End of 2009 To-See List (Fox Searchlight Heavy)

It's no secret that I have always loved movies. I was raised on a wind-battered plain near Lake Michigan, and I spent my winters huddling under blankets in two pairs of socks, renting videos and sipping hot cider. I live in Atlanta now, so I don't have the excuse of long, cold winters anymore, but I remain hopelessly addicted, and I am very excited for a number of movies coming out in the nearish future.

1. Amelia - Mira Nair - 10/23

I am a story person more than a performance person, but despite that I cannot think of better casting for the lead role in this biopic. Hilary Swank has the horsey features and acting chops to play this girlhood hero of mine. On topic-iche, If you haven't read Jane Mendesohn's I Was Amelia Earhart, I highly recommend it.

2. Gentlemen Broncos - Jared Hess - 10/30

Let's just say I am always receptive to a certain brand of goofy humor, and I am quite sure that Gentleman Broncos, a movie about writing bad science fiction, will satisfy. Who doesn't like those yellow-brown Napoleon Dynamite aesthetics? Haters.

3. The Box - Richard Kelly - 11/6

There's room for debate, but Donnie Darko is one of the pivotal films of my generation. As an improvisation on Suburban teen themes, it was brilliant, unexpected, and gratifyingly funny. After that, Richard Kelly made not one but two completely unwatchable shit show films (Domino and Southland Tales). I am giving him this last chance to win me over.

The titular box contains a button- if a person chooses to push it, he or she will receive a million dollars- and effectively take the life of a stranger. Despite Cameron Diaz's starring role, I am intrigued.

4. Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wes Anderson - 11/25

When I first heard that Wes Anderson was doing a stop-motion animated film based on the Roald Dahl classic, I was less than excited. I thought I wanted more of his usual brand of whimsical, melancholic, Salingerian family drama. That was before I felt the vague disappointment of The Darjeeling Limited. With that behind me, I am more than excited for this movie. I'm delighted in advance.

5. The Road - John Hillcoat - 11/25

The Road is my favorite novel set in a post-apocalypse, because instead of expansive views of a demolished world, it takes the impact of a collapsed culture in microcosm. I am excited to see how this film scales the story of a father and son who journey to try to find a new life outside of a freezing husk North American civilization.

6. The Lovely Bones - Peter Jackson - 12/6

After typing the above, it's funny to relate that in this adaptation project I am excited for a grand Jacksonian vision. I think he'll do great with this story of a murdered girl who continues to observe the grief and recovery of her loved ones on Earth years after her death. And I have a fatal weakness for Marky Mark.

It's a great season for movies, I think. I didn't even mention Where the Wild Things Are and The Men Who Stare at Goats. It's definitely a fall to winter line-up I can get behind.

But how about I close this up with a rant on the one movie being being released this season I will definitely not be attending?

Antichrist - Lars von Trier

I hate everything Lars von Trier touches, but I sat through Breaking the Waves, Dogville, and Dancer in the Dark for the sake of cultural literacy. I think he's self-righteous, unfocused and shallow. His films are tantrums that point a vague accusation towards a general injustice by forcing an audience to watch women being tortured. Antichrist would probably provide me even more evidence, but I don't think I could make it through the entire thing, because it sounds like another wretched display of everything I dislike about the way he sees (and judges) the world.

From l'Agence France-Presse, via The Slog - "Cannes entered the final straight on Saturday with more controversy over Anti-Christ...Lars von Trier's film was declared 'the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world' by an Ecumenical Jury, which....was so shocked by Von Trier's film—which closes with a shot of a clitoris being sliced off with rusty scissors—that it felt the need to award a special 'anti-prize.'"

Hey, Lars man, why you even got to do a thing?

Here I go, singing low.

In that whole consumption post, I forgot to mention Darren Aronofsky's masterful film, The Wrestler, which made me cry a little.


The thing about The Wrestler is the thing about Mickey Rourke, and I've always been a sucker for haunted characters. The ones with the ghosts of their pasts at their shoulders, in their eyes. Randy "The Ram" Robinson is a former pro-wrestling champ, an ex-star. He drives a van with his own action figure sitting on the dash, an effigy on an alter.

Decline inevitably follows peak, and the crest of the Ram's career was two decades ago. We are introduced to a middle aged, scar-faced man in a duct taped winter coat, struggling to make rent on his mobile home. In one early scene, he returns from a match only to find that his landlord has locked him out. Forced to sleep in his van, he swallows a few pain pills, fashions a pillow out of a towel, and balls his large, hurting body up against the winter cold.

