[UPDATED.]
When I post Favorite Films lists, they are always works in progress.
Here is Part One of my two-part reflection on the films of 2011, posted at Good Letters, the blog at Image.
And here is Part Two: my ten favorite films of 2011 (so far).
This is a work in progress… a running list of my favorite films.
Organizing any film list is a challenge. How do we determine the release date of a film? By the first festival screening? By the American commercial release date? What if it’s made available online before it reaches theatres?
I recently threw out my old lists. They had been categorized by the year in which they became accessible to me in Seattle. But distribution methods for movies have changed. It’s become increasingly difficult to say when a film has “become available.” Sometimes, films are available online long before they reach Seattle theaters or DVD.
For simplicity’s sake, I now list movies by the year of the film’s first showings as reported by IMDB (the Internet Movie Database).
That means my favorite of the films I saw in 2011 — Certified Copy — is now listed as my #1 film of 2010 because the completed film was first presented to audiences in 2010.
No doubt I still have some corrections to make, so if you see that I’ve mistakenly repeated a title or categorized in the wrong place, please let me know.
Before you peruse the lists, permit me to explain a little bit about what it actually represents.
I don’t! I explore movies and I study them, but I’m not a scholar.
For 20 years I’ve been writing reviews as a way of thinking through what I’ve seen.
Seeing a film for the first time is like meeting a stranger for the first time. I don’t want to just meet works of art. I want to get to know them. Sometimes they have little to say to me, or they’re mean, or they’re superficial, or they want to sell me something. Sometimes they turn out to be marvelous company, and I end up learning from them and revisiting them often. I make lists as a way of keeping track of which movies have been most rewarding for me, and which I’d most like to spend time revisiting.
You know the word “ruminate”? If so, you probably know where that word comes from. When animals “ruminate,” they’re chewing their meal again. I write about movies and discuss them in order to get more out of the experience, to glean rewards, to savor. I started LookingCloser.org not so I would have a platform or a pulpit, but because I wanted to find others who were interested in discussing cinema as “incarnation” — the embodying of truth through the imagination. I’m still learning a lot from that discussion, and I’ve only scratched the surface of it.
No.
When film critics announce that they’ve decided “the best films of the year,” I’m immediately distrustful. I’ve never met an individual who has that kind of authority. It’s better to be humble about it. Why not call them “favorites”?
Lists are personal things. Our cinematic preferences say as much about our personalities, interests, aversions, and questions as they do about the films themselves. We’re all distinct individuals and, to complicate matters further, we’re all changing. So what we value, appreciate, and understand is going to change and grow as we do.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a critic say, “Well, it wasn’t a perfect movie.” Of course it wasn’t! There are no perfect movies. Movies are imperfect because they’re made by imperfect people. It’s not very worthwhile to declare whether a film is imperfect or not.
It is worthwhile, however, to talk about what impressed us, what confused us, what intrigued us about a movie. But our relationship with any work of art will be incomplete, unique, and subject to change.
Thus, whether we’re rating movies with stars or points or thumbs, there is no strict unit of measure that can tell us the value of a work of art. We can talk about the virtues and faults of Schindler’s List or The Blair Witch Project, but any kind of “grade” or “point system” is severely insufficient and misleading.
Rating movies is like rating food: Is a ham better than a strawberry? How can you compare the two?
A movie, like any work of art, is — as my high school English teacher used to say — both a Thing and a Way. As a Thing, its craftsmanship can be examined, and we can discuss the quality of acting, soundtrack, editing, cinematography, composition, etc. As a Way, it is an invitation to an experience, and each traveler will find that movie inspiring different kinds of memories, challenges, questions, ideas, and lessons.
So in these lists, I have no authority to say which films are the “best.” Nor do I judge movies based on whether I “liked” them. I’m taking into account whether the Thing is excellent and worthy of praise, and I’m also taking into account what I have experienced on the Way of the movie.
No.
Some questions about movies are somewhat subjective:
- Was a director’s decision to shoot in black and white a good one?
- Should the voice-over narration have been eliminated?
- Was a performance too understated, or too flamboyant?
- Is the movie boring, or is it asking us to pay close attention?
- Was the non-chronological storytelling confusing or revealing?
- Must a movie have a clear and compelling narrative, or can movies work in other ways like impressionist paintings or poetry?
These are matters of opinion.
Because of that subjectivity, we should listen to each other’s opinions and preferences with respect, and offer our own with some humility.
But it would be wrong to say that there is no such thing as excellence.
Some aspects of film reviewing are far less subjective. For example, if the sound is poorly mixed, if the editing is sloppy, if there is evidence of laziness or thoughtlessness, or if we observe unethical treatment of actors, animals, or audiences… these are not very subjective matters. Most people know the difference between an actor and somebody who just speaks lines into a camera.
If somebody thinks that excellence is always just a matter of opinion, I’d like to give them some choices: Would they like their open-heart surgery performed by an accomplished surgeon or a 12-year-old who knows how to play the game of Operation? Would they like to hear a piano concerto performed by a famous pianist or by someone who’s had one piano lesson? I suspect that person’s choice would demonstrate that they do believe in objective measures of excellence.
I’ll say this:
Most people will agree that the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are “great” national parks, but some people would rather go to a video arcade than go on a hike or a camping trip. The most popular restaurants are obviously not the establishments that serve the greatest meals. People tend to choose donuts over spinach salad. Appreciating great art is a matter of growing up. When we’re children, we dislike a lot of the food and drink that we learn to appreciate and favor later. I hated both coffee and asparagus when I was a kid. But I learned, gradually, that the adults weren’t just trying to trick me. Coffee and asparagus are wonderful things. When I look at what’s popular at the box office, I think it shows us that we are a people of childish interests. Growing up a little would be good for us.
