5(+1) Questions About Watchmen (NO SPOILERS)

One of the joys of living in Chicago for the last two years was meeting, befriending and seeing a metric ton of movies with Miss Mary Kravenas. We met when I worked briefly at a book-seller in Evanston and bonded over our love of all things nerdy, geeky and comic book-related.

In fact, we have one of the best origin stories of any friendship. One day on the train into the city I read an ad saying Amy Sedaris would be signing copies of her new book at the Michigan Ave. Borders near my office. We decided we would go and took our place pretty far back in line when we arrived after work. So far back it took us until past midnight to reach the head of the line. Anyone you can spend six and a half hours in line with and have a deliriously happy good time is surely a true friend.

Mary was fortunate enough to see a preview screening of "Watchmen" tonight and when she got home, I asked her five spoiler-free questions about the film.



Mike: Okay, first question. The one every fanperson is worried about. Is it good?

Mary: Yes, and one of the people I went with was unaware of the graphic novel and he enjoyed it a lot.

Mike: Does the movie have the feel of the graphic novel or is it an entity unto itself?

Mary: It has the feel of the graphic novel. But it definitely has the cinematic feel too, much like "300" where the hong kong action film, turn-and-pivot filmmaking is present.



And the use of some of the actors--namely the dwarf actor who's in, well, everything, brought some unintended humor, I think. There were definite cheers and applause

Mike: Peter Dinklage?

Mary: No, let me find his name. He was in Seinfeld... Danny Woodburn



Mike: Malin Ackerman. Was she okay? Please be honest.

Mary: She did a good job. She kicks ass as Silk Spectre. There were some parts as Laurie where it was a little soft. The Night Owl/Silk Spectre sex scene made me roll my eyes a little.

Mike: Related to that. Did the filmmakers have the um... guts to include Dr. Manhattan's um... bits?

Mary: Yes, uncircumcised and everything. I haven't seen that much wang in a movie that didn't have an NC-17 rating.



Mike: Finally everyone worth their salt knows the Giant Squid is out. Did the replacement ending live up to it?

Mary: Well, it's no Giant Squid. There were parts of the replacement ending that I feel worked well. Because this is a movie, I think the changes that were made to the ending worked and made the ending and how things tie together/are explained more... realistic isn't quite the word.

Also there are a couple of elements that were very "Hollywood." There are going to be quibbles. If the movie could just end a couple minutes earlier I think some reviewers would've been happier. I don't know that I agreed completely with some of the thinking on the ending. There is a parallel to some recent movies.

But in an overall sense, I think the new ending worked for the movie. Even if I didn't agree with it completely.

Mike: Anything else to say?

Mary: There are some great choices of music like when Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is played during the Nite Owl/SS2 sex scene which made me snort. And Jackie Earl Haley is brilliant.



Mike: Mary, thanks a lot for putting a lot of my fears to bed.

Mary: You're welcome. It's not a perfect movie. But it's really good.

My Five Favorite Time-Travel Movies of All-Time

Travel through time is suprisingly a common plot device in movies. Army of Darkness, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and of course the Back to the Future trilogy are all movies where the plot centers around a character or characters moving through time. However in each of the cited cases, the time travel is not as important as the characters being a fish out of water. The movie is not about time travel as much as time travel is a mechanism to create the plot.

I like movies that are centered on time travel itself. The time travel needs to be integral to the plot with the additional treat of questions of causality woven into it. The central metaphor is then not a fish out of water but a fish in the current of a river. The current may normally push the fish in a specific direction. But the fish is able to swim in many directions and not just where the current takes them. Since I like these types of movies, I've seen quite a few and these are my favorite five.



Groundhog Day

Probably the most popular movie on this list, it's the one which is 100% centered on time travel and it does it in a very innovative way. The idea is causality is not being something fluid where small changes have large impacts. Instead causality is something that you repeat over and over until you get it "right", a kind of destiny forcing your hand. Free will is out the door but except in your capacity to learn.

Add on to its uniqueness that this story could only have been a movie. If you tried to tell "Groundhog Day" as a short story, it would've been almost unreadable. The consistent hiccups in the The medium of film and the audience's familiarity with film editing makes this movie not only possible but also very enjoyable.



