Favourite Performances: Diane Ladd as Marietta Fortune in Wild at Heart (1990)

This is the first in an ongoing series of pieces on what I consider the best performances I've seen. I'll pick out the performances, both male and female, that have made the biggest impact on me. Whether it's through what I see as sheer incontestably great acting, or simply a role that has struck a particular chord - a character that's been funny, moving or just deeply memorable. These aren't in any qualitative order, they're simply random as and when I think of them. First up is:

Diane Ladd in Wild at Heart.


How to look good mental: Diane Ladd applies the slap all wrong in Wild at Heart

If Baby Jane Hudson had another, younger sister it’s a fair bet she would have turned out like Marietta Fortune. Diane Ladd’s performance in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) channels Bette Davis’ furious camp rage, heightens it, pumps up the volume a notch further and then layers it with a hefty dollop of extra-matriarchal evil: she’s vile at heart, and definitely weird on top. (The scene where she smears her entire face in red lipstick whilst holding a conversation on the phone puts paid to any notion of concrete stability – she’s also wearing pixie boots whilst vomiting in a toilet at the time.)

An early scene sees her forbid her daughter Lula (played by real-life daughter Laura Dern) from seeing her lover, Nicolas Cage’s Sailor Ripley, after warding him off on the phone (Marietta is often seen on the phone in the film: cut off, at a remove, and dishing out unreasonable demands) “You know who that was,” she warns Lula, “and you know that you aren’t, and I mean ARE NOT, gonnah see him ev-ah. End of stor-eh.” She barks the lines in her southern twang, holding up her hand, fingers stretched out in a gesture of catty defiance.


Murder, she hoped: J.E. Freeman (as Marcelles Santos) and Diane Ladd (as Marietta Fortune)

With her over-styled hair a cross between an Afghan hound and a failed Farrah Fawcet flick, the wardrobe of a Golden Girl and sharp pink fingernails clasping the stem of a martini glass, she then turns to the camera and, in extreme close-up, pierces the fourth wall with accusing eyes. She proceeds to scoff the drink as if she were imperviously downing poison. She’s challenging the audience as much as she challenges Lula. Marietta is the Mommie Dearest of the South, and no mistake – though she could have Joan Crawford for breakfast. Either that or simply have her rubbed out.

That we’re meant to see her as evil is never in question, but it’s a delightfully blazing and blackly comic kind of evil. A few fantasy moments even have her riding a broomstick and cackling high into the night sky as the Wicked Witch of the West – one of many allusions to The Wizard of Oz (1939) that Lynch peppers the film with. What I particularly love about Ladd in Wild at Heart is that she’s clearly having a full-blown private riot all her own in the role (and the film is already riot enough). She obviously relished the opportunity to go way off the rails. Although at the same time she appears to play it entirely straight. Ladd infuses Marietta with a shopworn realness beneath the loopy dark-hearted bitch; she manages to make all that wickedness both sadly believable and outrageously parodic at the same time.


Prank caller: Diane Ladd tries out her ill-advised telephone face

If proof were needed of her sheer wonderfulness watch one of her earliest scenes, where she gratuitously (and drunkenly) attempts to seduce Sailor in a men’s toilet. “Oh Sailor, Sailor boy-eee! How would you like to fuck Lula's momma? …'Cause Lula's momm-ah would like to fuck you.” Her jovial audacity and determination turn to serious threat after he rebuffs her. Dejected and enraged, she warns him off Lula. “You’re gonna have to stop me,” Cage spits at her, and then walks away. Forcing the cubicle door open, Marietta disquietly snarls back: “That can be arranged.” And we know it can (Marietta is in league with some particularly nasty hitmen.) She sobers up quickly once she knows what’s at stake, what she’ll have to do to get her own way. Ladd brilliantly shows that an exultant, but insidious evil is always bubbling away just below the surface, right beneath the layers of garish electric-blue eye shadow and red, blood red, lipstick.

In looking back at Ladd’s performance – and I’ve done so regularly since I first saw the film in August 1990 – it’s actually a shock that she was nominated for both the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe and Oscar in 1991. Very little about the film, especially Ladd’s turn, feels award-friendly. Of course she was never going to get the Oscar (they went with Whoopi Goldberg’s comic turn in Ghost (1990)), but a nomination went some way in proving what an indelible mark she had made. And true to the sly, opportunistic spirit of Marietta, Ladd actually lobbied hard for the nomination herself. Her cheeky, ballsy self-belief mixed with the intrepid, out-there performance itself made people sit up and pay attention (when you put in a part as searing and as nefarious as Marietta you’d insist people to take notice – roles like her don’t come around too often).


Disconnected: Ladd threatens to rip a call centre employee a new hole for wasting her time

Ladd has been exemplary in many varied roles over the years – the waitress in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, her Ida Sessions in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (both 1974), Black Widow (1987), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), A Kiss Before Dying (1991), as Dern’s mother again in Rambling Rose (1991) and another role for Lynch, as scathing talk-show host Marilyn Levens, in Inland Empire (2006). But for me, Marietta Fortune is the absolute standout of her career so far. It was the part that made me aware of how truly good Ladd can be, given the perfect script. But it was the subtlety she added to it that made it great acting: the tiny, crazy nuances, the ingratiating put-on baby voice when faking sincerity, the flirtatious but subtly vehement attitude in all things conspiratorial (“no tongue – my lipstick!”), and all her glamorously vain posing. It’s all the triumphant risks of a daring actress that made Marietta that extra bit special. Diane Ladd in Wild at Heart is, absolutely, rockin’ good news.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

Vote Asia!

Asia Argento: the purrfect candidate

These Christopher Nolan Batman flicks are all right aren't they. Frenetically thrilling at times and broodingly morose at others. Gleefully daft in places and excessively exacting in others. They look appropriately moody with all that typically sombre cinematography and very 'high concept' with all those nifty little hooks and gadgets and things that make the hardcore Batfans go weak at the knees. Then there’s all that freakishly scary gurning that goes on (and that's just Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine). They’ve managed to rake in plenty of cash at the box office and from DVD and BluRay rentals and sales, and have been talked about, mulled over and pulled apart to within an inch of their closing credits. On top of the healthy returns The Dark Knight (2007) gained two Oscar wins - Sound Editing and, of course, Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger’s Joker - and six other nominations.

With the phenomenal success of both Batman Begins (2005) and, particularly, Knight there’s been plenty of brow-furrowing speculation as to possible future instalments and what could happen in them, never more so than with Inception about to do the rounds. It's all very well and good, but what I want to know is whether any bat-adventures will be truly surprising? Are they planning anything that mucks with the template? rather good fun as they already are, I’d like to see a few changes made. And one significant addition.

People are likely demanding the Penguin's return (to be played by some old, rotund Oscar winner probably) and certainly the Riddler's re-emergence (to be played by some young, lanky indie actor probably). People will probably demand [insert multiple other Batman foes] (I'm not widely versed enough in the Bat universe to know the names of any of the others) be ideally played by the latest Hollywood jock/hunk with a bad boy reputation, probably. And now Mickey Rourke is back on the movie map I bet film execs are kicking themselves that they didn’t snag him for Harvey Two-Face first. But what about Catwoman?


