Cthulhu *
Dan Gildark, 2007
US
@ Landmark Metro

Mostly I had to see this movie because for a long while the production operated out of a building a few blocks away from the MVS house back in 2006. And I kind of liked it. Prepared for the worst, the horror reminded me pleasantly of stuff like Doctor Who, wherein the atmosphere and the attempt are more important than actually overwhelming the viewer with realistic effects. And, yes, the visuals are good, except for the bizarre color which could have had to do with the projection. The reds were turned up way too high, resulting in a purple face for the protagonist and some weird looking orange soil.

See also: IMDb | David Schmader on Slog | Personal essay from writer Grant Cogswell

Hot Rod
Akiva Schaffer, 2007
US
@ home on DVD

I got to thinking about a movie starring Bill Hader in a semi-serious role, probably a pretty low-budget Sundance-type thing. He seems to always play the voice of reason (here, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) whilst also generating some laughs, but frequently a little too good for his role. Then again, pretty much everyone is too good for their roles here. This kind of felt like the SNL crowd does Napoleon Dynamite which in some cases kind of worked, but there were too few wildly original bits.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind ***
John Gianvito, 2007
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Inspiring, humorous, educational; revolutionary.

See also: IMDb

Frownland **
Ronald Bronstein, 2007
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

From when I saw this last September:

Keith (Dore Mann) is obviously something of a caricature, but his misadventures still resonate. He lives somewhere around Greenwich Village or maybe the Lower East Side and sells coupons door to door in Staten Island. He has a ferocious stuttering problem and minimal social skills. His roommate is a complete and total jerk. The film ends on a sour note, but no more sour than the constant tenor of the rest of the picture.

See also: Official website

Casting a Glance *
James Benning, 2007
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Fascinating in the limited scope of the work. This is foregrounded by the limited perspective of the camera, only revealing a partial view of the landscape surrounding the Spiral Jetty, and never placing it in context for the uninitiated viewer, which would pretty much be me.

See also: IMDb

Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains **
Jonathan Demme, 2007
US
@ home on DVD

This works fairly well both as a primer on Jimmy Carter the public figure, though it's not exactly thorough in that regard, and very well on Jimmy Carter the citizen. Both are of course up for interpretation and this is just one view. It almost feels like a trifle.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Terror's Advocate **
Barbet Schroeder, 2007
France
@ home on DVD

I'm a sucker for logical contrarians, so I have a hard time being revolted by Schroeder's failure to castigate Jacques Verges here. This is a great, if brief, history of modern terrorism, and illuminating in so many ways. The connections between ex-Nazis and the PLO, Baader-Meinhof, etc. was particularly interesting. Anyone who takes any ideology, fighting for the oppressed for example, to such a scandalously logical end seems valuable for study and an implicit critique of travelling unthinking down what seems at the start to be a righteous path.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

The Darjeeling Limited ***
Wes Anderson, 2007
US
@ home on DVD

I thought this would benefit from a second time around, and it certainly did. What felt a bit herky-jerky in terms of plot twists the first time around seemed smoother and more obvious, so Anderson's style seems assured and controlled rather than oddly quirky.

What was also more apparent is that Anderson's flair for visual detail extends beyond simply art direction or intricate sets (the Tenenbaum's house, Steve Zissou's boat, the train here) to the larger physical setting. He obviously delights in the desert, hills, and countryside the movie rambles through, and makes excellent and specific use of the surroundings, certainly a mark of many great on-location films, but a failing that is often overlooked in a lot of just pretty good stuff by perhaps more literary-minded critics.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | First viewing

King Corn *
Aaron Woolf, 2007
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

FYI, when you search for "king corn" at IMDb, the top result is Ron Jeremy. This movie is number two.

Disappointingly, this was the 60-minute version to be shown on Independent Lens next month and not the theatrical cut. I imagine the salient points were still made, and it was still shot largely in rural Iowa. The most interesting scene is when the two young farmers interview Earl Butz, who they claim was responsible, as Secretary of Agriculture in the early 1970's, for subsidizing massive growth in the amount of crops grown, corn included. Butz is in his mid-nineties at the time of the interview.

Also, from Wikipedia: "At the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome, Butz made fun of Pope Paul VI's opposition to "population control" by quipping, in a mock Italian accent: "He no playa the game, he no maka the rules." He kind of had a point.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Independent Lens page

Offside *
Jafar Panahi, 2007
Iran
@ home on DVD

Admirable, I guess, but the (neo)realism didn't do much for me. I enjoyed the ending in the van, but otherwise the whole scenario feels so slight that I'm not sure how I feel about it as a movie.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Black Book *
Paul Verhoeven, 2007
Netherlands
@ home on DVD

Well, I guess this was exciting and all, but I'm confused as to why the viewer is not just expected to give up, kind of like with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. If everyone else in the movie is just looking out for their own best interest, why we should assume the protagonist is any different?

