Flickcharting #2 – Rocking my Top 100

Time for more Flickcharting! For those still unfamiliar with the website Flickchart, here’s the gist of it: You’re presented with two random movies. Pick the one you like the most. Repeat until the end of time.

Last time I did this, I had Flickchart pick movies out of all the films I’ve seen. This time, I’m restricting the selections to the films currently in my top 100 on Flickchart – based on all my previous rankings. This should lead to harder decisions, as these 10 match-ups will all be between movies that I love.

Take it away, Flickchart!

Black Swan vs Bridge to Terabithia

Bridge to Terabithia always deserves more love than it currently has. Always. It may be my favorite movie about childhood, and watching it is a wonderful experience. It’s so much better than what the misleading marketing made it seem. So it’s with heavy heart that I can’t give it the win here. Black Swan is such an intense film, and a terrific production in all regards, from the cinematography to the acting. The final scene always leaves me breathless.
Winner: Black Swan

Best Worst Movie vs Take Shelter

There are plenty of things that I like about Best Worst Movie, the documentary on the notoriously bad Troll 2 and its cult following, but one part that really stood out to me was when they visited Margo Prey, who played the mother in Troll 2. At first, I just laughed at how out there she was, but gradually, that gave way to thoughts of “Wow, she’s really in a bad state.” It’s quite the shift from the generally humorous tone of the rest of the documentary. And then you have the scene at the convention, where both the Troll 2 people and the viewers come out of the bubble and are reminded that cult following is not the same thing as wide-spread fame. Two great documentary moments. Now, Take Shelter is a nuanced and engaging movie with a powerhouse performance by Michael Shannon, but I had fonder reactions to BWM.
Winner: Best Worst Movie

The Wrestler vs Little Miss Sunshine

I’ve gone back and forth a bit on Darren Aronofsky‘s The Wrestler since its release. I loved it when I first saw it, but on a subsequent rewatch, I felt the story was a wee bit too familiar, and I docked it a point in my review of it. Since then, my appreciation for it has risen again, largely due to how cleverly it uses its pro wrestling subject matter to create a different vibe from most sports dramas. “Sports”-wise, it’s not about a guy proving that he’s better than others; it’s about a guy willingly putting his health at risk because it’s all he knows how to do. It’s a unique beast, that film. That said, there is nothing in the movie quite as great as the rollercoaster of emotions that is Little Miss Sunshine’s climax, and while Mickey Rourke‘s performance in The Wrestler is worthy of all the praise it has gotten, there is a lot of fun to be had in the many ways the members of Little Miss Sunshine’s ensemble cast interact with each other. Plus, I’m a sucker for comedies.
Winner: Little Miss Sunshine

Hero vs Stranger Than Fiction

This is a case of where I appreciate the two films for very different things: Hero for its jaw dropping visuals and twisty Rashomon-esque storytelling, Stranger Than Fiction for its performances and quirky plot. Hero wins though, because it’s pretty much the most gorgeous-looking movie ever.
Winner: Hero

Life of Pi vs Groundhog Day

Life of Pi was the first movie I ever paid to see more than once in theaters. Like Hero above, it’s a stunning achievement in visual splendor, and the story it tells is one I adore for many reasons. It is, however, sadly lacking in Bill Murray at his best and snarkiest. Groundhog Day also has quite the nostalgia factor for me, which proves to be too much for Life of Pi to overcome.
Winner: Groundhog Day

The Rules of Attraction vs Requiem for a Dream

Flickchart is in an Aronofsky kind of mood today, it seems. Three films in six match-ups so far. Funny, that. Roger Avary’s The Rules of Attraction is a film I enjoy championing, because it rarely gets the credit it deserves – especially next to that other Bret Easton Ellis adaptation American Psycho. It’s great, wickedly funny, kind of alcoholic, and has some real teeth to it. If you haven’t seen it, you’d do well to check it out. Not that it’s better than Requiem for a Dream or anything, however. I saw Requiem early in my cinematic awakening, and it was a real eye-opener to me in terms of what was possible to achieve with directing and editing, not to ention the story that had me totally reeling. As an aside, it’s fun to note that the Victor segment of The Rules of Attraction owes a lot to Requiem’s hip hop montage editing style.
Winner: Requiem for a Dream

