83) Run, Lola, Run

Lola rennt (1998)

Director: Tom Tykwer

Starring: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Nina Petri, Armin Rohde

I thought I'd try and sneak one more film in before the end of the month as it's been a relatively slow month for movie viewing for me. I wanted something short, because I didn't have a lot of time, so grabbed Run, Lola, Run. I'd bought Run, Lola, Run ages ago but had never got around to watching it. Sometimes the idea of subtitles just seems exhausting. But after Ong-Bak I was up for it so gave it a go.

At 11:40am Lola (Potente) gets a phone call from her boyfriend Manni (Bleibtreu). His drug deal has gone horribly wrong. In a moment of panic he jumped off the train, leaving behind the back containing 100,000 Deutschmarks. He is convinced that he's a dead man when his boss arrives soon to collect. She now has 20 minutes to try and find 100,000 Deutschmarks and get it to Manni, or he is going to try and rob a nearby convenience store. Run, Lola, run!

European subtitled movies have certain connotations. We often assume they are going to be heavy, maybe a bit artistic, a lot of the time dramatic. One thing which I know that I personally have never associated with European subtitled movies is action, but a European subtitled action movie is exactly what you get with Tykwer's German film, Run, Lola, Run.

The key feature of the film which made this film notable when it came out, and still makes it worth seeing, is it's unique narrative structure. In Run, Lola, Run we get the same story told three times, in three different versions. Each telling starts with Lola receiving the phone call from Manni and then heading off to try and get her hands on 100,000 Deutschmarks but in each version slightly different things happen; she might make a different decision or an interaction with someone may go in a different direction, and each of these little differences alter the way the story ends up. It's really interesting to watch, because her journey from her apartment to Manni is made up of five or six key moments which appear in each retelling, but every time we come to those moments we get them slightly differently. It's kind of like that whole 'a butterfly flaps its wings on ones side of the world which causes a cyclone on the other' idea of the littlest things having big impacts. But the fact that the film is effectively three short films, each documenting Lola's 20 minute charge to try and find the money, gives the film a really pulsing sense of kinetic energy. Run, Lola, Run really is non-stop motion. You can maintain that high level of energy for 25mins in a way that is very difficult to do for 75mins, but by effectively replaying those 25mins three times you end up with 75mins that really pulse with energy.

Because the film is short (75mins is a short for a feature film, even more so when you consider the film is really 3 x 25mins) there is not a lot of time for character development. These characters don't undergo a transformation, they don't learn lessons, there are no character arcs. But what is amazing is that Tykwer is able to do just enough in fleshing out these characters that we care about them and grow sufficiently attached to them to be emotionally invested in their success.

Tykwer uses a number of different techniques in the film. There is an animation sequence which appears in all three of the tellings, in which Lola runs down the stairs of her apartment building past a man with a dog, there are also black and white sequences and fast and slow motion moments. But the most interesting stylistic device Tykwer employs is what he called "Now and Then" moments. A few times in the film Lola will run into a person and then in about three seconds we will get half a dozen quick stills accompanied by the sound of a camera flashing, in which we see a glimpse into that minor characters future. For example, for one character we see him having a bad accident on his bicycle, going to hospital, meeting a nurse their, going on a date, and getting married. These are really interesting little moments in the film because they each concern completely minor characters, but manage to flesh them out and make something of them. Also, like the other events of the story, these flash-forwards can change depending on the how their interaction with Lola changed.

This was a really fast paced, high energy movie. It's a subtitled movie for people who hate subtitled movies. I'm amazed that a Hollywood studio hasn't tried to remake it.

82) Ong-Bak

Ong-Bak (2003)

Director: Prachya Pinkaew

Starring: Tony Jaa, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Pumwaree Yodkamol, Suchao Pongwilai, Cheathavuth Watcharakhun, Wannakit Sirioput

For the last week and a bit I've been a bit snowed under with essay marking, so didn't watch a movie for nine days (that's the longest I've gone in a while). My brother is a big fan of martial arts movies and lent me one from his private collection which he highly recommended, Ong-Bak. I haven't seen a lot of proper martial arts movies so for the sake of variety was keen to give this one a look.

Ting (Jaa) lives in a small and peaceful village which has been ravaged by drought. They are preparing for the upcoming anniversary vigil in which they will be blessed with rain, but these plans are thrown into chaos when the head of their sacred statue of Ong-Bak, central to the vigil, is stolen by a young villager called Don (Sirioput) who is trying to gain favour with Bangkok crime lord, Khom Tuan (Pongwilai). Ting is sent by the village to the seedy underbelly of Bangkok to recover their Ong-Bak. He meets up with George (Wongkamlao), a son of one of the villagers, who now lives in Bangkok. But George has been corrupted by the city doesn't seem interested in helping. That is until he sees Ting fight and realises that there could be money made off him. By fighting at underground boxing gatherings Ting is able to work his way into the Bangkok underworld and closer to retrieving Ong-Bak.

The big selling point for Ong-Bak is the fact that all of the action sequences are real, the film's tagline was: "No stunt doubles, no computer graphics, no strings attached", and I must admit that there is something quite refreshing about seeing legitimate action without CGI or camera trickery. Pinkaew shoots Ong-Bak in such a way that there can be no mistaking the fact that everything we are seeing is legit. Each flying kick, flip or combo that Jaa performs is shot in one single extended shot which captures the whole move, rather than the Hollywood style which we are used to from Hollywood films in which the one move is presented through the cutting together of half a dozen different shots in order make things look a bit more impressive than they may have appeared otherwise. Having the film shot this way means that you can't help but marvel at the physical ability of Jaa. Highlights include a chase scene in which Jaa jumps over numerous cars, leaps through a coil of barbed wire and slides under a moving truck, and a later fight scene in which his legs get set alight and he proceeds to dispatch of an opponent with a series of flaming kicks before dousing the flames. Pinkaew assists us in our marvelling by incorporating a technique quite common in Bruce Lee movies, the instant replay of a particularly impressive stunt from different angles, confirming that the martial arts, Muay Thai boxing to be specific, is really what this film is all about.

