The five best romantic comedites of all time are:
1. Annie Hall – The Casablanca of romantic comedies.
2. When Harry met Salley – Fake orgasm, Wagon Wheel Coffee table, Don’t Fuck with Mr. Zero
3. Brother’s McMullen – if you have not heard of this truly independent movie check it out.
4. Say Anything/Singles – same director, same city, same cameos (Eric Stoltz and Jeremy Piven), both AMAZING soundtracks.
5. Love Actually was number five until I saw 500 Days of Summer.
500 Days of Summer has a horrible opening. It begins withteh Pixxy Queen Zoey Dechenl wearing an engagemnt ring and holding hands with Joseph Gordon Levitt on a park bench.. You think that this weill be a very formulic boy-meets-girl, get engaged and live happily ever after. That was a good movie 60 years ago, but now we have seen that movie 100 times. 500 Days does not fall into that very easy trap. 500 Days tells the story of Zoey, her character’s name is Summer, and Gordon-Levitt by examing the 500 days between when they first met until that day on the Park Bency.
500 Days benefits by not having a sequential story. By having the story told non-sequentially the same events; going to Ikea, specific jokes, eating pancakes and Karokee lead to radically different reactions from the characters based on their psycholigical and emotional status. These scnes also shwo the evolution of the caracters. The emotional growth/maturation of Zoey and Gordon-Levitt is very reflective of the changes we go through in our late 20s/early 30s. The removail of our social anx and the realization of what is truly importatn and, to blatently still from the great Chuck Palunk, “let the things that do not really matter truly slide.”
The film also benefits from having two brieltly creative scenes. The morning after they have sex for the first time (ARE YOU REALLY SURPRISED TWO PEOPLE IN THEIR 20S HAVE SEX IN A ROMANTIC COMEDY?), Gordon-Levitt goes home in the moring and his walk evolves to a dance scene played to Hall and Oats “You make my Dreams come True.” This shows exactly how e feels without saying a word.
The other creative scnee is where Gordon-Levitt goes to a party at Zoey/Summer’s house. The party is shown in split screne. On one side it shows how Gordon-Levitt hopes/invisions/prayed to all that is Holy that the party will go and the other side whows hot the party actually goes.
The two scnes show how Gordon-Levit feels about Zoey. The full ranges of utter joy (think being 5 years old and getting a puppy for Christmas) and pure anguish (everyone with a soul has had their heart ripped out).
This is a very good movie. It is like a real relationship. Good conversations. Great sex. Funny jokes. Dancing. Pain. An awkward wedding. Joy. Karokee and like all adult relationships a trip to IKEA.
p.s. This was a great movie for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. This with the previous year’s The Lookout (overlooked and underrated) show he is a force to be reckoned with…
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Top 25 Movies of 2000s: 19 Syriana
This film has a great cast. Almost everone of them was better in something else. Christopher Plumber was better in The Insider and The Sound of Music. The CRIMINALLY underrated Jeffrey Wright was better in Angles in America. The slightly over rated Matt Damon was better in the Borne movies. Chris Carter was much better in American Beauty, for which he deserved an Oscar, and Adaptation, for which he won an Oscar. The only exception is George Clooney. This is far and away his best acting performance. Clooney is one of the few actors who is hurt by being good looking. If he had average looks he would be apprecaited more, of course he would also get much fewer roles, but that is besides the point. He has proven that he can be very funny (O Brother Where Art Thou), serious (Good Night and Good Luck), charming (Oceans Eleven), tough (Michael Clayton) and in the case of Syriana extremly talented.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Top 25 Movies of 2000s: 20 In the Bedroom
Domestic Violence. Relationships your parents hate. Single mothers. Death of an only child. A plot to murder someone.
No, In the Bedroom is not a light summer movie. It is not a feel good movie. However, unlike most movies it does make you feel something. The plot revolves arround a young boy (Actor name) in the summer before he goes to college who starts to date a single mom (Marisa Tomei deserved an Oscar for this instead of My Cousin Vinnie) who has gotten out of a violent controlling relationship with (Actor Name). All three do the best work of their career. (young actor) succesfully negotiated being a child actor and nailed this befect not a young actor and not an adult actor (toughest transition in Hollywood that very few are able to do succesfully. Ironically, the one that did it best Juaquim Phoenix no longer acts.). He captured the character's childish naivity about relationship barriers while balancing it with a 20 something male bravado about casual relationships. Marisa Tomei hits her role out of the park. She showed the vulnerabilty that can only come from a deep relationship that goes incredibly bad and balances it with the hope of a good healthy relationship. She also shows her fear when she refuses to lie during a trial. (willnot spoil it). (Tom Cruise's cousin) gives a menacing portral of a socio-path while giving him the outward appearnce of being a fun guy to have a beer with. He does this without being cliche' and turning this role into a Lifetime Movie of the Week role. This performance was greatly overlooked and deserves more credit.
