Milk (2008)

Having already seen the wonderful, Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, I was excited to see Gus Van Sant's more succinctly-titled Milk when it was in theaters two summers ago. I remember thinking that it was possessed of an intense realism, and the film does indeed include many actual locations and persons from Milk's life. There are many great performances besides Penn's, most notably Emile Hirsch's, who was just "good" in Into the Wild the year before but superb as Cleve Jones, who is still to this day an important figure among AIDS and LGBT rights activists. As a biopic, Milk is a great achievement. And until the final, anticipated tragedy, borne of so much fear, hatred and, perhaps, junk food, it's funny as hell.
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The Wrestler (2008)

While reading about how director Darren Aronofsky successfully fought back against studio pressure to cast Nicolas Cage instead of Mickey Rourke, I had to wonder how many films have been ruined over the years by horrible casting decisions that were forced upon directors by studio executives. I have nothing against Nick Cage, despite his large body of crappy work (that sits alongside a smaller body of exceptional work) but Rourke was most definitely the perfect choice for this role. And the story of the unglamorous life of the professional wrestler is one that needed telling, even to those of us who consume hours of this often bizarre entertainment on television. It's nice to see Aronofsky get back to real storytelling after 2006's intriguing but ultimately pointless feature-length music video, The Fountain.
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Zombie Strippers! (2008)

I've always been a big fan of the genre and I do like the concept a lot. Zombie Strippers has its moments but I really can't justify recommending that anyone spend 94 minutes of their free time watching this film. Since it features both Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund, of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame, you would think that it might be considered required viewing for fans of porn and horror alike. But as Enid from Ghost World might say, (if anyone tried to bestow "so bad it's good" status on it) this is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again. Still, the scene where the stereotypical tough Mexican from East LA threatens the zombie almost makes it all worthwhile. "What are you staring at, dog? You know me?"
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Double Indemnity (1944)

It's incredible that a film more than 65 years old is still more intense, more suspenseful and more brilliantly crafted than 99% of all the thrillers Hollywood has ever produced. In 1945 the Academy demonstrated its irrelevance by nominating Double Indemnity seven times but awarding it nothing. Perhaps they weren't ready to come to terms with the fact that a picture about people misbehaving could somehow be more significant than a Bing Crosby musical.
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Apocalypse Now: Redux (2001)

If you feel like revisiting "the horror", and it's probably worth doing at least once every 5-10 years, then you might as well watch the "Redux". If you've never seen the original, then start there. Also, if you've never seen the original, then you must be totally insane, or at the very least your methods are unsound.
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The Good Shepherd (2006)

DeNiro is certainly a heavyweight when it comes to film in general, and his previous directorial feature, 1993's A Bronx Tale, was a classic piece of storytelling. But without decent material, I get the feeling that the actor/director/producer wouldn't be able to do much more than stare blankly into space. A reporter covering the Tribeca Film Festival once asked him how he thought aliens landing in New York would react to the event and all he could say was "I'm not good at questions like that". Anyway, there is decent material here, but it makes for somewhat less than compelling cinema. In fact, Francis Ford Coppola was originally slated to direct but dropped out, complaining that he couldn't relate to the characters and found them unemotional. I like a slow burner as much as the next person, but this one would work better as an abridged dinnertime story told by your uncle instead of a nearly-3-hour epic.

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Grey Gardens (1975)

I probably would never have sat down to watch this if my wife hadn't wanted to see it again after being reminded of it at a Rufus Wainwright concert. He sang his song of the same name and made a comment about how Santa Barbara (where we were living at the time) was, like Grey Gardens, also inhabited by crazy rich people. The documentary is loved by many because Little Edie and her mother say a lot of strange and amusing things in front of the camera. Complaints have arisen over the years about how the Beales' lives may have been exploited for the film but the two seem to have been quite proud of the whole project regardless. My overall feeling is that there are probably thousands of eccentric recluses who are, at this very moment, wasting away in old, decaying homes all over the world and muttering funny things. These two just happen to have been related to Jackie O.
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Joyeux Noël (2005)

I can't recall when I was last so disappointed by a film. I had been looking forward to seeing this for a long time, as it had been generally well-received by critics and nominated for some pretty big awards. I realize now that the Christmas Truce of 1914 on the Western Front is a very nice thing to read about, but it should never constitute the entire plot of a film. And if someone insists that it must, then they should seriously consider toning down the sentimentality, adding an interesting sub-plot or two and including some multidimensional characters. I really can't say it any better than Nathan Rabin from The Onion: "Though a painless time-passer, Joyeux Noël ultimately contributes little to the venerable anti-war genre beyond its curious message that to some degree, war is hell because it prevents soldiers from making really neat friends and pen-pals from different countries."
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Man on Wire (2008)