A lot of the publicity material surrounding Ong-Bak made comparisons between Jaa and Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, claiming Jaa was the heir apparent. I haven't seen any of Bruce Lee's films, but I've seen a fair bit of Jackie Chan and I'll say this: Tony Jaa has all of the physical ability of Jackie Chan with none of the charisma. I found that as much as I was impressed with the things that he was doing, there was nothing engaging about him as an actor. His character was really two-dimensional and simply uninteresting. Obviously the filmmakers knew Jaa's limitations in preparing the project because while all of the films action sequences revolve around him, none of the films overly emotional moments feature him. The character who we really watch go through a journey, or what we would consider a traditional character arc, is Wongkamlao's George. His is the character who develops and changes. Jaa's is the character who punches and kicks.

While the film is really about devoting as much time to action as possible, there is a plot there, but it is of minimal importance. The early scenes in the village establish the plot through some excruciatingly bad exposition. Almost every line in the early scenes have no purpose other than to explain things to the audience; the importance of the Ong-Bak statue, the deadliness of Muay Thai fighting, Ting's vow not to fight for money, and so on. It is hard to know, when you are watching a film with subtitles, whether the dialogue is as stilted in the original language or whether it has lost something in translation, but there don't appear to have been too many drafts written of the script before they found something they could work with. After we've left the village the plot takes a back seat, with only the occasional line to remind us the reason Ting is in Bangkok.

Ong-Bak was the first Thai film to really break through in the martial arts movie market. It proved to be quite successful, spawning two sequels, Ong-Bak 2: The Beginning and Ong-Bak 3, both of which Tony Jaa co-directed. Really, it makes sense to have Jaa directing given the films are pretty much about him and his stunts. Cut out the middle man.

The plot is decent, but unimportant. The dialogue is woeful and the acting is only fractionally better, but who cares. It doesn't matter. That's not what Ong-Bak is about. Ong-Bak is about action and the film delivers bucket loads of it. Ong-Bak was a real reboot for the flagging martial arts film industry and is a must see for action fans. If you're not really a martial arts fan, there's not a lot else there, but that being said I'm not a big martial arts guy either and I couldn't help but be impressed by the physical feats on display.

81) Ratatouille

Ratatouille (2007)

Director: Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava (co-director)

Starring: Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy, Peter Sohn, Peter O'Toole, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo, Will Arnett, John Ratzenberger

After putting myself through the wringer watching Crash, I decided that I needed to watch something nice and light to clear my mind of unsavoury images of car crash fetishists. You don't get much nicer and lighter than Pixar so I decided to go with one which I first watched while standing behind the counter at Blockbuster, and had been meaning to watch ever since to see if it was as good as I remembered it being from the half-watching I gave it while working, Ratatouille.

Remy (Oswalt) is a rat with an incredible sense of taste. This superior palette is a curse because it means that he can not be satisfied with the garbage which makes up a rat's staple diet. He dreams of being a chef, and after being separated from his family while fleeing the country house they once lived in, he finds himself in Paris, at the restaurant which belonged to his hero, chef Auguste Gusteau. The restaurant's reputation was tarnished when it received a scathing review from influential food critic Anton Ego, and following the death of Gusteau is now run by Skinner, who trades off the Gusteau name by attaching it to everything from burritos to hot dogs. Remy, with the help of Gusteau, who appears to him as an Obi-Wan Kenobi type spirit, puts his culinary skills to work to fix a soup which has been destroyed by kitchen-hand, Linguini, who in turn recieves the credit when the soup wins rave reviews from customers and critics. Linguini is promoted to a cook, but is aware that it was Remy that actually posesses the ability, so the two of them must then work out how to communicate and cooperate if they are going to make the most of the opportunity that has been placed before them.

One thing I love about Pixar's films is that they do an amazing job of selecting their voice actors. Dreamworks, Pixar's main competitor in the animation game, really tries to sell their movies on the back of the big names in the voice cast: the Shrek series with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderes, John Lithgow, Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Justin Timberlake, Shark Tale had Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renee Zellweger, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Martin Scorsese, Kung Fu Panda had Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu and Ian McShane (not quite sure how much overlap there was between Kung Fu Panda fans and Deadwood fans, but you can't count it out). Pixar, on the other hand, doesn't seem to use their voice actors as a key part of their marketing strategy. This frees them up to choose people on the basis of the suitability of their voice, even if they aren't a sellable name, and as a result really strengthens the characterisation in the films. Ratatouille is a fantastic example of this. In this case they have given the main roles to two relatively small names in Oswalt and Romano, both of whom fit the characters to a tee. Then, the 'names' that they do have in the cast; Holm, O'Toole, are there because they offer a specific quality. Then the rest of the cast is fleshed out with actors with very distinctive voices like Dennehy, Garrett, Arnett Garofalo, and, of course, John Ratzenberger (Cliff Claven for Cheers fans), who holds the honour of having appeared as a voice actor in every Disney-Pixar film.

The detail in the image that you get with Pixar is just amazing. The images that they put on the screen are genuinely beautiful. In the case of Ratatouille you not only get these breathtaking, postcard-like images of a surreal Paris, you also get completely digitised food which manages to look delicious, which I'm assuming is no mean feat.

It was funny watching this in the midst of Masterchef fever. I'm used to watching cooking on television now, but as I'm watching Linguini and Remy cooking in Ratatouille I found myself wanting more explanation. What was he cooking? What was that spice he just put in? The people say they love it. What do they love about it? Bird probably does not intend for people to view the cooking scenes as though they were instructional videos, but I found I couldn't help it. Masterchef has conditioned me that way.