12 Monkeys

I liked this movie because it posits that everything that will happen will happen. It's not just regardless of the involvement of time travelers either but in some cases because of those time travelers. It puts a different spin on causality than the normal "butterfly effect."

According to 12 Monkeys, you can't go back in time and kill your grandfather because you didn't already. At the same time, there are things that happened in the past that are better understood from the perspective of the time-traveler. Once you know X precedes Z but follows Y, the entire story is changed. The time travelers' role is no longer God-like with a prescient knowledge but as a cog in the machine that serves a role in advancing history to where it was going all along anyhow.



Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is largely indecipherable on its own. Richard Kelly's strength is what is in his head, not putting what's in his head onto the movie screen. Which is why a quick plunge into the extra material on the DVD is important to understanding this movie. This is especially useful if you get your hands on the director's cut.

Once you find out about the tangent universes, artifacts and the living receiver stuff, the movie makes a great deal of sense. One of the assumptions of most time-travel movies is that there is one true time stream and we can make tangential changes in it by traveling through it to another point. This movie is different by positing that making a tangent universe is actually a bad thing.



Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Okay, this movie is on here for two reasons really. First, it was a movie I watched as much as any other when I was an adolescent. My mom figured out how to use our video camera to play videotapes we rented from the videostore through the VCR and dub them. So I had a copy of this movie before owning your favorite movies was common.

Second, it's a goofy movie. It's not a heavy-handed "Going back to kill your own grandfather" time travel story. They can and do come both with and without existential dread. Bill and Ted are traveling through time to collect historical figures to come speak at the final history presentation of the school year. Even Camus would've cracked a smile at something as absurd as that.



Primer

There was a brief couple of months in early 2005 where this movie made me lose my mind. I rented it from CinemaRevolution, watched it by myself and then promptly showed it to anyone who I could get to watch it with me. It's not a movie that you can really figure out in the first time through and also gets better with repeated viewings. I was so enthralled I literally watched the movie like an addict.

It was addicting because it has the most believable mechanism for time-travel in any movie I'd seen. Normally it's a device like a flux capacitor and we're asked to suspend our disbelief that this device is the reason time travel is possible. "Primer" used a version of realistic physics to explain how time travel could actually be possible in real physics. Seeing "Primer" was, for me, like having a dream that you wake from and are convinced that it was real.

Tropic Thunder

Hollywood is obsessed with itself. I mean that beyond the obvious narcissism involved in its relentless promotion of stars and starlets who have this movie they just happen to be starring in opening this Labor Day weekend. It's just a part of the marketing to make an actor talk about what a character (written by someone else) means to them. Of course that's going to be very self-referential.



I'm referring more to when Hollywood decides that seeing a movie isn't enough. What audiences really thirst for is a movie about making a movie. It's not a few and far between occurence either. On IMDB there are 164 "Film Within a Film" movies, 366 "Film In Film" and 558 "Breaking the Fourth Wall" movies. Not all of them have been on par with Fellini's "8 1/2" either.

Tonight I went to see the latest incarnation of this phenomenon. Except "Tropic Thunder" is a film-within-a-film but also a BIG SUMMER ACTION MOVIE!!! So the intent is to make a bunch of inside jokes and observations about filmmaking that will be relateable to as many people as possible. Just beginning from that point while making a satire will doom you to taking limp cliches and calling them jokes. Which is exactly what "Thunder" does.

If fighting cliche with cliche is allowable, then my quick review is you see all of the best parts in the trailer. By the time Steve Coogan makes his "exit" from the film, the majority of the jokes have already been made once if not twice and they're coming back multiple times over the next hour and a half. "Thunder" plods along making points that a Pat Proft movie could've made a lot more efficiently and inexpensively while it also reminds us over and over how clever it's being. It's not a commentary about Hollywood as much as a bunch of ideas of what that might look like and the shadow versions were disappointing through and through.



The truth is I suspected "Thunder" would be a bad movie going in. Although he has made a bunch of really hilarious movies in the past, you can see in the trailer when Ben Stiller is going to be on auto-pilot and it looked like this was going to be one of those movies. However the movie was getting a lot of really good reviews and I felt it necessary to give it a chance in case my barometer was off. Sometimes its necessary to absorb a bad movie to know your sense is still accurate.