Asia in Mother of Tears: cry her name

So far we've had a wooden Liam Neeson as some kind of father figure who's, like, really strange and mystical or something, and an errant - and possibly sexually impotent - guy with an ASBO and a potato sack on his head in the first one; and in Knight we've had Ledger's tightly-wound, wayward-son-gone-off-the-rails Joker and a man with two faces - one all dashing 'n' that like an '80s catalogue model, the other all crispy. Add to this the long line of gruff police chiefs, numerous villainous henchmen and one fusty old butler and it reads like a pretty gloomy roll call. It’s all a bit too darn manly. Batman himself does indeed live in a pretty gloomy environment, but what about lifting the mood a little, adding something a little more felid and slinkier into the mix? As the Joker says, Why so Serious? Indeed, Why so masculine?

Don't you think these flicks lacked a decent female presence? A gal who could not only kick ass alongside, or better than, Christian Bale dressed as a nocturnal flying mammal, but also a gal who could add a touch of pouty, sultry vigour?

I mean, Katie Holmes went down critically and commercially like a sack of shit, and could barely mouth lines into a telephone let alone interact with her co-stars, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, as talented as she is, only really wore a few dresses, danced about a bit and then "left the film" two-thirds in. That just left Gary Oldman's wife - who, actually quite hilariously, in the newer film only ever opened doors to people in floods of tears (I wondered whether if someone had sent a nice singing telegram to her door she'd have done the same?) - and his police partner, who didn't get the chance to do very much apart from dob someone in to the Gotham rozzers and receive a smack in the face for her efforts. Tut-tut boys. Those Nolan bros. do write some stern and virile stuff for sure. But Batman needs mothering. He needs to be pussy-whipped. He needs to be slapped around a bit.

Batman needs fucking with.


Asia can even dispatch zombies lying down on the job in Land of the Dead

So, if you are saying, ‘Oh, why yes, I see what you’re saying in this pointlessly trivial post. The probable new Batflick does indeed need a superior lady character to perk things up a bit,’ then this is the right place for you.

Yup, this is my most likely futile attempt to create an (un)official platform for PROPOSING ASIA ARGENTO AS THE NEW & FUTURE CATWOMAN IN THE NEXT BATMAN FILM (providing there’s going to be one, and if they decide to bother with Catwoman at all).

People with far more business savvy, financial sense and/or fan boy inclinations than I will cry, 'I want Emily Blunt or Kate Winslet! Anne Hathaway! Megan Fox!... The Olsen twins!' (Who could alternate, Buñuel-style, in the role: one could relieve the other if they get too confused.) I’ve even heard a rumour that Cher’s name is being bandied about as the next Catwoman - to be played as a wise old cat-burglar type. Well, if they could turn back time, if they could find a way, I’m all for it.

But will any of these people really stand out? Will they bring something different to the table other than what's already been done before with the role? How interesting would the above lot be? Perhaps not very. They're all, by-and-large, really rather boring and obvious candidates, Cher aside. Michelle Pfeiffer was very good in Batman Returns (1992), but that was seventeen years ago; Halle Berry valiantly took a stab at keeping aloft the 2005 Catwoman film but the film took a nosedive - it had one life, not nine; and Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt and Julie Newmar, great as they were, have all had their day and have long since hung up their catsuits.

But I say vote for someone fresh, someone unexpected. Vote Asia Argento. She's frankly better than any number of carefully considered "top-draw" A-listers whom lazy casting agents might want to conjure up. Frankly, she’s a better choice than all of them.


Mean girl: Asia in Une vieille maîtresse

Watch Land of the Dead (2005) to see her dispatch villainous hoards of henchmen (well, er, zombies) with a brutal kick, thrust and punch - SOCK! POW! KER-SMASH! Watch Une vieille maîtresse (2007) and see her casually dismiss mere mortals with nothing more than a flick of the wrist, whilst dressed in some ridiculously elaborate yet fantastic costumes. Watch her dad Dario's 2007 horror flick Mother of Tears and see her capably interact with some dodgy special effects. Be enthralled as she acts everyone out of an artfully reconstructed Versailles, and in a quarter of everyone else's screen time, in Marie Antoinette (2006). Watch xXx (2002), if you want to, where she wasn’t given anything to do and was still the best thing on show. Or watch her s-l-o-w-l-y get out of bed and walk around for a bit in Gus Van Sant’s Last Days (2005). And certainly watch Trauma (1993), Boarding Gate (2007), Demons 2 (1986), The Stendhal Syndrome (1996), The Church (1989), and the two flicks she directed herself: Scarlet Diva (2000) and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) for the full Asia effect.

She's got the voice, the muscles, the stamina, the femininity and, above all, the perfect look to add something more lithely carnivorous to this testosterone-heavy franchise. She’s an indelibly talented, voracious and often volatile actress, someone who will give any film an extra shot of daring, wayward edginess. Aren’t these attributes perfect for Catwoman? Don’t you think this is exactly what’s needed in BatWorld?

She'll own Gotham town.

Red light spells danger: The Omen rehashed

Young Old Nick gives Skeletor a much-needed blood transfusion in The Omen

The Antichrist made a poor appearance back in 2006. 06/06/06 – the eye-rolling, conceptually-timed release date for the remake of ‘70s well-regarded devil-child flick The Omen – proved to be a redundant event, along with it being an equally redundant marketing ploy. I don’t think anyone cared, if they even noticed; those who did notice most likely greeted the concept with, a shrug and another mouthful of popcorn. (Although Mel Gibson should have tried a similar gimmick for his The Passion of the Christ movie back in 2004; releasing it on Easter Sunday accompanied by a limited edition range of chocolate eggs featuring Jesus’ winking face).

This oh-so-clever release date was the first dodgy step for director John Moore's remake. It’s a rather idiotic and lazy rehash, all told. Clammy-looking President's godson Liev Schreiber (does the man permanently sweat?) and wife Julia Stiles (whose face is so pale, luminous and circular that it seems to appear more lunar the more close-ups it gets) have a kid and he’s the devil: Damien, of course. If you’ve seen the much-better 1976 original then the story will be familiar enough. This update replicates the plot almost verbatim yet manages to fudge it mightily.

The first half of the film is rushed. This was an issue in the original, but events there were steeped in a dreadful, all-encompassing atmosphere that strained at the film’s edges to provide the audience with a close-to-terrifying tour through one family’s death trip courtesy, literally, of a brat from hell. The only signs of attempted atmosphere come in the form of a glaringly obvious colour-coded style of mise-en-scène that shows up director Moore’s misunderstanding of this devilish horror fable. The colour? Red, of course. From the promotional posters right through to the scarlet-tinted photographic palette, everything is red red red. It had to feature somewhat, certainly. But the experience of watching this Omen film was like a forced lesson in Film Colour Psychology 101.