Ratatouille was Brad Bird's third film, after The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. It appears that he is about to get his shot with live-action filmmaking, with his name being attached as the director for Mission Impossible 4. That may seem like quite a leap from animation to live-action, like it would require a completely different skill set, but when you watch Bird's animated films you can see they have a real live-action quality to them. As a director of animation, Bird is very much an artist rather than a technician, displaying a real knack for things like shot composition, which you don't always see in animated films.

Ratatouille didn't quite have the profile that Finding Nemo and The Incredibles did before it, of Wall-E and Up had after it, but it definitely belongs in that group (it is no let down like Cars). An interesting stepping stone from The Incredibles to the more adventurous projects of Wall-E and Up, Ratatouille is a real gem of a movie.

80) Crash

Crash (1996)


Director: David Cronenberg

Starring: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arquette


David Cronenberg's Crash is not to be confused with Paul Haggis's Crash, the one which pipped Brokeback Mountain for the Best Picture Oscar a few years back. If you mix the two up, you are in for a rude shock. The tagline for Cronenberg's film reads: "The Most Controversial Film You Will Ever See", and I tell you what, it isn't kidding.

James (Spader) and Catherine Ballard (Kara Unger) are a married couple who rely on recounting the details of their infidelities to each other in order to maintain some sort of flame in their sex life. Driving home one evening, James causes a car accident in which leads to the hospitalisation of Dr. Helen Remington (Hunter) and the death of her husband as well as his own hospitalisation. In subsequent encounters between the two, James discovers that Helen is strangely aroused by the sense of thrill and danger of car accidents. She takes him to a secret, underground performance/reenactment of the car crash which took the life of James Dean. The mastermind of this performance, Vaughan (Koteas), was once a scientist, but after being disfigured in a car accident has become obsessed with the fusing of man and machine that takes place in car accidents. Vaughan welcomes Helen and James, who in turn invites Catherine, into his society of like minded fetishists.

Ok, so I knew that Crash was supposed to be a very confronting and highly controversial film, and I knew roughly the area that it would be exploring. But I also knew that it was supposed to be a pretty good film. It won the Jury Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme D'or, and there is a book in the BFI Modern Classics series published on it. So despite knowing what sort of stuff to expect, I figured that I'm not usually all that squeamish when it comes to sex, violence, etc on screen so I figured I'd check it out. But woah!

This movie is full on, and it is full on from the very beginning. There are three sex scenes and one car crash in the first 7 minutes and it pretty much continues at that rate for the whole film. But for a film which contains a great number of sex scenes and sexual themes it should be noted that there is absolutely nothing sexy about this film. However, the film is not really seeking to be sexy. It is, rather, an exploration of the psychology behind fetishes, the compulsion which draws you to do things which defy all common sense and inhibition, and it does this by choosing a fetish so outrageous and hyperbolic that it becomes unrelatable. As a viewer you are not really invited into the mind of the characters. Rather than seeking to engage the viewer in the fetishistic behaviour, Cronenberg seems determined to make Crash an anti-erotic film. So a warning, don't come into this film expecting titillation, because the sexual content is more likely to make you feel sick than aroused. I think the moment that tips it for me is a sex scene between James and Gabrielle (Arquette) in which it is suggested that he uses the gaping wound on her leg that she sustained in a crippling car accident as a faux-vagina. Yep, that's the sort of gear we're dealing with here.

I will make special mention of the performance of Elias Koteas as Vaughan. Koteas is not a name or a face which will spark recognition for a lot of people. I certainly didn't know who he was, though having done a bit of research I see that he played Laeddis in the brilliant Shutter Island and possibly even more notably he played Casey Jones in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. But his performance in Crash has an incredibly intensity. There was something about his face, the way he talked, the way he moved, which really made me think of early Robert De Niro. I'm talking De Niro around the time of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, although the connection with the face is probably more related to De Niro's performance as the creature in Frankenstein. The character of Vaughan is just awful, he is grotesque, but the performance of Koteas is very strong.

It has been a long time since I've watched a film which I wanted to walk away from as badly as I did this one, and were it longer than 95mins I may well have. I cannot in good conscience recommend Crash to anyone. It's not that it is a badly made movie, it's won it's fair share of awards and perfectly achieves what it sets out to achieve, it is just a movie which is impossible to enjoy.

79) Broadcast News

Broadcast News (1987)

Director: James L. Brooks

Starring: Holly Hunter, William Hurt, Albert Brooks, Robert Prosky, Lois Chiles, Joan Cusack, Peter Hackes, Christian Clemenson, Jack Nicholson

I'm in the middle of marking final essays for Introduction to Cinema but have come down sick so have decided to take the afternoon off and watch a movie. Broadcast News has been sitting on my shelf for a while now and when I think what should I watch today, it always comes up but I've never actually sat down and watched it. Given how I was feeling today though, something a bit lighter was exactly what I needed so it got the call up.

Network news producer Jane Craig (Hunter) and her best friend, reporter Aaron Altman (Brooks) are outraged when their superiors hire the un-credentialed pretty-boy Tom Grunnick (Hurt) to be a reporter, in a move that represents the industry-wide trend towards entertainment news they both despise. Tom is aware that he is grossly unqualified to do his job, so relies heavily on Jane to help him get by. Tom wows the network heads with a report he files on rape victims which ultimately earns him the call up, leapfrogging Aaron to anchor a special bulletin regarding a military action in Libya. With the help of Jane, who talks him through the broadcast step by step through his earpiece, Tom is a hit. Much to her disgust Jane finds that she is actually falling for Tom, only to have Aaron throw a spanner in the works by declaring his love for her. On top of all that, the network has ordered the news division to cut over $20million from its budget so massive layoffs lie ahead.

