The Film Daily

[thefilmdaily]

Team America: World Police (2004), dir. Trey Parker

When was the last time you said Matt Damon without sounding like a simpleton? Our guess is; not since 2004. Those clever chaps behind South Park and The Book of Mormon pissed off just about everyone that year with their political puppet satire, Team America: World Police. They took a hysterical swipe at everyone from Tim Robbins and Alec Baldwin, to Kim Jong-il and George Clooney. Luckily for them, it swelled into a cult smash, created a few unforgettable phrases, and caused a lot of damp underwear (from guffawing). Oh, and did we mention there's gratuitous puppet sex? Team America are a crack team of paramilitary policemen hell bent on stamping out terrorism. Paris gets blown up, there's a shootout in North Korea, and Michael Moore suicide bombs Mt. Rushmore. It's all good fun. Do we like Team America? Fuck, yeah.

[thefilmdaily]

The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), dir. Anthony Minghella 

Everyone knows LinkedIn is the dullard of the social media world—it sits there being all grey with colleagues from yonks ago adding you and people arbitrarily endorsing each other's boring skills. Imagine, though, if your skillset included lying, forgery, and impersonation? That's what Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) would have on his LinkedIn page if they'd had it back in the 1950s, because that's what he's good at. While he's working at a party, he meets a man named Herbert Greenleaf, who gets the wrong end of the stick and believes Tom went to Princeton with his son Dickie, who's lounging around looking like Jude Law (he's played by Jude Law, in fact) and generally living it up in Italy and spending all of Daddy's money. He says he'll pay Tom a thousand bucks to bring Dickie home, and Tom naturally accepts. Upon arriving in Italy, he charms his way into Dickie and girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow)'s lives until they start to find him a bit creepy and then (spoiler!) everything turns quite murdery. Everyone is brilliant in Ripley, but it was a career-making performance for Jude Law, who proved he was much more than a pretty face, and, retrospectively, a nanny-fucker. 

[thefilmdaily]

Shame (2012), dir. Steve McQueen

There are plenty of movies about young lads trying to get their horrible little rocks off, and it usually involves penises being put in places they were never meant to go—holes in walls, apple pies, etc. Brandon (Michael Fassbender) has the opposite problem—he's having far too much sex, compulsively, joylessly—but when his porcelain-fragile sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) arrives to crash at his house, it becomes clear that making merry with baked desserts might have been a good option for him. Steve McQueen's blistering follow-up to Hunger is dominated by a crackling tension between Mulligan and Fassbender: where she is unguarded and needy, he writhes with a self-loathing that is only just concealed by a veneer of success and charm. Shot with an operatic kind of spareness and set to a brilliant Harry Escott score, this an intense and unflinching portrayal of damaged lives and unchecked impulses. Teenagers everywhere take heed: there are worse things to be than a virgin.

[thefilmdaily]

V for Vendetta (2005), dir. Larry and Andy Wachowski

Never has one movie prop delivered a greater cultural impact than the Guy Fawkes mask worn by the anarchic protagonist in V for Vendetta. Switch on the news today—a good seven years since its release—and you'll see the iconic veneer worn by political activists the world over. The violent comic book adaptation hit our screens at a sensitive time; London was reeling from the 2005 bombings and 'terrorism' was a white-hot topic. Brave then, to release a mainstream film that encourages you to sympathise with V; a freedom fighter trying to spark a revolution against a brutal fascist regime in a near-future dystopia. He takes Evey (Natalie Portman) under his rebellious wing and converts her to his righteous cause. Aside from the political current coursing through the veins of V for Vendetta, this is also an action thriller smothered in the Wachowski siblings' Matrix-y fingerprints (oodles of explosions and bullet time). So, as V politely explains to government bastard, Creedy; beneath the mask is an idea. And ideas are bulletproof.

