(I chose to write about some rather than all of the movies I saw this year. There were several others that I liked or didn’t like or had mixed reactions to that I have very little to say about. Bowling for Columbine, for example. I mostly liked it, had a few problems with it. Nothing more to say. Also, there are some 2002 movies I’m still planning to see. Catch Me if You Can and The Hours for sure, and maybe one or two others.)
First, Some Movies I Hated
Frailty
I hope Bill Paxson is never allowed to make another movie. This one felt like it was directed by the dumb, hysterical character he played in Aliens. With a different ending, it would have been a mediocre yet watchable thriller. With the ending it's got, it's an embarrassment. Here'>s what the premise is: God speaks to Paxson and later, his younger son (played by Matthew McConaughey as a grownup), telling them to kidnap people and kill them because they're really demons in disguise. You, the sensible viewer, think all the way through the movie that Paxson is a crazy murderer, and you feel empathy for the older son, the rational one with a conscience who tries to get his dad to stop killing people. But no, in the end it turns out that all those people were demons, including the older son. He was a perfectly nice, reasonable kid, but then he grows up to be a serial killer because he's really a ">demon." The only people I could see this movie appealing to would be mentally deficient fundamentalist Christians. Then again, that's half of America.
Star Wars Episode II
I found very little to like about this movie, and what there was I only forced myself to find because of my nostalgia for the original trilogy. Both this movie and the last one suffer greatly from being prequels to those popular films. They don't have enough story of their own, instead mostly consisting of plot points and dialogue designed to make the viewer think, "Oh, so that's why this or that happens in the later movies." And even dialogue that's directly ripped off from those movies (Christopher Lee: "Join me." Ewan McGregor: "I will never join you").
Also, there was way too much noise in this movie. Not just the sound kind of noise, but visual noise too. Loud, meaningless, noncompelling-because-it's-so-obviously-fake action in the form of explosions and chases and asteroids in your face and digital beasts roaring and stomping and technological gizmos being used. It felt like George Lucas's lackeys were sitting all around me in the theater with pop guns going "bang bang bang bang bang" to distract me from the fact that the writing and acting were so bad. The love story stuff between Anakin and Natalie Portman was laughable. The relationship of Han and Chewie is more genuinely romantic. My dad fell asleep during this movie. I elbowed him to wake him up, but then felt guilty about it. I think he was better off sleeping.
Igby Goes Down
This movie sucked, sucked, sucked. I still feel guilty about the fact that I forced Kristen to go see it when she was visiting from Baltimore. She had wanted to see Secretary. The last time she was up here, I redeemed myself by discovering that Secretary was still playing. We went to see it. I liked it, except for the ending. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be talking about Igby Goes Down. But what is there to say about it? The story was lame, I didn't give a shit about any of the characters, a lot of it didn’t make sense, Ryan Philippe’s acting was on the level of a high school drama club reject. It's sad when the highlight of your movie experience is that you got to see Bill Pullman naked from behind. The only thing that would have redeemed this movie for me is if it had lived up to its title by having Kieran Culkin actually go down on Ryan Philippe (just kidding, sort of). I thought The Rules of Attraction (the other "snotty East Coast rich kids wearing scarves" movie I saw this year) sucked too, but at least it had a few fun moments in it, like Fred Savage playing the trumpet in his underwear after injecting heroin between his toes.
Home Movie
Documentary by the assholes who brought you American Movie. Couldn’t help laughing at some parts, but it made me feel dirty. When I saw American Movie, I felt conflicted about deriving entertainment from the haplessness of others. This time I did not feel as entertained, and I definitely felt like the film had no value other than as a vehicle for exploitation and ridicule of its subjects; as I see it, that means no value at all. It seemed to me that the filmmaker’s intentions could be summed up in the response a college kid sitting behind me had to the Louisiana alligator guy in the movie: "(laughing) What a fucking idiot. (more laughing)" I wanted to punch that kid in the face. I liked the alligator guy, and didn’t think he was an idiot at all.
Two Movies I Had a Mixed or Neutral Reaction To
Gangs of New York
At some point around the middle of the film, Leonardo di Caprio takes off his hat and his hair is as black as Daniel Day Lewis’s. I thought, "Wait a minute, wasn’t his hair lighter before?" Then I second-guessed myself, wondering if maybe he’d just had his hat on the whole time. But at the end, when he and the Butcher have their cheesy climactic battle, sure enough, his hair is its real-life sandy-blond color. With a budget of megamillions, you’d think you could afford to hire a continuity person who’d notice a flaw that obvious.