Most people think critics are crazy when they talk about “the great films.” That’s because most people don’t have the patience to discover the greatest rewards that movies have to offer. They want instant, familiar gratification, and then they’re on their way.Americans tend to treat movies like junk food, and that’s why we’re now getting our movies out of Redbox vending machines instead of renting them from a neighborhood store, like the one where I used to work and have long conversations with neighbors and introduce them to challenging new filmmakers.
Recognizing greatness takes time, even for the most thoughtful moviegoers. Most critics will agree that Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, and Andrei Rublev are essential works of cinema, but the greatness of those masterpieces has been recognized over time, through countless viewings and discussions, through examinations under many different critical lenses. Blade Runner was not well-regarded when it first opened; now it’s often called a science fiction masterpiece. A movie’s greatness may go unrecognized by a casual moviegoer who goes to the movies on Friday night with certain expectations, desiring something easy and familiar, and equating “greatness” with “fun” or positive emotions.
Most people wouldn’t sit through Tokyo Story, or Yi-Yi, or Certified Copy, or Into Great Silence, or many of the films that have become my favorites over time. But then, when I was younger, I wouldn’t have appreciated those films either.
Having said all of that, I do like a good candy bar now and then. Sometimes I get cravings for an Almond Joy or M&Ms with pretzels. I’m also fond of Die Hard, Fletch, and Spider-man 2. These movies aren’t bad. But we can turn them into damaging influences if we make a steady diet of them, or fail to think about what they and how they are made.
I offer these lists and classifications as tentative summaries of personal experience. Nothing more.
They are expressions of enthusiasm and gratitude to some artists, and expressions of respectful acknowledgement (but not enthusiasm) for others. They reflect a combination of the excellence I see in each Thing, and the experience I had on the path of each Way. Thus, my choices say as much or more about me as they do about the films in question.
But these are not “ratings,” really. I don’t like “rating” movies. In one of my film-review jobs, I was required to submit my star-ratings of each film, rating each on a scale of 1-5. I did not enjoy that at all. I’m much happier when people have to read my review to get a sense of my experience. If they see that I’ve given a movie 3 1/2 stars, they don’t know anything about my opinion of that movie.
Think about it: If I served you a delicious strawberry on Monday, and a Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday, and then asked you to rate them on a scale of 1-5, what would you do if they were both excellent? Five stars for both of them? Are you saying a good strawberry is equal to a good Thanksgiving dinner? It doesn’t make sense.
No.
I might love a movie for how it changed my life, and still be careful to avoid recommending it to certain people based on what’s in it. And here I go with another food metaphor: I may enjoy a well-made peanut butter sandwich, but I have friends who will get sick if I serve them peanut butter.
Recommendations are individual. I can’t recommend a movie to my readership, because that’s like recommending pair of shoes to a crowd of people. What is useful and comfortable for some people could be harmful for others.
No. I’m changing, so the lists will change too. I’ll revise them as often as I like.
Nevertheless, I hope they lead you to some memorable, rewarding experiences.
Email me. Feel free to point out errors. Ask me why certain titles are missing, or why certain titles are included. But I’d encourage you to search my review archive first, where you may find some answers. If you notice that a film is not listed among my favorites or among the titles I have not seen, that means I’ve overlooked it or I saw it and didn’t care for it.
The lists are numbered and color-coded.
The numbers list my Top 25 of each year, in an approximate order of my gratitude for the experience.
The colors are a general expression of how grateful I am, how much I appreciate and value them. (If I were to offer a list of my all-time favorite movies, I’d be drawing from the red-letter “treasures.” Some years didn’t produce anything I’d consider “treasure.”)
Menace II Society
The Scent of Green Papaya
Searching for Bobby Fischer
The Wedding Banquet
Carlito’s Way
Much Ado About Nothing
The Joy Luck Club
Tombstone
A Bronx Tale
The Sandlot
Kalifornia
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Shadowlands
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Lucky Life is now streaming at Hulu, and my review is up at Good Letters, the blog at ImageJournal.org.
Xavier Beauvois’s beautiful drama Of Gods and Men tells the true story of nine French Trappist monks at the Monastery of Our Lady of Atlas in Algeria’s Atlas Mountains who risked their lives to serve the locals during a 1996 insurgence of violent extremists during the Algerian Civil War.
The cast features Lambert Wilson of the Matrix series and Michael Lonsdale (one of the big-screen’s human treasures) in memorable roles. Beauvois’s attention to the faces of his actors, to the script’s weighty conversations, and to the even heavier silences, is commendable.
I agree with my colleagues Michael Leary (Filmwell.org) and Steven Greydanus (DecentFilms.com): The humble service of these men is as vivid a portrayal of Christian service as I’ve ever seen on the big screen.
Of Gods and Men shows Christians and Muslims interacting in peace, respect, and friendship. Instead of demonizing Muslims, these monks even read the Quran in order to better understand and love their neighbors.