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Atonement **
Joe Wright, 2007
UK
@ Sycamore Theaters

From the trailer I thought this was going to be a boring, stuffy melodrama, but it was much more formally interesting than I'd expected. I always enjoy the characters interacting in strange ways with the soundtrack, like when Keira Knightley's character plucks the piano string, finishing the (rather atonal) line in the score. And of course you have the constant, rhythmic use of the typewriter clacking. The wedding scene was another nice example of the soundtrack as playful counterpoint to the image onscreen.

At least in my reading of it I thought the portrayal of class was pretty good, particularly at moments like when James McAvoy's upwardly-mobile med student/prisoner/soldier/lover makes some nasty crack about being perceived as only as trustworthy as a servant, even though that's exactly what his parents are. I was prepared to get really excited, a few minutes after Robbie moans at the sight of the French lovers on the movie screen in back of the bar (Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan from Port of Shadows), when I thought we might cut away or pull back to reveal him watching his own life on the same screen, but sadly Joe Wright chose not to take things quite that far. The neverending handheld tracking shot along the beach at Dunkirk just lets the gruesome melancholoy build and build for what seems like forever.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

The Lookout **
Scott Frank, 2007
US
@ home on DVD

I don't remember exactly why I passed this up in the theater. Maybe it came out at the wrong time or something. It brought to mind another modest, psychological thriller, Michael Clayton, that every talked about and a lot of people seemed to love. I was much more interested in this, but apparently no one else saw it.

Hopefully some of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's upcoming projects put him to good use.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Death Proof *
Quentin Tarantino, 2007
US
@ home on DVD

It's kind of funny that critics fall all over themselves to praise Apichatpong's two-part films, but here we have much the same thing.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Persepolis *
Vincent Paronnaud, 2007
France
@ BAM

There was a clinking sound in the ceiling that I've heard before at BAM (maybe Before the Devil Knows You're Dead) but it was just unbearable here. I didn't find the animation to be very stimulating and the narrowed focus of the movie (more personal, less cultural/historical) didn't do it for me.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

There Will Be Blood ***
Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007
US
@ Clearview Chelsea

I'm surprised so few people reference Stanley Kubrick when writing about this movie, particularly since almost everyone brings up at least a few monumental titles or directors. The misanthropic protagonist, the soundtrack, particularly the strings, the placid camera contrasted with the demonic screen presence, close-ups of faces behind which minds are discovering their destiny. The final scene in particular reminded me of Kubrick's three films of the seventies, give or take a few months. Daniel insane behind his expensive desk in a mostly empty, lavish residence, plotting the ruin of his family; the cool, calculated violence against intensely light white walls (multiple scenes in Clockwork Orange); the mental, verbal manipulation of an opponent, not even for any strategic purpose, just because. Granted, Kubrick was an expatriate, but there's nothing particularly foreign about his grossly selfish characters.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

2007 Analysis

Museum of the Moving Image announced that they'll be screening a number of the films included in the John Ford at Fox box set. I'll only probably catch a few of them, but I really hope someone programs something similar in Seattle this spring.

Ford comes in at the top of my most-watched list of directors for 2007, at about 7.5 since he co-directed Mister Roberts with Joshua Logan. Kiarostami follows with 6 and Johnnie To and Fritz Lang both have 5. I saw all the Kiarostami films at MoMA during a retrospective, and To and Lang at various venues, but none of them on DVD. (I already made some lists elsewhere.)

2007 was the most popular year at 57 films, with an average rating of 2.05 (min=0, max=3). This decade was also the most popular at 106 of the 202 titles I decided to include, rating 2.08. By far my favorite decade was the 1990s (14 films) with a rating of 2.21; this was mostly because of Asia. Least favorite were the 1930s at 1.82. Blame this one on the early sound films. 1932-1939 would rate a 2.50. I only watched six movies from the 1970s.

The overall average was 2.07 with 85 rated at three stars. 10 films got no stars.

Korea (11), Hong Kong (10), and then France (9) were my favorite countries of origin, though I only watched one current French movie this year, not so for the east Asian countries.

Fewer than 20% of these were seen at home. About a quarter happened at museums or other non-theatrical venues.

For some reason or other I watched 23 movies in March, probably boosted that high because I spent a lot of time at home (unemployed for two weeks) watching DVDs. In January I saw only 7 movies, mostly because I didn't have any money, knowledge of the city, and was mostly concerned with moving (twice).

I don't know if I'll get out to another 163 movies this year. I might spend more time reading and watching DVDs if I can get my hands on most of the stuff listed below. I do plan to at least make it to large portions of the Seattle and Vancouver film festivals.

