Top Ten Films 2010

10. Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone is set in brutally impoverished Appalachia, where seventeen year old Ree has a week to track down the dead body of her meth cooking father before the law takes her house away. This requires her to tread to the muddy and dangerous social waters of the Ozarks. So as you can tell this is not exactly an uplifting movie, but it’s a wonderful unflinching and intense portrait of a series of very desperate people.

9. 127 Hours

With 127 Hours, director Danny Boyle has managed to create an action movie where the main character is unable to move. 127 Hours follows the real life story of Aaron Ralston, a climber who after going hiking alone, gets his arm crushed by a rock in a canyon. After desperately trying to free himself for five days, while slowly using up the little of his remaining water, he finally decides to sever his arm to escape. The film is anchored by a very expressive and powerful performance by James Franco, and is helped by beautiful cinematography that keeps the film moving despite the fact it’s always in the same place. Obviously the amputation sequence at the end is gruesome and not for everyone, but it’s very much necessary and is a powerful statement about the human drive for survival.

8. Machete / Piranha 3D

The exploitation movie is back! Machete is about an illegal immigrant wrecking bloody revenge on the politicians who want to deport him, and Piranha 3D is about teenagers on spring break getting attacked by giant fish. Filled with buckets of violence, nudity, and bad dialog, they’re wonderful fun that you’ll probably feel guilty about later. What makes it even better is that the directors are clearly in on the joke, and work to make their movies as extreme and ridiculous as possible. How could you deny a movie that contains the line, “You just fucked with the wrong Mexican!”

7. The King’s Speech

The King’s Speech is about King George VI, known by his friends as Bertie, who suffered from an extreme and humiliating speech impediment. He eventually turns to Lionel Logue, who cures his speech impediment and eventually becomes his friend. Now the premise sounds conventional and boring, but what really makes this movie superb are the performances by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. They give beautiful and complex performances, and both of them deserve the buckets of awards that they are going to receive this year.

6. The Social Network

The Social Network is a tale of ambition, greed, and betrayal set to the story of the creation of Facebook. Driven by anger over his girlfriend breaking up with him, and jealousy of his fellow students at Harvard who come from old money, he creates one of the most popular websites in the world and becomes a billionaire. Driven by an unexpectedly brilliant performance by Jessie Eisenberg, who plays Mark as an awkward sociopath who’s horribly out of touch with everyone else, and a witty and fast paced script by Aaron Sorkin, the movie takes what could have been sensationalist bullshit and turns it into a polished reflection on class and ambition.

5. Splice

In probably the most original movie released this year, Splice is a movie about the consequences of the creation of human life. Splice surrounds Elsa and Clive, two scientists who end up creating a half human half animal chimera. But in many ways the creature is very human and they begin to treat it like their child. Although it was marketed as a horror movie, it’s not actually scary at all. It’s a very intriguing psychosexual Freudian family drama with a sci-fi twist. Understandably that isn’t for everyone, but I just loved it.

4. True Grit

Many may dismiss True Grit as a remake of a film that was already superb, but it’s a very different picture. While the 1969 version was vehicle for John Wayne, True Grit is a western about biblical retribution, but in true Coen brothers fashion it’s also a complex reflection on good and evil. It’s a story where the “good” characters and the “bad” characters aren’t that different, and karma simply deals justice with a swift and brutal hand. It’s very similar to No Country for Old Men, but Grit contains a lot more kindness and humor, and therefore is much easier to watch. Supported by great performances by the entire cast, particularily from newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, this is more evidence that the Coen brothers quite simply can’t make a bad film.

3. Exit Through the Gift Shop

Thierry Guetta was simply a Frenchman who owned a vintage clothing store, but who also constantly carried a camera and filmed everything that he saw. His cousin was the famous street artist Space Invader, and through him he ends up falling into the complex world of street art. After filming hours of footage of street art, he becomes obsessed with the idea of creating a documentary about the famous anonymous street artist Banksy, and therefore Banksy decided to make a documentary about Thierry. Exit Through the Gift Shop is that documentary. It functions as a character study, the charting of the birth of a movement, an expose on the exploitation of street art, and in many ways a practical joke. It’s endlessly entertaining and puzzling, but also inventive and insightful. I’d recommend it anyone.

2. Toy Story 3

Pixar seems to have a special ability that causes me to tear up during every single one of their movies, and Toy Story 3 was no exception. Andy is heading off to college and the toys’ fates seem to be in jeopardy, but they sent over to a daycare center that’s at first welcoming but then later sinister. Both emotionally beautiful and immensely creative, the movie never stops surprising you. In the end,it’s a simple beautiful love note to consumerism, childhood and the power of relationships.

1. Black Swan

Black Swan follows Nina Sayers, a ballerina at a top ballet company in New York, who is given the dual lead role in a production of Swan Lake. Director Darren Aronofsky views Swan Lake as a metaphor for the two extremes of art, which are controlled and rational versus passionate and dangerous. These extremes cause the childlike Nina to split in two, both literally and figuratively. This is all lead by Natalie Portman, in one of my favorite performances of all time, who takes an intellectual abstraction and turns it into a real human being who the audience can, at times painfully, relate to. The movie itself toys with both of these extremes and is both recklessly and powerfully melodramatic, but also interesting and complex. It forces the audience into Nina’s pointed shoes, and makes us feel like we ourselves are losing our grip on reality. It’s one of the most powerful movies I’ve ever seen, and is easily the best movie of the year.