In almost any other movie, these three performances would have dominated the film and made a very, very good movie. However, the best acting of this movie, in one of the greatest on screen husband/wife couples of all time, is turned in by Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson. Both of them have been better in other films (Coal Minner's Daughter and Michael Clayton/Fully Monty respectively), but they come togehter seemlessly here. They have the silent flow of a couple that has been together for forty years and say everything without saying a word. They way they deal with the death of their son and the subsequent trial and consequences of the trial is intimate and revealing.
The closing scene where Wilkinson is home and has the look of a man who has sunk to moral depths that were so far below himself that he never dreamed them possible, who is ravaged by the pain from the loss of his son, the fear of loss of even more, guilt over his actions are crippling to this pround, strong and essentially good man. Spacek's actions show that they will never talk about this, or possibly their son again, and wants to move on and go back to a normal life. Wilkinson knows this is not possible, but will try.
Essentially, this story is about desires. The characters who give into their desires loose their lives (in some cases literally and in some cases figuratively) and those that push down their desires survive but survive as shells of the people they use to be, want to be and see themselves as. No one is better off when this story ends from where it began. All of the people suffer. All of the people loose. The only people that benefit from this are those of us lucky enough to watch this great film....
No, In the Bedroom is not a light summer movie. It is not a feel good movie. However, unlike most movies it does make you feel something. The plot revolves arround a young boy (Actor name) in the summer before he goes to college who starts to date a single mom (Marisa Tomei deserved an Oscar for this instead of My Cousin Vinnie) who has gotten out of a violent controlling relationship with (Actor Name). All three do the best work of their career. (young actor) succesfully negotiated being a child actor and nailed this befect not a young actor and not an adult actor (toughest transition in Hollywood that very few are able to do succesfully. Ironically, the one that did it best Juaquim Phoenix no longer acts.). He captured the character's childish naivity about relationship barriers while balancing it with a 20 something male bravado about casual relationships. Marisa Tomei hits her role out of the park. She showed the vulnerabilty that can only come from a deep relationship that goes incredibly bad and balances it with the hope of a good healthy relationship. She also shows her fear when she refuses to lie during a trial. (willnot spoil it). (Tom Cruise's cousin) gives a menacing portral of a socio-path while giving him the outward appearnce of being a fun guy to have a beer with. He does this without being cliche' and turning this role into a Lifetime Movie of the Week role. This performance was greatly overlooked and deserves more credit.
In almost any other movie, these three performances would have dominated the film and made a very, very good movie. However, the best acting of this movie, in one of the greatest on screen husband/wife couples of all time, is turned in by Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson. Both of them have been better in other films (Coal Minner's Daughter and Michael Clayton/Fully Monty respectively), but they come togehter seemlessly here. They have the silent flow of a couple that has been together for forty years and say everything without saying a word. They way they deal with the death of their son and the subsequent trial and consequences of the trial is intimate and revealing.
The closing scene where Wilkinson is home and has the look of a man who has sunk to moral depths that were so far below himself that he never dreamed them possible, who is ravaged by the pain from the loss of his son, the fear of loss of even more, guilt over his actions are crippling to this pround, strong and essentially good man. Spacek's actions show that they will never talk about this, or possibly their son again, and wants to move on and go back to a normal life. Wilkinson knows this is not possible, but will try.
Essentially, this story is about desires. The characters who give into their desires loose their lives (in some cases literally and in some cases figuratively) and those that push down their desires survive but survive as shells of the people they use to be, want to be and see themselves as. No one is better off when this story ends from where it began. All of the people suffer. All of the people loose. The only people that benefit from this are those of us lucky enough to watch this great film....
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Top 25 Movies of 2000s: 21 300
Warning: If you are a guy, do not ask your wife/girlfriend is she thinks you are in as good of shape of the Spartans after you watch the movie 300. She will lie to you and tell you yes. Or she will tell you No and encourage you to join a gym.
