What the 2005 Summer Movies

Taught Me About Being a Man

Since John Kerry went down in flames against George W. Bush last year,
a question has plagued me: What does it mean to be a man in America?
Here's a guy who chased down Viet Cong and shot them at
point blank range, is an extreme sports enthusiast, a hockey player (a
hockey player!), a wild game hunter, and who is over six foot tall and
well-built--and he was defeated largely because the Republicans
convinced men in this nation that he's some Ivy League, cowering
pussy. [read more]

Shimes Lives! Hey, do you people know how friggin' hard taxidermy school is? Jeezus, these muledeer don't stuff themselves! I've been more than a little negligent on my movie reviewing dutes because Mark Mangino and Lew Perkins came back from a booster-sponsored trip to Alaska with three elk, a moose, eight beavers, a couple otters, and two dozen white tails, all of which they wanted stuffed in time for the football banquet before the opening game against Florida International School for the Blind. Guess which lowly Taxidermy School Intern that got dumped on! But I've seen the movies, and now, it's time to write about the movies!

First up is Springtime Art Houseapoolza: Millions, Off the Map, Layer Cake, and Kung Fu Hustle.Yeah, I know, these movies are long gone from the art house. [read more]

Edwards Caucus?  He Hardly Knew Us!  My Time at the Iowa Caucuses

The Unmitigated Gall of John Roberts

John Roberts and the Supreme Strike Zone

On the Death of Steve Irwin

Hot Dog Derby T-Shirt Night at Kauffman Stadium:  Why David Glass is Worse Than Charlie Finley

The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour

The Weekly Shredder 5:  An Analysis of a George W. Bush's August Campaign Speech in Springfield, Missouri

A Royals Fan's Dying Lament:  Loss #18 of The Streak

Stephen Himes' Bio at Flak

Movie-Related Articles

What the Summer of 2005 Movies

Taught Me About Being a Man

Kicking and Screaming

This Movie Tells Us You're a Man If...

You trade in your hybrid car for a Mike Ditka Bears sweater.

Will Ferrell's career is mostly a series of portraits of the confusion
of the Gen X male. Here, the soft-bellied, nurturing, hybrid-car
driving dad finally faces up to his macho dad, "The Sporting Goods
King", played by Robert Duvall. [read more]

What the Summer of 2005 Movies

Taught Me About Being a Man

Batman Begins

This Movie Tells Us You're a Man If...

You can pretend Katie Holmes passes for a ball-busting district attorney.

Christopher Nolan's Batman is a genuinely macho movie. Too often,
blockbusters are just loud with the clanking of metal, explosions of
gunpowder, and hum of engines. [read more]

What the 2005 Summer Movies

Taught Me About Being a Man

Wedding Crashers

This Movie Tells Us You're a Man If...

You only use 10% of your heart.

I had a damn good time at Wedding Crashers. Why? My girlfriend bought us tickets in one of those new-fangled fancy-schmancy theaters with the reclining leather seats where they bring appetizers and cocktails right to your goddamn seat whenever you ask for them! This, my friends, is as far as civilization can take us. [read more]

What the 2005 Summer Movies

Taught Me About Being a Man

Bad News Bears

This Movie Tells Us You're an Man If...

Billy Bob Thornton makes you think Arkansas might not be such a bad place.

This movie makes me want to cry. Filmsnobs MVP Richard Linklater decides to remake The Bad News Bears. [read more]

What the 2005 Summer Movies

Taught Me About Being a Man

Broken Flowers

This Movie Tells Us You're a Man If...

You land Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy, Jessica Lange, Frances Conroy, AND Sharon Stone.

It's been five years since the last Jim Jarmusch movie--too long, frankly, and The Droll One doesn't disappoint. Jarmusch taps into Billy Murray's middle-age depression phase to create a meditation on love-lorn lonliness. [read more]

What the 2005 Summer Movies

Taught Me About Being a Man

The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

This Movie Tells Us You're a Man If...

You let the dog be in charge.

I actually preferred Chicken Run to this plasticine adventure. Chicken Run's opened with a plucky hen trying to escape her coop, using Steve McQueen's dares from The Great Escape. [read more]

http://www.nypress.com/18/47/news&columns/subfeature.cfm

Is it an act of NEW YORK SNOBBERY to write a scathing review of a movie set mostly in Kansas, and then say it's set in Iowa--as if you don't know the difference and, apparently, don't think it matters enough to get it right? To say that the filmmakers sacrifice "a credible sense of place" when you don't even know where that place is?

Is it an act of NEW YORK SNOBBERY to revile the "media elite" for "name calling" instead of "thinking" in a column that relies primarily on "name calling"?

Is it an act of NEW YORK SNOBBERY to base an accusation of across-the-board smugness and disconnect with the "mainstream audience" on a few indie movies--which, here in the Midwest, showed only in a few urban centers? Is it SMUG to assume that you have your finger on the Midwestern pulse when you clearly have no idea what movies people are going to see in the Midwest?

Is it an act of NEW YORK SNOBBERY to talk about mainstream criticism's smug self-satisfaction, but then hold up the most smug, cyncial, self-satisfied, audience-hating filmmaker of the last decade, Todd Solondz, as your paragon of movie making virtue?

