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Eraserhead

Miguel Penabella | 16 March 2013

Eraserhead

Dir. David Lynch, 1977

David Lynch constructs a bizarre world in his 1977 film Eraserhead, uniting an unearthly industrial landscape with a seemingly mundane throwback to a 1950s domestic scene. Like the rest of his features, Lynch evokes the uncanny realm of the unconscious in a surreal amalgamation of psychosexual desire and a sinister undercurrent that pervades the entire picture. The various characters that populate Lynch’s shadowy industrial domain have indeterminate motivations, often speaking with cryptic dialogue and react with perplexing actions. Coupled with the foreboding soundtrack and ominous black and white cinematography, Eraserhead sustains an atmospheric, drifting quality akin to a dream state. Lynch channels internal dream logic in his industrial-tinged vision of the everyday world, creating a personal nightmare mired in the grotesque fears of parenthood and domesticity. The film’s constant sense of unease reflects the unstable psyches of Lynch’s characters, and Eraserhead quietly rumbles with a foreboding dread. Anticipating the wonderfully surreal achievements in his later career like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, Lynch assumes a number of familiar motifs that expresses an auteurist style even in his formative years, and Eraserhead stands on its own as a markedly surreal experience.

Originally released as a “midnight movie,” Eraserhead catered to a cult audience looking for a counter aesthetic to the mainstream moviegoing experience. Popularizing everyone from Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) to John Waters (Pink Flamingos), the midnight movie permitted David Lynch to disseminate his avant-garde project amongst a welcoming audience. Although many midnight movies ultimately faded into obscurity as lowbrow B-movie trash, Eraserhead has undoubtedly risen to the realm of classic. This transcendence lies in Lynch’s serious engagement with his art and narrative approach, emphasizing a counter aesthetic not merely for shock value but as a filmic style directly tied to a surrealist mode of filmmaking. Like his contemporaries including David Cronenberg and Alejandro Jodorowsky, Lynch presents absurdist scenarios in a dark, unpleasant package that unites the familiar and the strange to disillusion audiences from the images onscreen. This subversive aesthetic ties into Lynch’s education as a painter, and Eraserhead channels the macabre work of Francis Bacon and his fondness for images of putrefaction and displays of body horror. Following the painterly quality of his short films Six Men Getting Sick and The Alphabet, Lynch appropriates cinema as a visual language that can convey abstract ideas, and this visual flair shines through in the film’s iconic mise-en-scène. Lynch frequently composes his shots with diffused textures such as strange liquids, smoke, and the famous eraserhead dust, and this interchange between mixed media and film communicates a sense of intertextuality with true stylistic uniformity. Moreover, Lynch expounds on Francis Bacon’s fascination with decaying bodies in a similar fashion to David Cronenberg’s emphasis on body horror. Eraserhead contains its fair share of repulsive embryonic forms and psychosexual spermatozoids to conjure the sexual anxieties of psychoanalytic neurosis.

These psychosexual imagery plague the mind of Henry Spencer (a wonderfully bumbling Jack Nance), the ridiculously wigged and muttering protagonist that Lynch chronicles. Images of spermatozoids intermixed with industrial iconography seemingly controlled by the mysterious Man in the Planet (Jack Fisk), a strange figure who inhabits Henry’s psyche, pervade the opening sequence in an unearthly display. In the opening minutes of this directorial debut, Lynch introduces a number of motifs that would reappear throughout his career including this tension between organic and inorganic material and a gently hovering camera plunging into a dark abyss. These rapid descents into the void (see also the ear in Blue Velvet and the box in Mulholland Drive) emulate Lynch’s own submersion in the unconscious mind. The inner psyche of Eraserhead contains a mix between an oppressive industrial landscape and a contorted glimpse of 1950s suburbia. David Lynch conveys an askew quality to the latter element, anticipating the perverted take on a hokey domestic scene as in Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks. An extended dinner table scene embodies Lynch’s distortion of a prototypical 1950s domestic drama, and the director employs a number of cinematic techniques to estrange audiences from familiarity and towards a surreal realm. Henry and his girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), sit down for a meet-and-greet with her parents (Jeanne Bates and Allen Joseph) over a chicken dinner. This entire sequence evokes a parodic jab at the mundane nature of a typical domestic sitcom, with Lynch’s grotesque imagery (overtly sexual symbolism, flickering lights) and bizarre conversations upending traditional values of the nuclear family.

Henry’s disinclined attitude towards meeting Mary’s parents lends the scene a sense of tension, and Lynch conveys this mood physically with his characters in spasm or uncontrolled ecstasy. Lynch underlines a Freudian sense of hypersexuality in a repressed 1950s-esque environment, and Jack Nance’s permanently quizzical face matched with the bizarre psychological makeup of the characters that surround him make for a paradoxically revolting and comic film. Psychosexual undertones saturate Eraserhead, and Lynch pays strict attention to gestures like moaning, stroking, and bodily twitches to emphasize the social pressures placed upon Henry. Unconscious desires and fears motivate the entire film (Lynch even employs a femme fatale figure seemingly dislocated out of film noir), and an unbearable tension and sense of uncertainty emerges to deepen the absurd surrealism of Henry’s situation – that of accepting his new fatherly role over a nauseating-looking offspring straight out of a body horror flick. David Lynch maintains a level of ambiguity over his characters’ psychology, and many of these individuals often inhabit a trancelike, intoxicated state of ecstasy. Extended sequences lack dialogue altogether, and characters convey a disturbing psychical imbalance with their body language (orgasms, frozen grins, overwrought crying). This psychological inconsistency marks a jarring incongruity with the mundane nature of Lynch’s 1950s-esque imagery, thus locating the familiar social norms of the period – marriage, rules of sexual conduct, parental responsibility – implicitly put under pressure. 

The entirety of Eraserhead resembles a dream unfolding before the audience, as if representing the internalized world of Henry’s psyche and the anxieties that come with his newfound fatherhood. In the film’s extended dream sequence, Lynch presents a surrealist tension between the oneiric and reality that draws from the work of Luis Buñuel and would later influence the rapturous world of Twin Peaks. Lynch avoids fully plunging into unreal fantasy, and the film maintains a slight veneer of reality that contributes to the strangeness of the images that unravel before the audience. The initiation of the dream is difficult to pin down to one specific moment because the entire film carries a dreamlike quality that visualizes the internalized psyche. Furthermore, the events of the dream – a performance of “In Heaven” by the now famous radiator woman (Laurel Near), an encounter with the aforementioned man in the planet, and Henry’s decapitation – are not all too strange compared to other equally bizarre moments throughout Eraserhead. The dream sequence invites and frustrates interpretation because of the indeterminate separation between Henry’s conscious and unconscious, and later films like Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire continue Lynch’s project in visualizing the irrational quality of the dream state.

Moments such as Henry’s dream sequence permits the unconscious to overtake reality, and David Lynch provides a plethora of visual motifs and iconography common to surrealist cinema without necessarily corresponding to a strict surrealist formula. Eraserhead lacks a formulaic construction in relation to other surrealist-minded filmmakers of the era, and Lynch instead chooses to redefine and alter the aesthetic to suit the needs of his own film. Certainly, the emphasis on an abstract character performance from the wildly underappreciated Jack Nance contributes to the overarching strangeness of Eraserhead, but also in Jack Fisk’s experimental set design and the droning industrial soundtrack that mires the entire experience in an unsettling atmosphere. David Lynch creates an visceral world of unnerve and unease that would set the tone for the rest of his filmography, uniting the unconscious fascinations of his characters with a shuddering industrial world plucked straight out of a dream inching closer to nightmare. Eraserhead turns intensely inward towards the psyche rather than outwards towards the social and political spheres, producing a hypnotic blend of dreamlike imagery and surrealist frictions. There lies a comprehensible structure and logic to Eraserhead, but Lynch locks audiences out from an upfront lucidity that ultimately leaves the film’s mysteries up in the air. This same open-ended pleasure resurfaces in Lynch’s later masterpieces like Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, and Eraserhead shrewdly visualizes a disturbing echo chamber of dreams even in the director’s formative years. Ultimately, Lynch’s own emergent talents in realizing his surrealist imagery leaves Eraserhead feeling all the more cryptic than the carefully designed films later in his career, and the rough patches of this work only serve to muddle its unrealities all the more secretive.

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New Order: Favorite Films, 20-1

Miguel Penabella | 14 March 2013

No introduction necessary. Here’s 20 to 1.

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020. Synecdoche, New York | Charlie Kaufman | 2008

Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Adaptation are merely warm-ups for the mystifying convolution of Synecdoche, New York. Kaufman takes his archetypical interests – duality, doppelgangers, metacinema, performance, metaphysics – and unleashes an unhinged exercise in artistic expression. Like Adaptation, Kaufman explores the warped mind of the artist in standstill through the eyes of the neurotic Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Taking Adaptation’s story-within-a-story setup, Synecdoche complicates this metacinematic formula by introducing doppelgangers and meta-metacinematic storytelling that plunges even deeper into Cotard’s mind. Kaufman’s talented cast miraculously juggles the mind-bending intricacies of its plot, including the likes of the aforementioned Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Tom Noonan, Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Michelle Williams, and so on. The metaphysical simulacrum of reality at play here unfolds so naturally and effortlessly that it’s no wonder why critics hold Charlie Kaufman in such high regard. There’s really nothing else like it.

019. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans | F.W. Murnau | 1927

My appreciation for silent cinema leaves a lot to be desired, but I’m desperately improving. Out of all the silent classics revered by the cinema community, F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans remains my uncontested favorite. Murnau presents a tumultuous marriage under pressure from a duplicitous tantalizer, and what would be a formulaic melodrama ruined by the conventions of love triangle plotting ultimately becomes a meditative glimpse at the struggles and joys of life. Eschewing a straightforward conflict with the seductress, Murnau places his married couple in the bustling realm of the city only for the pair to gradually fall back into love. Sunrise thus presents a welcoming tale of love rekindled, complete with the fragilities and insecurities of a relationship tested by time. Murnau tells his story minimally, emphasizing mood and pacing to deepen the emotions at the crux of his lover’s relationship. Representations of romance in films have been extremely well executed since then (Blue Valentine, Tokyo Story, Before Sunrise), and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans marks an already well-established foundation for these and many more films to come.

018. Branded to Kill | Seijun Suzuki | 1967

Loosely held together with elliptical fragments of storytelling, Seijun Suzuki unravels his weird tale of rival hitmen with an eye for the abstract. Drawing on the style of the French New Wave, Suzuki fills his film with lively jump cuts that often cut away before a character can even finish their thoughts. Restlessness pervades the entire experience, making for a breezy and brisk film that bubbles with reckless energy. Branded to Kill follows an eccentric, narcissistic hitman with an obsessive neurosis over a bizarre hitman ranking system (No More Heroes and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai would draw heavily from this film), gunning for that number one spot amongst other equally ostentatious competitors. Suzuki’s rash editing renders a lot of the dialogue as non-sequitur, transforming Branded to Kill’s premise into an absurdist exercise in vagueness. In lieu of narrative complexity, Suzuki focuses solely on capturing the essence of the period with lavish stylization – James Bond-esque sex, cars, guns, drinks, jazz, black and white cinematography, and boiling rice. Suzuki does to hitmen what Kurosawa does to samurai, mythologizing them to the point of pop art; it’s a wonder to watch.

017. Minnie and Moskowitz | John Cassavetes | 1971

About half an hour into the film: “You know, I think that movies are a conspiracy… because they set you up. They set you up from the time you’re a little kid. They set you up to believe in everything – in ideals and strength and good guys and romance, and of course, love. So you go out, you start looking. Doesn’t happen, you keep looking. You get a job and you spend a lot of time fixing up things – your apartment and jazz. And you learn how to be feminine – you know, “feminine?” You learn how to cook, but there’s no Charles Boyer in my life. I never even met a Charles Boyer. I never met Clark Gable. I never met Humphrey Bogart. I mean, they don’t exist – that’s the truth. But the movies set you up and no matter how bright you are, you believe it.”

John Cassavetes takes this idea and cross-examines it throughout his entire career. For Cassavetes, the distinction between reality and cinema distorts into a hybrid world of trickery. His actors inhabit their roles with full authenticity and the director films in a vérité style as if to undermine his artifice altogether. Minnie and Moskowitz places this tension between reality and cinema at its core, and the things at stake here – love, trust, hope – all but transcend this struggle.

016. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | Michel Gondry | 2004

Synecdoche, New York may be Charlie Kaufman’s masterpiece, but his stint with Michel Gondry for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind witnesses the enigmatic screenwriter engaging with the knotty pitfalls of romance and despair. The film allows Kaufman to tease out complex emotions following the taciturn absurdism of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation; this emotional weightiness in part stems from career-defining performances from a resonant Jim Carrey and a down-to-earth Kate Winslet. Kaufman channels the work of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in his exploration of memory and budding romance, and the film remains just as emotionally mature and levelheaded enough to reverberate with striking insightfulness. Gondry’s eccentric mastery of mise-en-scène works phenomenally when paired with Kaufman’s charged script, conveying the desperation of memory loss with set design, costuming, and lighting. Eternal Sunshine is strangely both a melancholic and exuberant film, and it demands multiple viewings to fully convey its shrewd genius.

015. 8½ | Federico Fellini | 1963

Federico Fellini’s metanarrative of an artist’s inner psyche humanizes the monolithic status of the famed Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) by laying bare the man’s ego and neurosis for all to see. 8½ journeys deep into the unconscious workings of the imagination, probing the artist’s mind via dreams and the unstable nature of memory. The film both anticipates the work of pop culture deconstructionists like Charlie Kaufman, but Fellini’s agenda remains playful and sensual enough to tread the realm of a Woody Allen flick. Fellini explores nagging ideas at the core of Guido’s head, ranging everywhere from religion to family life. Everything revolves around Fellini’s singular artist, and so even as his masterpiece and home life breaks down and revitalizes, we’re still lost amidst Guido’s fleeting thoughts in one euphoric imagination.

014. Brazil | Terry Gilliam | 1985

The comic vision of Orwellian dystopia in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil feels natural: simply take the absurdist humor of Monty Python and assimilate it into a futurist envisioning of the world. Brazil’s many quirks – ducts, magnified screens, plastic surgery – produce a rich and colorful dystopian society that violently clashes with the dark underbelly at the heart of it all. Gilliam slowly teases out the sinister quality of Brazil with a smile, rendering its big reveal all the more devastating. An often-overlooked sci-fi masterpiece, Brazil stands the test of time as one of the funniest sci-fi works ever produced and its absurdist sensibilities (see: an unexpected Odessa steps homage) seem like a natural reaction to the absurd society that Gilliam presents. Nevertheless, what Gilliam offers resonates with full force in a modern world mired with political and social discord. Brazil’s social commentary is simply tied to visual gags and offbeat humor that audiences often overlook, and upon repeat viewings, the density of Gilliam’s project slowly reveals itself. Undoubtedly Terry Gilliam’s magnum opus, Brazil endures as one of the strangest products of the 1980s, and yet its brazen mélange of dystopia and fantasy remains cynically hilarious today as it did back in 1985.

013. There Will Be Blood | Paul Thomas Anderson | 2007

Paul Thomas Anderson forges a compelling character study for the modern times, a monumental powerhouse of storytelling that will likely stand tall amongst the Charles Foster Kanes and the Vito Corleones of the cinematic world. Following the demonic oilman Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), PTA’s avoidance of his typical Robert Altman-inspired ensemble casts in favor of a singular character drama places him in the realm of Kubrickian cinema. The gorgeous one-point perspectives and the fanatical exploits of his characters certainly evoke the crazed characters of Kubrick’s past (see: The Shining), but PTA masterfully weaves his own unique tale of corrupted Manifest Destiny and unrestrained capitalism. There Will Be Blood triumphs with the monumental performances from Daniel-Day Lewis at the top of his game and a bravado stint from a fiery Paul Dano, both actors thundering and bellowing like angry colossi. Tensions build throughout the film, and the savage epilogue fast-forwards into a crumbling, chilly mansion that witnesses one of the most striking conclusions in recent memory. It’s haunting stuff.

012. Paris, Texas | Wim Wenders | 1984

Wim Wenders directs a film so fundamentally tied to the mythology of the modern American landscape that no other American filmmaker has been able to fully replicate its poignant foresight. Paris, Texas is a meditative film full of secrets as mysterious as the American Southwest and the rolling hills of California that Wenders captures on film. It’s a story about hidden memory and the passing of time, and a screening of home videos midway through the film permits buried emotions to rise to the surface. Wim Wenders directs the near mute Harry Dean Stanton to concoct one of the most transfixing character studies of the 1980s, examining the nature of reconnection and human emotions with a careful eye for beauty and great sadness. The visual landscapes that comprise the film – from the arid horizons of a vanishing American desert to the neon skylines of urban Texas – carry a sense of wistful longing all on their own, and Paris, Texas channels the emotions of a forgotten Americana into Harry Dean Stanton’s own devastating ten minute monologue towards the end of the film. Paris, Texas films characters getting lost and staying lost, turning men into myth and emotions into buried remnants of memory, forever lost in time.

011. Mulholland Drive | David Lynch | 2001

Everything that has come to define the style of David Lynch coalesces in Mulholland Drive, the sprawling, cryptic work of an artist in full form. Lynch takes the sunny, innocuous sanguinity of an idealized vision of stardom and pairs it with the nightmarish underbelly of something sinister lying around the corner. Mulholland Drive floats through unconsciousness with style, crafting memorable moments that can startle and amuse with equal measure. Naomi Watts delivers a groundbreaking performance as a character as duplicitous as the hokey smiles of those in Twin Peaks. David Lynch’s digital cinematography fundamentally validates the worth of this budding video technology as a means to convey an experimental aesthetic that engages in our perception of illusory images. Hollywood as a netherworld of parlor tricks and smoke-and-mirrors deception has never been so surreally dreamlike.

010. Seven Samurai | Akira Kurosawa | 1954

The influence of Seven Samurai resounds in everything as obvious as 13 Assassins to something as offbeat as A Bug’s Life. Akira Kurosawa’s epic story exhibits the full resolve of the human will, tracing delicate emotions and concluding with a relentless flurry of action in his three-hour masterpiece. But before Seven Samurai reaches its cathartic conclusion, Kurosawa takes his time with a good hour of exposition. The film chronicles a band of wayfaring, philosophizing ronin tinged with Marxist underpinnings and fueled by a daily bowl of rice from impoverished farmers straight out of Russian literature. Kurosawa’s samurai are a dejected bunch, fighting not for honor or valor but for daily sustenance; the magic of Seven Samurai lies in how Kurosawa teases out true heroism when his warriors stop thinking only of their own ego but for the rights of the underprivileged and the poor. Indeed, the film’s extended stay simply welcoming and developing its titular samurai allows flexible room to grow. Toshiro Mifune is a livewire act as always, and the sheer emotional weightiness of Kurosawa’s maturing warriors and his emotionally charged story permits the first two hours of build-up to pass with ease. When the furious rainstorm hits and the final showdown commences, the desperation of Kurosawa’s seven samurai feels extraordinarily palpable. One can’t help but get the feeling that these saturnine warriors fight not only for the village they’re sworn to protect but also for the memory of a way of life already long gone.

009. Lost in Translation | Sofia Coppola | 2003

Nobody does modern ennui like Sofia Coppola; her characters drift aimlessly yet graciously through cinematic space, leisurely floating towards a discreet sense of catharsis. Lost in Translation captures the fleeting moments of melancholic isolation with a loving sense of mise-en-scène, employing both a shallow focus lens and soft lighting to elevate the intimacy of her scenes. Coppola separates the lofty hideaway of the Park Hyatt Hotel and the crazed streets of Tokyo below, and in doing so replicates the comfortable world of the internal psyche and the external environment. Lost in Translation’s interiors embrace wearied travellers with open arms, and it’s in this tranquil indoor retreat that the budding friendship between Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) gradually blossoms. Coppola directs Bill Murray with a level of self-awareness, playing on his eccentricities as a self-deprecating, aged comedian with an approach that feels almost autobiographical. Scarlett Johansson’s performance as Charlotte radiates a warm sense of stillness necessary to authentically convey human disconnect. In Bob and Charlotte’s steady gravitation towards one another, Coppola transcends the pitfalls of verbal communication. Lost in Translation’s presentation of human detachment speaks volumes to an entire generation lost amidst the depravity of a hurried modern life, offering in its place a dreamlike meditation on interpersonal connection.

Read my review here.

008. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off | John Hughes | 1986

John Hughes breaks all the rules of the teenage film with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and this cinematic rebellion reflects his titular character’s own rebellious state. We shouldn’t appreciate Ferris Bueller’s cocky, narcissistic attitude and his cemented popularity, but Hughes writes his characters in such a way as to humanize them as endearing and earnest. Hughes denies framing Bueller as antagonistic just because the conventions of the archetypical high school film dictates that popular kids are inherently unlikeable. No, Ferris Bueller is a strongly written, well-defined character who actively sticks up for his friends and pursues anything that interests him – being the star of his own parade, admiring modern art, taking a priceless Ferrari 250 GT out for a joyride – with unashamed enthusiasm. Hughes thus avoids the usual clichés that hold back normal teenage films for something absolutely irresistible as a true cultural milestone – a triumph that he replicates in The Breakfast Club as well. What helps John Hughes’ celebration of the high school years are outstanding performances by a well-rounded cast. Matthew Broderick delivers a career defining performance as the titular character, conveying a guileless charm and effortless likability as one of those folks that everyone was a friend with back in high school. Mia Sara plays the sensitive concern of Sloane Peterson with a delicate touch; Alan Ruck’s outing as the existentially tormented Cameron Frye is a pleasure to watch as he turns from a downer into a headstrong young adult. Ultimately, the incessant amusements of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off yield to the inevitable coming-of-age crises that Hughes’ trio of leads are circumventing: that of the apprehension over the future, and the changeover from high school to college life. And so even as Ferris Bueller and his pals manage to temporarily halt the world-weariness that comes at this stage of their life, one can’t help but fear a greater somber ennui that would come in a film like The Graduate.