Mia Farrow feeds red devil Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) a CAKE FROM HELL in The Omen

It’s one thing to attempt evocation by showing Damien disconcertingly wrapped up in blood-coloured bed clothes, or smartly dressed in a bright red outdoor jacket, as the smarmy conceptual trailer showed, but having such totally random items as – and these are random – tomatoes, toy British telephone boxes, every single plant and flower and the dresses worn by Moonface, amongst many other things, all in red is pushing the idea a bit too far. Don’t Look Now (1973) achieved this effect with just the one red coat 30-plus years ago.

So Damien is evil incarnate. We know this. But why shove signifier upon signifier onto the screen to keep reminding us. Oh, it’s a portent of bloodshed to come… or the very colour of death itself. Yes, got it. Instead of constantly upping the film stock level so that it creates the effect of watching the film through bloodshot eyes, why didn’t the filmmakers put some of that enthusiastic creation into lessening the dull thud that the script makes on the ears; each line is delivered with mounting vacancy that it makes somnambulists of the entire cast. (Although, on the plus side Mia Farrow, as mini-Beelzebub’s sinister babysitter, brings faint memories of Rosemary’s Baby (1969) with her, and the Thorn family maid’s fatal bungee jump off the mansion roof is still effective).

There are a few moments when Moore’s direction works. Some still shots are quite nicely studied, and create a sense of fearful unease: plastic-wrapped paintings and sculptures in a hollow mansion seem almost otherworldly; a stark bathroom with something sinister spied in the corner of a mirror; the optical, illusory, Escher-like Parkay flooring patterns in the Thorn’s mansion, and so on. But everything else here, including most of the actual action, is simply boring. And who thought a brush with the Prince of Darkness would induce yawns? The movie poster strap-line says His Day Will Come. If this remake is to be believed then we’re in for a much longer wait.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

Piss and moan, piss and moan: giving Zach Braff the kiss-off

Zach Braff in The Last Kiss, giving us one of his life-affirming stares into the distance

One of fashion retail chain Gap’s mission statements has always centred on the idea of lifelong shopping: clothing people from birth to death. The characters in the Zach Braff film The Last Kiss (Tony Goldwyn/2006) seem to represent the Gap demographic perfectly: the film shows us a host of affluent clotheshorses variable in age, from babies to would-be grandparents. They all pout, gaze and flap endlessly in a listless manner that the film’s makers would like to think constitutes emotional interest and connection (or disconnection if the threadbare narrative is to be believed), but actually all this results in is 103 minutes of verbose trash of the most insular and hermetic kind. So, the feeling you get after having shopped at Gap during a Christmas sale, then.

The Last Kiss is one hair away from being a glossy coffee table catalogue full of middle-class whiners too self-indulgent to see beyond the ends of their own privileged noses. Braff and his three drifting chums (played by Eric Christian Olsen, Casey Affleck, Michael Weston) are on the cusp of 30 and find that “there are no surprises anymore.” So Braff hooks up with a younger version (Rachel Bilson) of his newly pregnant girlfriend Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) to try and discover himself. Or some such rubbish. What the film would like us to believe is that this band of buddies are so disaffected with their lives that they have invariably reached some kind of crisis. But in fact they are a sad-sack bunch of damp, spoilt cry-babies, too wet from all the man-tears they’re wallowing in and all the Coldplay albums they’re listening to to think about anyone else in their lives. Although I understand that this description clearly wouldn't have made a particularly sellable plotline.


Braff giving us another of his life-affirming stares into the distance (with his face glued to a doormat)

In fact, a woeful sense of disaffection rings throughout this whole indulgent excuse for Braff and co's introverted meanderings. Zack the lad's scared of commitment, see. Therefore fucking a duplicate of your girlfriend is the order of the day, ‘cause she’s, like, the same woman, only younger, and comes with a free mix CD (most likely featuring The Shins, Snow Patrol and any other dribbling alt. rock) for those Braff-only life-affirming stares into the distance from a comfy highly-paid architect’s couch, thus enabling him to relive the youthful, heady days of college abandonment. It allows him to find his true path. Bless the guy. All the while Jenna's parents (played by Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson) are going through their own rote, non-specific marital troubles, proving that happiness clearly isn't hereditary. Danner even has a spectacularly embarrassing, and therefore quite hilarious, breakdown scene of her own; one that involves her flapping her hands in front of her face whilst running on a treadmill.

Nobody here is content with the obvious abundance of luxury afforded them, especially Braff's well-off mates. The filmmakers aren't content with that either, so they pile on generic strife in an attempt to wring from us extra sympathy for them: one pal can’t get over his ex (and we are duly nudged to feel for him because the plot demands that his dad, uh, selfishly dies, interrupting his lovelorn brooding); another can’t cope with having had a baby, so leaves his wife to do all the work whilst he stares into the distance from a comfy, highly-paid architect’s couch (where he must surely be dreaming up an excuse for why he can’t cope with simple everyday responsibilities, because god knows the scriptwriter, Crash’s (2005) Paul Haggis, hasn’t provided one); another one of the pals actually seems ok with – Gosh! Shock! – getting on with life in the company of his female fuck buddy… well, that is until she suggests he meet her folks. By then he’s hotfooting it off to Mexico for a boy's own soul-searching jolly with the rest of them. God forbid anyone suggest these dudes do some actual work - they’d surely shit a brick.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

The Transporter: The all-new action man (comes with disposable villains)

Frank, the transporter of the title, breaks one of his own rules roughly a third of the way into the film: never open the package. He finds Lai (Qi Shu), a female hostage who he has to deliver to a crime baron type who has her family held in a shipping container, bound for black market slavery (or something to this effect). The plot doesn’t really go into the messy specifics of the politics of people trading and I never expected it to. It’s an excuse for an onslaught of sleek and swiftly executed action sequences with Jason Statham kicking and punching a lot of people in the process of saving the day. It’s preposterous, over-the-top and a lot of fun. We needed another Bruce Willis now that Bruce Willis is getting a bit too old for running around and slapping bad guys. Step up, Statham.

Through a commitment to its slimmed down narrative and maximum action quotient, The Transporter (Louis Leterrier/Corey Yuen, 2002) indeed transports us back to the kinds of mid-eighties Renegade-Operative-on-a-Mission style flicks that starred the likes of Arnie, Sly or Steven Seagal in their heyday (the soundtrack is full of cheesy ‘80s soulfullness, too, but with a noughties techno-glitchiness added to jazz it up and make the whole thing feel contemporary). But Statham’s no-nonsense quiet guy mumbles less than those near-fossils of action cinema, and is far more sleek and energetic, making this post-millennial update of those ‘80s films zip breathlessly past by confidently providing four or five major set pieces with a forceful efficiency.