Is it an act of NEW YORK SNOBBERY to write such a smug, self-satisfied column reviling smugness?

Is it smug to write a smug response to a smug article about smugness? I don't know. I'm not from New York, and I know only a handful of New Yorkers. [read more]

This fall also offered several what I call "portrait" movies: tightly focused character studies that illuminate not just a single person, but a time and place as well. These are often my favorite movies because they have the intensity of a poem or a painting and can have more scope than a sprawling novel or an "epic" motion picture. [read more]

January 13, 2006 

Dear Snobs,

How are my babies doing? I've missed you guys alot in the past month or so. It seems my need for a break have expanded more in the past year. [read more]

Shimes' Definitively Middle-Brow Top Ten (or so) Movies of 2005

10.  Upstairs, Downstairs:  Pride and Prejudice and Match Point

Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice suffers from its length:  The Colin Firth BBC version is an entire mini-series, so we get a better feel for the evolution of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy's relationship.  Here, they hate each other...then they don't.  But Wright's accomplishment is a realization of a cinematic form:  He films Jane Austen like a Robert Altman movie, creating a new type of poetic voice for the old stories.  The bubbly confusion of the parties are filmed like Altman high society events:  Conversations overlap, and in one remarkable ten minute sequence, the camera follows the characters from dance floor to staircase, in and out of doors, picking up one girl and veering to another after a bump on the dance floor or a relay of gossip.  The camera's fluidity mirrors the elegance of the chandeleirs and candlelabras; the scenes are blocked so that the actors perform without knowing the camera is there, as if we overhear illicit gossip when the girls go into a giggle session.  A remarkable melding of form and function.

Where Altman would have amped up the class war, takes a more subtle approach.  Remember Gosford Park, in which you could barely see Michael Gambon's jowls through the glare of chandeliers and crystal stemware?  Wright uses wide exterior shots of homes to capture details:  geese in the yard, a well downhill from the Bennett house.  He takes us inside and finds spinning rooms and cluttered offices.  The detail creates a cinematic painting of Austen's prose.

The third act seems rushed, but I think about what disasters would occur if Altman were directing Pride and Prejudice.  Lady Catherine would have ordered her servants to shoot the Bennett geese, and he would have had Knightley do a full-frontal while Darcy tickled her rear with a feather (how Altman hasn't cast Dame Judy has a high society ball-busting shrew, I have no idea).  But Wright's choices capture a more subtle class struggle, voiced as elegantly and fluidly as a champagne flute of Austen prose.

Match Point takes another route.  Woody Allen's movie follows a sub-Henman Irish tennis pro who finds himself feeding forehands to clubby Brits who still play on grass courts--they're that rich.  He's a provincial kid with a taste for opera, and an attentive manner that lands him a rich friend in Tom and a marriage to the nerdy, slender sister Chloe.  Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays Chris with a serious, determined bent who knows he can use his smooth, cool manner (learned from the courts) and his analytical skills (also learned fromthe courts) to get what he wants--"a certain kind of living," he says.

Enter Scarlett Johansson, whose pouty lips and pushed-up breasts rock his world.  She's the flipside of Chris' jock life:  You sense that he's had first pick at the flowers since he won his first tournament, but Nola--she's a real challenge.  Scarlett shoots cigarrette smoke from her lips with a devil-may-care confidence, which over the course of the film gives way to a Fatal Attraction loose cannon desperation.  Woody Allen measures this development to build to a great climax--as if he actually took the time to edit this script, rather than just draft and shoot, as has been his "method."  Woody had to move this movie to London from Manhattan, and it seems that the foggy air has breathed life into his moviemaking.  Match Point is taut, dramatic, and emotionally vital.  More of this, Woody, and less Small Time Crooks.

Scarlett ponders whether a boiled rabbit might be too forward.

9.  Comic Book Blockbusters:  Sin City and Batman Begins

Watching these movies is like taking a shot over the middle from Ronnie Lott.  I mean, they're physical.  Batman Begins is a bold concept executed with conviction:  The realistic comic book creation myth.  Batman may be known for the comical "THUDs" and "THWACKs" absorbed by Adam West, but here, Christopher fights these cliches.  We feel every smack when Bruce Wayne kendo fights Liam Neeson on a sheet of ice.  Essentially, Nolan makes Batman into The Last Samurai, but with a car like a Hummer Camaro and more insecurities than Mike Tyson.

Sin City is all about Mickey Rourke.  We know his tragic story:  The Next Brando parties too hard, beats his supermodel wife, gets arrested, goes into boxing, does more drugs, and comes out the other side with the rough and thick, but sensitve, skin of a scarred man.  On-screen, Mickey is essentially shorthand for himself.  He brings this baggage to the character, and in the person of Marv, he seems to be discussing some of his own personal issues through the big lug.  Mickey called himself a "Bad Boy," as if he saw himself playing the role of a larger-than-life comic book character.  After the storm, here he is, actually playing a giant, amoral, ass-kicking machine past his prime, trying to figure out what his life is about.  Marv has a heart you don't often find in comic book blockbusters because you don't often find an actor who has played the role in real life.

