Leave it to Hans to select proper adult and mind challenging films such as those based on a Roald Dahl novel. Alas, he is going for something that someone with his 5th grade reading level will enjoy. But in all seriousness, I am also a huge fan of Wes Anderson, and he has reached automatic watch level. I am in the minority however, as I count The Life Aquatic as one of my favorite movies ever; it’s irreverent humor just struck such a chord with me, and the island assault scene is easily one of my favorite film sequences of all time. But moving on to my #5, I present what will most likely be one of the most bittersweet films of 2009…
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Title: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Synopsis: The leader of a traveling theatre troupe takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations, all under the auspice of the cliche deal with the Devil.
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law, Tom Waits
Why you should be excited too: A Terry Gilliam film is usually a must see, but in this case, we will witness the last recorded performance by the late Oscar winner, Heath Ledger. When Ledger died during the filming of this flick, there was no shortage of people who chalked it up under the multitude of misfortunes that Terry Gilliam has had during his tenure in Hollywood. However, when the film was made salvageable by the plot device of using three different actors to play Ledger while in different parts of the film, and that the three would be Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell (I can hear the thuds of the women of the world feinting to the floor now), and that each of these movie stars would be donating their salaries to Ledger’s daughter Matilda, it made my interest in what Gilliam’s fantastic imagination would be bringing to the screen all the greater. I eagerly await the work of some of the finest actors in the business under the direction of one of the business’ most creative, coming out as of now, on September 24, 2009.
Hans got a compliment from his training teacher; he was commended on his ability to read. High five!
From a two woman race in the Best Actress category, we move on to a two man race for Best Actor. From a career resurrection, to another fine performance in his resume, the other nominees need not come Sunday night. The nominees include Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Sean Penn (Milk), Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler). (Full disclosure: I still need to see The Visitor, don’t judge me!)
Who Will Win
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler
Hollywood loves a redemption story, and there is none hotter right now than Mickey Rourke’s. Poised to be the biggest Hollywood star of the 80s and 90s, Rourke took a well documented detour and became Hollywood poison. Slowly working his way back into everyone’s good graces, Rourke completed his comeback with perhaps his finest and most authentic performance to date as a broken down, aging wrestler out for one last hurrah, a role that critics point out was not hard for him to pull off as it is his story. Nonetheless, it was the best performance of the year by anyone, and one that will studied for years.
Who Should Win
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler
Mickey has this on lock. I hope. If it is not going to be Mickey Rourke though, it will be this guy…
Sean Penn in Milk
Sean Penn gives another amazing performance as Harvey Milk, and is just as deserving as Mickey Rourke for the grand prize. As awful as it may sound to say it, I feel that there may be some sort of homophobic backlash against Penn’s performance, and it may have rubbed some of the voters the wrong way, similar to how Brokeback Mountain and Heath Ledger were seemingly locks a few years back but came away empty handed, save for Ang Lee’s win. Penn is deserving of it, and becomes Harvey Milk, and it is another iconic performance.
Who Was Snubbed
Colin Farrell in In Bruges
Anybody who has followed this blog knows my love and admiration for In Bruges, and at the core of this great picture is a performance from Colin Farrell that will change his career. He earned a Golden Globe for it, and he was an outside shot at getting the nomination, but fans of the film will be rooting for Martin McDonagh in the Original Screenplay category. If you still have not seen this gem, definitely make the effort to see it, and treasure the performance by not only Colin Farrell, but also Bredan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes.
Viola Davis packs quite the wallop in her sole scene in Doubt, and is deserving of the nomination. However, it appears that the Penelope Cruz train is too strong, and we both agree will carry her to Oscar gold a week from now.
Now, on to a category with perhaps the least amount of suspense, but will most likely be the most emotional award of the night, Best Supporting Actor. The nominees are Josh Brolin (Milk), Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt), Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight), and Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road).
Who Will Win
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
If there was ever a sure fire, money in the bank winner, it has to be Heath Ledger in his last completed role before his unfortunate death as the diabolic villain, The Joker in the second highest grossing film of all time, The Dark Knight. While the whole of Christopher Nolan’s epic was amazing and elevated a comic book film above its genre, it was Ledger’s performance that ensured The Dark Knight would go down in the annals of film history.