If You Ain't Gonna Ride Fly Then You Might As Well Hate

Though it came out two Fridays ago, it took me until last Wednesday to see "The Dark Knight" for a couple of very valid reasons. Foremost in those reasons is that I spent all of that weekend at the Pitchfork Music Festival listening to Public Enemy, The Hold Steady, Jarvis Cocker, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, Vampire Weekend and Dinosaur Jr as well as others.

On Saturday morning my friend and consistent concert companion Patrick and I were walking to the train to take out to the festival. Walking in the other direction was a kind of lumpy kid with colored hair and too big clothes with army boots. Back in high school this kid would be considered a goth and, while I wouldn't have been slamming his head into a locker, I could have counted on this kid listening to Marilyn Manson, not really giving a shite about school and owning at least one shirt with Brandon Lee as The Crow on it.



Except this kid's shirt didn't have Brandon Lee on it. The face printed white on black and staring back at me wasn't The Crow. In a moment it all snapped together for me. The long run of Brandon Lee as the dead celebrity that most exemplifies the dark and brooding soul of a teenager was over. Fourteen years on the top ended quickly and quietly overnight on Thursday with the old king being deposed by a new prince of crime. It had barely been a day and a half since the first midnight screenings of "The Dark Knight." But already Heath Ledger was the new Brandon Lee. The Crow Is Dead! Long Live The Joker!

Now I could go off on a tangent about how the icon has changed from a hero who is righting a wrong and curing the world of its ills to a cynical villain who is creating chaos in the world. I'll just say post-Columbine it became very easy to vilify the outsiders who sat by themselves at lunch. Apparently those attitudes have not faded completely in the last ten years.

The point is this. Going back to the day they announced Heath Ledger would be playing The Joker... check that... going back to the end of "Batman Begins" when he flips over the playing card, it was apparent this movie would be riding on whomever played The Joker. When they cast Heath Ledger, it seemed an oddball choice and this role would have forever remained his legacy whether he'd died or not. I'm so sure of it, I actually wrote these first five paragraphs before I even saw the movie. And, having now seen the movie, I can tell you his legacy will be he was the only inspired thing in an otherwise terrible movie.



One of the things that "Batman Begins" got right was it returned the astray Batman franchise from focusing on flash and visuals and celebrities playing the villains to the dark and deep story of a man who brings justice to an unjust world. The movie walked you through the development of Bruce Wayne into Batman and you could see the dynamic character growing and learning. You could feel his motivations changing and expanding. At the beginning of the movie, he's ready to shoot the man who killed his parents. At the end of the movie, he allows the man who really killed his parents to die. He's stopped fighting the symptoms and started curing the disease.

Well, that one movie detour into truly timeless elements was short-lived. The franchise quickly and noisily reverted to 90% stunts, 10% "There's good and evil in the world. Get it?" The line I've been pushing this past week is that the movie should've been called "Die Hard With A Batman." But the truth of the matter even that is a misnomer because the third Die Hard movie actually had more plot than "Dark Knight." This movie was a return to the failed form of the earlier movies with flash and visuals and "Hey, it's that guy," playing a larger part of advancing the movie to its finish than things like story, character growth and dramatic rise and fall.

Which is what makes "Dark Knight" ultimately more than a bad movie. It's a disappointment because of the potential re-starting the franchise held. This franchise could've been a study in the human character wrapped into a blockbuster's skin. Now it's just the hollow skin. My guess is too many fingers ended up in this pot and the auteur sense used to make "Batman Begins" into a great movie was squashed under a mountain of memos. These movies cost and make too much money to just let someone like Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan play with them for too long. Eventually these pieces of art are about making money for the studios and to do that you have to appeal to the largest audience possible even if it means watering down your product to the point of oblivion.

My only solace will be to watch the "Watchmen" trailer over and over until it comes out next March. They can't possibly screw up the sequel to that. Word up to my fellow comic book fans who get the joke!