Bruce thinks he might have been Punk'd.

8.  Out-There Indies:  Off the Map and Me and You and Everyone We Know

Off the Map is slow....rreeaallyy slow.  It's a movie for readers.  Sam Elliot and Joan Allen are a hippie couple who live off the land of New Mexico.  They have a precocious daughter who entertains herself because, well, they live in the middle of the desert.  Elliot, he of the "It's what's for dinner" cowboy gravel voice, goes mute with catatonic depression.  J.K. [read more]

Shimes' Definitively Middle-Brow Top Ten (or so) Movies of 2005

7.  March of the Penguins

More crazy French dudes filming birds.  This time, the French come up with a family values movie that was multiplex-friendly because, hey, people love the waddle.  And if you've got to take her to a chick flick, why not this rather than The Wedding Date?  Women must have loved this movie because the male penguins walk seventy miles through sub-zero blizzards across a sheet of ice of their women, take the egg from her and shield it from the elements for two months so she can go vacation in the warmer waters, and then have the hatchling ready upon her return.  And we can't even get real maternity leave in this country.

Also, I liked this movie than Grizzly Man, which cuts against the critical grain, I know.  But here's the deal:  Even though Morgan Freeman's narration at the beginning has some embarrassing talk about this being a "love story," for the most part, he just gives us the facts.  How far did they walk?  How cold is it?  Are they really, pound for pound, fatter than Mark Mangino?  For me, Werner Herzog ruined Grizzly Man.  Throughout the movie, he says stuff like, "Timothy Treadwell's home videos are like windows peering into his soul."  Yeah, no shit, Werner--that's why you made the movie.  It's more of German Existentialism 101 class-on-tape than a movie.  He doesn't leave anything for me to ponder about.  And the scene where we see Werner give the tape of Timothy's tape to his best friend, and then says, "We must destroy it"?  What a manipulation of her, us, and the film itself.  Give me penguins every time!  People love penguins!  It's the waddle!

"I can't believe she's having Brad's baby either!"

6.  Glorious Vulgarity:  The Aristocrats, Wedding Crashers, and The Forty Year Old Virgin

Every year we say this:  If comedy really is harder than drama, then why don't critics put more comedies in their top ten lists?  Seriously, the only comedic critical darling is A History of Violence.  So I welcome your ridicule with open arms, and will now defend my selections. 

The Aristocrats is fifty comedians telling their versions of the Dirtiest Joke in the World, edited so that the movie itself is a telling of the joke.  Basically, it's comedians discussing their craft--the type of documentary about comedy that's been tried by, say, Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian.  But here, we see the mechanics of joke-telling--listening to George Carlin discuss the delivery of scatology onstage is like listening to Peyton Manning talk about calling audibles at the line of scrimmage.  The dirtiest telling probably goes to Bob Sagat, who actually breaks down in the middle of his joke and asks,"Can I get a copy of this? I'd like to send it to the kids from the show 'Full House.'"

For the record, I didn't get to see Sarah Silverman's Jesus is Magic.  Personally, I think she's overhyped and her comedy is mostly bullshit.  However, the whole "Joe Franklin raped me" thing from The Aristocrats was kinda funny.  But she's married to Jimmy Kimmel, for God's sake!

To be fair, they kept bringing me Jack-and-Cokes all through Wedding Crashers.  Even though it does go on too long, and the Owen Wilson stuff at the end is a little overblown, Vince Vaughn's virtuoso performance can be ignored.  Seriously. His self-assured, self-aware Gen X counterpart to Owen Wilson's slacker persona embodies the jocular detachment of many man-boys his age:  The machine gun, SportsCenter, pop culture-informed nature of his banter coupled with a certain sense of wasted erudition.  However, the movie is missing a big Walkenizing speech:  Imagine the missed beats of Walken versus the staccato the Vaughn. 

The Forty Year Old Virgin is the best movie of the three.  It's low brow in that Ferrell/Wilson/Vaughn/Stiller manner of today's multiplex marquee, but the Carrell-penned comedy actually is ambitious enough to create a touching story in which the chest-waxing and hooter-discussing serves a higher purpose.  This risk, I think, is why the movie was released amidst the doldrums of August.  And it pays off.

It's as if Carell imposes a Will Ferrell movie on top of a Doris Day chastity comedy.  Yeah, there's a puke scene, a chest waxing, and his buddies go on about the slight variations in boob texture.  But Carell barrells through the movie without a blink--like Ferrell's Buddy the Elf, there's no self-conscious wink at the camera.  It's just Andy Stitzer and his apartment full of action figures still in the package.  Catherine Keener, as the GILFy girlfriend with a history, brings an adult sense of the movie.  Their relationship, by Hollywood standards, is a mature affair, which contrasts with the juvenile nature of the poker games and break room banter.  This contrast amplifies both aspects of the picture, and yields something unexpected:  A movie simultaneiously profane and touching.

"Hey, my man right here could make a fight club of Brad's face.  You hear that, Jen!"