'Red State' Trailer: Wow.

So the trailer has just been released for Kevin Smith's long rumored evangelical Christian horror movie Red State, and man does it look good. Smith is known largely for profanity filled R-rated commedies, so this is a huge departure for him. After the horribly lame and unfunny 'Cop Out', it seems that he'd run out of steam in the comedy genre, so it makes sense that he'd take a risk and move on. But it seems that the risk has paid off, because it looks very unique and very very unnerving. As someone who loves a classy horror movie, I'm super pumped. Check it out.

(There's some slightly disturbing imagery, so check yourself before you wreck yourself.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmmnVGyLajw

Tron

TRON - B

TRON: Legacy - B

Imagine a company investing 250 million dollars in a sequel 20 years after the original came out. Also the original was a massive flop that only a very select number of fans have seen. However this is exactly what Disney has done with Tron: Legacy. Disney's strange gamble seems to have payed off with a successful first weekend, mostly due to it's incredibly aggressive marketing campaign. So out of curiosity I decided to watch both the 80's original and the sequel, and see what I made of them. What's shocking is that they are almost exactly the same movie, despite the fact Legacy claims to be a sequel rather than a reboot. This is not just because of the plot, but rather also their strengths and weaknesses also. They have did the same things excellently, but unfortunately they have made the same painful mistakes.

The original Tron follows Kevin Flynn, played by a ultra cool Jeff Bridges, a computer programmer who is accidentally sucked into a computer. While in the computer he is forced to play in a series of gladiator-esque games by a sinister computer program called Master Control, that has sinister designs for the outside world. Now the plot of Tron isn't why you would want to see it. It's writing is at times a little unfortunate, and has a lot of trouble avoiding schlocky 80's action movie cliches. It toys with "2001"-esque ideas about the consequences of technology, but dosn't really do anything with them. Master Control mentions taking over the entire world once, and it really raises the stakes, but then it's never mentioned again. Because of this the entire movie just kind of seems like Jeff Bridges having a good time in a psychedelic world trying to get some copyright information, which is not that compelling. I think the reason why they struggled with this is that they had to humanize really abstract concepts like RAM, which is understandably challenging. When programs talk about their users it almost sounds like the toys in Toy Story talking about their children. But it did begin the development of our cultural understanding of cyberspace, which is definitely something to be applauded.

So Tron: Legacy takes place about 20 years after the original Tron, and Jeff Bridges has gone missing in the grid, leaving his son Sam by himself. So Sam ends up getting sucked into the computer program, and is forced to play in a series of gladiator-esque games by a sinister younger computerized version of Jeff Bridges that has sinister designs for the outside world. Sound familiar? Not only in plot, but also in structure Legacy is identical to the original Tron. This wouldn't really be an issue if the original had a great plot, but Legacy ends up having all the issues of the original. Primarily this is the regrettable writing ("What am I supposed to do?" "Survive!"), but also the characters aren't very developed, so when things stop exploding you have trouble caring.

What everyone should be seeing both Tron's for though is the visuals. Tron was actually the first major movie to come out of Hollywood that extensivly used special effects. It seems that the approach was ahead of it's time, because many animators and critics shunned the technique, and the Oscars disqualified Tron from the visual effects category because they considered the technique cheating. Despite the original being a lot older it still looks fantastic. Because the visuals are so old it actually becomes interesting, unique and really really trippy. The entire movie has a strange neon glow to it, and sticks to bold primary colors which makes it very striking. Even though the CGI is very minimalistic, it's really effective. You may just be seeing a red block chasing a blue block, but you end up irrationally supporting the brave blue block and hating the evil red block. I guess that now we are in a society that has completely embraced CGI and computers, the movie makes a lot more sense.

That's probably why Disney decided to reboot Tron. The visuals in Legacy may not be as innovative as the original, but they still look fantastic. It takes a huge amount of visual references from the original, but still finds it's own beautiful glossy style. It's color scheme is huge expanses of darkness punctuated by flashes of bright neon, and it looks really great. Also some of the action sequences are some of the best I've ever seen. The light-cycle scene blew my mind, and was over way too fast. The only visual thing that disappointed me was the 3D. I could hardly even notice it, and it made my eyes hurt. It's a shame because the 3D could have been fantastic in TRON. Also having Daft Punk score the movie was a masterful choice. They're the most iconic electronic artists out in the world, and their music perfectly fits the futuristic atmosphere of the grid. Another notable part of the movie was Jeff Bridges playing both himself, and a younger computerized version of himself called CLU . This was done by the people who aged Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button and it produces mixed results here. Younger Jeff Bridges suffers from slightly dead eyes, and his face looks like it's been overstuffed with botox. This creepiness works wonderfully when Jeff Bridges is playing the artificial version of himself, but in flashbacks when he's playing the actual Flynn it looks really strange.