Prior to acting Statham was an Olympic Diver on the British National Diving Team (finishing 12th in the World Championships in 1992) and he already has a background in martial arts, enabling him to perform the majority of his own stunts (it works well and he makes it look a breeze – aided by editor Nicolas Trembasiewicz’s swift cutting). Statham’s credentials goes far in showing us just how effortlessly he manages to kick ass: he makes every move, jump and spin count. To me, he seemed like the perfect contemporary action hero, blending no bullshit bravado with a measured stance on dishing out his brand of zero-fuss MovieWorld justice. He may be a bit shaky with the American accent at times, but that’s not really a concern: he doesn’t need to talk people down when a sharp chop to the face will suffice. And I never require plot exposition in films like this (who does?). I’ve always admired director-star combos who prefer swift pacing and a clear focus on the fundamental joys of the genre.

Of the set pieces an oil-covered bus terminal face-off (where goons attempt to get to slippery grips with a grease-smeared Statham), a four-way scrap in a shipping container yard and a thrilling getaway-in-a-lorry-hurtling-down-a-highway stand out – which is the most playful, ridiculous and absurdly entertaining chase I’ve seen since Licence to Kill back in 1989. And curiously enough, more often than not 50% of Statham’s wardrobe happens to go mysteriously missing during some fight scenes, giving them a slightly Fight Club-esque homoerotic tinge (enhanced by his apparent disinterest in the heroine, regardless of a reluctant one-off token sex scene) – and one dock-set scuffle is cheekily topped off with an underwater “kiss” between Statham a recently dispatched bad guy (submerged and desperately needing air, Statham locks lips with a drowned henchman!). It makes you think that the filmmakers were hinting at something that they dared not include overtly in the actual storyline. Hmm.

Although, in many ways, all we need to know is contained in the let’s-get-straight-to-the-point introductory scene. After some typically slick opening titles the camera immediately seeks out Statham as he sits in his BMW, impatiently waiting for the film to get going. It’s as if he’s a blank slate, and has no background: he’s simply a man on a mission, and whatever we might want to project onto him is welcomed by the filmmakers and gladly open to interpretation. He does his job, and he does it well. The same can be said of the film itself. The Transporter went on to spawn two sequels (in 2005 and 2008), and the only thing to be said about them is that they contain more of exactly the same, thank you very much.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

Desperate Living: A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes/1974)

Street life: Gena Rowlands wanders in A Woman Under the Influence

A Woman Under the Influence is an astounding and incredibly moving film, without a single wasted scene or false moment in it. Cassavetes’ open-ended, improvised approach to filmmaking is, to me, one of the most effective kinds. His films - I’ve found, having seen my first five over the last year or so - have a singular style (he was one of the biggest pioneers of genuinely independent filmmaking in the ‘70s). His approach to telling stories about people off-the-right-track comes from an angle of deep-rooted humanism and regard. In Influence a scene will perhaps last for 20 minutes, and seemingly cover very little narrative ground, but the focus is on establishing small grains of truthfulness that build up to form an overall portrait of people’s lived existence that has a bold, lasting effect.

Gena Rowlands is Mabel Longhetti, a housewife who is (possibly? Probably?) going slowly out of her mind. It’s never firmly identified as any typical idea of insanity, but it’s clear that she doesn’t fit into the conventional mould of day-to-day living. It’s in everyone’s minds that Mabel is ‘losing it’, but the evidence for this is blurred at the edges. Her husband Nick (Peter Falk) may be embarrassed by Mabel’s behaviour – the excessive drinking, shouting, flirting and general histrionic behaviour - and duly has her committed, but the regret and resignation etched on his face speaks volumes and begs questions about the nature of his marital commitment. He loves her completely (something we never doubt), but feels that he can’t live with her the way she is. The dramatic conflict of emotion arising from this situation is honestly heartbreaking.


Gena Rowlands as Mabel Longhetti

It’s interesting to observe how the couple’s children actually have fun in Mabel’s company, whereas fun is strained when they are with Nick – shown in a memorably cringe-inducing, though very affecting scene when he takes them on a trip to the seaside. Each scene, in fact, is drawn out to its natural conclusion, but not a single moment of screen time is squandered. The editing is sharp and conducive to constructive narrative progression. There isn’t anything phoney in the film at all; nothing in the cutting, the acting or the direction feels flabby or dishonest. Some of the best moments are fleeting: Rowlands, shoeless on the street, in an overlong overcoat, cigarette in hand, bag draped over her arm, wonders into a bar eager to connect with someone who hasn’t already put their stamp on her life; she conveys the habitual sting of a lonely mind, in a few effortless gestures, in a matter of minutes.

Better still is the scene of Mabel waiting for kids to return from school (after she has spent some time away from them – in the hospital, have been committed). She nervously darts between road and pavement waiting for the school bus to come around the corner. Her excitement is feverish: she desperately needs to see her kids. Other, perhaps more socially adjusted, mothers also waiting shoot her awkward glances, but she absently thumbs them off whilst blowing raspberries at them. You instantly feel her new-found, undiluted pride. Her attire may be shabby and her behaviour erratic, but the unfaltering need to be the best person she can – for her husband, for her kids, for the longevity of her lifestyle, and, overall, for herself – is never in question. Rowlands is staggering in the film. Her face, in all its crumpled, unabashed gracefulness, acts as the film’s worried mascot. In numerous ways, she’s the original desperate housewife.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

Unhappy Endings & Barefaced Cheek

Jesse Bradford, Lisa Kudrow and Bobby Cannavale in Happy Endings

One of Happy Endings (Don Roos, 2005) many problems were its awful inter-titles scattered throughout. They function as character introductions (with roughly eight main characters in the film, they have their work cut out) and reveal choice plot points in a twee, chatty manner. One self-referentially says: “it’s a comedy; sort of”. And the film is a comedy. Sort of. But it’s just not really that funny.

The problem with these inter-titles is that they do what the script itself should’ve done naturally. I don’t know, I found it more lazy than amusing. It points to a lack of confidence in the script, and suspiciously whiffs of afterthought due to, perhaps, a test audience’s confusion with all the different characters. It’s not really that hard to follow though. For all the Short Cuts (1993)-style interweaving of desperate lives, it’s actually easy to get to grips with all the comings and goings of its LA inhabitants. Roos is treating his audience like idiots if he thinks they need extra pointers as to what’s going on.

There’s a whole host of issues that Happy Endings maps out, and Roos ambitiously sets them up: infidelity, adoption, trials of the loved and the lovelorn, sexual identity, parenting, coming out troubles, and so on. It reads like a check-list of themes for an Oprah book club title though. And this is where its problem lies. In covering such a vast amount of self-help issues, it doesn’t really find the space to cover any of them fully or allow for any depth. I could’ve done without at least half of the above plot strands and had the film simply concentrate on a choice few, so that the characters experiencing these varying tribulations could blossom more fully within their own situations. Instead it spends too much time on three or four plot threads and leaves the remaining ones inadequately explored (in this respect it feels a lot like 2001’s similarly multi-charactered, 13 Conversations About One Thing).

