12 Most Anticipated Movies of 2016

Sorry, I couldn't whittle it down to 10.

Note: This list purposefully excludes all sequels, reboots, and superhero movies. This does not mean I'm not looking forward to Deadpool, X-Men Apocalypse, Dr. Strange, Bourne 5, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, Finding Dory, Independence Day 2, Captain America: Civil War, Ghostbusters, Gambit, Star Trek 3, or Star Wars: Rogue One; this list is just highlighting the littler guys who don't make quite as many headlines but are still sure to be compelling cinema.

12. Midnight Special - March 18

The trailer for this one is... strange, which is the only reason this movie isn't ranked higher. If I didn't know anything about the plot and had just heard that Jeff Nichols (director of Mud and Take Shelter) was making a sci-fi movie starring Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, and Adam Driver, you'd have me. In fact, you do have me. Silly-looking glowing eyes or not, you have me. Plus apparently Nichols has another movie coming out in 2016, but let's just take it one at a time for now.

11. La La Land - July 15

Damien Chazelle is the acclaimed director of Whiplash so his next movie was always going to be on my radar, trailer or no trailer. Based on the intensity of that previous dramatic outing, I was surprised to hear that his upcoming release was going to be a musical-comedy. Color me intrigued. Plus Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are the best on-screen couple (yeah I said it, Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper) and Whiplash star / Oscar-winner JK Simmons is back for more. It's unclear if he'll be throwing cymbals at people's heads this time around.

10. Kubo and the Two Strings / Moana - August 19 / November 23

I know, I know, ties are lame. But both of these animated films feature an adventure centered around a young person on the high seas, battling epic adversaries in gorgeously realized environments. Kubo is brought to us by Laika, the Portland-based stop-motion animation company that is pretty damn close to batting a thousand; their previous works include Coraline, ParaNorman, and Boxtrolls. Meanwhile, Moana (pronounced Mo-ah-na) is brought to us by Disney animation who has basically no right to be making films of this high quality while Pixar is under the same umbrella corporation. Disney's last few efforts include Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, and of course the unstoppable juggernaut that is Frozen. Nothing to shake a stick at, so expect big things from these two (as well as an inevitable onslaught of lunchboxes and figurines).

9. A Monster Calls - October 14

Comparisons to The BFG are going to be inevitable when both trailers feature a kid being pulled out of a window by a giant hand- but that is probably where the similarities in these two films stop. This fantasy movie is being directed by one of the most capable people imaginable, the extraordinarily talented Juan Antonio Bayona. Bayona previously directed the technically-dazzling The Impossible as well as one of my favorite horror movies of all time, The Orphanage. His name has been attached to big franchises like Jurassic World and World War Z but in the meantime we'll keep taking the suspenseful and fantastical adventures he's been humbly churning out every few years.

8. Passengers - December 21

[there's literally not a single image for this movie yet]

Passengers is one of those scripts that has been bouncing around Hollywood for quite some time with various producers, directors, and stars attached. More often than not, those sorts of films end up not getting made or getting made poorly and being swept under the proverbial rug. Not this time. The sci-fi story about a passenger (!) on an extended space-flight who wakes up from cryo-sleep a few decades early has landed Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence as the leads. They're arguably the two biggest and most charismatic young action stars of our day and age, so if they can't draw you into a theater nobody can.

7. The Nice Guys - May 20

A Shane Black movie is always going to have gangsters and jokesters. Violence and humor. Usually a dash of Christmas. This red-band trailer makes it seem like The Nice Guys is not going to be the one to break the mold- and that's not a bad thing. There aren't enough entertaining and clever writers like Shane Black around, and Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe look like they're going to make a great pair of reluctant partners. This could be Kiss Kiss Bang Bang round 2, and there's nothing wrong with that.

6. The BFG - July 1

Admittedly, I'm very sad that I'm not the person to bring Roald Dahl's beloved children's classic The BFG to life (I had always planned to make it an animated film in the style of illustrator Quentin Blake). But if somebody else is gonna do it, I'm glad it's Spielberg. People have started to take Spielberg for granted lately, but that's only because his product is so consistently high-quality. Granted, people were a bit divided on Tin Tin but I personally liked it and for this one he's steered clear of the uncanny valley. Remember, this guy brought us ET, Jaws, and the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. A big friendly giant should be no problem.

5. Keanu - April 29

[this movie comes out in 3 months and there are no promotional materials??]

Not much is known about this movie at this point other than it's about a cat who is abducted by a street gang. But really, the plot is secondary- the reason(s) I'm interested in this are its creators, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, fresh off the conclusion of their incomprehensibly consistent and hilarious sketch show on Comedy Central. I never thought I'd see a show in this format that would make me laugh as hard as Chappelle's Show, but these two guys managed to pull off that feat. Their brand of humor is the perfect combination of low and high-brow, managing to mix severe social critiques with absurd slapstick and they can do it all seamlessly in one bit. Expectations are high for this one.

4. The Witch - February 26

Horror movie trailers are becoming an event in their own right, with the internet going nuts last year over Goodnight Mommy and it seems that crown is being passed to The Witch (sometimes stylized as The VVitch) in 2016. This movie got nothing but stellar reviews at Sundance last year with people praising the tense atmosphere and total lack of gimmicky jump scares. Now the rest of us plebeians are finally going to get a chance to see it and blast our low-brow criticisms all over the YouTube comment sections. 