So for those anticipating a science fiction masterpiece from either of these movies, you won't find it here. But technically they're both really stunning, and Jeff Bridges acting like The Dude is always welcome. Just sit back and watch the light show and you'll have a good time.

Three by David Lynch

Over the last month I've been watching several of David Lynch's movies and I've felt very differently about all of them even though in many ways they're very similar. They're all very heavy on abstract disturbing imagry. They all also deal with the depression, psychosis, and evil that he feels is present almost everywhere in modern society. I didn't like Ereaserhead very much, I thought Blue Velvet was good, and I feel that Muholland Drive is a masterpiece.

Ereaserhead is Lynch's incredibly abstract first film that he made while in film school in the seventies. The film follows Henry Spencer, played by Jack Nance in an almost hypnotizing performance, a very depressed man who lives in a tiny apartment in the middle of a large field of warehouses. Near the begining of the film he finds out that his former girlfriend Mary has given birth to a severely deformed baby that barely even looks human and is constantly screaming. Mary then abrubtly leaves and he is saddled with taking care of the baby himself. The movie then dissolves into a bizzare series of visions including him seeing a dancing woman in his radiator, and his head falling off and being made into pencil erasers.

I didn't like Eraserhead because for most of the time the movie came off as incomprehensible and even kind of stupid. It seems that even David Lynch dosn't know what any of the imagery means. Either his metaphors are painfully obvious (he feels guilt about the baby, and therefore it seems revolitng to him) or don't even try to make sense (the film radomly cuts several times to a disfigured man pulling switches on the inside of a planet). However you have to give David some credit because he made it while only in college, and the things he did well he did very well. The atmosphere is so thick you can literally feel it in the room that your watching it and the black and white cinematography is beautiful and haunting. It's not a great film, but it's definetly worth watching mainly because it achives the rare feat of being like nothing else out there.

Blue Velvet, which was made in the eighties, is all about asking one question. What is the real America? People would traditionally respond with traditional values, friendly people, beautiful neiborhoods. Lynch would argue that there's a layer of filth laying under the perfectly trimmed grass of the American suburbs. The film follows a college student named Jeffrey who is home from college to care for his ailing father. However while out on a walk he discovers a severed ear laying on the ground. He becomes incredibly determind to find out what happened and this leads him into a underground world of violence, torture, and perversity.

I liked Blue Velvet better than Eraserhead. This was mainly because it actually had a comprehensible story to tie it's imagery to, so things actually could be put together. It seems like at many points he's making two different films which bothered me. At points the film feels very conventional and tame as if it were a detective after school special. However at other points its incredibly wierd and very much like Eraserhead. If sure that this was intentional in order to make it seem like there are two very different world in the same place, but this made the film very disjointed. My favorite thing about this film is Dennis Hopper's totally off the wall performance as the psychotic helium inhaling Frank Booth. He is given some of the most ridiculous dialouge in any film ever (he says fuck at least once every sentence) but he manages to make himself always believable. He is at the same time incredibly terrifying and hilarious and I think it's incredible. In the end however David Lynch attempted to make a more conventional film, but he lost a lot of the atmosphere that made him special in the first place.

Muholland Drive, made in 2001, is David Lynch's most recent major work. It follows Betty, played in fantastic performance by Niomi Watts, a wannabe actress who has just moved to LA. At the same time a woman named Rita narrowly escapes being murdered by her chauffeur while in her limo by getting hit by a car. She survives but loses all her memory. The two run into each other and attempt to figure out who Rita really is. Scattered throughout the film are several seemingly unrelated vignettes, such as a director being blacklisted for not casting a girl that the mob wants him to cast and a hitman botching an assassination and killing two people who witness it. Then the movie upends the entire plot and makes you reconsider everything you've seen in it's incredible final half hour that I'm not going to spoil.

Muholland Drive quite simply is a brilliant film. What it does is find the perfect balance between his other two films that I've seen. It's strange and interesting and you'll be searching for clues during the entire movie, but unlike Eraserhead all the wierdness makes sense and comes together at the end. It also has brilliant acting, characters we end up caring about by the time the movie is over, and interesting relationships. I won't say in what context but the way that the movie portrays dreaming, and dreams themselves is incredible. The atmosphere, and the way that events move from one to another is exactly how dreams themselves really feel to me. Even the way that relationships and objects from reality carry over to dreams is dead on. Effectivly this is the movie that I wanted Inception to be. It's one of my favorite films ever and I couldn't recommend it more. This movie shows that Lynch has learned perfectly how to deal with his quirks, and I can't wait for his next film.

Inception Music

Something interesting I found on youtube about Inception.

Cool right? Also if you don't remember, the song that was slowed down is the one used as the kick.

Speed Racer

A certain friend of mine had told me several times several times that she loved the film Speed Racer, and I had ridiculed her for it. But given the fact that I had never actually watched the movie I had no right to judge, so I decided to actually watch the film. And when I did it suprised me. Although not by it's quality, but by how absolutly horrible it was.