DIRECTORS FOR 2008

• Jia Zhang-ke
• Tsai Ming-liang
• Hou Hsiao-hsien
• Hirokazu Koreeda
• Carl Th. Dreyer
• David Cronenberg
• Hong Sang-soo
• Alfonso Cuaron
• Gus Van Sant
• Todd Haynes
• Ken Loach
• Mike Leigh
• Alain Resnais
• Jane Campion

MOSTLY INDEPENDENT

• The Newton Boys (Linklater)
• SubUrbia (Linklater)
• La Promesse (Dardenne)
• Rosetta (Dardenne)
• Ghost Dog (Jarmusch)
• Night on Earth (Jarmusch)
• Permanent Vacation (Jarmusch)
• sex, lies and videotape (Soderbergh)
• Battle in Heaven (Reygadas)
• Keane (Kerrigan)
• Clean, Shaven (Kerrigan)
• To Sleep with Anger (Burnett)

MUMBLECORE (from the map)

• Dear Pillow (Poyser)
• Grammy's (Poyser)
• The Pipe (Brown)
• Baghead (Duplass)
• Zellner vs. Duplass: Shorts
• The Guatemalan Handshake (Rohal)
• Fish Kill Flea (Cassidy, Hillis)
• Silver Jew (Tully)
• Dance Party, USA (Katz)

RECENT

• The Lookout
• Death Proof
• Idiocracy
• 28 Days Later
• Marie Antoinette
• Collateral
• Inside Man
• The Aura
• Clerks 2
• The Illusionist
• Little Miss Sunshine
• The Science of Sleep
• The Queen
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• The Lives of Others

ASIA

• The Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (Hong)
• I'm a Cyborg and That's OK (Park)
• Secret Sunshine (Lee)

TV

• Twin Peaks
• Spaced (UK)

NOTES

Richard Linklater may by now have finished a documentary on University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido. Obviously this will be third in a trilogy already including Dazed & Confused and Bad News Bears.

Joe Swanberg, in addition to Season 3 of Young American Bodies, has another serial entitled Butterknife coming out on January 28.

I'm not entirely sure what is supposed to be coming out next year. The tiny list I know about is above at left.

Smiley Face ***
Gregg Araki, 2007
US
@ IFC Center

I was reminded pleasantly of my old wish in elementary school to write a story without a central conflict (which we were informed was the basis of all stories ever written) where the characters would all just have a really nice time. Gregg Araki has basically made that film, except not quite.

It slides away if you try to pin it down anywhere, yet Smiley Face offers so many delightful reasons to enjoy it. Mostly it was just refreshing to watch a movie about a woman who is only at most very secondarily a love interest to anyone in the script, beholden to no one, but at the same time neither obsessively ambitious nor constantly cracking wise, just ambling through life. We spend an almost disconcerting amount of time looking directly at Anna Faris's mostly blank face, particularly at the beginning, and it brought to mind the intensity of the camera's relationship with Uma Thurman's independent, young blonde protagonist in Kill Bill. Keep in mind, though, that this is a stoner comedy.

The tiny audience seemed most delighted by the lasagna/Garfield/President Garfield riff near the middle, probably due to the way Faris keeps slowly rubbing her belly, looking dazedly pleased with herself. Also, REO Speedwagon! My only wish is that somehow John Cho would've gotten a larger part, but I suppose I can just wait for Harold & Kumar 2 this spring.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Nathan Lee review

Juno **
Jason Reitman, 2007
US
@ Clearview Chelsea

I don't think I laughed for at least the first half hour. Maybe it was the complete saturation bombing of the trailer this fall, but nothing seemed more than snarky. Eventually there were a number of scenes I liked, almost all of them involving Michael Cera. Is it a good movie though? I'm not sure if the direction was all that good, and there were definitely some strange scenes and exchanges. The memorable bits are just so memorable.

For the record, Vancouver does not really look enough like Minnesota to just hope and pretend that it will. They could have at least shot in Ontario or something.

Does anybody else think it's creepy how much Allison Janney looks like Justine Bateman? As if to suggest that perhaps Juno's stepmother is like a long-lost relative of the prospective adoptive parents of Juno's child?

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

I'm Not There ***
Todd Haynes, 2007
US
@ AMC 19th Street East

I suppose no one can really say for certain whether or not this film is intelligible without decent knowledge of the Bob Dylan biography. The reviews seem to indicate no, but I was always under the assumption that if you keep up with pop culture at all that the story eventually just seeps into your brain, so why would it even be an issue? Maybe that's not the case.

I don't see how you can quibble otherwise, though. The various story arcs are emotionally pretty well-aligned, informing each other subtly. The bookends of the Heath Ledger section involve enough of a shift in perspective that replaying the same "scene" doesn't feel obvious at all.

From the playful opening credits onward this seemed heavily influenced by Godard in a variety of ways, from the experimentation with form to the sound (numerous times an onscreen sound effect matches the tempo of the song on the soundtrack) to the questions about identity.

Plus, Jim James appears in pancake makeup to serenade Richard Gere's bizarro-world version of Bob Dylan with a version of "Goin' to Acapulco," and that's tough to beat for sheer outlandish greatness.


See also: IMDb | Metacritic | J. Hoberman review | Larry Gross essay