5.  Broken Romances:  Broken Flowers and Brokeback Mountain

Jim Jarmusch finally makes another movie (his last was Ghost Dog), and boy, is it droll.  Bill Murray once again goes downbeat; he's learned to make a lot out of little gestures, like in Lost in Translation when he almost holds Scarlett Johansson's hand or covers her up after a long night out.  Jarmusch's movies have always been about the strange ways in which people communicate with each other, so the match seems perfect.  Since we don't know anything about the ex-girlfriends Don visits, each actress has to fill in the back story with detail, reaction, and gesture.  Murray gives them a blank canvas to paint upon, and the story fills in from there.  Like Off the Map, it's a "slow" movie for readers.

I really didn't want to like Brokeback Mountain just to be contrarian.  You just knew that critics and the academy (read:  Liberals) were going to rush to embrace this as an "issues" movie.  It was going to be annoying.  And it is annoying.  But with great deference to my non-Brokeback web partner JimmyO, this is actually a really good movie, and Heath Ledger proves himself an actual, honest-to-goodness actor. 

The first twenty minutes are simply Heath and Jake in the mountains, herding sheep, living the idyllic life in a Wyoming that seems untouched by the 1950's.  Ang Lee unfolds the story wordlessly--we're not "told" anything, so later in the film when the two speak so painfully and wistfully of Brokeback Mountain, we understand what they mean.  Then...it happens.  And you should see Jake grimace.

The rest of the movie is a decades-long tragic romance, held aloft by some remarkable performances.  Ang Lee wisely eschews any preaching, stereotyping, prejudice--he just tells the story straightforward, which is the best propaganda for cause he could create.  Gay cowboy romance is just like any other forbidden love--Tristan and Isolde, Anna Karenina and Alexei Vronsky, Anakin and Padme.  True, Heath Ledger sounds like he's got a mouth full of sand, but the performance works because he's the inward soul--uneducated but not stupid, burdened but not pitiful.  Ignore the hype and just watch the movie.

Heath asks if Kirsten ever wears the outfit from Bring It On.

Shimes' Definitively Middle-Brow Top Ten (or so) Movies of 2005

4.  The Weather Man

Another movie for readers.  Gore Verbinski's film has certain literary quality--the plot and images flesh out the theme to create a tight, textured work.  It's easy and deceptive to just cast this movie off as a weird piece of Hollywood, directed by the newly rich director of Pirates of the Carribbean and starring a Jerry Bruckheimer stalwart. 

The tone is the trick.  Dave Spritz is a weather man in Chicago. He gets paid an extraordinary amount of money to do nothing but hang out by the water cooler, and then go wave his arms in front of a green screen for a few minutes (kinda like how Cage performs in Bruckheimer movies).  Spritz gets pegged with fast food for missing the "Spritz Nipper," and that’s the best part of his day. [read more]

Bono is often besieged on both sides of the political spectrum.  Right-wing ecclesiastic 
Rush Limbaugh informed his radio audience that Bono "has a mistress."  "Trust me on this," 
Rush assured on his masses. Of course, Rush retracted the statement days later because he 
didn't "have (his) facts straight."  That's just Rush being Rush:  Bono was given a box 
seat at the Democratic National Convention, so he must be an evil liberal do-gooder.  No 
professed Christian could ever count Bill Clinton as a friend without being a Pharisee, 
which makes Bono perfect fodder for Rush.

Oddly, though, Bono is often derided by the Left .  He is often a  target of John Stewart's, and has been called every name that can be traced to Guilty Rich  White Guy.  But Bono's liberal critics suffer from ironic detachment.  True, Bono uses his  Rock God pulpit to preach the gospel of saving people from poverty, disease, war, and other worldly ills.  True, the charge of "egomaniac" is not unfounded.  But Bono uses his position to actually practice what he preaches--to the highest levels of wealth and power in the world.  This, it seems, this isn't enough:  It's celebrity vanity, self-important proselytizing, the grandstanding of guilty rich white guy, and worst of all, he has associated himself with conservative politicians like Jesse Helms  and John Kasich to get support for his causes. [read more]

Shimes' Definitively Middle-Brow Top Ten (or so) Movies of 2005

2.  Capote

The film balances these two views of Capote, weaving in the same rural/urban contrasts Capote employed in his book.  Catherine Keener's Nelle Harper Lee provides cover for the tiny, wispy, openly homosexual Caopte.  Lee asks the compulsory questions in a friendly Southern manner, allowing Capote to find the vulnerability in the subject, which he would exploit by opening himself up--by playing up his "outsiderness" for empathy in the same way he played up his "outsiderness" in Manhattan for humor. 