Who Should Win
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Ledger should win. But, for the sake of argument (and just so I can write a little bit more because I need a study break and am a huge fan of this guy), the winner (in any other year) should be…
Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder
It is not very often that an actor in a comedy (especially one directed by Ben Stiller) gets nominated for an Academy Award, but Downey’s performance in Tropic Thunder as Kirk Lazarus, the Australian method actor to put all other method actors to shame, was simply transcendent, and cemented Downey as an actor who could pull off anything thrown at him.
Who Was Snubbed
Eddie Marsan in Happy Go Lucky
There were many great actors in supporting roles this year, but Eddie Marsan in Mike Leigh’s quirky Happy-Go-Lucky was quite simply amazing. Playing a driving instructor who simply could not deal with the optimistic attitude of his student, played by the in fine star making form Sally Hawkins, Marsan is nearly as terrifying as Heath Ledger’s Joker, and literally looks like he will explode at any moment whenever he is on screen. En Ra Ha.
Even though I enjoyed Pineapple Express, I’d be remiss if I didn’t scold Sulmoney for ranking a stoner comedy higher than modern classics on his list like Wall-E, The Wrestler, and RocknRolla. BAM! See what I did there? No? Maybe cookie monster can explain it for you:
I’m actually glad that at least one big summer comedy made it onto Sulmoney’s list, though, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had a chance to discuss them. I’m a notoriously harsh critic of movie comedies, and trips to the cinema have often started with my (so-called) friends arguing over who has to sit next to me because I hardly ever laugh out loud. That said, we got some pretty decent stuff this summer with Pineapple Express (good), Tropic Thunder (better), and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (best). Unlike Sulmoney, I don’t think Pineapple Express succeeded as much as a genre-bending action-comedy, especially because a lot of the action in the last act fell flat for me, but James Franco, Danny McBride and, my personal favorite, Craig Robinson did some hilarious work that at least held up the comedy end. Even though I enjoyed Tropic Thunder more in the theater, I think Pineapple Express will age better.
Shout out also to Role Models, which I still haven’t seen, but expect I’ll really dig. Here’s big #2:
The Dark Knight
This list of my top 10 films of 2008 doesn’t necessarily include the best movies, in order, of last year. It’s simply a list of those films that for whatever reason appealed to my personal tastes more than the rest. The Dark Knight is a flawed film in many ways. It’s too long, it’s a bit too ambitious, it rushes the Two Face storyline, and some of the story elements (particularly the cell-phone mapping at the end) are just a bit too preposterous for the universe it establishes. For all of those reasons, I’m not too upset that The Dark Knight failed to snag a nomination for Best Picture at the 81st Academy Awards, but it’s a complete and utter travesty that director and co-writer Christopher Nolan was not even nominated for the Best Director trophy. If you want a review of The Dark Knight, you have thousands to choose from. Instead, here’s my case for Christopher Nolan as one of the best directors of 2008.
There’s so much to talk about that I won’t be able to really do the man justice without taking up the entire page. The stellar performances across the board, the moody music, the breathtaking scope, the unbearable tension, the bold choice to shoot in Chicago over New York, the emphasis on practical effects vs. CGI and the groundbreaking use of IMAX cameras all deserve to be mentioned, so there, I just mentioned them. What I find most impressive, though, is the uncompromising vision of the man behind the camera.
I wonder how awesome my hair looks right now...
I attribute every last dollar of The Dark Knight’s nearly $1 billion box office gross to the directorial vision of Christopher Nolan in translating the epic story of Gotham City to the big screen. The film’s title may refer to Batman himself, but it may as well have been titled “Gotham City,” since the first thing that struck me when the credits started to roll was just how much of the film was not even about Batman. Brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan had a monumental task before them in trying to adapt the story of one of pop culture’s most recognizable heroes with 70 years and thousands of stories of history. And just to make it a little bit harder, they had to somehow capture the essence of not one, but two of the character’s most iconic villains in a way that both honored the source material and communicated ideas that strike a chord even with today’s audiences.
Didn't I have a really cool tower with a train through it last time? And before that everything glowed-in-the-dark?