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

When the original Spider-Man movie came out in 2002, I was disappointed by it. I felt like the action looked too CGI-ed, the story was weak and the Green Goblin lacked any real motivation to be, y'know, evil. I was one of the people who helped it to $115+ Million in box office on its opening weekend. But that was the only time I saw it in the theaters and never watched it on DVD. However when the second movie came out, it was my favorite movie of 2004. My best guess is that since the first one made Sony so much money, they left Sam Raimi alone for the second one.

Which is exactly what seems to have happened to Hellboy in a roundabout way. The first one came out in 2004 and wasn't very good. It had some promise but didn't follow through on it largely getting lost in the smart aleck aspects of Hellboy instead of the comic book's mythology. Normally that's the end of the line for an action movie franchise, especially one that doesn't even make back its production budget. There was a catch. Guillermo Del Toro, the director of "Hellboy", made "Pan's Labyrinth" as his next project. That movie was well-reviewed and raked in more than four times its production budget. Suddenly Del Toro was a hot director again and the door was reopened for a Hellboy sequel.

The result, "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army", is the best movie of this year so far exceeding "Iron Man", "Get Smart" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". Basically Del Toro was allowed to work to his strengths. He was able to build a fantastic world on the mythology of Hellboy (that's basically what comic books are, modern hero mythology) and make a visually stunning movie which doesn't feel like it was whipped up on a Mac. The number of practical effects in this movie are refreshing in the world that gave us both Hulk movies. Add in that the story suceeds on the both the Big Problem and little problems levels and it's what makes a great comic book movie.

It's amazing on some level that Hellboy movies are being made. Just like DareDevil, Iron Man and Elektra, the level of awareness of the Hellboy character amongst the general non-comic-book-reading populace should be limited to the family and significant others of people who read Hellboy. Instead a really good and well-done too sequel to an earlier box office bust based on Hellboy was the number one movie this weekend. Almost 8 years to the day from when my brother and I saw the X-Men movie at the Mall of America, the comic book movie has become more than just an abberation or a curiosity that lives off of previously existing fans. It is healthy and survives under its own merit as a viable genre and that's amazing like Spider-man.

Peace to Dirt Dog. I'm Back like Deja Vu.

Last night I saw a preview screening of "Iron Man" with K-Dogg. The movie comes out this weekend so I can't claim great exclusivity like when we saw "Spider-Man 3" last year a few weeks before it came out. But I've always held Iron Man as one of my favorite comic book characters so I've been looking forward to the movie since it was just a rumor.

In the grand thrust of movies based on comic books coming to the screen, there are a select handful including the original X-Men movie, "Batman Begins" and "Spider-Man 2" which encompass the upper eschelon. Those are movies which are good enough to stand up on their own irregardless of genre in the same way "Star Wars" is more than just a sci-fi film.

The next level down from that is where "Iron Man" belongs. It's a good movie and I was thrilled as a comic books fan to see they stayed faithful to the character. Like the first "Spider-man" movie or the Thomas Jane "Punisher" film, it's really good for the genre and should do a good job satisfying both the fans of Iron Man and the general public who is properly meeting the character for the first time.

One thing which did stick out for me about the movie was the enemies in the movie were Taliban-esque warlords in Afghanistan. And for the first time since our Global War on Terrorism began, it didn't feel heavy-handed to have them be the enemy. Perhaps it's because it's the last year of GWB's presidency and perhaps it's because the "with us or against us" rhetoric has died down since Rumsfeld resigned.

I think a bigger part of it is the movie's self-awareness showing that it's not guys who live in caves and warm themselves around woodfires who are making the guns being fired at our military. In a way, it is both literally and metaphorically our own imperialism being fired back at us. That little extra is what distinguishes making an Iron Man movie from making a movie about a man in a flying metal suit.

Placing the Book Before the Movie

I saw a girl reading "The Other Boleyn Girl" at the train-station today. She was reading it because the movie was just out and there was a great big marketing campaign promoting it. It wasn't necessary to ask her if that was true or not. The cover of the book was the film's poster.

It made me think of that phenomenon. A movie based upon a book is approaching release into theaters. So places like Borders and Barnes and Noble place that book out on their browsing tables. People who have seen the trailer or the television commercials snatch the book up thinking, "I'll read this before the movie comes out." It's all quite silly.