007. Taxi Driver | Martin Scorsese | 1976

Martin Scorsese’s unforgettable 1976 masterpiece addresses the topic of violence with the uncompromising resolve of something like A Clockwork Orange, depicting human psychology as inevitably bound to hurtle towards violence when put under pressure. Paul Schrader’s poetically written script clashes with the ferocious imagery that Scorsese delivers, filming a decaying, grungy 1970s glimpse of New York and a character caught in a downward spiral. Taxi Driver pits these two forces together – that of the urban monstrosity itself, along with its political machines and exploitative criminal core against the colossally building fury of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) – and concludes with one of the most powerful sequences in the history of film. Many have talked about Bickle’s ultimate showdown before, and once Scorsese’s color gradient softens to a toned-down scheme, Taxi Driver erupts in cathartic horror. More importantly, the scene that follows ultimately ends up being the more subtly jarring dénouement of events, a complete about-face that betrays the unreality of its conclusion. Scorsese returns to the charming, passive version of Travis Bickle as he drives home the angelic Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), only for his final seconds of footage to collapse under the instability of the human psyche. Bickle sees his reflection in a catastrophic moment of self-reflexivity, the music distorts, and the credits roll. It’s only when we’re treated with the lovely credits sequence set to the moody saxophone of Bernard Herrmann that Scorsese complicates Taxi Driver one final time, when the face of Travis Bickle momentarily reappears for a brief split second in the credits. The open-endedness that surrounds this finale only deepens my appreciation for the film even more.

006. Oldboy | Park Chan-wook | 2003

Park Chan-wook understands the fundamentals of Greek tragedy, channeling Oedipus Rex in how he elicits a sense of pity and fear while simultaneously upturning his original endeavors of what would be a simple revenge flick. Chronicling the trials and tribulations of the tormented Oh Dae-su (an always phenomenal Choi Min-sik), Chan-wook ultimately subverts his genre formulae and renders every single character as one to be pitied, and the finale proves devastatingly tragic. Amongst the other great contemporary Korean directors working today – Bong Joon-ho, Kim Ji-woon, Lee Chang-dong – Park Chan-wook approaches the topic of violence with a painterly sensibility, sketching out broad, expressive strokes that charges each and every scene with emotion. His command of mise-en-scène contributes to an aesthetically stunning (if sometimes repulsive) film, and in combining elements of melodrama and the revenge flick, he informs audiences how to experience his unflinching violence. Oldboy addresses a number of contemporary national issues everywhere from surveillance to the modern growth of South Korea and the things lost amongst this growth (memory, for one thing), and Park Chan-wook’s intricately woven revenge tragedy represents a finely tuned exercise in dramatic stylization.

005. Solaris | Andrei Tarkovsky | 1972

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris induces a particular kind of cryptic, space-set odyssey that simultaneously draws from and heavily departs from Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking 1968 classic. Like 2001, Solaris meshes arthouse surrealism with the familiar images of sci-fi, inspiring a dialogue between the whacked-out interstellar overdrives of the 1970s and the grander tradition of film art. Tarkovsky’s 1972 film continues his ethereal sense of meditativeness and spiritual restlessness, allowing his camera to gently float through his forsaken spacecraft like a ghost. His cosmonauts descend into the bleakest voids of the unconscious, and it’s in this altered state of being that Tarkovsky enters into a discourse of spiritual metaphysics, the fickle nature of memory, and time and space itself. Solaris confronts the limitations of our human understanding of love, reality, and identity, and in the context of Soviet communism, Tarkovsky’s artistic endeavors here are revelatory. Moreover, Solaris generates extraordinary cinematic imagery that will last the test of time, from the extended sequence in a future Japan to the remastered Criterion edition’s interchange between color and violet-tinted cinematography. These richly defined visuals contrast with Tarkovsky’s incredibly cryptic visions, and the milky glimpses of outer space mirror the psychological opaqueness of the entire journey, ultimately lulling you into a hypnotized state. Solaris is frequently analyzed in the context of Steven Soderbergh’s curious remake in 2002, and while both retain their own individual strengths (they are vastly different beasts), Andrei Tarkovsky prefers to withdraw inward while his boundless space setting turns outward towards the stars.

004. Pulp Fiction | Quentin Tarantino | 1994

The simple, guilty pleasures of Pulp Fiction rely on how a young Quentin Tarantino engages his audience, assuming that they are acquainted with the language of cinema. Pulp Fiction features high stylization with lowbrow inspirations, and it’s in Tarantino’s constant citations that reveal a work of cinematic depth deeply enmeshed in the formative qualities of 1990s American independent filmmaking. Tarantino excavates the value of B-movies, exploitation films, and grindhouse as the filmmakers of the French New Wave did in the 1960s, and his appropriation of overlooked movies retains a playful touch of new wave sensibilities and knowing B-movie camp. In this sense, Pulp Fiction occupies a role as postmodern pastiche with the budding director’s imagination pouring out a strange vision of Los Angeles informed by works of the past. As a result, we’re catered with an overabundance of some of the most memorable images of the movies: bad motherfuckers, royale with cheese, a pocket watch’s journey, overdose mishaps, accidental deaths, a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, and the efficiency of a certain wolf. Upon repeat viewings, one can uncover the even subtler witticisms and cinematic puns that operate underneath the surface level narrative: a flock of seagulls, Tony Rocky Horror, Martin and Lewis or Amos and Andy, garcon means boy. All of these allusions combine in producing a sharply written and tremendously fun moviegoing experience despite the film’s extremely long running time. It’s a wax museum with a pulse rate.

003. The Thin Red Line | Terrence Malick | 1998

Terrence Malick’s contemplative commentary on how war consigns all men into one, indefinite being conveys this forlorn sentiment with an extraordinary sense of natural beauty, as if nature will endure despite humanity’s shortcomings. Shadows fall upon the faces of Malick’s enormous ensemble cast, rendering each and every individual soldier completely inhuman, and yet The Thin Red Line avoids succumbing to the trappings of an ugly and gritty war film. John Toll’s stunning cinematography prefers to show its limbless, bloody dead amongst the verdant rainforest grasses and floating butterflies in peaceful serenity – a visually arresting, revelatory juxtaposition. Malick’s first film in twenty years since 1978’s Days of Heaven, the sagacious auteur reintroduces and tinkers with a number of filmic elements that will define his entire career: ethereal snatches of voiceover narration, gliding camera movements, dialogue inspired directly by transcendentalism, philosophical musings, and a great love of naturalism and natural lighting. And yet despite the loveliness of Malick’s imagery and philosophizing, The Thin Red Line still inhabits an ugly subject matter on a conceptual level, and the resigned, aimless faces of his soldiers betray the melancholy underneath it all. The soldiers on Guadalcanal may fight as one unified whole, but Malick presents his vision of warfare in such a way that these men could never be any more distant from one another than that given moment, each and together fighting their own private wars.

002. 2001: A Space Odyssey | Stanley Kubrick | 1968

What can I write about 2001: A Space Odyssey that hasn’t already been said before? The film remains a masterpiece not only in science fiction, but also as a monumental work of cinema. Stanley Kubrick explores themes in philosophy, religion, science, metanarrative, technology, and the human identity in a densely packed yet aesthetically calculated work of art. Everything from the godlike presence of the obelisk to the Genesis allegory of David (playing as God here) punishing HAL-9000 for its rebellion (playing as Adam and Eve) carries such a multifarious quality that interpretation will likely continue on for decades. The film also explores elements of metacinema in how Kubrick collapses our sense of space with his zero gravity sequences, rendering spatial relations completely indefinite and dreamlike. Characters move through space in an exaggeratedly slow manner, almost like wading through the layers of a dream. A later shot of Frank violently thrashing through the empty void of space is surreally spellbinding. On top of this spatial estrangement, Kubrick goes on to abstract the cinematic nature of time in the film’s concluding segment. Time becomes opaque, spontaneously accelerating and stopping to the point where 2001: A Space Odyssey ceases to resemble anything like a prototypical film and more like a work of a mad genius tinkering with form and content. And yet what would be a completely disillusioning film still proves to be a satisfying work of euphoric beauty. Stanley Kubrick meshes the beautiful and the grim into one unified whole, choreographing nuclear weapons to the graceful notes of The Blue Danube Waltz or juxtaposing the Nietzschean void of HAL-9000 to the trippy lights and colors of the stargate sequence. Even if you don’t completely understand the workings of 2001 upon first glance, the sheer ambition and scope of the film ought to be sufficient in a mesmerizing cinematic experience.

001. Breathless | Jean-Luc Godard | 1960

Breathless has a legacy as one of the defining early French New Wave films that completely revamped the cinema. Focusing on the burgeoning postwar youth culture, Godard channels this raw and untapped energy with aplomb. Running at a scrubby 90 minutes, the film feels seemingly innocuous, but this short duration lends Godard enough time to completely overturn the status quo of traditional filmmaking. Breathless is playful in its editing practices, with its now famous jump cuts conveying the spontaneity and impulsiveness of youth culture with an unparalleled honesty. This spontaneity extends to Godard’s on-location, guerilla-style method of shooting footage with a shaky handheld, blurring the lines between cinematic artifice and where reality begins. The lack of a script renders his duo of actors Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo completely unprepared, but Breathless turns this unpreparedness into a triumph of ad-libbed jubilance with authentic, in-the-moment emotions. Godard interrogates the tropes and conventions of classical cinema by appropriating the language of Hollywood crime films and upends these tropes as silly (albeit joyous). Breathless rebuilds cinema anew even as it pays great tribute to the films of American past (here’s looking at you, Bogart), but in breaking all the conventions of cinema, new ones emerged. What we come to love with modern cinema owes greatly to the storytelling and directorial techniques that Godard presents here, everyone and anyone from Steven Soderbergh to Michael Haneke.

On top of its lasting importance as an essential slice of new wave cinema, Breathless is also an undyingly rapturous film. The extended apartment sequence in the middle of Godard’s decimation of the gangster genre materializes out of nowhere, as if dislocated from a love story in another film altogether. The innocuous tomfoolery of the couple in the confined space of the apartment transcends the initial claustrophobia of the scene – their relationship feels boundless, and what Godard does in this scene uncovers the iconoclasm inherent to the film. Jean-Paul Belmondo’s Michel Poiccard may prove a bit rough around the edges, but he radiates an effortless cool and confidence while swaggering about the streets of Paris with his weightless gait. He may be a womanizer, but Godard’s loving close-ups makes him seem charming. Jean Seberg’s lovely Patricia Franchini embodies a young Paris, her black and white striped top now synonymous with French style. She’s well read, intelligent, and has a taste for art, but like Poiccard, she also comes with her share of blemishes. She’s naïve and falls with the wrong crowd – imperfect people in a perfect world. Godard amorously films this world of 1960s Paris with the gleaming Citroëns and the tree-lined boutiques and cinemas of Champs-Élysées, lights sparkling in the dark. His jump cuts convey the youthful restlessness that makes the picture lively and sprightly, always an ease to watch with its breezy 90 minutes. It gives rise to Godard’s later pictures like A Woman Is a Woman (he hadn’t found his perfect muse Anna Karina just yet) and Pierrot le Fou, but even after all these years it’s always been Godard’s first film that’s left me à bout de souffle.

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A Year In Review: Best Films of 2012

Miguel Penabella | 24 February 2013

This is a list written in 2013 ranking my top films of 2012 featuring a number of titles from 2011. Looking back at last year’s multitude of releases, I’ve found all my cinematic memories in a haze of opacity. Only impressions of that fever dream of a year remain, from the exceptional oddities of the independent crowd to the unconscious-probing auteurs of arthouse. I remember fragments of brilliance, tiny glimmers of memory occasionally arising to waking thought in retrospective appreciation. This peculiar feeling – those fleeting moments of filmic surreality suddenly clashing with the mundane realities of life – has reappeared outside the movie theater as the film world reflects on a year of greats. I no longer see the quandaries and anxieties of normal waking life apart from the moving pictures. Instead, I see the bizarre delirium of Giorgos Lanthimos’s dancers of death. I see Matthew McConaughey stalking like the Grim Reaper in funereal black. I see two lovers entwined, passing from one space to the next. I see a hushpuppy who lived in a bathtub. I see a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you and me. I see the death of cinema and rebirth.

2012 was a peculiar year for film, and I’m pleased to present this list containing twenty of my favorite films and five extra honorable mentions below.

(left to right, starting from top)

01. Holy Motors | Leos Carax

02. The Master | Paul Thomas Anderson

03. Beyond the Hills | Cristian Mungiu

04. Zero Dark Thirty | Kathryn Bigelow

05. Amour | Michael Haneke

06. Moonrise Kingdom | Wes Anderson

07. The Turin Horse | Béla Tarr*

08. Beasts of the Southern Wild | Benh Zeitlin

09. Django Unchained | Quentin Tarantino

10. Tabu | Miguel Gomes

11. Skyfall | Sam Mendes

12. Cosmopolis | David Cronenberg

13. Wuthering Heights | Andrea Arnold*

14. The Deep Blue Sea | Terence Davies*

15. Farewell, My Queen | Benoît Jacquot

16. Oslo, August 31st | Joachim Trier*

17. Alps | Giorgos Lanthimos*

18. Sightseers | Ben Wheatley

19. Chronicle | Josh Trank

20. Killer Joe | William Friedkin

Honorable Mentions

21. The Raid: Redemption | Gareth Evans

22. Lawless | John Hillcoat

23. Fill the Void | Rama Burshtein

24. The Avengers | Joss Whedon

25. The Loneliest Planet | Julia Loktev*

Notes

*Although these titles have been canonized in IMDb as 2011 films, I’ve included these in the Best of 2012 category based on the non-festival U.S. release date.

**Previously posted on The Art of Movie Stills

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A Year In Review: 2012 In Pictures

Miguel Penabella | 19 January 2013

Academy Awards history in the making. Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) and Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) are the oldest and youngest nominees for Best Actress.

Anne Hathaway lounging on the set of The Dark Knight Rises.

The comprehensive production photos for Terrence Malick's enigmatic (and still untitled) new flick raise many questions. Why exactly is Rooney Mara and the Black Lips onstage with Val Kilmer and a chainsaw?

There used to be about three pictures of Terrence Malick known to exist before production of this new movie. This picture (with Christian Bale) is a lot more interesting.

There was a stretch back in the autumn when some of today's best acting names began joining Malick's film. Here are Michael Fassbender, Florence Welch, Rooney Mara, and Ryan Gosling hanging out on set.

Ben Affleck is three for three so far with direction after this year's Argo. Can he continue the streak?

Here's director Abbas Kiarostami (Like Someone In Love) sitting pretty at the New York Film Festival.

Nicolas Winding Refn's first promotional picture for Only God Forgives hints at something violent (obviously).

Juliette Binoche, Robert Pattinson, and David Cronenberg promote Cosmopolis at Cannes.

Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, and Vanessa Hudgens for Harmony Korine's arthouse shock film Spring Breakers...

...and here they are in more professional dress to promote Spring Breakers at the Toronto International Film Festival.

An interesting choice for a promotional photo for Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, a film which treads shaky territory in neither heralding nor chastising the actions of the CIA.

Bérénice Marlohe and Daniel Craig channel film noir in Skyfall.

The lovely Tilda Swinton on the set of Moonrise Kingdom.

Note Scarlett Johansson's inner Janet Leigh for Hitchcock.

Shia LaBeouf vows to only work in the independent/arthouse route from now on. Here he is with screenwriter/musician Nick Cave for Lawless.

Wonderboy Joseph Gordon-Levitt behind the scenes in Hong Kong with Rian Johnson for Looper.

Bane (Tom Hardy) goofs off behind the scenes of The Dark Knight Rises.

Straight ouf the glamour pages of the 1950s: Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone for Gangster Squad.

Scarlett Johansson was an early pick for Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's 2011 adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Here's the actress in W magazine and what she may have looked like for the role.

Lars von Trier and the cast of The Nymphomaniac, including the likes of Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, and Shia LaBeouf.

Olympic athlete Usain Bolt poses with Jason Statham at the Expendables 2 premiere, because why not?

Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob Zombie, and Jeff Daniel Phillips at TIFF to promote The Lords of Salem.

Here's Kristen Stewart. I like Kristen Stewart.

Noomi Rapace on the set of Prometheus in Iceland.

Wes Anderson looking fashionable in "interview mode" at Cannes.

Everyone's favorite summer blockbuster, The Avengers, and its amusing post-credits scene.

From the gaming world: The excellent Michael Mando as Vaas for Far Cry 3.

It may be from 2011, but it's too funny not to post. Tom Hardy annoys Gary Oldman at the premiere of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

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New Order: Favorite Films, 40-21

Miguel Penabella | 19 January 2013

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040. Meshes of the Afternoon | Maya Deren | 1943

Maya Deren’s definitive 1943 short features one of the most enigmatic figures in experimental cinema, that of the mirrored-face, reaper-esque character. The surprisingly terrifying presence of this figure further abstracts the moviegoing experience, dislocating us even further as Deren’s groundbreaking film trifles with highly conceptual editing and temporal experimentation. Meshes of the Afternoon loops back on itself with more intricacy than a Christopher Nolan or Rian Johnson film, and the film remains just as dreamlike without the need for flashy effects – just careful editing, imaginative camera tricks, and a little experimental ingenuity to make the entire experience incredibly fun.

039. Chungking Express | Wong Kar-wai | 1994

Wong Kar-wai captures the energy of a bustling Hong Kong on the verge of independence and approaching the new millennium that only a new wave film can. Featuring a lush, dreamy soundtrack and a pair of leads (Tony Leung, Faye Wong) that simmer with an infectious dynamism, Chungking Express glorifies 90s youth while American cinema was busy dealing with its slacker generation.

038. La Jetée | Chris Marker | 1962

An experimental short film told in a series of still images (save for one crucial second of movement), La Jetée is still the landmark time travel film and remains unsurpassed. For a film all about time, Chris Marker’s decision to slow everything down to still images feels revolutionary in its ambition, and it pays off. All other successors attempting to harness the complexity of time travel – Primer, 12 Monkeys, Looper – can only replicate a fraction of La Jetée’s haunting brilliance.

037. The Tree of Life | Terrence Malick | 2011

The Tree of Life contains some of the best philosophical voiceover in any Malick film, bolstered by Emmanuel Lubezki’s beautiful cinematography of angelic whites and sylvan greens and an extended creation of the universe sequence that delights with cinematic wonder. The film also provides an exquisitely moody performance from Jessica Chastain, with her character as one of the best in any of Malick’s works. Ultimately carrying the trademark poeticism of the enigmatic auteur’s mystical visual inserts and lovely philosophical ruminations, The Tree of Life simply operates with ideas as grand as those in 2001: A Space Odyssey yet feels achingly intimate and private.

036. Last Year at Marienbad | Alain Resnais | 1961

As one of cinema history’s most puzzling films, Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad presents evocative visuals with enough ambiguity to leave wide room for interpretation. The film’s hypnotic cinematography makes reality all the more unreal, but rather than trying to unravel the puzzle, I find myself more satisfied in remaining enraptured in the mystery of it all.

035. Inglourious Basterds | Quentin Tarantino | 2009

After endlessly paying tribute to grindhouse genres in Death Proof and Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino focuses attention elsewhere to redefine what it means to be a “Tarantino” film. Inglourious Basterds locates the auteur at his most mature, with a script no longer meandering and laid-back but with a clear agenda on its mind. He maintains his delicious revenge plotting and dialogue-heavy sequences, but Tarantino also packs a newfound tension with each sequence and deconstructs his own violence in its metanarrative film-within-a-film. Pile on one of the best ensemble casts assembled in recent memory while effortlessly weaving across multiple languages, and you have one of the best Tarantino flicks ever.

034. L’Avventura | Michelangelo Antonioni | 1960

L’Avventura proves that Michelangelo Antonioni is one of cinema’s most masterful storytellers, with his breakdown of existential ennui and a human failure to connect presented in a slow-paced, meditative, and drifting narrative. His intentional abstraction of plot and pacing leaves total aperture as mystifying as the characters that exist in the film. It’s fitting then, that the vague closing leaves no answers whatsoever, only an unsetting dénouement that burns deep into memory.

033. Dancer in the Dark | Lars von Trier | 2000

Dancer in the Dark remains my favorite musical of all time, even if Lars von Trier pushes the boundaries of the genre to an almost indefinable form. The lovely Björk, in her first and only film role, delivers a devastatingly beautiful performance with some of the best original music composed for a movie. Each musical set piece is a glorious moment of catharsis, especially when contrasted with Lars von Trier’s largely lo-fi digital shooting inspired by his Dogme 95 style.

032. The Passion of Joan of Arc | Carl Theodor Dreyer | 1928

Operating under the registrar of silent cinema, Dreyer emphasizes the expressive quality of film with Maria Falconetti’s iconic close-ups. These strikingly filmed portraitures are so evocative that characters from other films weep to it (see: Vivre Sa Vie) as Falconetti conveys every emotion in her tragically powerful facial expressions.