I haven’t had the opportunity to write extensively about this film yet, but here are some excellent reviews that I recommend you consider:
Michael Sicisnki (The Academic Hack): “The brothers lived in harmony with their Muslim community; they provided free health care, sold honey at the local market and were often honored guests and family celebrations. Beauvois presents a picture of two faiths living side by side in total mutual respect. However, this isn’t a rosy, pie-in-the-sky ecumenical vision. What he demonstrates is that the community shares a mutual distrust of their government, the army, the Muslim extremists, and the French colonizers of the past. That is, their bond has been sealed not through ideology but through laboring side by side, as well as each group studying the tenets of the others’ faith. That is, Beauvois shows that true religious belief requires effort, not ignorant sloganeering. And so, when the Islamist fundamentalists finally arrive in the end, Of Gods and Men has already built a nearly airtight argument that, regardless of what these men with guns might believe, they do not represent Islam. They are not men of God. Particularly when writing for Cargo, I try not to be USA-centric, but it is difficult to watch a film like Beauvois’s and clear my mind of the fact that, back home, bigots are burning Korans in order to protest the construction of an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan, which right-wing extremists have dubbed ‘the ground zero mosque.’ I hope that everyone in the U.S. has the chance to see this film.”
Steven Greydanus, Decent Films: “Xavier Beauvois’ sublime Of Gods and Men is that almost unheard-of film that you do not judge — it judges you. To one degree or another it defies every attempt to put it in a box, to reduce its challenge to a political or pious ideological stance to be affirmed or critiqued. Whoever you are, whatever you bring to it, it will not tell you exactly what you want to hear, unless that is all you are willing or able to hear. Seldom have I read so many reviews justly genuflecting to a film amid such inability to explain why, or with such unconvincing rationalizations for critical discomfort. … Of Gods and Men is a remarkably uncompromising film: uncompromising in its depiction of the challenge of Christianity, of the sharp divisions within Islam between the peaceful villagers and the bloodthirsty insurgents. It is profoundly engaged in political realities, yet it transcends politics. It is thoughtful, yet many of its best scenes are dialogue-free, from the routines of manual labor to the luminous emotional climax.”
Glenn Kenny, Some Came Running: “When a monk invokes the metaphor of birds perched on a branch with respect to their situation, a woman of the village corrects that monks: You are not the birds on the branch, she says to him; you are the branch. The film is finally about how these men come to gradually accept that fact. There’s no road-to-Damascus blinding light moment to be had here. Instead, there is a gradual solidifying, a taking-root, accompanied by incidental pleasures, sorrows, and some rather typically French ironies, as when Lonsdale’s Luc recalls Pascal’s observation that evil is never more cheerfully accomplished as when it’s done in the name of religious conviction. The generosity with which Beauvois and his wonderful cast share the lives of these men with the viewer makes the losses that end the film that much harder to bear. Be prepared to be shaken.”
A Looking Closer Film Forum is an evolving “conversation” among critics… a “round-table” review of perspectives from critics I regularly consult as I revise my list of viewing priorities. I haven’t seen the film yet, but these reviews have intrigued me.
Check back from time to time, as I may add more reviews to the list.
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Come back later. I may be posting more voices here.
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It happens every January — movie ads fill up with boasts about awards they’ve won. In a few days, those boasts will start to include Oscar nominations.
And The Artist is currently the most boastful of all. Filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius’s tribute to Hollywood’s silent film era is stirring up enthusiasm among audiences and critics alike.
And The Artist looks to me like the right film to love right now, if you want to be cool, because it’s so countercultural. This is, after all, the dawn of the age of 3D and IMAX, when bigger and louder and more elaborate is better. The Artist is “silent.” It’s black and white. It’s as brash as an “Occupy the Big Screen” protest. What is more, it’s cheerful in a year of dark, grim, and despairing. So it’s kind of rebellious to love it, right?
Set in 1927 Hollywood, The Artist follows the fall from grace… or rather, the fall from fame… of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent movie star who seems so perpetually convinced of his own entitlement to fame and fortune, so in love with his own onscreen persona, so drunk on applause that we have every right to hope for an educational fall. Not ruination, no… but reform.
As we watch him play the classic silent-movie archetypes — the suave gentleman, the Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler, the ancestors of Indiana Jones, etc — accompanied by a big-screen Jack Russell terrier who just might beat Tintin‘s Snowy in an IQ test, things aren’t so glamorous back at the Valentin ranch. His wife (Penelope Anne Miller in a return to the screen that’s hardly worth mentioning) is wasting away from neglect, a zombie in the mansion.
I don’t know how you’ll respond to this, but my sympathies were with this poor woman immediately. I quickly figured out that I was out of step with the movie, though. Because the movie’s sympathies aren’t with her at all. More on that in a bit.
The film has already lured us into hoping for the glorious union between Valentin and someone else — his happenstance, love-at-first-sight encounter with an admirer, Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo). Clearly, two smiles as big and white as those belong together, no matter what promises have been made. Peppy’s an opportunist with a heart of gold. She’s using her chance moment in the spotlight with Valentin to charm the public and become the Next Big Thing. At this point, the film seems to be headed deep into cynical satire about the superficiality of Hollywood.
But no, Peppy’s celebrity is treated as legitimate and wonderful. And when she becomes the first big star of “talkies,” rising to glory while Valentin plunges down into irrelevance, a victim of the forgetful public, she takes pity on the poor outdated icon.
It turns out that this story is more about the rehabilitation of Valentin’s career than it is about the reformation of his priorities.
One critic summed up the film’s lesson like this: “pride can interfere with progress… failure to adapt can make you obsolete.” Well, sure. But is that a lesson worth celebrating when “progress” is portrayed as the public’s fickle rush to embrace any new trend? Sure, “failure to adapt can make you obsolete.” Does that mean an “artist” — this film’s title rates among the most inappropriate I’ve ever seen — should always adapt in order to please the public? Should box office drive our decisions? Should fame be our goal, and popularity our standard of what is best?
