Year-end lists 2009: Male Performances

Following on from my favourite female performances, here are what I thought were the ten best male performances of 2009. The guys put in some good turns last year, though perhaps there weren't quite as many great performances from the men as I found came from the fairer sex: I'd shortlisted for my ten nearly twice as many female performances. Although these ten men below (and the further ten honourable mentions after that) all in differing ways made '09 a great film year, acting wise, for a multitude of reasons. To me this lot rose to the top of the pile.


top row - left to right: 1 - 5; bottom row - left to right: 6 - 10

There's a fair bit of Heroes love involved in this choice, if truth be told. Having watched that show from the start, Sylar quickly became one of my favourite characters. Zachary Quinto (10) added to it just the right amount of eeriness and complication, which is also why he made such a good Spock in J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot. It was great to see a fresh take on Spock alongside Nimoy's original, and see them interact well; Quinto had great rapport with not only Nimoy but the rest of the cast. He makes Spock even more pivotal to the film than what the script already outlined. He gets the role just right.

Tom Hardy (9) was funny, committed and full of spirit in Bronson. It was inspired casting, too. Hardy has built up his acting persona over the last few years and it's a role like Charles Bronson that's given him a touch more clout. His film choices, mixed with his fierce talent, have no doubt gone toward marking him out as someone to keep an eye on, plus he's avoiding those dodgy movie pifalls that snare actors like Danny Dyer. Hardy's showmanship was champion in the film, and he makes the character both reprehensible and bizarrely amiable with it. A role in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010) is next and a rumour has it that he's the new Mad Max.

Frost/Nixon was the best Ron Howard film since Splash (1984) and Parenthood (1989). (To flip the claim often assigned to Woody Allen later in his career: I prefer his earlier funny ones.) Although the film was still a bit too Oscar baiting and worthy, overall, Frank Langella (8) gave a concrete performance as Richard Nixon. It was just plain great acting: no unnecessary frills and without any pomp. Langella showed the insecurity behind a man not generally associated with such a thing. The acting was entirely plausible, and through subtle means contained great moments of fascinating drama. He works hard here and never falters, delivering value in lengthy, drawn-out scenes mostly made up of just two-way conversations. He should've shared the Oscar with Mickey Rourke last year.


Clive Owen shoots on sight in The International

Clive Owen (7) had two films out in '09. Both featured him jet-setting around the world in pursuit of corporate criminals of one sort or another: Duplicity was smug and tediously chatty, and he got to do his smirking-in-disbelief bit, as he did in 2007's Shoot 'Em Up. But in The International he gave one of his best performances to date - alongside Close My Eyes (1991), Closer (2004) and Children of Men (2006). He's not always the most versatile actor and can veer waywardly on a moment's notice, but when he's as committed as he is here, he can be a riveting presence. He flunked on playing 007 a few years back, but got to kind of perform a pretty nifty imitation of him here (although, incidentally, I thought Owen and the film itself were far better than Daniel Craig in the last two Bond films): he was the best not-Bond in a non-Bond Bond-esque flick. He was never less than believable as Interpol agent Louis Salinger, on the trail of shady international bankers/arms dealers. The way he takes no bullshit from anyone in every scene, and seems to fix his opponents in a grim, determined glare and needle out of them exactly the information he wants, was gripping. I don't agree with those that suggested that Owen and/or the film needed more humour; Salinger has to be hardened and relentless, or else much of the film wouldn't be as intensely rewarding as it is. It's inferred by other characters that Salinger doesn't sleep, eat much or take care of himself, so determined is he at his job. Details like that are easy to script, but Owen takes this and fleshes it out with real, unclichéd characterisation.

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden again show, as they did with Half Nelson (2007), that they have instinct and flair when it comes to getting fresh and unaffected performances from young new actors. Algenis Perez Soto (6), the non-professional lead in Sugar (Fleck's second fiction feature film as director: Boden co-directs and writes) gives a soulful and refreshing performance as Dominican Republic baseball player Miguel "Sugar" Santos. he gets the chance to play in the minor leagues in the US, with the possibility of bigger and better things thereafter. Perez Soto gets the tone perfectly spot on as someone who feels alien in a new environment desperately, and at great cost, trying to rise to others' expectations in a fiercely-competitive sport. For a first-time actor having to pull the film along (he's in just about every scene) he does an amazing job. His unfussy, unfazed and very interior performance allows for no affectations at all. His body language seems to say, 'don't notice me', but I found myself searching his face for what he was thinking; in each instance it is clear because of the innate way Perez Soto composes himself in regard to everyone and every situation around him. He exudes an awkward warmth throughout, not least in the film's affecting last scenes.

Paul Rudd (5) has been due some major credit for his array of great comic characters he's honed over the last five-or-so years. In recent times he's been very funny in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Knocked Up (2007), I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), and last year he was even better in two films: Role Models and I Love You, Man - and it's for the latter role (but with a nod to the former) that he makes my top five. With each of these films he's been gradually refining his comic capabilities and with I Love You, Man he's at his peak. Simply, he's charming, daft in all the right places and good at being the centre of attention here. He really holds the film wonderfully. He's incredibly good at the kinds of embarrassing situations wherein social interaction goes awry - he often very hilariously trails off, after attempts at budding (and buddy) humour, making in the character a tool of comic identification for all of us that have tried to make a mark with a quip or comment only to see it fall flat. Rudd turns these very things into an amiable virtue.


Jason Segel tells Paul Rudd he loves him, man

Paul Schneider (4) is the epitome of faded rakishness in Bright Star. He is the film's third, understated star, and the character is a gem of a role for him. Some found his Scottish accent a bit wavering, but I didn't notice anything odd about it (he may well have watched some Billy Connelly clips as practice). The way his Charles Armitage Brown robustly and jauntily puts himself into all social situations, and talks a mile-a-minute to all around him, suggests a man open to adventure and the pleasures of the day ahead. But there's a brewing sadness hovering around the edges of his demeanor. An unforeseen hidden emotion spills out of him at one particularly crucial moment in the film and Schneider masters his line delivery whilst desperately attempting to swallow down a life's worth of sorrow. He was truly amazing in this scene and indeed in every minute of the film he appears.

I, like a lot of people I'm sure, when they finished watching Armando Iannucci's brilliant political satire In the Loop, half found myself wishing I had the ability to fire off the quick banter, sharp wit and verbally creative put-downs of the Peter Capaldi (3) creation, Malcolm Tucker. A lot of it is due to Iannucci's adroit writing, but having shaped and perfected the character over five years of The Thick of It Capaldi clearly knew by heart the kind of delivery and flow of cadence in which to deliver the lines as if he were projectile-vomiting poison darts. From the start it is evident that Tucker has an oh-so-thoroughly grounded knowledge, from the inside out, of British and American politics, and he knows how to egregiously control every one of its twists and turns to his advantage. It's the pure pleasure of watching him do this, scene after scene, that stuck with me by the end (and a lot of the writing and acting is exemplary that it sticks in the mind). Ultimately, Tucker is a reprehensible creation, but by doing and saying the kinds of things that most of us won't dare say - and by appearing to be hilariously spot on a lot of time - he becomes a kind of misanthropic hero, however morally dubious that may sound. Capaldi is pin sharp here, and entirely memorable. To wit: after a disagreement with Gina McKee's political aide about a cancelled (by Tucker) appearance on Question Time, Tucker replies to McKee, who mentions that getting to air time 'falls within her purview': "Within your 'purview'? Where do you think you are, some fucking regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some fucking Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock!" So wrong, but so funny.