3. Everybody Wants Some - April 15

I don't know why it took me so long to realize I'm a huge Richard Linklater fan. I've seen Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, Bernie, and I think a few more but it was only after Boyhood last year that I started putting it all together. Boyhood really, really struck a chord with me. I realized Linklater has an unique insight into seemingly mundane, everyday situations in a way that elevates them. The movies are art because everyday life is art, when you look at them/it the right way. I know that sounds highfalutin but I don't know how else to describe the feelings I associate with his movies- I'm sure he could explain it better. Anyways, after seeing Boyhood I binge-watched all three Before Sunrise movies and they made me feel all of the feelings; I've been intending to write an article breakdown on that experience but I don't know if I'm up to the task. Maybe it's better to just sit back and emote naturally instead of dissecting every shot, line, and cut to the point where the feelings die. Ah, the struggles of blogging about film. Anyhoo, Everybody Wants Some is out April 15th- maybe I'll have an answer by then.

2. High-Rise - unspecified

I hate to put a movie on this list that doesn't have a specified release date, because I know how wacky distribution schedules can be and who knows if this movie will even make it out in 2016? That being said, hot damn am I excited for this movie. My friends and I were recently lamenting the lack of notable stylistic auteurs who are up-and-coming in the film world today- where are the Tim Burtons and Terry Gilliams of the 21st century? Ben Wheatley doesn't quiiite fit on the same bill as those two wackos, but he definitely has a strong personal voice that is reflected in every film he has released. Most people I talk to love Kill List, and while I appreciate that movie my favorite of his is definitely Sightseers. So gruesome, so lovely, so strange. His movies feature incredible character actors in totally bizarre situations, and this J. G. Ballard adaptation starring Tom Hiddleston is definitely in that vein. It's hard to figure out what's going on from this trailer, and that's quite alright with me.

1. Hail, Caesar! - February 5

The Coen brothers are my favorite living directors, so their movies will always find a home at the top of my most-anticipated lists. I cannot think of any other directors who have as firm a grasp on comedy as they do on drama. The same team that created Inside Llewyn Davis, No Country For Old Men, and Blood Simple also created Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother Where Art Thou?... It's amazing, unheard of, and unrivaled in my opinion. It's been a few years since this duo released a comedy, but they're coming back in a big way with the cast (George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, and Jonah Hill, to name a few) of Hail, Caesar! so expectations couldn't really be higher. I'll admit that the dregs of February is an odd-time to release this sort of movie, so lets hope that it's the studio trying to take advantage of a scheduling-hole rather than a sneaky-dump of a film they don't have faith in (btw, Sneaky-Dump- band name, called it). I tend to forgive even the least-beloved Coen bros' efforts, however (anybody remember The Ladykillers?), so this movie would have to be a real hot piece of garbage to not win my affections. Here's hoping that it's up-to-par.


Whew! That's it. I'm sure there are plenty that I forgot and even more that will pop up that I haven't heard of yet. 

10 Best Movies of 2015 (Pre-Awards Season)

With movies like Suffragette, The Danish Girl, and Brooklyn out now or soon, you know that we're knee-deep in awards season territory. The last couple months of the year play a comically over-sized role in determining what films will find space on the "Best Of" lists that appear every December like a swarm of attention-seeking reindeer. Unfortunately, top 10 lists are a zero-sum game and the Oscar-contenders generally push out a bunch of quality movies that have played between January and September. But comparing June movies to December movies is a bit like comparing a Dr. Pepper to a Malbec- they're both great but for totally different reasons. Pleasure versus sophistication. Upper versus downer. Consistent versus unique. Hot damn, that metaphor worked better than I expected. Anyways, with that in mind I've decided to compile a Pre-Awards Season Best of 2015 list that features movies with guns, drugs, sex, and swear words- you know, the empty calories that we all crave. Lastly, for reasons only I understand (there wasn't enough room on the list), I've decided to count Sicario as an awards-season movie even though it has guns, drugs, sex, and swear words and came out before The Martian.

[full disclosure: I haven't seen every movie that came out in 2015. My apologies to Shaun the Sheep]

Purposeful Omissions: Fast & Furious 7, Avengers 2, Terminator Genisys, Jurassic World, Mission: Impossible 5, The Gift

Honorable Mentions: Trainwreck, Straight Outta Compton, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Cartel Land

10. While We're Young

This movie made my soul cringe. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play an aging childless couple, trying to figure out where they fit in society. Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried play twenty-somethings hell-bent on making art while living wild and free. Both couples are deeply flawed, and somehow both couples act as a mirror to me, the not-so-young creative-type laden heavy with both dreams and regrets. People act foolishly when they pretend to be young, or pretend to be wise, or pretend to be anything other than what they really are, and this movie showcases that foolishness to hilarious and traumatizing effect. I didn't know whether to laugh or sob. Sadly, the conclusion of this film doesn't tie everything together tidily but the journey there was strong enough to merit a spot on this list. Writer-director Noah Baumbach's dry wit prevails again.