Yes, the movie is a simple. Yes, the acting is not great. Yes, it is “based” on historical fact. Yes, those historical facts are not accurately depicted. Yes, there are times when the movie is a commercial for 24 Hour Fitness. Yes, the movie has slow parts. Yes, every actor has done better work. Yes, it is based on a comic book. Excuse me “Graphic Novel.” Calling a comic book a graphic novel is like calling porn Erotica. It is the same thing, but costs five times as much and you can keep it on our coffee table without people thinking you are a freak.
It is also the best pure action movie of the past decade. It has amazing fight/action scenes. The bad guys are evil. You cheer for the good guys. You want them to win. You despise the characters who betray the brave 300. You get caught up in the movie.
Yes, the movie is a simple. Yes, the acting is not great. Yes, it is “based” on historical fact. Yes, those historical facts are not accurately depicted. Yes, there are times when the movie is a commercial for 24 Hour Fitness. Yes, the movie has slow parts. Yes, every actor has done better work. Yes, it is based on a comic book. Excuse me “Graphic Novel.” Calling a comic book a graphic novel is like calling porn Erotica. It is the same thing, but costs five times as much and you can keep it on our coffee table without people thinking you are a freak.
It is also the best pure action movie of the past decade. It has amazing fight/action scenes. The bad guys are evil. You cheer for the good guys. You want them to win. You despise the characters who betray the brave 300. You get caught up in the movie.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Top 25 Movies of 2000s: 22 Love Actually
Love, Love, Love
Love, Love, Love
Love is all you need.
My favorite Beatles song made it into this very simple Romantic Comedy. That gives this movie a little bit of a bump, but the movie has more than a good cover of a great song.
Since it is a romantic comedy the producers were required by law to cast Hugh Grant. Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, Mariano Rivera and John Grisham all only do one thing well, romantic comedies, a great man with a fatal flaw, a perfect slider and a simple lawyer story, but they do them exceptionally well. Hugh Grant does his usual Hugh Grant thing and does it very well. This time he is doing the Hugh Grant thing as Prime Minister of Great Brittan. Hey, if you can believe a multiple men can fall head over heels in love with Sara Jessica Parker you can suspend disbelief enough to think of Hugh Grant as Prime Minister.
Love Actually is a combination of eight (yes eight!) love stories all slightly connected either through friendships or random chance. This is an example of how the sum is great than the parts. Each of the stories is unique and even at their most bizarre (one British man goes to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to meet women because over there he will be exotic) to their most ominously foreshadowing (Liam Neeson plays a widower, six years before his wife’s tragic death, who is trying to raise his son on his own and give romantic advice to a 10 year old). While all of these stories revolve around love/romance they have at their true center courage. These are stories of a Prime Minister who stands up to a bullying US President (played perfectly by Billy Bob Thornton who is channeling Bill Clinton) and starts a relationship, a cheated on wife who has the courage to make her marriage work, a man who has the courage to fly to America to seduce women (ok, maybe that one is more lust and desperation), a husband whose marriage is ended by his wife’s infidelity with his brother who has the courage to learn Portuguese to seduce the woman he has fallen in love with, a washed up rock star who has the courage to be a real human being and a decadent rock start at the same time, and a man who has the courage to walk away from the woman he loves because she is married to his best friend.
This movie also benefits from having an amazing cast.
Alan Rickman (2nd best performance barely edging out Galaxy Quest and behind Die Hard)
Bill Nighy (great washed up ROCK STAR)
Colin Firth (women like him)
Emma Thompson (getting better at comedies)
Hugh Grant (always good/never great)
Laura Linney (Massively underrated, deserves more good roles and an Oscar)
Keira Knightly (a role that is right in her wheelhouse)
Rowan Atkinson (has a two minute appearance that is the perfect amount of time for him)
Billy Bob Thornton (has he ever been bad?)
Chiwetel Ejiofor (you may not know him now, but he has been in a ton of great movies, Inside Man, Red Belt (trust me), American Gangster, Children of Men. Watch three of his movies and judge for yourself. It is possible that he could turn out to be the best actor on this list.)
Love, Love, Love
Love is all you need.
My favorite Beatles song made it into this very simple Romantic Comedy. That gives this movie a little bit of a bump, but the movie has more than a good cover of a great song.
Since it is a romantic comedy the producers were required by law to cast Hugh Grant. Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, Mariano Rivera and John Grisham all only do one thing well, romantic comedies, a great man with a fatal flaw, a perfect slider and a simple lawyer story, but they do them exceptionally well. Hugh Grant does his usual Hugh Grant thing and does it very well. This time he is doing the Hugh Grant thing as Prime Minister of Great Brittan. Hey, if you can believe a multiple men can fall head over heels in love with Sara Jessica Parker you can suspend disbelief enough to think of Hugh Grant as Prime Minister.