Alex Descas on a break from his 'Night Shift' in 35 Shots of Rum

Alex Descas (2) was one of four acting wheels that motored Claire Denis' latest masterpiece 35 Shots of Rum - a deeply heartfelt film about Lionel (Descas), a widowed train driver living with his daughter in an apartment on the outskirts of Paris. Singling him out of the brilliant quartet of lead actors (the others being Mati Diop, Nicole Dogue and Grégoire Colin as, respectively, the daughter, neighbour and unrequited love interest, and the daughter's suitor, also a neighbour) is perhaps a tad unfair as all four worked gloriously together and were equally excellent in the film. But Descas was the pivotal character, and he took to the role in an unforced and beautifully delicate manner. As usual with Denis, the dialogue is sparse and the way characters exist through looking (and merely being), and how they manoeuvre themselves through life, is the key focus. Much is given to us via Lionel's body movements - one small look, without words, and directed in just the right way tells us just how much he cares for those around him. Descas is exemplary at telling us everything we need to know through such deft, often silent actions - whether merely walking through his apartment after work, smoking a cigarette whilst gazing at the train tracks or quietly eating dinner. The incremental building up of minute details and gestures all create a lasting sense of the man he is. It was a sheer joy to watch Descas, either alone or gently interacting with his fellow actors. His strikingly handsome face was the most fascinating to look at of all actors on screen last year. Lionel is a character simply played yet difficult to define, but this is why Descas has an abiding appeal.

As soon as James Gray's excellent fourth feature, Two Lovers, ended I knew that Joaquin Phoenix (1) would most likely end up on this list. It was only when compiling it that it emerged he was top of the heap. He was amazing as Leonard Kraditor, a probably bipolar and certainly suicidal Jewish guy living with his parents (due to the peculiar difficulties of his life) in their Brooklyn apartment. But all that information is what we get within the first five-or-so minutes. From there on in Phoenix fleshes out and inhabits the role with great tender flair. He achieved the perfect balance of naïve wonder and awkward dysfunction in the role, without any hint at all of falling into the trap of being a typical 'movie misfit' (as what may have happened if one of those regulation hip indie actors had played Leonard). On paper, the role doesn't make the heart leap, filled as it is with some potentially irritating quirky traits, but Pheonix has the smarts to know just what to do when and where; he makes it all work perfectly in every scene. His strange behaviour - not so much with either of the two women in his life (played brilliantly by a surprising Gwyneth Paltrow and an excellent Vinessa Shaw), as this is the main plot focus, but more so with his immediate environment and the everyday objects and periphery characters within it - is narratively structured to enhance his actions (though it never obfuscates them) and it wonderfully clarifies who he is (whether, for example, inspecting a pair of discarded gloves, oddly gazing at the subjects of his photographs, the way he flicks a coat off a hook on his way out the door, and so on). Phoenix manages to be both endearingly accessible and distanced at the same time; the camera observes him closely but he's a charming enigma to the end. In one particular scene, when he's in an upmarket hotel bar nervously waiting for Paltrow's character, he sits fidgeting with the cutlery but affects an air of suave importance and machismo in doing so. It's a wonderful small moment that speaks volumes about Leonard, and one of many great miniature instances where you can see Phoenix creating this defining role.

Also good, in order:

Karra Elejalde Timecrimes/Los cronocrímenes / Alex Macqueen The Hide / Michael Stuhlbarg A Serious Man / François Bégaudeau The Class / Sharlto Copley District 9 / Anthony Mackie The Hurt Locker / Mickey Rourke The Wrestler / Kåre Hedebrant Let the Right One In / James Marsden Sex Drive / Jean-Claude Van Damme JCVD

Next up: best and worst films

Year-End List 2009: Female Performances

The end of the year is here again. Or, well, was here. A lot of these end-of-year best film lists tend to get circulated from around November to January, but I like to have January as a buffer zone, an extra month's catch-up period in which to watch any last minute stragglers, so to speak. Starting off February will be my selections for the ten best female performances of '09, with a few more that I also thought worth mentioning. 2009 was in many ways a tremendous year for great female filmmaking, both in front of and behind the camera. In compiling my lists here (best films etc are to come soon) this was a definite theme that emerged; at times quite blatantly, other times more subliminally. My choices, I hope, somehow reflect that it was indeed a good year for the ladies.


top row - left to right: 1 - 5; bottom row - left to right: 6 - 10

In a largely male-dominated ensemble Diane Kruger (10) not only stood elegantly out, but also stole much of the guys' thunder in Tarantino's long-awaited war remix Inglourious Basterds. In her main, long scene - the almost unbearably tense and wordy meeting-turned-bloodbath in a German basement bar - she displayed, in character, her ability to captivate a room marvelously. She delicately towed the line with her covertly flirtatious banter as the wonderfully named Bridget von Hammersmark, all the time keeping the scene, almost solely, on track and in careful balance (she more than kept the equilibrium in the face of a paticularly explosive scenario), and with a feel for true film star verve. For me, the entire scene revolved revolve around her brilliant performance.

Tilda Swinton (9) was my favourite thing about David Fincher's youth-vs-old age mixed fantasy bag The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The twenty-plus minutes roughly in the middle of the film's near-three-hour run time, set in a Russian hotel, where Swinton's Elizabeth Abbott meets with Brad Pitt's Benjamin Button amid the ticking clocks and hissing pipes of the midnight hour, to somewhat gradually fall in love, was the most rapturous sequence. She expertly displayed her status as one of the very best actresses working, and all this in a relatively small, but lovely and significant role. The small coda later in the film, where she realises a life-long ambition to swim the channel was a beautiful full stop to her story, and it added much pathos to the film.


Card-sharp Diane Kruger and co. in Inglourious Basterds

Beyoncé Knowles (8) should certainly be in more films based on her turn as Etta James in Darnell Martin's Cadillac Records. She entered the movie quite late, but proved to be a minor revelation in the role. It was a part that could easily have been over played, as James' life (or the slice we get to see here) was decidedly tumultuous, but Beyoncé plays it with conviction. And she sounds just great singing both I'd Rather Go Blind and At Last. She shows that she's much more than a versatile singer, and would surely add solid star class to any film where she may get to flex her considerable acting abilities.

In her break-out role, in 2004's Somersault, Abbie Cornish (7) gave a nice performance full of controlled subtlety, and now again, in Jane Campion's latest, Bright Star, she does the same - but this time she's even better. Cornish has been producing good work since Somersault (Candy (2006), Stop-Loss (2008) for example), but as Fanny Brawne she gets her best role so far: her small, obsessional mannerisms and constant attention to playful things (butterflies, sewing) reveal a girl being raptly aware of the world blossoming around her. But it's the joy written across her face whenever she's with Ben Wishaw's Keats that stays in the mind most.