I enjoyed the film’s singing and dancing and visual cleverness… and yes, the dog… for the most part. It was all very playful, funny, shiny, a hoot. Hazanavicius showed guts when he committed to reviving a form that hasn’t been popular for more than half a century.
And yet, a few minutes after the credits rolled, I felt that I’d been served a chocolate éclair made entirely of toxic chemicals. In a year full of meaningful feasts, this is the movie we’re going to celebrate? Very little in it strikes me as award-caliber material. Just because a recipe hasn’t been used in decades doesn’t mean that we should give highest honors to somebody who bakes up a batch to show it still works.
Moreover, in a year when filmmakers seemed especially preoccupied with questions about the meaning of life, why would we choose to give highest honors to a film that celebrates vanity? I don’t mind movies that revive old-fashioned methods. Hugo, The Muppets, Winnie the Pooh, and War Horse all did that in 2011, and their narratives celebrated respectable themes.
Glenn Kenny, who I find to be consistently one of the most thoughtful and experienced film reviewers around, used harsher words than I’m using:
…the fact that this movie is being proclaimed the Best Film of 2011 by various critics’ groups is literally—there’s no other word for it—insane. One could make a snide remark or two about the various members of said groups perhaps strongly identifying with the film’s title character’s entitled indignance at his imposed obselescence, but that would just be mean. However, I will say that any expectation that these proclamations will effect some kind of populist wellspringing on the film’s behalf is even more insane. We shall see.
I won’t go so far as to call my Artist-loving colleagues “insane,” but I sure don’t get what they’re so excited about.
The Artist is, in my opinion, not only frivolous — it’s irresponsible in its glorification of fame, fortune, and glamour. And it celebrates a love-at-first-sight encounter that leads to an extramarital affair (it may not be consummated, but come on: Affairs can happen within a gaze, within a silence). It goes so far as to reduce the hero’s betrayed, neglected wife to comic relief, brushing her aside as a convenient punchline. Call me Hazana-vicious, but this movie seemed to me to be 100 minutes of slick-looking, engaging, ebullient song and dance in service of… what, exactly? There’s the rub. You may smile and smile, and be a villain.
Nevertheless, Oscar forecasters see a Best Picture statue in The Artist’s future. Of course they do. The Academy Awards are the biggest annual party that Hollywood throws for itself, and The Artist is a movie that worships Hollywood — its vanity, its values, its people-pleasing, its superficiality. Looks like a done deal.
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Other Review Excerpts:
The idea of making a film about the American cinema between 1927 and 1933 seems as daunting a prospect as making a film about the entire cinema—in other words, the difference between conceiving the magnitude of a galaxy and the magnitude of the universe. You might as well make a 100-minute film about the Renaissance. Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist neatly sidesteps this unsolvable dilemma by ignoring everything that’s fascinating and memorable about the era, focusing instead on a patchwork of general knowledge, so eroded of inconvenient facts that it doesn’t even qualify as a roman à clef.
The 1927-1933 period witnessed an almost unquantifiable number of movies whose greatness remains unchallenged, from auteurs such as Josef von Sternberg, F.W. Murnau, John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Borzage, King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, Charles Chaplin, as well as, more controversially (since conventional wisdom places their creative peaks as pre-1927), Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim, and D.W. Griffith. The Artist simply cannot be bothered with any of those old fossils, and goes full steam ahead with the presumption that the silent cinema was most accurately depicted in Singin’ in the Rain, i.e. stolid costume dramas, hysterically acted against cardboard sets.
…
The 1920s and ’30s are full of tragic stories … of actors and actresses perishing in obscurity, misadventure, scandal, or sheer misfortune. For every screen icon who lived to a ripe, old age, like Lillian Gish and Bette Davis, there’s a Jean Harlow (renal failure, 1937), Jeanne Eagels (heroin overdose, 1929), Sidney Fox (overdose of sleeping pills, 1942), or Carole Lombard (airplane crash, 1942), and those are just a few examples. Furthermore, the period of American movies from 1930 to 1934 are now referred to as the “pre-Code era,” as it became apparent to certain bodies of American morality that Tinseltown, with its off-screen scandals and on-screen amorality, was becoming a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and needed to be saved from itself. To say that The Artist wallpapers over this stuff would be an understatement.
It’s not that The Artist is bad (although it drags so much in the middle that it comes very close), it’s that The Artist is a trifle. There are nice moments in the film, some lovely moments, but they never add up to anything with meaning, to anything with weight or anything with impact. If The Artist truly were from the period it’s about, it would be a minor film that occasionally played on TCM at 3AM, and about which even hardcore silent film fans wouldn’t care much.
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My review of Steven Spielberg’s War Horse is up at Image’s blog, Good Letters.
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In the opening scenes of The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, the new 3D motion-capture-powered animated spectacle from director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson, one character in an open marketplace happily informs a stranger, “Everybody knows him. That’s Tintin.”
And yet, after two hours of nearly perpetual, elaborately choreographed action, the audience still doesn’t know who Tintin is.
Those who have lined up to see a comic book character they already know and love may recognize him, but if they do, they’re only recognizing a haircut, an outfit, and the elements around him. To all appearances, Tintin is as blank as any character a film has ever been built around. That signature pinch of hair on the front of his head is actually a clue: Tintin isn’t a cartoon character with thought balloons. He is a balloon, and that point on his head is the knot tying it off! As Manohla Dargis describes him in The New York Times, he’s “lifelike, but without the pulse of real life.”