What's the cliche about movies that are adapted from books? That the book was better. It makes sense too. If you want a dragon in a book, you write "There was a dragon." If you want a dragon in a movie, you have to budget for the CGI. In a book you can explicate a character's exact feelings and reasoning. In a movie you have to have that character declare those same things via conversation or monologue. Movies have be short enough to show four times a day at the theater while books can be as long as the author wants. Books have a few natural advantages in their potential to tell a more complete tale.

Don't get me wrong. I've read books before they were made into movies and there are movies being made from some of my favorite books. But reading the book before seeing the movie is foolish. You're reading the more complete version of the story before you watch a less complete version of the story. If anything you should see the movie first. Then, if the subject interests you enough, then you can go to the source material for greater depth.

Now who do I need to talk to if I want to see an adaptation of "The Shadow of the Wind"?

2007 - The Year In Film Pt. 3

(Hi, Mom! I already did my taxes.)

Finally, here are the best of the best movies from 2007.

In 2007, The Top Five Movies stood apart from the rest of the bunch. I'll again type a few paragraphs about each which is why you might be reading this in March. In reverse order...



5.) Once

When I was 13, my childhood epilepsy returned for one isolated incident while I was away at summer camp. Chasing down the theory that I had the seizure because of a lack of sleep and exhaustation, I stayed up with my dad overnight the night before I had a CT scan. We watched two movies, "Terminator 2" and, more importantly, "The Commitments". It was the beginning of a family tradition of non-traditional musicals.

Now, more than half my life later, the guitar player from The Commitments is the male lead in a quaint, non-traditional musical. It's a romance through music but not in the way "Moulin Rouge" is, more the way it actually happens in real life. The circumstances aren't ideal. There are things which hold you back. But in the end you find a way to be with that person. "Once" is about what you love in its many forms.



4.) Lars and the Real Girl

"Lars and the Real Girl" is also about love in the real world. It's just about not knowing what you want yet. Though Ryan Gosling's character takes the road otherwise untraveled, it's a different shade of the journey most of us take to find the person for us. In a roundabout way, it's about chasing after the ideal person.

However anyone who has been on the journey knows it's really about finding out what is lovable about you. This movie could've been a freak show about a guy who has a relationship with a RealDoll. It's more about a man out-growing his damaged past and into a full and heathy adult. For him, the journey is about finding where and how he fits in the world.



3.) Hot Fuzz

The best satire comes from deep admiration. When Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg made "Shaun of the Dead" in 2004, it was from a place having seen and loved the old masters of the genre. It was spot on as a zombie movie eventhough, as a comedy, it was meant to also expose the quirks of the genre. It is a case of using the tools of the master to lovingly deconstruct the masters' house.

Then they returned last year to take on a genre even more ripe for satire, American action movies. Yet they took a different tack to lampooning the largest of Hollywood's movies. They made them very small. It's comedy is the comedy of inversion instead of adoption. By scaling down (but not toning down) the violence, the absurd hilarity was increased exponentially.



2.) Michael Clayton

I've been a fan of George Clooney for a long time. My admiration springs from his willingness to do projects which are difficult and on the fringe. Compare to his close friends. Could you see Brad Pitt in "O Brother Where Art Thou"? Or Matt Damon directing "Good Night and Good Luck"? Clooney has attained a level of being able to do the projects he wants and follows through on doing them.

"Michael Clayton" is another project with some teeth. It's part Grisham-esque legal thriller (without the courtroom) and part morality quest for the titular character. What sets the movie apart is the ending. I don't want to give it away. I will say that it was one of the rare times where the ending was set-up well throughout the movie to conclude at a point instead of just ending.



1.) Knocked Up

One year, two excellent movies about unwed pregnancy and in both cases they keep the baby. Hollywood has a liberal bias? Like the other movies I was drawn to this year, I enjoyed this movie because it was a reflection of the contemporary world. There are people who get pregnant out of wedlock and DON'T have their lives descend into ruin (despite what health class teaches us).

I also really like both Seth Rogan and Katherine Heigl. One of my constants of romantic comedies (even of the Apatow variety) is I have to like the girl and see myself in the guy. Now I don't see myself as an adrift stoner trying to set up a celebrity nudity site. But there is something about getting to a point in your life when you have to decide to switch from being someone's child to being an adult. For some people that's when they have a child of their own and, instead of being angsty and mourning their childhood, growing up a lot in a short time.