In the otherwise rather dull The Burning Plain Kim Basinger (6) lights up the screen and lifts the film out of its self-important glaze whenever she's on screen. She is still more than capable of being incredibly good, despite not making a great many films these days - she's improving, film by film, the older she gets (here she betters her similar performance in 2004's The Door in the Floor). Her small but pivotal role as a breast cancer-surviving mother finally giving vent to what seems like years of suppressed passion (due to a dull, loveless marriage), and anger at the world, by embarking on an affair, was one of the most sorrowful and likeable roles I saw last year. The role is indeed relatively minor, the acting anything but. The aching confusion Basinger conveys in one particular scene (where, her secret having been realised by her daughter, she has to be at once the admonishing mother and the shocked and rumbled adultress) is expertly handled with skilful ease. An actress given to more histrionic outburts would've stopped the scene dead - Basinger gets each nervy glance and gesture spot on. This is the film for which she should have won the Oscar, not L.A. Confidential (1997).


Béatrice Dalle tries alternative means to get Inside

Béatrice Dalle (5) added just the right tone of freakish menace as La femme in French gore flick Inside/À l'intérieur (2007), which finally got a release in the UK in 2009. From her first sinister close-up, lit only by a match that illuminates her face in all its jolie laide glory, to her demonic mother-in-waiting on a vengeful shitfit later in the film, Dalle proved inspired and entirely apt casting. She is one of the most watchable performers in cinema, with a face hard to look away from however much, here, in this particular role, we might want to. Phantom figures and midwifery looked awfully grim as played out by Dalle. Is it right and fair to say it looked like she was having fun in the role? Bad girls rule.

Everything we need to know about the character Melissa Leo (4) plays in Frozen River (Ray Eddy, a working class trailer-park mom who makes ends meet by transporting immigrants across the Canadian border into the US) is contained in the first few minutes of the film. Ray is on the phone in her car, door open, smoking a cigarette and quietly crying. It's not just the minute actions performed or the way director Courtney Hunt uses her camera incredibly well to capture them, it's how immediately and indelibly Leo manages to tell us every little detail about the woman we will get to know, to almost live with, over the remaining 90-minutes, all through subtle and sensitive expressions, all entirely non-verbal - and more meaningful because of it. It's easy casting, sure, but perfect casting all the same. Kate Winslet won the Best Actress Oscar last year, but (co-nominee) Leo gave the infinitely better performance.

One of my favourite underrated actresses, Melissa George (3), was blisteringly good in the time-warping horror-thriller Triangle last year. I've been a fan for several years - after impressive small and/or supporting turns in the likes of Mulholland Dr. (2001), Down with Love (2003), The Amityville Horror (2005) remake and 30 Days of Night (2007) - and now she gives her best performance to date, as a mysterious woman trapped aboard an abandoned phantom(?) ship, where increasingly disturbing events are repeatedly played out again and again. George's character is desperate to get back on dry land (and to a stable time zone) to take care of her son, or maybe to clear up a few secrets that she, and the film's writer (Christopher Smith, also its director), have been carefully withholding from us. George was better here, in a solid genre offering, than many of her perhaps more overvalued, and Oscar-baiting, contemporaries have been in their last few films - the kind who usually get widespread awards recognition year-on-year. I'd gladly watch Triangle repeated on a loop over, say, The Reader (2009), Notes on a Scandal (2006) or The Constant Gardener (2005) any day of the week. George's character's fear and exhaustion, that gradually and believably turns to forceful determination, is vividly conveyed through some tricky and elaborate scenes - and she never falters for one moment: her performance keeps the film afloat, and makes its often daft, but always exciting, events work. In the film's dénouement she shows further skill and depth than even earlier in the film, and it's these scenes that should convince anyone just how good she truly is. Keep up the great work, Melissa - I'll happily keep on watching every film you make.


Melissa George shooting on all cylinders in Triangle

Michelle Williams (2), in Kelly Reichardt's second film Wendy and Lucy, was unvarnished, weather-beaten and real. Her performance as Wendy wasn't immediately easy to warm to, but proved entirely worth the investment after merely a handful of scenes of this brilliant, unsentimentally heartfelt film. Williams gives very little away as to Wendy's increasingly deepening emotional state, as her journey toward finding work in an Alaskan fish cannery abruptly comes to a halt - first due to her car breaking down, then because her travelling companion, her dog Lucy, is impounded - but slowly, quietly and, through the gradual piling up of misfortune, we see how utterly fragile she is. Reichardt displays a deft hand in withholding the kinds of vital pieces of information many films give away all too easily, and when they do subtly arise it's incrementally channelled through Williams' beleaguered exasperation. Watching Williams here is fascinating. By the film's end I found I not only warmed to Wendy as a fully lived-in character, but also became entwined in Wendy's life completely; through how the performance is cleverly constructed, it allowed me to almost directly feel the way forward alongside her. And that level of audience-character connection is high praise indeed.

The best female performance for me last year came from someone I hadn't heard of before. As with Eva Löbau in 2005's The Forest for the Trees I was totally caught off guard by an actress relatively new to filmmaking. Hilda Péter (1) was astounding as the title character in Peter Strickland's singularly impressive debut feature film Katalin Varga. After revealing to her husband that their son is not biologically his, Katalin takes the son on a journey to discover the truth behind some kind of dark secret involving a man from her past. Here starts her bizarrely creepy path toward a possible answer to her questions. It's a revenge trip of sorts for Katalin, and throughout Péter never allows her to fall prey to victimisation or easy sympathy; she creates an occasionally fraught, level-headed and certainly determined performance out of a decidedly bare framework. We work hard to fill in the gaps and silences provided by the moments where Péter and Strickland let us simply observe Katalin. The best (of many) involves an afternoon boating trip where Katalin confronts the (possible, probable) target of her search: Péter performs a heart-wrenching, though coldly delivered, monologue about the key event of her past - the reason she is there in the first place - which showed her sly skill with words and intricate gestures. With Katalin Varga Péter has created a peculiarly hard-to-fathom and uncatagorisable facet of fractured femininity that was riveting, fresh and, in the end, the best female performance last year.

Also good last year, in order:

Jane Lynch Role Models / Nicole Dogue 35 Shots of Rum / Catherine Frot Angel of Mine / Morjana Alaoui Martyrs / Vinessa Shaw Two Lovers / Katie Jarvis Fish Tank / Drew Barrymore Grey Gardens / Kyôko Koizumi Tokyo Sonata / Lena Olin The Reader / Lorna Raver Drag Me to Hell

Next up: male performances

Review: Spun (Jonas Åkerlund/2002)

The film’s plot is of the familiar day-in-the-life, to-and-fro type: Ross (Jason Swartzman, badly miscast) is having an odd, bad day. He drops in to see Spider Mike and Cookie (John Leguizamo and Mena Suvari, both overacting wildly) with some kind of drug score in mind, and thus gets to hang out with fellow hangers-on Nikki and Frisbee (Brittany Murphy and Patrick Fugit, highly irritating) in the interim. After this he ends up running errands for drug baron, The Cook (Mickey Rourke, unintentionally funny), and then tries to get back in contact with his girlfriend. Clearly things go from bad to worse and back again, just to get to some kind of resolution. And this is all it does really: one drug-related encounter makes way for another, then another. And so on. Scene after scene of increasingly tiring mishap. When a film credits twenty different producers it sets a few alarm bells ringing. Whether associate, executive, or just a plain vanilla, producer, it makes you wonder why so many cooks were needed; did Spun have a strained production maybe? Whatever the reason, it all makes for an unappealing, tasteless broth.