The 40-Year-Old Virgin vs Lost in Translation

One of my Flickchart philosophies is that there should be no “automatic” wins. Just because I call Lost in Translation my favorite movie doesn’t mean that the match-up shouldn’t warrant full consideration (in fact, I never would have realized that it was my favorite movie if not for this philosophy, as described here.) So let’s look at the opposition here. The 40-Year-Old Virgin is pretty much the cream of the crop of the Judd Apatow brand of comedy. It’s hilarious, the cast is hitting on all cylinders, and there’s real affection for the main character and his plight. I’d call it one of the finest laugh-out-loud comedies of the 2000s. There. Case made. Lost in Translation is still better. Its meditative nature and profound tale still strikes all the right chords for me, and it keeps growing all the more relevant to me for every year as I traverse the age gap between Charlotte and Bob.
Winner: Lost in Translation

High Fidelity vs The Ice Storm

Two movies about relationships here. Well, kind of. High Fidelity very much is, whereas The Ice Storm focuses more on a specific time and place (70s American suburbia) and the way people and families operated during this era. The Ice Storm is arguably the deeper of the two, and its approach to its themes is impressive considering that it’s directed by non-American Ang Lee. Even so, High Fidelity is a movie I find more relatable, and its blend of outright comedy and introspection is handled wonderfully. Having read Nick Hornby‘s source novel, I’m also in awe of what a skillful adaptation it is. Oh, and it has Jack Black‘s best performance ever.
Winner: High Fidelity

Man on the Moon vs Forrest Gump

Oh, this is a tough one. My gut reaction is to go with Forrest Gump due to its emotional and touching story, but the more I think about it, the more I lean towards the Andy Kaufman biopic. It’s the one movie where I can actually forget that I’m watching Jim Carrey, as he does a great job of inhabiting the Kaufman character. Compare this to Forrest Gump, which is more a case of “Tom Hanks is sure acting the hell out of this movie.”
Winner: Man on the Moon

The Woodsman vs American Beauty

Remember how I said that Lost in Translation is the movie I tend to call my favorite? Well, that used to be American Beauty, which to this day holds a special place in my heart. The Woodsman, on the other hand, is the film that made me a certified Kevin Bacon fan through his stunning performance as Walter. Both movies deal with the touchy subject matter of adult men lusting after younger girls, with The Woodsman fully focused on this whereas American Beauty has this as just one aspect of main character Lester’s mid-life crisis – and said crisis is still just one part of everything 1999’s Best Picture winner deals with. This thematic multitasking is part of what I like so much about it. The Woodsman is a more harrowing film, and certainly the more fearless one, but superior to American Beauty it is not.
Winner: American Beauty

Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments!

 

Scene of Awesome: “Do I need to worry about you, Bob?”

One of my favorite observations from the late great Roger Ebert appears in his review of Lost in Translation. In it, he wrote: “you can only say ‘I feel like I’ve known you for years’ to someone you have not known for years.” It’s the irony of how sometimes you’re able to have deeper conversations with people you’ve only just met than with those you’ve known all your life. With no mutual baggage, discussion is free to soar between you. This is of course an important part of Sofia Coppola‘s masterpiece, in which Bill Murray‘s Bob and Scarlett Johansson‘s Charlotte encounter one another in a hotel bar in Tokyo and together discover how lost they are in their lives. The two connect is a wonderful way, but they know it’s a temporary thing. Perhaps that knowledge is what allows the connection to happen at all.

The other side of the coin is that we can feel distant to the people we have known well for a long time. This too is part of the film for both main characters. With Charlotte, it can be seen in how little time she and her husband (Giovanni Ribisi) get to spend with one another, but it’s also shown in an early scene where she phones home to a friend and talks about how visiting a shrine didn’t make her feel anything. The conversation reaches an abrupt end. She has a need for deeper discussion, but it feels awkward.

Similar ground is explored with Bob later on in the film, and it’s one of my favorite scenes of Lost in Translation. Bob is in a bath, getting a phonecall from the woman he has been married to for the past 25 years. Bob is going through a midlife crisis; he has probably been aware of this himself for a while – he seems prone to introspection – but spending time with Charlotte has made it more tangible to him. He wants to change things in his life. He tries to communicate this to his wife, and you can really feel how he’s struggling to get the right word out. But he can’t do it. All he can muster up is how he wants to eat healthier food, to which he gets a snippy response about how maybe he should just stay in Tokyo if things are so great there. Then he asks how their kids are doing, to which he gets the reply that they miss their dad but are getting used to him not being around. Ouch.

