Top Films 2012

My list of the top films I've seen this year.  There is no particular ranking.  Some of these films are new releases and some are old. Also, it would take me weeks to give all of these films the special attention they deserve. 

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (1968)

William Greaves

A significant experimental documentary about the process of filmmaking.  Worthy of noting is Greaves' creative use of split screen processing.  I hope more people discover this film.

One of the first films I watched in film school was Un Chien Andalou (1929) and I remember being shocked by its experimentation. The ending of Simon of the Desert is surreal, outrageous, and absolutely brilliant. The chamber drama of The Exterminating Angel had me laughing.  At the same time, I kept thinking - he shot a masterpiece that takes place in a music room!

 

Fish Tank (2009)

Andrea Arnold

  A British film about Mia (Katie Jarvis) a 15-year-old lonely and isolated teenager who has a talent for dancing and becomes attracted to her mother's boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbinder).  This is a gritty and emotional drama.  It is interesting to compare this film with Silver Linings Playbook... 

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

David O. Russel

I love David O. Russell's work.  This is a mash up of genres and a lot fun.  Reminded me of the madcap films of the 1930s. Great acting - especially De Niro's performance. 

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson continues to make interesting coming of age drama/comedies.

Skyfall (2012)

Sam Mendes

This is clearly up there with the great films of the Bond franchise.  Javier Bardem's long take entrance and monologue about rats was absolutely brilliant.  Great action film that actually raises some interesting points about transparency, surveillance, and terrorism in the digital age.

Room 237 (2012)

Rodney Ascher

A highly engrossing documentary about the various interpretations of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.  This documentary demonstrates how time-shifting technologies are impacting spectatorship, allowing viewers to closely exam the moving-image. 

The Leopard (1963)

Luchino Visconti

Made by one Italy's best filmmakers.  Long, slow, beautiful, and ethereal.  The wedding sequence at the end is unbelievable.

From Here to Eternity (1953)

Fred Zinnemann

Excellent melodrama before the attacks on Pearl Harbor. 

  

Bernie (2012)

Richard Linklater

One of the best performances of the year.  Black should be nominated for an Academy award.  I love the structure of the film - reminded me of Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974).

Death of a Cyclist (1955)

Juan Antonio Bardem

Made by Javier Bardem's uncle, great thriller from Spain in the Hitchcock tradition.

49th Parallel (1941)

Michael Powell

See my random review.

Amreerka (2009)

Cherien Dabis

 

Great melodrama about a Palaestian mother and her son who move to Illinois.  At times a bit sappy, but I really liked this film.

 Advise and Consent (1962)

Otto Preminger

Long and excellent film made by one of the greats of the classical period.  With all of the sex scandals in politics, this film is even more important today.  Betty White has a small role.

The Guard (2011)

John Michael

Hilarious and smart movie.  Great dialogue.  I particularly loved the gangster's conversation about Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Bertand Russell early in the film - very funny.

 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

David Fincher

David Fincher continues to make great movies.  The chemistry between Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara works very well.  I love how the film combines digital technologies and physical materials such as documents and photos to solve the mystery.

Random Review - December 12, 2012 - Unfaithfully Yours

 Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Writen and Directed by Preston Sturges

CAST: Rex Harrison as Sir Alfred De Carter; Linda Darnell as Daphne De Carter; Rudy Vallee as August Henshler; Barbara Lawrence as Barbara Henshler; Kurt Kreuger as Anthony Windborn; Lionel Stander as Hugo Standoff; Edgar Kennedy as Detective Sweeney; Alan Bridge as House Detective; Julius Tannen as O'Brien; Torben Meyer as Dr. Schultz. 

Unfaithfully Yours begin with Alfred, a famous orchestra conductor arriving in town from London. At the airport, Alfred meets his wife, Daphne and her sister, Barbara and her husband, August, and Alfred’s business manager, Hugo. We find out that August had been looking after Daphne while Alfred was away. But August actually thought that Alfred wanted her literally followed, so he hired a detective. This angers Alfred. August gives Alfred the detective's report which he tears to pieces. As the film continues, Alfred keeps receiving a copy of the detective’s report. Finally, when he meets up with Detective Sweeny, he rips up the original report so no more copies can be made. But then Sweeney tells Alfred that Daphne had been seen with Tony, suggesting an affair. Later that night, Alfred heads to the concert hall for this performance.   