Speed Racer is a reboot of the 1960 anime show of the same name, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. The film follows Speed Racer (yes, that's actually his full name), played by Emile Hirshe, a teenager who loves racing and his family. However racing is shown to be extremely corrupt, and it follows Speed Racer's journey to win the Grand Prix without becoming corrupt himself. Now just by hearing the plot you would think that it's very simple and easy to follow. However I was completly unable to follow a large amount of what was happening. The movie is filled with unnessasary dialouge about the buisness of racing that's loaded with subtext that I was complelty unable to pick up on. I'm saying this as someone who had no trouble following Inception and Memento, and this is a movie made for little kids!

And that brings me to my second point, which is that if you are over the age of ten it's impossible to enjoy this movie. About a good third of the film is spent on horribly unfunny slapstick between Speed's chubby little brother and his monkey. Even in the relativly serious race sequences they find some way to work them in. Unlike charming comic distractions like Dug in Pixar's Up, they're obnoxious and dumb and ruin the chance of any adult enjoying the film. I thought I would never say this, but they're worse than Jar-Jar.

Another problem I have with the film is the use of special effects. The purpose of the film is to be a live-action cartoon, so everything but the actors is CG. Everything is extremely colorful and over the top, and it had the potential to be extremely cool and artsy. However they attempt a degree of realism, and it puts all the scenes in this ackward looking middle ground that causes everything to look cheap and bad.
Speaking of things that are cheap and bad, lets talk about the script. I think it speaks for itself so I'll dicate to you a conversation between two characters after a ninja attack.
Trixe: Oh my god, was that a Ninja?
Pops: More like a non-ja. Terrible what passes for a ninja these days.
Trixe: Cool beans!
It tries so hard to be ironically retro, but because it tries so hard we end up laughing at them rather than with them. Also there isn't a single character in this movie that has an ounce of dimention to them. Speed is the good guy and is always incredibly good, the bad guy is always incredibly evil and has no real motivation.

Finally there's the acting which contains some of the only redeeming qualities of the film. Emile Hirshe is excellent (although he makes some really ridiculous faces during the racing scenes) and so is John Goodman and their scenes together provide some of the only honest material in the entire film. But the acting also provides some negative elements, mainly Matthew Fox as Racer X. I love Matthew Fox on Lost and I think he deserves the Emmy, but he simply cannot play the tough guy and his acting in this movie is laughably bad. On the brightside though they were considering Keanu Reeves for the role who undoubtably would have been worse.

So Speed Racer is bad. Really bad. But I did enjoy watching it, even if it was just so I could laugh at it. So it's not completly without merit. But to actually enjoy it as a legitamate film is impossible for me, and I cannot fathom how someone else could. I'll leave you with a clip from the movie that sums up almost all my problems.

Inception

Over the last few weeks there has been a fair amount of discussion surrounding Inception, and when I say a fair amount I mean critics can't seem to stop arguing about it. This discussion has even invoked meta-critisism of how we view movies in general (AKA A.O. Scott's article today in the New York Times). So I was left wondering, at this late date is there even anything left to say about this movie? So I'm going to give an balanced reivew, and I'm also going to adress some of the major concerns that other critics seem to constantly bring up. And finally spoiler alert, because I'm planning on going into the movie relativly deeply and that requires discussion of the ending.

The most simple way to describe Inception is that it's a film directed by Christopher Nolan about dreams. Of course it's actually much more complicated than that. The film follows Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, a man who breaks into peoples dreams and steals their ideas for the benefit of the corporations that he's hired by. However for this film he's hired by the leader of a major corporation (Ken Watabe) to plant an idea in the mind of the son of one of his rivals(Cillian Murphy), this idea being to break up his fathers company. However this process called Inception is very difficult, and it involves drawing the target into dreams within dreams within dreams and tricking them to plant the idea themselves in the third layer. The benefit of doing this job for Cobb is that because he's an international criminal he can't return to his two children in the U.S., and Ken Watabe is able to grant him access to the United States.

That was my attempt at a plot summary, and it's very basic and missing several elements. So as you've seen Inception is complicated and several of my friends and even a few critics (Entertainment Weekley's Owen Gleiberman) have been completly baffled by Inception because they're unable to follow the plot. I'd just like to say contrary to popular opinion that Inception is not a mindfuck, in fact it's not even close to being one. Yes the plot is intricate and occasionally several things are happening at once but it always spells out to you what is happening. For instance there's this idea of how do we ever know is we're in a dream or not. Some people I know spent the entire movie unsure if what was happening was actually happening. But because of the devise of the top it's always very clear. The only part where that's left ambiguous is the ending and that's just to create some room for interpretation. Yes it's complicated, but in terms of structure it's a simple heist movie with a twist. If you want something that's actually confusing watch Christopher Nolan's own Memento or 2001: A Space Odyssey. So if you actually pay attention you shouldn't leave Inception completly baffled.