9. Dope

This is a loose film. The script is not tight. Things happen that aren't obviously motivated. Characters make odd choices. Even the genre label falls somewhere between bildungsroman, heist, fish-out-of-water, and probably a few more I'm forgetting. That being said, it was an original, forward-thinking, highly-stylized genre movie featuring a cast of interesting and relatable characters. The basic plot is three nerd-ish high school friends need to figure out how to sell a lot of drugs in order to get a girl, get into college, and not be killed. Classic high school antics, I know. But the whole thing has an amazing 80s hip-hop vibe, despite taking place today (and even having a whole subplot devoted to bitcoins). The setting, the costumes, the music, and the performances worked together wonderfully, even when the story elements and pacing were a bit off. Plus A$AP Rocky has acting chops, who knew?

8. Me and Earl and The Dying Girl

I know this movie has some shmaltz in it and I don't care, I had a great time with this one. The misfit kids who swede their own versions of classic foreign and arthouse cinema are always going to be okay in my book. Most of this movie feels like a cross between Wes Anderson and Phil Lord & Chris Miller- careful compositions and absurd situations. This sort of kids-dealing-with-death coming-of-age concept isn't altogether original so in a movie like this you really have to nail the execution. Well, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon nailed it. The core cast is pretty green behind the ears (as evidenced by their unpolished, rambling Q&A answers I heard after the movie's LA premiere) but they all did a great job and the supporting players were excellent. Having Brian Eno do the score never hurts either. 

7. Inside Out

In today's Hollywood landscape I can't help but give points to a film simply for being an original property. This year gave us Fast & Furious 7, Mission Impossible 5, Terminator 5, Jurassic Park 4, and Marvel Cinematic Universe films 11 and 12. Not to say I didn't like a lot of those films; sequels and reboots and boardgame adaptations can (and do) make for great movies. But yeah, I was impressed by the sheer originality and maturity of Inside Out. It's not my favorite Pixar movie by a long-shot, but it might be the most unique. The world inside a girl's mind is a complex and beautiful place, at times alternating between jolly and terrifying. The abstract journey of Bing-Bong is museum-worthy art in my humble opinion. The movie is not without its problems (the protagonist is very upset by some first-world issues, for example) but overall it's an impressive endeavor and a thoughtful semi-experimental film. Not necessarily a winner for children (this ain't Cars) but that just adds to my fondness of it.

6. The Martian

This is Ridley Scott's biggest movie. Take a second and consider that. The 77-year old director who made Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and more made his most profitable movie this year. That's insane! This movie is not quite as good as some of those I just listed, but it is the only PG-13 one of the bunch so I guess that helped it a lot. This movie stuck pretty close to the beloved sci-fi novel it's based on, but not to a fault. In all honesty, the movie was probably a little better than the book because the visual spectacle was handled with aplomb. It pleased fanboys and newcomers. Matt Damon made a great stranded astronaut-hero, and my one negative note is the casting of Kristen Wiig and Donald Glover (???). Also Jessica Chastain and Kate Mara and Michael Peña were under-utilized, but I actually agree with that choice; if anything I'd like to spend even more time alone with Damon on the red planet. He's dreamy.

5. It Follows

The concept is simple enough: if you have sex with someone who is afflicted, they pass the affliction unto you and it follows you until it kills you. The affliction is manifested as a walking (never running) human of indiscriminate age, sex, and relation to the victim. It can only be seen by the afflicted (and the audience, of course). Throughout this movie the audience learns to never trust a walking human in the background, because more often than not that human is the awful eponymous "it." My ass was on the edge of the seat, my knuckles were clenched and white, and my eyes ceaselessly searched each frame for the monster. Even though the actual scenes of violence were ultimately underwhelming, the pure unbridled tension that existed throughout the movie made it successful. The protagonists' clueless attempts to mitigate the monster were a clever touch as well, and the soundtrack still gives me chills. And they said original horror was dead.

4. Finders Keepers

Making a documentary must be a very anxiety-inducing endeavor. The characters you follow have to be pretty darn compelling for the movie to work, and you won't really know if they are interesting until you start shooting them. With that in mind, these filmmakers struck gold. The stranger-than-fiction premise hooks you right away: a man buys an abandoned storage shed and finds a human foot inside of it. Intrigued already, right? That sounds like the beginning of a mystery movie, but it's actually more of an intimate character study. Finders Keepers is about the embroiled legal (and moral) battle between a shameless glory-seeker who finds a foot and the self-destructive amputee who wants it back, with a healthy sprinkling of their eccentric families and friends who weigh in along the way. This is it folks; a true slice of Americana. There is a bizarre sense of the universal to be found in this very peculiar story. This is an A-grade documentary all the way through. 

3. Kingsman: The Secret Service

I love having fun in a theater. There's a childlike innocence to really getting onboard with a movie in a dark room full of perfect strangers, and I feel like I don't get to experience that emotion too often anymore. Kingsman did it for me. I guffawed openly. There's a real beauty to a successful parody, wherein a movie can poke fun at a genre but still be a worthy entry itself (Cabin in the Woods and Shaun of the Dead are the only others that come to mind). Spy movies have gotten either grim or campy (or both) lately, and those routes kind of suck. Even though it had its tongue firmly planted in its cheek, Kingsman managed to be a fun, funny, high-octane action movie. I would buy this lunchbox! Colin Firth in a scene with The Raid-level of violence and Samuel L. Jackson as a flamboyant supervillain can only add positively to a film like this. And as a wise man once told me, "it's always the old white guy" so keep your eye on Michael Caine. Does a movie like this need spoiler alerts?

