with aplomb. It makes this film memorable and almost forgivable for all the other excruciating moments it delivers.

77) The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au Vélo, 2011, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

The second of three Dardenne films I saw this year, and also the first to be mentioned so apparently the weakest. This is not a weak film, however: it’s down this low simply because I found Cyril, the eponymous ‘kid with a bike’ emotionally unpredictable and unsympathetic as a result. The stories the Dardennes tell seem all to revolve around the themes of kids with parental issues, trying to forge a life and meaning for themselves. I think in some ways this more recent effort is also one of their more despondent efforts. It ends, as they all do, ambiguously, but with a very pronounced sense of the ongoing cycle of misfortune and misadventure. More pronounced than in the other films of theirs (which we’ll get to later), where I got a greater sense of promise (no pun intended).

76) Knife in the Water (Nóz w Wodzie, 1962, Roman Polanski)

Now if Jean-Luc Godard remains enigmatic as a filmmaker to me, then I’d have to call Roman Polanski just baffling. Stepping back from Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby and his more recent mainstream resurgence to see his earlier European efforts is a really odd experience. Not least so because this, in particular, is quite an odd film. A well-to-do middle-aged couple randomly pick up a young hitchhiker and take him on their sailboat for the day, and the three of them argue about class, ageing and property ownership. There’s some really interesting dialogue, and quite an elusive central conflict that nevertheless remains intriguing. But ultimately I could not really tell you the point of this film; it has that minimalist, artistic temperament of European cinema, but also just comes from a stylistic place I can’t quite fathom.

75) Waiting for Guffman (1996, Christopher Guest)

As I said when discussing Best in Show, Guest’s mockumentary films are pretty easy to like, provided you can engage with the characters. Guest’s own character here, the flamboyant amateur theatre director Corky St Clair, is most definitely a character I can recognise and enjoy, which explains why I enjoyed this more than his other offering. It’s still obviously over-the-top and silly, but the framing plot device, of the Broadway critic Mort Guffman being on his way to view their musical’s opening night, manages to draw out the melodrama and foibles of all the larger-than-life characters. It’s a good plot device for a silly film.

74) Short Cuts (1993, Robert Altman)

It was only about halfway through this multi-thread narrative that I remembered David Stratton writing off PT Anderson’s Magnolia as a Short Cuts imitation. Knowing that at least part of the way through, it’s hard not to make the comparison myself, and when you consider that Magnolia is one of three films always vying for the title of my all-time favourite, unfortunately Short Cuts is going to suffer. For one thing, this strikes me as more multi-thread-for-the-sake-of-multi-thread: there isn’t much of a unifying theme, so it’s just sort of a hodgepodge of different stories and different characters. As a result, for the film to be great overall, all of said stories/characters need to be as great as each other, but there are strong ones and weaker ones. Ergo the film becomes a sort of middle-ground affair for me.

73) The Hudsucker Proxy (1994, Joel & Ethan Coen)

Ah, my last ever Coen brothers film to catch up on: this was a bittersweet experience, knowing that I had no new Coen material to watch until… well, soon, when Inside Llewyn Davis comes out. I think this is generally regarded as one of the Coens’ weakest, and I would have to concur, just on the basis that it feels like far more of a mainstream comedy, and doesn’t have enough of their twisted edge to it. There’s also the fact that the Coens + Paul Newman should = cinematic brilliance, and it just doesn’t come up to the sum of their parts. Maybe there’s just too much Tim Robbins being small-town-cute: the act starts to wear a bit thin after a while. Still a decent comedy, just a bit lacking in the Coen brothers’ magic.

72) Stagecoach (1939, John Ford)

As far as I can tell this is the only western I caught up with this year. There were many more on the cards but just less freely available. This is very much in the vein of the classic John Ford western: the danger from the outlaw gang of desperadoes, and the conflict from the innocents in trusting the ‘outlaw but with a conscience’ to protect their lives. John Wayne is of course masterfully utilised here by Ford, but the miscreant cast of characters from various walks of life sharing this perilous stagecoach ride is what makes the film come to life. It’s maybe not as exciting as my favourite westerns – there’s quite a lot of talk – but it’s still good, clean fun.

71) Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, Peter Weir)

Finally managed to catch up with this Aussie classic on the plane over to the US. Knowing my ambivalence towards most Australian cinema, I have to say there are parts here that work, and parts that don’t. Weir casts a wonderfully atmospheric veil over the whole film, creating a mood of both mystery and despondence. The mystery of the film also, however, becomes its greatest frustration, because there’s obviously meant to be a sense of unknowing, and of unreliable witnesses, but it becomes a bit difficult to know even what we’re wondering about anymore. The character of Edith is also the most irritating and shrill character I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across, and her amount of screen time just makes the film grind even more slowly.

70) The Palm Beach Story (1942, Preston Sturges)

The last of the three films in the Preston Sturges DVD set I bought, this is probably the less known and remembered, after The Lady Eve and Sullivan’s Travels. That sadly doesn’t do this film credit, however, as I think it’s the comic equal of the other two films. Just a classic screwball plot, involving star-crossed romance, deception and (of course) mistaken identity, it lacks the sparkling dialogue of some of the genre’s more celebrated examples, but still has the hijinks to make it all an amusing ride. Claudette Colbert is the standout performer here – wily and strangely naïve at the same time, she brings this movie to life; without her it could have been just a staid, by-the-numbers comedy.

69) Lincoln (2012, Steven Spielberg)

Ah, I wanted to hate this film. I wanted it to be terrible and finally consign Spielberg to the ashpile of once-great directors that his last ten years of film should otherwise have consigned him. Sadly, the Oscar-bait source material was handled with an uncharacteristic subtlety and restraint by Spielberg, and he simply allowed Daniel Day-Lewis to do his method thing and deliver a captivating portrayal. I still didn’t love it: I thought the handling of the house democrats opposed to the abolition bill was frankly glib, and there were times when Spielberg just couldn’t resist throwing in Oscar montage soundbites, because being Spielberg, he has no ability to tell a story without focusing on winning an Oscar any more. But I still think it was a far better effort than I went in giving it credit for.

68) Easy A (2010, Will Gluck)

There’s a number of films in this run of ten that I will describe as far more sophisticated than they had any right to be (apparently films like that end up somewhere around the 60-70 mark in my preference). This is certainly one of them. At its heart, it’s still little more than a teen comedy/romance, but it outwardly tweaks the generic conventions with an astuteness and comic sensibility that is really admirable. The other big strength of the film is obviously Emma Stone, who manages an adroit performance that is both part of the action on screen, and the framing narrative that tweaks the conventions of the genre. Great fun.

67) The Player (1992, Robert Altman)

Spoiler alert: this is the highest-ranked of my Robert Altman retrospective. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Altman, but there always seems to be a meta-narrative sense to a lot of his films. Like what people appreciate about them isn’t actually what’s on screen but what’s behind it all. And nowhere is it more apparent (to me) than here, basically Altman’s nod and spoof of the underhanded dealings that go on in the Hollywood film industry. Even the IMDb plot description includes as one of its three phrases “Loaded with Hollywood insider jokes” which goes to show how pivotal those insider jokes are to this movie’s success. Honestly there’s a limit to the number of insider jokes that I personally get, but the satire and not-so-subtle message that ‘Hollywood producers are all sleazebags’ are things I can appreciate, so I liked this film well enough.