[thefilmdaily]

School of Rock (2003), dir. Richard Linklater 

Things aren't going well for Dewey Finn (Jack Black) – he's jobless, is constantly getting hectored by his best mate Ned's bothersome girlfriend (played by a spectacularly annoying Sarah Silverman), and he's been kicked out of his band for being a bit overzealous with guitar solos. And that's all he really wants to do, poor old sod—play in his band. The chips are down, but in opportunistic fashion, he takes on a job as a substitute teacher—only problem being, he's pretending to be Ned, who actually is a substitute teacher. Cue the classroom, and Fake Ned realises these children are ripe for exploitation, because they can form a brand new rock band with him as the star. It's not as creepy as it sounds; in fact it's got a whole lot of heart, and some banging singalong tunes, too. One thing, though—it made us really pissed off that we never learnt the bass guitar properly when we were a kid.

[thefilmdaily]

The Sixth Sense (1999), dir. M. Night Shyamalan

We've been caught out in quizzes when asked to name Bruce Willis' highest grossing movie. Die Hard? Armageddon? Nope. It was The Sixth Sense by a country mile. The supernatural chiller is armed with one of the best twists in cinematic history; sadly, it is also one of the worst kept secrets. Still, don't let that put you off—this is gripping, spine-tingling stuff whether or not you're privy to the third act humdinger. Miserable child psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Willis) takes on troubled tyke, Cole Sear—a lad cursed with seeing dead folk pottering about. It's all pretty dark; most of these ghosts are suicide or murder victims complete with ghastly injuries and potty mouths. It's up to Malcolm and Cole to work out what exactly it is they bloody want and see them off for good. This box office smash raises big questions; what happened to Mischa Barton and Hayley Joel Osment? And what the fuck is Shyamalan playing at? The genius that brought us this classic also delivered The Last Airbender and The Happening.

[thefilmdaily]

Jumanji (1995), dir. Joe Johnston 

Imagine if you started playing a board game and suddenly it got really windy and Robin Williams sporting a great big beard popped out. If you’re familiar with kids’ classic Jumanji, which you jolly well should be, you’ll know that it’s a film in which this exactly happens, in a manner of speaking. It begins with 12-year-old Alan Parker having a bit of a shitty time of it with school bullies and a harsh, overbearing father; and things only get worse when he discovers a quirky-looking board game in a building site emitting the sound of jungle drums like some sort of freaky boombox. It gets worse because it sucks him in for 26 years, and he only reappears when a pair of children (one of whom is played by Child Actress Kirsten Dunst) start playing the game themselves. Imaginative and wholly unique, Jumanji is one of those movies that made you really crave a sequel, which unfortunately never came—although somebody is, apparently, planning a reboot, which is thoroughly good news. 

[thefilmdaily]

Killing Them Softly (2012), dir. Andrew Dominik

There's plenty to admire about Killing Them Softly, Andrew Dominik's 2012 adaptation of a George V. Higgin's novel. Taut yet impressionistic, it's a crime thriller more interested in exploring ideas and atmospheres than simply delivering the thrills and spills you'd expect from its hitman-pursues-bumbling-crooks premise. But since the sad news of James Gandolfini's death this morning, it will now go down as featuring Gandolfini's last great performance in a career that offered plenty. He appears as hitman Mickey, a former sure bet now hamstrung by alcoholism and heartbreak. While it's much more than simply a Tony Soprano reprise, Gandolfini invests in Mickey many of the contradictions that made Tony so fascinating; he's strong but pathetic, both winner and loser, both monster and human.

[thefilmdaily]

Stoker (2013), dir. Park Chan-wook

Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is a gloomy girl – probably because her dad’s just died, but you get the feeling she’s inclined that way anyway because she’s very pale and dresses like a Victorian. As she’s gliding around being professionally melancholic at the funeral, everyone’s surprised to see long lost Uncle Charlie turn up—handsome, dapper, charming, and totes creepy. He stays afterwards, and Stoker’s sad, desperate mum (Nicole Kidman) is thrilled about it, at first ostensibly because he’s a good cook and then because they start touching each other. But there’s something not right with Uncle Charlie, and young Stoker knows it too. It’s a neo-gothic psychodrama, so it involves sinister people staring at each other in an aghast fashion quite a lot; but it’s as much about the story as the cinematography; with beautiful, storybook-style imagery that belies the chill factor. We found out afterwards that Wentworth Miller from Prison Break wrote it, which is what you’d call ‘a turn up for the books’. Good lad.