The director, Jonas Åkerlund, had made many music videos and short films prior to the film. Some (Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ for example) contained an enjoyably rapturous sense of fun; others (namely The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’) were puerile attempts at replicating and/or subverting the quickly waning MTV-style of glossy degradation-chic. In fact Spun looks and feels like an extended music video, which contributes to its disposable feel; it's one idea stretched too far, especially when Åkerlund has tried similar tricks elsewhere to varying degrees of success.

Indeed, this type of gimcrack filmmaking has been done countless times before, and this one’s another, superfluous, entry. If you’re after TV-obsessed trailer trash, watch Pink Flamingos (1968) (which Spun seems to want to blatantly, though weakly, make homage to in some scenes); if you want strung-out teens and over-exposed faux-gritty cinematography, then check out Gregg Araki's just as vacuous and throwaway, though infinitely more interesting, The Doom Generation (1995) or Nowhere (1997) (both of which Spun aspire to); if agitated editing, sped-up footage and copious drug ingestion are your bag then Requiem for a Dream (2000) should’ve given you enough to last a lifetime. The list could drag on. It shows up the awfully vast parade of previous contenders in this film’s overcrowded lineage. Spun goes beyond homage: it’s literally a sketchy patchwork of other, sometimes better, films.



This rehashed feel extends to the choice of cameos, too. We have porn star Ron Jeremy, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan (who provides the soundtrack), American History X (1998) director Tony Kaye and – in an extended cameo – Deborah Harry, who has the one and only half decent line in the film. Sure, all are cultish figures, but it really would be a good idea to give them something to do once you have them in front of the camera. Attaching their names and having them simply turn up on set doesn’t guarantee that their credibility will rub off.

One suggestion might be that all this faux-chic, debased and apathetic movie wants to do is to pass comment on ‘00s US indie(ish) filmmaking trends, to show the how devalued the quality of life for contemporary teens might be (maybe they’re imitating their atmospheres, spitting back out what they consume on TV). But it doesn’t even, at any point, make any halfway interesting observations to this effect. The thing is, you have to do more than just show this in a snazzy way, otherwise it just falls prey to the trappings of needlessly trendy excess; a feat that Spun achieves well. A film that really wants to make a valid point – or even one that just intends to thoroughly entertain - should surely value the need for some kind of proper content instead of merely relying on over-stylisation, and contain kinetic thrills instead of flippant and tiresome overused visual gestures.

It has some, erm, choice plot contrivances: one character leaving a woman tied to a bed for almost the entirety of the film; another woman defecates whilst her lover pleads for sex (shades of Harmony Korine?); a spotty teen gets randomly shot in the groin (shades of Tarantino?), and two checkout girls getting repeatedly slapped, all for no discernible reason. I didn’t see the point. Surely even the teen market wants something more substantial than what Åkerlund offers up here. That they get this seems like an insult to their intelligence. This is utter hateful rubbish.

Oh the horror! - A random roundup

Being the Halloween season I thought a quick horror film roundup would be in order. I’ve selected randomly out of the films I’ve seen relatively recently, so the comments tend to flit all over the place – from the cheap, very cheap, and cheerful to thrashed-out sequel quickies, and from ‘70s backwoods treks to franchise reboots. There will be more to come in future, but for now here are some thoughts on 11 random horror flicks to help you while away the final minutes of the witching hour...

I did a double-bill of Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland (Michael A.Simpson/1988/1989). Part 2 was ridiculous fun, being pretty much a replay of the original (which was fine by me), but with Angela now seeming a whole lot darn perkier whilst on her killing spree; the campers themselves abided by the title and were very unhappy indeed, what with all the drills to the head and knives to the gut. I felt a bit sorry for poor, beleaguered Angela this time around - Pamela Springsteen goes about her grisly business with an air of resignation (whether this was intentional or not is open to debate). Part 3 was the same thing all over again, but seemed more of a lazy rehash than a decent enough replay, like Part 2. One after another the killings didn’t come off as significantly varied enough to be either surprising or interesting for a third time, though the ketchup blood, wobbly angles and haphazard structure kept the laughs coming: one camping victim is seen lying dead next to a previous victim even before he’s actually been killed (he pops up alive and well in the following scene). It’s the sign of something good, whatever the weather.


A good look for the trash-strewn streets (an unfortunate passer-by in Street Trash)

Famed camera operator and cinematographer Jim Muro’s (aka J. Michael Muro) only directing effort, Street Trash (1987), was grim, silly fun. A game of catch the severed tramp’s penis, an obese boss chasing the secretary around the office (resulting in an oddly-faked death) and a nifty exploding head moment in the final fight-off all go toward making it a memorable ninety-odd mins. Muro’s control of the camera is as expert as it should be. At one point – after the proprietor of a store that sells the body-melting liquor drinks some of his own stock and stumbles out onto the street to, er, duly melt – the camera does an incredibly showy slow vertical pan-cum-back-flip-cum-somersault, revealing the process of the guy gradually melting as a series of tumbles. It’s the kind of trick that the Coen bros. pull frequently, but here it has a grubby fluidity all its own. Parts of the film were engrossing (it’s shot in a crisp and vibrant manner - oddly opposing the subject matter), and some parts were plain gross, but everything about it was enjoyable. It's a shame Muro hasn't as yet directed again.

Brian Yuzna’s Beyond Re-Animator (2003) was a good threequel after seeing the original Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon/1985) a while back – I missed out on the second instalment, Bride of Re-Animator (1990), so far (to see what happened in between these two). Both have plenty of wonderfully shoddy atmosphere and a ton of ick to go with it. I prefer Yuzna when he’s working strictly from material he’s generated himself (as in his debut, Society (1989)), but he does a good job of reinterpreting Gordon’s initial idea for this third film. The original, now 24 years old, still fully deserves its cultish following.

The infamous Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato/1979) and Creep (2004) director Christopher Smith’s second film Severance (2006), whilst being entirely different in tone, both warn city folk of the terrors of venturing into the wilderness. Holocaust was book-ended with rather dull scenes of awkward exposition, both of which refer to the main thrust of the narrative (a camera crew’s jaunt into the jungle to film a lost tribe of cannibals), which first attempt to point toward the horrors that lie waiting, then to reflect back to them. By the end, the notorious scenes that make up the bulk of the action have come and gone all too quickly to really merit the shocking tag the film has been pegged with all these years. (I checked out the running times of the version I watched with other versions available, and discovered my copy was cut by about 5 mins.) Whether tamed by over-cautious censors or from it having a curiously disjointed, overly dated feel Holocaust seems less than the sum of its parts now. (It's always been a notorious must-see-at-least-once than an outright classic.) The intercutting between the jungle and a city office – where a TV crew watch the footage for later re-assemblage for televising – does create some momentum and tension. There’s some awful dialogue right at the end, which makes what the film was telling us instinctively through imagery blindingly obvious through verbal means, but bad line readings are, for the most part, part of its knackered charm. It’s a film I might revisit in the future - preferably with friends and alcohol, so as to make the experience more fun. It has potential to be better second time around.