2. Mad Max: Fury Road

Let me start off by voicing a contrarian opinion: I think Mad Max: Fury Road is over-rated. It is sitting at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes with over 300 reviews counted. The plot insomuch as one exists is weak. The characters are thin, and their decisions are mostly kinda dumb. Max is an empty shell of a protagonist, almost wholly lacking in motivations and even dialogue. Okay, whew, I got that out of my system. Now for the rebuttal: Fury Road is f*cking awesome. It is balls-to-the-wall insanity on a level not often (or maybe ever) reached in cinema. The monster-truck dystopia with an army of spray-paint-huffing fundamentalists is so gorgeously realized that it's hard to find fault in other aspects of the movie, because why are you looking at other aspects of the movie?! How, even?? There's a blind mutant playing a freaking flame-throwing guitar, and you're worrying about character development? You're nitpicking the script while the kid from About A Boy enters a raging electrical storm, screaming something about Valhalla? That's completely missing the point of this lovely day- I mean film. Charlize Theron is great. Tom Hardy, in his own mute way, is great. This movie somehow manages to appeal to the intelligentsia and frat boys alike. It is a miracle made of explosions, and I'll gladly kneel at the altar. The Holy Boom. Praise thee.

1. Ex Machina

I wasn't sure how I felt about Ex Machina when I first left the theater; it was definitely not what I was expecting. It was a small movie, almost more of a play really. From the posters and the trailers and the Tinder-based marketing scheme, I had expected something bigger. It was only later, once I had come to terms with the fact that the movie wholly takes place inside a mostly-empty compound in the middle of nowhere that I could start to assess just how wonderful it is. Two of my favorite character actors and a rising star get to chew scenery for two hours while talking technology, intelligence, and ethics. Some of my favorite topics! Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson aren't superstars quite yet, but soon enough they will be. They co-star in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and then Isaac is the big bad next year in X-Men: Apocalypse. These guys are going to be huge, and I can't think of any two actors at the moment who deserve it more. Gleeson is the personification of every guy who might end up in this situation: curious, naive, and unable to not fall in love with Alicia Vikander, even if she is a robot. Isaac is like a drunken, philosophizing version of the scientist from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Vikander is perfect as the metallic yet somehow soft and warm and inviting Ava. She came out of nowhere, but her 2015 (Ex Machina, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Danish Girl) shows just how capable she is in big roles. 

This movie is clearly more of a contained story than a harbinger of real things to come, but I still enjoy catching a glimpse into this possible near-future. Movies like Her, Frank & Robot, and Ex Machina are clearly sci-fi... but just barely. It will be mighty interesting in 25 years to look back on movies like this and see how close or far off they were from reality. In the meantime, filmmakers like Alex Garland (who also wrote 28 Days Later and Sunshine) will have to keep terrifying us with these twisted and fascinating possibilities. 

Thoughts on the 2015 Director Breakdown Challenge

Wow- I did it! I set my mind to something, and I did it!

56 films by 13 directors in one calendar year. Actually I finished before November by doubling up in three different months. This project has been a major time-suck but I couldn't be happier that I stuck with it. As a brief reminder, the directors that I watched (in order) were: Jean-Luc Godard, Wong Kar-wai, Terrence Malick, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Robert Altman, Federico Fellini, Francis Ford Coppola, Pedro Almodóvar, François Truffaut, Spike Lee, Michael Haneke, Ingmar Bergman, and Roman Polanski.

I feel much better-versed in the language of film now- some serious knowledge gaps have been closed. And yet, the project was far from perfect. In December of 2014 when I put this little shindig together, I probably didn't spend enough time deciding on who to watch or what films to watch. This is an immense undertaking, and the pre-production could've been handled with a little more care. Why not David Lynch over Wong Kar-wai? How did I pick Alphaville over Week End or Masculin Feminin? Frankly I can't remember. I'm also a little dismayed at how many films I couldn't find via (free) streaming services or on Netflix discs: Day for Night, Short Cuts, Crooklyn, and many more.

That being said, for such a hastily put-together project I'm also pretty proud of how well it turned out. All of these directors have contributed special and impressive things to the art of cinema and I don't regret watching a single one, even if they didn't all agree with me. I discovered that I'm impatient with a certain style of meandering art-house film, and unfortunately that description fits a lot of titles from a lot of the directors on this list. I especially struggled with Wong Kar-wai and Terrence Malick, and it probably didn't help that I watched them back-to-back. Robert Altman's movies are also fairly anti-adrenaline-inducing, and I'm glad that I front-loaded these three filmmakers. If they had come more towards the end I might not have made it.