The boy android in Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence had one hundred times more life than Tintin. In fact, Tintin sometimes feels like a movie that the “mechas” might have assembled inside their own circuitry, unable to locate what it is that differentiates human beings from computers.
I almost feel that I should congratulate Jamie Bell, the actor whose motion-capture performance is animated here — it takes some real genius to create a character so utterly devoid of personality, so convincingly lacking in history, so unaffected by fear or physical stress, so free of meaningful relationships or concerns.
That is a problem.
It doesn’t help that the character who becomes Tintin’s fellow adventurer, the almost perpetually intoxicated Captain Archibald Haddock (“played” by Andy Serkis), is the sort of obnoxious, talkative drunk you try to avoid at parties — flamboyant and exaggerated. When he steals the show from Tintin, you might be tempted to demand that he give it back.
There are plenty of forgettable supporting characters and, strangely, there is not a single female of any importance. Remember the complaints about the lack of women in The Lord of the Rings? Tolkien’s epic feels like a feminist manifesto compared to Tintin, a world in which women appear even more fleetingly than pauses in the film’s action.
Ah, but what about that action, which so many moviegoers are gushing about?
Well, that’s a problem too.
The action in Secret of the Unicorn is as complicated and as carefully engineered as it gets. Throughout, it’s the kind of action that fans of Spielberg’s other action movies — from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Minority Report — love. Chases down sidewalks and streets, chases by car and airplane and ship. Narrow escapes, spectacular explosions, duels on the decks of flaming ships.
But while this action is quite impressive in its Rube-Goldberg-esque design, where is the suspense in action that never bruises its hero, that conspires such preposterous rescues and escapes that we know nothing serious will ever go wrong, that assures us from the opening scenes that all of the apparent danger is just that — apparent danger? Tintin will slip through it as gracefully and confidently as Tweety Bird through the clutches of Sylvester the Cat, but with far less depth of character.
He’s a crash test dummy who never hits a wall. As balloons go, he’s unbreakable.
Further, the animation only distances us further from any sense of suspense, since these can’t properly be called “stunts” and thus convey no real sense of risk. (This is where Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol reigns supreme among 2011′s action-adventure movies.) Animated films can be suspenseful, but they have to cultivate suspense in storytelling and character development, or through action that draws us in and makes us believe. Tintin‘s action overloads the senses. I was checking my watch at the one-hour point.
I’m told that the script by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish interweaves three existing Tintin adventures (The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham’s Treasure). There’s a snarling and entirely uninteresting villain named Ivan Ivanovich Sakharine (and it’s interesting that the villain’s name is pronounced like “saccharine” when the whole movie feels like it’s made of frosting). There are two identical and mildly amusing police inspectors voiced by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost who manage to slow the action down from time to time for some delightful but fleeting comic interludes. (I would have preferred a whole movie with these guys, who seem to live in a world of playfulness inspired by Jacques Tati.)
I suspect I’ll be thrown off a bridge by fans of the artist Georges Remi — also known as Hergé — for daring to nay-say the comics that delighted them in their childhoods. Hey, I have no experience with those comics, so I have nothing negative to say about them. They may be as enthralling for readers as The Lord of the Rings was for me when I was growing up. The fact remains that while Peter Jackson drew new generations into a love of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, giving them characters they would care about, environments of natural beauty so enthralling that we’d want to go back there someday, and a high-stakes plot rich with suspense and surprise, he doesn’t come anywhere close to achieving that here. Watching Tintin, I felt as detached as if I were looking over the shoulder of a kid playing a non-stop, high-speed video game.
Reading a comic book, you can take your time, study the action, and get to know your characters at a gradual pace. Watching Tintin, you’re tied to the back of a runaway train and told to keep up if you can. I wasn’t very intrigued by the quest, and the more the “secrets” of the Unicorn were revealed, the more underwhelmed I became. And I don’t know that I’ve ever been so thunderstruck and dissatisfied by the film’s abrupt conclusion, which seems to happen during one of the film’s rare pauses. I was still waiting for something that felt significant enough to mark the close of an episode.
Film critic Glenn Kenny mentions Wallace and Gromit in his review, which gave me a sort of “a-ha!” moment. In a short Wallace and Gromit cartoon, we do see action sequences that are similarly elaborate, similarly mechanical, similarly preposterous. And yet, running through it all are a man and his dog whose relationship anchors us to unfolding action. We are happy to chase them through one circus act after another because we enjoy their company. We’d be as happy to sit with them and eat slices of cheese as we are to see them escape the gears of a deadly machine. I watch those claymation cartoons over and over, delighting in their unique camaraderie. I get the feeling, watching Tintin, that if he stopped running he’d vanish like a puff of smoke.
So I’m left not with a finale that gives me any reason to be glad I made the journey, but with a jarring “To Be Continued,” the promise of a sequel that I will make a point to avoid (unless I am powerfully persuaded otherwise by early reviews heralding the arrival of a much, much better movie). This treasure hunt left me without the greatest treasures of all — characters worth visiting, a story worth telling, a reason to care.
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It is a pleasure to announce that director Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is worth every penny of today’s high ticket price. In this moviegoer’s opinion, it’s easily the finest installment in an otherwise mediocre franchise. Moreover, it’s leaves X-Men: First Class, Captain America, and the rest of 2011′s glorified Saturday morning cartoons in its dust.