I found this film to be totally watchable and engaging, if a bit too long, which I guess is a testament to Scorsese’s skill as a director, because usually when a story is this lame and the acting and writing this inconsistent I end up feeling much more hostile to the film. What was with the Butcher’s silly obsession with constantly talking about what a great man Leo’s dad was? And did he have to literally be a butcher? Couldn’t that have just been a nickname? When the U.S. soldiers are all attacking the gangs at the end, it reminded me of the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when they’re getting set to attack that castle full of Frenchmen and the cops ride in and arrest them. I guess I admire Marty’s ambition in trying to tell both a personal story and a larger one about the history of New York City, but like just about every other movie that tries to combine a little story and a big one and make them both matter, G.o’N.Y. ends up overextending itself.
One last thing: John C. Reilly is overrated. Like Edward Norton (sorry, Steve) he is just not that good, and I can’t understand why people jizz over him so much. His accent in this movie was ludicrously inconsistent (sometimes he sounded like Paddy McLeprechaun, other times like a Nebraska farmhand or similarly nondescript modern American person), and he seemed bored all the time. He didn’t give his character any depth. Even Leo was better than him. I didn’t like JCR’s performance in The Good Girl either. He seems like he’d be a cool guy to hang out with, and for some roles he’s great (Boogie Nights), but versatile he is not.
About Schmidt
I didn’t go in expecting this movie to be as good as, or at all similar to, Election. Some people did, I think, and ended up being disappointed. I thought it was funny, but not quite as funny as it wanted to be. It was better at being sad. Dermot Mulroney was hilarious, though. Best combination of head and facial hair I’ve ever seen. My favorite thing about the film was watching Jack Nicholson. He’s a great screen presence and a very talented man, as we all know. However, I think he was miscast. He deserves recognition for his performance, which was as good as it could have been. However, the character was supposed to be a midwestern insurance executive with a staid, conservative life. Take a look at Nicholson’s face. It’s tan and leathery. The face of someone who’s lived most of his life in Southern California. And his voice belies decades of decadent living. There’s elements in his voice that he can’t diguise—a little bit of sinister, a little bit of cool—that make him sound very unlike what I’d expect such a character to sound like. I don’t know who might have played Schmidt more believably (note that I didn’t say "better"), but I have to think there’s someone out there. Brian Dennehy? Gene Hackman, maybe? I guess the problem is that if you’re an actor who doesn’t get much work, you tend to move on to a different career way before you’re in your sixties. So all the old-man roles have to go to superstars.
Some Movies I Liked
(In approximately chronological order of how I saw them)
Orange County
This was a Saturday morning matinee, and therefore I didn=t demand $10 worth of entertainment out of it. I=d say I got about $7, which is $1.50 more than I paid. Not bad. I don=t know what Dan=s talking about (see #99 on his movie list) B I thought Colin Hanks was good. He=s cute, charming, and much more convincing as a comedic Aevery teenager@ than his dad is with that overwrought, self-righteous Everyman schtick he smears all over his dramatic roles. This movie was not great, but I left it with a smile. There were a few damn funny scenes and I didn’t mind the cliched yet well-intentioned little insights it imparted.
It occurs to me suddenly that this movie’s message might have influenced me in a pretty big way. It=s about a kid who tries to get away from home and everything he knows, thinking that going to Stanford will make him into the person he wants to be, but then realizes in the end that Orange County (his home) is where he belongs. Me, I took off from New York in May thinking I might need to live somewhere else, but then I missed my friends and Brooklyn and came back. Brooklyn is my Orange County!
What Time Is It There?
This was my favorite film of the year. (Actually, Andrei Tarkovsky=s Stalker was my favorite of the films I saw in 2002, but it was released in 1979 so I can=t put it on this list.) I came out of WTIIT? thinking I had seen the film equivalent of a poem. It=s odd, reflective, beautiful, goofy. The lead actor manages to be sexy, funny and sad, sometimes simultaneously. And even though he may not be as handsome or charming as he was 30 years ago, seeing Jean-Pierre Leaud in a cameo appearance made me all tingly inside.