031. Spirited Away | Hayao Miyazaki | 2001

Wistful longing for childhood is one of the more palpable emotions in Spirited Away, but Hayao Miyazaki is insightful enough to move beyond the pale of nostalgia and towards a refreshing coming of age transformation. Unlike traditional children’s animated features, Miyazaki never presents a clear-cut good/evil dichotomy, instead presenting a phantasmagoric assemblage of folklore, surrealism, and even a biting subtextual commentary on contemporary Japanese social and economic woes. Simply put, Spirited Away remains one of animation’s shining achievements.

030. The Social Network | David Fincher | 2010

The crisp presentation of David Fincher’s direction, Aaron Sorkin’s rapid fire dialogue, and the coldly detached actors – Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Rooney Mara, and Justin Timberlake – will leave a lasting impression. The Social Network deliberately avoids an accurate chronicling of the founding of Facebook in favor of cinematic artistry, offering a character study on a self-consuming hero as profound as Charles Foster Kane or Daniel Plainview that also doubles as a sobering portrait of an entire generation.

029. Blade Runner | Ridley Scott | 1982

Ridley Scott hybridizes neon-drenched cyberpunk futurism, corporate artificial intelligence, and a unique throwback noir aesthetic in Blade Runner, tied only with 2001: A Space Odyssey as one of the most influential sci-fi films in history. The film’s existentially plagued detectives and rain-spattered urban hellholes comprise a sci-fi neo-noir with profound philosophical questions worth investigating.

028. Persona | Ingmar Bergman | 1966

Persona’s cryptic opening sequence anticipates the abstract means of storytelling that Bergman operates with, leaving us with a secretive cipher of a movie. The pair of female leads by Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson absolutely hypnotize in their performances, channeling a distinctly female id that would be replicated by later filmmakers (looking at you Lars von Trier) but would always be distinctly Ingmar Bergman.

027. The Night of the Hunter | Charles Laughton | 1955

Charles Laughton’s first and only film transforms a surreal fairytale into a shadowy nightmare world where whimsical innocence and deadly premonitions exist side by side. Robert Mitchum’s sinister villain – all sweet-talk and smiles but with a chilliness behind it all – stands as one of the most iconic antagonists ever, especially when Laughton’s visually arresting chiaroscuro cinematography and its menacing shadows threaten to overtake childhood innocence altogether.

026. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy | Peter Jackson | 2001-2003

Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy triptych embodies the pinnacle of modern blockbuster moviemaking, yet these films endure because of the small things: the nuanced performances by every single person in its immense ensemble cast, the clever use of forced perspective and richly detailed practical effects over the falsity of CGI, the sweeping soundtrack by Howard Shore, and the human charm and drama that never ceases to earn our appreciation.

025. Children of Men | Alfonso Cuarón | 2006

Alfonso Cuarón and Emmanuel Lubezki present one of the most visually arresting sci-fi films ever, with the dirtied vérité cinematography of a future dystopian London bursting with novel ideas. Channeling the post-9/11 unease of the world, Cuarón’s unbroken single takes travel through a ravaged landscape of over-crowdedness, tacky advertising, devastating pollution, xenophobia, urban decay and poverty, lingering post-colonial guilt, militarized police, and unseen terror. It’s one of the most groundbreaking sci-fi films ever made.

024. Annie Hall | Woody Allen | 1977

Annie Hall still contains some of Woody Allen’s best comedic writing, with its light and breezy 90 minute running time finding its characters stepping through memory and consciousness to philosophize, muse, and joke with a lovable playfulness. Diane Keaton’s lively animation is still one of cinema’s greatest pleasures and Allen’s self-deprecating condemnation of New Yorker intellectual elite (tinged with tongue-in-cheek psychoanalytic neuroses) has a wit sharper than even today’s best writers. The film’s fourth wall breaking and Kaufman-esque melancholy has a lighthearted ease that’s still as refreshing and funny as it was back in 1977… it’s simply a romantic comedy ahead of its time.

023. The Godfather: Part I & II  | Francis Ford Coppola | 1972-1974

The first two titles in The Godfather saga aren’t just stories about Mafioso gangsters. These films are also deeply enmeshed in the life of the immigrant, the desperate preservation of family, the breakdown of political structure, an appreciation for Italian and diasporic culture, and New York City itself. It’s in these ways that Francis Ford Coppola transcends the limitations of genre and elevates The Godfather to a status of masterpiece.

022. Vertigo | Alfred Hitchcock | 1958

I often juggle Vertigo and Psycho as Hitchcock’s most valuable films, but I prefer the sly meta critique inherent in this film as the director interrogates traditional modes of sexuality and character roles in classical Hollywood cinema. This year’s top 250 list from Sight & Sound places this film at number one, and I don’t hesitate in claiming Vertigo as one of cinema’s most enduring works of art, and Hitchcock’s best film.

021. The Big Lebowski | The Coen Brothers | 1998

The Coen brothers refract genre through the lens of the independent 90s, taking the language of a gangster flick and placing it in the context of absurdist stoner comedy. The Hichcockian “wrong man” trope at the core of the film’s narrative creates not a tense thriller but a nihilistic screwball comedy with bumbling protagonists just digging their own graves. The Big Lebowski is shrewdly funny with its sight gags, precise comic timing, non-sequiturs, and superb performances constructing an iconic portrait of the directionless era of the 1990s as momentous and meandering as that of Richard Linklater or early Kevin Smith.

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Hanna

Miguel Penabella | 5 January 2013

Hanna

Dir. Joe Wright, 2011

Joe Wright secures his role as one of the most unique filmmakers working today by pushing the boundaries of aesthetics, finding ways to make his films look and feel all the more “cinematic.” Films like Pride & Prejudice and Atonement capture a spectacularly maximalist theatrical style, an exquisite treat for the senses brought about by Wright’s fantastic rapport between his sounds and visuals. His films operate within the confines of traditional narrative filmmaking, yet Wright directs with unhinged bombast that makes for stunningly beautiful works. Showing off an excessively extravagant style like a cinematic version of a Kanye West song (see: “Power”), Wright demonstrates an understanding of how to exhibit overblown eye candy with a tasteful self-awareness in his excess (see: Anna Karenina). The director’s 2011 film Hanna presents a curious artistic statement for a director so enmeshed in period costume dramas, but his daring visuals remain. Detractors have often blasted Joe Wright as a director mired in a purgatory of all flash and no substance, but with his films, the substance is in the style. Wright delivers in the face of skepticism, unleashing a truly wild maelstrom of deliberately erratic visuals as if granted complete carte blanche with his direction. Additionally, Hanna also witnesses the director smartly upgrading his immaculate tastemaking to demonstrate a masterful command of mise-en-scène and camera movement. The film vomits out hyper-kinetic visuals that only a post-MTV cinematic landscape can deliver, with a pulse-pounding forward sense of urgency that propels the action with a music video-like intensity. Actress Saoirse Ronan’s spectral heroine cuts through enemies like a young Tarantino bride, carrying the torch from other young progenies wielding guns – Natalie Portman’s Mathilda or Chloë Moretz’s Hit-Girl – but Hanna transcends the standard rituals and clichéd follies of action films by swapping timeworn action for arthouse imaginativeness.

Hanna never aspires for hollow popcorn fun, as Wright’s camera refuses to relish in the bloody violence left behind by the rampaging titular character. Instead, the film’s main delight lies in its stylistic faux pas, rendering every single shot with a myriad of colors, pulsating electronic music, and dynamic camera movement dominating the cinematic experience. Blending the forward rush of a film like Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run and the slick packaging of Anton Corbijn’s anti-thriller The American, Wright escapes the relentlessly boring drudgery of mainstream action filmmaking and creates a warped hitman/revenge flick with a tantalizing sense of stylistic rhythm. Opening with an extended sequence in a monastery-esque cabin refuge in the snowy woodlands of Finland, Wright presents a backdrop that could have been the setting for Little Red Riding Hood. Folklore definitely plays an essential role in Hanna, reframing a conventional hitman story as an adolescent fairytale straight out of a storybook. Hanna’s father Erik (Eric Bana) trains her to become a stoic, killing warrior like something out of a martial arts film. All of the cold, ceaseless training is meant to prepare the young Bourne-esque assassin to settle unfinished business with Erik’s previous employer, the scornful C.I.A. officer Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett). Blanchett’s stony villain plays the fairytale role of a wicked witch or a big bad wolf, slowly preying upon Ronan’s innocuous little red riding hood: a later shot of a giant wolf only alludes to Wright’s Grimm fairytale inspirations. What transpires throughout the rest of Hanna is thrilleresque intrigue and buzzing chase sequences that build up to Hanna’s overall revenge plot. Despite its 111 minute running time, the film travels briskly, presenting its story wrapped up in Wright’s frenzied trance that features an extended run-in with a bourgeois European family vacationing in Morocco and Europe and an effeminate C.I.A. assassin named Isaacs (Tom Hollander) who swaggers like an outlandish Bond villain. The director even peppers in other stylistic flourishes like Wiegler’s bloody smirk (my, what big teeth you have!) and Hanna’s halcyon coming-of-age segment with the young tourist Sophie (Jessica Barden). The latter point reveals the emotional crux amidst Wright’s frenetic visuals, uncovering the inner kid hiding beneath the guise of a coldblooded killer.

Nevertheless, the majority of Joe Wright’s film remains a crucible of stylistic braggadocio that threatens to dwindle all human connection under the power of his visuals – but that’s perfectly permissible here. Like his contemporary Baz Luhrmann, Wright recognizes the maximalist pageantry that has defined his directorial finesse. Hanna bustles with a droning electronic score from The Chemical Brothers, driving the action forward like in the exquisite compound getaway set to “Escape 700.” The lightning quick camera pans, filters, topsy-turvy whooshes, zooms, single takes, and precise editing work reveals that there’s a lot going on in Joe Wright’s head. Simply basking in the audiovisual pleasure that Hanna unfolds is one of the most enjoyable action cinema experiences in recent memory, joined only by films like The Raid: Redemption and Haywire that match this film’s visual intricacy. Unlike his previous efforts Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and The Soloist, Wright doesn’t need to stick closely to his literary sources and instead has total autonomy in leaving a singular directorial stamp. Carefully constructed style and composition dominate the entire film, and Wright simply has fun with his freedom to experiment: shakycam, varying lenses, replays, and one-point perspectives abound throughout Hanna. Even The Chemical Brothers’s soundtrack oscillates with experimentation, ranging from pulsating trance to dreamy synths that set distinct moods for each scene. Furthermore, the pair of actresses at the film’s core demonstrates two incredible talents working with full commitment. Saoirse Ronan conveys the subtle tenderness beneath an assassin who’s all frenzy and rage; Hanna proves to be a damaged young psyche riddled with emotional scars after being so detached from anything other than total slaughter. And Cate Blanchett’s fiendish and hot-tempered villain sneers like a scornful Maleficent, plotting death and treachery with an uncanny gracefulness that makes her savage tantrums all the more terrifying.

The visual and editing precision that Joe Wright accomplishes with Hanna may be some of the best work he’s done (perhaps only outdone by the even more extravagant Anna Karenina), and this film certainly finds new energy for the standard espionage thriller after Bourne has come and gone. The film does slow down towards the end of the film and fails to recapture the vitality of the first half, but Hanna keeps on running with Wright’s eye-catching compositions that make the movie a wild rollercoaster of an experience. With action choreography filmed like rhythmic dance and mise-en-scène as wildly imagined as German Expressionism, Hanna is uniquely constructed as one of the most satisfying action films in years. Joe Wright seeks nothing more than an honest intention to stun his audiences with an unhinged film dripping with style, and Hanna transcends this goal with its impeccable leads and gloriously rapturous execution.

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The Dark Knight Rises

Miguel Penabella | 4 January 2013

The Dark Knight Rises

Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2012

“You think this can last? There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

For those of us who look upon Christopher Nolan as a hack director, The Dark Knight Rises comes along to both challenge and verify such a claim. The liabilities that anchor Nolan’s direction down are all present here – David S. Goyer’s murky politicizing, shoddy pacing, too many broad allusions and ideas in a single package, a lack of coherent human drama – and ultimately make The Dark Knight Rises predictably bloated and occasionally tacky. Nolan’s extensive array of characters undermines deeper characterization and genuine human drama in a vain attempt to construct an intricate network of ideologies within Gotham City, and The Dark Knight Rises’s lack of restraint also squanders the talents of an otherwise excellent cast. Yet despite the film’s fair share of misfires and creaky faults, Nolan still assembles a higher quality summer blockbuster than most, or at least one less relentlessly mind-numbing. As a filmmaker, Nolan’s complex approach of unraveling his stories has rarely failed him (see: Memento, The Prestige), and with his Batman franchise, he’s also developed a blockbuster dexterity that transforms these narratives into expansive and open-ended films. The Dark Knight Rises is grandiloquently cinematic in the most blockbuster of ways, with its bloated running time stuffed with grand ideas and memorable set-pieces to push the limits of what popcorn filmmaking can accomplish. Nevertheless, the film remains a fractured work despite its ambitions, with true artistry and narrative brilliance hindered under the limitations of genre. The Dark Knight Rises has a lot to say about class, self-sacrifice, hope, anarchy, order, and law, but all these ideas are crammed into a form that simply cannot hold these ideas in a tangible package. The limitations of blockbuster filmmaking (especially that of a comic book adaptation) force Christopher Nolan to focus on simple theatricality and brainless spectacle to attract any and all audiences, thus leaving its artistic merit incomplete.

Looking at Nolan’s Batman trilogy holistically, these summer blockbusters fit neatly into one unified whole in which each title represents an individual act in the larger story. Rather than as separate pieces, the collective Batman saga signifies Nolan’s storytelling talents at its peak. If his masterpiece The Prestige has anything to tell us, it’s that Christopher Nolan has mastered the fundamentals of a three-act narrative. With his Batman trilogy, Nolan translates The Prestige’s rules for a three-act magic trick into pure cinematic showmanship, thus aligning him with magicians-turned-filmmakers like Georges Méliès and their concern for wowing an audience with spectacle. In The Prestige, Nolan deconstructs a magic trick into three acts: The Pledge (introducing an ordinary act), The Turn (transforming ordinary into extraordinary), and The Prestige (tying everything up to make audiences believe in the magic). It’s no surprise that Nolan applies this basic setup to his Batman trilogy, offering his initial act with the straightforward Batman Begins before upturning the nature of law and order in The Dark Knight, spiriting away his titular hero at the very climax of the series. Thus, if The Dark Knight Rises were to fall under the narrative arc that The Prestige explains, bringing back a redemptive Batman would be the only logical conclusion. Indeed, The Dark Knight Rises includes plenty of visual references to rising and falling, mirroring the undulating narrative arc itself with its big-budget peaks and emotional downturns that bespeak Nolan’s mastery of narrative arrangement.

As individual films, however, the Batman films begin to lose their majesty. Before The Dark Knight Rises can even launch its caped crusade through the neo-noir pulp of Gotham City, we spend a ridiculously long exposition simply brooding about with a forlorn Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) eight years after the events of The Dark Knight. The image of a downtrodden Wayne awaiting a redemptive comeback recalls the work of the landmark graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, but devoid of any sense of mood. The opening scenes of the echoing halls of a lonely Wayne mansion lack the emotional weightiness of a man drained of hope; instead, Nolan merely tells, not demonstrates, this loneliness through Wayne’s trusted butler Alfred (Michael Caine) as a mouthpiece. Unlike Orson Welles’s depiction of maddening isolation in Citizen Kane (a film in which Nolan draws much inspiration from here), The Dark Knight Rises remains automatically contrived in its eliciting of emotions, simply telling rather than letting performance and mise-en-scène convey mood. Even after action begins to rise, the film still features an overlong running time with an excess of characters with separate backstories and motivations that vie to bring the film crashing down altogether. Christopher Nolan has no sense of economy with The Dark Knight Rises, electing such a big ensemble that each character arc transpires haphazardly throughout the film. As the plot wears on, many of his characters simply become one-note with the exception of a select few. Luckily, Nolan has a knack for offering imaginative characterizations of Batman’s rogues gallery, with Bane (Tom Hardy) and Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) delivering two equally superb performances.

The film follows the exploits of Bane as he fuels urban anarchy and class warfare within a crumbling Gotham City, capitalizing on the departure of Batman after the events of The Dark Knight. Amassing an underground army, Bane’s subterranean stratagem witnesses evil and corruption finally erupting to the surface, and like the aforementioned graphic novel on which this film is partially based, Batman must reemerge to address Bane’s chokehold on the city. Images of civil unrest from the French Revolution to more contemporary issues like Occupy Wall Street abound throughout the film, yet Nolan robs Gotham City of its grubby personality necessary for this kind of storyline. In Batman Begins, the city really looked oppressive, with the split image of a sparkling, aboveground financial sector and a dingy, underground slum betraying the class division that has brought about this conflict to begin with. With The Dark Knight Rises, Gotham’s locale switches from Chicago to Manhattan, and the humanizing portrayal of the working class Narrows cedes to the impassive skylines of the moneyed downtown. Bane’s reign of terror never truly looks as harsh as the status quo of the Narrows in Begins; in fact, the citizens of Gotham remain relatively tame throughout the film except for one kid who steals an apple. The underlying class struggle that Nolan implies never comes to fruition visually even though a film like Batman Begins reveals the director’s capacity to do just that. Frequent monologues appear throughout the film, noting the instability of the ruling classes like a popcorn version of Cosmopolis, and yet Nolan doesn’t offer an actual clash between the moneyed elite and the disgruntled but of mercenaries and police. For a film all about the disadvantaged, the movie poorly represents Gotham’s everyman as reactionary and reckless – less a political allegory and more just a demonstration of weak writing.

Only the chaotic kangaroo court scene presided by none other than Dr. Crane (Cillian Murphy) translates the imagination of the comics on the big screen, with an insane shot of the loopy tyrant towering over Gotham’s wealthy. The problem with Batman’s politics on law, order, class, and power lies in Nolan’s insistence on his films’ self-serious politicking that aims to condescend rather than instigate dialogue with its audience. Christopher Nolan’s films work better as straightforward heist films with intriguing characters, and discussion often revolves around just that. However, this film’s stubborn resolve for political relevance leaves The Dark Knight Rises problematic, as the filmmakers barely hide the underlying marketing ploy to capitalize on the past year of protest and revolution as movie-of-the-moment pretense. Instead, Nolan and his screenwriter David S. Goyer’s Occupy-inspired visual metaphors of haggard, class-conscious marchers serve as murky, propagandist allegorizing instead of worthwhile cinematic discourse. The film paints its populist movement under Bane as disruptive chaos that leads to rule by madmen, ultimately concluding in a realignment of the status quo under Gotham’s distant, moneyed elite and a (if Batman Begins has anything to tell us) crooked police force. Obviously, the dubious framing of populist movement as destructive mobocracy betrays the film’s awkward politics that couldn’t be any more removed from reality. Nolan continues his despotic portrayal of the torture-happy, secret surveillance-prone Batman (in the context of both post-9/11 politics and Occupy) with aplomb, ultimately concluding with his billionaire hero securing the very structure that preserves his wealth. Rather than reorganizing Gotham’s deteriorating political structure responsible for the city’s extreme wealth disparity, The Dark Knight Rises merely conceals the workings of politics and law in an attempt to restore the status quo (unlike a more levelheaded film like Watchmen, in which Alan Moore’s characters doubted the fabrication of truth and power). Instead, Nolan and Goyer’s anti-populist slant remains messily convoluted, and if were to extend Goyer’s Occupy rhetoric here, The Dark Knight Rises represents a kind of naïve fantasy tale spun for the 1%.

Bane’s declaration that he rules on behalf of Gotham’s impoverished serves as empowerment for a city devoid of hope. Such language indicates the French Revolution angle of the film more so than the Occupy imagery, with Nolan’s pathetic masses easily controlled by a Robespierre-like reign of terror. The Dark Knight Rises offers an unbelievably ridiculous solution to fix Nolan’s three-film politicizing, ultimately concluding with his kindly corporate billionaire donning his flying rodent latex once again as a symbol of justice (?). Frankly, the Batman films have always been extremely self-serious and cynically gritty to a fault, and David S. Goyer’s contradictory screenwriting worsens the entire ordeal. The entire film plays out like a revenge fantasy against Gotham’s fraudulent, moneyed elite who harbor no sympathy for the masses who live in crime-ridden slums; of course, the leader who champions the poor is Bane, the villain. Selina Kyle chastises the excessively wealthy to a seemingly understanding Bruce Wayne, and yet Batman upholds the structure that creates these irresponsible billionaires. Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) abhors the corruption of law and order within Gotham City, but Nolan chooses to fetishize the police force. The film’s shadowy hero advocates for justice and morality, yet operates outside the law with techniques that border on Guantanamo torture. Simply put, The Dark Knight Rises never has a solid stance on anything it presents – Nolan and Goyer seem unwilling (or worse, unable) to choose on a single point to center their narrative on.