Truman's interpersonal instincts were matched only by his literary ones--Capote knew what’s the matter with Kansas decades before Thomas Frank did. In the first chapter of In Cold Blood, Capote describes the Clutter farm as "an inch more of rain" from being an "Eden on Earth" and Dick Hickock’s head as a halved-apple not put together quite right. [read more]

As Cinemarati's Unofficial White-Trash Correspondent, I feel it is my duty to debut our new feature, "Two Minutes Hate," by exposing one of the most bewilderingly beloved movies of 2000, Erin Brockovich. I have no beef with Steven Soderbergh -- it's apparent that he was merely using this studio-trash as a warm-up exercise for Traffic. Perhaps it's a testament to Soderbergh's colossal respect in Hollywood that this Norman Jewison-style liberal fairy tale garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination, but upon review, it becomes evident that he really didn't care all that much. He's often said that his entire career led up to Traffic, and in Erin Brockovich, I really think that he was just trying out the colored lenses used in Traffic. None of his trademark time-scheme patterns appear -- it's like he just handed out the script and got the hell out of the way of Julia's cleavage. [read more]

I loved Freddy Got Fingered. Those are difficult words to type, believe me, especially about a movie that asks you to laugh at bloody children and ejaculating mammals. But Tom Green doesn't ask you to laugh at these things as much as he dares -- no, double-dog dares -- you to laugh at them. [read more]

In director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, memory erasure is performed much like plastic surgery. Dr. [read more]

From Christopher Hitchens:

Dear Mr Himes,

Yo Adrian!  I did it!  With the help of performance enhancing drugs!

Cinemarati #2 Film of 2006:  The Departed (dissenting view)

Cinemarati #14 Film of 2006:  Letters From Iwo Jima 

Cinemarati Best Supporting Actors of 2006  

The Best Movie W's 

Cinemarati #2 Film of 2005:  A History of Violence (dissenting view) 

Cinemarati #4 Film of 2005:  Capote 

Downfall  

Stop-Loss Josh Rushing Before He Speaks Again 

Full Length Articles

The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Illusions of Film and Memory 

Erin Brockovich: A Portrait of the Sassy and Classless White Trash Female

Most critics only make predictions after the nominations have been made. But here at Filmsnobs, we've taken that one step further. [read more]

                Jay Sherman Says, "Shawn Edwards: You stink!"

Shawn Edwards is not offensive because he likes bad movies.  He's offensive because he's dishonest about who he is.  The evidence:  The Fox 4 Movie Awards on WDAF-TV 4 here in Kansas City.

If you're unfamiliar with Shawn Edwards, he's one of America's most infamous "quote whores"-- a critic who doesn't write reviews (though Edwards does an occasional column for a local magazine in Kansas City), but gives "quotes" to movie companies to put on the promotional material for the movie.  The "whore" part comes in when the movie is so bad that few people beyond horney teeagers actually like.  For instance, Shawn Edwards once said of Britney Spears, "Crossroads is a perfect teen dream. It has everything that makes a movie totally cool: laughs, adventure, spirit, hot music, drama and of course BRITNEY! Britney rocks! She is like a comet. [read more]

April 28th

United 93

Is it too soon?  Well, as long as the Republican Party keeps trying to exploit 9/11 for political profit, why shouldn't Hollywood exploit it for actual profits?  Lucky for us, we've got the right director for this material:  Paul Greengrass, who filmed the Irish civil rights protests of 1972 like cinema verite, with handheld cameras and grainy footage.  Something closer to cinema verite rather than the Truthiness of Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie in August. ---shimes

RV

When his adaptation of Dave Barry's Big Trouble was released four years ago, I calculated that Barry Sonnenfeld hit rock bottom and needed to return to the embrace of the Coen Brothers, a la Sam Raimi when he was the second-unit director on The Hudsucker Proxy before helming Spider-Man. [read more]

The Filmsnobs Celebrate the Crazy and Fascinating Career of Kansas City's Own Robert Altman

Being a full-time taxidermy student has really wrecked havoc on my ability to update my website, and for those of you still tuning in, I know you want us to comment on this. The Filmsnobs' favorite director, Mr. [read more]

I say "middle brow" because I don't get to see the breadth of movies I did before attending taxidermy school.  Just perusing J. Hoberman's list  at The Village Voice, I can't claim to have seen The Death of Mr. [read more]

Engvall, we don't need Foxworthy's dumbass tv show to know you're stupider than a fifth grader.  You only have a job because you make Foxworthy and Fat Boy over here seem funny in comparison!  Now, I'm going to ask you again, are you going to defend freedom in the Baghdad troop surge, or are you two retards are going to see every piece of shit Hollywood puts in theaters this summer instead?  That's what I thought!

May 3

Spider-Man 3

I guess one of the best parts of a “preview” is discussing the film before it comes out. Not the case here. [read more]

Updated Sunday, 2/25/07 at 3:02 pm by shimes

Oscars Fans, Start Your Engines!  JimmyO will be reporting to you live from Springfield, Missouri--or as I like to refer to it, Culturetown USA!   Shimes will be coming at you live from Louise's Upstairs in beautiful downtown Lawrence, Kansas.  That smell is the burned out hippies who haven't bathed since the sixties.  Or these guys.  Check back with us at 7:00, and continue to refresh this page throughout the night to keep up as JimmyO and I spew out our comments on the show.

5:37 by JimmyO

This is Jimmy O and I am still not dead. Looking forward to a long night of pizza, wine, and being wrong about my Oscar pix...once again. [read more]

Andy Samberg goes for the Altman-esque in Hot Rod, opening in August.

