Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island and Inception – because in the 90s he was just another teen heart-throb but since 2000, he’s had a pretty good run (The Beach, Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can, The Departed, Blood Diamond and Revolutionary Road)
Colin Firth in A Single Man
Top 5 Films That Weren’t Released In 2010 But Which I Watched For The First Time In 2010
Brick – great use of language – almost Shakespearian
Fame – not as camp as I expected – actually quite gritty
7 Films I Didn’t See But Will Have To Catch On DVD In 2011
Toy Story 3
The Social Network
Mother
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
The Illusionist
I’m Still Here
Chico & Rita
80s Nostalgia Special Prize
Back To The Future remastered 25th anniversary edition at The Curzon cinema in Clevedon
Most Uncomfortable Film Watching Experience Award
Dogtooth
Dogtooth also gets the Clench Award for most unexpected and visceral depiction of violence for the scene in which you could feel the whole cinema wince. Twice.
… and the Most Brought Up In Conversation Subsequently Prize for pushing the boundaries of taste and decency and becoming the new benchmark against which awkwardness and film-watchability are now measured. Many times this year we used a phrase along the lines of “it’s not pleasant but it’s nothing compared to Dogtooth”.
For completeness, here are some films I watched in 2010 that didn’t get a “Jon watches” post of their own…
Ghost Town – Ricky Gervais vehicle. Not bad though.
A Single Man – Probably most stylish film of 2010.
The Runaways – Kristen Stewart is better than Twilight.
Empire Records – The Breakfast Club in a music shop.
The Ghost – Turning trashy airport fiction into a film results in a film that feels like watching trashy airport fiction.
Dan In Real Life – Steve Carell vehicle. Mediocre story but a good heart.
Slums of Beverly Hills – Standard Jewish comedy.
A Serious Man – Coen brothers Jewish loser comedy.
After the stylish but flat Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola returns to Lost in Translation territory with this slow, considered study of the mundane reality of the life of Hollywood star Johnny Marco. In a media landscape obsessed with moving on to the next scene, plot point or action sequence, it’s refreshing to watch a film that takes it time and Coppola certainly knows how to do that with substantial parts of this film being devoted to beautifully composed, almost photographic sequences in which nothing much happens. This all serves to highlight the main character’s increasing boredom with his supposedly enviable lifestyle of fast cars, pretty girls, parties and world travel.
Combining the lovely visuals with a sparse but excellent soundtrack gives us the style we’d expect but it is the relationship between Johnny Marco and his daughter that gives the film the heart that makes it work. The tender depiction and development of this relationship is what pulls together the vignettes of Johnny’s existence into a film worth watching with a message that’s worth remembering – it’s in our relationships with the ones we love that we find out who we are.
Phoenix’s “Love Like a Sunset” from the soundtrack…
Based on the true story of a group of French monks caught up in civil war in Algeria, Of Gods and Men is one of the most affecting portraits of what it means to be people of faith you’re likely to see on film. It ends with extracts from this letter written by the head monk as he became aware that the decisions they were making were leading them to martyrdom…
If it should happen one day – and today could be the day – that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church and my family to remember that I have given my life for God and this country. I ask them to accept the fact that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to associate my death with so many other equally violent ones which are forgotten through indifference or anonymity.
My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value either. In any case, it no longer has the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil which seems to prevail in the world, even in the evil which might blindly strike me down. I should like, when the time comes, to have a moment of spiritual clarity which would allow me to beg the forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time forgive with all my heart those who would strike me down. Of course, I would never choose such a death. It seems important to me to stress this. How could I rejoice to see the people I love indiscriminately accused of my murder? It would be too high a price to pay for what will perhaps be called the “grace of martyrdom” to owe to an Algerian, whoever he might be, especially if he feels he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.
I am aware of the scorn which can be heaped on the Algerians indiscriminately. I am also aware of the caricatures of Islam which a certain Islamism fosters. It is too easy to soothe one’s conscience by identifying this religious behaviour with the fundamentalist ideology of extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: it is a body and a soul. I have proclaimed this often enough, I think, in the light of what I have received from it.
I so often find there that true strand of the Gospel which I learned on my mother’s lap, my very first Church, precisely in Algeria, and already inspired with respect for Muslim believers. Obviously, my death will appear to confirm those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of his ideals!” But those persons should know that my most avid curiosity will finally be set free. This is what I shall be able to do, God willing: immerse my gaze in that of the Father to contemplate his children of Islam with him just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and restore the likeness, juggling with the differences.
For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God, who seems to have willed it entirely for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything. In this thank you, where everyone is included, from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families – you are the hundredfold granted as was promised! And I also include you, my last-minute friend, who will not have known what you were doing. Yes, I want this thank you and this good-bye to be a “God Bless” for you, too, because in God’s face I see yours. May we meet again as happy thieves in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both.
The Disappearance of Alice Creed is well acted (Eddie Marsan is always good) but mostly trashy. The first 5 minutes are pretty good as the two ex-cons turn a run-down flat into a sound-proofed prison but thereafter the film is essentially just 2 big and not entirely surprising plot twists and a few smaller ones and then it’s over.
Back To The Future is, as everyone knows by now, awesome. If you don’t think so then you need to get some awesome lessons. Watching it remastered and on the big screen at Clevedon’s historic Curzon cinema was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Having seen BTTF many, many times, it was more the comfort of familiarity than the thrill of the new but therein lies a deeper love!
Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky is the story of three men’s journey into “The Zone”, a restricted area where some supernatural event in the past has created The Room into which those who enter receive their deepest desires. That’s the set-up; the resulting film is a 3 hour long exploration of the state of mind of these three men – both what has brought them to a place of searching for The Room and how they might prepare themselves to enter it. The film is slow moving and though there’s some impressive imagery and cinematography, it seems more just a background to the dialogue, which is where the real meat is. It’s more poetry than narrative, hinting and pointing at ideas and concepts and then giving you a few minutes of quiet images to contemplate and respond.
I Love You Phillip Morris is the mostly true story of a con-man who leaves behind a conventional “American dream” lifestyle with a wife and child to come out and move to LA. When his schemes inevitably see him wind up in prison he falls in love with a fellow inmate and his focus shifts to getting them both out of prison through various scams and escape attempts. Supposedly a comedy but it seems that comedy is supposed to be derived entirely from Jim Carrey acting camp. It’s actually ends up being quite a sad story of a confused guy desperately trying to make the life he wants but through methods that end up just being destructive. Like Catch Me If You Can but less fun.
Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free or Die Hard) – the complete opposite of Stalker but a better than average action film with some of the charm of the previous Die Hards carried over into this incarnation. Certainly a better quadrequel than the awful Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (yep, I’m still annoyed about it!).
Both contenders for the 2009 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Argentinian crime thriller The Secret in Their Eyes pipped French prison drama A Prophet to the win. I agree with that ranking of these two films.
The Secret in Their Eyes is beautifully shot with lots of shallow depth of field and sumptuous, atmospheric locations and although the film jumps frequently back and forth between 1999 and 1974, the story unfolds at a nicely measured pace – fast enough to keep you interested but slow enough to keep you guessing.
A Prophet follows the rise of a young Arab through the ranks and factions of a French prison. Highly praised when it came out, I thought it was good but not particularly better than an episode of Prison Break. I didn’t really enjoy director Jacques Audiard’s previous film The Beat That My Heart Skipped all that much either so I guess he just doesn’t make my kind of films.
Anyway, pretty free weekend this weekend. I’ve added “learn to draw better” to my to do list so might have a go at that.
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