Severance, on the other hand, was daftly amusing and appropriately gruesome, despite feeling entirely derivative. Although I’m only superficially comparing it to Holocaust, it pulled similar manoeuvres without any expository bullshit. It isn't really too comparable to that film in any significant way, but after a time there are some parallels between the two: chiefly that both feature angry, almost faceless forest-dwellers intent on bringing down urban interlopers (here an office staff's team-building trip to a remote cabin). It was unofficially marketed as The Office meets Deliverance (1972), but I suspect the film it wants to closely emulate is Shaun of the Dead (2004): the mix of brutal bloodshed with darkly comic sequences owe a debt to Edgar Wright’s film, but it doesn’t feel deliberately imitative (though its innate Britishness – through the minutiae of modern, cringeworthy office types – does rather closely match that of not only Shaun, but also Ricky Gervais’ TV show a bit too smartly). It was a lot more fun than recent stuff that runs along similar, though perhaps more po-faced, lines, such as Hostel (2004). There are some dungeon-set torture scenes that sustain a terrifically creepy feel, which work integrally and fluently with the film, as opposed to being look-at-me highlights (hello, Eli Roth), there to simply show how adept everyone involved is at being sick in a smug, post-modern way, as Roth tried and, in my view, failed to do with his film.


Severance's Danny Dyer finding the right fit at Foot Locker.

Smith manages to make Severance both far more level-headed (in that he seems to know just how to create unnerving set pieces without drawing attention to a too-long list of obvious reference points) and unbelievably stupid. There’s little intellect to the film (and thank god for that; any lofty allusions to cleverness would have sunk the ‘gore ‘n’ grin’ atmosphere straight away), but a masked attempt at topicality with a 9/11 reference, which (literally) backfires. It does have a seen-it-all-before feel, but nowadays this tends to come with the territory in such genre-specific horrors. It has spadefuls of cheeky charm, too, in the form of a few likeable characters – most notably Danny Dyer, as a strung-out, wide-boy computer programmer. He’s often very funny and gets the best lines. Although another character, after tasting an overcooked cake (that, unbeknownst to all, contains a severed human finger) made for the starved staff by another, inept worker, spits it out and replies: “You don’t cook every cake for an hour”. It’s full of many such comic asides that are, more often than not, both humorous and grisly at the same time.

Mother’s Day (Charles Kaufman/1980) was something I’d been wanting to see for a fair while. I caught sight of a photo of the mother of the title, played by Rose Ross, and thought it’d be the kind of thing that would usually win me over (I’m a sucker for deranged matriarchs in horror), and it was only Ross alone who proved to be worth the time here. Apart from her gleefully maniacal face the film was a series of tedious arguments between the mother’s boys, (which aimed for laughs, but weren’t terribly funny) and the three female camping victims, who only ever tried to escape v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. I got quickly bored. The location looked like a novice set designer’s wet dream though: a redneck backwater hovel, graffited to the hilt, and styled into a food-splattered den of bones, trash and varying accouterment. It added some colour and had me scanning the background for fun visual details during the dull moments. There seemed to be a lack of focus as far as the story was concerned - God knows I’m not one for too much actual plot in cheap slasher flicks, but there wasn’t much going on in the way of organised scares, frights or generally gruesome incidents. Though when the much-mentioned freak-of-the-woods Queenie finally jumped out, it pointed to the fact that she should’ve sprung into action a lot sooner. The funniest touch was when one character was smothered to death by an inflatable tit. Lovely.


Cube²: Hypercube's production designer may have forgotten to get his light fittings PAT-tested

Both Cube sequels regularly show up on the Zone Horror channel and I managed to catch both on one of their current runs. Cube²: Hypercube (Andrzej Sekula/2002) and Cube Zero (Ernie Barbarash/2004) take the first film’s plot backwards, forwards and probably sideways, just like the movie’s shifting boxes of death themselves. Hypercube kept the original’s white space look and merely continued the story, neither changing much nor adding a great deal to it in the process. It was still absurd fun though, peppered with some teeth-gratingly awful acting and a few surprise moments (usually involving the silly methods of entrapment that the actors have to wriggle out of). Zero – a prequel, clearly signalled by its title – answered any outstanding queries about back-story, how the cubes function, who’s behind it all, and so on. The look this time was grungy-dungeon just like in the Saw (2004-09) films. It gets points for veering away from the sterile cocoon setting of the two previous films, though I wondered if the filmmakers were consciously aping the Saw franchise’s style for this third film by downgrading to filth chamber locations (a bit of research told me that Zero came out roughly at the same time as the first Saw - their concepts are uncannily similar indeed). The original did this kind of thing first though, back in 1997 - and I’ll gladly take any number of shoddy Cubes over two minutes of Jigsaw and his human pets any day.

I watched Halloween: Resurrection (Rick Rosenthal/2002) chiefly because having seen Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) some years back I wanted to know how a decapitated Michael Myers managed to ‘come home’ for another night of killing (although it’s not as interesting as I’d hoped - we find out in the film’s first 10 mins). I still enjoy a lot about these sequels - some occasionally contain moments worth waiting for. As soon as the plot kicks in, and Jamie Lee Curtis kicks off, it struck me that the filmmakers were eager to cash in on several notable recent-to-its-time horror successes, as if following Carpenter’s original template (and resulting sequels) weren’t enough. The plot is unerringly simple: a selection of students have to spend the night in Myers’ old house for a reality TV show, which has a live internet feed. The Blair Witch Project (1999), Scream (1996) and My Little Eye (2001) can all be ticked off its list of reference points (even Mike Figgis’ four-screen experimental film Timecode (2000) may have been a slight influence, too). Ideas are paraphrased from these films, and stapled together in the script in an attempt to (surely) appeal to the needs of today’s teens’ expansive viewing habits (though if it were released today there would be an obligatory reference to YouTube and/or Facebook thrown in as well). The doomed students are given cameras to film their night of terror, and I thought that, in a conceptual move, the actors themselves were going to film the bulk of the action themselves (as in Blair Witch) to inject some immediacy and freshness, but it all resorts back to obligatory formal camera set-ups and familiarity soon sets in thereafter.


He's behind you! (yet again)

In one respect all this regurgitating of trends is exactly what’s to be expected. The filmmakers here most likely want to keep as current as possible to grab the audience's attention, but maybe it'd be best for them to avoid the blatant and wearisome pandering that occurs here (though there are certainly worse offenders – Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (2000), for one). The internet/reality TV slant feels belated (even for 2002) and a rather feeble excuse to pick around for zeitgeist. Carpenter’s directly brutal, no-fuss shocks worked a hundred times better in the original of course (from 1978, when this type of slasher flick was finding its legs), but Carpenter hasn’t been involved directly in the franchise since 1981 with Halloween II. Go figure.

There are a few inspired moments though: one has Myers kill a victim using the end of a tripod, camera still attached and filming his murder live (clearly a nod to Peeping Tom (1960)); the other, which was a nice, genuinely unsettling touch, has Myers walk through a doorway, knife in hand, only to be followed a moment later by another “Myers” mimicking his moves (with an unsettling cutaway to the image of them both on one of the CCTV cameras positioned in the house). The killing shape is doubled and for a moment you almost expect a multiplicity of Myers clones to emerge. This brief sequence stood out as wonderfully surreal and truly intriguing in a way that the remaining film didn’t live up to. The repeated Myers figure was explained away in the next scene, but for a few minutes the film was both nicely baffling and surprising.