Finally, as I mentioned, it was an Apatow comedy. As a fan of "Anchorman" and "Forty Year Old Virgin", I'm glad to see the dual success of "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" solidifying the place for movies like this in the market. As I mentioned in my "Hot Rod" blurb, there's a different paradigm in movie comedies now. Ten years ago a comedy was based around a funny concept. You took a swinging 1960s superspy, put him in the post-AIDS 1990s and all of the jokes flowed from the "fish out of water" situation. Now it's sped up, more YouTube-ized where the what matters isn't a concept which can grow stale and wear thin quickly. You have to bring the jokes. This style where the plot is a starting point, not a teether, means there are no throwaway jokes. It's all in there because it's all funny.

The Oscars

Since the Oscars are on tonight, I thought I'd throw up some quick predictions before the show and then update with some reactions later.

I have a pretty simple lithmus test for the Oscars. I believe that Oscars should stick out. Either because it was a touchstone role or because that actor's oeuvre stands out amongst their piers. Basically the Oscars should be celebrating the best movies have to offer. My updated notes are in italics.

Best Picture - No Country For Old Men

This was the best reviewed movie of the year hands down and the consensus seemed to settle on this being the best picture of the year. "There Will Be Blood" was the sort of movie a lot of people felt very strongly about (including me) and that probably pushed its profile up a bit. "Juno" had a dark horse chance in the same way "Little Miss Sunshine" did last year. But ultimately it was No Country for Old Men's award to lose and it didn't.

Best Actor - Daniel Day-Lewis

I read an article recently that Daniel Day Lewis has done only 9 movies since winning his first Oscar in 1989 and has garnered Best Actor noms for three of them. That means he is Academy nominated in 40% of his movies and has won an Oscar 1 in 5 times he's appeared onscreen in the last ten years.

So I'm sorry for Johnny Depp and that years from now he'll be "can you believe he's never won?" discussions. He ran into (successively) Sean Penn in "Mystic River", Jamie Foxx in "Ray" and Daniel Day Lewis in "There Will Be Blood."

Best Actress - Laura Linney

I like Laura Linney and I was hoping for a "lifetime achievement" award for her. I mean, since 1996, she's only been in "Primal Fear", "The Truman Show", "You Can Count On Me", "Mystic River", "Love Actually", "Kinsey", "The Squid and the Whale" and "Breach". I'm not mad Oscars. (Unlike last year when Jennifer Hudson won.) I'm just disappointed.

Best Supporting Actor - Javier Bardem

I can't really argue with this one. I think Phillip Seymour Hoffman was awesome in "Charlie Wilson's War." But Bardem has been excellent in movies like "Before Night Falls" so I can't argue this win will stick out years from now. He really does deserve the award.

Best Supporting Actress - Cate Blanchett

I wanted Cate Blanchett to win for the first of the two criteria I listed above. Her role as "Don't Look Back"-era Dylan was exactly the kind of boundary-stretching which actors should aspire to and recognized for instead of the typical Oscar-bait. That said Tilda Swinton has an Oscar-worthy oeuvre and "Michael Clayton" was one of my favorite movies of the last year (which is another post entirely).

Best Director - The Coen Brothers

My heart does swell with a little civic pride when Minnesota-born directors Joel and Ethan Coen take home the gold. I want Paul Thomas Anderson to win an Oscar one day since I've pretty much enjoyed every movie the guy has made. Then again, considering he keeps getting nominations, he either will eventually or become his generation's Scorsese. And even Marty won eventually.

Best Adapted Screenplay - The Coen Brothers

Okay, a rehash of what I said about best reviewed movie and civic pride before now. Can I let you in on a secret? I still haven't seen this movie. Since my regular movie viewing partner is squemish when it comes to violence, I never got out to this one. I'll see it eventually and I'm sure I'll really like it. I just haven't yet.

Best Original Screenplay - Diablo Cody

Again, more civic pride eventhough Ms. Cody is really from Chicago. She lives in Minneapolis and I've read her book and in CityPages for years. I even remember the posts on her blog about the movie coming together. So, in a way, it's kind of like following the rise of someone from your high school into stardom.