Over each number, Alfred envisions three scenarios of on how he would evoke revenge on Daphne. The first vision is a skit where he murders Daphne and pins the blame on Tony; the second is Alfred forgiving Daphne and writes her a check for $100,000; and that last is Alfred forcing himself, Tony and Daphne to a game of Russian roulette, resulting in Alfred shooting himself. The films ends with Alfred in a prolonged slap stick skit of trying to orchestrate Daphne’s murder, which, of course, completely fails.  But at the end he learns that Daphne was not with Tony. Yet Daphne never finds out what was on Alfred’s mind - the three imagined scenarios of her death.

An object that plays an important, but subtle role throughout Unfaithfully Yours is the use of zippers and in relation to Alfred's reluctance to read the detectives report.  During the restaurant scene, early in the film, Alfred approaches August and asks him for the detective’s card. The image cuts to an extreme close up of the wallet as August unzips it and retrieves the card. Of course, Alfred tears the card into pieces. But what is striking about this moment is that Sturges amplifies the sound of the zipper to draw our attention to the object, suggesting that there is something happening in Alfred’s head that neither the spectator nor the characters are privy to. One possibility is that Alfred has always been insecure about his marriage to Daphne because of his age.

For example, Alfred states to Daphne before heading to his concert, (paraphrasing) “Movies fits your culture better.” So when Sweeny tells Alfred that his wife was with Tony, he assumes the worse, which leads to his visions of enacting revenge on them. It is at this point in the film Sturges “unzips” Alfred’s head so we can see his mind's eye - the three fantasy sequences.   

But for Daphne and the other characters, they are “zipped up” and, of course, not accessed to Alfred's visions. They can only hear the music, oblivious on why Alfred acts so peculiar at the concert.  In between the numbers, Hugo approaches Alfred backstage praising his conducting. Hugo ironically states to Alfred, “What vision do you have in your head?” It is only at the end, when the letter finally arrives at its destination, that Alfred learns that Daphne did not commit adultery.  All the work Alfred put into ripping up the detectives story, Alfred finally gets the truth of the letter, which zips the story shut.

Top Non-Fiction Books 2012

Below is my top list of non-fiction books I read this year.  No particular ranking.

Straightedge Youth: Complexity and Contradictions of a Subculture

by Robert T. Wood

Wood's sociological and cultural studies account of the straightedge music scene greatly contributes to the field of subculture.  Wood's central argument is that when members become disenchanted with the values of their subculture, sub-groups form out what he refers to as "schisms."  Straightedge was a result of a schism in the punk rock and hardcore scenes of the early 1980s.  This is a great companion piece to Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style.

War and Cinema

by Paul Virilio

Virilio's central claim is that the development of film technologies are intimately linked to warfare technologies and strategies of war. One of Virilio's best books on speed and technology.

  

How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics

by N. Katherine Hayles

I became interested in Hayles' work in a course I took at Claremont Graduate University on Visual Research Methodologies. Hayles' book explores the question of embodiment, materiality and virtuality in the age of high technologies.  A complex read, yet totally rewarding. I learned a lot about cybernetics. 

Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno

by Miriam Hansen

Superbly written book on the writings of Kracauer, Benjamin, and Adorno, three great writers of film and culture of the twentieth century.  I particularly enjoyed reading about the various stages of Benjamin's canonical essay, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

 Optical Media

by  Friedrich Kittler

Unapologetic as a technological determinist, Kittler traces Renaissance art to computational machines. The key points is that the emergence of optical media now allows us to store, transmit and process information. This is a great read and very accessible. 