The acting by everyone is good, though. Lisa Kudrow (in arguably her best role yet), Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tom Arnold and Laura Dern (who is always worth watching) stand out more prominently than the rest because their characters are well defined. Jesse Bradford, Steve Coogan, Jason Ritter, David Sutcliffe and Sarah Clarke get the short end of the stick, particularly the last three; their characters get less attention from the script and are, by and large, merely there to support their on-screen companions or amble around the edge of the action.


Maggie Gylenhaal, Jason Ritter and Tom Arnold in Happy Endings

There are some nice scenes between Bradford and Kudrow. As a woman who’s being blackmailed by a novice filmmaker – a motor-mouth whipper-snapper in the mould of Tarantino – Kudrow plays well with Bradford. Their coupling is quite affecting despite the implausibility of the premise; their meeting created to transpire into a quirky and charming mismatch, but feeling more like a shoehorned contrivance ultimately. Their scenes together, once we get to know both better, are quite sweet. The best storyline, however, concerns Maggie Gyllenhaal’s gold-digging bar singer, who essentially gets to play the Christina Ricci ‘bitch-in-a-bathing-suit’ role from Roos’ overall much sharper, funnier The Opposite of Sex (1998) only with more flair and a harder edge (there’s even a poolside seduction scene just like in that film, but more than anything it exposes Roos’ rather shallow puddle of ideas).

The film feels longer than it should be, too. Robert Altman (with Short Cuts, The Player (1992) and Nashville (1975), for example) and P.T. Anderson (with Magnolia (1999) and Boogie Nights (1997)) wrote a wider range of complex characters to sustain their respective films’ long running times, but Roos’ stories are stretched out thinly even at just over two hours. By two-thirds of the way through, a feeling of déjà vu sinks in, and the only thing I was actually happy about was the ending: it finally had one.

Broken-backed Moaning

One thing, extraneous to the events in film but still linked integrally to it, concerning Roos feelings for another recent gay-themed film, Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005), struck me as hollow. I remember reading an interview at the time of the film's release about Roos disliking Brokeback for its lack of real gay feeling and retrogressiveness. He complained that Lee’s film “tells the same old story… it’s sad, it’s really lonely, people hate you. It’s tragic.” But I think he’s missing the point. Brokeback may be solemn in tone and concern an age-old gay issue, but it ultimately explores it as a proactive thing, despite all its prolonged heartache and inclusion of period social taboos.

Roos wants pro-activeness for his film – albeit under different circumstances – but he doesn’t quite achieve it. There’s a big difference between Endings and Brokeback, of course (they are after all only really tenuously alike), but bemoaning a more successful gay-themed film (one made by a straight man) for what he sees as a lack of honest gayness smacks of obtuse envy. Roos forgets that Lee’s film deliberately bypasses socio-political ambition to focus on snatched moments of intimacy and the painful, lifelong straining effects of repressed desire. His whole rant, in reference to why Ennis and Jack don’t elope together - “Guys, get a map. Go to New York. Go to LA. Your problems will be over if you just get a map!” - is the same (now actually quite old-hat) retort that I’ve read many times before by easily-displeased critics and audiences when looking for simplistic explanations.

The thing is, it wasn’t about just “getting away” for them. Of course it was about them finding a place of their own, but it was also about the pull of family commitment on their psyches (especially where Ennis was concerned). “The furthest I’ve travelled is around the handle of a coffee pot”, states Ennis at one particularly crucial point in Brokeback: he wasn’t one for travelling far, such was the familiarity and tight grip of mountain life. Roos possibly missed this little nugget of acute dialogue.

The irony is, as a gay filmmaker himself he hasn’t particularly made a film that wholeheartedly gets to the core of gay lifestyles. The two films are miles apart, but both in their own ways want to pro-actively say the same things; I thought Roos would at least put his money where his mouth is, but he doesn’t. Sure, he’s attempting contemporary social comment with his upwardly mobile gay dads and pained stories of rich L.A. teens’ coming out woes, but these issues aren’t fully explored as much as they could have been. And the fact Endings features three full-on straight sex scenes, but only one gay kiss is a bit hard to swallow coming from the man who readily vents his distaste for others’ attempts to convey gay relationships in a more all-encompassing manner. I couldn’t really believe his gall. Brokeback isn’t exactly explicit, but at least there’s that tent scene. Roos’ gay characters just meander down the middle somewhere, not really saying or, more precisely, doing anything significant to make them feel real at all.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

Masters of Horror: joy on and off a television screen

"Care for a... slice?"

One Sunday night back in 2006 I sat down to watch the first episode in Mick Garris’ largely very good ‘Masters of Horror’ series of hour-long films, Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (Don Coscarelli, 2005). There seemed nothing more perfect to me than a late night, no fuss, honest-to-goodness bite-size 60-minutes of trashy televised gore. I watched it again recently, and because it was the first one I saw, and for all the above reasons and then some, it's therefore stayed with me the longest. There were a few better episodes in the series - namely John carpenter’s excellent Cigarette Burns (also 2005) - and I still have a few more yet to see, but this one struck a chord with me.

Incident was the perfect introduction to the series. Its key theme fits directly into one of the fundamental joys of watching horror: the act of looking with fearful eyes. Eyes reveal a horror movie victim’s fears; moonlit, their teary glint can give away their whereabouts in an isolated forest clearing, as it does in Incident – and trembling, these teary orbs are the prized organs that the killer here values so much.

It opens on familiar territory, which invokes the title from the start: a car snaking its way down a mountain road in the dead of night, lit solely by the moon’s luminous glare. Its driver, Ellen (Bree Turner), crashes into an abandoned car. There is no sign of a driver and something sinister is stirring in the surrounding trees. A forest dwelling half-man-half-creature (John DeSantis) has killed the driver and now sets his sights on Ellen. A panicked chase ensues, where Ellen uses some cunning tricks to evade the monster, thanks to some survival lessons from her militarist husband (Ethan Embrey), weaved throughout the slim-lined plot as a series of flashbacks that allow an insight into Ellen’s past and reveal something intrinsically terrifying about her current situation.

Under Garris’ tutelage, Coscarelli was given free reign to film whichever scary tale he desired. He chose to revisit the short fiction of novelist Joe R. Lansdale (who wrote the short story for his Bubba Ho-Tep(2002)). Incident – perhaps because it was first in the series – is a rather traditional and straightforward introduction, and slightly tamer than many of the resulting episodes. Takashi Miike’s Imprint (which, due to its excessively visceral nature, was refused an airing on US television) and Dario Argento’s Jenifer, for example, narratively played around with genre conventions and the extremities of televised gore, but there are still a few giddy, twisted thrills in Incident that, although having been somewhat previously road-tested in the likes of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and the two Jeepers Creepers (2001/2003) films, effectively convey a sense of fear through the set up, then unravelling, of queasy situations in an ultimately surprising manner: those flashback lessons are deployed for an inspired and unexpected reason.