Boxed-in: Shane Carruth's Primer (2004)

I couldn’t describe the plot of this film if I tried, but I’ll hazard a guess: a couple of guys, Abe and Aaron (David Sullivan and director Carruth), are working on a machine in their garage that could possibly send objects, and hopefully people, back in time. It’s made out of refrigerator parts and various bits and bobs around the house, and makes a weird humming noise – its look is part metal box and part… I don’t know quite what. The two send themselves back in time, duplicating themselves in the process, and then have to spend hours, days locked away in a pre-arranged hotel room for fear of something terrible happening with either guns, deception or each other's psyches, or indeed a combination of all three. Things inevitably go wrong, but where, when and how remained a mystery to me, right until the credits.

Conceptually, it's akin to Darren Aronofsky's debut, Pi/π (1998), but without its anarchic driving force or sullen atmosphere, mixed with In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute/1997), though without LaBute's acute observations or jagged cruel streak. Both those films, whilst not complete successes, were better examples of insular, low budget filmmaking. And recent inventive Spanish thriller Los cronocrímenes/Timecrimes (Nacho Vigalondo/2007) royally trumps Primer in the twisty-turny-time stakes. Vigalondo's film plays its time travel games with more conviction and, more importantly, with a sense of fun. There is little that lightens the mood in Primer - a humorous touch, or even a few jokes here and there, might have added a bit of charm to the film, and may gone some way in unseizing the impervious grip it has on itself.

The script is so impenetrable that it’s really hard to fathom what it is exactly about. I’m not being defensive in my obtuse reaction and lack of understanding of the film, but Carruth is totally and utterly unconvincingly restricted in his aims to produce a story with access for viewers outside of its, most likely, in-the-know circle of computer-math geeks. (And the fault ultimately and solely lies with Carruth alone - as well as directing, he cast, edited, designed, did the music/sound and produced the film.) Its appeal surely lies with the few - and I mean very few - who can actually say that they grasp what’s going on. In the respect of a film wanting to reach a universal audience (and most films, especially those low-in-budget-desirous-of-box-office, should, yes?), Primer spectacularly fails.



On the good side (limited to some technical attributes), the inventive framing of many scenes is nicely achieved: offices, garages, storage boxes and hotel rooms are all disconcertingly depicted as claustrophobic prisons, both backing up the theme of privacy and containment and formally mimicking the look of the box-like time-travel-gizmo that the characters create. The photography is good too: the low (reportedly $7,000) budget extends to some atypically grainy, often warm images that counteract the gloomy locations and gives them a lived-in feeling of some authenticity.

Ultimately, I just couldn’t get involved with characters who are smug, self-appreciating, middle class WASP boys in business get-ups, who confer endlessly about their secret little endeavours. Kudos, certainly, to Carruth and co. for making a film with very little money – and with a great sense of commitment and determination for their story - but maybe they should have thought that a great number of other people just might not feel included in their sealed-off band of tech-heads. Making it for themselves is fine, but I'm unsure as to whether they should expect many people to care less. It’s primarily very much a film for fully-commited number-crunchers, who consider incomprehensible technical babble to equate meaningful perceptions on existence. Although by no means rote, it's a math lesson I could've easily skipped.

David Lynch hops to it: Rabbits (2002)

At forty-two minutes this short, web-only offering from David Lynch (found on his own website) is one of his straight up oddities, no question. Made after Mulholland Dr. (2001), alongside another experimental short, Darkened Room, and his crudely animated eight-part web series DumbLand (both 2002), it feels like a roughly thought-out sketch, a test for something bigger (it did ultimately get segmented and cleverly enfolded into his last feature Inland Empire (2006)). Lynch is reported to be constantly prolific between features, whether with short films, painting, photography or sculpture (Rabbits is certainly a stop-gap experiment). His signature themes continually reoccur throughout these side projects, expanding and building on his ongoing fascination with dark deeds and strange happenings. Rabbits fitfully, yet densely uses some of the ideas and imagery that has permeated his films from the start. Faulty lighting? Check. Fire? Check. Shadowed interiors? Check. People in bunny costumes doing the ironing? Ah, that’s a new one.

The film – actually a series of four-or-five-minute episodes strung together – is simplistic in set-up, yet relatively obscure in execution. Each segment opens with the same image: a barely-lit room containing a couch, a telephone on a table, an ironing board, two lamps and a doorway leading to… well, somewhere otherworldly for sure (although Inland Empire did eventually provide the answer). The film features only three characters: Suzie, Jane and Jack (Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring and Scott Coffey respectively – although not that we can tell, as the rabbit suits obscure their identities throughout).

Characters enter the room, approach each other and make blank, stilted comments to rapturous applause from an unseen audience. It has a sketch show/sitcom set-up, although there is no actual obvious comedy; the lines aren’t funny in the way that sitcom one-liners tend to be. I doubt we’re meant to get the humour, if it is indeed there to actually get, as it’s not really outwardly funny in any normal sense. It’s deliberately baffling - more of an innate manner for these rabbit people to communicate with each other and a way for the viewer to attempt to grasp some kind of narrative. It feels like dialogue from a performance art piece (Lynch’s 1990 filmed theatre piece Industrial Symphony #1 comes to mind) or a bad poetry reading. If it’s empty of meaning, then it feels deliberate, presented merely for us to connect the dots and take away its wispy gist perhaps? I’m sure he’s aware of how impenetrably barmy it all comes across, anyway.


Still life With Rabbits (and ironing)

It adds up to very little in the way of coherence, but this doesn’t really matter initially. The last thing I’d want from Lynch when he’s wearing his playful hat – especially in a work this absurdly throwaway – is a narrative that fulfills logic or makes any kind of defined sense; with Lynch it’s thankfully always mood over meaning. He’s merely presenting a set-up, a tableau vivant, and letting his ideas seep out in whichever way he likes; using mise-en-scène to create an arena in which he can seemingly empty out the contents of his brain at the given moment of a take.

The one set-up is consistent throughout: the room is lit the same way and the camera is in an identical position each time the image fades in. Long periods where very little happens are frequent; it’s focus is the pause, pregnant with dread, waiting another monotone line reading as if delivered straight out of a daytime soap opera. This feels intentional and adds a further peculiarity to the already over-peculiar mood. All the time there are constant noises or random spurts of sound that have an instantly typical Lynch feel of otherworldly aural fear: it could be the distant hisses and thuds of some far-away factory; steam pumped out from gnarled machinery; or that fierce wind through the dark trees that Lynch loves so much. We don’t know what is going on outside of the room, and, by extention, outside of the film’s frame. What’s behind the (only) door to the left of the frame? We know, from the re-occurring footsteps echoing ominously that a man in a green suit figures somewhere in the mix, but who, and where, is he? And what’s with the twisted red rodent face that appears in the top corner of the room, gurgling some kind of warped and cryptic dialogue?

For whatever it is, and whatever Lynch might be saying with this, I liked what he was doing on the whole. As ever, he’s eschewing comprehension for the abstraction of imagery, and the hitting of the right phantasmagoric tone. There is a startling, albeit brief, moment when that door on the left slowly opens of its own accord; there is one of his daunting pauses then a cacophony of horrible sounds and lighting changes; then the door quickly slams shut. After thirty-odd minutes of feeling that something ungodly might be lurking there, the effect is terrifying. Here, Lynch is doing what he does best. He may be resting on his laurels slightly, punching just shy of his own weight, but it still works well enough – though nowhere near as effectively as it does in his features. (The effect that the chopped up Rabbits has, as expanded in the monumentally evocative Inland Empire, is sublime, and woven in with great emotional deftness).