Even though the film’s politics are irreparably baffling, Nolan at least manages to get some of his characters in tiptop shape. Tom Hardy works total role commitment as Bane, conveying the villain’s terrific stature and violence with a visceral immediacy. Channeling the muscular monstrosity from his previous gig in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson, Hardy doesn’t even need to illustrate his violence through kinetic action but by simply parading his physical stature. Nolan’s camera documents every inch of Bane’s goliath muscles, with oppressive shots from below idolizing his sheer body size. Nevertheless, Bane proves to be much more than pure visceral power because Tom Hardy conveys a colorful personality beneath the masked criminal. Hardy’s Bane swaggers and struts with poise, clenching at his vest and speaking with a calm, gentlemanly accent that makes the villain all the more terrifying. Radiating a cool self-assurance, Bane carries a jovial, almost inquisitive tone as he talks down to his characters (“And this gives you power over me?”), serving as a complete foil to Batman’s exceptionally gruff voice. Make no mistake, however: Hardy unleashes the character’s inner menace with formidable power, with his various close-combat fights against Batman conveying the pure sensory impact of every hit. Hardy knows how to fight (see: Warrior), and Nolan accentuates the visceral atmosphere of these bouts by toning down his music into a dark, echoing chamber of savage punches.

The franchise’s other newcomer Anne Hathaway delivers an outstanding performance as Selina Kyle, conveying the character’s duplicitous nature with a frustrated insecurity over her own ethics. Like the cat burglar she plays, Hathaway steals the show, avoiding a lousy, simplified approach to her Catwoman in favor of a much better developed accomplice to Batman than the Dawes character will ever be. Hathaway brings a mix of refined sexuality and charisma to the role, weaponizing her charm and cunning like the similarly leather-clad (and of course, well-written) Black Widow in The Avengers. Moreover, Nolan reframes the character with a tasteful style after the wreck of previous incarnations of Catwoman, never forcing the camera into weird angles to accentuate pandering sexuality. Instead, Hathaway’s character retains her allure and wit without resorting to condescending fan service; her own moral ambiguity bespeaks a well-written female character for a series in desperate need of one. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the lovely Marion Cotillard’s Miranda Tate, an equally twofaced love interest for Bruce Wayne. Cotillard’s mix of beauty and talent has been well established in films like La Vie en Rose, Midnight In Paris, Rust and Bone, and even Nolan’s own Inception, but the overstuffed ensemble here confines her screen time to second-rate supporting role. Tate never truly comes across as a fully characterized figure, instead merely serving as a plot device in the last twenty minutes of the film just to bring the trilogy full circle. 

Marion Cotillard isn’t the only one who suffers from the overbearing ensemble that Nolan delivers, as the franchise’s trio of veterans – Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman – is relegated to the sideline with one-note performances. Caine admittedly delivers a rousing last bow as Alfred, especially when he breaks down in a moment of humanizing fragility towards the end of the film. Both Freeman and Oldman are earnest, welcoming faces, but Nolan awkwardly marginalizes these two actors with negligible functions within the overall narrative arc. The introduction of Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the series also proves narratively insignificant despite his likability as a hotshot young cop, ultimately concluding with the character as just another piece of plot device. Despite the unwieldy handling of the film’s disproportionate cast, Nolan has a half-decent crew that delivers a clean and polished product. Wally Pfister continues his gorgeous widescreen IMAX cinematography from Inception, with noir-inspired shots of crisp lines, tailored suits, matte surfaces, and muted colors that brilliantly convey a unique style. Numerous upwards shots and sprawling wide lens cinematography express the sheer spectacle of the blockbuster and the imposing nature of Batman’s villains, even if Nolan himself doesn’t quite understand how to maintain dramatic insight on his visuals (like the Scarecrow in Batman Begins, Bane exits abruptly from the series). Hans Zimmer’s wildly bombastic score also lacks dramatic intuition, instead preferring the overblown percussion that drowns out any sort of tension. Only the anarchic strings and chants of “Gotham’s Reckoning” and the delicate piano of Selina Kyle’s theme “Mind If I Cut In?” resonate with any cinematic clarity.

Shoddy pacing and an overblown narrative arc further contributes to The Dark Knight Rises’s lack of coherent cinematic drama, with Nolan’s reapplication of the hero’s journey via Wayne’s ordeal at the Lazarus Pit-esque prison receiving poor dramatic treatment. Nolan uses this segment to interweave backstory and develop Bane’s chokehold on Gotham City, but the lack of a truly cathartic reawakening leaves the entire segment gracelessly handled. Bruce Wayne’s ultimate revelation at the prison – a sort of concession on the relationship between fear and inner drive – proves useless and anti-climactic towards the latter half of the film because Batman never applies this teaching, instead preferring sheer strength and explosive action over human resolve and sharp intellect. The entire sequence feels like a lazy montage to slowly build anticipation for the explosive finale to come, emphasizing the true interests of Christopher Nolan and his crew. But let’s be honest, audiences flock to Nolan’s films for his big spectacle heists because they are incredibly entertaining. Although the director hasn’t matched the quality of his forbearer Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider), heist-inspired moments like the ambitious opening sequence and the stock exchange attack magnificently employ Nolan’s knack for big-budget spectacle. Just don’t praise him as a particularly thoughtful filmmaker.

Nevertheless, the last twenty minutes of the film halfheartedly challenges the liabilities of Nolan’s direction to admittedly worthwhile results. Although Nolan completely ruins Bane’s humanizing backstory with a cute one-liner from Selina Kyle, I’ll concede that the actual plot twist caught me off guard. That a film as overblown as The Dark Knight Rises can still muster up surprises attests once again to Nolan’s ability to focalize his narrative around something to divert attention away from the real magic at work. The film gives many indications of Miranda Tate’s true role throughout the film (including a terrific cameo from Liam Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul), but like The Prestige explains, we want to be fooled. Even Batman’s final disappearing act and his reemergence right before the triumphant closing credits harkens back to The Prestige’s three-act teachings. Nolan even gives a fairly lengthy and clear paper trail detailing Wayne’s steps to anonymity with Selina Kyle, completely refuting fandom’s obsession with labeling Nolan as “ambiguous” or “subversive.” As for a logical explanation of the simultaneous, unrelated disappearances of both Wayne and Batman… let’s not think about it and just enjoy the scenery, shall we?

The unrestrained three hours of The Dark Knight Rises features a convoluted story that introduces too many big ideas and too many new characters without any sense to slow down and unravel coherent human drama. Even when Christopher Nolan hints at deeper emotional resonance underneath his popcorn spectacle, the film overflows with a cacophony of a billion things happening all at the same time, leaving the entire ordeal uneven and messily executed. While the film is certainly an entertaining piece of blockbuster filmmaking, Nolan and Goyer’s stubborn insistence on political subtext and social relevance sours the cinematic experience with superficial understanding and contradictory stances on its issues. The Dark Knight Rises signifies Nolan working at his most grand scale, and yet despite the exemplary organization of his jumbled parts into a somewhat unified whole, the film still lacks a dramatic coherence that would elevate the Batman trilogy above mere popcorn filmmaking. Thus, underneath the claims of gritty pop realism and pseudo-intellectual commentary on the ongoing global financial crisis, The Dark Knight Rises remains mere fairytale.

“No one cared who I was until I put on the mask…”

[freetea-blog]

A Year in Review: The Ten Best Videogames of 2012

Justin Keever | 3 January 2013

2012 turned out to be a surprisingly strong year for gaming, with both excellent AAA and indie titles, the very best of which I have listed below for your viewing pleasure:  

10. Dishonored

                It’s very rare nowadays that a game can impress me on gameplay alone, but Dishonored managed to do just that, crafting a creative power fantasy from the blueprint of the original Deus Ex, but with gameplay that is far more intuitive and enjoyable than any of the games from which it takes inspiration. Yeah, I said it.  Dishonored finds the perfect balance of player empowerment and challenge, keeping the game interesting to play from start to finish. The powers at Corvo’s disposal complement each other perfectly, allowing for seamless transition from stealth to combat and back again, and can be used together or with Corvo’s conventional weapons in a multitude of creative ways. Really, “complement” is the perfect word to describe just why Dishonored is so good. The powers are complemented not only by each other, but by the level design itself, which provides several different paths to the main objective, encouraging exploration and creative power usage. Add onto that a Steampunk/Bioshock art style, and you’ve got a game that plays great, looks great, and derives enough of its ideas from enough different places to where the game as a whole paradoxically feels unique. It’s a real pity that the game’s story is poorly told, that the game’s celebrity voice cast is rather weak across the board, and that we’re stuck with yet another soulless silent protagonist. But against the odds, Dishonored makes it on this list by simply looking so good and playing so goddamn well.  

9. Forza Horizon

                 The power of escapist fantasy has never been lost on me, and that is honestly the main reason I loved Forza Horizon as much as I did. Horizon is one of the few non-story based games I’ve played recently where I allowed myself to get lost in the fantasy, and, as silly as it sounds, I honestly felt like a damn driver. This is a feeling I’ve never gotten from any other racing game I’ve played, and I can’t point to a single element of Horizon that elevates it above other racers. It’s everything working in tandem: the beautiful open world, the excellent car models, the immaculate, realistic sound design, the excellent simulation controls, the reasonably difficult AI opponents, and the (mostly) great soundtrack that create a truly stunning, engrossing whole. Forza Horizon finds the perfect balance of arcade and simulation, with a blistering sense of speed and forgiving crashes being balanced by realistic controls and an emphasis on careful driving to win races. It’s a pity that the game suffers from a fair amount of bugs and the multiplayer is a laggy mess, but these shortcomings don’t sour the experience enough to say it isn't one of the best games of the year.

8. Persona 4 Arena

                I love Inaba. I love the characters I met there; I love the music that played as I explored the town and the many dungeons I braved inside the TV world. I loved giving out orders to my persona and my party, watching as the manifestations of our stalwart hearts duked it out with powerful shadows. Hell, I loved the style of the menus. And all of these elements remain in Persona 4 Arena, so how could I help but love it, too? As I first started the game and first began to navigate the Main Menu, I was overcome with a powerful pang of emotion I can only describe as nostalgic elation. Familiar music played as I looked out over the Northern Shopping District, rendered in the background. The familiar faces and music from Persona 3 are equally as welcome. And it doesn’t hurt, naturally, that all of this Persona content and style is attached to an exciting, intuitive fighting game. There’s a great sense of flow to the combat, as different moves easily blend together, and the game is balanced in such a way that a come-from-behind victory never seems too impossible. It’s extremely disappointing that the story (stories, really) are told via a largely non-interactive, occasionally tedious, and sometimes not particularly well-written visual novel, but the voice acting is good enough, the humor funny enough, and the story interesting enough for me to look past that specific shortcoming, and confidently declare that Persona 4 Arena is my eighth favorite game of the year. 

7. Max Payne 3

                Max Payne 3 is something of a strange beast, taking a traditionally silly noir-themed slow-mo shooter series and moving it (for the most part) into a new setting, dismissing the plotlines of the previous titles almost entirely, and introducing an entirely new cast of characters. But most importantly, Max Payne 3 has a much darker tone than any of the prior games, doing away with the awful graphic novel cutscenes in favor of actual cinematics, telling a more grounded, darker narrative, and ratcheting up the violence from merely bloody to utterly grotesque. Seriously, the look and sound of bullets piercing flesh in Max Payne 3 is gut wrenching, shocking stuff, which makes it strange that I enjoyed Max Payne 3 as much as I did. Rockstar has finally crafted a game with excellent combat, thanks tight controls, the perfect level of challenge, and superb level design, and might I say an excellent targeting reticle that is simple, unobtrusive, and functional. Yep, you can’t beat a dot. The game is a technical powerhouse, with absurd levels of detail, great animations and character models, and brilliant sound design. Add onto that a great soundtrack from Health, and you’ve got a game that is an absolute blast to play. It doesn’t hurt, naturally, that the protagonist, Max, is a really interesting character. Max has become a sad soul, an alcoholic drug addict who is just trying to forget his past and do something right, an unwitting tool of violence looking for a way out. And it’s the story of Max that elevates Max Payne 3 from being merely being enjoyable to amazing.

6. Thomas Was Alone

                Mike Bithell’s little game about a collection of shapes becoming friends and working together to escape from the clutches of a pixel cloud monster is the most utterly delightful, charming game I played during 2012. The game has an excellent minimalist style, an exceptional color palette, and great atmospheric lighting. But what makes Thomas Was Alone so special is Bithell’s ability to bring so many disparate elements together to infuse his fellowship of quadrilaterals with an incredible amount of personality. The animation, sound effects,  and differences in the way that the individual shapes control, combined with the excellent voiceover work from Danny Wallace (whom you may recognize as Shaun Hastings in Assassin’s Creed) work together in tandem to create some of the best, most likeable characters of the year. The game captures the imagination, giving the player enough information about each character’s personality and mannerisms to where imagination can take over, as dialogues between the naïve, happy-go-lucky Thomas, the cynical Chris, and the others effortlessly form in the player’s mind, making the narrative feel all the more personal. Even more astounding is the way the mechanics of the puzzles represent the friendship between Thomas and his friends, as the player swaps characters, using each other’s unique abilities to work together to solve puzzles and “move up and to the right.” The puzzles aren’t difficult at all, but the sense of camaraderie the mechanics evoke is undeniable, and just adds to the overwhelming charm. But there is more to Thomas than charm; the game has quite a few truly heart wrenching moments, but all in service of an ending as uplifting and satisfying as you could hope for.  

5. Hotline Miami

                There seem to be a lot of people out there that really love Hotline Miami, but very few that actually seem to get it, or at least appreciate what lies beneath the retro aesthetic, the music and the brutal violence. That’s not to say that the 80’s aesthetic (so reminiscent of 2011’s Drive that Nicolas Winding Refn is listed in the credits), brilliant Electronic soundtrack and brutal violence aren’t a significant part of the appeal, because they certainly are. The tight controls and gory violence make the game’s ultra-fast and extremely difficult combat an absolute blast. The game is always difficult, but never feels punishing, as quick restarts and reasonable stage lengths keep the game fun and rewarding throughout. That is, until the game shoves your nose in what you've done at the end of each level, stopping the pulsating music and playing ambient tones as we have to walk through the building we just assaulted, stepping through blood, bodies and entrails. This is where the true genius of Hotline Miami begins to show. The game starts as an intriguing mystery, as enigmatic figures in masks speak to our protagonist in a surreal opening sequence. We are then thrown into the game’s graphic violence, committing unspeakable acts of murder in the name of solving this mystery. The game never even tells us explicitly to kill, but we do it anyway. We are never promised any answers from the game as a reward for brutally murdering dozens of NPCs. And when we begin to demand answers, the game mocks us, diving further and further into a confusing disreality until we finally reach the conclusion that there is no answer. It was all for fun. The audience is taken aback, insulted almost, that the game would think killing is so much fun. A man’s face sneers at us as we realize that it was.

4. Journey

                Journey is probably the most accessible work that thatgamecompany has released thus far, but this sudden appeal to mainstream taste winds up not being a negative; just the opposite, because Journey is probably the most beautiful, moving game that the developer has created yet.  Frankly, I find it hard to write about Journey, because words feel limiting when trying to recreate what was so excellent about the actual experience of playing it. I could tell you that Journey lets you explore some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring landscapes that I’ve ever seen, and that the sense of mystery and awe it evokes in the player has not been matched by any other game, ever, but that doesn’t feel like enough. It’s the sort of thing that needs to be experienced, because it will absorb you. The game’s title is apt, because despite the short length (which is honestly perfect) the organic flow of the levels and the sense of cohesion and identity created by the consistent, yet varied art design make you feel as if you have traveled in a foreign land, with its own past and culture. In fact, if I was forced to point out a flaw in Journey, it would be that it shows a prompt when the game is saving. It is the only thing that pulls you out of the illusion. Everything else; the animation, the score and all of the other aspects of sound design, the art, everything about the game is perfect. It is behind the next few entries on this list by the slimmest of margins, and Journey’s position here speaks only to the strength of the titles released this year, not to any weaknesses in thatgamecompany’s work. Journey is the amazing product of a  dedicated, collaborative artistic vision and it shows.

3.  Mass Effect 3 (post EC)

                I had an epiphany recently, wherein I realized that the Mass Effect trilogy is to games what The Lord of the Rings is to film. Both are not overly thematically complex, and their execution is flawed, but they have just the right mix of epic action and human drama to be emotionally engrossing, with incredibly well realized worlds that millions of people have loved and experienced. But no matter how many people have played Mass Effect, when I sit down and play the trilogy, I feel like the experience is mine, and mine alone. And that’s not because of the game’s conversation options, or morality system. It’s the art design, the characters, the scenarios I find myself in, the depth of the lore, and the sense of wonder that makes the Mass Effect trilogy so special to me. In some ways, the series is as good as it’s ever been in its final chapter, with improved combat and meaningful changes to the dialogue system that allow the player to respond less rigidly, simultaneously giving the different paragon and renegade options more tangible consequences. But perhaps most importantly, Mass Effect 3 effectively ends Shepard’s story in an epic fashion that never loses sight of what the series has been about from the very beginning: the characters. In what might be my favorite addition, the crew of the Normandy actually moves around and interacts with one another, a simple little feature that goes a long way, both in terms of characterization and in encouraging the player to explore the Normandy thoroughly and often.

But perhaps I can convey more through a little anecdote, if you’ll allow me. There is a moment near the end of Mass Effect 3 where, in the midst of the final battle on Earth, I managed to find enough time to have a conversation with Garrus, right before the last push against the Reapers began. As we talked, it was clear that he and I knew the end was coming, that after we started this final assault, we’d never see one another again. Shepard knew too, but that didn’t matter. I sat there, conversing with my friend, dreading having to take the final few steps I needed to take to finish the fight. Because I knew, and so did Garrus, that all of this was coming to an end. And I didn’t want it to.

And goddamnit, I liked the Extended Cut ending.

2. The Walking Dead

                 I didn’t play the Walking Dead when the individual episodes were released digitally, but opted instead to wait for the physical release. As a result, I played the entire series over the space of about a week, and was completely consumed in the TellTale’s expertly crafted narrative. To say that I cared more about the fate of Lee and Clementine than any other characters in any game I’ve ever played sounds like a dramatic exaggeration, but to quote Justin’s catchphrase from Catherine, it’s the truth. The Walking Dead wisely uses the zombie apocalypse as a backdrop for human drama, as Lee struggles to protect Clementine from the worst sides of humanity, trying to preserve what little innocence is left in the world as violence and distrust have become the norm. The Walking Dead expertly balances tragedy and hope, with a litany of shocking moments that are juxtaposed with moments of genuine peace. You are forced to make truly difficult decisions, forcing the audience to explore moral greys in a way that games have claimed to in the past, but never succeeded in exploring until now. The Walking Dead is not scary, per se, but features some of the best tension in any horror game, ever. It is smartly written, perfectly paced, and builds towards one of the most heartbreaking finales I’ve ever seen, not just in games, but any narrative medium.

                The Walking Dead isn’t just incredibly good, it’s incredibly important for a multitude of reasons. First, it is one of the few games out there that stars a black man that isn’t racially insensitive in any way, and features a child character that has her own unique personality and motivations, and is likely one of the best child characters in the history of fiction. It has also brought adventure games back into the public eye. While playing through The Walking Dead, I was reminded of a conversation I had with Miguel, during which he posed the question as to why there aren’t any gaming dramas, where the primary action is simply talking with other characters. Well, here it is. The Walking Dead is at its best during the conversations, thanks not only to its excellent writing, but to its nearly perfect dialogue system. Its excellence makes a case for Adventure games to be the genre in which we will see the great gaming dramas in the future. It also perfects player choice, by acknowledging the limits of games as a medium. As much as it seems the collective gaming audience would like to deny it, it is in no way possible for developers to craft an infinite number of narratives based on the individual choices a player has made over the course of a game. TellTale understands this, and what they give us is a narrative where the major plot points remain the same no matter what, but the context in which they occur can vary wildly. This basic understanding of the limitations of games is incredibly important, and the Walking Dead is able to work around it to great success.

1. Spec Ops: The Line

                It’s fairly rare that a game will change the way you think about games. Even rarer is the game that forever changes the way you view yourself. Spec Ops: The Line is both of these. Disguised as a forgettable modern military 3rd person shooter, The Line offers instead the most powerful, scathing critique of the modern military shooter the gaming industry has ever seen, as well as an analysis of the player’s relationship to the avatar they control, and how complicit the player is in the violence they enact onscreen. There’s a certain satisfying irony that a series that was once one of the many sub-par, jingoistic military shooters of the early 2000s has now been resurrected as what can most easily be described as the complete polar opposite of that; an intelligent condemnation of the power fantasy that war shooters provide. Spec Ops: The Line is not a game that is meant to be enjoyed. The controls are basic and unintuitive in a way reminiscent of the very best survival horror games, making basic actions just difficult enough to be stressful and frustrating, making combat an agonizing, painful experience. That makes it sound like the controls are broken, but they aren’t. Spec Ops is perfectly functional, but does away with some of the modern treatments given to shooter controls, like aim assist and the ability to pick up and throw live grenades. All of these omissions, along with AI that is sometimes painfully difficult and a woeful lack of ammunition on the battlefield, are meant to frustrate the player, making every success feel sweeter. The game goes as far as to slow down time when the player scores a headshot, and allows them to watch as the head of their adversary is reduced to a red mist. In just about every other military game, a feature like this is supposed to satisfy us, rewarding our prowess with digital rifles with a healthy dose of gore. It becomes apparent, over time, that Spec Ops doesn’t want us to be happy about this. We are supposed to get a good look at what we’ve done. We’ve ended a life, and we’ve done so without mercy.