Give me another ticket, Mr. Bird. I want to take this ride again.
This Mission: Impossible episode begins with our hero, special agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), in a jail cell in Russia. Why? Long story. The movie will get around to that eventually.
What really matters is this:
A renegade Russian named Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist of the original Dragon Tattoo film) has decided that the world needs to be “rebooted” through an act of nuclear devastation. It has something to do with his wacky theory that this will advance human evolution. Whatever — he’s just a few launch-code numbers away from launching nuclear missiles that will trigger a war between the U.S. and Russia.
Sounds like a job for the Impossible Missions Force (IMF)… right?
Well, if you’ve seen the previous films, no… the IMF team haven’t exactly become heroes of choice for moviegoers over the past 15 years. Brian De Palma’s initial feature was enjoyable enough, especially for introducing a large American audience to the international film goddess Emmanuelle Béart and for helping to revive John Voight’s career. But John Woo’s sequel was atrocious. J.J. Abrams, in his first attempt as a feature film director, improved things, but the movie amounted to little more than a two-hour episode of Alias starring Tom Cruise instead of Jennifer Garner. Meanwhile, audiences kept referring to the hero as “Tom Cruise.” The name and personality of his character, Ethan Hunt, just weren’t sticking.
Nevertheless, Ethan Hunt’s Russian imprisonment brings a team of talented action-movie sidekicks too set him free. They need him, you see, so he can lead them into action and save the world one more time.
As Ghost Protocol revs its engines, things get complicated in a hurry. No sooner has Hunt made his first move against the villain than he and his team are framed, made to look like they’re the real terrorists. To make a long story short, these undercover agents have to go even deeper undercover, operating without the protection of the American government, in order to prevent humankind from being vaporized. They need somebody to lean on, and have nobody but each other.
Yeah, I know. It sounds like the conventional absurdity of a zillion action movies.
But as you may remember, this stuff can be a whole lot of fun if it’s done well.
At the feast of cinema, action flicks like these are the plate of chocolate chip cookies, or the bowl of buttered popcorn. Their plots are so mechanical, their characters so sketchy, they make the Indiana Jones narratives look like Shakespeare. They’re circus acts, and they run on stunts and cleverness and surprise. They appeal to the Saturday morning cartoon fan in all of us. We’ve worked hard, and now it’s weekend: We want to see something outrageous, zany, an adrenalin rush that will make us forget our troubles for a while. If we ask for that and are instead delivered something deeply meaningful — or worse, realistic — well, it won’t be very satisfying.
But action flicks are not an easy art. Some action filmmakers fulfill the recipe with cheap ingredients and sloppy cooking. They make disposable, forgettable movies. But once in a while, you find a director who takes this stuff seriously, demands excellent ingredients, and invests so much imagination and invention that the result is memorable, worth revisiting, and worth recommending.
What does an action movie need to rise above predictability and mediocrity?
First, it needs engaging action-movie personalities. And this one has them.
Tom Cruise, looking a little more rugged (and thus, a little more human) than normal, is allowed to do what he does best: Play a determined, unbreakable action figure.
Unlike Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, or even Bruce Willis, Cruise has never created characters who convey much complexity, depth, intelligence, or emotional range. His irrepressible zeal is both a weakness and a strength. It prevents him from excelling in quieter moments, in emotional scenes, or in ensemble settings (Cruise cannot help but become the center of attention). But it enables him to commit to scenes of flamboyant action with such enthusiasm that we can almost believe him when he dodges bullets, or sandstorms. He’s more athlete than actor.
Ethan Hunt, being a man of action, determination, and courageous acrobatics, is the most perfect fit for Cruise’s talents that I’ve seen.
Cruise’s colleagues are also fit for their tasks. Simon Pegg is endearingly amusing as a somewhat untrustworthy tech wizard. Jeremy Renner is a rather unnecessary but engaging new addition, playing an analyst dragged into action that uncovers his secret abilities and wounds. Paula Patton is the fighting machine/supermodel who is as ready to use her sex appeal as her deadly kickboxing skills to get the job done. (If she’d been given some fight scenes in Precious, I might have liked that movie a great deal more.) She even gets to beat the snot out of Léa Seydoux, which I enjoyed more than I should have. (Seydoux’s character in Lourdes was so aggravating that I found genuinely guilty pleasure in seeing her so vigorously punished.)
Villains are usually the highlight in films of this genre. They give us the most colorful characterization, the most flamboyant performances. Not this time. As the nuclear-war-wishing madman, Nyqvist isn’t asked to do much more than carry a steel briefcase, look menacing, and fight Tom Cruise. It’s a shame. Villains don’t have to steal the show, and frankly I’m grateful when they don’t. But they should certainly be better than boring.
Second, a great action movie needs a propulsive soundtrack to enhance — but not overwhelm — the action. Michael Giacchino delivers just that here, embracing the franchise’s theme to excellent effect.
Third, it needs three or four thrilling action sequences that are just persuasive enough to seem dangerous and just imaginative enough to surprise us.
That’s where Ghost Protocol is supremely satisfying.
If I described these scenes to you — the jailbreak, the escape from a third-story window, the infiltration of the Kremlin, the adventure in Dubai’s skyscraping Burj Khalifa tower, the adventure on the exterior of the tower, the high-speed-chase in a sandstorm, the climactic battle in an automated parking garage — they would sound absurd. And they are.