66) Star Trek (2009, J J Abrams)

Now I’ve made two oblique references to this film twice already in these write-ups, both times without mentioning the actual title. Can you guess what they were? Well let’s tackle the most recent first: this is the second of the films that are far more sophisticated than they had any right to be. I’ll get into that more after discussing the other oblique reference, do you remember what it was? No? After I even specifically told you to remember it? Honestly. OK, well basically when discussing A Prairie Home Companion I talked about ‘another film’ that spoke more deftly to outsiders looking in. This is that film. What J J Abrams does so well here is that there is obviously a sense of fandom to this franchise reboot, and to someone like me who has never watched more than about a minute of any kind of Star Trek footage (TV or movie alike), it still feels like we’re an outsider looking in. However, Abrams manages to balance the fandom with a non-condescending introduction to these characters, the settings and the relationships. He does it cleverly and with a good sense of humour. Really I couldn’t fault this film much at all; the only reason it finds itself down in the 60s is that, despite its best efforts, it remains to me a hollow blockbuster-type film, and I still feel like an outsider, so if it had set out to draw more people into the fandom, it failed in this respect.

65) Sleepwalk with me (2012, Mike Birbiglia/Seth Barrish)

Another of the films I watched on planes somewhere between Sydney and New York, this was one of the more ethereal experiences, given that it deals with severe sleeping problems, which is basically a three-word description of me on a plane anywhere. At the same time though, this is a very funny and surprisingly poignant memoir, which fans of Birbiglia from his spots on This American Life and elsewhere will recognise as part of his inimitable style. As much as I found myself silently yelling arguments at his on-screen persona, there’s a real charm to his everyman fallibility, and he manages to weave a pretty interesting story of personal development into the mix as well. I’m not entirely sure how true to life the story is, but it just feels so genuinely Birbiglian that I was able to suspend disbelief for the duration.

64) My Dinner with Andre (1981, Louis Malle)

Somewhat more… intellectually satisfying than the previous Malle effort on this list, Damage, this is also a fairly different film. I’m sure the ‘deleted scenes’ section of this DVD would include all the car chases and lurid sex scenes that the final cut was lacking, but I think the film is certainly richer for having excluded them. OK so honestly, this film is obviously very talky, but its conversational nature manages to be interesting just by covering a rich depth of subjects in great detail, travelling from life in the theatre to intrepid travels and posing the questions about what life is really about. Yes, it’s far easier to make this film the butt of jokes than to dissect its meaning, but if you’re willing to engage with its subject matter then it’s richly rewarding. If you’re not willing, you can settle for kinetic popcorn trash like, I don’t know…

63) Beverly Hills Cop (1984, Martin Brest)

Ah, popcorn trash. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it popcorn trash except in a tongue-in-cheek way. No, this isn’t one of the movies that is far more sophisticated than it has any right to be, but it is a great deal of fun. It’s also kind of fun to go from today’s world where Eddie Murphy is such a washed-up joke back to when he was a superstar, and his brand of irreverent sass-mouth was utilised well in films. The hard-boiled nature of the story and the culture clash between Murphy and his LA counterparts is a milieu that works well for him. It’s certainly not intellectual stuff, but it’s definitely well put together action-comedy stuff.

62) The Lady from Shanghai (1947, Orson Welles)

This film seems to be pretty well-known among cinephile circles, but virtually unknown out of it. That’s a bit of a shame, because I think there’s plenty to enjoy in this noir thriller. Welles’ own mumbling accent gets a little annoying at times, but the film has all the other hallmarks of a great film noir and a great femme fatale performance by the underappreciated (these days) Rita Hayworth. However, the film is most worth it for its memorable stagecraft, in particular the final standoff sequence in a carnival hall of mirrors. Without those very memorable visual games, this is otherwise just a solid film noir.

61) Bullets over Broadway (1994, Woody Allen)

Another Woody Allen effort, and one of my more favourably received ones from this year. Classic Allen comedy stuff, featuring a struggling, creatively-stunted Broadway personality and a whole lot of mafia interference. This film is both funny and sweet, with the standout scenes those between John Cusack’s playwright and Chazz Palmintieri’s bodyguard, who despite his loutish appearance happens to be the literary genius that Cusack wishes he still was. Otherwise, there’s just a load of amusing, chaotic hijinks throughout. I guess given my preference for this over some of his other films this year I think I agree with Ned Flanders, in liking his films ‘except for that nervous fella who’s always in them’. Sometimes I just think his comedy works best through other people’s performances.