                There is a point in Spec Ops where we are face to face with the antagonist, and he speaks briefly to our avatar, Captain Martin Walker, and says “This is your fault, Walker. You did this. Not me.” A loading screen mocks us, saying “This is all your fault.” We see characters in the story blame our avatar, Walker for all of the horror that plays out over the course of the game. No, says Walker, it is the fault of the antagonist, Col. Konrad. The man we never see, the man that never gives an order. So Walker presses on, changing his endgame at the end of each chapter, until he becomes a man consumed with rage, a final goal to simply bury his enemy in the city where they’ve chosen to make their last stand. Their last stand against what, you may ask. The player, I answer. As Walker continues his plight, we follow him, commanding him the whole way, in our even more desperate quest to feel like a hero. We cling to the hope that the next man we shoot will somehow make us feel empowered, the emotion we have come to expect from our shooters. But it never comes, because Spec Ops doesn’t want us to be empowered. It wants to remind us that we’re killers. There is a moment that comes late in the game, after a vicious series of firefights among wrecked ships, where we are punished for what we’ve done for the citizens of Dubai. They finally decided to strike back against the men who caused them so much strife. Reflecting on it, I can’t blame them. But in the moment, I was infuriated. I had gone through so much just to be rewarded with a sight that made me truly sick to my stomach. It was the moment I knew salvation for Walker and I would never come. I felt a seething hate for these people as I turned to face them. They just looked at me. None of them were armed. I had a choice, in this moment, of turning my gun to the air and firing to scare them away, or to kill. I slaughtered every civilian I could. Spec Ops pushed me to my breaking point, and broke me. I don’t often think about this moment, but when I do, I can’t look at myself in a mirror.

                Spec Ops is a brilliant game, with an excellent soundtrack, brilliant performances, and great art design that is absolutely drenched in symbolism. The mechanics aren’t as tight as they are in, say, Gears of War 3, but they aren’t just as means to transport us to the end, they actually mean something. But most of all, Spec Ops: The Line is a game that revealed the darkness within me and forced me to acknowledge it. Thanks to Yager’s masterpiece, my perception of myself has changed forever. Spec Ops: The Line is the best game of the year, and should be considered one of the greatest games of all time.

[freetea-blog]

A Year in Review: 2012 Videogame Awards

Justin Keever | 3 January 2013 

Hello, Free Tea! It’s been a long time, but I’m back to share with you Free Tea With Purchase’s videogame awards for 2012! So without further ado:

Worst Oversight I Made Whilst Crafting My Top 10 in 2011: The Stanley Parable

          The Stanley Parable should have been number 2 on my top ten list last year. Davey Wrenden’s funny, intellectual stimulating mod effectively deconstructs choice in gaming narrative, in a deliciously meta story of a man named Stanley and his journey to escape the control of the narrator, who will tell his story about Stanley whether or not Stanley wants any part of it. I would say more, but I don’t wish to say anything that would be too redundant with what my colleague has written, which you can find here. The Stanley parable is free to download, only requires that you have the Source SDK (which is also free), so go play it, now.

Best Performance: Nolan North (Martin Walker; Spec Ops: The Line)

          It almost seems unfair to give this award to one of the most recognizable names in videogame voice acting, but North gives the best performance of his career as Captain Martin Walker, protagonist (?) of Spec Ops: The Line.  North’s immaculate delivery is probably the most important component of the transformation of Walker from a wisecracking videogame hero to hate-fueled psychopath. As the end of the game looms, Walker becomes downright terrifying, as North expertly portrays a man who lets the violence that occurs around him (and because of him) consume him, break him, and reduce him to a vengeful animal. North’s portrayal of a man going insane is the most chilling, and most believable performance of the year. This man is one of the best at his craft, and it truly shows in Spec Ops: The Line.

Runners Up: Dave Fennoy (Lee; The Walking Dead), Melissa Hutcherson (Clementine; The Walking Dead), Danny Wallace (Narrator: Thomas Was Alone), James McCaffrey (Max Payne; Max Payne 3)

Best Soundtrack: Journey

                I firmly believe that the proper way to judge music in any sort of narrative medium is how much the music factors into the actual experience and how much it elevates the material as a whole. And that’s why even though I’ve been obsessively listening to Hotline Miami’s soundtrack; I have no choice but to give the award for best soundtrack to Journey. The game’s fantastic score is key to the experience; emphasizing all of the emotional highs and lows that make Journey as amazing as it is. The music is always perfect, reinforcing the tone, and working in conjunction with the visuals to elicit a variety of emotions. The final few notes that play just before the credits roll are beautiful, fulfilling, and haunting; a culmination off all that has come before. Journey’s score is moving every time I listen to it. It’s amazing.

Runners Up: Hotline Miami, Mass Effect 3, Thomas Was Alone

Best Looking Game: Journey

                Journey has it all: great animation, a tremendous sense of scale, an amazing color palette, fantastic lighting; just look at these screenshots:

                Yeah. Best looking game of the year.

Runners Up: Max Payne 3, Hotline Miami, Halo 4, In a Permanent Save State

Worst Fault of the Year: The Anita Sarkeesian Reaction

                Anita Sarkeesian goes on this list for two reasons: the controversy surrounding the initial reaction to her Kickstarter, and the end result of the fiasco which was, in short, nothing. All of this was avoidable. Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter would never have gone off the ground if a few insecure assholes were resisted the urge to act like assholes, and just accepted that a fair number of videogames do, in fact, treat the female gender with disrespect. Naturally, this being the internet, we couldn’t play nice, and the resulting death/rape threats, and the attention subsequently drawn to them, resulted in a whole host of people funding the project, some of whom it seemed were out to prove that not all gamers are horrid, sexist people.  So we gave a woman what I consider an unreasonable amount of money, and with that money she ended up purchasing a lot of games. As of this moment we have yet to see the fruits of such investment, but she has promised her backers that the videos will come. Still, this entire debacle just wound up being an utterly pointless embarrassment, especially for gamers, from which I can derive absolutely nothing positive for the duration of 2012. We can only hope she releases her video series, and that they can spark some intelligent discourse in the gaming community. (And thanks to Eric Swain for the additional information on Sarkeesian's progress)

Runners Up: Hitman Absolution’s Marketing, Assassin’s Creed III, the NRA, Mass Effect 3 ending controversy

Best Use of Dubstep: Black Ops II

                Though I am extremely tempted to give this award to Forza Horizon for using a non-Skrillex song in its climactic race, Black Ops II wins because its use of Skrillex in the dance floor shootout is nothing short of brilliant. Dropping the bass when the shooting starts is hilariously awesome in its own right, but there’s more to this scene that makes it award worthy. The Solar Club Sequence is one of the few moments in this game that does not fall victim gadget gimmickry and instead opts do what Call of Duty is best at: making first person shooting exciting through a tightly scripted setpiece.

Runners Up: Forza Horizon, Far Cry 3

Best Game That I didn’t Get to Play This Year: Fez

              As much as I wish it were otherwise, I lack the time and money to play every major title that is released each year, and I refuse to pirate anything, so when making my top ten list I find that I have to exclude games that likely would have made the cut. And if only one of the games I couldn't play made it on to my list, I would guess it would have been Fez. I played the demo and found it very charming, but it was my other research that makes me think it would have replaced Dishonored had I played it. I have heard nothing but endless praise for Fez, and after watching Indie Game the Movie, it strikes me as the sort of personal passion project (yay alliteration) that would appeal to me greatly. Unfortunately, I can’t speak to any specifics of the game that would have pushed it into my list, because I consciously avoided any specific details. I’ve seen a few writers talk about cracking the game’s code, and I want to experience that for myself, whatever the hell that entails.  So, Fez fans, I apologize, and I promise that I’ll write a little something on it in 2013.

Runners Up: XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Far Cry 3, Dust: An Elysian Tale, Mark of the Ninja, The Unfinished Swan, Papo & Yo

Worst Box Art: Batman Arkham City GOTY Edition

                Overall, this wasn't a great year for videogame box art, but plenty of games managed to limbo themselves beneath the bar of mediocrity in favor of being released in packaging that could only be described as outright terrible. And while I would love to give this award to the giraffe blowjob that is RE6’s box art, there is no packaging worse than that of Batman: Arkham City GOTY Edition. If you approached this game with no knowledge of what it was, you could be forgiven for believing its title was “10 out of 10!” The cover resembles a poorly designed magazine ad. It’s an abomination, plain and simple.

Runners Up: Assassin’s Creed PS3 Gamestop Edition, Hitman Absolution Walmart Edition, Resident Evil 6, Black Ops II

Best Component of a Bad Game: Naval combat in Assassin’s Creed III 

                         I have finally gone through all 5 stages of grief and come to terms with the undeniable truth that Assassin’s Creed III is not a good game. It’s boring, has no real core mechanic, has the worst story and setting of any Assassin’s Creed so far, its end is confusing and abrupt, and is one of the glitchiest games I played all year. But, as many others have pointed out, the naval combat is excellent. Controlling the ship is simple and intuitive, sailing on the open seas looks great, the targeting reticles are the perfect combination of visible and unobtrusive, and giving the order to fire the main guns is satisfying each and every time you do it. I’m still waiting on my amazing pirate game, and when it comes, I can only hope the naval combat is as good as it is in Assassin’s Creed III.

Runner Up: Fist-bumping squadmates in Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor 

Worst Ending: Assassin’s Creed III

                And on the other side of the coin, let’s talk a little about the ending of Assassin’s Creed III. This might be because of the trend of making major series into trilogies, but I think we were all expecting AC3 to give us some sense of closure, a feat which literally no Assassin’s Creed game has really accomplished. The series probably came closest in Assassin’s Creed Revelations, wrapping up the story of Ezio and Altair incredibly well before delving back into its confusing, poorly explained science fiction plot that deals with the ones who came before (or the predecessors, or whatever they’re called). The science fiction aspect of Assassin’s Creed was always the weakest part of the entire series, and the end of Assassin’s Creed III just proves that Ubisoft didn’t know what to do with it, or really any of the present-day characters. Desmond is unceremoniously killed off, and a conflict between Juno and Minerva (who I honestly can’t tell apart) that we have never been privy to is revealed in the final few minutes. Worse than that, it seems as though at one point, this was the actual end of the series. Desmond is given a choice in the final moments, to sacrifice himself to stop the sun from destroying the earth, or to let the apocalypse happen and try to rebuild society. The question is posed, but we have no part in making the choice. I’ll bet anything that a one point, this series was meant to end with this choice: to preserve or rebuild. But it doesn’t: Desmond chooses to sacrifice himself, he dies, and in doing so he releases Juno, who wants to control humanity. Wait, what? The game wraps up a significant plot thread, yes, but it does so abruptly, and offers no closure whatsoever. It is the worst ending of any game I’ve played this year, and probably one of the worst ever.

Runners Up: Mass Effect 3 (pre Extended Cut), Dishonored

Best Ending: Journey

                Journey’s ending is perfect. I honestly don’t know what else I can say. It is beautiful, it is satisfying; it just left me in complete awe. I get chills just thinking about it as I write this. On the off chance you reading this haven’t played Journey, I refuse to go into the specifics. It’s not really a thing you can spoil, per se, but it’s best to go into this game without knowing what’s coming. Just know this: the combination of the music, the visuals, and the gameplay make Journey’s end the most emotionally fulfilling conclusion of any game in 2012.

Runners Up: The Walking Dead, Spec Ops: the Line

Free Tea’s Game of the Decade: Bioshock

                Take a minute and look up Jeff Gertsmann’s video review of Bioshock. Seriously, just watch as a famed professional game reviewer utterly fails to describe what makes Bioshock as fantastic as it is, using buzzwords like “emotional” (which Bioshock certainly isn’t) to describe the appeal of the story, even going so far as to say it is more like “a piece of interactive fiction than a game.” With the release of Bioshock, men like Jeff Gertsmann became relics as games moved into a new era of complexity and self-awareness.  Bioshock is many things: a critique of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, a condemnation of affordable beauty, an examination of how a lack of an ethics can negatively influence a society. The story of Rapture is a tragic one, an idealistic society that sounds like a utopia, one which supports the arts and sciences unquestioningly. Rapture should have been a place where intellectual and imaginative pursuits would be supported and rewarded, where the best and brightest would be able to thrive. Of course, what we find is a hellish metropolis, populated by drug addicts who are so desperate to obtain more of their precious Adam that they would risk certain death at the hands of Big Daddies, the men in mechanical suits that have become the mascots of Bioshock. We see these people roam the halls of what could have been an idyllic society, had anyone simply practiced restraint. We kill these addicts, these splicers, time and time again, but the game never lets us forget they are human. Penetrating their insane cries are real emotions: fear, regret, sadness. We see a woman mourning her baby, interrupt a marital spat, and see memorials to those long dead. As we travel through Rapture, we see gorgeous architecture splattered with the blood of desecrated corpses, remnants of the failed dream of Rapture.

                But what Bioshock is, what it really is, is a deconstruction of the very structure of videogames. A man chooses, a slave obeys: the line we all come away remembering. It is not just the character we control, Jack, who was being manipulated by Atlas; we were as well. Just as Jack does whatever Atlas asks when hearing the trigger phrase “Would you Kindly,” we follow the arrow at the top of the screen, we interact with glowing objects, we run when we’re told to, fight when we’re told to, kill when we’re told to. Bioshock reminds us that when we play games, no matter how much choice we think we have, we have none. We are slaves to the systems of the game; obeying our objective markers, obeying the whim of the supporting characters yelling at us during Call of Duty, obeying our quest log in Fallout and Mass Effect. Bioshock brought self-awareness to mainstream gaming that we hadn't seen before, acting as part of a revolution (along with titles like Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, and Heavenly Sword) that occurred in 2007 as mainstream games gained a new level of maturity. Bioshock paved the way for many other brilliant games, including out top pick for this year. It is the most important game of the last decade. 

[freetea-blog]

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Miguel Penabella | 28 December 2012

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Dir. Peter Jackson, 2012

For the most part, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey succeeds in immersing us into its captivating fantasy world, depicting Tolkien lore – goblin kingdoms, vengeful orcs, squatting dragons, necromancers, trolls, rings, riddles, and more – woven into a larger narrative arc. J. R. R. Tolkien’s original source material presents a boundless world of imagination, and Jackson certainly knows how to engross audiences in his maximalist fantasy spectacle. Unfortunately, The Hobbit greatly suffers from the director’s predilection for technical gimmickry and imprecise over-direction, eroding the entire cinematic experience despite the presence of a potentially solid film underneath the heaping mess. The main cast does a fairly commendable job – specifically Freeman, McKellen, and Serkis – but Peter Jackson himself frequently delves into self-indulgent fan service meant to expand the story of a single book into three films, piling on unnecessary baggage from the back appendices of Tolkien’s unimportant supporting mythos. The film’s lighter tone in comparison to the darker, war-centered Lord of the Rings trilogy naturally fits with Tolkien’s adventure-centered tale, yet Jackson often alludes to his superior films in employing familiar musical leitmotifs and shots solely meant to conceal The Hobbit’s middling presentation and remind us of the Lord of the Rings’s far superior direction. Lastly, the high frame rate (HFR) technology that Peter Jackson intends the film to be viewed represents blockbuster filmmaking at its worst, parading cheesy gimmicks that diminish the grandeur of the cinematic image. Coupled with Jackson’s insufferable choice of heavily using CGI effects instead of his praiseworthy practical effects of Lord of the Rings (and his earlier horror flicks), The Hobbit makes the terrible mistake of mistranslating the language of blockbuster cinema spectacle. In pairing CGI graphics that creates a false reality and HFR that heightens actual reality, Jackson unintentionally creates a visual disarray that emphasizes the cheapness of his images, making his direction seem all the more stuffy and pandering.

Although the source material contains less grand-scale spectacle than The Lord of the Rings, Jackson treats his Hobbit trilogy as though it’s just as elaborate. A straightforward adventure book as short as The Hobbit shouldn’t need a trilogy of overlong films lest these movies become derivative of the main trilogy back in the early 2000s. The basic plot revolves around the tale of young hobbit Bilbo Baggins of Bag End (Martin Freeman) and his reluctant companionship with Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) and twelve raucous dwarves (no, I’m not going to list them off) to reclaim their ancestral homeland Erebor, The Lonely Mountain. Despite an initially averse Bilbo after a particularly unruly dinner party, he eventually concedes to the promise of adventure. With the leadership of the brooding Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), the pseudo-ensemble of fourteen characters treks onward towards the elusive dragon Smaug who guards the mountain, while also coming across plenty of obstacles along the way. The Hobbit offers plenty of details, locales, and characters to deepen the grandeur of Tolkien’s rich Middle-Earth world, and Jackson has an undeniable enthusiasm in pulling us from the theater and into his cinematic space. In his Lord of the Rings trilogy, the director makes a convincing case as to the immediacy of Middle-Earth, presenting his chainmail, costumes, and prosthetics with an eye for handmade detail. This meticulous passion for weighty realism makes his fantasy all the more immersive because of its avoidance of false CGI graphics that can only approximate reality. Instead, Jackson’s props and sets exist in the physical world, allowing his actors to interact naturally with the fantasy environment for an earthier presentation. And yet despite Peter Jackson’s proven ability to create immersive environments out of wood and clay, his decision to employ mainly CGI effects and digital trickery squanders the majesty of his vision for Middle-Earth, primarily in The Hobbit’s treatment of high frame rate technology.

HFR already confounds the moviegoing experience with The Hobbit’s myriad of theater formats: the IMAX 3D version, the IMAX HFR 3D version, the non-IMAX 3D version, the non-IMAX HFR 3D version, and the modest 2D version. Peter Jackson intends the film to be viewed with HFR and 3D, and this preference proves to be an excruciating stylistic wreck. Upon the first seconds of the film, the HFR jumps out immediately, making every tiny action appear all the more fluid and realistic with smoother frame transitions. Admittedly, this HFR technology would suit handsomely in a costume drama like Lincoln or The King’s Speech, in which the tighter shots mixed with the smoother movements of the technology would create an aura of live theater. Nevertheless, HFR has no place in the long shots and sprawling vistas of The Hobbit, turning grand cinematic spectacle into a half-hearted videogame cutscene. When the camera moves in really close to the film’s characters, everything in the shot clashes – the crisp digital picture, the 3D depth of field, HFR’s look of sped up animation – and makes Jackson’s images look unintentionally cheapened. The decision to dash his film with the “realism” of HFR in a world that should be shrouded in a mysterious fantasy aura simply removes us from total immersion and suspension of disbelief. The high frame rate results in paradoxically making the film look too realistic in all the wrong ways. Rather than improving the look of Tolkien’s bountiful fantasy world, Jackson only reminds us of the cinematic process; the crispness of the images feel so real that we’re no longer looking at Middle-Earth, we’re looking at the movie set of Middle-Earth. Certain scenes look more like a stage production than a film, especially in the film’s early history lesson of Smaug’s attack on dwarven lands. Costumes, sets, and props become more apparent than ever as mere tools of the film rather than as diegetic items found within the world. The crisp movements that a heightened frame rate creates squander the value of static CGI backdrops, emphasizing the tackiness of artificial reality instead of neatly blending in. Instead of smoothly combining practical effects and CGI wizardry as Lord of the Rings did, Peter Jackson leaves The Hobbit worse off with his immaterial prevalence of CGI effects and reality-heightening HFR, allowing audiences to differentiate between physical objects and pixels all the more easily.

To worry about the crispness of the image is to focus on precisely the wrong aspect of cinematic realism; Lord of the Rings focused its realism on the props, costumes, and practical effects themselves to allow its characters to fully interact with the world of Middle-Earth. In The Hobbit, the 48 frames per second (fps) locates every single detail with greater clarity, but it also cheapens all the fantastical elements of Tolkien’s world into cinematic artificiality. Furthermore, the jump from a century of 24fps to 48fps creates a jarring effect of motion interpolation (or “the soap opera effect”), underlining the realistic movements of the actors while the CG-rendered effects look all the more out of place. As the film trudges onward, the high frame rate eventually recedes out of your waking consciousness, but this indiscernibility of HFR only reveals how pointless the gimmick really is. Unlike 3D, which can heighten the cinematic experience – improving depth of field and creating a tangible sense of space (I argue in favor of 3D in this article) – HFR becomes thoroughly unimpressive because there’s just no use in contributing to film art. Many critics and audiences have simply stated that they’ve become less attuned to the technology as the film wears on, and this purposelessness of the technology other than creating a controversial debacle over the course of blockbuster filmmaking leaves The Hobbit’s execution all the more disordered.

Coupled with the 3D CGI effects of The Hobbit, the film abounds with cluttered digital images to overload the senses. Jackson’s diverse color palette leaves the film looking crisp and clean in its digital production, through not necessarily as eye-pleasing as the muted simplicity of Lord of the Ring’s shades of pale blues, forest greens, and browns. Trading practical effects and physical mise-en-scène for fake CG production design, Jackson forgets the ingenuity of forced perspective, elaborate set design, and costumes in favor of the tacky overabundance of digital pretension. His CGI orcs look more like something out of a second-rate videogame than a grand cinematic experience, and the higher frame rate that approximates the smoother kineticism of videogames doesn’t help out Jackson’s cause either. The final sequence in an underground goblin city conveys its manic tone very well, but the sequence is ultimately a visual cacophony of mishmash action that looks like a small-scale videogame than big screen cinematic spectacle. The one-armed pale orc represents the worst example of Jackson’s bizarre CGI penchant in this film, electing the film’s main villain with the most screen time as an artificial CGI creation than a practical effects character like the orcs in Lord of the Rings (which look far more definite and terrifying). Contrast this clashing CGI/practical effects behemoth with the rock giant boxing match in the rain. This sequence carries the grandeur of imposing cinematic spectacle because these colossi are indistinct shadows in the thunderous rain, concealing the fakery of CGI and fully blending in with the rest of the environment. Moments like this reveal where Guillermo del Toro’s original script shine through (I imagine this fight is what Pacific Rim will feel like) since this sequence never appears in Tolkien’s original book. Nevertheless, Peter Jackson’s takeover of CGI effects largely accentuates the problems of fake production design instead of neatly disguising it, and worst of all, Jackson never really cares much for the characters that comprise his story in the first place.