Y Tu Mama Tambien
I really dug the energy and recklessness (and, of course, the homoerotic playfulness) of the two main characters. The woman who played their muse and traveling companion was great too. I laughed hard at the funny parts and I appreciated the bittersweet parts as well. And I liked the nudity. American movies should show more penises.
Spider-Man
Saw this with Mike and Patty in a surreal setting, the Battery Park multiplex over by the Trade Center. It was opening night of the movie and re-opening night for the cinema. Out of the upper-floor windows we had a pretty clear view of Athe pit.@ I=d gone to a few movies there with co-workers when the buildings were still standing, so it was strange to be back and confronted with the new reality. All of that was swept out of my mind by the movie, which entertained the hell out of me. I wanted to be Peter Parker. I guess I=m still just a wimpy teenager at heart. The part with Bruce Campbell was classic, the guy from Law and Order and Oz was great as the newspaper editor, Tobey Maguire makes a much better superhero than I expected. And James Franco is nice to watch, of course. I left the movie thinking I wanted to see it again and again, but I haven’t yet. Who can I borrow the DVD from?
XXX
The key to my liking this movie was that I saw it at the Court St. Stadium 12 as a matinee. First show every day of each film, folks. Check it out. The thing about paying $5.50 is that you don’t hold the movie to the same standard as a film you’d be more than willing to pay $10 to see again and again, such as The Two Towers. I might have still liked this even if I’d paid 10 bucks. No, it was not particularly intelligent, but it got my adrenaline going a little bit, and it made me laugh (unintentionally most of the time, yes, but laughing is laughing). Also, I’ve been a Vin Diesel fan since I saw Pitch Black, one of my all-time favorite sci-fi thrillers (see my 2000 movie list). I’d rather watch him than Tom Hanks or Ralph Fiennes or Hugh Grant any day.
Some movies you appreciate because they uplift you or make you depressed or make you think or scare you or give you hope for humankind. This one served the same purpose for me as an ice cream sundae or a ride on the Cyclone. Pure enjoyment, nothing more.
Punch-Drunk Love
Throughout this movie, I was never sure what I thought of it. I decided that was a good thing. I liked that Adam Sandler=s character was like none other I=d ever seen. But Emily Watson=s character was underdeveloped, and I didn=t get a good sense for who she was or why she=d be attracted to him. I was relieved by the way the phone-sex subplot was resolved, because it could have turned into an annoying Hollywood morality play. I liked the absurdity all over the fringes of the action, like the bumbling warehouse guys and Sandler=s cluelessly antagonistic family. I guess the overall tone was pretty consistently absurd, actually, so all these elements seemed to fit better here than the frogs falling from the sky or characters singing that Aimee Mann song did in Magnolia.
Solaris
I haven=t read the novel or seen the Tarkovsky film of it, so I went in with no expectations except for the knowledge that I=d thoroughly enjoyed Out of Sight and Ocean=s Eleven, the other two Soderbergh-Clooney collaborations I=d seen. This movie was thought-provoking and ultimately depressing in a good way. I appreciated that it achieved a futuristic look without trying too hard the way most sci-fi movies do (Look – here’s some things that don’t exist in the present but they have them in the future…aren’t they cool! Look at them again!)
The endingCdismissed as schmaltzy by one or two reviews I readCwas anything but. It was chilling. The story is an imaginative take on our inability to perceive reality and relationships objectively, specifically George Clooney=s character=s inability in that area.
The one drawback for me was that Jeremy Davies was incredibly annoying, doing this weird hand gesture/stammering delivery thing. I thought maybe he was trying to reflect the character description in the book or the performance of the actor who played that role in Tarkovsky=s version. But then I saw Secretary, in which he acted exactly the same. Now I don=t want to see him in a movie ever again.
Talk to Her
Almodovar is good at telling stories that no one else would want to tell, and making them visually stunning. I didn=t connect emotionally with the characters as much as I did with those in All About My Mother, but I still found it moving. The black-and-white silent film in the middle was hilarious. Someday I’d love to learn Spanish just so I can appreciate his movies in their original form. I have to say, though, I’m not with all these critics who are slobbering all over Almodovar for his new maturity and subtlety, saying he’s at his creative peak because he’s all serious now. This film is great, no doubt, but I’m ready for him to do another wacky and/or madcap comic adventure like the ones he was doing 15 years ago.