I actually preferred a lot of the depressing movies on this list to the slow-paced ones. Especially films by Haneke, Bergman, and Polanski. I was either chilled to the bone or moved to tears by some of their movies, but I was never bored (well, maybe once during The White Ribbon). I understand why people don't love to put these movies on on a sunny Saturday afternoon (which is exactly what we did with both The Piano Teacher and The Pianist) because they make you feel shitty, but even when I find the subject matter unpleasant I don't necessarily find the experience unpleasant. I know people (even in the film industry, or perhaps especially in the film industry) who only like to watch popcorn action flicks or happy-ending romantic comedies. That's fine if you're only ever looking for escapism. But then you might forget about the "art" part of cinema that can stretch so many emotional muscles. It's like food- even if you're usually drawn to the sweet (romance/comedy) or salty (drama/action) stuff, I think it gets awfully boring if you don't mix it up with spicy (scary), sour (sad), tangy (experimental), and umami (educational) flavors. There's a whole beautiful spectrum for your palate to experience. The same goes for stylistic choices or black and white films or films with subtitles. Don't knock it till you try it, everyone- you might not know what amazing lovely things you're missing!

My favorite films of this experiment were Contempt, Apocalypse Now, 8 1/2, Jules et Jim, Persona, Repulsion, and all of the movies by Pedro Almodóvar. If you can't tell by that list, I like movies with a certain degree of nastiness in them. I like tension. If I had to pick a favorite genre, it would be Tense. That feeling can come about in psychological horror movies, war movies, or domestic dramas. Tension can rise up and flare in just about any situation, and I like the movies that examine the build-up and fallout that results. I need to give a special shout-out to Almodóvar who made the most colorful, savage, comical, interesting, and intense movies of anyone on this list. I cannot stress that enough. If I hated every other movie I watched this year, this project would still be worth it for introducing me to that man's body of work. 

As the year and the project wore on, I realized I was still missing a few highly-regarded works from these directors. I'd like to fill in the knowledge gaps within the knowledge gaps, and someday soon watch these movies: 

Godard: Week End, Masculin Feminin, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, Goodbye to Language

Almodóvar: The Flower of My Secret, Broken Embraces

Truffaut: Day For Night, Stolen Kisses, The Wild Child, Fahrenheit 451

Altman: Short Cuts, Brewster McCloud, Gosford Park

Lee: Jungle Fever, Crooklyn

Fellini: Nights of Cabiria

Bergman: Cries and Whispers, Hour of the Wolf, Scenes from a Marriage

There are also a number of directors I'd like to add to this list of 13, including: David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Gaspar Noe, Bernardo Bertolucci, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Bogdanovitch, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Errol Morris, Werner Herzog, and Lars Von Trier. Hey that's 11 directors- I could do that in 2016! But maybe I need a year off so I don't burn-out, which almost happened a few times this year.

In the interest of being completist, here is the final list of movies that I watched, their rankings out of 10, and Academy Awards they won:

• Jean-Luc Godard (January)
• Vivre Sa Vie (1962) - 7.5
• Contempt (1963) - 8.5
• Pierrot le Fou (1963) - 8
• Alphaville (1964) - 6
• Wong Kar-wai (January)
• Chungking Express (1994) - 6
• In The Mood for Love (2000) - 6
• The Grandmaster (2013) - 5.5
• Terrence Malick (February)
• Badlands (1973) - 7.5
• Days of Heaven (1978) - 6 - Best Cinematography
• The Thin Red Line (1998) - 7 
• Alejandro Jodorowsky (March)
• El Topo (1970) - 5.5
• The Holy Mountain (1973) - 6
• Santa Sangre (1989) - 6.5
• Robert Altman (March)
• M*A*S*H (1970) - 8 - Best Adapted Screenplay
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) - 8
• The Long Goodbye (1973) - 7
• Nashville (1975) - 7.5 - Best Original Song
• The Player (1992) - 6.5
• Federico Fellini (April)
• La Strada (1954) - 8.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• La Dolce Vita (1960) - 8 - Best Costume Design
• 8 1/2 (1963) - 8.5 - Best Foreign Language Film, Best Costume Design
• Fellini Satyricon (1969) - 5
• Amarcord (1973) - 7.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Francis Ford Coppola (May)
• American Graffiti (1973) - 7
• Apocalypse Now (1979) - 9.5 - Best Cinematography, Best Sound
• The Outsiders (1983) - 6
• Rumble Fish (1983) - 5.5
• Pedro Almodóvar (June)
• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) - 8
• All About my Mother (1999) - 9 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Talk To Her (2002) - 9.5 - Best Original Screenplay
• Bad Education (2004) - 10
• Volver (2006) - 10
• François Truffaut (July)
• The 400 Blows (1959) - 7.5
• Shoot the Piano Player (1960) - 7.5
• Jules et Jim (1962) 8.5
• The Last Metro (1980) - 7
• Spike Lee (August)
• She's Gotta Have It (1986) - 7
• Malcolm X (1992) - 7
• Clockers (1995) - 5
• He Got Game (1998) - 7.5
• Summer of Sam (1999) - 5.5
• Michael Haneke (September)
• The Piano Teacher (2001) - 7.5
• Time of the Wolf (2003) - 6.5
• The White Ribbon (2009) - 7
• Amour (2012) - 9.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Ingmar Bergman (October)
• Wild Strawberries (1957) - 7.5
• The Virgin Spring (1960) - 7 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Through a Glass Darkly (1961) - 7.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Winter Light (1963) - 7
• Persona (1966) - 9
• Fanny and Alexander (1982) - 8 - Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• Roman Polanski (October)
• Repulsion (1965) - 9
• Tess (1979) - 7 - Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• Frantic (1988) - 6
• The Pianist (2003) - 8.5 - Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Lead Actor
• The Ghost Writer (2010) - 7
• Carnage (2011) - 7