Incident features the standard heroine in peril – the typical final girl scenario is adhered to – but it’s one of the only entries that does this. Others (Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns, Stuart Gordon’s Dreams in the Witch House) focus on male protagonists. This adds to Incident’s conventional feel, though Coscarelli does mess with the tradition somewhat. But by the time Ellen finds herself tied up in a basement, with only a demented old man (Coscarelli veteran Angus Scrimm) for company there are only so many outcomes available.

Though it lacks originality, there is a nostalgic thrill to the film. The palpable joy from watching a concise horror played out with efficient skill from a film-maker who clearly respects and relishes the genre remains throughout its short duration. It plays up to the kinds of workaday ‘80s video horrors that paved the path for an event like Masters of Horror. Although it never pushes the genre’s limits, it proves to be a serviceable, bite-size introduction to a series that is welcome viewing for any horror aficionado.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

Cosy Christmas films: the case against

The Family Stone: Diane Keaton realises that she used to be in good films like Annie Hall

If you’re not a full-tilt, liberal-minded, vaguely bohemian middle-class-type, you won’t fit inside the Stone family’s cosy Christmas bubble. This is the vibe that The Family Stone (Thomas Bezucha, 2005) surreptitiously gives off as its guiding ethic. It’s Christmas and the family are going about their dizzy festive business. In comes a woman (Sarah Jessica Parker), about to marry one of Stone parents Craig T. Nelson and Diane Keaton’s sons (Dermot Mulroney), but she doesn’t quite fit their cuddly template. They run her over the hot coals as some kind of liberal attitudes test, and then, when she proves to be an alien entity (i.e. not a walking greetings card sentiment), they proceed to try and oust her from Mulroney’s affections. So, not so liberal after all then.

Without any reluctance I found myself championing Parker’s character. Indeed, her “cold, uptight bitch” had more characterisation than the entire Stone clan put together: daughter Rachel McAdams signals her stroppiness purely by complaining about her bedroom; Tyrone Giordano and Brian J. White – as the deaf, gay son and his black boyfriend - are there to up the look-at-how-painfully-inclusive-we-all-are quotient and little else; Diane Keaton, as the insufferable matriarch, conveys her terminal illness by looking vacantly out of the window at opportune moments; and Nelson is pretty much absent for most of the story.

Parker’s (who gives a taut and credible performance, her best post-Sex in the City TV show – and was rightly singled out for a Golden Globe nomination here) scenes with eternal slacker and brother-in-law-to-be Luke Wilson are the best in the film. They are the only two characters that literally stand out from the bunch by not conforming to their exclusive love fest. Everyone else is either a flat-pack variation on Hollywood’s all-purpose, box-ticking PC package (black and deaf homosexuals!) or they’re drawn-from-stock family members with equally standard personality traits.

One scene has the clan around the table for Christmas dinner: the subject of ‘nature or nurture’ regarding homosexuality comes up. Before the meal, the family, behind Parker’s back, bemoan, “she isn’t making an effort to get to know [them]”. At the dinner Parker attempts to engage in the gay debate by offering up the age-old idea that, given the option, "someone wouldn’t necessarily choose to be gay." Because there are two token gay characters present, the over-sensitive family take it upon themselves to be outraged. Parker’s character – not shown to be any kind of homophobe at all anywhere in the film – is told to shut up, and she duly flees the scene. “If I had my way, all of my son’s would be gay – that way they’d never want to leave me,” intones Keaton. So, all gay men would instinctively and permanently cling to their mother’s bosom eh, Ms. stone? The family’s counter argument here is the weakest of retorts; its forced, over-the-top correctness becomes noisome, and the line between genuinely well-intended inclusiveness and clichéd offensiveness is straddled without ado. It’s all so blatantly, falsely ingratiating.

Everyone of course gets on famously at the end, after a bit of rote tragedy and some life-affirming lessons (well, only after Parker proves that she’s not actually a bitch after all by giving everyone a surprise heartfelt Christmas present – she literally has to buy their affection), and all is well in their world. Lesson learned, then. The Family Stone is less like a Christmas gift, and more like the used wrapping paper that ends up on the floor.

© Craig Bloomfield 2008

Carlos Reygadas: Old (master) before his time?

Carlos Reygadas is a fairly young filmmaker at 38, but it seems that just after three features – his 2002 debut Japón, Battle in Heaven/Batalla en el cielo (2005) and Silent Light/Stellet licht (2007) – he’s attempting to prematurely plough himself a path as an old master, it seems. It's especially visible in Silent Light, his latest. It feels as if he’s deliberately made the kind of film – slightly too po-faced or high-minded, the kind of beloved title that festival-goers are keen to quickly lavish praise upon – that may well goad critics into spouting a few BIG WORDS and pronouncements to cement him a quick reputation in certain circles as one of the new significant art film auteurs of our times. But is he... yet? Though, if anything, all the raves will read well as strap-lines on the poster.

But it isn’t so much the thought of all the none-too-hasty, gushing adoration that might be applied to him so far that feels slightly over-the-top, it’s the way in which nearly every image in Silent Light comes dressed in ostentatious flourishes that seem to beg nothing less than nonpareil reverence, or demand some kind of unequalled, if rather empty, awe. Whether or not he deserves such high praise quite yet, I’m not sure. I think he may be a bit hurried in his desire to be a Big Name before his time, to be already seen as the next Andrei Tarkovsky or the new Carl Th. Dreyer, or whoever he wishes to simulate next (these two venerable wizards of world cinema, along with Kiarostami, are the likes of whom he’s name-checked himself). It’s no bad thing essentially. He’s certainly an ambitious filmmaker, and should of course be applauded for this; his films often feel singular and in certain instances look uncommonly out-of-step with many art cinema trends, but his visual invention often comes unattached to solid emotional content. He’s staunch in his determination to dazzle, and overall he favours the expansive image over the temperate. But with Silent Light I felt like I was watching an artist only flexing his technical expertise, exerting cleverness with a camera because he can, not because he has something indispensable to say.



Silent Light is much less then the sum of its parts. There are indeed some awesome (and awesomely astounding) sequences and a few smaller moments that are impressive, too: for instance, a slow tracking shot into a darkened garage space that gradually reveals a blossoming light inside is filled with a curious beauty. But moments like this are segmented from the overall arc of his sparse narrative and are too few and far between to contribute to a whole, truly great film. The atmosphere is heavy, often too heavy, with loaded symbolism, earnest signifiers of The Other and scenes of human suffering so painfully, tediously lofty that it drags the film along almost like a burden; a lot of it feels like dead weight.

Some parts are immediately stunning: the bookend shots that open and close the film, of dawn breaking and night encroaching, elapsing in single, long-held shots, did make me gasp at how pretty they were, and curious as to how he attained them, but they were nothing but examples of look-at-me visual elegance – and Godfrey Reggio pulled similar time-lapse tricks nearly thirty years ago, with Koyaanisqatsi (1982) etc, anyway. And a scene of the main protagonist’s (a Mennonite who’s embarks on an illicit extra-marital affair) children swimming and washing purposelessly in a lake, occasionally staring vacantly at the camera, has a light and unprocessed feel – although another way to look at it was as if Sofia Coppola was making a shampoo ad featuring the Children of the Damned.