An Unexpected Journey isn’t particularly welcoming in the first place, a thought that Jackson resounds in his indulgence into Tolkien-savvy pretentions: name-dropping plenty of textual allusions, historical events, locations, and people not even relevant to the action at hand. Although The Hobbit still miraculously manages to engross us into the world of Tolkien, Jackson doesn’t persuade us enough that all this over-information is necessary to his agenda; his numerous distractions simply comes across as pandering allusions not meant for the universal demographic of hefty blockbuster films like The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings triumphs because Jackson remembers that while Middle-Earth is a captivating land of popcorn escapism, his characters are far more interesting filmic elements with the potential to explore genuine human drama. With The Hobbit, Jackson indulges too much in world building for a setting already uniquely defined; there are only a few moments where the humanism behind it actually emerges. At nearly three hours, the film already feels like the extended edition, containing plenty of digressions into non-relevant sideplots and historical allusions that fragment the overall story into an episodic structure than a concrete whole. Jackson basks in his source material, infusing his film with an extended history lesson of Middle-Earth and scenes that merely feel shoehorned in. Scenes like the Shire prologue that witnesses cameo appearances by Ian Holm and Elijah Wood or Radagast the Brown’s (Sylvester McCoy) cryptic forewarning of Sauron’s return serve as reminders of the greater story at play, but these moments are just extra baggage for an already over-inflated narrative. Indeed, Peter Jackson spends a protracted first hour merely loitering around Bilbo’s home, overstaying its welcome just like his unruly dwarves. Once the actual traveling starts, the film conveys a palpable sense of adventure and wanderlust, especially in the film’s many travel commercial-esque helicopter shots of the glorious landscapes of New Zealand.

Once gears begin churning along and the main narrative is on its way, The Hobbit begins to resemble shades of Jackson’s superior direction in The Lord of the Rings. A shot of elder LotR characters in a single frame – Ian McKellen’s world-weary Gandalf the Grey, Cate Blanchett’s ethereal Galadriel, Christopher Lee’s Saruman the White, and Hugo Weaving’s Elrond – makes for a brilliant shot and signifies the magnificent line-up of characters in the broader Middle-Earth universe. But first, An Unexpected Journey must trudge through the insufferable line-up of main characters at its core: the dwarves. Led by a fairly commendable Richard Armitage as the brooding Thorin Oakenshield, the rest of the dwarves come off as one collective character rather than finely individuated personalities. Unlike Jackson’s fantastic handling of a massive ensemble cast in The Lord of the Rings that isolated secondary, even tertiary characters to make their mark tonally and aesthetically – the mud and clay orc leaders, the ominous Witch-king of Angmar, the splendid character arc of Éowyn – Jackson doesn’t transcend his source material in favor of greater cinematic characterization. Thorin’s numerous dwarves remain indistinguishable from one another (likely even more than in Tolkien’s fleshed out pages), and because they’re underdeveloped characters, we don’t really care for their safety in the heat of battle either. There’s no sense of tension with every action sequence because these characters are so disposable, sometimes even serving as pure comic relief. The dwarves don’t convey a palpable sense of touching friendship like the fellowship of The Lord of the Rings, just a bland sense of can-do camaraderie. Of course, some actors have their moments. Richard Armitage, while spending the majority of the film being an unlikable and stubborn bully without enough background to justify his actions, still maintains an aura of an enigmatic cipher. All the other dwarves are merely caricatures: there’s the one with the hat, Bofur (James Nesbitt); the Merry and Pippin doppelgangers, Fili and Kili (Dean O’Gorman and Aidan Turner); the old one, Balin (Ken Stott), and the rest are distinguishable not by their personalities but by their beards.

On the other hand, Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen deliver incredible performances. Freeman continues his superb acting stint after BBC’s much-lauded Sherlock television miniseries (also the home of Smaug’s Benedict Cumberbatch), radiating an endearing charm in his great comic timing and fondness for the simplicities of home. The actor slips into the world of Middle-Earth perfectly, taking reigns from the excellent Ian Holm in the original trilogy with a more compelling leading role than Elijah Wood’s Frodo. His rendition of Bilbo Baggins includes numerous mannerisms and quirks that make him grumpy, bumbling, funny, and sometimes even courageous. McKellen has plenty of fun as the cunning and charismatic Gandalf the Grey, acting as if a day hasn’t even passed between his original stint as the character in 2001 while still maintaining a sense of growing world-weariness.

Despite the strength of these two prolific figures, it’s Andy Serkis who steals the show again with his full role commitment as the bitterly dissociative Gollum. When Bilbo descends into the damp caverns where Gollum makes his home, the frenetic action of the second half cedes and The Hobbit really begins to resemble a movie. With little emphasis for visual effects except for the motion capture work that Andy Serkis has already mastered, Peter Jackson presents a simple shot-reverse shot game of wits between Bilbo and Gollum as they trade off riddles in the dark. Even the high frame rate diminishes because of the frozen execution of the scene; instead of pointing attention to the look of the movie, it’s Freeman and Serkis who push their own acting talents to the foreground. The film slows down and freezes on this moment, taking its time to unravel the foreboding playfulness behind Gollum’s game of wits. Serkis disappears wholeheartedly into the role once more, conveying the tragic antihero’s desperation and utter worry with true authenticity. In the film’s singular moment of outright humanness, The Hobbit witnesses Bilbo ready to cut down Gollum for good, and yet the look of defeated sadness in Gollum’s eyes betrays the emotional crux that humanizes the scene. Rather than focusing on the franchise’s world of fandom and excess, the film fleetingly holds on a single shot that conveys the emotion necessary to keep the film afloat. It’s simply marvelous.

Nevertheless, the overall scope of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey arrives with a multitude of problems, revealing Peter Jackson’s loss of directorial blockbuster focus in a changed cinematic world. Many elements detract from the overall cinematic experience, including his worthless high frame rate presentation and dodgy use of CGI effects for a story in which its characters are ultimately uninteresting in the first place. And because of these numerous setbacks, The Hobbit fails to recapture that perfect blend of human drama, fantasy spectacle, inventive effects, and the creativity of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, but a scene like the one shared between Bilbo and Gollum points to the slight potential of this new series. The Hobbit lies in the shadow of better direction, and yet Jackson hints at greater redemption waiting around the corner. For the most part, The Hobbit’s welcoming immersion into a familiar universe substantiates the film’s existence just enough, and if anything, this fairly unexceptional title inspires in the mind a next installment worth looking forward to. As a standalone title apart from the grander franchise, An Unexpected Journey ends up with a disjointed narrative and an untidy, gimmicky presentation. Adventure and merriment transpires during the course of its nearly three hour running time, and yet all Peter Jackson has to offer is half-hearted direction for a new trilogy that already feels stale.

[freetea-blog]

Resident Evil: Retribution

Miguel Penabella | 27 December 2012

Resident Evil: Retribution

Dir. Paul W.S. Anderson, 2012

Resident Evil: Retribution, like its predecessors, suffers from stuffy writing tailor made for humdrum B-movie actors to give abominably wooden performances. The film also offers a ludicrous, nonsensical plot with little intelligence necessary to justify its highly stylized action sequences in this fifth installment in director Paul W.S. Anderson’s seemingly endless series. These complaints have been parroted over and over again by numerous critics who have nothing else worthwhile to say, sinking Retribution’s Rotten Tomatoes score to a measly 31%. That Retribution is a silly movie should be a given; audiences shouldn’t need a critic to inform them how terrible its dialogue and performances are, especially when unnecessary pop-cult entertainment such as the Resident Evil series has reached its fifth title. Such criticism only delivers stale complaints that have appeared endlessly, adding absolutely nothing to the ongoing discussion of film art. Instead of focusing solely on ridiculing Anderson’s usage of stock characters and genre clichés, I’ll be focusing instead on his genre experimentation of narrative syntax and aesthetic standards in an attempt to unearth true genre artistry underneath the garbage that most other B-movie directors are doing. If one eschews the formulaic derision of critics who cast aside directors like Paul W.S. Anderson as nothing more than low art drivel, one can discover the moments of subtle self-awareness that reveal Anderson’s confidence in his craft. Indeed, there’s enough reflexive self-awareness in Resident Evil: Retribution to even surpass Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s extensively praised The Cabin In the Woods, and yet both films operate under the same conventions of genre filmmaking. Nevertheless, Retribution offers more meaningful commentary in its metaphoric foregrounding of the filmic process, making visible the mechanics of filmmaking in order to interrogate B-movie genre conventions and destabilize the nature of cinematic fiction and reality.

Criticizing Retribution’s plot and character development as one-dimensional means focusing on exactly the irrelevant elements that comprise Paul W.S. Anderson’s films. After all, this man is likely the only director with the tenacity to envision a Three Musketeers film with a crass steampunk-inspired setting, flamethrowers, and giant CGI airships. And yet despite his silliness, he manages to turn nihilistic violence into digestible pop filmmaking without the gall of pretension, locating an endearing simplicity with his husband/wife tag-team approach to filmmaking (he frequently casts his wife Milla Jovovich with a starring role). Admittedly, Anderson has had abysmally rough patches – Mortal Kombat and Alien vs. Predator – but after a four-year absence and a return to the basic language of genre filmmaking with 2008’s Death Race, all self-seriousness drops in favor of maximalist B-movie flicks served with an implied nudge and wink. Instead of trying to write “intelligent” material for his films, Anderson seems to have realized that wooden dialogue and B-movie clichés are simply part of the genre’s syntax, allowing him to focus his artistic merit on the style, presentation, and cinematography to justify the worth of exploitative camp. At the fifth film in the Resident Evil series – fifth! – Anderson returns behind the camera after his equally reflexive Afterlife, disrupting and subverting classical conventions of genre cinema to upend audience expectations of character identification and narrative. Unlike most genre filmmakers working today, Paul W.S. Anderson remains one of the boldest experimenters of his craft, eschewing the traditional language of B-movie clichés for something unexpected and new. Revisionary criticism will hopefully come to re-evaluate Anderson’s work as film theorists have reclaimed the B-movie films of Seijun Suzuki as high art (Branded to Kill, Tokyo Drifter), grindhouse films made postmodern discourse by the likes of Quentin Tarantino (Shogun Assassin, I Spit On Your Grave), and even the films of Paul Verhoeven made genre standards (Starship Troopers, RoboCop, Total Recall).

It’s telling that Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: Retribution was released the same day as Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, as if coincidence (or film distribution folks with a sense of humor) tried to link the worlds of arthouse and contemporary grindhouse to reveal that these two are not so different from one another. Indeed, both Anderson films partially deal with expanding the notion of film art, but Retribution comes in the form of least common denominator escapism. Continuing its adaptation from the video game series, Anderson transforms the language of gaming into unhinged kinetic cheesiness, dropping his immaculate heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich) in a massive facility run by the evil Umbrella Corporation. Like The Cabin In the Woods, this facility represents a reflexive playground in which various rooms stand in as individual levels like that of a globetrotting videogame. As Alice attempts to reconvene with a rescue team masterminded by villain-turned-inexplicably-good-but-who-cares Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), the various rooms signify a set of killing fields manipulated by the evil “Red Queen” computer program. Thus, the program and its unleashing of the zombies that audiences want to see stands in as Paul W.S. Anderson himself, manipulating the film’s environment to suit the needs of genre entertainment. The mock settings inside the facility – Tokyo, New York City, Moscow, and suburbia – all resemble elaborate movie sets because they are movie sets, signifying a bit of self-awareness that transforms what would be a cliché narrative into reflexive popcorn spectacle. Much later into the film, Anderson’s camera lingers on an assembly line of endless Alice clones in line for experimental slaughter by the computer program, reflecting on the disposable nature of stock B-movie and videogame characters as mere templates to place into new contexts and recycle until its worth diminishes. 

In the hands of a less competent B-movie filmmaker, such nihilism would ruin the escapist experience, but Anderson takes this cynical outlook and turns it into worthwhile pop filmmaking. The setup of various rooms as “killing stages” emphasizes the falsity of the series, allowing for unabashed globetrotting everywhere from Times Square to the Red Square without the need for deeper narrative justification. This lack of self-important pretension makes Retribution pure popcorn exploitation, but it also reveals the falsity of filmmaking itself. Anderson points out the computer-controlled lighting, artificial rain, and carefully constructed mise-en-scène like a zombie version of The Truman Show or Synecdoche, New York, with the filmmaker foregrounding his filmic elements to satirize game and film design as scripted and systematic. Paul W.S. Anderson spends less time on pointless narrativizing (honestly, who cares in a film like this?) and more time on simply making Milla Jovovich’s Alice one of the most badass action heroines ever, transcending the staged nature of the Resident Evil games. The film’s self-awareness extends beyond its consciousness of film sets and even Alice’s “S&M” getup to allow for reincarnations of bygone characters, specifically Michelle Rodriguez’s Rain Ocampo. With each passing room comes the resetting of characters like videogame NPCs, and Anderson toys around with Rain in resurrecting her (Rodriguez dies as much as Sean Bean) for various roles. The film specifically imagines the character as either a mundane suburban woman driving a hybrid car and ironically supporting gun control or as a heartless killer hell-bent on eliminating Alice for good. I like to imagine the real actress as a personality somewhere in between.

Paul W.S. Anderson has the most fun in Resident Evil: Retribution than any other film he’s done, experimenting with the genre and applying the language of counter-cinema to make what would be a tired B-movie series fresh and constantly expanding. The bombastic opening sequence attests to this forthright experimentation, envisioning an explosive action sequence played in slow-motion reverse. Nevertheless, Anderson remains discontented in this extensively stylized assault on the senses, so not only does he has his cake, he eats it too in upping the film’s excess. He replays the scene again in regular time after a ludicrously extended recap segment to bring audiences back up to speed in the narrative, and there’s admittedly a guilty joy in watching Anderson choreograph his action like a bastardized Zack Snyder film. And yet Retribution does all this showing-off for a distinct purpose. In presenting the film without exposition, Anderson keeps his audience on their toes, and his deliberate continuity breaks, elliptical method of storytelling, and self-aware reflexivity only heightens the crispness of a series already approaching its sixth installment. After the film’s frenetic opening sequence and recap, Retribution pulls the rug out from under its audience, abruptly entering into a Dawn of the Dead-like suburbia with a mundane domestic drama that features a housewife version of Milla Jovovich raising her daughter Becky (Aryana Engineer). This complete disregard for everything immediately before the scene dislocates and takes us by surprise, suddenly throwing audiences into a new context without forewarning. 

Retribution’s suburban setting makes total sense in the grand scheme of the franchise, because mundane middle class suburbs are exactly where Resident Evil found its foothold, with kids playing these hyper-violent games in the sparkling placidity of Anywhereville, America. Paul W.S. Anderson simply visualizes this paradoxical clash literally, his hideous zombies intruding on the unexciting domesticity as Zack Snyder did in his Dawn of the Dead remake. That Anderson would deliberately confuse his audiences with such jarring elliptical storytelling reveals the director’s emerging confidence in his skills. In one scene, Alice even serves as a mouthpiece for the director to convey his genre mastery, instructing the suburban Rain Ocampo that using a gun is “just like a camera: point and shoot.” This simple set of instructions is exactly what Anderson does for his heavily stylized actions sequences, borrowing from the videogame source material and turning it into his own artistic playground with which to exercise unrestrained aesthetic experimentation. Anderson’s action images are recurrent, featuring his heroine somersaulting through the air while doling out violence with bright lighting, fantastic 3D rain, and incredibly deep shots. The filmmaker has a clear sense of cinematic space that allows him to break conventional stylistic rules and push the boundaries of action aesthetics and cinematography. For a B-movie, Retribution’s cinematography remains top-notch, following its precursors’ predilection for one-point perspectives that would make Stanley Kubrick proud. Early scenes featuring Alice in an Umbrella holding cell visualize Anderson’s eye for symmetrical precision and harsh white lighting, creating genuinely eye-catching images as his heroine erupts into combat.

Even the film’s usage of product placement contains a thematic twist, with the aggressive positioning of logos like Rockstar Energy, Sony, and GameStop mirroring the Umbrella Corporation’s own saturation into everyday life within the film’s diegetic universe. Thus, the pairing of the evil Umbrella logo next to a Pepsi logo likely reveals the director’s own feelings towards unhinged corporatism, aligning his fictional company with the likes of Weyland-Yutani or Cyberdyne Systems. Nevertheless, it’s Retribution’s action sequences that warrant the most praise, comprising expert choreography and masterful editing that invites audiences into its visceral kineticism rather than estranging them. The film cuts in sync with the action, offering glorious long shots of its fast-paced combat instead of shakycam incomprehensibility or insufferable close-ups like the action sequences of The Amazing Spider-Man or Battleship. Anderson keeps a nice rhythm to his shots that divulges an incredible understanding of Soviet montage, painting his glowing white hallways seemingly lifted directly from Beyond the Black Rainbow with zombie blood. Throughout the series, narrative has never really made much sense, but every single action sequence has always maintained a level of dynamic coherence that reveals where the filmmaker’s interests truly lie. 

Although it may have taken many years for Paul W.S. Anderson to perfect his genre filmmaking abilities, the filmmaker has finally managed to grasp a unique style and mise-en-scène. Like his peers Rob Zombie or the late Tony Scott, Anderson crafts lean, visually impressive, non-pretentious, amusing pieces of popcorn entertainment that are better off avoiding characterization and plot for the sake of stylistic presentation. Undeniably, Resident Evil: Retribution’s action choreography looks and feels coherent, with impeccable framing and composition to bolster the filmmaker’s own role as a true contemporary B-movie artist. Adding on a sense of self-awareness only contributes to the guilty fun of Retribution, pointing out the falsity of filmmaking and the campiness of genre formulae. With these distinct stylistic tendencies recurrent and definitive of the director, the only final conclusion I have left is that (weirdly enough) Paul W.S. Anderson has undeniably joined the ranks of a B-movie auteur.

[freetea-blog]

Cosmopolis

Miguel Penabella | 26 December 2012

Cosmopolis

Dir. David Cronenberg, 2012

To follow up my review of Holy Motors, here’s another essay on a film also revolving around a surreal, lunatic odyssey in a limousine across a city. Trading Paris for New York City, director David Cronenberg tells a straightforward, unassuming narrative of billionaire playboy Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) and his head of security (the stocky Kevin Durand) traversing across an increasingly dire-looking Manhattan to get a haircut across town. In this tedious creep through the city, Cosmopolis chronicles the various comings and goings of the people that comprise Packer’s life over the course of a single day. The film is a minimalist and fragmented take on modern society, with Cronenberg’s bizarre conversations in and out of the limo representing a Marxist and aesthetic discourse both mindfully pretentious and excessively stylized. It’s a film for our times, entering into an ongoing dialogue on modern capitalism and the millennial generation with a tone that’s neurotic as the characters that comprise its narrative. Audiences may find the dialogue-heavy film oblique and impenetrable, but the bizarrely mundane feel of it all presents the unraveling of mankind, the future, and cinema itself.

Cosmopolis has a simplistic setup, but Cronenberg quickly delves into staged abstraction, commenting on life in the 21st century and the hollowness of millennials now running the world. The various people Packer comes across – including characters portrayed by the likes of Juliette Binoche, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, and Mathieu Amalric – all hint at a growing restlessness that has plagued the world. This anxiety derives from an unstable economic system on the brink of collapse; nobody quite understands what’s happened, but Cronenberg conveys an illuminating clarity on modern civilization while remaining abstract on a superficial level. Taking liberties from the 2003 novel by Don DeLillo on which this film is based, Cronenberg aligns Cosmopolis with the modern world to reveal the estrangement of capitalism from human life, technology from reality, extreme wealth from the everyday. The film’s surreal odyssey through Manhattan takes place in a chaotic world quickly hurtling towards dystopia, yet the uneasy tone feels undeniably immediate and existent. Characters converse in heavily stylized exchanges full of economic and philosophical jargon that distances them from the unraveling reality outside the limousine, betraying Cronenberg’s cynicism towards those who are causing the instability in the first place. Every single interaction confounds with impenetrable, cryptic dialogue, mirroring our own linguistic distance from those economists and politicians who have evaded public responsibility for running the world to the ground. Cronenberg abstracts dialogue to the point where language itself becomes damn near hostile and confrontational, and he leaves audiences with the choice to either take effort in piercing through the veil or simply remaining apathetic.

Like Cronenberg’s previous effort A Dangerous Method, the period piece on psychoanalysis told psychoanalytically, Cosmopolis presents the cold distancing of relationships and the disorder of the diegetic world. Filming remains largely confined to the interior of the limousine, and Cronenberg’s camera takes in the rich technology that plasters the walls and armrests with touchscreens for virtual communication. Eric Packer always stays a step removed from the intimacy of humanity, often conversing through his gadgets or casually maintaining a detached façade during face-to-face conversations. Nothing can overcome Packer’s aura of arrogance and egotism, lacking a capacity for social responsibility and instead wasting away in lethargic opulence. In showing the malaise of the 1%, David Cronenberg masterfully fashions a film for the 99%, replicating our time through the lens of caricature to unearth deeper truths.