Speaking of 2001, I'd like to talk about probably my favorite thing in Inception which is the imagery. Nolan uses these dream sequences to toss us from one massive set piece moment to the next and it's really thrilling. First there's a crazy van chase, then straight to Joseph Gordon Levitts rotating hallway fight (one of my favorite movie moments in a long time), then straight to the giant crumbling skyscrapers of Leonardo DiCaprio's limbo world. He never stops throwing new stuff at the audience. I mean it really takes a special director to create four separate dream sequences all happening inside of each other happening real time with the events of all of them effecting the others. Basically the editing and direction is out of this world.

However Nolan still seems to be struggling with his main issue as a filmmaker, which is his unemotional storytelling. While Nolan does do a create job with his imagery and concepts, he shafts possibly one of the movie key things in any movie which is emotion. The one human element in the entire film is Cobb's relationship to his wife ( Marion Coltiard)and despite the superb acting of DiCaprio and Coltiard I had a huge amount of trouble caring about their relationship. Basically there's no emotional payoff in the ending. How am I supposed to care about two faceless children that I never meet? It's also dissapointing that he dosn't spend very much time with his non-Dicaprio characters. He has a terrific cast who play their characters very well (especially Thomas Hardy who steals every scene he's in) and I loved seeing them interact, but the relaitionships went nowhere because the film is overly obsessed with it's own exposition. Therefore Ellen Page's character simply becomes a devise for revealing plot details rather than an interesting an layered character (all of her dialouge basically goes like, "How does this work Leonardo Dicaprio?" "Well it works like...").

Then finally there's the issue of dreams themselves. In Memento Nolan toyed with this idea of memory, which was interesting because we have a very defined idea of how memory works. But no one really knows how dreams work, and when I've talked to people about this it seems everyone dreams differently. For most people I've talked to dreams don't take place in defined spaces like in Inception, they feel much more hazy and surreal. So the fact that he make's them these very straightforward defined spaces feels like a missed opportunity. But also there's this Freudian take on dreams, in which dreams express the way we truely feel about ourselves and our relationships. So the complete lack of that in Inception is dissapointing, but another example of Nolan's key weakness as a director. There's nothing more emotional than our dreams, yet he makes them all about technology and science.

So Inception is an incredibly well made film with several interesting concepts, but it's nowhere near being a perfect film. But it's a huge amount of fun to watch, and it's nice to see a big budget film that actually requires you to leave your brain on. So go see Inception, I really liked it.

Network

On what's supposed to be a news program the anchor is simply chosen because he's mentally unstable and it produces ratings. For standard programing the network films criminals doing dispicable things in real life and broadcasts it on television for the public. When you hear that you might think of modern television with Glen Beck's tearful rants and reality telivision. But this is actually the events of Sydney Lumet's 1976 satire Network. Despite the slight confusion in tone the movie is a brilliant, scathing and eerily prophetic look at the the television industry and it's loss of integrity for the sake of greed.

Network centers around the news division of the struggling television network UBS (effectivly a fourth version of ABC, NBC and CBC) which has just been taken over by the large corporation CCA. Howard Beale is the longtime news anchor for UBS's nightly news and he learns that in two weeks he will lose his job due to low ratings. He responds by announcing during a live broadcast that he will shoot himself on live television in a week and claiming that life is bullshit. But instead of removing him from the news CCA decides to keep him on the show anyways once they notice that his mental instability has dramatically increased ratings. Eventually the news show has a live studio audience, a fortuneteller predicting the news, and Beale giving firey yet intelligent rants on the evils of television.

The first thing you notice while watching this movie is the oscar winning script written by Paddy Chayefsky. While at points brutally funny, it's also brutally tragic. It takes simply the subject of a corporation taking over a television network and uses it to talk about the sterilizing effect it has on our knowledge, relationships, and effectivly our entire lives. We spend so much time watching television that we effectivly live and plan our lives like bad cliched TV dramas. Huge tragedies reduced to 30 seconds on a newsbroadcast. It's drained us of our sense of outrage, rendering us almost like robots. In the words of Howard Beale, we should be mad as hell and not want to take it anymore. But the thing is, is that we continue to take it. Howard implores his viewers (and effectivly us as well) to turn off our television sets and we don't. That's the brilliance of the the movie, because it involves the viewer directly in the tragedy of the story. We trap ourselves in a system that simply destroys our humanity.

The second thing you notice is the performances which took home three of the four acting Oscars the year it was released. The flashiest and probably best performance in the film is Peter Finch as Beale. I have two clips of him below and they speak for themselves. He takes an extremely difficult part with three-quarters of the film's important monolouges and infuses it with so much passion and outrage that it's invigorating just watching him. Then there's Faye Dunaway playing constantly talking head of programing Diana. She takes what could have been an irratating and one note part and makes her sympathetic and full of heart, so despite the fact she represents all the film is against you can't help but root for her. Even the smaller parts are fantastic. Robert Duvall is great as the merciless corporate hachet man Frank Hackett and Beatrice Straight is heartbreaking as Louise Shumacher (the shortest performance ever to win an Oscar). This is a massive ensemble film and there's not a single weak link which is a remarkable achievment in itself.