His other two films worked much better, though they, too, still felt slightly laden with too much influence, although not as consciously so as in Silent Light. Battle in Heaven, in particular, felt more controlled and stylistically more open to organic development, more his own; I saw fewer borrowed traits in it. Its visuals contained a vigorous pull, the content contained moments of fury and questioning, all of which nicely enhanced the entire film, more than just providing filling for the sexually explicit, controversy-baiting bookend sequences. And at least by attempting to explore new ground in Battle Reygadas earned all the controversy, it was his to defend, and the images appeared largely undiluted by overt influence. For me, the 'difficult second film' issue didn't apply. It went one better too: it felt like a film made by a 38-year-old director vividly experimenting with the film frame and searching for a truth beyond mere imitation.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

Attack of the Loons: Dirty Sanchez: The Movie vs Jackass: The Movie

Which one is better? There's only one way to find out: Fight!

Dirty Sanchez: The Movie (2006) reminded me of how well gross-out gags can be done – when it goes by the name of Jackass: The Movie (2002), that is.

It wishes it were Jackass though. It isn’t and won’t ever be; Johnny Knoxville and co. got there first, and did it better. The Welsh imitators will never have the crude sense of cheeky abandon that they had. The games of juvenile one-upmanship here pale in comparison to their US predecessor’s roughly strewn inventiveness; they can replace Knoxville’s water-rocket bikes with as many fish-hooks to the foreskin as it takes, it just doesn’t seem either shocking or flinch-worthy this time around. It just comes off as hackneyed déjà vu.

Sanchez has some needless, misdirected homophobia concerning the identity of some Thai transsexuals they happen across (and then a bit more elsewhere) and a brush (a gross-off?) with a Japanese collective equivalent that do actually seem to have some of the Jackass charm (and the Sanchez chancers look scared stiff of them), but everything seems to somehow miss the point.

Knozville’s gang were likely to be offensive to some people’s tastes, but they were all-embracing, inclusive pranksters, targeting their skits playfully at one and all: from Hollywood stars (Brad Pitt) to random passers-by, though mostly at each other, all in the name of a good belly laugh. Sanchez are too cliquey and hetero-centric by comparison; their forcibly high testosterone levels seem to induce a kind of standoffish mean-spiritedness and prevents them from actually engaging with their foils.

There’s only so much vomit drinking and inane mugging to camera to be consumed before this jejune crap gets rapidly boring and reaches tedious overkill; any laughter evaporates all a bit too quickly, and disappears without much of an enduring result. There was something wonderfully charming, and lastingly funny, about Knoxville merely riding his upgraded bike into a lake, or Steve-O getting trapped in an upside-down portable toilet: they performed the stunt, cracked the joke and were effortlessly on to the next thing with no fuss. Sanchez clearly aren’t fussy either, but they tend to hang around after their gags, like a bad smell, and ensure each other definitely, like, got it, man. Jackass were simply more intuitively funny.

Director John Waters has openly acknowledged his love and appreciation of the Jackass lot’s TV shows, and he even appeared in their film's follow-up. That’s more like it. After all, he’s the one who really started all this: Divine scoffing poodle shit at the end of Pink Flamingos back in 1968 set the bar high for all this scatological japery. The Dirty Sanchez crew talk shit, but I bet they’d never be caught dead eating it.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

What can a canon live without?

Abbas Kiarostami, pondering the validity of images (or simply just on a lunch break)

I recently finished reading Jonathan Rosenbaum’s excellent book Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons, and am also in the midst of contributing a few personal selections to an ongoing online film canon, so the idea of film canonisation is forefront in my mind at the moment. One film, which I didn’t originally put forward as a selection, but perhaps should have, was Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten (2002).

On reading Rosenbaum’s book, and in the playing of the “canon game” online, I've been (re)introduced to some exemplary films, some of which weren’t obvious canonical titles – unlike, say, a lot of the AFI’s list or Sight & Sound’s ten-year polls – but that’s not to say they were necessarily obscure films - although some indeed are (and why not, of course - this is one way of getting some of the more unheralded or unseen films noticed; and shouldn’t fresh canons start this way anyhow?). Though who's to really say what's obvious and what's not; one person's long-time favourite is another's fresh discovery.

Ten may be obscure to some, a likely candidate for others (like so many possibly unobvious contenders one might conjure up), or even anti-cinema (in its approach to resolute minimalism) in some other people's eyes. But it's the named director – along with his or her general reputation - that can often be a deciding factor in creating canons. Is it a hearty signifier of quality, perhaps? Or just the way things are? This may be why the usual line-up of “greats” (like Welles, Bergman, Antonioni etc) are so many in number on a great deal of canons.

Kiarostami certainly has a large number of admirers who would surely like to see most of his output cemented in Official List Form (indeed, he's a "great" in his own right), but is Ten the obvious contender? Is it his best? What about his follow-up, Five (2004)? There's the highly-acclaimed Koker trilogy (Where Is the friend's House? (1987), And Life Goes On... (1992), Through the Olive Trees (1994)), or Taste of Cherry (1997) too? Does it really matter if Ten is or isn't believed to be his "best"?

Rosenbaum’s list, by-and-large, leans toward the personal, with a healthy tip of the hat towards a film's overall international impact, reception and accepted status among those who may have been lucky enough to have seen some of his choices. I think this is one way, indeed a good way, in determining what might be held up as a Significant Example of Filmmaking. Each to his or her own, of course: the joy of having so many canons available to mull over is the variety of choice. And what's personal to me may be anathema to you. But I like the idea of including something that may at first seem anti-canonical make a canon (I detected this in the Rosenbaum book, too). The interesting thing about Ten (among many, many interesting aspects) is that it questions directorial intent and the role of the director (or director-as-auteur)* And there should be at least a few films that challenge this in any film canon.

Many impassioned film buffs and writers of course like to love, love to like, or at the very least confirm and acknowledge, the idea of auteurism and so could perhaps be, with a gentle nudge in the ribs here and there, open to contemplating titles that question its place in shaping film content. Should a film be canonised because of the director’s conscious input, or because of the lack of it? Ten pokes a stick in the spokes.


Mania Akbari as the Driver in Ten

Kiarostami is questioning auteurism with Ten. To me he seems to be addressing the complaints of the 1920s-on New Criticism (first suggested by US theorists W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in their essay "The Intentional Fallacy" (1946, rev. 1954)) and their idea that the author's intention is not important, by, directly or indirectly, almost removing himself from the film’s construction. Whatever meaning his camera might draw from the narrative and the images is posited as separate from him; he acts as the displaced conduit.