Since the 2000s, David Cronenberg has withdrawn from his characteristic body horror and towards the contemporary monsters that distress everyday human life. His horror still exists, albeit with a matured, introspective manner that has his afflictions take on different forms altogether. In A History of Violence, these monsters are the innate Darwinian savagery of man. In A Dangerous Method, it takes the form of sexualized disarray. In Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg presents the disorder of unchecked modern capitalism. Part of the director’s capitalist commentary derives from cinema’s tradition of Marxism, but like A History of Violence, Cronenberg is more interested in analyzing capitalism through a Darwinian school of thought. The film portrays capitalism as animalistic and violent, with Pattinson’s Eric Packer emulating the vampirism of his Twilight stint, albeit in the form of the voraciously insatiable Dracula. Packer sits in quiet, frozen gratification as the chaos and violence erupts around him even though the disarray negatively impacts him as well, taking sick pleasure in the assassination of the head of the International Monetary Fund and an Occupy Wall Street-esque demonstration quickly escalating into a French Revolution riot. And unlike a screenwriter like David S. Goyer who cautiously preserves the values of the 1%, Cronenberg portrays the excessively rich as estranged to the point of inhumanness. Packer deals with abstract work of digital stocks and currency without any physical labor or product, leaving his job description completely vague throughout the film.

Vagueness runs through the film with aplomb, as Cronenberg’s dark, twisted philosophical dialogue on capitalism and the contemporary world intertwines with the violence occurring outside the limousine. Samantha Morton’s character, the “chief of theory” Vija Kinsky, waxes philosophical about uncontrolled markets and the instability of time’s acceleration. She asserts, “all wealth has become wealth for its own sake… money has lost its narrative quality,” while the film’s Occupy/French Revolution-like backdrop spins out of control, revealing Cronenberg’s forewarning of the potential consequences for irresponsible capitalism run amok. In its fragmented exchanges of dialogue, Cosmopolis unveils the language of capitalism as tied to violence, noting the “destruction” of old markets and exploitation as a kind of Darwinian survival of the fittest in true Cronenberg fashion. He even makes this language literal, with Packer explaining, “the logical extension of business is murder.” Cosmopolis’s world bursts with clashing violence and volatility, like a doomsday prophecy turned into an unstable dystopian Manhattan with shades of our current society. Make no mistake: while Cronenberg operates under the setting of an indistinct future world, he’s clearly discussing our ongoing condition of unbalanced cyber-capitalism and protests against these grandiose visions of technology and wealth. Cosmopolis represents one of the first films addressing the economic recession, Occupy Wall Street, and the millennials who comprise these events, portraying its vague characters outside the limo as desperately trying to delay a catastrophic future where capitalism ignores the horrors of the present. The creeping passage of the limo through the gridlocked chaos escalates as the film trudges on, and through the tinted windows and television screens can be seen looters, assassinations, people setting themselves on fire, and plenty of rat imagery not unlike that of the French Revolution. And for a brief second, Cronenberg visualizes his underlying message with a scrolling digital sign, reading “a specter is haunting the world… the specter of capitalism.”

All the while, a rich technocrat like Packer remains completely out of touch inside the secluded confines of his limousine. Totally detached from even the street level of New York, the cabin of the limo feels like a quarantined hermetic seal from the real world, recalling a similar theme of technology’s isolation from reality in eXistenZ. Instead of the ongoing upheaval outside, Packer diverts all attention to the currency markets that seem to run 24/7, constantly fluctuating and headed towards disaster. The boyish Robert Pattinson proves a miraculous choice for the role, with his smug and youthful face representing the decline of capitalism itself. His ego makes him impulsive and reckless, often witnessed spending his money on lavish goods like Rothko paintings and military aircraft just to call it “mine.” And yet Packer isn’t oblivious to his exponential loss of money but simply indifferent, with his eerie coolness about everything betraying a sense of self-destruction. Holding his own against veterans like Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti, Pattinson’s frigid delivery feels as deadened as the ancient vampire he plays in the Twilight films yet even more sexualized than ever, albeit in a predatory way. Cosmopolis radiates sex and desire, and the unsettling undercurrent builds into moments of climax like in Cronenberg’s own hypersexualized 1996 psycho-thriller Crash. Sex is the topic of many conversations, and the camera often lingers on convulsing bodies and sweat to visualize the ravenous nature of millennial economics. Sarah Gadon’s character Elise Shifrin provides one of the most memorable lines in the entire film – “I smell sex all over you” – with a delivery both sexually riveted and repulsed.

As in many David Cronenberg flicks, the director pairs his sex with a dark and brooding tone that mirrors the ominous look of his mise-en-scène. Although the action of Cosmopolis mainly transpires inside the claustrophobic confines of Packer’s stretch limousine, the various shots Cronenberg employs keeps the film looking fresh and captivating, everywhere from deep focus long shots that seem to elongate the entire cabin to voyeuristic angles looking from below. The constantly changing exterior through the windows further contributes to the growing restlessness, and the window’s tint alters light and color altogether to dissociate audiences from the escalating chaos that lies just outside. Howard Shore and indie rock band Metric craft a dark electronic soundtrack reminiscent of Cliff Martinez’s undulating synths in Drive and Contagion, further burying the unnerving nature of the film under layers of icy electronic music. And yet despite all the cold, alarming remove that Cronenberg focuses his attention on, Cosmopolis finds moments of mad hatter goofiness such as Packer’s persistent worry about his “asymmetrical prostate” and a scene of slapstick throwback concerning a prankster smacking Packer’s face with a cream pie like a fictional Noël Godin dissident.

Nevertheless, Cosmopolis remains a visceral and alienating film that cuts to the heart of modern capitalism and violence even as it distances from audiences with its circuitous language and moments of maddening bizarreness. The film’s final segment locates Packer sitting down with an agitated Paul Giamatti as hysterical ex-employee/stalker Benno Levin for another perplexing talk. They discuss the realities of aggression and the need for violence to have a burden or purpose. Amidst the relentless abstraction of the film’s language, this purpose for violence suddenly becomes clear, representing the last bastion of desperate action against the desolation of Cronenberg’s dark, dystopian cyber-capitalist world. Over the course of the film’s protracted odyssey, Cronenberg stalks this singular act as the only natural reprieve and source of clarity amidst the shrouding specter of self-destructive capitalism, so it’s only natural that Cosmopolis ends with a whimpering bang.

[freetea-blog]

New Order: Favorite Films, 80-61

Miguel Penabella | 25 December 2012

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080. The Prestige | Christopher Nolan | 2006

Make no mistake: The Prestige is Nolan’s finest, most nuanced film. Presenting a story of rival magicians, The Prestige brings up a legacy of cinematic history as intimately tied to showmen (Méliès?), presenting misdirection and trickery so spectators will never fully know the twist of the act until the time is right. Nolan’s pair of magicians onscreen reflects his own showmanship behind the camera, constantly manipulating his audience because he knows you want to be fooled… no matter how closely you watch.

079. Gummo | Harmony Korine | 1997

In showing something ugly, Harmony Korine teases out the beautiful.

078. Le Samouraï | Jean-Pierre Melville | 1967

The boyish Alain Delon is a precursor to all the stoic, violent men in cinema from Drive to Léon: The Professional. A hitman film as filtered through the existential minimalism of an Albert Camus novel.

077. The Holy Mountain | Alejandro Jodorowsky | 1973

Containing some of the most overpowering and imaginative visuals ever put to film, The Holy Mountain is so utterly bizarre that it can only come from a mind as twisted as Jodorowsky’s.

076. Shaun of the Dead | Edgar Wright | 2004

The first of Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (and still the best), Shaun of the Dead is achingly funny and shrewdly satirical of both the language of the zombie genre and the deadness of modern life.

075. Grand Illusion | Jean Renoir | 1937

Released just before the beginnings of World War II, Grand Illusion conveys the desolation and tragedy of war without even needing to show the blood, trenches, and bombs – just the hollow men whose eyes betray the sadness of it all.

074. No Country for Old Men | The Coen Brothers | 2007

A scene witnesses Llewelyn Moss in a dark hotel room, rifle ready for Anton Chigurh when his shadow appears underneath the door – then the lights go out. Another scene shows Chigurh killing a bunch of men in a hotel room and then sitting on the bed in frozen ennui as the camera’s wide lens captures the bloodbath in the background. And yet another scene shows Chigurh slowly getting angry at a stubborn landlady; he’s on the verge of killing her right then and there. The faint sound of a toilet flushing offscreen can be heard, and Chigurh’s eyes slightly gravitate towards the sound. He leaves.

Javier Bardem terrifies me.

073. Kill Bill | Quentin Tarantino | 2003-2004

Kill Bill switches genres effortlessly: samurai film, spaghetti western, rape and revenge, Yakuza flick, Hong Kong wuxia, anime. The whole bloody affair is a warped journey into the subconscious of Tarantino at his most extravagant, yet Kill Bill is so meticulously directed that all the diverse styles, homages, and pieces of dialogue are organized into one unified whole to create an intimate, if bloody, conversation with postmodern film culture.

072. The Shawshank Redemption | Frank Darabont | 1994

It’s always a tough decision choosing between Shawshank and Gump for the second best American picture of 1994 (behind Pulp Fiction, of course). Both involve a cathartic journey of a man through generations, but Frank Darabont reveals his true artistry in making Shawshank as wide open and epic in scope as Gump even as it confines its action to a single locale.

071. The Graduate | Mike Nichols | 1967

Dustin Hoffman is tremendously great in this coming-of-age tale of post-college weariness, comedic melodrama, the malaise of a generation, and a broader human failure to connect.

070. In the Loop | Armando Iannucci | 2009

“Climbing the mountain of conflict? You sounded like a Nazi Julie Andrews!”

“Kiss my sweaty balls, you fat fuck!”

“You are a boring F, star, star, cunt!”

“Fuckity bye!”

069. The Battle of Algiers | Gillo Pontecorvo | 1966

Shrewdly taking a stance apart from its murky politics, Pontecorvo precedes what filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow are doing today: craft tense political dramas without taking sides, letting audiences pick apart their own ideas for greater thematic clarity.

068. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back | Irvin Kershner | 1980

The very zenith of 1980s Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking: resonant, iconic, exciting, sprawling, imaginative, engaging, and triumphant.

067. Night On Earth | Jim Jarmusch | 1991

An underdog beneath the shadow of Jarmusch’s far more beloved Mystery Train, I prefer Night On Earth simply because of the candid sincerity of it all. By showing tired people around the globe leaving the troubles of the day behind, Jarmusch creates a world community separated by distance but linked in the casual epiphanies of life.

066. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | Sergio Leone | 1966

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a glorious cinematic experience where the widescreen shots of the barren Southwest aren’t even as grand as the three monolithic men at its core. Sergio Leone films the cinematic myth of the Old West, chronicling his land of savages, outlaws, and legends all backed by the glorious score composed by Ennio Morricone at his most epic.

065. Au Hasard Balthazar | Robert Bresson | 1966

Bresson presents the parallel lives of a donkey and a girl, both plagued by suffering and affliction while using his mastery of editing to convey the intricate religious criticism that lies beneath.

064. The Conformist | Bernardo Bertolucci | 1970

Each scene has its own unique aesthetic – from fascist-inspired mise en scène to luxuriant sepia and gold filters (anticipating its use in The Godfather) – to complement both the film’s beautiful actresses and Bertolucci’s directorial experimentation. The film’s extremely canted angles, shakycam, rear-projection, Caravaggio lighting, carefully selected fashion, and colorful filters represent visual dynamics that make The Conformist a wonder to behold with every watch.

063. Minority Report | Steven Spielberg | 2002

Tied with A.I. Artificial Intelligence, this is some of the best turn-of-the-millennium sci-fi I’ve ever seen. Spielberg delivers commentary not only on the gleaming futurism of personalized advertising, screen-centered livelihoods, and surveillance, but also on deeper philosophical musings on free will, religion, power, and morality. It’s Spielberg’s most complex and intellectually probing film, one that garners more relevance with today’s world than it did back in 2002.

062. Being John Malkovich | Spike Jonze | 1999

Kaufman and Jonze, unhinged: the most high concept visualization of mind-bending Cartesian theater on the big screen (and a debut for both, no less), yet also incredibly funny and easy to digest.

061. Chinatown | Roman Polanski | 1974

Chinatown embodies the essential neo-noir, upending the entire language of the film noir genre to create one of the most unsettling endings in all of cinema history. These images burn into the mind long after the credits: a bloodied, torn off face seen only for a split second; Cross covering the eyes of a stunned Katherine, snatching her from the audience; the final crane shot overlooking the crowd and the darkness beyond; “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

[freetea-blog]

Holy Motors

Miguel Penabella | 23 December 2012

Holy Motors

Dir. Leos Carax, 2012

Since his 1999 film Pola X, French director Leos Carax has remained largely dormant aside from his contribution in the triptych collaborative film Tokyo! alongside Michel Gondry and Bong Joon-ho. Holy Motors represents the auteur’s first major picture since Pola X, and what Carax has to offer is a truly preposterous work of unapologetic art that signifies a madman’s comeback. Striking a careful balance between deliberate arthouse pretension and a sincere director’s vision with a true love for filmmaking, Carax’s fragmented narratives within Holy Motors creates a lunatic open-endedness for a film that’s unpredictable, occasionally awe-inspiring, and sometimes even beautiful. The bewildering images onscreen convey the sheer ambition of the project, a sort of encapsulation of Carax’s subconscious run amok. Filtered through the eyes of a surrealist with a subtext on the death and potential rebirth of cinema, Holy Motors follows a madman’s odyssey through Paris as if the underlying id beneath James Joyce’s Ulysses were visualized on the big screen. Céline (Édith Scob) chauffeurs the cryptic Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) in a stretch limousine around Parisian streets as Oscar takes on the personas of nine widely different characters of varying genres altogether, relegating the film as a holistic yet fragmented work of different vignettes that come crashing down in the last quarter of the film. Taking place over the course of a single day, the film plays out like a reimagined Ulysses that’s completely off its rocker, but true genius often comes part and parcel with lunacy.

Holy Motors retrospectively evaluates the historic ebb and flow of cinema, opening with a clip from some of the first ever images of motion pictures: Étienne-Jules Marey’s proto-film of a man stretching, literally shot with his photographic gun in the late 1800s. The film then turns its eye on a catatonic audience in a movie theater, mirroring our own impassive eyes falling upon Carax’s images. For the rest of the film, this audience remains largely absent onscreen, though Carax assumes our ubiquitous presence haunting his main protagonist as he performs his nine absurdly vaudevillian acts to please his invisible audience. After these puzzling images of Marey’s film and the unresponsive audience, Holy Motors wanders into Leos Carax himself waking with a start, thus linking cinema with dreams as surrealists like David Lynch have done time and time again. Undoubtedly, Holy Motors is a work of surrealism with its thesis partly concerned with the film theory assertion of cinema as intimately linked with dreams. The movie’s own contemplation of bygone styles of film recalls the ceaseless flow of daydream, unconsciously studying a century of cinema from today’s drastically different perspective of the medium. In examining the very nature of film art, Holy Motors reveals both the limitations of the medium and the boundlessness of art itself. With less of a focus on narrative and more emphasis on an expression of the powers and effects of art, Holy Motors’s existential malaise presents cinema on its death knoll with the medium’s inevitable rebirth just waiting to emerge. 

Shot digitally, the film seems coldly removed from the original images of cinema but Leos Carax slowly chips away at the divide between generations. Like a celebratory panegyric, the film’s own open-endedness embraces all aspects of movies (from filmmaker to spectator) and performance art with an enthusiastic fervor. The film is many movies all in one, with Monsieur Oscar’s individual vignettes taken from melodrama, romance, musical, comedy, hitman movie, kitchen sink drama, motion capture work, and so on. Carax’s usage of digital cinema captures Denis Lavant’s all too human acting with a piece of machinery, yet the director presents the actor’s scenes as something not unlike theater, where no obstacles lie between audience and the live act to make for pure performance art. This bizarre approach to moviemaking yields an acting tour-de-force from its cast, especially with Denis Lavant’s phenomenally physical movements and gestures that flavor each of his nine different characters with a unique identity and tone. Disappearing into each of his roles perfectly, the actor conveys the importance of human physicality amidst an age of cold, digital technology that transcends Carax’s own duplicitous use of digital filmmaking techniques. Lavant’s theater-like performance to an absent crowd recalls Shakespeare’s “All the world's a stage” monologue, with Carax portraying everything in his film as part of a larger performance where reality itself becomes cinema.

The film plays out as an odyssey complete with interludes inside Céline’s limousine, one dreamy vignette lapsing into another, sometimes without an apparent beginning or end. The film simply slides into its various identities as Oscar puts on the persona of his characters, delving into the worlds of comedy, sci-fi, and musical with effortless grace. This overarching theme on the instability of identity spills onto the film’s own commentary on the constantly fluctuating forms of cinema. There are numerous deaths throughout Holy Motors, but of course death remains merely another part of the act: the film simply starts up a new vignette to signify rebirth and continuation. Just as Oscar collapses his personas and gives rise to new ones, so too does the cinema (and art in general) as it conforms to changing modalities of time. Carax underlines how movies constantly die and reform under new identities – silent cinema ceding to talkies, black and white ceding to color, fullscreen to widescreen, 2D to 3D, analog, digital, VHS, DVD, blu-ray, so on and so on – to make the point of the impermanence of art. With a myriad of new technologies and styles taking over older ones, certain modes of filmmaking will ultimately disappear from the spotlight and performance will change to suit the needs of whatever new form arises. Certainly, Holy Motors resembles little of Étienne-Jules Marey’s early images, yet both works fall under the ever-expanding umbrella of film. Thus, while Leos Carax entertains the idea of our current form of cinema nearing its death, Holy Motors is also about rebirth and life, because as long as there are beholders, art will always create beauty.

Roughly midway through the film, Monsieur Oscar converses with a nameless character played by Michel Piccoli, a film industry suit straight out of Mulholland Drive who worries about the disappearance of both the movie camera and the audience altogether – “What if there is no beholder?” The exceptionally physical performance of Denis Lavant emphasizes the significance of human actors amidst digital imagery, safeguarding authentic humanism against the abstraction of commercialized digital filmmaking. Nevertheless, the characters of Holy Motors remain anxious over the changing forms of cinema, and their fear of a disappearing camera only holds truer in reality with directors like James Cameron and Peter Jackson conforming to the falsity of CGI filmmaking. Even the disappearance of the beholders of beauty – the audience – rings true with the film’s own absent audience save for the deadened stare of the spectators in the initial scene. To Leos Carax and the characters of Holy Motors, they ultimately conclude that the show must go on so long as beauty can be created in art, and Oscar sets off on his bizarre journey through Paris.

The miniaturization of the camera makes life itself seem like the movies, and Holy Motors runs down various forms of the medium throughout its running time, from its early progress to its current state of decline. One of Oscar’s early performances reflects this decline: the actor dresses in a spandex suit with motion capture sensors, performing his routine physical acts in a completely barren room. By showing the process of performance under motion capture and CGI technology rather than the final product after post-production, Carax underlines the hollowness that modern cinema now operates under. A contortionist also enters the darkened room to match Lavant’s acrobatics, and the two eventually enact the most physical of performances – sex. Yet despite the passion of the two performers, the isolated digital context lacks the energy of real filmmaking before an actual camera, sets, and lighting, feeling crude compared to the actual act of performance. However, Leos Carax acknowledges the inherent falsity underlying all of cinema, shifting his characters’ performances into an interrogation between real and “reel” life as the narrative quickly falls to ambiguity. Part of this ambiguity stems from Denis Lavant’s deep role commitment that makes his various performances unclear as to what is dietetically real and what is just part of the act. Holy Motors itself casually sinks into the film’s own deliberate unreality, blending reality and fiction into an ambiguous whole by the end of the movie. Carax indirectly interrogates cinema’s lies in one vignette where a domestic drama version of Oscar chastises his “daughter” when he discovers that her personal narrative of the night’s events prove to be a fabrication. Reality becomes unclear in Carax’s cinema, and Lavant’s engrossed role perfectionism makes it hard to differentiate the act and the real world.

René Magritte’s famous painting “The Treachery of Images” comes to mind in addressing Carax’s obfuscation of his narrative. The painting depicts a pipe with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” written underneath: This is not a pipe. Holy Motors represents a kind of reapplication of Magritte’s treacherous imaging, making visible the carefully constructed process of filmmaking in order to reach a similar conclusion. In place of a pipe, films present reality; Carax makes the cautious reminder as many other likeminded auteurs (Michael Haneke, for example) have done: this is not reality. So what exactly is reality’s relationship to cinema? Holy Motors points out the metaphysical complications of discerning reality from film, containing plenty of visual allusions to the fakeness of image-making, such as a digital fireplace and Oscar’s many disguises. Indeed, both Oscar and the audience get lost to the fictional, Carax-created world where reality blurs with cinematic life and traditional ways of filmmaking (big cameras, tangible mise en scène, physical acting) are simultaneously immediate and obscure. Audiences know that Oscar’s various performances are all an act, yet the initial death of the character comes as a shock even as he unblinkingly stands right back up to move on to the next scene. Carax further complicates his narrative with the introduction of popstar Kylie Minogue’s duplicitous character, who in her shared scenes with Oscar make obscure her relationship with him. Do they have a history together, or are they merely strangers acting out their roles? Who dies in the film, or is death and killing simply part of the act?