What makes them so thrilling is how they manage to be convincing, suspenseful, and full of surprises in spite of their absurdity. How is this accomplished in a way that makes audiences cheer instead of scoff? We need actors who fully commit to every moment, stunts that are breathtakingly executed, editing and direction that draws us in rather than beating us senseless, and good sense of pacing between fast and slow, noise and silence, chaos and control.
Brad Bird, directing his first non-animated feature, shows he has the stuff of action-movie genius.
Some amusement park rides invite you to sit in a stationary chair, strap on goggles, and fly through a simulated environment. But there’s no real wind, no real sights and sounds, no real sense of risk. It’s all just the simulation of action. Me… I prefer real roller-coasters. I like to move through real space, feel wind in my hair, and see that I am actually suspended high above the earth before the rush of plummeting.
Ghost Protocol succeeds by doing action-movie thrills the old-fashioned way.
During the best scenes, I remembered why I still love Raiders of the Lost Ark and Die Hard so much. This movie isn’t nearly as supreme an accomplishment as those action films, but in the age of 300, Clash of the Titans, Immortals, Avatar and Tin Tin, it’s refreshing to watch an action movie made primarily of footage, not animation. While there is a lot of digital enhancement at work, it’s just that — enhancement. We always have at least one foot firmly planted in the stuff of performance and real-world materials. Actors, stunts, environments: The stuff that makes us ask “How did they do that?” That’s a question we don’t ask if the images appear overly altered by digital effects. The vehicles, the expressions, the animals, the dizzying falls, the explosions, the environments — it feels more staged than illustrated, more captured than generated.
When we watch an onstage escape artist submerged in a water tank try to escape a straitjacket, or watch a professional magician “saw a woman in half”, we feel a different kind of suspense than we do if we’re watching a cartoon of the same thing. There is a greater sense of mystery as to how the illusion is being achieved under such restrictions, with such limited resources. There is a sense of risk that something could go wrong.
Similarly, there is a reason we enjoy watching live sports more than cartoons of sports.
I don’t mean to criticize digital animation. That’s an art all its own. But it’s a different art than cinematography — the preservation of events that played out before a camera. The thrills of the original Star Wars films were a different experience than those of the subsequent “prequels,” primarily because so much of what we saw onscreen in 1977, 1980, and 1983 had been incarnate, embodied, existing in three-dimensions with weight and texture and color. Much of what we saw in the prequels was painted, representing environments and objects and costumes that no one ever touched. Thus, the Yoda performed by Frank Oz holds our attention in a more exciting way than the one created by a team of digital artists.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol could have been just a digital cartoon with a few familiar human faces pasted over the top of its animated automatons. What is refreshingly remarkable and compelling is that so much of its cartoonish action is made from real-world stuff in front of cameras.
That’s why the real hero of Ghost Protocol is Brad Bird.
With three celebrated animated features to his name Bird has earned a sterling reputation. Put him at the controls of a cartoon adventure, and you’ll get something worth watching over and over and over again. His films excel in visual design, character development, and thoughtful storytelling that subverts clichés and steers us in unexpected and rewarding directions.
Note how The Iron Giant — perhaps the most beloved “Transformer” the big-screen’s ever seen — is not known for how he smashes and destroys and fights, but for how he protects a boy and resists the impulse to blast away at what opposes him.
Note how The Incredibles are unusual in the realm of superheroes in that their real triumphs can be found in how they function as a supportive and loving family, how they resist temptation, how they invest their powers in service with excellence and responsibility.
Note how Ratatouille does not conclude with the hero’s success in business terms, but with his success in matters of art and conscience. (Remy the Rat doesn’t defeat his enemy; he appeals to what is best in the enemy, leading to redemption. What does he defeat? Cynicism. Arrogance. Resentment. He wins not by violently opposing someone, but by doing good with excellence, so that mediocrity is exposed for what it is.)
So how does Brad Bird surpass our Mission: Impossible expectations?
Where many filmmakers strive to create animated features that look like a real world, Bird, having already achieved that, is now demonstrating that he can do the opposite — create real-world scenes in which things happen that would only seem possible in cartoons.
That’s really Tom Cruise leaping from a ledge toward a passing vehicle and dodging bullets on a Russian street. That’s really Tom Cruise hanging from wires outside of the 130-story Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. Cruise isn’t in as much danger as he seems to be, but still… we’re watching stunts performed high above the earth by the same actor who will do interviews later, not by a stuntman or an animated avatar.
Seeing this, I think I have finally come around to appreciating Tom Cruise’s place at the movies. We just don’t have many actors willing to throw themselves into actual action the way he does. And Brad Bird has given him a perfect opportunity to do just that.
With help from screenwriters Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, Bird also upends several of the franchise’s conventions. In this episode, the fictional super-spy technology that is always designed to excite our imaginations… fails. Repeatedly. This strips the superheroes of their usual advantage, and requires them to think fast, devise scrappy solutions, and behave with compelling desperation. This cynicism about technology is refreshing. And more importantly — it’s familiar. It is part of our daily experience, and that makes the world of Ghost Protocol more persuasive, its characters more sympathetic.
I do say “characters” with some amusement. Mission: Impossible has never given us characters of any particular depth. Bravo. Appelbaum and Nemec deserve credit for not pretending that this is Shakespeare. They give the characters just enough personality. And they give the story just enough drama, context, connection to previous installments, and just enough slack for us to sense a sequel on the horizon.
But if we’re lucky, Bird won’t just direct the next one — he’ll write it too.
Bird has already raised the bar for feature animation in both spectacle and storytelling. Could he be planning to do the same thing for live-action adventure films? If that’s his mission, it looks like he’s chosen to accept it.