Love Actually is a combination of eight (yes eight!) love stories all slightly connected either through friendships or random chance. This is an example of how the sum is great than the parts. Each of the stories is unique and even at their most bizarre (one British man goes to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to meet women because over there he will be exotic) to their most ominously foreshadowing (Liam Neeson plays a widower, six years before his wife’s tragic death, who is trying to raise his son on his own and give romantic advice to a 10 year old). While all of these stories revolve around love/romance they have at their true center courage. These are stories of a Prime Minister who stands up to a bullying US President (played perfectly by Billy Bob Thornton who is channeling Bill Clinton) and starts a relationship, a cheated on wife who has the courage to make her marriage work, a man who has the courage to fly to America to seduce women (ok, maybe that one is more lust and desperation), a husband whose marriage is ended by his wife’s infidelity with his brother who has the courage to learn Portuguese to seduce the woman he has fallen in love with, a washed up rock star who has the courage to be a real human being and a decadent rock start at the same time, and a man who has the courage to walk away from the woman he loves because she is married to his best friend.
This movie also benefits from having an amazing cast.
Alan Rickman (2nd best performance barely edging out Galaxy Quest and behind Die Hard)
Bill Nighy (great washed up ROCK STAR)
Colin Firth (women like him)
Emma Thompson (getting better at comedies)
Hugh Grant (always good/never great)
Laura Linney (Massively underrated, deserves more good roles and an Oscar)
Keira Knightly (a role that is right in her wheelhouse)
Rowan Atkinson (has a two minute appearance that is the perfect amount of time for him)
Billy Bob Thornton (has he ever been bad?)
Chiwetel Ejiofor (you may not know him now, but he has been in a ton of great movies, Inside Man, Red Belt (trust me), American Gangster, Children of Men. Watch three of his movies and judge for yourself. It is possible that he could turn out to be the best actor on this list.)
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Top 25 Movies of 2000s: 23: Traffic
This decade Michael Douglas is known more for being Catherine Zeta-Jones husband than for being a good actor who has made some great films. Wall Street, Romancing the Stone, The China Syndrome, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct,the criminally neglected Wonder Boys and Traffic are all great films. These roles are all very different. At the time these movies were made is there anyone else who could have played a Evil Wall Street robber baron, a soldier of fortune, a camera man, a police detective with a kinky side, an unfaithful husband, a stoned out college professor/writer and the United States Drug Czar? Maybe Harrison Ford in Romancing the Stone, but that is it. No two characters are the same. No two characters have the same motivation and when watching none of these movies do you feel you are just watching Michael Douglas.
Traffic is great for a lot of reasons. One, it showed that Stephen Soderberg could make a commercially successful film, that addressed serious topics in a realistic way. The acting is phenomenal. Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dennis Quaid (very good here), Don Cheedle (someone please give him another great script and let him get the Oscar he deserves), Topher Grace (showed he could act with some heavy weights) and the Oscar winner Benecio Del Toro are all great.
This movie could very easily become a movie of the week saying drugs are bad and they hurt families. It did not. It makes you ask questions about what is actually going on with our families. Also, what is the price we pay for our ambition? Would Michael Douglas’s daughter gotten on drugs if he had put more time at home and less time advancing his carrer? Did Cather Zeta-Jones always suspect that her husband was a drug dealer and only got upset when the perfect life she had for herself was upended? How was success change Benecio Del Toro?
Soderberg weaves three essential stories together. The story of a Drug Czar who is struggling to help his daughter kick drugs. The story of a Drug Dealer’s wife who copes with her husbands arrest and her ethical changes and she evolves from naïve wife to cruel drug dealer. The story of the one honest Mexican cop who despretly wants peace in his time and to watch a simple game of baseball.
Traffic is great for a lot of reasons. One, it showed that Stephen Soderberg could make a commercially successful film, that addressed serious topics in a realistic way. The acting is phenomenal. Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dennis Quaid (very good here), Don Cheedle (someone please give him another great script and let him get the Oscar he deserves), Topher Grace (showed he could act with some heavy weights) and the Oscar winner Benecio Del Toro are all great.