And then this wonderful exchange happens.

“Do I need to worry about you, Bob?”

“Only if you want to.”

Nothing dramatic. No anger. No tears. Just calm resignation. This is Bob’s life.

 

14 actors I really dig

There’s a bit of a meme going on in Swedish film blogging circles. The idea is simple: list your seven favorite male and female actors. I’m participating too, although loosely. I’m not saying these are my very favorites, as that tends to change from day to day and I might have forgotten someone. These are, however, seven men and seven women whose work I really enjoy, either because they constantly deliver great performances, or because they possess some hard-to-define quality that makes my brain happily go “ding!” whenever I spot their names on a cast list.

First, some honorable mentions…

Kevin Spacey: Had I written this post 10 years ago, he’d be a shoo-in for sure. Alas, he hasn’t had many truly great roles lately.
Kirsten Dunst: She has been underrated ever since she lit up the screen in Interview with the Vampire in 1994, and only recently has she started getting the critical acclaim she deserves.
Al Pacino: Another one whose heyday is behind him, Pacino has tons of maniacally energetic performances on his CV.
Rosario Dawson: Effortlessly charming, possibly the hottest woman on this planet, and probably with her best work still ahead of her.
Jason Statham: The bona fide action star of the millennium.
Ellen Page: At 25 years of age, she has already amassed a number of impressive lead and supporting roles. What does the future hold for her?

On to the list proper. This is in randomly generated order.

Catherine Keener

When I watch Keener play one of her evil characters, I can not imagine here ever being good. When I watch her play one of her good characters, I can not imagine her ever being evil. Her impressive range is perhaps her strongest quality and she has proven to only get better with age. When she got her first Oscar nomination for playing manipulative seductress Maxine in Being John Malkovich, she was already 40 years old. Since then – and before – she has kept putting in affecting performances no matter how small or large a part she plays.

3 great performances
Living in Oblivion – pulling off the difficult task of acting like you’re acting, both badly and well.
Being John Malkovich – toying with John Cusack with equal measures of bitchy and funny.
An American Crime – playing one of the most despicable abusive mothers in recent history.

Anthony Hopkins

While there is a lot to be said for physical transformations and chameleon actors who are nigh-unrecognizable from one film to the next, perhaps even more impressive is someone like Hopkins. He always looks more or less the same, and yet he disappears into roles like few others. A master of mannerisms, body language, and voice, Hopkins portrays clearly defined characters utterly convincingly. Never one to turn down a paycheck, he appears in many films that might not make full use of his talents, but you will never see him slumming it or sleep-walking through a role. Hopkins always delivers.

3 great performances
The Silence of the Lambs – somehow making a mere 16 minutes of screen time into the one thing people associate the film with.
The Remains of the Day – redefining “emotionally restrained”.
The World’s Fastest Indian – completely inhabiting a man jovially dead-set on accomplishing his dream.

 

On the subject of rewatching movies

Before my recent apartment move, I had limited space for my movie collection. As my number of DVDs and Blu-Rays increased, the stacks on the shelves grew higher and higher. Soon enough, I couldn’t fit any new purchases on there. I came up with a system: whenever I watched a new film that needed to go on a shelf, I would pick out one film that I wanted to rewatch and put it in a pile near my TV. Every now and then, I’d rewatch one from that pile, and then send it back to the shelf and pick out a new rewatch candidate. As you can probably figure out, this didn’t really solve any of my storage issues; it was mainly a justification to let my collection spill out from the shelves. “Oh, those films are piled on the floor by the TV just because I intend to rewatch them soon.” My new living quarters have given me more room and shelf space, but I still keep a section reserved for films I intend to revisit soon enough. At the moment, it’s inhabited by Children of Men, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Into the Wild, and others.

On the rewatch queue

Everyone has their own opinion on the subject of rewatching films. Some enjoy discovering new things in films they like, trying to understand what others see in a movie that left themselves indiffierent, or just taking a trip down memory lane to an old favorite. Others rarely bother, feeling that experiencing something new and uncharted is a better investment of their time. I belong to the former camp. I love rewatching films.