During the 2009 Academy Awards I had a great big smile on my face while watching Philippe Petit (the "Man on Wire") balance the Oscar on his chin. What he and his team pulled off in 1974 was perhaps the most insane, illegal stunt in history. Many viewers complain that there is no video footage of the actual tightrope walk. I couldn't care less about that. Because it's the idea of the whole thing that really inspires. By the way, he didn't just walk across a tightrope from one World Trade Center tower to the other. He spent 45 minutes walking back and forth, dancing, lying down, and taunting police who threatened to "pluck" him from the wire using a helicopter. And Petit may have a tendency to prattle but you have to give him credit for simply stating at one point that "there is no why".
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Death at a Funeral (2007)

I've learned to take it with a grain of salt when people tell me that they nearly died laughing while watching this or that film. Death at a Funeral has a few good jokes that are introduced early on and then get beaten to death for the rest of the running time. Director Frank Oz is certainly no lightweight, but, although I don't necessarily believe that it's inevitable for any director to ever be "past his prime", I kind of feel like he is way past his prime. Many people would submit the "poo" scene as evidence that this is one of the funniest movies of all-time. This scene didn't have much of an effect on me, not because I found it disgusting, but because it didn't feel original or clever in the slightest. It was a modified version of so many things that have come before it, most notably certain scenes from There's Something About Mary. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the only people who are writing fresh poo jokes these days are the "South Park" guys. The other problem I had with the film is that it just becomes exhausting watching everyone stall for time during the funeral over and over while trying to deal with ridiculous situations behind closed doors. It might work for a sitcom, but not for a 90-minute feature.
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Surfwise (2007)

This is a photo of surfing legend Dorian Paskowitz and eight of his nine children, whom he "home-schooled" with his wife, Juliette. They became famous as the "first family of surfing" and spent years traveling up and down the coast, renouncing material possessions (besides some surfboards and used camper vans) and living on barely any income at all. For a couple of decades they seemed to be more or less genuinely happy, and while watching the first half or so of the documentary it's fun to imagine what growing up in such a family would have been like. The obligatory bummer portion of the documentary reveals that most of the kids weren't very happy with their father upon discovering, as young adults, that getting out of the water and enrolling at Stanford was not an option.
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Gattaca (1997)

I liked the style of this film a great deal. It feels very much like the not-too-distant future, and with a minimum of effects and gimmicks. According to the IMDB trivia section, "When Gattaca was first released, as part of a marketing campaign there were adverts for people to call up and have their children genetically engineered. Thousands of people called". The story deals with Ethan Hawke's character's attempt to fake his genetic makeup in order to be selected for a space flight mission to Saturn. This involves an elaborate plan where he assumes the identity of a man with a more favorable genome (played by Jude Law) as well as lots of naked scrubbing scenes in which he removes all the incriminating dandruff. If you were wondering where they got the title, as I was, the name "Gattaca" is composed of the four letters in the DNA "alphabet", and the order that they appear in has some further significance that isn't worth going into here. I enjoyed Ethan and Uma (they first became a couple during filming), Jude Law, Alan Arkin and even good old Gore Vidal. But in the end I couldn't help but feel like it was a somewhat bleak and sedated version of something that could have been a little bit cooler.
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The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

As I write this an updated version of the film, starring Denzel Washington, is about to be released in theaters. And I can't help but wonder why. And I can't help but think that if I were a big-time movie director, like Tony Scott, I could find a better project than a remake (that's already been crappily remade for TV with Edward James Olmos!) where John Travolta hijacks a subway car. But the original is a decent film and it's what Quentin Tarantino borrowed the color code-names thing from for Reservoir Dogs. Walter Matthau plays a memorable transit detective but the rest of the characters, made-up of psychotic bad guys and a cross-section of citizens of New York, are ultimately forgettable. In case you were wondering, 1:23 is the time that the train leaves Pelham (Pelham Bay Park in The Bronx) which gives it its temporary designation. Anyway, Mr. Scott, after you're done ruining The Warriors for us, why don't you try something completely different for a change?
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Broken Rainbow (1985)

"In the Navajo tongue there is no word for relocation. To move away means to disappear and never be seen again." There is too much to explain here. Although this documentary won the Oscar in 1986, it's difficult to find much information on the subject online. The Wikipedia article, for example, is only a stub with a few links to things like "Navajo Native Americans", "Arizona" and "Martin Sheen" (narrator). In 1974 over 10,000 Navajo were ordered to relocate from their homes in northern Arizona. Many resisted and over the next decade the government proceeded to systematically destroy their way of life. What were the reasons? Coal, oil, natural gas and uranium. Anyone who says differently, like the late Barry Goldwater did (John McCain's scumbag predecessor), is not to be trusted.
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The Point (1971)