[thefilmdaily]

District 9 (2009), Neil Blomkamp

What would happen if a spacecraft packed to the rafters with alien folk drifted into our atmosphere and stalled above a major city; like, say, Johannesburg? Neil Blomkamp asks this and other tricky questions in District 9 and the answers are bleak. With a less than subtle nod towards the apartheid, the cat-food loving aliens (or 'prawns' as they are unaffectionately known) are housed in a crime-ridden, impoverished slum. Wikus, an Afrikaner bureaucrat, is ordered to relocate the prawns to a new camp much further outside the city (they're not liked, much). It's a disastrous affair, particularly as Wikus sprays himself in the face with a liquid that sets off his own mutation into one of the beings. He's snaffled up by the government and subjected to some awful tests, before narrowly escaping vivisection and heading for the slum. Thus begins a violent quest to reverse the transformation that sees him form an uneasy alliance with Christopher, a prawn that may have the solution. This is sublime South African sci-fi with a bitter political undertone.

[thefilmdaily]

Superbad (2007), dir. Greg Mottola

The adolescents of '99 (us) had American Pie for their 'cumming-of-age' sex comedy fix—eight years later, having been corrupted by internet porn, teens needed something more salacious. Virgins, Evan and Seth, are invited to school hottie, Jules' house party on the proviso they can procure booze. Along with socially-awkward pal, Fogell, they embark on a disaster-laden mission ripe with sexually-charged, razor sharp dialogue and one terrible fake ID. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg kicked off the script when they were pubescent 13-year old lads, which might explain the saturation of cock and vagina jokes. The critically-acclaimed, box office hit served as a career springboard for Hollywood darlings Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Emma Stone, as well as inspiring a new wave of high school gross-out flicks. And we thought Jim fucking an apple pie was edgy.

[thefilmdaily]

9 to 5 (1980), dir. Colin Higgins

Back when the cast of Bridesmaids were still in nappies, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and left-of-field feminist pinup Dolly Parton were already busy schooling audiences in the art of ‘womance’ (like bromance but with less aggressive hugging). Here, the ladies get stoned, drunk, and seriously antsy when men with comedy moustaches keep passing them over for promotion. Then arch nemesis boss Franklin Hart Jr stares at Dolly’s general chest area one time too many and she gets a gun out and shouts, ‘I'm gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot!’ She doesn’t, but she does kidnap him and attach him via winch to the ceiling of a Tudor mansion, which looks almost as painful, only kinkier. Hart makes like a whale tangled in a trapeze, but his captors just fix their perms and get on with running his company. The feminine touch means flexible working hours, a crèche, Dolly singing, and lots of flowers: sure, it plays straight into the ‘caring woman’ trope, but at the end of the day Hart gets eaten by savages in the Amazon (this part is blurry) whereas Dolly Parton has a waterpark in Tennessee named after her. Fact, fiction, and peroxide blondes collide, and the girls come out on top.

[thefilmdaily]

Collateral (2004), dir. Michael Mann

When they look back at Tom Cruise's iconic performances; Ron Kovic, Jerry Maguire, and Katie Holmes' husband, we wonder if Vincent—the silver-maned hitman in Collateral will get a mention. Because he should. Cabbie, Max (Jamie Foxx), picks up a fare at LAX—a no nonsense guy in a sharp suit offering $600 to make five stops in an evening. Probably just a lot of dry cleaning, right? Wrong. He's professionally offing the witnesses in a high-profile drug indictment. Cruise is chilling as the cold-blooded killer, and Foxx plays the passive hostage driver with aplomb. They aren't the only big talents on show; Jada Pinkett-Smith, Javier Bardem, and Mark Ruffalo all pop up. Michael Mann is no stranger to exceptional crime flicks; Heat and Manhunter were already under his belt by the time Collateral came along. Aside from the blistering soundtrack, gritty cinematography, and tightly woven plot, what we'll really remember this for is Tom Cruise as a lethal assassin in need of some Just For Men.