James L. Brooks is a big name, but probably not as big as he should be. He doesn't have the instant recognition that names like Woody Allen have, but the guy is an absolute gun. As a writer, director and/or producer his name is attached to films including As Good as it Gets, Terms of Endearment, Big and Jerry Maguire and television shows including Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and, of course, The Simpsons. His specialty seems to be romantic comedies, but the romantic comedies that he makes have a bit more depth than what you often get from what can be a very shallow genre. This is obvious when you consider that Broadcast News received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, As Good As it Gets won two Oscars and received a further five nominations and Terms of Endearment won five Oscars, including Best Picture and received another six nominations (note I am intentionally choosing not to refer to the performance of Spanglish).

In Broadcast News, Brooks takes his romantic comedy narrative and plonks it in the middle of a quite interesting context. Not only are we watching Jane trying to sort out her personal life, we are watching her trying to deal with the fact that her professional life, which has been everything to her, is changing. In Broadcast News, Jane and Aaron have to deal with the fact that the integrity of television journalism is being compromised, becoming infotainment in the name of ratings. As you watch Jane lament the fact that every national news network reported on a domino train world record attempt while overlooking a major congress ruling, you can't help but consider the nature of today's news broadcasting, where an report on laundry liquid or fad diets or dole bludgers, or the announcement of the contestants for the next series of Dancing with the Stars passes as current affairs. Broadcast News stands alongside Network as a brilliant exploration of the changing nature, or the corruption, of television.

Broadcast News may seem to have a reasonably generic love-triangle formula, but Brooks actually does something a bit different with it. The usual formula calls for the girl to be torn between the likable loser friend (see Ducky from Pretty in Pink) and the dreamy heart-throb (Blane in Pretty in Pink, although watching that movie, Andrew McCarthy reminded me too much of Gene Wilder for me to take him seriously as a heart-throb). However, in this case Brooks has provided a variant on the theme, in that the loser best friend is also a bit of an arrogant jerk and there's very little that is likable about him, while the dreamy heart-throb is quite humble and self-effacing. So while we still feel sorry for Aaron because Jane doesn't seem to realise that he's been there the whole time, we still don't want them to end up together because he's a tool.

The weakest point of the film is an unnecessary epilogue which brings the three main characters back together a few years down the track. It feels just a little forced, and as though Brooks could not work out what note to finish the film on. It's a shame because up until that point it has been really good.

The film has a nice little cameo from Jack Nicholson as network news anchor, Bill Rorich. I suppose the role is slightly more than a cameo, it just feels like one because with the exception of one scene towards the end of the film where Jack's character shows up, he is only ever seen on monitors. Jack Nicholson has done quite nicely out of his working relationship with James L. Brooks. In fact two of Nicholson's three Oscars have come from parts written and directed by Brooks (1984 Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment and 1998 Best Actor for As Good as it Gets). Nicholson is obviously aware of the debt he owes to Brooks as he will make his first first screen appearance in three years when he appears alongside Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson in James L. Brooks' upcoming romantic comedy Everything You've Got.

Broadcast News is a really clever film and the themes that it explores are as relevant now as they were when it was made. It does what James L. Brooks does best, romantic comedy that provides something more than fluff.

78) Avatar

Avatar (2009)

Director: James Cameron

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel Moore, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, CCH Pounder


Tonight Turramurra Uniting Church held its second Reel Dialogue for the year. This time the film was James Cameron's super-epic Avatar.

In 2154, a mining corporation sets up on the far off moon of Pandora, a rich source of the very expensive mineral, unobtainium. Pandora is inhabited by and indigenous race called the Na'vi, so as well as the miners, a research team is present to learn about the Na'vi. Paraplegic ex-marine Jake Sully (Worthington) is brought to Pandora to join Dr. Grace Augustine's (Weaver) research team as a replacement for his murdered identical twin brother. Because he is genetically identical to his brother he is able to control his avatar, an organically grown Na'vi lookalike which can be controlled by their human drivers from the main base. While in his avatar, Jake meets Neytiri (Saldana), the princess of the Na'vis, who after a sign from their god Eywa is ordered to teach Jake about their way of life. The mining corporation has hired mercenaries, under the command of Col. Quaritch (Lang), to clear out the Na'vi people if the research team cannot encourage them to relocate peacefully. The more Jake learns about the Na'vi, the closer he becomes to Neytiri, and the nearer the mining corporations deadline draws, the more conflicted he becomes about just whose side he is on.

There is nothing original about the story that Cameron is telling. Avatar is Pocahontas (Exhibit A) is Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest is Dances with Wolves is The Last Samurai with a just a pinch of Return of the Jedi for taste. But despite its familiarity it is still a good story, and a story which enables Cameron to explore some interesting areas. For a film which, with all its bells and whistles and massive budget, looks on the surface like everything we think Hollywood is, it contains a very 'un-American' message. The film not only has a very strong environmental message but also a very strong cultural imperialism message, with Pandora's Na'vi seeming to represent every Indigenous people group ever to have been trampled by a Western power. While there is nothing subtle about the way in which Cameron gets his point across, the film has been criticised for being overly preachy, Avatar none the less leaves you with a lot to think about.

In a film which is full of less than brilliant performances, highlighted by Joel Moore's rubbishy character who seems to have no purpose other than exposition - 'Yes! We're going to the Floating Mountains! What's that you say? You've never heard of the Floating Mountains? Well let me explain...' (slightly paraphrased) - credit has to go to Zoe Saldana, who is brilliant as Neytiri. She puts in an amazingly powerful performance which really enables you to connect emotionally with a computer generated character.