Narrated by Ringo Starr and scored by Harry Nilsson, it features the voice of Mike Lookinland as Oblio, a kid who was born without a pointy head in a kingdom where everything is required by law to have a point. My first question was "why in the world don't I remember a great name like Lookinland after watching the Brady Bunch (he played Bobby) for so many years?" I guess I didn't pay as much attention to credits back then. Anyway, I found The Point very charming for a while, but once Oblio is banished to The Pointless Forest it starts to feel too much like Yellow Submarine. Still, it's required watching for any fan of Ringo, Bobby Brady or the "Coconut" guy.
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What About Bob? (1991)

I first saw this movie at the local playhouse in the summer of '91. I remember laughing at Bill Murray and loving all the clever one-liners. But seeing it again as an adult made me realize that it's really Richard Dreyfuss's superb performance that makes the whole thing work. Murray is great too, of course, but it's watching Dr. Leo Marvin deal with being tormented by Bob that's truly enjoyable. Catching up with What About Bob? after all these years reminded me (as Napoleon Dynamite also did) that you can make a great comedy without including sex, violence, drugs, feces or bad language. Not that there is anything wrong with having those things in your film, but too often it seems like the only formula that any comedy writer is using anymore.
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Michael Clayton (2007)

The premise is somewhat reminiscent of Erin Brockovich and although it's not based on a true story, the characters and events portrayed in this film feel closer to the truth than whatever it was that I was supposed to get out of watching Julia Roberts stick it to the man for 130 minutes straight. This time the evil corporation goes to even more extreme lengths in order to cover things up, taking out a contract on a man's life. I sometimes wonder how often things like this actually happen in this country (everyone knows that they happen abroad with the tacit approval, if not complete support and participation, of certain corporations) but if they go down the way they do in the film then there is very little chance that we will ever find out about them. This was my pick for Best Picture in 2007.
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eXistenZ (1999)

I enjoyed the Judeo-Christian-Zen-Buddhist-sci-fi epic The Matrix as much as everyone else did, but I think some of the performances were actually quite shabby, and parts of the script are just beyond lame. eXistenZ uses a similar gimmick, but in the form of a multi-player virtual reality video game. And instead of waging a kick-ass proxy war against some evil, real-world force while humanity hangs in the balance, the players explore some of the more nuanced issues that come up when dealing with ultra-real virtual worlds, and the question of whether what we are seeing at any given moment is really happening or not (and what that question even means) becomes increasingly difficult to answer. This turns out to be a lot more fun than watching Keanu Reeves learn Kung Fu. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Allegra Geller, the impossibly attractive video game designer who guides Ted Pikul, a marketing trainee played by Jude Law, through the mysterious plot of the game. They have great chemistry and writer/director David Cronenberg somehow manages to make the act of hooking themselves up to the game something that is strangely erotic. As much as I want to play a game like eXistenZ (strange casing because "isten" is the Hungarian word for God) or hang out in the holodeck from Star Trek, I seriously doubt the technology will ever get that far. But if it does, then I hope no one ever has to ask: "Hey, tell me the truth... are we still in the game?"
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Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

You've probably heard this before so I'll keep it short: predictable, contrived, derivative, and entertaining as all hell. Seinfeld may be right about how "awards are stupid" but I still want this to win.
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Matewan (1987)

This film was extremely well-received by critics at the time of its release, but there were a handful who complained that the historical Battle of Matewan was painted too black and white for their sensibilities. I can't even begin to describe how misguided that notion is. When we're dealing with the corporate greed of a coal-mining company in the early 1920s, whose workers were most definitely getting screwed on a daily basis, how can they say that the most important conflict in this story is not right versus wrong? I'm not saying certain things weren't sensationalized, or that in real life all the workers were heroes and all the company men villains, but it's incredibly disrespectful to the history of organized labor to say that it's just a lot of idealistic melodrama. But why am I bothering to defend a movie that most viewers enjoy? Because it's the mindset of people who don't get it that is a major cause of suffering in the world. The union leader Joe Kenehan, played by Chris Cooper, says that he didn't go off to the war because all he could see in it was "workers fighting workers". Even today that's an extremely controversial idea, and not one that you can try to apply to the so-called "good wars" without being laughed at, unless you work it into a nice little film like this.
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