That's 25 Oscar wins (including 8 Best Foreign Language wins), and of course that's not counting all of the nominations, Palm d'Ors, Golden Bears, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, etc. etc. that these garnered. It's a prestigious bunch. Perhaps the most shocking revelation is the lack of Best Director wins, which only 1 director got 1 time (Polanski for The Pianist). I thought auteurs were meant to be honored for their visions! As some of these directors might say, c'est la vie.

Well, I think that's just about it. As mentioned above, there's plenty more cinema to explore and in fact I'm probably going to dive right into David Lynch in November. I'll also try to get my hands on some of the films from these directors that I missed. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment. Delicious, sour, spicy, tangy, rich punishment. As for this blog, it has served me well for the purpose of cataloging this year-long journey but I hope to now expand it and use it for other avenues. I want to publish list-icles, movie reviews, op-ed pieces, and anything else that I fancy as it relates to the world of movies. And with <1 average viewer per day, I doubt anyone cares what I do with this blog! So I'll use it how I please! Thanks for reading, mom and girlfriend!!

Roman Polanski (October)

"I would like to be judged for my work, and not for my life."

Can you truly divorce the artist and his art? This is an ethical dilemma that I struggled with throughout my time watching Roman Polanski's films. If I did not know the morbid, awful details of this man's oh-so-public private life, would I respect the movies more?

Here's what I know about Roman Polanski: he is an outstandingly talented filmmaker. I think that is beyond argument. Before this month began I had seen Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, and Chinatown with the latter two being personal favorites of mine as well as undisputed classics of cinema. Many of the filmmakers I've watched stick with one style or genre or type of movie, but Polanski is a hopper: he makes noir, war, horror, thrillers, and period pieces and they are (generally) perfectly executed. The only other filmmakers who come to mind who can jump around so flawlessly are the Coen brothers and Stanley Kubrick- that's high company. Polanski is an Oscar-winner and he has been nominated for that prestigious award in four different decades; that's longevity in a notoriously shifting industry. For this project alone I watched movies he created from 1963 to 2011, and he's still making them! I for one hope he's got many more to come.

Here's what else I know about Roman Polanski: he was born in France to Polish parents but moved back to Krakow in 1936, where he would endure the Holocaust. His mother was killed in Auschwitz, and in fact 90% (around 3 million people) of the Jewish population in Poland would be killed during World War II. He lived in and escaped from the ghetto and was separated from his father for many years. After the war, Polanski went to film school and became involved in the film industry. He made his first feature Knife in the Water in 1962, which garnered a Best Foreign Film nomination at the Academy Awards. Throughout the 1960s Polanski lived in France, England, and the United States and continued to expand his critically-beloved filmography. In 1969, his pregnant wife Sharon Tate was murdered in Los Angeles by members of Charles Manson's so-called family. He was in London at the time. In 1977, Polanski was arrested at Jack Nicholson's house for the rape of a 13-year old girl whom he had given quaaludes. He was indicted on 6 criminal charges and held in prison for 43 days. After a plea-bargain, Polanski was promised by a judge that he would be put on probation and serve no further jail time. After Polanski realized that the judge was going to renege on his promise, he fled the country and moved to France where he was protected from extradition. Since then, he's been living as a fugitive and the charges remain pending. The 13-year old victim later sued Polanski and settled with him out of court for a large sum. Since that time, the victim has long been an outspoken proponent of Polanski's. She has publicly said the charges should be dropped and that they both would love to put the past behind him. Polanski has been arrested in Europe and held on house arrest as recently as 2010, but so far any attempt at extradition has failed.

Okay, whew! That's a lot of background, right? But it's important not only as a background (to decide whether or not this guy should be in jail or whether or not anyone should watch his movies) but also because the subject matter of his life is present in his movies. For this month I chose The Pianist, Frantic, Repulsion, Tess, The Ghost Writer, and Carnage. The Pianist takes place in the Krakow ghetto during WWII. Frantic is about a man who loses his wife. Tess and Repulsion are both about young girls who are raped or deathly afraid of being raped. See the familiarity with the above story? The movies about young girls being raped were especially difficult for me to watch, knowing the details of Polanski's sordid crime. In fact, Repulsion was easier for me to watch, knowing it was made 12 years before the crime rather than Tess, which was made just a year and a half later. The rumors that Polanski had a romantic relationship with the 15-year old star of Tess made it even more difficult to get through.