But to get back to the point, it’s not the writing that’s important, because it’s a mistake to think that The Dark Knight is an original story. Like the classic Homeric poems, the story of Gotham City, its heroes and its villains has been retold for decades through many generations. The genius of the director, then, is not that he saw something in these characters that no one else had seen before, it’s in the way he was able to sift through the excess and boil down so many of these unfathomably dense and disparate elements in a way that made sense for his own medium. You think the Joker was scary? So did Alan Moore (writer of the upcoming mega-blockbuster Watchmen) when he wrote The Killing Joke back in 1988, which Christopher Nolan hand-delivered to Heath Ledger in preparation for his role. Felt for the plight of Commissioner Gordon, who had to choose between working with Batman (implicitly condoning vigilante justice) or risk letting the city fall into the hands of the mob? What about the tragic story of Harvey Dent, the man who believed so strongly in the goodness of the system that seeing it ultimately fail drove him to complete madness? Then check out Batman: Year One, Gotham Central, or The Long Halloween. Chris Nolan did.
In Japan, the Joker says, "Hai! Cheeeezu," and somehow it's still scary.
These are ideas that say an enormous amount about so many universal themes: the greyness of right and wrong, the limits of the human psyche, our capacity to find hope in a sea of despair, and, of course, the true nature of villainy and heroism. Now try telling your friends that you learned about these things in a comic book. “Ha! You mean those kids’ books with the silly pictures and the big words that say SMASH and POW?” But tell them that you saw all of those same things in The Dark Knight, and I suspect you’ll be met with a little more respect.
Christopher Nolan has made it socially acceptable for people to argue in public over the motivations of the guy with green hair and white face-paint, the justifications of the man with a melted face and a split-personality, and the iconography of the dude in the cape and rubber suit. That deserves a trophy in my book.
Well, I think we have Wall-E covered pretty extensively. And I am sure that we will be seeing my #4 movie pick come up in your top 3 sooner rather than later, and I beat you to it once again. Again, Wall-E is a transcendent animated film, one that has universal appeal, and it is money in the bank for Best Animated Feature at the upcoming Academy Awards. We will find out in the morning if it has enough love to crash the presumed locked in 5 for Best Picture (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire).
Enough foreplay, on to the biggest blockbuster since Titanic.
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight. THE comic book movie to end all comic book movies. Nearly $1 billion in worldwide gross revenue. The movie event of not only the summer, but all of 2008. But we know all that already. We have story after story about The Dark Knight, and frankly, I overdosed on it. We have all seen it, and we all recognize the genius in every aspect of the film, from Christopher Nolan’s expert direction, the wonderful cinematography by Wally Pfister, the score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, to the no need to mention it anymore iconic performance by the late great Heath Ledger. The only thing that I take offense to in the critical reception of the film is the seemingly forgotten performance by Aaron Eckhart in the tragic role of Harvey Dent/Two Face. Good thing I get to use this as my soap box to fight for him.
I really really believe in Harvey Dent
For all intents and purposes, the main story of The Dark Knight is the rise and fall of Harvey Dent. Even the title of the film indirectly references what Harvey Dent represented to the city of Gotham, as he was supposed to be their White Knight. For everything that Batman could do for the city in secrecy and in the cover of night, Harvey Dent could do in the light of day without hiding underneath a mask. Batman realizes this, and if there is one thing that he would want, it would be to be able to put his alter ego behind him, live his life as Bruce Wayne, and support Harvey Dent to the end of his days. One even gets the impression that Bruce Wayne wishes he was Harvey Dent. The first half of the film we are brought along through his biggest legal victories, and how he has cleaned up Gotham City to the best of his ability. This however leads to the coming out of The Joker, and we see the frustration of fighting a losing fight, the breaking of a good man’s spirit with the loss of his love, the subsequent birth of Two Face, and his final shameful acts.
Cue Daddy Yankee's Gasolina
Aaron Eckhart, lost amongst all the (well deserved) acclaim for Heath Ledger, merits recognition for what he brought to The Dark Knight. In his portrayal of Harvey Dent, Eckhart is the pulse of the film. As Two Face, he creates an absolutely terrifying villain that had too short of a shelf life in Nolan’s Bat-universe. Allowing us to come along for every rise and fall of his emotonal rollercoaster during the course of the film is a true triumph of acting, and Eckhart’s performance should elevate him to the upper echelon of Hollywood. When you rewatch The Dark Knight over and over for the rest of eternity, amidst all the wonderful pieces of the film, remember Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, Gotham’s White Knight.
The Feature Preachers 