For all that his body is breaking down, it is Randy's livelihood. He could have worked construction, it's true, or some other job. But he is an athlete, and an entertainer, and he will not quit until he is too broken to go on. Rourke succeeds in making this desire one I understood for all I found it unreasonable, and this is his great triumph in the role. On the wrestling circuit, no longer a hot commodity, The Ram must try increasingly reckless tricks to keep the audience's attention. That is what makes the film hard to watch. In one scene, after pulling staples and broken glass out of his back, Randy collapses into a pool of his own vomit. Sitting in the comfortable warm of the Midtown Art Cinema, watching him pitch forward, I shed two tears, because he was so bent on suffering, and I understood that his life outside the ring was not worth a damn. Turns out the pony only had one trick.

The Wrestler isn't exclusively about making you ache with pity. There are glorious, poignant little light-hearted moments, featuring the Ram's beauty regimen (tanning beds and peroxide) and fire fighter fetishists. Marissa Tomei does superior work portraying a stripper past her prime, and Evan Rachel Wood gives a fine performance as Randy's daughter. But Mickey Rourke's Ram owns the show, because it is so much his story.

In what is the saddest, truest scene in the movie, the Ram attends a small convention of former wrestlers, hocking his own merchandise behind a folding table. He has some VHS tapes and a few posters. As he surveys the room he becomes aware of his peers, with their canes, wheel chairs, and colostomy bags. His face shows recognition, but in a subtle move, Randy curls his fists, defiant, unwilling to surrender.

The Wrestler is an incredible, wrenching, and heartbroken piledriver of a movie. Rourke deserves to win the Oscar, and I hope he does.

A darling of the trenches.

Since I've been remiss in my duties as a blogger, I'm going to offer you:


things I have consumed - by justasweetyoungthing on Polyvore.com

1. Monster Trucks
I went to see large trucks roll over cars and jump hills at the so-called "Monster Jam" at the Georgia Dome. You guys, Monster Truck is poetry. It is mesmerizing and loud and perfect. I may have been a little tipsy, but everything about watching Maximum Destruction flip over and careen into Backdraft was gorgeous. I think I was dazzled by scale, I'm not ashamed to admit. Everything was just so damned big.

2. Twin Peaks
Of course, you may roll your eyes at this one. My love of a good pie, a magically real setting and plot, a square-jawed hero, and a good whodunnit are all wrapped up in a tidy, Lynchian package here. Critically, I'll tell you that the story sags after the first few episodes of the second season. Between that climax and the series finale, Twin Peaks becomes difficult to watch, a series of torturous, directionless scenes featuring beloved characters that used to have animus.

3. Låt den rätte komma in
Sometimes called the Swedish vampire movie, it's more than it sounds. It was a completely magical movie experiences simply by virtue of being itself, which is to say a truly unique perspective on adolescence, vampires and bullying. It's pale and beautiful too, all shades of snow and ice. In truth, it's my favorite movie made in the last year. If you don't trust me to be objective about vampires, you're right, but this movie is still incredible, and you should at least netflix it if you have the chance.

4. Top Flr and La Tavola
I've been working on eating my way through Atlanta, and both these restaurants are worthy. Top Flr has the kind of eclectic, sleek elegance you sometimes crave in a date restaurant, but La Tavola's long second floor porch is magnificent. In terms of food, they represent opposite ends of the modern spectrum, but I think I liked the small plates of minimalist New American fare at Top Flr more than the creative Italian Tavola offered.

5. Fenders
These are the best investment of any of these reviews, and they protect me from puddles and gravel and everything else on the ground, they also look cute and appropriate on my girly, girly bike. I got a basket too, which also succeeds in being practical and charming to look at. That is, of course, my general life goal.

6. Tights
I wear them in shades of black, gray, and brown most everyday. I am so happy they are in style, because my shins are always, always bruised, and these keep my legs looking ladylike. They also hide my pallor, always a plus. I am particularly fond of all the patterns of sweater tights available from Target. A good pair, like these, is warm and comfortable for my bike ride to work and back each day.

7. Necklaces
Let's be honest. I tend to think of jewelry as something I should expect to lose, but I've gotten two necklaces recently that I hope I can hold on to. The first was a thrift store find, and cost me all of $15 dollars, well, actually my mom picked up the tab on that one. The second comes from Hotcakes design in San Francisco, and is a handcarved resin number that cost a little more, but I think I will wear often enough to make up for it. Is it weird that these things make me feel more adult, when really they are basically an extension of my dress-up instincts?

*As in spent money on. Much as I love the idea of eating monster trucks, it is not something I am physically capable of doing.