Widescreen Cinema

by John Belton

Belton considers economic, historical, and technological factors that led to the film industry's conversion to widescreen in the 1950s. To compete with television, the film industry marketed widescreen and bigger and better sound as if you were going to an amusement park.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

by Neil Postman

Postman argues that forms of television have significantly impacted the production of knowledge in everyday life. He attacks television that takes itself seriously, especially when it involves politics. Highly polemic, this is an essential read for those studying television. I kept thinking about this book during the Presidential debates this year. 

Roman Polanski

by James Morrison

 

Excellently written by my colleague and friend. I had the great pleasure of taking film classes taught by Jim. This is a fabulous book on Roman Polanski. Highlight is the chapter on Rosemary's Baby and the occult.

Top Fiction Books 2012

My top list of fictional books I read this year.   No particular ranking.  Other lists will soon follow.  I thought of the music show Later...with Jools Holland when putting my lists together, looking at literature and film from a variety of genres and time periods.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

by Thomas Hardy

The story of Michael Henchard begins with him getting drunk at a fair and then selling his wife.  Remorseful of his actions, he gives up the drink and eventually becomes the mayor of Casterbridge.  When I read the back cover of this book, my first though was that this book has to be read.  A great melodrama.  One scene worthy noting is when the townspeople skimmity ride through the town to publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta.  This part of the story demonstrates that big new scandals and carnivalish ways of gossiping have been around for quite a while.  Hardy leaves us wondering whether or not this is a novel of fate. Probably one of the best books I have ever read. 

The Shining

by Stephen King

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is one of my favorite films and what led me to go to film school in 1993.  I finally read the book to see what Kubrick left out of the story.  This is a great book and much different from the movie.  Whereas King emphasizes the supernatural, Kubrick underscores the psychological.  I particularly love the The Wasp's Nest sequence.  Of course, in the novel you get a deeper understanding of Jack Torrance and his dissent into madness. There are some really scary moments, especially "The Elevator" scene.  King is a great storyteller.

Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury 

Bradbury's dystopia world where books are banned and burned.  Great book about literature and mass media.  It is worthy to note that this book came out shortly after Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's essay: "The Cultural Industry," which deals with mass entertainment and mass culture.  Francois Truffaut's film adaption of the novel is also worth checking out.  

 

The Invisible Man

by H.G. Wells

One of the great all-time science-fiction novels about Griffin (the invisible man) who takes residence in a small village to conduct his research.  Griffin eventually turns to robbing the villagers in order to generate money for his rent.  Once the villagers discover that Griffin is invisible, a mob is formed and they attempt to capture him.  I kept thinking about Michel Foucault's work on the panopticon as I read this. In many ways, Griffin intensifies the villagers' sense of looking and self-scrutiny in a sort of surveillance fashion.  When it comes to surveillance, Foucault argues that it is not that someone is actually watching you that makes the panopticon effective.  It is the fact that you don't know if someone is watching you and what internalizes the gaze.  I believe Griffin has this effect on the villagers.

Freedom

by Jonathan Frazen

Franzen covers a lot of ground in this long tale of the Berglunds family.  Franzen takes his time, providing the reader a detailed account of each character.  The description and dialogue are excellent here.  The storytelling is non-linear, suggesting the disconnection of the Berglunds.  I particularly love the character Richard, a disenchanted punk rocker who has a sort of strange relationship with Walter Berglund.  Though not as great as The Corrections, this was a long, yet rewarding read.  Franzen is one of our best contemporary writers.

Young Hearts Crying

by Richard Yates

Yates' gritty and melodramatic novel about of the Davenport couple.  For more, see my random review.

 

The Dead

James Joyce

Joyce's beautifully written novella at the turn of the twentieth century.  See my random review on John Huston's film adaptation.

Mother Night

by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut's novel tells the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr, an American Nazi playwright living in New York city.   See my random review about the film adaption.  

From Hell

by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

Alan Moore is known widely for writing Watchmen, probably one of the most important graphic novels of the twentieth century.  From Hell deals with Jack the Ripper which speculates the motives behind these horrific murders in England.  This is a haunting, gruesome and philosophical tale on the nature of evil and madness.