There may be some speculation as to what Kiarostami intends with Ten, as he makes anonymous his signature, used distinctively in his work before this film. But by making the film Kiarostami suggests he’s wiped his slate clean; he’s questioning what direction means and implies that the viewer do the same. But even more so than in some others’ films (Michael Haneke's work, say) Kiarostami seems somewhat glad to hand over the reigns to us to control as we want (though he handed them over and actively walked away on Five, which I also aim to write about at some point).

But who’s to say? Anyone can glean from it whatever they darn well want to.The positioning of the camera/audience in Ten is only really initially determined by the choice to make a film set solely in a car: the camera is static, a stationary tool for recording conversations, whilst everything around it is in motion. That is, apart from those two crucial cuts away. Filmmaking (in the traditional sense), in the form of an edit, does then intrude. But then maybe he couldn’t help imposing himself just a little bit... and is merely placing the camera on the dashboard an act of direction anyway? This is all very elastic and debatable, but that’s what makes it a perfect contender for film canonisation in my view; the boundaries between director and viewer are subtly and carefully blurred. A healthy film canon, one that wants to truly show breadth of choice in what is possible in filmmaking, needs to have just one or two, maybe smaller in scope, films that try to flip over the auteurist cart.

I read a quote, back in 2002, that filmmaker Catherine Breillat gave on the film: “[it’s] perfect Kiarostami, because there’s no more image, no more Mise-en-scène, just a camera and intelligence, and pure thought.”

Now, a film which uses image, and more importantly authorial intention, as frugally and cautiously, and as beautifully as Ten does, and then regardlessly allows the mind to enter the gaps that the images have vacated, demands to be held up for re-evaluation. Fire your canons, folks.

* see Kiarostami's companion-piece documentary, 10 on Ten (2004), for his own views on the film.

© Craig Bloomfield 2009

Top Ten Films and Performances of 2008

Here is my list of what I saw as the best films of last year. Also, as per usual, I've included my favourite ten male and female performances, and also a bit on a few unexpected and/or underrated mini gems - those that may not necessarily be exactly the best, but have what I consider some great qualities about them (whether that be purely genre pleasures or films that have left a small but memorable mark). All films by-and-large received a theatrical release in the UK between January 1st and December 31st.

Male Performances:

Top row: 10 - 6; Bottom row: 5 - 1

01. Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands in Hunger
02. James Franco as Saul Silver in Pineapple Express
03. Michael Shannon as Son Hayes in Shotgun Stories
04. Pat Shortt as Josie in Garage
05. Thomas Turgoose as Tomo in Somers Town
06. Eddie Marsan as Scott in Happy-Go-Lucky
07. Mos Def as Mike in Be Kind Rewind
08. Albert Finney as Charles Hanson in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
09. Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Deerfield in In the Valley of Elah
10. Karl Urban as Nick Harvey in Out of the Blue

Also good, in no order: Colin Farrell In Bruges / Michael Pitt Funny Games U.S. / Diego Luna Mister Lonely / Ricky Gervais Ghost Town / Gary Oldman The Dark Knight / Benicio del Toro Things We Lost in the Fire / Brad Pitt Burn After Reading / Samuel L. Jackson Lakeview Terrace / Baki Davrak The Edge of Heaven / Toby Jones The Mist

Female Performances:

Top row: 10 - 6; Bottom row: 5 - 1

01. Julianne Moore as Barbara Baekeland in Savage Grace and as doctor's wife in Blindness
02. Asia Argento as Vellini in Une vieille maîtresse
03. Jennifer Jason Leigh as Pauline in Margot at the Wedding
04. Juliette Binoche as Suzanne in The Flight of the Red Balloon
05. Sally Hawkins as Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky
06. Isabelle Huppert as Jeanne Charmant-Killman in A Comedy of Power and as Pascale in Private Property
07. Anamaria Marinca as Otilia in 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
08. Helena Bonham-Carter as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
09. Mary Beth Hurt as Ruth in The Dead Girl
10. Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody in The Mist

Also good, in no order: Nicole Kidman Margot at the Wedding / Jennifer Garner Juno / Pauline Malefane Son of Man / Galina Vishnevskaya Alexandra / Wei Tang Lust, Caution / Maria Bello Butterfly on a Wheel / Hanna Schygulla The Edge of Heaven / Samantha Morton River Queen/Mister Lonely / Cynthia Nixon Sex and the City / Melonie Diaz Be Kind Rewind

Top Ten worst and 10 disappointments:

Worst, in order: 01. Funny Games US (Michael Haneke) / 02. Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov) / 03. Scar 3D (Jed Weintrob) / 04. Charlie Wilson’s War (Mike Nichols) / 05. The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan) / 06. Smiley Face (Gregg Araki) / 07. My Blueberry Nights (Wong kar-wai) / 08. Ghost Writer (Alan Cumming) / 09. Sex and the City (Michael Patrick King) / 10. Pathology (Marc Schoelermann)

Disappointments, in no order: Dan in Real Life (Peter Hedges) / Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg) / The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona)/ Redacted (Brian De Palma) / Reservation Road (Terry George) / Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster) / Changeling (Clint Eastwood) / Diary of the Dead (George A. Romero) / Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck) / Eagle Eye (D. J. Caruso)

A Few Underrated/mini gems, in no order: Tu£sday (Sacha Bennett) / P2 (Franck Khalfoun) / The Dead Girl (Karen Moncrieff) / Butterfly on a Wheel (Mike Barker) / The Duchess (Saul Dibb) / Awake (Joby Harold) / Black Water (David Nerlich/Andrew Traucki) / All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (Jonathan Levine) / The Good Night (Jake Paltrow) / What Happens in Vegas (Tom Vaughan) / WTC View (Brian Sloan)

Top Ten films:

10: Our Daily Bread/Unser täglich Brot (Nikolaus Geyrhalter/Germany, Austria)


09. Garage (Leonard Abrahamson/Ireland)


08. The Mist (Frank Darabont/USA)


07. The Flight of the Red Balloon/Le Voyage du ballon rouge (Hsiao-hsien Hou/France)


06. Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichol/USA)


05. Private Property/Nue propriété (Joachim Lafosse/Luxembourg, Belgium, France)


04. Blindness (Fernando Meirelles/Canada, Brazil, Japan)


03. Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach/USA)


02. Still Life/Sanxia haoren (Zhang Ke Jia/China, Hong Kong)


01. Hunger (Steve McQueen/UK, Ireland)


Films, 11-20: 11. Savage Grace (Tom Kalin) / 12. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas) / 13. You, the Living (Roy Andersson) / 14. Out of the Blue (Robert Sarkies) / 15. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet) / 16. Somers Town (Shane Meadows) / 17. Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine) / 18. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh) / 19. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton) / 20. Une vieille maîtresse (Catherine Breillat)

Also good, in no order: Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green) / The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin) / Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry) / Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov) / The Savages (Tamara Jenkins) / [●Rec] (Jaume Balagueró/Paco Plaza) / WALL·E (Andrew Stanton) / My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin) / We Are Together (Paul Taylor) / 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)