Lynch is comfortably back in his red room.

Other than his ability to truly unnerve the viewer, the film is slightly underwhelming. Maybe it’s the episodic nature or the over-familiarity with his ideas, but something feels somewhat lacklustre about it. He is being wilfully obscure. He often is, but in his other, longer films the abstruseness is built up, extended and spread over a series of (not always necessarily sequentially ordered) narrative turns so that it finally comes to a terrible and often open-ended conclusion – where we’re left to ponder all its effects and implications as the credits roll (I’m thinking of Fred’s ride into infinite metamorphosis at the close of Lost Highway (1997) and Betty’s suicide, followed by the Blue Lady’s reverberating sign-off, ‘silencio’, in Mulholland Dr.)

Perhaps due to its limited, piecemeal set-up Rabbits largely just baffles and then simply ends, without much of an enduring impact. An enigmatic trace of atmosphere does remain, to some degree, by the time the rabbits have hopped off the screen. But it’s a minor, quickly evaporating trace compared to how all the nocturnal mysteries and exterior horrors take sublime flight and permeate all-day and all-night-long (and much longer still) in his film work. But in the sequences where mood is sustained with maximum efficiency, Rabbits intrigues simply and instinctively – not letting on about the terrors that lay wait on the other side of that door.

Genet’s Single Soundless Song: Un Chant d’amour (1950)

I finally caught up with Jean Genet’s only film as director, Un Chant d’amour (1950), within the past year, and it was only as it started that I realised it contained no sound; it was very much a silent film. For some reason I always assumed - in noting the literal translation of the title, A Song of Love - it might feature at least a sprinkling of musical accompaniment, at least. I don't know if my ignorance in not knowing much about the film had anything to do with it, but as soon as the film started the impact of Genet's soundless criminal world was quite a shock: the first prison guard had no footsteps; the swinging flowers outside the cell window made no whooshing sound...



The film is full of splendid, close-fitting imagery – some of it stark; some of it consolatory – but the absence of sound is the most interesting thing about the film. After a while – through the visual-aural associations I missed via the actions carried out on screen – I found myself subconsciously adding sounds to match whatever was happening: I took on the role of the foley artist. The bizarre, solo, jerky dance one inmate performs (either for the prying warden? us? or simply himself?) was rhymeless. Just as the prisoner may have conjured up an internal song, I did the same. I was making the scene as moving, painful, transcendent or even as humourous as I wanted to. I found that the lack of either diegetic or non-diegetic sound often desexualised the action (chiefly the flirtations and foreplay between the prisoners). But, adversely, that lack also makes some moments more intimate, more sensual. A climbing visual fascination occurs, not only for the inmates on screen (visibility for them being hindered by cell walls), but also for the viewer (audibility for us being hindered by its very deficiency). On screen and off, we retreat to recalled images and sounds, respectively, as tools for arousal and/or identification.

The absence of sound during the frequent scenes of sex in the film eradicates one significant and sometimes embarrassing factor (for any person): all that panting and groaning and, er, general verbal appreciation, shall we say. It could be that these prisoners perhaps can’t or won’t make any sound during sexual acts (through fear of being discovered, general self-consciousness, or the desire to keep things ‘unspoken’). This idea is raised in the film’s absence of aural accompaniment. Without it, Genet’s moments of sexual intimacy come across as distanced and almost clinical, tidied up somehow, though never dulled or unpassionate. We inscribe onto the screen how we might feel; it presents us with the act and asks us what we do, how we’d act and what we sound like in similar situations. (The essence of the act of sex, gay or straight, being of course both relative and universal.)



It’s clear that films like Todd Haynes' Poison (1991), Sean Mathias' Bent (1997) and, to some extent, Gus Van Sant's Mala Noche/Bad Night (1985) - as well as (although in a different vein) various Andy Warhol film experiments such as Blow Job (1963) – drew largely on the tonal sensibilities of Un Chant d'amour (particularly in the case of Haynes' film: the 'Homo' section directly references the film), but none captured its exact tone, whether outrightly intended or not. The Love Behind Bars theme may have been examined through others' filmmaking, but Genet’s crucial touch was to deliberately make it affecting through what he didn’t include: the nonexistent sound makes us focus on what’s not there; as a result the focus falls on the images more intently.

The film has often been labelled as visually poetic and dreamlike, and although some sequences have a particularly insular kind of surrealness about them, the general ocular cheerlessness of it doesn’t really inspire - or indeed require - too much overt romantic reference: the details in the very everyday-ness of its most intimate moments are beautifully conveyed with a lucid frankness and, in my view, there isn't call for overstatement here. This is not to devalue what Genet and his co-cinematographer Jacques Natteau acheived at all. The images are certainly distinctive: each scene is framed with immaculate attention to screen space, and the frequency of close-ups instil further intimacy within this world of confinement. But the real potency of the film, what lingers afterwards as a result of watching it in silence, occurs through what each individual viewer adds onto it – through whatever tune, noise, hum or whisper they think fits. We personalise it that way; the best stuff arises simply through the viewing. Did Genet require us to be unwitting interactive participants, by deliberately omitting a soundtrack? I don’t know. But the resulting effect makes his only directing effort a thoroughly reciprocal experience: the viewer, him- or herself, is the perfect complement to the visuals.



Maybe Genet had said and sung too much elsewhere, through his novels (tellingly, books obviously don't have soundtracks), or in his own confinement, to need to say anything with either dialogue or song here. Or maybe he just prefers his films pre-talkie. Who’s to say what Genet’s ultimate thematic or aesthetic intentions for the film were. But this isn’t essential to grasp its seductive qualities. What’s presented on screen can be absorbed intuitively. I took it in the manner I did at the time, and others do likewise. But the lack of voices and noises, the sounds of desire or submission, replaced simply with silence, is what’s so spellbinding about Un Chant d’amour. I could transpose anything I liked onto this mini-fable of grubby love. Needless to say, however good Simon Fisher Turner's or Gavin Bryar's scores for reduxed versions of it are, it's best left without one.