[thefilmdaily]

The Silence of the Lambs (1991), dir. Jonathan Demme

We hadn't seen The Silence of the Lambs for so long when rewatched it the other day that the only bit we could remember was mad old Miggs croaking 'I can smell your cunt' to Clarice Starling before ejaculating in her hair—but while it stands to reason that's the most memorable bit of the whole movie, it's not the only thing that made it so culturally significant it was preserved in the US National Film Registry. Clarice, as it happens, is just the hapless victim of an unfortunate incident—nobody expects to visit a state facility for the criminally insane and get jizzed on. She's there to see the infamous Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a former psychiatrist who went from counselling his patients to eating them. Everybody's understandably given him a bit of a wide berth, but he's the only one who can help the FBI find a serial killer nicknamed 'Buffalo Bill' who's been finding 'roomy' size 16 women and skinning them to (naturally) make himself a woman suit. Foster's great in her own awkward way, but this is all about Hopkins, all bulging eyes and cut-glass voice ('I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti'); so chilling that when it came to the sequels, his character could never be played by anyone else. 

[thefilmdaily]

Princess Mononoke (1997), dir. Hayao Miyazaki

While Spirited Away is principally responsible for exposing Western audiences to the fascinating world of Studio Ghibli, it's Princess Mononoke that probably inspires the most ardour: and with its smorgasbord of fantasy, history, and environmental concerns, it serves as a perfect introduction to the ideas that recur throughout this prolific Japanese institution's work. Our hero is handsome young Ashitaka; when a demon attacks his rural village, he slays it, as handsome young heroes should—but not before it infects him with an icky, tentacly curse. So, he sets off to the west to find a cure, only to find they're having problems of their own. The local Irontown is being terrorised by a Wolf goddess, and they've got a feral, human-hating Princess in tow. This is endlessly imaginative stuff, drawing heavily from Japanese folklore, and the animation is nothing short of stunning. If the proliferation of CGI animation films has you sore, this is a real balm.

[thefilmdaily]

The Kids Are Alright (2010), dir. Lisa Cholodenko

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are living the American dream. With a spacious house in the suburbs and a loving marriage that includes bubble baths and porn flicks, they’re the poster children of domesticated bliss. Sure, they’re lesbians, but that doesn’t appear to have affected their two attractive, artificially-inseminated teenagers one jot. But when the kids decide to get in contact with their sperm donor—played by a peculiarly florid Mark Ruffalo—this scene of idyllic domestication is shattered as each family member succumbs to his irresponsible, irrepressible charm. If you like the thought of Annette getting drunk, Julianne getting naked, and Mark doing that sexy West Coast drawl, this wry inspection of traditional family values in a modern day set-up delivers an intelligent portrayal of love and life.

[thefilmdaily]

The Rules of Attraction (2002), dir. Roger Avary

Christ on a bike, what happened to Dawson Leery? He was always moody and smouldering and a little bit of a dick, but now he's selling drugs and shagging everything that moves. Based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel of the same name, The Rules of Attraction in fact follows van der Beek's Sean Bateman and his pals through their turbulent college days. And by turbulent, we don't mean late nights in the library and a dwindling student loan; we're talking rape, suicide, obsession, and cosmic should-have-beens. As far as movies about college goes, this has all of the hedonism you'd expect plus a ruthless streak of sneering antipathy that left a bitter taste in many a critic's mouth. Nonetheless, solid performances, a sharp script, and some very slick sequences from Roger Avary makes this well worth a watch, even with its heart of darkness.