July 6

Transformers 

I know it’s Michael Bay. But remember: He gave us all he got with The Island. [read more]

As Barry Bonds limps his buckled knees closer to Hank Aaron, baseball fans are nearly unanimous in their hatred for Bonds because he used steroids. The steroids issue casts a shadow over the game, calling into question the “hallowed” records broken during the steroid era. [read more]

You may remember Marine Captain Josh Rushing from last year’s penetrating documentary Control Room. Rushing was the CENTCOM liason to Al-Jazeera who had actual conversations with the Al-Jazeera reporters about the Iraq War, the Middle East, and America’s perception of the conflict. [read more]

Godwin’s Law states that the first person to use a Hitler reference will lose the argument. This theory is particularly apt in politics, and particularly bipartisan. [read more]

Playing the President on Saturday Night Live can be a bit of mixed blessing. Generally, more pure impressionists are better at it (Dana Carvey’s George Herbert Walker Bush, Darryl Hammond’s Bill Clinton), but they can become known solely as impressionists–which is great for Saturday Night Live, but doesn’t translate into success on the silver screen. [read more]

2. THE DEPARTED

Jeff Vorndam explains our decision:

Really, this was money in the bag. [read more]

14. LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

Stephen Himes explains our decision:

The American collective memory of World War II is shaped by the movies of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, et al, in which Americans bravely trudged into battle against crazed banzai warriors and be spirited back to patient wives and girlfriends. [read more]

How do you like these apples? A critics’ list with both Will Hunting and Gigli on it. And the 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Nutty Professor — all led by the former ruler of the Funky Bunch. [read more]

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Brian Darr explains our decision:

David Cronenberg is an actors’ director. Sure, he built his career with films in disreputable genres and his name became virtually synonymous with an unusual variety of special effects design. [read more]

CAPOTE
shimes explains our decision:

Hoffman’s performance gets most of the movie’s accolades, but this is no Ray — a film buoyed by a remarkable impersonation. Capote’s dialogue mimics his writing, which he described as “simple, clear as a country creek”: “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. [read more]

I’m not joking when I say that I owe a lot to Cinemarati. Back in 2001, my friend James and I started a movie review website. [read more]

Shimes’ Top Twenty-Five Movies of 2007

In his year-ending column, Roger Ebert said, “I do a top ten because tradition requires it.”    Well, this is the internet, so screw tradition.  This year deserves more than a top ten list!   As Ebert said, this was the best year for movies in recent history, so I’m giving you fifteen more suggestions for your Netflix queue.  But, because I’m a sucker for tradition, I divided these into ten “categories” to help expedite the list. 

10.  The Hidden Costs of the War on Terror

Charlie Wilson’s War

In the Valley of Elah

The Bourne Ultimatum

A Mighty Heart

Reign Over Me

After awards season started, Hollywood watchers noted that movies about the War on Terror didn’t make any money, specifically citing Rendition and Lions for Lambs.  Explanations ran rampant:  People go to the movies to be entertained, not burdened with real life; filmmakers don’t have enough “perspective” yet to make a good, thoughtful movie; moviegoers are inherently turned off by politics. 

I don’t think any of that is true.  The problem is that Rendition and Lions for Lambs  is that they were heavily promoted Big Star movies that bombed.  Rendition (Reese and Jake) and Lambs (Cruise, Streep, and Redford) tackled the War on Terror intellectually, coming off preachy and pedantic.  They didn’t engage the audience emotionally, making our Friday evening feel like undergrads at night class lecture. 

Movies excel at telling human stories that bring the larger issues into clearer focus.  Each of the stories in these five films boils some aspect of the war to an essence:  A lesson that Robert Redford, muddling Lions for Lambs with interlocking stories, would have done well to heed.  Charlie Wilson’s War describes the ad-hoc nature of American foreign policy by chronicling the backroom shenanigans of three very different Cold Warriors.  In In the Valley of  Elah, Tommy Lee Jones is the father of a fallen soldier who doesn’t accept the official story; his unraveling of the mystery shows how the extreme stress of this war wears on young soldiers.  The Bourne Ultimatum may not seem like a War on Terror film, but it got Bill O’Reilly’s cockles in a bur.   Of course, Papa Bear completely missed the point:  Torture doesn’t just harm the tortured—it erodes our moral sense and carries a huge human cost for those asked to torture and kill in our name.  Just in case we think that that al-Qaeda is only mobilized by American foreign policy, A Mighty Heart personalizes the extreme anti-Semitism at the heart of the Islamofascist movement.  Finally, Reign Over Me tackles, if awkwardly, the toll the attacks themselves took on guilt-ridden survivors.  True, only Bourne made a lot of money, but all are worthy additions to our thinking on the War on Terror.

9.  Cruel Landscapes

Into the Wild and No Country For Old Men

Sean Penn’s Into the Wild doesn’t turn the story of Chris McCandless—an Emory grad who sold all his possessions and headed west, eventually to Alaska—into a Thoreau-esque romantic sojourn.  Instead, Sean Penn plays it as a kind of regressed-male story, set against the Baby Boomer materialism of his parents. Emile Hirsch gives a emotional and physical performance, transforming McCandless not into some sort of hero, but willfully lost soul.  I will quibble with the end:  After reading McCandless’ diary, I seriously doubt that was the expression on his face as he froze to death.