This movie could very easily become a movie of the week saying drugs are bad and they hurt families. It did not. It makes you ask questions about what is actually going on with our families. Also, what is the price we pay for our ambition? Would Michael Douglas’s daughter gotten on drugs if he had put more time at home and less time advancing his carrer? Did Cather Zeta-Jones always suspect that her husband was a drug dealer and only got upset when the perfect life she had for herself was upended? How was success change Benecio Del Toro?
Soderberg weaves three essential stories together. The story of a Drug Czar who is struggling to help his daughter kick drugs. The story of a Drug Dealer’s wife who copes with her husbands arrest and her ethical changes and she evolves from naïve wife to cruel drug dealer. The story of the one honest Mexican cop who despretly wants peace in his time and to watch a simple game of baseball.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Top 25 Movies of 2000s: 24: No Country for Old Men
Being bad is more fun than being good. If this was not the case no one would have heard of Hugh Hefner. No Country for Old Men is a perfect example of this. The movie has two good performances (Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin), one very underrated and darkly funny performance (Woody Harelson) and one skin crawling, vicious, scare the crap out of Hannibal Lector Performance, in what could be the best performance of the decade (Javier Bardem).
This is a great movie. The Cohen Brothers, in the first of their two entries on this list, prove once again that they cannot be placed in one type of movie. They make brilliant comedies (Raising Arizona, Burn after Reading) and incredible dramas (The Man who wasn’t there and Miller’s Crossing) and movies that cannot be truly categorized (Big Labowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Their only consistency is brilliance. They take chances with the work they do. They focus on making good work that they find interesting and seem to follow the belief that people will seek out good films.
Their work brings up the classic Chicken and the Egg argument about filmmakers. Do filmmakers need to find an audience with commercial films and then make the films they want to make that are much more creative and better? See David Fincher’s arc of Alien 3 to Fight Club to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Or should filmmakers make their own passion projects gain credibility and then make commercial films to secure financing for more adventures films. See Steven Soderbergh’s arc Sex, Lies and Videotapes to Ocean’s 12 to The Girlfriend Experience.
I personally like this film because it introduced me to the writing of Cormac McCarthy. He is a brilliant writer whose work has been turned into other works including All the Pretty Horses and The Road (my favorite book I read in 2009).
However, this movie rises and falls based on the brilliant and evil performance of Javier Bardem. His character of Anton Chigurh is introduced to the audience by having him strangle a man to death with his own handcuffs. Then he gets mean. The character is purely evil. He enjoys exerting his power over other people. He enjoys watching their fear before they die. I cannot adequately describe his work on this page.
Go watch this movie as part of a Cohen Brothers Double feature along with their classic Raising Arizona. Both films have the parallel structure of a Husband and Wife being pursued by an evil character because they took something that does not belong to them. These parallel by polar opposite films show the Cohen’s genus and take the audience on an amazing journey.
This is a great movie. The Cohen Brothers, in the first of their two entries on this list, prove once again that they cannot be placed in one type of movie. They make brilliant comedies (Raising Arizona, Burn after Reading) and incredible dramas (The Man who wasn’t there and Miller’s Crossing) and movies that cannot be truly categorized (Big Labowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Their only consistency is brilliance. They take chances with the work they do. They focus on making good work that they find interesting and seem to follow the belief that people will seek out good films.
Their work brings up the classic Chicken and the Egg argument about filmmakers. Do filmmakers need to find an audience with commercial films and then make the films they want to make that are much more creative and better? See David Fincher’s arc of Alien 3 to Fight Club to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Or should filmmakers make their own passion projects gain credibility and then make commercial films to secure financing for more adventures films. See Steven Soderbergh’s arc Sex, Lies and Videotapes to Ocean’s 12 to The Girlfriend Experience.
I personally like this film because it introduced me to the writing of Cormac McCarthy. He is a brilliant writer whose work has been turned into other works including All the Pretty Horses and The Road (my favorite book I read in 2009).
However, this movie rises and falls based on the brilliant and evil performance of Javier Bardem. His character of Anton Chigurh is introduced to the audience by having him strangle a man to death with his own handcuffs. Then he gets mean. The character is purely evil. He enjoys exerting his power over other people. He enjoys watching their fear before they die. I cannot adequately describe his work on this page.
Go watch this movie as part of a Cohen Brothers Double feature along with their classic Raising Arizona. Both films have the parallel structure of a Husband and Wife being pursued by an evil character because they took something that does not belong to them. These parallel by polar opposite films show the Cohen’s genus and take the audience on an amazing journey.
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