Avatar has gone absolutely gangbusters at the box-office and now sits at the top of the pile as the highest grossing film of all time (although if you want to be a stickler you can cry foul about the influence of inflation on those lists. It is no coincidence that there are only three films in the top twenty that are pre-2000), but it really hasn't been a the pop culture phenomenon that you'd expect. The whole Avatar thing has given me an even greater appreciation for just how huge Star Wars was in 1977. There are obvious similarities between Avatar and Star Wars in terms of what they offered. Both were special effects driven, science fiction extravaganzas which offered cinema-goers something they'd never seen before. Both dealt with spiritual themes. Both were kind of lacking in terms of dialogue and performance. Yet Star Wars was an absolute pop culture phenomenon in a way that Avatar hasn't been. Avatar hasn't invaded the lexicon the way Star Wars did, you don't hear people talking about 'Eywa' the way they talk about 'the Force', and it's images don't seem to be quite as iconic. What is Avatar's light saber or Death Star or Millennium Falcon or Darth Vader? I just don't get the impression that Avatar is going to be a film that defines a generation like Star Wars was.

What I'd like to know is how did Sam Worthington suddenly become the must have man for action franchises? He's been around for a while and had carved himself out a decent niche in the Australian film industry, and then all of a sudden he manages to land not one, but three big time blockbusters in the space of two years. Terminator Salvation, Avatar and then Clash of the Titans. Now two of those movies may have sucked, but that doesn't alter the fact that they were three legitimate, big-big budget blockbusters. Whoever Sam Worthington's agent is, they are earning their money.

One last thought, James Cameron spent 15 years working on bringing Avatar to the screen and spent almost US$300 million. You'd think he could have devoted perhaps two minutes to thinking up a better name than 'unobtainium'. I mean, honestly, why not just call it 'hardtofindium'.

Avatar is not as good second time around, or maybe it is just not as good without the 3D, huge screen and digital surround sound of the cinema (Avatar is the one of only two films I've seen, the other being Coraline, which I think have benefited from being in 3D). That is not to say that it is not a good film, just that while the visuals are still impressive you don't get lost in them like you did at the cinema, and as a result some of the other areas where the film is obviously lacking - primarily in the dialogue and acting - come to the fore a bit more. It is still an amazing achievement and a great film, but will never be included in the canon of cinematic masterpieces, and a few months after the event I'm glad it didn't win the Best Picture Oscar because I don't think it deserved it.

77) The A-Team

The A-Team (2010)

Director: Joe Carnahan

Starring: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson, Gerald McRaney, Brian Bloom

I was never a die hard fan of The A-Team television show. I hadn't grown up with it. I'd discovered it in my teens and found it to be quite enjoyable, but for some reason I was reasonably excited by the prospect of an A-Team movie. My excitement grew when I saw the trailer for The A-Team, even though the trailer gave no real indication whether the movie was going to be amazing or awful. Kate has finished her classes for the semester so now has Thursday evenings free and had an exam yesterday so was keen to relax so we thought we'd catch an opening night screening (like Iron Man 2 it looked like her kind of movie. Fun action where when people get shot they just fall over dead rather than bleed everywhere).

An Alpha Unit, or A-Team, of Iraq War vets under the command of Hannibal Smith (Neeson), who specialise in missions of a more outrageous nature are given the job of recovering a set of engraving plates and bills from Baghdad which could be used to counterfeit millions of dollars worth of US currency. When the mission goes horribly wrong and the plates are stolen, Hannibal and his team; Templeton 'Face' Peck (Cooper), Bosco 'B.A.' Baracus (Jackson) and 'Howling Mad' Murdock (Copley), are charged, convicted, dishonourably discharged and locked up in four separate maximum security facilities by a military court. Hannibal and his team break out of prison in order to go after the true thieves so they can clear their records and be reinstated.

Often when a film version of a popular television show is made something gets lost in translation. In taking everything to a new level and giving it the Hollywood treatment the filmmakers seem determined to take things more seriously or make it "darker", and in doing so forget what it was that made the show popular in the first place. In the case of The A-Team, Carnahan has done a wonderful job of upping the ante with the addition of some big name stars and big budget effects without losing the sense of light-hearted fun which made The A-Team such an enjoyable show. The action scenes remain largely bloodless, there is minimal coarse language and the sexual tension between Jessica Biel's Sosa and Bradley Cooper's Face is broken by nothing more than a kiss.

The cast is does a wonderful job. Liam Neeson battles with consistency in accent, but is none the less a perfect fit as Hannibal adding to his recent penchant for mentor type roles (consider Qui-Gon Jin in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Henri Ducard in Batman Begins and Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). Bradley Cooper is pretty much himself, a wise-cracking pretty boy, and it fits the part perfectly. UFC star Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson is fine filling the iconic role of B.A. Baracus. That being said the role only really requires him to look menacing. Sharlto Copley is the highlight though. In only his second feature film after he burst onto the scene as Wikus Van De Merwe in the brilliant District 9, he steals the scene virtually every time he appears as the unhinged maniac Murdock. He also has some issues with maintaining his accent, but given he is meant to be playing a lunatic it is not so much of an issue (he even gets a scene where he gets to 'pretend' to be South African). There is also a really strong chemistry between the four leads which really helps with the fun atmosphere of the movie.

The support cast is also good. Patrick Wilson gets some brilliant lines as the CIA agent Lynch. His is definitely one of the funnier villainous performances I've seen (the scene in the car with his henchmen intending to kill Brian Bloom's Pike is a particular highlight). Jessica Biel gets third billing in the credits behind Neeson and Cooper because she is a big name, and she does an ok job but really her role is pretty bland.