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Some stories are short for a reason.
Dr. Seuss’s children’s book How the Grinch Stole Christmas tells a simple tale about a mean old grouch who learns that love conquers all. The Grinch hates the Whos, it’s as simple as that. But no matter how much adversity he throws down on the town of Whoville, he’s never able to spoil Christmas. Animator Chuck Jones made a beloved animated cartoon of the story that stuck to the script, provided perfect voices for the characters, and added a memorable, brilliant song.
But Ron Howard’s movie adaptation stretches the story out to 109 minutes, gets preoccupied with why the Grinch is grouchy, and uses Whoville as an opportunity to show off special effects and a cast of seemingly hundreds. It also gives Jim Carrey the opportunity to turn in the most superhuman comic performance of his career. For the spectacle of this performance, I’m almost glad the movie was made.
Almost.
But the rest of it is just bad storytelling, totally devoid of restraint. And worse — it is the opposite of a faithful adaptation. It is a betrayal of the original story’s lesson.
Excess is often a problem in Ron Howard movies. Backdraft, Parenthood, and Willow all had memorable moments, but collapsed under the weight of numerous uninteresting subplots, indulgent effects scenes, and/or too much melodrama. We didn’t get to know characters enough to really care about them, because we were so busy trying to keep track of everything. (A few exceptions — Apollo 13, Cocoon, and Ransom – demonstrate that Howard is better when he reins in the spectacle and lets actors do what they do best.)
To make matters worse, this Grinch’s soundtrack is spread on like ten layers of Cheez Wiz and recycled Danny Elfman themes. Sappy, shallow, forgettable songs are thrown in, like it’s a bad Disney straight-to-video sequel. And the town of Whoville is so busy with activity that you don’t get a chance to focus on any of its details or appreciate it.
It’s a tragedy, because Jim Carrey’s work here is so good.
Some people will say that this performance is nothing new for Carrey. And I agree — Carrey as an actor has not yet demonstrated much in the way of range. He can be manic (The Mask,Dumb and Dumber) and he can be sincere when he plays damaged childlike characters (The Truman Show, Man on the Moon). But this is his greatest performance, because he’s never had a character so suited to his strengths. Carrey, above all, is great at exaggeration. He doesn’t need special effects… he is a special effect. His rubber face stretches like a Tex Avery cartoon. He could win an Olympic medal for the athletic feats he pulls off here. He makes Robin Williams look cool, calm, and collected by comparison. Friends have told me they dislike him because he’s so over-the-top, but I think that’s because, when placed in a normal movie environment, he’s just too out-of-control. Here in Seuss-land, everything around him is out-of-control, so he fits right in with his surroundings.
Not only that, but he’s delivering this performance within what must have been a stifling costume. It’s like watching Michael Jordan win a championship in a straitjacket. Rick Baker’s makeup for The Grinch may be the most brilliant creature costume I’ve ever seen. Its magic is that somehow you can’t understand how Jim Carrey got inside it. And you can’t understand how Carrey makes every part of that outfit work. There’s not a moment where you can see the seams, where you can take time to figure out how he’s making it all so real. It’s the perfect fusion of a clown and a costume. He shoves his face into the camera and sinks broken yellow teeth into that trademark improvisational wackiness. And he digs deep for a guttural monstrous voice that’s half Sean Connery, half Jimmy Stuart.
That alone could have been enough to make this film a classic. Carrey did his job. Now… just follow the story, and everything’s fine.
But after the opening 30 minutes, which are magical and exhilarating, we are yanked off the track and given a whole new twist… flashbacks of the Grinch’s childhood. Why the Grinch is so grumpy? Unrequited love, and people laughed at his ugliness. Yep. It’s as boring, as unimaginative, and as plain as an After-School Special. The marvel of Jim Carrey’s performance is that he gives us just enough of a glimpse of the Grinch’s heart so that we care about him. But then the movie doesn’t trust that to be enough, and shoves this boring, awkward, and unnecessary explanation under our nose.
Dr. Seuss books are about the outrageous, about whimsy, about where a fantasy can take you if you follow the rhyme scheme. This childhood chapter is rhymeless. It takes the Grinch far more seriously than he should ever be taken. It ruins the tone of the story. And, in spite of many great Grinch moments, it never recovers the joy of those first 30 minutes.
This “artistic license” steers the story so off-course that when the conclusion comes around, it lacks the resonance it should have. In Seuss’s story, the Grinch just hates Christmas until he understands it. In Howard’s version, the Grinch is mean because he’s angry over unrequited love, so it seems unlikely that the Christmas carols of the Whos would solve his problems. In fact, his problems aren’t solved at all. When the Grinch goes back down, supposedly full of love and a healthy heart, one of the first things he does is steal the girl and laugh vengefully at his old nemesis. No love or compassion here. This indulgent “nyah nyah-nyah nyah-nyaaaah nyah” at the rival’s expense spoils any sense we have of the Grinch becoming a compassionate soul. It is a clear sign that the storyteller doesn’t understand the story he is telling.
So in the end, I feel sorry for Jim Carrey. He is so good at his job, whether you like what he does or not. And he’s never had an opportunity to demonstrate his talents like he does here. When I pick up a copy of the video someday, I’ll fast-forward through it and watch his finest moments and then skip the rest.
Unfortunately, Ron Howard is the Grinch who stole Christmas from Jim Carrey, Dr. Seuss, and the children who deserve a better story.