I think the Coens’ film is a bit overrated—like most of their work, it’s emotionally distant.  Still, as they did in Fargo, the Coens use the vast landscape of middle America as a moral vacuum.  And give Javier Bardem a comical haircut.

8.  Cutthroat Capitalism

American Gangster

Gangster is an underrated movie, in my judgment.  Ridley Scott’s Frank Lucas isn’t a gangster; he’s more like a “post-gangster” ruthless capitalist.  More—lots more—is in the review.

7.  Into the Nursing Home

Away From Her and The Savages

Away From Her is an mature film from the young actress Sarah Polley—you may remember her from The Dawn of the Dead remake and 1999’s Go.  Julie Christie and Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent play a retired college professor couple living in small town Ontario.  Christie develops Alzheimer’s and decides that she should—for reasons never fully explained—check into a nursing home.  Christie has gotten most of he accolades here, but Pinsent’s performance as the sad, befuddled husband is devastating and uplifting at once.  I should have this higher on the list.

The Savages was advertised as a dark comedy, but it’s really not funny.  It makes the list on the strength of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney’s performances as siblings from an intellectual northeastern household who have to grow up when faced with the decline of their father. 

6.  Apatow

Walk Hard:  The Dewey Cox Story

Superbad

Knocked Up

Judd Apatow and crew are what Harold Ramis and his crew were to the 80’s.  Walk Hard is a misunderstood film—it’s not about Walk the Line as it is a satire about the whole Baby Boomer narrative.  Superbad is the truest portrait of male anxiety in the internet porn age that I’ve seen.  Knocked Up is a little sexist, sure, but Apatow made a fantasy baseball draft more devastating to a marriage than an affair.  That’s a man with his finger on the pulse of today’s American male.

5.  Legal Backchannels

Michael Clayton

Gone Baby Gone

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Zodiac

As a lawyer, it’s sometimes hard to watch lawyer movies—especially when there’s courtroom scenes—for the same reason doctors have trouble with “ER.”  They’re just…wrong.  You always have to give a foundation for an objection based on a Rule of Evidence.  You can’t call the defendant a liar in your closing argument.  Cross Examination questions should almost always be “yes or no.”  These films explored the legal world outside the courtroom; they all felt more “real,” and offered insight into how things work in the real world, not showy trials that only 1% of all cases make it to.  Michael Clayton wades George Clooney through the cesspool of big firm business.  Gone Baby Gone explores the question posed by the legal standard in most child custody cases:  “What’s in the best interest of the child?”  Devil shows what happens when you plan a “victimless crime” without thinking it through like a cop or lawyer.  Zodiac shows how the stress of searching for murders affects public servants.

4.  Westerns Ride Again

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

3:10 to Yuma

When we think about Westerns now, we think mostly about John Wayne and the stoic hero protecting women and children and a way of life.  As the black-and-white world of the fifties gave way to the Hollywood of the 60’s and 70’s, naturally the Western fell out of favor.  Occasionally, the lone Western would ride into the theaters (Unforgiven, for example), but 2008 gave us a virtual cavalry of cowboy movies, with No Country For Old Men and Into the Wild fitting the mold as well.  Jesse James is more a psychological drama, exploring the landscape of American celebrity, interpreting the myth of Jesse James for the present.  Yuma remade a 50’s Western as a meditation on terrorism and justice, with Russell Crowe as a thief who, when told he’s “not all bad,” replies, “Yes I am.”  He is, too.

3.  Suffering for Art

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Ratatouille

Ratatouille is like a cartoon Altman film.  Remy, a mouse with an exceptional sense of smell and a virtuoso talent for cooking, emerges in a Parisian restaurant to puppeteer a kitchen hand to culinary superstardom.  The Altman-esque aspect of the film is its portrayal of class structure:  the turf wars in the kitchen, the poor scraping together a living serving five star dishes.  Unfortunately, the awards people ghettoized the film to the animation category.

Butterfly is seen mostly from the perspective of a victim of “Locked-In Syndrome,” the diving bell being his condition and the butterfly his imagination.  Renowned painter and part-time director Julian Schnabel puts the action in front of us as if we’re the victim, occasionally sliding into impressionist visions of imagination as Jean dictates his book by blinking his working eye.

2.  Nerds Under Fire

Juno

The King of Kong:  A Fistful of Quarters

            Juno is the mature, teenage version of Knocked Up.  Some of the same sexist arguments might apply in reverse (Bleeker’s role as the father is underwritten, but then again, isn’t that the way it is in many of these situations?).  It handles a bevy of tricky issues sensitively, smartly, and for the most part, truthfully. 

            In The King of Kong, Seth Gordon stumbles onto a cast of characters straight out of a Christopher Guest movie:  World class Donkey Kong players.  He explores the dynamics between the players and their relationship to a self-appointed record keepers who become invested in the very records they claim to be the impartial clearinghouse for.  The result is a treatise on what it takes to succeed in America.