My one complaint about the movie, which is not so much a complaint specifically about The A-Team as it is about modern action movies in general, concerns the way in which the action sequences are shot. Steven Spielberg revolutionised things with the opening Omaha Beach landing scene of Saving Private Ryan. He used rapid cutting together of short, moving shots in order to perfectly create a really frenetic sense of panic and terror in battle. That has pretty much become the template for shooting action scenes since then. Recently though, I feel this style is going too far. I noticed it in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen and again in The A-Team that during the action scenes the camera is moving so much and cutting so quickly that you actually struggle to focus on the image and work out what it is that you are looking at. I think this is because filmmakers have started using this style for two purposes; firstly for the tone it creates, but also to cover over special effects and stunts.

The whole film is wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, to the point that I was genuinely surprised that there was no blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Mr. T. There are however short cameos from Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz, the original Faceman and Murdock, in a short scene after the credits, which unfortunately I only discovered after I'd left.

The A-Team is simply the most fun you'll have at the movies this year.

76) Youth Without Youth

Youth Without Youth (2007)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, Andre Hennicke, Marcel Iures, Matt Damon (uncredited cameo)

For my thesis I'm currently working on a case study on Francis Ford Coppola. I've seen all of his films from the 1970s and 1980s, and most of his 1990s work but still have to catch up with some of his very early work and his most recent work. Youth Without Youth was Coppola's first film after a ten year break from directing and kind of slipped under the radar. If it got a cinematic release in Australia it would have been a very limited one.

Based on a short story by Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade, Youth Without Youth tells the story of 70 year old, Romanian linguist, Dominic Matei (Roth) who is struggling with the realisation that he will probably die before completing his life's work. One day he is struck by lightening but miraculously survives. While recovering in hospital it becomes apparent that the lightening strike has reversed the ageing process. His hair thickens and regains its colour, he grows a new set of teeth and his skin returns to that of a 40 year old. Matei also discovers that the strike has left him with intellectual super-powers; he can read people's thoughts and by simply holding a book can obtain all the information inside it. When the Nazis hear word of him they go after him, intrigued by the possibility that he is some sort of super-human. He escapes to neutral Switzerland where he comes across a young woman, Veronica (Lara), who is the spitting image of his lost love Laura. After an accident of her own, Veronica has a series of episodes in which she seems to regress backwards in linguistic time, first speaking in Sanskrit, then ancient Egyptian, then Babylonian, getting closer and closer to the Ur-language from which all other descended. While Dominic is excited because Veronica's episodes could hold the key to him finishing his life's work, it becomes apparent that Veronica's aging process is accelerated by being with Dominic, so he must chose between the woman he loves and the work he has devoted his life to.

Coppola is a really interesting figure in the history of the American film industry. While he has nowhere near the profile today that some of his peers enjoy (Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas), by the end of the 1970s he was regarded as the most powerful filmmaker in history on the back of an incredible run of successes in the 1970s and his ability to manipulate the power structures around him. In the 1970s Coppola made four films; The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. All four films received Best Picture nominations, with two Godfather films winning (The Godfather Part II and The Conversation were actually nominated in the same year). He also received three best director nominations for the decade, winning one. By the end of the decade he was such a powerful figure that he was able to open up his own film studio, Zoetrope Studios.

Coppola's ultimate ambition was to become a powerful enough figure that he could secure financial autonomy which brought with it the complete creative freedom to make the films he wanted to make. The problem was that the films he wanted to make were not necessarily the films the public wanted to see. Therefore when Coppola's first film for Zoetrope Studios, One From the Heart, bombed at the box office he was left with a massive debt which ultimately led to the closure of the studio. Coppola then spent the rest of the 1980s trying pay off debtors, while also struggling to attract big projects because the major studios were reluctant to trust him. By the 1990s he had become somewhat of a gun for hire. His talent as a filmmaker has never been questioned, rather it has been his ability or desire to make marketable films which has put him on the outer.

Youth Without Youth was Coppola's long awaited return to directing after a ten year absence, but rather than coming back with a bang, it was like he snuck in the back door. The film only received a very limited release and was definitely intended for a niche market. It was quite a divisive film, receiving mixed reviews, some quite positive and some absolutely scathing reviews. For example on At the Movies with Margaret and David, Margaret Pomeranz gave it four stars while David Stratton gave it one and a half.

Coppola's films, at least the ones he chooses for himself, usually have quite a personal bent to them, and Youth Without Youth is no exception. Coppola was 69 at the time he made this film, so the story of a 70 year old who is dealing with the realisation that he will probably never realise his overly ambitious life goals obviously struck a chord with him.

Youth Without Youth looks wonderful. Coppola obviously has not lost the technical knack for filmmaking. Some of the shot composition is simply beautiful. The locations are quite visually appealing too, even if it is a bit apparent that even the scenes that were meant to be shot in another country, for example India, are still being shot in Romania. Coppola has always been interested in technology and uses some CGI in the film, but it is all very subtle and adds to the visual dynamic of the film. The performances are also quite strong. Tim Roth in particular puts in one of his more impressive performances as Dominic Matei, though he leaves a bit to be desired as a leading man. I will also say that the scenes in which he argues with himself (split personality shot back and forth from different angles) were just a bit too reminiscent of Gollum in Lord of the Rings for me to take seriously. Ultimately it is the narrative which really lets this film down.

The first half of the film, which is more concerned with Matei's recovery from the lightening strike and the discovery of its amazing effects on him, and then the struggle to escape the clutches of the Nazis, who see him as a super-human and want to experiment on him, is actually quite compelling. However the film kind of falls in heap in the second half as it gets lost in murky, philosophical territory. Coppola is obviously intrigued by the metaphysical concepts that Eliade's short story explored, and as a result has sought to maintain the exploration of those ideas, considering his film a meditation on time and consciousness where other filmmakers may have opted to transform the story into a much more simple entertainment. The problem is that by retaining some of the more obscure elements and ideas in the story the narrative becomes messy. It is obvious that this is all very interesting to Coppola, and this leads to a much more sincere film than some of the films which Coppola made as a gun for hire, for example Jack (that's right, Jack with Robin Williams was directed by the same guy who made The Godfather!), but unfortunately it is not always very interesting to us and at times gets quite dull.

