1. Avatar
When the Hollywood rotational axis occasionally tilts - Intolerance, The Jazz Singer, Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Star Wars come to mind – the seismic tsunami remakes the landscape for all succeeding moviemakers. Don’t miss James Cameron‘s Avatar - see it in 3D Imax. His script may be lame, but Cameron has reinvented moviemaking for the next generation.
2. L’Heure d’été/Un Jour Tu Comprendras/ Entre Les Murs
In Hollywood - to rework a cliché - only the successful movie director is celebrated; in England no movie director is celebrated, and in Canada, nobody knows what a movie director does. But in France all directors are celebrated. From the 1950s nouvelle vague on, the French have instructed us how to think about the aesthetics of moviemaking. These three felicitous reminders, coming out spring 2009, show a nation, still at the top of its cinematic form.
3. Hurt Locker
Katherine Bigelow’s Hurt Locker provided a excruciating depiction of exactly what kind of hell war - and in this case, America's Iraq war - must be. Not since George-Henri Clouzot’s Wages of Fear and/or Spielberg’s Jaws have movie pyrotechnics scared the bejeezus out of me.
4. An Education
Nick Hornby’s felicitous rendering of smirking bourgeois British anti-Semites in 1960, and one teen’s willful self-liberating escape from her own mean and pernicious upbringing.
5. Precious/The Soloist
January 2009, Barak Hussein Obama became America’s 44th President, and we looked upon African-Americans with a new dignity. In the spring, the Jamie Foxx/Rob't Downey Jr. The Soloist did the same. And last month, we met Precious. Only friend Phillipe and I seem to think Precious will win the 2010 Oscar.
6. A Serious Man
Those two skeptical Coen scamps, wondering what their Jewish God must be thinking, torture a dorky Minneapolis prof with all manner of bourgeois afflictions - a philandering wife, dubious children, hostile associates - in order that a trinity of rabbis can expostulate on the wisdom of this divine disorder.
7. Sugar/Sin Nombre/Che
OK, nobody, but us cinémaniacs went to see these three vigorous Sundance movies about the firestorm engulfing Latin America, but who cares? Each served as a vivid reminder the American Empire is not only under seige across the Middle East. It is about to explode Down Below as well.
8. Gomorrah
Matteo Garrone’s unsentimental depiction of Neapolitan mobsters’ enterprise of recruiting tots and teens, pregnant women, immigrants into becoming full-blooded criminal entrepreneurs.
9. Che/Girlfriend Experience/The Informant
Steven Soderbergh is just about as original a filmmaker as Hollywood can muster. And he proved it three times out in 2009, each a moviemaking clinic on how Hollywood must make movies, if it hopes to survive digital technology.
10. Cairo Time/Love & Savagery/One Week
Three felicitous reminders that when it comes to making our own movies, some still know how to do it.
When the Hollywood rotational axis occasionally tilts - Intolerance, The Jazz Singer, Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Star Wars come to mind – the seismic tsunami remakes the landscape for all succeeding moviemakers. Don’t miss James Cameron‘s Avatar - see it in 3D Imax. His script may be lame, but Cameron has reinvented moviemaking for the next generation.
2. L’Heure d’été/Un Jour Tu Comprendras/ Entre Les Murs
In Hollywood - to rework a cliché - only the successful movie director is celebrated; in England no movie director is celebrated, and in Canada, nobody knows what a movie director does. But in France all directors are celebrated. From the 1950s nouvelle vague on, the French have instructed us how to think about the aesthetics of moviemaking. These three felicitous reminders, coming out spring 2009, show a nation, still at the top of its cinematic form.
3. Hurt Locker
Katherine Bigelow’s Hurt Locker provided a excruciating depiction of exactly what kind of hell war - and in this case, America's Iraq war - must be. Not since George-Henri Clouzot’s Wages of Fear and/or Spielberg’s Jaws have movie pyrotechnics scared the bejeezus out of me.
4. An Education
Nick Hornby’s felicitous rendering of smirking bourgeois British anti-Semites in 1960, and one teen’s willful self-liberating escape from her own mean and pernicious upbringing.
5. Precious/The Soloist
January 2009, Barak Hussein Obama became America’s 44th President, and we looked upon African-Americans with a new dignity. In the spring, the Jamie Foxx/Rob't Downey Jr. The Soloist did the same. And last month, we met Precious. Only friend Phillipe and I seem to think Precious will win the 2010 Oscar.
6. A Serious Man
Those two skeptical Coen scamps, wondering what their Jewish God must be thinking, torture a dorky Minneapolis prof with all manner of bourgeois afflictions - a philandering wife, dubious children, hostile associates - in order that a trinity of rabbis can expostulate on the wisdom of this divine disorder.
7. Sugar/Sin Nombre/Che
OK, nobody, but us cinémaniacs went to see these three vigorous Sundance movies about the firestorm engulfing Latin America, but who cares? Each served as a vivid reminder the American Empire is not only under seige across the Middle East. It is about to explode Down Below as well.
8. Gomorrah
Matteo Garrone’s unsentimental depiction of Neapolitan mobsters’ enterprise of recruiting tots and teens, pregnant women, immigrants into becoming full-blooded criminal entrepreneurs.
9. Che/Girlfriend Experience/The Informant
Steven Soderbergh is just about as original a filmmaker as Hollywood can muster. And he proved it three times out in 2009, each a moviemaking clinic on how Hollywood must make movies, if it hopes to survive digital technology.
10. Cairo Time/Love & Savagery/One Week
Three felicitous reminders that when it comes to making our own movies, some still know how to do it.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteThis is not a comment on your blog. I am going to be in Montreal this weekend and thought I might contact you. This is the best I could come up with when I googled you. If you get this and want to respond, I am at bill.woloshyn@mcmillan.ca
Bill Woloshyn
I had the great pleasure of attending your March 1, 2010- hommage to Chris Sarandon and Joanna Gleason evening. It was a pure joy. Met with Chris and Joanna in the lobby after the event. I kiddingly remarked to Chris, it seems you never did get the sex change operation, as per Dog Day Afternoon. He excused himself telling me he had to go to the loo.-and hurriedly scampered into the Ladies room,by mistake. He returned looking a bit embarrassed. I did not miss a beat, responding-It seems like LIFE IMMITATING ART.
ReplyDelete