Denis Lavant’s various assortment of characters – an acrobat, a beggar, a feral sewer-crawler, etc. – unquestioningly carries out their acts without any discernible plot within the movie to tie all scenes together. Soon, Oscar begins to think of his work as tiresome routine appointments, though the actual visual product of his performances is absolutely deviant from anything that could be considered routine. Take for example the aforementioned feral sewer-crawler persona, a filthy man who emerges from a manhole and marches through a cemetery set to the original 1954 Godzilla theme. Leos Carax doesn’t just reference for the sake of paying tribute, however, because Holy Motors also contains plenty of meta self-referencing to reflexively probe its own syntax. For example, the Kylie Minogue song “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” plays in a scene right before Kylie Minogue herself appears as a main character in another scene. Édith Scob dons a mask towards the end of the film that recalls her famous face-mask in Georges Franju’s 1960 Eyes Without a Face, a film she played the starring role in. Even Lavant’s own sewer character is a reprised role from another Carax work: the brief segment in the aforementioned film Tokyo!

Such moments of self-referencing suggest Carax’s invitation of the audience to participate in his film’s performances, a thought bolstered by his decision to make visible an actual diegetic audience in the first few minutes of the film. This closer relationship between artist and audience makes Carax’s inherent commentaries within Holy Motors feel all the more personal. When Oscar stumbles upon a fashion photographer constantly muttering “beauty!” (and nothing else) amidst his curiously aloof model (Eva Mendes), Carax implies our current one-dimensional, superficial attitude towards art, photography, and fashion. The photographer, upon seeing the disgusting costume of Oscar’s feral character, can only excitedly exclaim a single word over and over again: “weird!” When Oscar suddenly abducts the model to the humorous chagrin of bystanders, Carax portrays him fashioning a makeshift burqa for a mannequin-like Eva Mendes, once again repurposing an art form to changing modalities and contexts. Moreover, this bizarre sequence, along with many others scattered throughout the film, also carry a tinge of comical absurdism. A later scene finds Oscar meticulously creating a new hitman persona only to completely botch his job (evoking David Lynch’s funny hitman sequence in Mulholland Drive) even though the character appears to play both hitman and victim.

These bizarre scenes turn Holy Motors into a film that can be undeniably fun even as Leos Carax interrogates ambiguous, open-ended topics that investigate the entire breadth of cinema. The sudden emergence of an accordion parade midway through the film is especially glorious, conveying Carax’s own infectious enthusiasm for film. This moment of sublime gusto is necessary for a work as dense and ambitious as Holy Motors, signifying that the best way to experience Carax’s strange film is to simply sit back and let his images wash over you. There’s simply too much packed into the movie’s otherworldly voyage through the unknown, and the lack of a traditional narrative only makes Holy Motors that much more ambitious and fascinating. Both a death ode and a hopeful glance towards the inevitable rebirth of cinema, Holy Motors rekindles the spark for the future possibilities of film art by glancing forwards and backwards in time. Without hesitation, Carax presents enigmatic yet captivating images for audiences to peek into his strange, unknown world. For Carax, this unknown world inhabits a film, because as Holy Motors demonstrates, all the world’s a screen.

[freetea-blog]

New Order: Favorite Films, 100-81

Miguel Penabella | 19 December 2012

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100. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | David Fincher | 2011

David Fincher captures the unnerving dread of Stieg Larsson’s icy Swedish tale better than even the Swedes did, with Pakula-esque direction and gorgeous wide-angle cinematography. Casting Rooney Mara is a winning choice as well, with her rendition of the titular Lisbeth Salander finding ground apart from Noomi Rapace’s version as a far more ghostly, secretive presence.

099. Wings of Desire | Wim Wenders | 1987

Wings of Desire’s slow pace is hypnotizing, lulling you into a trance as the camera gently tracks through a black and white Berlin. Saturnine yet strangely lovely, objective yet intimate, this film represents a perfect example of the visual poetry of film.

098. The Three Colors Trilogy | Krzysztof Kieślowski | 1993-1994

Kieślowski’s masterpiece is a sprawling collection that places his three muses – Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irène Jacob – in one of the most intellectually engaging and ambitious trilogies ever created. With a meticulously calculated style and grand meditations on various political and philosophical themes, The Three Colors Trilogy is a captivating tour de force and a true wonder of cinema.

097. Possession | Andrzej Żuławski | 1981

Disturbingly Cronenberg, psychotically von Trier, and disquietingly Cassavetes, Possession’s allegory for marital discord strikes home as a deranged take on arthouse horror.

096. L'Atalante | Jean Vigo | 1934

Tracing the newfound marital life of its young protagonists, L’Atalante unfolds both the pleasures and pains of romance in its delicate poeticism.

095. The Third Man | Carol Reed | 1949

The very essence of film noir: tense, atmospheric, moody, shadowy, and altogether captivating.

094. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Alfonso Cuarón | 2004

Prisoner of Azkaban is what happens when you hand over a massive blockbuster franchise to an auteur of global cinema: a turn from whimsical children’s cinema to darker and more mature family cinema, glorious single takes, and Gary Oldman.

093. Rosemary’s Baby | Roman Polanski | 1968

A fairly square domestic drama for the first half of the film, until Polanski unravels the occult horror lying beneath his bourgeois comforts. Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes work wonders here, even if production with Polanski was total hell.

092. Blow Out | Brian De Palma | 1981

Brian De Palma surpasses the limits of genre trappings here, transcending what would be a simple political thriller in favor of a work of art that’s equally gripping and dreamlike.

091. Cloverfield | Matt Reeves | 2008

Admittedly a guilty pleasure, the pure subjectivity of Cloverfield throws you directly into the action to make every single explosion, shout, and terrified burst of running feel immersive and the audience absolutely vulnerable.

090. Some Like It Hot | Billy Wilder | 1959

Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon make for one of my favorite screwball comedies ever. It’s not quite my favorite Billy Wilder film (well, nobody’s perfect), but Some Like It Hot is deathly funny no matter how many times it’s revisited.

089. eXistenZ | David Cronenberg | 1999

David Cronenberg’s dissertation on videogames and reality stands as true today with the constantly-growing trends of augmented reality, moral systems in gaming, sole “auteurs” as the visions behind games, and the overarching culture of videogames than it did back in 1999. Simply put, Cronenberg’s (for lack of a better name) mindfuck was ahead of its time, and likely suggests that Cronenberg himself is a gamer (wishful thinking).

088. Singin’ In the Rain | Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen | 1952

This is the feel good movie of choice. The movie to watch at 1:30 in the morning and still feel great staying up late. The movie to watch when the day’s gloomy and raining but you can still feel happy knowing that Gene Kelly once felt glorious in such miserable weather. The movie to watch when you need to laugh, because don’t you know everyone wants to laugh?

087. The Wages of Fear | Henri-Georges Clouzot | 1953

Like a forerunner to the B-movies we have today, The Wages of Fear makes stunning use of its gimmicky plot (two trucks carrying fragile nitroglycerine must carefully drive through mountain passes to extinguish an oil well fire) to make for a suspenseful, Hitchcock-esque thriller. Once the action unfolds, the rest of the film carries a mentally-taxing feeling of uncertainty, with Clouzot’s trucks (and his audiences) completely defenseless to the dangers that lie ahead.

086. Superbad | Greg Mottola | 2007

In 2007, Superbad (along with the equally great Juno) broke down high school taboos with sharp writing and even sharper acting from its young stars. Superbad’s excellent deconstruction on the stereotypes of drinking results in one of the most bittersweet comedy endings I’ve ever seen: the guys get the girl only after a sobering acknowledgment of friendship as they part before college, now all grown up and ready to move on after one last anxious look before leaving.

085. Syndromes and a Century | Apichatpong Weerasethakul | 2006

Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes some of the most serene films I’ve ever seen. With a minimal plot, slow pacing, and the soothing diegetic sounds of his rural Thailand, Syndromes and a Century plays out as calm as a half-remembered dream state.

084. 3 Women | Robert Altman | 1977

Because Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek in a movie together.

083. The Last Picture Show | Peter Bogdanovich | 1971

Filming with gorgeous black and white cinematography, Bogdanovich presents a desolate coming-of-age tale that leaves its characters as lonely as the Texan town they live in. An essential slice of American cinema.

082. Watchmen | Zack Snyder | 2009

As a Zack Snyder apologist, I mark Watchmen as his best flick because of the richness of Alan Moore’s original source material and Snyder’s masterful eye for matching the graphic novel aesthetic. Noirish, glossy, and altogether a slick yet brutal package, Watchmen embodies my kind of comic book adaptation.

081. The Shining | Stanley Kubrick | 1980

Who can deny The Shining’s labyrinthine presentation and unnerving approach to horror? To those who deny its creeping power, simply revisit the jarring close-ups, the unearthly lighting of the final maze sequence, and the shifty architecture and mise en scène that Stanley Kubrick obsessively constructs to entrap not only his characters but the audience as well.

[freetea-blog]

Lawless

Miguel Penabella | 18 December 2012

Lawless

Dir. John Hillcoat, 2012 

Digitally shot in an autumnal stretch of Georgian countryside, Lawless carefully unites pop filmmaking and historical drama with characters that serve as living documents themselves. With Nick Cave penning the script alongside his usual collaborator John Hillcoat as director, the true story behind Lawless makes for a superb crime epic and a dark period piece that surveys the legendary aura surrounding cinematic gangsters. Following Cave and Hillcoat’s previous work in Ghosts… of the Civil Dead and The Proposition, this film similarly portrays violent, half-mythic men and the relationship between law and order in savage lands. Thus, Lawless resembles a formal Western not only in the film’s dusty Southern cinematography but also in its depiction of larger-than-life men that overstate their criminal ego in pursuit of legendary status. Nick Cave chips away at the legend that surrounds the film’s protagonists – the raucous Bondurant brothers – to demystify cinematic gangsters and analyze how unrestrained egoism aggravates interpersonal violence. Take for example seasoned actor Gary Oldman as the elusive big-city mobster Floyd Banner. An early scene witnesses him singlehandedly blasting away a car with a tommy gun, brandishing his weapon with a deadened eye and a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips like an archetypical gangster legend. This kind of grandiose entrance suggests a pivotal role in the narrative (especially with Oldman’s bankability), but Banner is more of a ghost throughout the rest of the film, his name only heard in excited gossip except for one other grand appearance. Instead, Lawless presents Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) as the reckoning weight that the Bondurant brothers must revolve around. Rakes pursues a destructive, blood-spattered campaign less in the name of justice and more just to prove that the Bondurants are not indestructible as people claim them to be. This obsession naturally leads to eruptions of total violence, including one particularly sadistic attack on the youngest Bondurant, Jack (Shia LaBeouf). Despite the film’s breakdown of cinematic gangster violence, Lawless is still altogether a pop gangster flick, a sort of genre precursor to Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad complete with anachronistic music (The Velvet Underground as re-imagined by a folk band) and moments of pure popcorn glee. 

Thanks largely in part to Boardwalk Empire, the collective cultural consciousness of Prohibition Americana has moved from jazzy speakeasies to hardboiled gangsters. Drawing on the tradition of classic gangster pictures like 1987’s The Untouchables and 1931’s The Public Enemy, Hillcoat presents a story bound in blood, fame, and liquor. Lawless portrays its characters as monolithic creatures that populate these kinds of archetypical gangster flicks, now relocated in the tranquil backwoods of bootlegger country, the very source for all the violence that spills onto the streets of America’s cities. Alcohol, bloodletting, and flourishes of hillbilly culture run through the film as it does in Matt Bondurant’s book The Wettest County In the World upon which the film is based. Telling the story of brothers Forrest, Howard, and Jack Bondurant (Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, and Shia LaBeouf), Lawless filters its sprawling crime saga through the eyes of the moonshiners over those who wield the Tommy guns. Nevertheless, Lawless still operates under the familiar language of the gangster genre, primarily following Jack’s coming-of-age to mobster prominence under the shadow of his older, already established brothers like a historical antecedent to Goodfellas or The Public Enemy. The Bondurant brothers operate a lucrative moonshining business along with the numerous other underground distilleries that light up the countryside “like a Christmas tree,” but with the arrival of the aforementioned Deputy Rakes comes along the corruption, extortion, and intimidation from the city. While the two older Bondurants struggle to maintain the fear and mythic aura that sets them apart from the rest, Jack finds himself dragged into the world of predatory men and their world of stark, gritty violence painted on an idyllic country landscape. Lawless certainly doesn’t let up on its blood gushing, containing images of throats slit open, men beaten with brass knuckles, and so on. Nevertheless, Hillcoat has the insight to spread his violence apart during the film’s nearly two-hour running time, allowing audiences to immerse in the pastoral locale before suddenly amplifying his action for full impact.

Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme frequently shoots in a magnificent wide-angle lens that locates characters in full context of their surroundings, placing the film’s men alongside the countryside that defines them. Barren, wide open landscapes that serve as establishing shots dot the film (thanks largely in part to guidance by Roger Deakins and the late Harris Savides), while Delhomme takes precious time to detail the deadened woods, rickety houses, and sawdust sprinkled interiors to fully immerse audiences in the film’s specific time and place. Still, Lawless is more concerned with the vicious yet charming gangsters that live in these forests, with Hillcoat and Cave capturing a dissertation on violence and coming-of-age masculinity. Hillcoat’s sprawling countryside serves as a land of violence where boys become gangsters and the Bondurants deal out fear and intimidation while believing in their own egoistic legend. Shia LaBeouf finally unveils his true acting capacities after a string of poor role choices, conveying a youthful gawkiness while still believably feeling undervalued by his older brothers. Harboring an inner drive that slowly allows him to work his way up the criminal ranks, LaBeouf somehow makes his character seem simultaneously respectable and ridiculous, posing for pictures that make him look like a wannabe gangster much like those you’ll find in today’s social media sites. Inversely, Jack’s budding romance with the local preacher’s daughter Bertha Minnix (Mia Wasikowska) feels charming because of the film’s steady pacing of their relationship, and proves Wasikowska’s growing presence as a prolific young actress to keep an eye on. As for the older Bondurants, Tom Hardy holds his own against tested actors like Oldman, Pearce, and Chastain, conveying an awkward charisma during rest periods and suddenly erupting into an unbreakable shell during moments of action. Numerous scenes shared between him and Jessica Chastain carry a tremendous tension, contrasting the far more lighthearted frivolities that define LaBeouf and Wasikowska’s scenes. Unfortunately, the superior roles from all the aforementioned stars overshadow Jason Clarke’s Howard, casting him to the sideline as a supporting character.

While Oldman stays out of the spotlight for the majority of the film, it’s Guy Pearce who takes center stage with his fearsome yet seemingly innocuous visage. Pearce’s Deputy Rakes initially displays himself as soft-spoken, clean cut, and eerily unruffled, only to shatter this early pretense for the merciless, temperamental sadism that defines his villainy. Often resorting to brutal acts of unflinching violence, Rakes underlines the disparity between the crooked cities of the time period and the far more levelheaded “hillbilly” country folk. Hillcoat frames his pastoral countryside as tied to religion, family, culture, and tradition while his city gangsters convey a repulsive sleaziness. Of course, Lawless makes sure to never fully side with the country folk either, reminding audiences of the period’s racism (separate fountains for whites and non-whites) and demonstrating the capacity of the land’s seemingly harmless moonshiners for acts of gory mutilation. Gritty, commanding, and sprawling, Lawless is ultimately a worthwhile trip into the violence and egoism of the Prohibition-era backwoods despite its shortcomings. The fierce, devoted acting from all involved sets this film apart from many other genre entries this year, and coupled with the strong direction and sharp writing from John Hillcoat and Nick Cave, Lawless contains a cinematic heft that’s hard to ignore.

[freetea-blog]

New Order: 100 Favorite Films [Honorable Mentions]

Miguel Penabella | 17 December 2012

With the Sight & Sound releasing their decennial top films poll this year (the top 250 can be found here), I’ve found myself drawn to extensive list-making myself. Throughout the past few months, I’ve undertaken a half-interested attempt at 365 films in 365 days and a good chunk of the films I watched during this period appear on this list. Bolstered by my experiences in various film courses that have broadened my movie tastes both foreign and classic, I’ve finally condensed this list down to a sheer hundred. Nevertheless, the entire process ruminating over my personal favorites proved absolutely infuriating because of the sheer number of titles that abound throughout cinema history, and at the ripe age of 19, I’ve only seen the smallest percentage of what the world has to offer. There’s just so much to research, screen, re-screen, and critique that my mind just melts at the thought of claiming all of film history within one lifetime. Perhaps I’ll revisit this list next year and laugh at my choices, a handpicked selection of 100 titles that perfectly captures my tastes and attitudes on cinema at this point in my life. Hopefully next year my favorite 100 films will be radically different, because a man who views the movies at 20 the same as he did at 19 has wasted 1 year of his life (with apologies to Muhammad Ali).

110. Citizen Kane | Orson Welles | 1941

I know: blasphemy, right? To put Citizen Kane as an honorable mention! I know (as well as you do) that no one, not even Sight & Sound this year, needs to remind people that Citizen Kane is one of the best movies ever. That’s a given. Watching Orson Welles rage, bellow, and transform right before our eyes is a wonder to behold, setting the standard for cinematic character studies even while experimenting with the sheer fundamentals of the moving image: compositions, mise en scène, camera movement, continuity editing. There’s nothing that neither I nor any other critic/academic can say that the original movie poster has already said back in 1941: “It’s terrific!”

109. Irréversible | Gaspar Noé | 2002

Gaspar Noé takes an ugly subject matter and refuses to indulge in cinematic suspense. By presenting his rape and revenge story backwards, revenge arrives without context at the very start of the film. Thus, Noé denies catharsis and punishes his viewers for even thinking about expecting more violent reprisal despite the fact that he already delivered it. A fascinating, unforgiving take on violence.

108. Werckmeister Harmonies | Béla Tarr | 2000

With Werckmeister Harmonies, Béla Tarr demonstrates how only 39 black and white shots over the course of over two hours can pack more emotional impact than by simply cutting away from the drama. Minimal yet beautiful, the film is a true modern masterpiece that highlights the sheer power of images.

107. M | Fritz Lang | 1931

There’s Metropolis and there’s M. The former represents one of the finest early sci-fi films ever made and the latter represents one of the finest early film noirs ever made. For a prolific filmmaker like Fritz Lang, M surpasses Metropolis by its sheer emotional complexity and resonance as one of the most spellbinding serial killer hunts ever filmed.

106. Tokyo Drifter | Seijun Suzuki | 1966

Seijun Suzuki’s mise en scène here is the most eye-catching cinematic pop art I’ve ever seen. Signifying the transition of Japan from the rigid black-and-white formalism of the postwar period to the colorful, bizarre world we think of the country today, Tokyo Drifter isn’t just one of the best hitman films I’ve ever seen, it’s also one of the finest works of art I’ve experienced. Inspiring a wave of artists from Suda51 (Killer7, No More Heroes) to Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Pusher), Suzuki’s sprightly hitman flick has more relevance today than ever before.

105. Caché | Michael Haneke | 2005

I’ve only begun to tap into the career of Michael Haneke, and his 2005 film Caché has piqued my interest the most. Operating both as a critique of cinema’s conveyance of truth and France’s willful amnesia of its dark postcolonial history, Caché is a complex and tense film more interested in provoking audiences than with closing its narrative. Leaving with more questions than answers, Haneke offers an ultimatum: even if you watch with close eyes, truth may never be found. With that in mind, is Caché (or any film) worth watching? Without hesitation, I say yes.

104. Harakiri | Masaki Kobayashi | 1962

Akira Kurosawa may be the definitive samurai filmmaker, but Kobayashi’s Harakiri is just as good as any in Kurosawa’s filmography. Just watch the last half hour of the film – the breathtaking samurai duel in an open prairie or the tense last stand in a confined locale – to really grasp the magnetic power of actor Tatsuya Nakadai’s existentially misplaced samurai.

103. Come and See | Elem Klimov | 1985

Leave it to the Soviets to make the most intense, emotionally brutal, unflinchingly terrifying, and un-heroic war film ever made. Rather than uplifting audiences with insincere cries of honor, bravery, and valor, the film leaves you feeling utterly disturbed. Like a good war film should.

102. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her | Jean-Luc Godard | 1967

Perhaps the most “Godardian” of all Godard films, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her comprises some of the best of the director’s stylistic and thematic tendencies. Aiming to realize a counter aesthetic for cinema following the stuffy, overblown features of postwar America, Godard rewrites the entire language of film. He makes both the camera and acting looser, filming anything and everything while his actors become less and less restrained by formalistic conventions of performance art. Laying the foundations for the cinema we have today and inspiring a multitude of modern artists (Scorsese, Tarantino, Soderbergh, PTA, to name a few), Godard stands as one of the most influential filmmakers in history, and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her signifies the director at top form even if it’s not quite my favorite film he has to offer.

101. Holy Motors | Leos Carax | 2012

Returning to filmmaking since 1999’s Pola X, Leos Carax unveils one of the most insane cinematic odysseys ever concocted. Holy Motors is batshit, absurd, vulgar, silly, and totally off its rocker, but of course, many geniuses are also completely bonkers. To the discerning moviegoer, one can unveil the true brilliance behind the film’s surreal frontage, locating the self-reflexivity, the breathtaking acting by Denis Lavant, and the true love that Carax and his crew undeniably have for cinema. Starting with the very first images ever recorded by something that can arguably be considered the moving pictures and finding along its narrative basically everything that cinema history comprises – musicals, motion capture CGI, theater, screwball comedy, fashion, gangster films, melodrama, etc. – the film’s odyssey through Paris is a bizarre yet fascinating ode to why we go to the movies in the first place.