While Youth Without Youth does have some redeeming features and you can definitely see glimpses of the skill which made Francis Ford Coppola one of the most respected filmmakers in history, you can also see that Coppola is still very much out of touch with his audience and is clearly making this film for himself. Thus the whole thing just feels a little pretentious. Something in it for the Coppola fans, not much for anyone else.

75) Mary and Max

Mary and Max (2009)

Director: Adam Elliot

Starring: Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana, Barry Humphries, Bethany Whitmore, Renee Geyer, Ian 'Molly' Meldrum

A few years ago I saw Harvie Krumpet, the short animation for which Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot won an Oscar in 2004, and loved it. So I was quite keen to see his feature debut Mary and Max when it came out last year. I didn't manage to catch it while it was at the cinemas (which seems to be a bit of a general problem for the Australian film industry), but when I say it for sale for $12 at JB Hifi I thought I'd give it a go.

In the mid-1970s in suburban Melbourne, a lonely, insecure, eight-year-old named Mary Dinkle (Whitmore/Collette) decides to write a letter to someone chosen at random from an American telephone book she finds in the library. That someone ends up being Max Horowitz (Hoffman), an equally lonely, middle-aged man living in New York who suffers from anxiety attacks as a result of his Asperger's Syndrome. An unlikely connection is forged between the two and over the course of 20 years of correspondence they become the best of friends as they deal with the ups and downs of life.

As I said Mary and Max is Adam Elliot's debut feature and it has a real short film feel to it. Elliot's strength as a filmmaker is the characters he creates. Narratives don't seem to be Elliot's strength at this stage and in the second half of the film we storyline starts to labour a bit and you get the impression that a few of the narrative threads (ie. Mary's relationship with Damien) have been introduced primarily to pad the story out to feature length. The best part of the film is the first half where the progression of the narrative is not the primary focus, and rather we are just being introduced to these two wonderful characters through the writing of their letters, which contain some beautifully charming and funny material. Elliot also uses naration beautifully. This obviously also comes from his background in shorts films and it is always one of the primary features of his work. He always picks narrators with lovely, comforting voices. For Harvie Krumpet he used Geoffrey Rush. Previously he used William McGuinness in his trilogy Uncle, Brother and Cousin. In this case the narration is provided by Barry Humphries.

With Adam Elliot films it also pays to keep an eye out for the little humorous details in the image. Whether it is the jury member with the 'I Yodel for Jesus' t-shirt, the epitaphs on the headstones of Mary's parents; 'Always Merry, Killed by Sherry' and 'Here in the ground lies Noel who was drowned', Max's psychiatrist who's sign reads 'Dr. Bernard Hazelhof: Psychiatrist and Aerobics Instructor' or the ever changing sign held by the homeless man (voiced by Molly Meldrum) outside Max's building which goes from '50c Financial Advice' to '50c Hugs' to 'Free Kisses' to the slightly more profound 'Keep your money, I want change', the real pleasure of Elliot's films is in the details.

Since Pixar took off, computer animation has pretty much taken over the animation market. Even Nick Park, the man behind Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run teamed up with Dreamworks to make Flushed Away, a computer animation which used digitised versions of his traditionally claymation characters. To be honest though, I can kind of see why he would have been keen to move away from stop-motion. It is an excruciatingly slow process. A standard movie camera operates at 24 frames per second. Stop-motion animation works on the same principle, just slowed down. You set up your scene and take a photo. Click! Then you ever so slightly move a few of the pieces within the scene and take another photo. Click! Do that another 22 times and you have 24 frames, or one second of footage. Mary and Max took five years to make, including 57 weeks of shooting. There were six animation teams working on the project each producing roughly four seconds worth of footage a day. As slow as it is, and as much as it must drive you bonkers to work on, there is something really charming about stop-motion animation. Especially Elliot's animations. Elliot has developed quite a distinctive appearance to his films across the series of short films which led up to Mary and Max. His animation is not quite so shiny and refined as the animation in, for example, The Corpse Bride.

The other thing which makes Mary and Max stand out from most animation is the colourscape. We are used to animation being bright and vibrant whereas Mary and Max is quite dull colour-wise. Mary's world is all various shades of brown while Max's world is all various shades of grey, with the exception of the red pom-pom which Mary sent him. The use of this more somber colour palate reflects the state of the characters, both of whom are damaged individuals. Max suffers from depression as a result of his Asperger's hence his world being grey, while Mary is incredibly insecure as a result of the birthmark on her face which the narrator informs us was "the colour of poo" hence her world being brown.

It doesn't surprise me that this film didn't go brilliantly at the box office. Making animation for adults is always a financially dangerous because there is the assumption that animation is for children. The only time that animation for adults tends to work is when it is crude, and is going more for the adolescent market than the adult market (like South Park or Family Guy). Mary and Max is not a film for adults in the naughty, titillating way. It is a film for grown ups. The story deals with issues of depression, disability, disfunctional families and suicide. There is some weighty stuff in there which means that the end product is not necessarily family friendly. But the film runs into the problem that a fair share of the demographic that would enjoy such a story and the style of story telling doesn't see the film because they assume that animation is for kids.

Last year Mary and Max became the first stop-motion animation ever to open the prestigious independent film festival Sundance. This is fitting when you consider that Adam Elliot is pretty much Nick Park with indie filmmaker sensibilities. There is a lot to like about Mary and Max. It does what Adam Elliot does best by introducing us to some wonderful characters and some quirky humour. Philip Seymour Hoffman's unrecognisably dead-pan New Yorker portrayal of Max is brilliant. The film also looks beautiful. It is just a bit of a shame that the narrative is not quite as strong as the other elements of the film.