But the movies themselves are mostly great. Lizzie and I watched The Pianist first and it ruined our day. It's an extremely vicious look at the savagery of war, and young Adrien Brody definitely deserved his Oscar win (at 29 he was the youngest Lead Actor winner of all time). It's a sad but necessary reminder of how brutal the situation in Poland was, and how easily our fragile society can collapse. Next I watched Frantic, which though enjoyable was the weak spot among these films. I want to make a supercut of every time Harrison Ford clumsily hurts himself in the movie. It's a lot of times. After that came Repulsion which was the surprise super-hit of the bunch. Polanski later said he made the movie simply to fund his next one (the less-commercial Cul-de-sac) but he accidentally created a winner. The imagery was phenomenal; I loved it. Tess was next, and as I mentioned I had a hard time with the subject matter, despite the story being an adaptation of the 1891 novel Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy. The film was beautiful but it felt a lot like Barry Lyndon; painfully slow to watch even though I knew it was gorgeous. It almost feels like watching a series of paintings for 2.5 hours. After that I watched The Ghost Writer which is very well-liked but it felt like a fairly standard political thriller to me. The ending was a lot of fun though. Finally I finished out this project with Carnage, the 2011 adaptation of a play with an all-star cast of Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Cristoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet. This one reaaaally felt like a play (it's just the four of them in one apartment for 90 minutes) but it was still very beautiful and fun to watch. I'd still prefer it as a play I think. And that's technically it for the great director challenge of 2015! I'm going to do a wrap-up post rather than try to stuff it into this (already too-long) Polanski article.

• Repulsion (1965) - 9
• Tess (1979) - 7
• Frantic (1988) - 6
• The Pianist (2003) - 8.5
• The Ghost Writer (2010) - 7
• Carnage (2011) - 7

As I mentioned above, this is technically the end of the road for the great director challenge. I watched 13 directors in 10 months (because I doubled up 3 times). I'm probably going to extend this project to cover a few more directors (Lynch, Noe, Bertolucci, etc.) but the initial resolution is now complete! A full write-up post on my thoughts on the project soon to come.

Ingmar Bergman (October)

"Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God."

Ingmar Bergman reminds me a bit of Werner Herzog in that they would both be dismissed as caricatures if their works weren't so damn earnest and great. Bergman's films (and through them, his views) concerning religion, faith, death, and family are immediately recognizable. They carry his dark signature and for that he is rightly known as one of the greatest auteur filmmakers of all time. They are all in Swedish and mostly in black and white. Having already seen The Seventh Seal, for this project I chose Fanny and Alexander, Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Wild Strawberries, Persona, and The Virgin Spring. If this weren't already so ambitious I would've added Cries and Whispers as well as Hour of the Wolf. Luckily these movies mostly run short, so I was able to cruise through the six I chose fairly easily.

I started with the only color film of the bunch, Fanny and Alexander. Netflix sent me the 3.5 hour version and it was only afterwards through Wikipedia that I discovered a 5+ hour version existed. I decided to be happy with the version I saw. Fanny and Alexander is a very good family drama, filled with lively characters (the sexually over-active uncle is my favorite) and monumental performances, especially considering that a few of those performances come from children. It is often depressing, but manages not to get bogged down in hopelessness. Next I watched Through A Glass Darkly and I was surprised at how mature and explicit the story was. A psychologically disturbed girl seduces her brother, for example, and that's just a sub-plot. After that came Winter's Light, which again examined the themes of faith, love, loyalty, and family in a bleak Swedish setting. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this one, seeing as it would probably work even better as a play than a film.

Then I came to Persona. Wow. A lot of Bergman films have horrific elements, but this was the first straight-up horror movie I had seen, and boy did he knock it out of the park. The movie is about a nurse who takes a mute actress to an isolated home to help treat her. Their relationship is extremely complex, tangled up with elements of love, hate, guilt, jealousy, resentment and more. The movie is both shocking and very sad. I loved it and don't know why more horror junkies don't talk about it. It's about due for a remake, methinks. After this I watched Wild Strawberries and about a quarter of the way through realized I had seen it before but finished it anyways. It's an interesting tale of nostalgia and regret. Lastly I watched The Virgin Spring, which also surprised me with its X-ratedness. They show a virgin getting raped and murdered in a 1960 film. Intense. Also, I didn't know until afterwards that The Last House on the Left was a remake of this movie!

All in all, I think Bergman totally deserves his accolades. The movies are tough but generally enjoyable. They're a bit like Haneke's oeuvre- unsettling stories, thoughtful scripts, compelling imagery, A+ performances. It's probably time for me to watch The Seventh Seal again.

• Wild Strawberries (1957) - 7.5
• The Virgin Spring (1960) - 7
• Through A Glass Darkly (1961) - 7.5
• Winter Light (1963) - 7
• Persona (1966) - 9
• Fanny and Alexander (1982) - 8

And then we came to the end: Roman Polanski is the last director of this challenge. Wow. 

Michael Haneke (September)

"I want to make it clear: it's not that I hate mainstream cinema. It's perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult life situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with the art form."

Bleak. Difficult. Inaccessible. This is the strange, sorrowful world of Michael Haneke. There is beauty in the sadness, and the stories he tells have often not been told before. They aren't easily marketable because they are simple and they are tragic, but they are also powerful and emotional. Going into this month I had seen two Haneke films: Funny Games (the original one) and Caché. The former is one of my favorite horror (horror?) movies ever, and the later is a tense albeit slow-paced thriller. I suspected that his worldview (at least as represented by these films) was rather dark and cynical, but I still felt ill-prepared for the sheer amount of despair in the four movies I chose for this project: Time of the Wolf, The Piano Teacher, Amour, and The White Ribbon.