Personal Velocity
This film consists of three stories, each focusing on a different woman. They were all sad and funny in unpredictable ways. Jane, with whom I attended the film, told someone beforehand that we were going to see a "chick flick." It turned out to be anything but that. There is no sappiness or Oprahfied redemption, no Prince Charmings riding to the rescue, no Charlie’s Angelsesque T&A disguised as girl-power ass-kicking. Instead you get complex characters who find themselves in difficult situations and struggle with the decisions they find themselves making. The story featuring Parker Posey was the best. I continue to believe that she is awesomely talented. I’ve never been a big fan of Kyra Sedgwick or Fairuza Balk, but they were both very good as well. Secretary’s downfall was its trite, cheaply satisfying resolution. These three minifilms didn’t make that mistake, so they ended up feeling more meaningful overall.
Adaptation
(If you haven’t seen this yet, you may not want to read what I have to say about it.) I loved this movie from start to finish. Yes, it was smarmy and clever and self-indulgent and convoluted. What’s wrong with any of that, if you can pull it off as skillfully as Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze did? And some parts were genuinely moving—Meryl Streep feeling empty because she’s not passionate about anything, Charlie’s struggles with his insecurities, Chris Cooper talking about the car accident that killed his mom. When I left the theater, I was thinking that they should have brought it back to "reality" in the very end, with Charlie saying to Donald that he’d gone too far or something along those lines. But after mulling it over, I’ve decided that it’s better they didn’t. After all, Charlie hands the script over to Donald and says, "You finish it," and he does, in just the way he’s been taught by Brian Cox’s screenwriting teacher character (who was hilarious, by the way). I felt like Mike and I were the only people in the audience laughing during the part when Streep and Cooper were chasing the brothers in the swamp and Cooper gets attacked by the alligator. What is wrong with people? That was funny as hell. And Streep inhaling orchid drugs and trying to imitate the dial tone, that was classic.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
I watched The Fellowship of the Ring on DVD on New Year’s Day, while recovering from the party the night before. It was my fifth or sixth time seeing it, and I got choked up at the end yet again. The next day I went to see The Two Towers. Very impressive. The downside was that it made me more frustrated at not being able to see The Return of the King for a whole year. But I did thoroughly enjoy it. Peter Jackson is my idol. Aragorn and Legolas are hot. Gimli is very funny. Brad Dourif (Wormtongue) is one of my favorite obscure actors; it’s always nice to see him on screen. The battle scenes were spectacular. Treebeard and his buddies laying waste to Isengard got me all fired up. Hey Chris Lawrence, how many days until the release of ROTK?
Morvern Callar
While watching this film, a thought occurred to me that I tried to articulate afterward but couldn’t. I’ll try again: basically, I felt like I could have watched an infinite number of other films composed of entirely different shots and dialogue, but with the same characters and situation (and actors), and liked it just as much, in the same way I liked this, and developed the same kind of appreciation for what Morvern was about as a character and what she was going through. And that’s a good thing, I think.
Hmm…I think that explanation was a failure too. I guess I could just say that this movie felt poetic in much the same way as What Time is it There? Not much emphasis on plot or narrative or dialogue, more on images and silent expressions of emotion and unspoken understanding. It lets you draw your own conclusions about a lot of things. I liked it a lot.
Spirited Away
This animated Japanese film was pretty and fun to watch. And it featured the cutest cartoon characters I’ve ever seen, these little black spidery guys who are like puffballs with eyes and lots of legs. There’s definitely a moral or two or three to the story, but most of the characters occupy ambiguous positions on the hero-to-villain scale, or slide back and forth on it more flexibly than the stock characters in your typical Disney flick (Disney actually distributed the film in this country). This one named No Face, who looked like a stuffed-animal version of the killer from Scream, was particularly intriguing, seeming sort of scary at first, then kind of creepy yet harmless, then monstrous and destructive, then finally good but still sort of creepy.
The Pianist
This film would get my votes for best picture, best director, best actor, maybe even best cinematography. The night I saw it, I woke up in the middle of the night a couple of times with scenes from the film playing over in my mind. Adrien Brody was great. He obviously put a lot of thought and effort into his performance. I’d say his role required a lot more than Daniel Day Lewis’s in Gangs of NewYork, who was more or less a cartoon character with no nuances.
2002
LISTS
dan
kevin
jeremy
alex
sujan
dave n.
sarah f.
juhi
genna
shawn
chris larry
mitch
chris m.
donovan
marc
jim