Unrelated

A pie a week, I've discovered, is a little much. My poor hips can't take the butter, even when I have friends to help eat up all the slices. That said, I've been baking like a fiend as the weather's gotten colder. I'm one for desserts so it's been a long fall of cakes and pies. I've mulled a lot of cider and mashed a lot of potatoes. It's been great, it's been seasonal. I like the chill in the air. I don't even want to hear cracks from the Indiana crowd regarding "real winter"- you can back off, Indiana. It's been a great fall.

Let's get over that and talk about James Bond.

I'm going to preface this by saying A.O. Scott is my favorite film critic. He has an even keel to set your rudder by*, and we have similar tastes. It's not that I feel he is my long lost preference twin (for that, see Keith Phipps of the Onion's AV Club). He is my preference cousin, and he is good for me because he is not as prone to loving things with explosions for having explosions the way I am. In terms of movies, he is my reminder that I ought to eat a vegetable every once in a while, or at least watch that Herzog documentary.

Which is why I found it strange to catch him in the crowd of critics crying foul on the newly emotional James Bond. "Is revenge the only possible motive for large-scale movie heroism these days? Does every hero, whether Batman or Jason Bourne, need to be so sad?"

And the answer, in PoMo America, with the end of the Cold War and the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East, the rise of terrorism and the decline of the nation-state, is well, kind of, yeah. Bond, more than Batman**, reflects the spirit of a time. In 46 years and 22 movies, you see 6 Bonds, all of whom embody different qualities.

You have the brutish and charismatic Bond of Sean Connery in the 1960's- he liked his ladies blonde and he seemed to forget them instantly. The interloping George Lazenby was the only marrying Bond in 1969, before they brought Sean Connery back out of popular demand. Roger Moore had more success replacing Sean Connery, possibly because he was his physical opposite. Further, the light-hearted kitsch feeling of Moore's bond is a peek in on the strange feeling of the 1970's. I recommend "Moonraker" most highly of these fantastical Bond movies- in an era after we'd seemingly mastered space travel, there is a sauntering quality of Bond's which becomes dominant in his character, as if his smirk is always to say, "Bitch, please. I've conquered the universe." With the close of the 80's, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and the decline of the Soviet Union, Timothy Dalton went a little too far in his realistic portrayal of a darker Bond and people just didn't like his eyebrows. Ok, I just don't think he was particularly charming.

Of course there's the Bond I first encountered, Pierce Brosnan. More sensitive, and some have argued "more psychologically complete" then previous Bonds, he had that sort of wistful widower quality about him. Of course, I think that he was probably just mourning the end of the Cold War and the dearth of sexy KGB girls to seduce. Despite this unipolar handicap, he was quite adept at getting pretty young women to disrobe. Goldeneye, Brosnan's debut, is still my third favorite Bond movie***, not just because I like explosions or because Judy Dench as M is the single greatest casting decision the franchise ever made. Because James Bond is a three dimensional character in it, and because my favorite henchwoman Xenia Onnatop kills people by strangling them with her thighs. Take that, Octopussy. Also, Brosnan and Sean Bean make excellent frenemies. It's a good Friday night movie for sitting in your PJs and avoiding clubs or company.

But let's talk about new Bond. He's not humorless as critics would claim. And he's not so brooding or brutish that he can't talk a sexy redheaded British beaurocrat into forgetting to arrest him and then forgetting her panties. He's bruised and distrustful, but he's also smart and tough. He is not nearly as tragic a figure as A.O.'s whining would suggest. He's a wounded and witty Bond for a wounded and witty age. Sardonic quips aside, I would argue that a Roger Moore in this day in age would be not only inappropriate, it would be border-line psychotic. It would be equivalent of inserting Zac Effron into a production of Faust. The title "Quantum of Solace" means a measure of comfort, and that's what the movie is about. Revenge for Bond, is what it takes for him to recover, and I have little doubt he'll be broken inside and cynical enough to pull off "Shaken not stirred" in the next movie.

Side note: How cool was that visual allusion to Goldfinger with the naked lady in Bond's bed covered in oil? So cool.

That's all I have for now. To follow: my ridiculous shrinky dink projects, a road trip to Valpo for Thanksgiving, my first encounters with Maryland, and other DIY nonsense.

* I love the way ship analogies sound so much that I do not care if this is actually something that one does on a ship.
** I'm talking about on screen appearances. I think we can all agree that Batman Forever or Batman and Robin don't reflect anything other than a franchise's unfortunate shiny fabrics and nipple armor phase.
*** 1. Goldfinger
2. Quantum of Solace
3. Goldeneye