The one flaw of the movie though is that it seems at points that it dosn't know what it wants to be. While at points its very over the top and silly in it's exagerated satire, and then at other points it aims to be a realistic drama about the loss of integrity and humanity in television and humanity as a whole. The tone shifts back and forth rapidy, sometimes several times in a single scene and it makes the movie seem slightly disjointed. But if you think about it possibly that was intentional because now what was viewed is satire is real life, so mabye the ridiculousness was intended to be mixed right in with the humanity.

The film's great achievement is it's humanity. The film is just bursting with emotion from the greatest depths of sorrow, to hell like anger, to incredible happiness. It even manages to stir some of the same feelings in you as you realize that the state of telivision and entertainment as a whole is very much like Network's. It's so brillant and immersive that it makes you a character yourself. The film breeds a very personal relationship with the viewer and because of that I couldn't recommend it more.

Splice

Splice opens with a first person view of Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley delivering what seems to be a baby. They look at it with pride at what they have created. Then you discover that what you thought was a baby was actually a genetically created dog sized worm. This misplaced feeling of parenthood is what Splice is all about.

I'm going to begin by saying that Splice is a very strange movie. But despite how bizare it might get at points it's incredibly interesting and genre bending. It takes the plot of what would be a cliched horror movie and they turned it into a character driver drama about family. So even though it has several flaws its premise is intriguing enough to make up for them.

The movie follows two scientists, who are also in a relationship, named Clive and Elsa (played by Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley) who work at a bio-engenering lab. Effectivly what they do is splice the DNA of different creatures together and then use the chemicals in those creature's bodies to make medications. Their ultimate goal however is to create something using human DNA because they believe that it would lead to a great medical breakthrough (cures to cancer, parkinsons, ect...). However due to economic and social reasons the pharmaceutical company they're working for forbids it. So in stardard horror movie fashion they do it anyway and create a creature that they name Dren (nerd backwards). As it begins to grow older it matures rapidly, eventually looking very similar to a human female (besides the strangly jointed legs and the tail with a stinger). And inevitably it dosn't end well.

Now just by hearing the summary above you would assume that its basically a bad rip off of Species, but it's so much more than that. As Dren begins to mature Elsa begin to treat it almost like a child by giving it toys, dressing it in peoples clothing, even putting makeup on it. And in their handling of the creature you realize that each character isn't who you think they were. Elsa turns out to be incredibly emotionally damaged, and you begin to realize that her motives for creating it in the first place were less than scientific. Clive initially reacts with disgust which gradually morphs into something very different. The movie turns into a character study and isn't really a horror movie at all as the advertising would lead you to believe. If anything the creature is more sympatetic than frightening. In fact the movies weakest moments are when it's attempting to be scary, because it seems that they were just tacked on so the movie could be more commercial. Also Vincenzo Natali can't direct horror very well so some of the sequences near the begining and the end fall flat.

Splice is also acted extremely well. I think it says a lot about how clever Natali is when you look at the casting of Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley. First they're fantastic actors, particularily Polley who brings out Elsa's quirks and tendencies in a really interesting and believable way. Also though they are both very interesting looking and aren't generically attractive like the characters are in most horror movies (AKA Nightmare on Elm Street remake) and this in a way makes them more believable and interesting characters. the performance that is really scene stealing though is Dren, partially played by Delphine Chaneac. The creature effects in this movie are just fantastic, probably some of the best I've ever seen, especially in the early parts. The way it interacts with the environment and how the actors react to it is simply breathtaking.

I will warn you though, there's a certain point in the movie where you're either on board or you're off because things get a little crazy and more than a little wierd. I won't spoil it for the people reading who havn't seen it but it's messed up. It makes sense in the genral ark of the story, and is VERY Freudian, but in the theatre where I was watching the movie it was divided between people laughing hysterically and people really wierded/grossed out. I personally liked it and it's something very memorable, but you might not be able to get past it.

In a way the film reminded me of some of David Cronenberg's early stuff (wow, second Cronberg reference in row) like The Fly. It deals with metamorphosis, identiy, and what really makes you human. But it also confronts way the strange aspects of parenting in a very upfront way. Splice is crazy, facinating, sometimes disgusting, and thought provoking. It's different than anything in theatres, or mabye even out of theatres, and I highly recommend it.

Red Dead Redemption

Now I don't usually review games, nor will I make this a regular thing, but what Rockstar has done with Red Dead Redemption is just fantastic. They take every ounce of this game and make it fit the genre perfectly, make it incredibly polished, and even make it encompass complicated themes. It's taking storytelling in the medium to a different level, and I can saftely say that it's the best game I've ever played.

Red Dead is set in the early 1900's and follows John Marston. John is a former outlaw who attempts to go straight but the government threatens to kill his family unless he hunts down his old friends. Effectivly it's the plot of A History of Violence set in the west, but that's no bad thing. During this time John comes to terms with the bad things he's done, reflects on what kind of a person he really is, and debates on wheather or not a person can truly change. Just like Cronenberg it intelligently disscusses indentity in a moving way. Not only is John a total badass he's a fantastic and relatable character who I really grew attached to as the story progressed. In fact by the end of the game I really became attached to most of the characters John met, and unlike the somewhat jokey GTA series they approached the characters and relationships in a really honest way. The fact that they dedicated two hours at the end of the game to John spending time on his farm with his family is a sign of how they care more about the story than just shooting guys in the face.