Looking back to 2000: Films and performances

Female Performances:

01. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Donna De Angelo in Limbo
02. Maggie Cheung as Su Li-zhen/Mrs. Chan in In the Mood for Love
03. Kerry Washington as Lanisha Brown in Our Song
04. Melora Walters as Claudia Wilson Gator in Magnolia
05. Julianne Moore as Sarah Miles in The End of the Affair
06. Carrie-Anne Moss as Natalie in Memento
07. Catherine Keener as Maxine Lund in Being John Malkovich
08. Mira Sorvino as Dionna in Summer of Sam
09. Cate Blanchett as Meredith Logue in The Talented Mr. Ripley
10. Melanie Griffith as Honey Whitlock in Cecil B. DeMented

Also good, in no order: Chloë Sevigny Boys Don’t Cry / Tracey Ullman Small Time Crooks / Annette Bening American Beauty / Björk Dancer in the Dark / Sigourney Weaver Galaxy Quest

Male Performances:

01. Eric Bana as Mark Brandon 'Chopper' Read in Chopper
02. Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho
03. Billy Crudup as FH in Jesus' Son
04. Forest Whitaker as Ghost Dog in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
05. John C. Reilly as Officer Jim Kurring in Magnolia
06. Michael Douglas as Prof. Grady Tripp in Wonder Boys
07. Tony Leung Chiu Wai as Chow Mo-wan in In the Mood for Love
08. Denis Lavant as Galoup in Beau travail
09. Albert Finney as Ed Masry in Erin Brockovich
10. John Leguizamo as Vinny in Summer of Sam

Also good, in no order: Mike White Chuck & Buck / Jack Black High Fidelity / David Strathairn Limbo / Ewen Bremner Julien Donkey-Boy / Jim Carrey Man on the Moon

Top Ten Films:

10. Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese/USA)
09. Summer of Sam (Spike Lee/USA)
08. In the Mood for Love/Fa yeung nin wa (Wong Kar-wai/Hong Kong, France)
07. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch/France, Germany, USA, Japan)
06. Blackboards/Takhté siah (Samira Makhmalbaf/Iran, Italy, Japan)
05. Jesus' Son (Alison Maclean/Canada, USA)
04. Beau travail (Claire Denis/France)
03. American Psycho (Mary Harron/USA)
02. Limbo (John Sayles/USA)
01. Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson/USA)

Also good, in no order: One Day in September (Kevin Macdonald) / Our Song (Jim McKay) / High Fidelity (Stephen Frears) / The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan) / Chuck & Buck (Miguel Arteta) / Wisconsin Death Trip (James Marsh) / Small Time Crooks (Woody Allen) / Ringu/The Ring (Hideo Nakata) / Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter/Ash Brannon/Lee Unkrich) / Chopper (Andrew Dominik)

Looking back to 2001: Films and performances

The top ten films and performances of 2001.

Female Performances:

01. Isabelle Huppert as Erika Kohut in The Piano Teacher
02. Dina Korzun as Tanya in Last Resort
03. Ellen Burstyn as Sara Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream
04. Tilda Swinton as Margaret Hall in The Deep End
05. Charlotte Rampling as Marie Drillon in Under the Sand
06. Frances O'Connor as Monica Swinton in A.I. Artificial Intelligence
07. Ike Ogut as Naghadar in Kandahar
08. Brooke Smith as Dawn in Series 7: The Contenders
09. Jennifer Coolidge as Sherri Ann Cabot in Best in Show
10. Pilar Padilla as Maya in Bread and Roses

Also good, in no order: Laura Linney You Can Count on Me / Jennifer Jason Leigh The King Is Alive / Frances McDormand The Man Who Wasn’t There / Andrea Martin Hedwig and the Angry Inch / Juliette Binoche Code Unknown

Male Performances:

01. John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
02. Jack Nicholson as Jerry Black in The Pledge
03. Mark Ruffalo as Terry Prescott in You Can Count on Me
04. Paddy Considine as Alfie in Last Resort
05. Ryan Gosling as Danny Balint in The Believer
06. Javier Bardem as Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls
07. Emilio Echevarría as El Chivo in Amores perros
08. Sami Bouajila as Félix in Drôle de Félix
09. Peter Mullen as Gordon Fleming in Session 9
10. Adrien Brody as Sam Shapiro in Bread and Roses

Also good, in no order: Tom Hanks Cast Away / Saïd Taghmaoui Nationale 7 / Takeshi Kitano Gohatto / Benoît Magimel The Piano Teacher / Mark Webber Storytelling

Top Ten Films:

10. Damnation/Kárhozat (Béla Tarr/Hungary)
09. Under the Sand/Sous le sable (François Ozon/France)
08. You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan/USA)
07. Session 9 (Brad Anderson/USA)
06. The Piano Teacher/La pianiste (Michael Haneke/Germany, Poland, France, Austria)
05. Last Resort (Pawel Pawlikowski/UK)
04. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg/USA)
03. The Pledge (Sean Penn/USA)
02. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell/USA)
01. Dark Days (Marc Singer/USA)

Also good, in no order: Bread and Roses (Ken Loach) / George Washington (David Gordon Green) / A One and a Two.../Yi yi (Edward Yang) / Code Unknown/Code inconnu (Michael Haneke) / Amores perros/Love's a Bitch (Alejandro González Iñárritu) / Drôle de Félix/The Adventures of Felix (Olivier Ducastel/Jacques Martineau) / Kandahar/Safar e Ghandehar (Mohsen Makhmalbaf) / Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer) / The Anniversary Party (Alan Cumming/Jennifer Jason Leigh) / The Deep End (Scott McGehee/David Siegel)

Looking back to 2002: Films and performances

Female Performances:

01. Naomi Watts as Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn in Mulholland Dr.
02. Stockard Channing as Julie Styron in The Business of Strangers
03. Helen Mirren as Mrs. Wilson in Gosford Park
04. Shiang-chyi Chen as Shiang-chyi in What Time Is It There?
05. Uma Thurman as Amy Randall in Tape
06. Mania Akbari as the Driver in Ten
07. Cate Blanchett as Philippa in Heaven
08. Samantha Morton as Morvern Callar in Morvern Callar
09. Emily Watson as Elsie in Gosford Park
10. Béatrice Dalle as Coré in Trouble Every Day

Also good, in no order: Marcia Gay Harden Pollock / Fanny Ardant 8 Women / Barbara Hershey Lantana / Maribel Verdú Y tu mamá también / Anjelica Huston The Royal Tenenbaums

Male Performances:

01. Martin Compston as Liam in Sweet Sixteen
02. Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums
03. Tom Cruise as Chief John Anderton in Minority Report
04. Timothy Spall as Phil in All or Nothing
05. Samuel L. Jackson as Doyle Gipson in Changing Lanes
06. Bill Nighy as Dan in The Lawless Heart
07. Paul Dano as Howie Blitzer in L.I.E.
08. Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson in 24-Hour Party People
09. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Okwe in Dirty Pretty Things
10. Robin Williams as Seymour Parrish in One-Hour Photo

Also good, in no order: Jake Gyllenhaal Donnie Darko / Stefano Cassetti Roberto Succo / Moritz Bleibtreu Das Experiment / Heath Ledger Monster’s Ball / Owen Wilson The Royal Tenenbaums

Top Ten Films:

10. My Little Eye (Marc Evans/UK, USA, France, Canada)
09. The Lawless Heart (Tom Hunsinger/Neil Hunter/UK, France)
08. Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis/France, Germany, Japan)
07. 28 Days Later... (Danny Boyle/UK)
06. Gosford Park (Robert Altman/UK, USA, Italy)
05. Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach/UK)
04. What Time Is It There?/ Ni na bian ji dian (Tsai Ming-Liang/Taiwan, France)
03. Ten (Abbas Kiarostami/Iran, France, USA)
02. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg/USA)
01. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch/USA)

Also good, in no order: Abouna (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun) / The Business of Strangers (Patrick Stettner) / Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly) / Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsey) / The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson) / L.I.E. (Michael Cuesta) / All or Nothing (Mike Leigh) / Changing Lanes (Roger Michell) / Tape (Richard Linklater) / Talk to Her/Hable con ella (Pedro Almodóvar)