74) V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta (2005)


Director: James McTeigue

Starring: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt, Tim Piggot-Smith, Rupert Graves, Roger Allam


One of the best feelings as a movie watcher is when you come across a film that really surprises you. A lot of the time you pretty much know what you are in for when you go to watch a movie. Often even the really good ones you will come into with an understanding that the film you are sitting down to watch has been well reviewed or whatever and you are expecting it to be really good. But when something really surprises you, in a good way that is, it is fantastic. One film which really surprised me when I went as saw it at the cinemas five years ago was V for Vendetta. From memory I went and saw if because a couple of guys wanted to see a movie on a Saturday night and there wasn't much showing. I expected it to be a run of the mill comic book movie, possibly a bit less because it was a character I'd never heard of, but it proved to be so much more.

In the year 2020, Britain has become a totalitarian state under the control of dictator Adam Sutler (Hurt). On the evening of the 5th of November, Evey Hammond (Portman), who is out after curfew, is saved from rape at the hands of a group of policemen by a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask known only as V (Weaving). Evey accompanies V to a rooftop where they witness the explosion of the Old Bailey which he has orchestrated. The next day V hijacks the television station where Evey works in order to broadcast a message that in one years time he will do what Guy Fawkes failed to do and blow up the Houses of Parliament. When Evey helps V to escape from the the television station she is forced to go into hiding with him to avoid being taken by Sutler's secret police. Over the next twelve months, Evey learns the political motivations behind V's plan, to unite the people against their fascist government; "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." Meanwhile, detectives Finch (Rea) and Dominic (Graves) have been given the job of trying to catch V, but their investigation into who V is uncovers the sinister side of the government which motivates V's fight.

The last ten to fifteen years saw an explosion of comic book adaptations. The success of the X-Men and Spiderman franchises opened the floodgates on material from the comic book, or should I say graphic novel world. Out of that there have been some hits; Iron Man, The Watchmen, Sin City, A History of Violence, and some misses; The Hulk (I'm talking the Ang Lee one with Eric Bana, not that Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton was all that much better), Daredevil, Superman Returns, The Fantastic Four. But I would say that probably the most interesting film to come out of the comic book cycle has been V for Vendetta.
Based on Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name, released in 1982, V for Vendetta is a bit different. Firstly, the fact that the story is set in the UK rather than in America gives the whole thing a very different feel. You don't have the over the top Americanness which you get in a lot of superhero stories. But primarily V for Vendetta has a different tone to other superhero/comic book movies. V for Vendetta is a film about ideas rather than action. Our hero is a political activist rather than a crime fighter, with the evil he stands up against being a fascist regime rather than a super villain. His goal is to empower the people to stand up for themselves. What makes him an even more interesting character to consider is that he is a terrorist. He blows up the Old Bailey and plots to blow up the Houses of Parliament in order to make a political point. Terrorism is not an overly popular concept these days which makes it so interesting the way in which the viewer is encouraged to side with V and accept his justifications for his actions.

The screenplay is written by the Wachowski brothers, Andy and Lana, who are most famous for the Matrix films. I read one review which suggested the Wachowski's were Hollywood's equivalent of John the Baptist, having a seemingly strong interest in proclaiming Messiahs. It is a fair comment when we consider the characters of Neo of the Matrix films and V from V for Vendetta though I'm not sure if the analogy extends as far as Speed Racer.As you watch V for Vendetta you can't help but think of a number of different texts, whether that is because of intentional allusions or just thematic similarities. I had two which really jumped out at me this time. The first was Phantom of the Opera. The character of V, and particularly his relationship with Evey, is quite similar to the Phantom. Obviously there is the mask and the underground lair, but you also have a character who has a score to settle and controls those around him through the use of their imagination. Also much like the Phantom, V is a very ambiguous character who, as a viewer, you are unable to justify all of his actions making him an uncomfortable hero. I've seen V for Vendetta before and can't recall making the Phantom of the Opera connection then, but it was inescapable for me this time.

The other connection, somewhat more logical, is to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and the film adaptation by Michael Radford. For those unfamiliar with it, Nineteen Eighty-Four also deals with a dystopian fascist Britain. Particularly the scenes in which we see Sutler (played by John Hurt who also played the lead role, Winston Smith, in Nineteen Eighty-Four) on the big screens barking orders at his underlings on massive screens make you think of Nineteen Eighty-Four's 'Big Brother'.

V for Vendetta is a film which doesn't quite have the profile I think it deserves. People who see it generally love it (it currently sits at 168 on IMDb's Top 250, compiled from the ratings of IMDb users), the only problem is that not as many people have seen it as have seen some of the more average comic book movies of recent years. I think it is probably the most interesting film to come out of the explosion of comic book adaptations over the last decade. It's a superhero movie which is about ideas more than action. Until Christopher Nolan's Batman films raised the bar for comic book movies I'd say this one sat at the top of the pile.

Status Update

May

Films Watched: 13 (73 in total)

Pick of the Bunch:

I realise that in the eyes of many choosing anything ahead of Citizen Kane is verging on sacrilegious, and were my priorities a bit different in making this selection I would have picked it. But Citizen Kane is not the sort of film that you'd recommend to anybody. This is about picking something I think people will love, and I think more people are likely to get a kick out of L.A. Confidential than would Citizen Kane. It's got the lot, a great cast, a great plot and a great noirish tone.

Also Up There: Citizen Kane, The Royal Tenenbaums, Roger & Me

Don't Waste Your Time: It's a toss up this month between The Poseidon Adventure and The Gleaners and I, but I think I'm going to have to give it to The Gleaners and I. It's not a bad film, so I feel a bit harsh suggesting that seeing it is a waste of time, but I study film and even I struggle to get excited about that film, so for the average movie watcher I think it would be excruciating.