I came across a passage last night while reading David Gilmour‘s autobiographical book “The Film Club”. It said that the second time we see a movie is the first time we truly see it. On the first go, we tend to focus more on the story and engross ourselves in the narrative. What’s happening? What’s going to happen next? Will the boy get the girl? Will the hero triumph? What’s in the box? We seek the answers to these questions, so that’s where our attention lies.

Once we’ve already seen the film and know the answers, we are free to think about everything else in the movie: the performances, the cinematography, the themes, etcetera. These things are of course very possible to take in on the initial viewing too, but there’s more room for them when knowing how the story goes.

An example I often use when talking about rewatching films is the Coens. With their off-beat kind of humor and genre-blending stories, their films always grow more enjoyable and impressive on rewatches. I wrote a review for No Country for Old Men some time ago where I managed to delve deeper into the movie than when I first saw it some years ago. (Looking at that review now, I apparently wrote in essence the very same things I’ve talked about so far in this blog post. Oops.) The past week, I’ve revisited both their debut film Blood Simple and Barton Fink, and while the latter only barely follows the rule – the climax and ending are just as maddening as always – Blood Simple definitely improved for me. That one has a story that’s simultaneously straight-forward and twisting, and the atmosphere is palpable.

There are other examples too of movies improving when plot isn’t what you’re spending most attention on. A History of Violence is a good one. Trainspotting, too. And Repulsion! I found that one terrifying the first time I saw it, but “only” gave it a score of 4/5 as I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. A second watch down the road – while closely scrutinizing it for the purpose of a blog post – allowed me to take in the thematic stuff along with the scariness, as well as letting me admire the beautiful black & white images. Nowadays, I’d call Repulsion a strong contender for being my favorite horror film ever.

Every reason to post a picture of Catherine Deneuve is a good one.

There are different ways for rewatches to improve a movie, though. Sometimes knowing how the story plays out can make a film better because we can appreciate just how the story builds to its conclusion, rather than allowing us to think about non-story stuff. For instance, take Fight Club. I remember seeing it back in the day without knowing anything about it, and was taken completely by surprise by the twist ending. Watching it nowadays, I keep finding new things that cleverly hint at the reveal, to the point where I wonder how I ever couldn’t have seen it coming. It’s highly impressive. That said, Fight Club has lots of other things to make it enjoyable on rewatches as well, such as the filthy sets and the hilarious dialogue.

There’s also the case of your own taste evolving the further you grow as a movie lover. This is something I’m very much in touch with, having only gotten into movies a few years ago. The more I see and explore, the more diverse films I find myself appreciating. Lost in Translation is an example I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog already, as it went from “meh, boring” to my current favorite film. The fact that the film doesn’t have much of a conventional narrative might have turned me off somewhat when I was mainly a casual watcher, but once I knew that nothing happened in the film, I could start seeing just how rich it is.

As Bill Murray‘s character says in the movie: “The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

This goes for watching films as well.

 

Fifty Wishes

John LaRue over at TDYLF recently wrote a fun blog post called Fifty Wishes, which was just that: fifty things he wished for when it came to movies. I really like the idea, so I decided to steal swipe borrow it for a post of my own. Make sure to head over to John’s blog and read the original post as well, though; he’s a great writer.

There may be some mild spoilers for certain movies in this list, but I’ve done my best to limit it to things that are either fairly common knowledge or what can be reasonably expected. Still, if you don’t want to know how Rocky ends, proceed at own peril.

(I’d like to apologize preemptively for any grammar mistakes. I pride myself on having a good grasp of the English language for someone who doesn’t have it as his primary tongue. However, “wish” is a tricky thing grammatically, and while I have tried to look up what verb forms to use, I’ve probably messed up here and there anyway.)

1. I wish Shannyn Sossamon were a major star.

2. I wish David Fincher will find better use for his considerable talent than directing the sequels to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

3. I wish to someday get the chance to see the unreleased Glitterati.

4. I wish I had gotten interested in movies earlier.

5. I wish all films ever made were available through digital distribution all over the world.

6. I wish there were a wider range of theaters around where I live.

7. I wish the story in Nine were as good as some of the song numbers.

8. I wish more screenwriters had the level of imagination that Charlie Kaufman has.

9. I wish I “got” war movies and westerns.

10. I wish Julie Delpy‘s plans to stop acting don’t come into effect before there’s a sequel to Before Sunset.

11. I wish Amélie lives happily ever after.