I watched Time of the Wolf first, and I can say that the opening scene shocked me to my core. I suppose there are other movies that have opened similarly, but I can't think of any that basically ruined my disposition for the entire rest of the day. As I'd find in these films time and time again, the characters in Time of the Wolf dealt with loneliness and (often pointless) violence for the duration of the runtime. The Piano Teacher came next, and I'm not sure what I expected but it wasn't what I got. Isabelle Huppert was amazing and the story about someone desperately trying to connect with another human but without the know-how to do so is fairly universal... but the violence, the bullying, the hyper-sexuality and sado-masochism and rape made it a bit difficult to appreciate. Or rather, all of that X-Rated stuff is what hits you first, and it takes a bit of thinking back on the movie to appreciate the more subtle nuances and emotional performances- but they're there.

I watched Amour next, and even though I basically knew what I was in for I still cried and cried towards the end of the film. As much as Time of the Wolf shocked me, Amour shocked me more. I didn't see the ending coming, and it snapped me out of my weepiness. But Jesus, even before the ending I was in love with Haneke for telling this most-difficult of stories. I have members of my family going through similar circumstances, as I suspect nearly everyone on the planet does, but nobody has told this story. The quote I opened this article with is especially poignant seen in the light of this movie: I don't want to think about the death of loved ones, in fact I want to escape thinking about it. But that's not always healthy, and some art is here to help us examine our own complex feelings. I never want to watch it again, but Amour to me is pretty much a perfect film. I finished the month with The White Ribbon, which somehow managed to out-bleak the other movies, which is a fairly monumental task. I found in Ribbon what I found in all of Haneke's work: brilliant compositions, long slow takes, and some of the best performances (from leads and ensemble alike) that I've ever seen. And all of them left me with a frowny-face, but that's not such a bad thing.

• The Piano Teacher (2001) - 7.5
• Time of the Wolf (2003) - 6.5
• The White Ribbon (2009) - 7
• Amour (2012) - 9.5

Also, I just need to point out that after 9 months of article-writing, I'm finally caught up and writing about the director I most-recently watched. Hooray for me! Next up is Ingmar Bergman.

Spike Lee (August)

"People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world."

It had to be Spike Lee in August, right? Lee's best-known work (and best work, for that matter) is Do The Right Thing which is basically the movie version of the month of August. It's hot, it's sweaty, fuses are short and tempers flare. It had to be Lee in August. Do The Right Thing is an incredibly important movie to me. It had a way of showing people with real faults, mistrusting one another despite living in tight spaces. It showed racial divides without being ham-fisted (like Crash and so many other movies that have tried to address race problems come off). Plus it's like a time capsule- the music, the clothes, the language... and say what you will about Spike Lee casting himself in most of his movies (early on, anyways) but Mookie is a fantastic and relatable character.

Other than DTRT I had also seen (and very much enjoyed) 25th Hour and Inside Man. Very different movies, but both had qualities that I appreciated. For this project I wanted to go back to Spike Lee's early days when he was making such a huge splash on independent cinema. Dude has made a ton of movies, so I chose the ones that I thought were most famous: Summer of Sam, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Clockers, She's Gotta Have It, and Crooklyn. I chose... mostly well. I didn't need Clockers (although it is Mekhi Phifer's first movie) and I probably should've added Jungle Fever and maybe one more, Bamboozled or Mo' Better Blues or something. Also Netflix didn't have Crooklyn dangit.

I started with Summer of Sam, which is a helluva ride. I love Adrien Brody and John Leguizamo's characters but the film was all over the place. Murder, drugs, clubs, sex... those aren't bad elements to have in a film but it felt awfully disjointed. Malcolm X was probably longer than it needed to be and the beginning felt like a very weird West Side Story-esque musical; not based in reality at all. But over the course of the 3.5 hour epic the story really came together. I didn't know much about Malcolm X going into the movie and by the end I was curious to learn even more. Crooklyn was underwhelming, as I mentioned, although Harvey Keitel puts in some good work in the "white cop with an idea" role and the twist did catch me off-guard. She's Gotta Have It is Lee's first "joint" and I can see why it put him on the map. It was unflinching and it looked at sexuality and responsibility in an engaging way- with black three-dimensional characters in lead roles! I didn't love it but I liked it and can see why it was pretty ground-breaking for the era (and budget!). Lastly I watched He Got Game and loved it! Ray Allen and Denzel Washington are both incredible in this father-son story, and the basketball star cameos are all great. This movie takes place in a universe where convicted murderers are set free and universities can tempt prospective students with sex and cars, but ignoring all that this movie is very fun.

Spike Lee has always tried to keep pace with Woody Allen in terms of movie outputs, and just like that old New Yorker Lee has struck movie gold many times. But maybe (t)he(y) should focus a bit more on the quality of each one rather than putting >1 out every year.

• She's Gotta Have It (1986) - 7
• Malcolm X (1992) - 7
• Clockers (1995) - 5
• He Got Game (1998) - 7.5
• Summer of Sam (1999) - 5.5

September brings us the bleak world of Michael Haneke, and I'm finally caught up with the present!