However John's story also functions as a metaphor for the death of western culture. Due to the spread of trains things like the Model-T Ford and automatic weapons are begining to make appearences. What's so tragic about this though is that you spend the first fifteen minutes of the game out in nature. Rockstar obviously put a huge amount of work into the surroundings because this game is beautiful. Simply watching the sunset in this game is a treat. They even created a realistic ecosystem in this game, with animals that behave realistically and prey on each other. So when you finally arrive in Blackwater and it begins to looks like modern society it seems so ugly and brutish it compared to the beauty that surrounds it. And it's tragic because you know that soon everything will look just like that. But another thing that Rockstar does is they paint John's old comrades actions as if they are simply fighting to preserve their way of life. So it's very sad when you actually have to hunt them down (reminded me of Shadow of the Collosus). So John's actions and surroundings serve the overarching themes of the story, making the gameplay itself completly relevant. That's a brillant example of how games can approach storytelling because if that isn't art I don't know what is.

The final thing that I found impressive was how it completly captured the genre. After finishing Red Dead I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and I was awestruck. To the way all the plants looked, the mountains, the way people talked and dressed, even the way the trains looked it was dead on. The amount of detail put into this game is awestiking. You can enter every building in the game and all the interiors are detailed. The world itself is huge, covering miles and miles of terrain. It's like you stepped into the largest, most detailed Western ever, and you're the director.

This game conjured up more emotion in me than almost any film recently has, and if you have a Xbox 360 or a PS3 you have to get this game. It's evidence of how games are becoming a more sofisticated form of media and is maturing rapidly (other equally good examples include Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain). Even if you aren't a gamer this is a great time to start, because Red Dead is something everyone should experience.

Alien

Recent news that Ridley Scott would be directing an Alien prequel made me curious to visit his original sci-fi horror masterpiece, and it really is a stunner. It combats cliches, piles on an incredible amount of atmosphere, and sports several great performances. It really is a modern masterpiece.

The film follows the crew of the mining vessel Nostromo who are on there way home in stasis having completed their original task. However the ship receives a distress signal from a nearby planet and they stop to investigate. Needless to say this leads to nothing positive. Some exploded stomachs later the crew is trapped in space with a bloodthirsty alien hiding in the ventilation.

The main thing that stands out while you watch the film is the sets. Scott constructed massive sets to compose the ship and they are truly impressive things. The set of the crashed ship on the alien planet is particularly impressive with towering walls and creepy engravings. Even the ship that they pilot is frightening. The walls are pitch black and covered in markings, tubes and notches. Not only does it almost seem to provide camouflage for the alien, it creates a mood of fear and evil that can't be matched by any other film I've ever seen. It's refreshing in a time were so many movies are filled with artificiality to have these very real and impressive backgrounds.

Another thing that is impressive is the remarkable restraint of Scott. He sets up a scenario where their ship is trapped for 17 hours on an alien planet and you'd expect to have it become a fight for survival on their planet. But he waits a full hour before having any blood actually spilled. He simply drenches you in atmosphere so by the time the violence arrives you're scared out of your mind. Another example of this is the presence of the alien. It's only actually shown a couple times mainly because the puppetry wasn't advanced enough to have it be shown on screen for a long time, but because of this it undertakes a Psycho like vibe where you're more scared of what's off screen then you ever are when it's actually in front of you.

Even the special effects have aged quite well. With the exception of a few scenes (the fake decapitated head of Ash looks nothing like Ian Holm) everything looks very good and the alien is truly a very monstrous and terrifying thing. All in all this is a very thrilling and visceral movie, even though it was made 30 years ago, and I highly recommend it.

(Warning: Scene is a wee bit graphic.)

Memento

Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan, is one of the most inventive, mind-bending movies I have ever seen. It follows Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce, a man who is unable to make new memories. The film follows his attempts to track down and kill the man who murdered his wife. How he manages to keep track of what he's found is a series of tatoos and polariods that he uses to reconize important people and places.
What makes this film so interesting is that the story is told out of order and told in the sections that he remembers (the non-chronological story telling kinda reminded me of Pulp Fiction). Because of this it effectivly puts you in the shoes of Leonard. People seem to reconize him but you're not sure, people may have good intentions or they might be exploiting his condition. It really puts you on your toes because even with the characters you've spent so much time with could actually have totally different intentions. Even the polaroids that he completly relies on might be inaccurate. When I approached the movie I was partially expecting it to be just a gimmick, but it really shows you in a sense how it feels to be Leonard. Nolan took what could have been incredibly confusing and stupid and made it more coherent than most regular movies today. It creates such a strong feeling of darkness and confusion, and I feel that it accomplishes in a lot of ways what Veritgo failed to do. Basically it was incredibly cool. And in addition to the innovative storytelling the film has great performances by Guy Pearce and Carrie-Ann Moss and the cinnemotography is supperb. Memento is one of those films that makes you reevaluate the way you approach movies, and it's one of my favorites. Go see it, I implore you.