The Film of the Year:  Once

            Probably the great film about making music ever made.  Before Sunrise with songs.  Intimate, suspenseful, heartfelt…should be the highlight of the Oscars. [read more]

By the time you read this....I will already be dead.
 
Whoa! I bet that caught your attention, didn't it? But I think that writing this is long overdue. But I think it's time that "Jimmy O" be put away and retired. [read more]

May 2^nd

Iron Man

This could be completely weird.  The Iron Man character was originally based on Howard Hughes; for the adaptation, he’s been updated to an industrialist who’s made billions off the wars in the Middle East.  He is kidnapped to Afghanistan, where he builds the Iron Man suit.  If Robert Downey’s training montage features monkey bars in the desert, we’ll know where director Jon Favreau is going with this.  Speaking of Favreau, he’ll probably take this material to darker places than would, say, Michael Bay or Stephen Sommers.  I’m still convinced that Elf is one of the most cynical Christmas movies of the decade.  Downey stars alongside some great talent:  Gwyneth Paltrow (hopefully in goth girl mode), Terence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Hilary Swank, and—would it be a summer movie without him?—Samuel L. Jackson. 

Made of Honor

McDreamy stars in this inverse My Best Friend’s Wedding.  Patrick Dempsey steps into the void left by a retiring Hugh Grant which will last for about three to five mediocre movies, and then he’ll be put out to pasture on Lifetime.  Dempsey won’t be the next Rom-Com It Guy because he has no discernible screen personality:  Grant is the narcissist, John Cusack is the angsty Gen-Xer, Dempsey is the….what?  At least Ryan Reynolds has this reformed frat guy thing going for him. [read more]

If he'd have showed up to court in this outfit, the judge totally would have believed Chuck and Larry.

June 6th

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

If we were to graph the Sandler Amusement Curve, the chart would start high with Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, then progress downward through The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy, and Big Daddy, and finally does this with Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds through I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Sandler knows this; he’s not stupid.  If anything, Sandler is a savvier businessman than comedian—Happy Madison Productions has been cranking out cheap-ass Rob Schneider movies that turn profits for the better part of a decade, and Sandler barely breaks a sweat and Mr. [read more]

July 4^th

Hancock

There’s been a little negative buzz around this one, but I think it has potential.  Will Smith, Mr. July 4^th weekend, plays a drunk louse of a superhero.  Replace Mr. [read more]

Just a few days before the Indiana Democratic Primary on May 6th, the Supreme Court issued its in opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board , which upheld the constitutionality of Indiana's voter identification law. [read more]

August 1^st

The Mummy:  The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

This is going to be hacktastic!  The Mummy franchise started life as Filmsnobs Public Enemy Stephen Sommers, a Spielberg rip-off artist who, basically, created the Aldi’s version of Indiana Jones.  Sommers, though, damn near crashed and burned himself right out of Hollywood with 2004’s megaflop Van Helsing.  But The Mummy Returns opened with $68 million and grossed over $200 million domestically.  Clearly, this is a franchise that needs reviving.  So what do you do?  You recycle Rob Cohen, whose muse is Vin Diesel.  Cohen hit big with The Fast and the Furious, but bombed out trying to supersize Diesel’s stardom in the somewhat misleading xXx.  The irony of all this is that this summer’s Spielberg hackery quotient has already been filled….by Steven Spielberg!  

The Rocker

Dwight Schrute stars as a middle aged loser who subs in as a drummer for his nephew’s rock band playing the prom.  The trailer feels like Judd Apatow Presents:  Almost Famous. Rainn Wilson does his thing where he stares right past insults and dives headlong into nerdy deviancy.  This looks really funny—and August has given us some great too-dirty-for-July comedies the last few years, see Superbad and The 40 Year Old Virgin. 

Swing Vote

This looks like a smart, sleeper comedy.  Kevin Costner plays a good ol’ boy in a greasy mesh hat who goes fishing instead of looking for work—in other words, a Hillary voter.  The conceit is that a computer glitch (this is how you know it’s a movie—Diebold voting machines would leave no paper trail) gives this guy the deciding vote in the election.  Costner, in something close to Tin Cup mode, is courted by Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammar, with Dennis Hopper and Nathan Lane as the Carvillians behind the curtain.  We see these guys trying to shoot guns and, literally, having a beer with Costner.  This could be the hilarious political satire we thought we were getting with Barry Levinson and Robin Williams’ colossal miscalculation Man of the Year.    

August 8^th

Pineapple Express

More wacky weed comedy from Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen.  Rogen plays a guy who serves subpoenas; James Franco is the dealer who watches “Good Times” in his apartment until business starts showing up around 4:20.  Rogen sees a guy get murdered, he runs to Franco’s apartment, and the chase ensues.  Apatow said that the movie came together after he figured out that Franco should play the dealer.  This isn’t as counter-intuitive as it sounds; Franco starred in Apatow’s “Freaks and Geeks.”  The wildcard here is director David Gordon Green, best known for cinematographically stunning indies. [read more]