Random Reviews - November 3, 2012 - Young Hearts Crying and Watchmen

Young Hearts Crying, Richard Yates, 1984

This was a book recommended to me by my wife who has read all of Yates' work.  Yates is known widely for his book Revolution Road, made recently into a film directed by Sam Mendes.  This is a powerful and gritty book about the marriage and divorce of Michael and Lucy Davenport.  It spans almost forty years, beginning with Lucy and Michael's meeting at Harvard and their marriage in the 1940s, ending somewhere in the late 1970s.  The novel's twist is that Lucy comes from money and has inherited 3 million dollars.  But Michael refuses to live the life of a wealthy couple, and decides they should live by everyday means.  This is because Michael is an aspiring poet and believes that wealth will distract his passion and imagination as a writer.  This is a brilliant move on the part of Yates, because it directly taps into the novel's emotional realism about creativity and the struggle of the everyday, something one would likely find in the works of Charles Bukowski.

Young Hearts Crying has similarities to the emotional experience of watching a John Cassavetes film.  Yates' minimalist and Hemingway-ish dialogue is pungent and hits you right in the gut, so to speak. The dialogue also indicates the novel's passage of time.  For example, you can hear Michael's dialogue changing as he becomes older.  I also could not help noticing how many moments in the novel are reminiscent of the character Pete Campbell from the show Mad Men.  One wonders how much inspiration Matthew Weiner may have gotten from Yates's work?   

Michael and Lucy have their own separate stories after their divorce, as they each try to pick up the pieces and carry on with their lives.  Part of their struggles stem from the desire to create, whether its Michael hyper-focusing over one line of dialogue in his poem, or Lucy seeking approval for her paintings from her neighbor and artist Nelson.  Like the book itself, its about tapping into those deep emotions and trying to find the right word or image to convey expressions of loneliness, melancholy or frustration.

  Watchmen, 2009, Zack Snyder

Watchmen has had a long history in Hollywood. It was acquired by Hollywood in the late 1980s, and a number of directors have been attached to the project, including Terry Gilliam.  I even purchased a copy of the screenplay in the late 1990s from a nascent eBay. When I finally heard the film was actually in production, and then saw a trailer in 2008, I was quite eager to see how director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Sucker Punch) would adapt what many have called the "Citizen Kane" of comic books to the screen.

Snyder compacts twelve chapters of Watchmen into roughly a three hour film.  The set design and art direction of the film are magnificent. The film's use of colors and light, in many ways, reminded me of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. I would even go as far as to add that the film has a sort of surrealistic quality.  I also love how Snyder incorporates popular music as part of the score.  Rorschach, played by Jackie Earle Haley, is fantastic and has a Taxi Driver/Travis Bickle-like quality.  As a side note, I highly recommend reading Rorschach's back story in Before The Watchmen, written by Brian Azzarello, writer of 100 Bullets.

Many reviews for Watchmen have not been enthusiastic. Yet, I believe that as time passes,  Watchmen will be considered a significant film in the cannon of the comic book film genre.  Putting that aside, Watchmen, as a graphic novel, is arguably an important work of literature of the twentieth century.  Overall, I think the film is quite entertaining and something of a tour de force for its tone, art, and set design.

Random Reviews - September 18, 2012 - Lost, Fringe and Person of Interest

Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest

I recently finished watching all six seasons of the television show Lost (2004-2010) - thanks to the wonderful technology of video streaming. For the sake of those who have not seen show, I have tried to avoid listing specificities that would ruin the plot. In a nut shell, Lost tells the story of a group of survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 marooned on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Lost is clearly one of the top television shows of recent years. The show covers many themes, such as science, religion, and family. But probably the topic given the most attention is the question of fate.  Here, the writers do a great job keeping us wondering if there is a greater purpose for the survivors of flight 815. Lost's puzzle narrative structure helps to underscore this notion. Some random notes (after all, this is a random review): Michael Giacchino's beautiful score; the diversity of characters; and cinematography, editing, and acting-all work very well. Lost deservedly won a bunch of Emmys. But I was surprised that none of the women were nominated for their work. Lastly, there are some fantastic stand-alone episodes. I particularly loved "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," which some critics, apparently, did not like.