Cromer's Streetcar

David Cromer has gained a huge amount of attention lately, and much of it is deserved. He takes mid-twentieth century plays and turns them into some of the most relevant and naturalistic plays I have ever seen. He infuses new elements but makes the meaning of play clearer than it ever was. A good example of this is his production of Our Town that I saw in New York. Throughout the play all the characters wear modern clothes and pantomime everything and use very little to no scenery. But in the third act when Emily implores the stage manager to relive her 12th birthday the stage manager pulls back a curtain at the back of the stage and reveals an incredibly detailed set. At one point Emily's mother starts cooking bacon and you can actually smell it wafting across the theatre. By the time they are pulling back the curtain you don't want them to because there's just so much to look at. He truelly puts you in Emily's shoes and shows you how much of life we take for granted. That production is one of the best I've even experienced.
But now Cromer has stage a production of Tennesse Williams A Streetcar Named Desire, and while not as innovative it's still beautifully done. Cromer has actually knocked out the first several rows of seating in the theatre and filled the space to the brim with the set. You feel almost as if you are actually in the apartment. You really feel that this is an apartment meant for two people, and after Blanche moves in you can palpably feel the tension rise as these dichotomous personalities clash. One scene of the play that really stood out to me was the scene between Blanche and Mitch after they returned from their date. It's done in almost pitch black and you can really feel the intimacy of the moment. Natasha Lowe delivers a brilliant Blanche, one that's a little more agressive than you might be used to but because of that it delivers the play much greater passion and fire than what Vivian Leigh gave us. Everything in the show is so wonderfully underplayed that moments such as Stantly screaming "Stellaaa!!!" become startling and exciting, which is only magnified by your proximity to the action. I strongly advize everyone to go see Streetcar down at Writers Theatre.

Taming of the Shrew (CST 2010)

So a week ago I saw a production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. This was of particular interest to me because I had been in a production of Taming in the fall, so I had actually brought a couple members of the cast with me. What is interesting about this particular production is that Neil Labute (Reasons to Be Pretty is one of my favorites) wrote a framing for the play in lieu of the Christofer Sly stuff. The introduction is effectivly Kiss Me Kate except with the focus on the actual Shakespeare. It follows the drama between the director and the actress playing Kate (who are in a lesbian relationship), and Kate is constantly flirting with the actress playing Bianca. Many critics have HATED the introduction (Chris Jones of the Tribune was one of them, "You can hear the painful screeches of uncertainty and artifice") and I attempted to go in with an open mind, but in the end it just dosn't work. Though I suppose it's attempting to comment on gender issues, it seems irrelevant and unneccesary. But what's really tragic about this is how great the Shakespeare is. It's hillarious, acted perfectly, and the tricky message of the play is handled very well. Josie Rourke can direct a mean Shakespeare (she directed a Twelfth Night last year that I loved) but as soon as it shifts into the Labute material things become slow moving and ultimatly kind of boring. It's like one half of the show is apoligizing for the other. I suppose this was added in order to bring people into the theatre by doing something different with the material, which has become a trend (a pool onstage in Twelfth Night, Macbeth set in modern times). But as interesting as these are, it makes me wonder why they don't think that the material can stand for itself. If you love Shakespeare set it free, and don't trap it with gimmicks.

Tuesday Night (AKA Lost + Glee)

Lost:

This episode was called "What They Died For" yet Cuse and Lindelof continue to tell us very little, and reveal what we already knew. Jack's transformation into a man of faith was finally cemented tonight by officially becoming Jacob, we found out that Desmond wanted to fix Locke, and we finally found out that Desmond was a last resort (very specific guys). Though it seemed that the purpose of this episode was to set up for the finale. But in the scale of things this is probably the best set up episode for Lost ever, so take what you can get. But what really anchors down the show is the characters and the acting and it seems that Michael Emmerson and Terry O'Quinn are really bringing their A-game and giving their best work ever on this show. But What I think everyone really cares about is the 2 and a half hours of Lost goodness on Sunday, so get you're Dharma notebooks out and write down my predictions.

-Everyone is going to die except for Jack, and everyone else passes over into the sideways universe. What this does is it redeems Jack's decision to blow up the bomb because it gets everyone into a universe where they're not destined to be on the island.

-The final scene is going to be a reenactment of the scene on the beach with Jack and FLocke ("Do you know how badly I want to kill you?" LOST). Chills right?

Glee:

Better than last week's abysmal episode but still not great. It feels as if the show is just stuck in place, because at the end of each episode it seems like nothing changes. Wheelchair kid thinks he can dance! Oh never mind back to normal... Neil Patrick Harris causing trouble! Oh never mind he's taken care of...Even the Rachel/Idina Menzel storyline didn't progress that much. Glee isn't a sitcom, it's allowed to change from episode to episode. Although I do award greatness to NPH and The Safety Dance, in the end just a mediocre episode for me.