I find myself drawn more and more to J.J. Abrams' fictional Universe. I recently started watching Fringe - another great show of Abrams'. Fringe is like the scientific version of the Twilight Zone.  If Rod Serling gave us existential reasoning for the show's strange happenings, Fringe attempts to scientifically solve them! Topics covered are telekinesis, shape-shifting, spontaneous combustion, and suspended animation, to name but a few.  Walter (John Noble), the eccentric scientist, does a convincing job to prove the scientific validity of these strange happenings. Noble's humorous antics also help to balance out Fringe's graphic imagery.

All of these shows strikingly share a commonality: a depiction of a post 9/11 society of paranoia. These shows, in many ways, are a microscope into our culture of rapid technological innovation, speed, and surveillance. Abrams and Matt Reeves really tune into these features in their frantic, science-fiction, disaster, monster, digital cinema film Cloverfield (2008).  I guess in certain ways these shows can be compared to the paranoia films of 1970s, such as Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). This is not meant to be a generalization.  But I like that the writers of the show address these issues. Finally, I recently read that Star Trek 2 is heading into production which begs the question: does J.J. Abrams sleep?

Random Reviews - September 7, 2012 - The Dead and 49th Parallel

More random reviews...why not?

The Dead, John Huston, 1987

John Huston's last three films before his death in 1987 is a tour de force.  Under The Volcano (1984), Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead - three outstanding films made respectively within a period of three years.  I highlight his final film - The Dead which is based on James Joyce's short story from The Dubliners. The film closely follows Joyce's story, providing viewers with vignettes of the yearly gathering of the Morkan sisters in January of 1904, which include singing and dancing, a piano performance, and recitation of poetry. There are many wonderful moments in The Dead, particularly the serving of the goose and all the different courses of foods during dinner.

The Dead is a beautifully slow and meditative non-narrative film.  It takes place when the western world was beginning to witness social and economic changes due to modernity.  Of course, Joyce's style of writing would later become associated with the broad movement of modernism. The film hits upon a number of issues, such as the political tension between Ireland and England, conversation about opera, discussion of about literature and clothing fashion of the time. There is also a sense of loneliness that pervades the story.  We eventually find out that what lies beneath this gathering is an unspoken tension between Gabriel and his wife Gretta, performed wonderfully by Huston's daughter Anjelica Huston, who had recently won a supporting Oscar for her supporting role in Prizzi's Honor.    

This is extraordinary filmmaking from man who began his career in the golden age of Hollywood - a time when a film like The Dead and its non-narrative style of would have been hard to find. The ending of The Dead has to be one of the most beautiful and power passage of prose I have ever read.   And Huston wonderfully captures this ending sequence of Gabriel self-reflecting on the fleeting nature of memories, the cosmos, "and the living and the dead."

49th Parallel, Michael Powell, 1941

This is a compelling propaganda war film made by one of Britain's finest filmmaker, Michael Powell, who also directed films with Emeric Pressburger, such as A Canterbury Tale (1945), Black Narcissus, (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and Pepping Tom (1960).   

After the sinking of their U-boat in the Hudson Bay, six Nazi sailors must evade capture as they travel across Canada. They meet different groups of people that challenge their Nazi rhetoric. One scene in particular is the Nazi speech by Peter (Anton Walbrook), the leader of the group, who tries to spread Nazism upon the peaceful Hutterite community--a group of people who happened to be of German descent.  Peter's speech literally scared me to the bones.   

This is a powerful film made during the time before U.S. entered the war. The final sequence of the film clearly alludes to this - a strong message to America to break with its isolationist stance. The poignancy of film's title addresses this as well: the geographical divide between the U.S. and Canada (the 49th parallel) - a divide that may have had no meaning or purpose for both countries if America did not join the Allies.

Most of the film was shot on location, which gives the film a realist quality.  Laurence Olivier plays a great role as Johnnie the trapper. 49th Parallel also deservedly won the best screenplay Oscar in 1941. This is clearly one of top films of the war genre.  It is great that Criterion released this one.