See you after the show... Any predictions for next year? Best Picture to "Semi-Pro"?

2007 - The Year In Movies Pt. 2

Let's resume this little tea party and close it out asap.

Up next are the honorable mentions, aka The Films I Liked Which Didn't Make the Top Tier. I won't say anything about them because really my recommendation is to see them if you're interested in them but not to go too far out of your way if you aren't. Basically, they're enough to justify a rental for someone who is already interested in...

4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, American Gangster, Blades of Glory, The Ex, The Golden Compass, I'm Not There, The Last Mimzy, Music and Lyrics, Ratatouille, Rush Hour 3, Sleuth, Starter for 10, TMNT and Zodiac.

Penultimately, these are The Films In the Lower Half of the Top Tier. They're movies I'd recommend seeing because I really liked them and I think a good number of the people I know would like them too. Here are a few words about each.

300 I already praised the obvious things about "300" above. But it's also interesting to the post B.A. me because I believe in modern myth. Not "am interested in." Believe in. And when the characters talk about their actions resonating through history, I think, "Just like how there's a movie about them now."

Beowulf Same thing about modern myth when it comes to this movie. "Beowulf" is synonymous with "Because you had to" reading and the epic poem has therefore lost why it survived in the first place. Myth should feel present. It should feel like a part of our lives. So when a film like "Beowulf" takes that myth and makes it "available" to a modern audience, it has succeeded.

Breach Based on the real-life Robert Hanssen espionage case, Chris Cooper is the gravity which holds the story together. His portrayal of Hanssen holds the duality of being patriotic and virtious and while being a traitor as well. He basically carries the film all by himself but, like a spy, without being obvious about it.

Charlie Wilson's War I saw this movie after the New Year so consider it bonus coverage to make up for not finishing this list earlier. The Global War on Terror is understandably a delicate subject right now. There really isn't a way that you can approach it without taking a stance on it. So laurels go to the people behind this film for saying something poignant instead of being preachy and for being funny without taking the topic lightly.

Control The saddest part of any movie about Joy Division and their frontman Ian Curtis is when the band finds out they are going to tour America. It's sad because they are all so happy and it appears their career (and lives) are taking off. But, knowing the history, a Joy Division fan knows Ian Curtis hangs himself on the eve of their American tour. It makes the moment sad because you know that their happiness is really just the beginning of the end.

Death at a Funeral This movie was a very dry almost-farce which has a brilliant "Chekov's Gun" and, based upon what I've read of other "End of the Year" lists, I don't know if other people got it in the same way I did. It's comedy is based in situations (but not sitcom) and in manners and in uncomfortable circumstances.

Eagle vs Shark Starring Jemaine of "The Flight of the Conchords", this movie's tagline was a perfect summation. A story about there being someone for everyone apparently, it's also a story about not judging yourself because of what other people think of you.

Hot Rod There is a new paradigm in comedy. Ten years ago you had to have a quirky concept like a 1960s superspy who is out-of-place in contemporary times. Now, in our post-YouTube culture, you just need to have funny jokes like "I needed to think about last night. So I galloped into a wooded glen, and after punch-dancing out my rage and suffering an extremely long and very painful fall, I realized what has to be done." It has become a medium of ideas and unlimited potential.

Juno This year's "Little Miss Sunshine" down to its quirky dialogue and the way it snuck from the fringe to the mainstream on the strength of its word-of-mouth. Here's the thing. I think it's a better movie and is even more deserving of the attention.

The King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters This movie was the perfect set of circumstances. Profiling something with as much drama already as the obsessive world of competitive arcade-game-playing, the filmmakers lucked into a situation which also injected some dark green-eyed jealosy.

Live Free or Die Hard One of my favorite moments of the year came when Susie and I saw "Hot Fuzz" in Madison with CJ and Elaine amongst others. We were all hyped up and talking about what we thought of the film (more on that later). Then CJ turned his head to see the poster for this film. "Oh, no," he said. "Oh, yes," said I. The movie promptly lived up to the moment.

Ocean's Thirteen As much as I liked "Oceans 12" at the time, later viewings have worn thin pretty quickly. In opposition to that is "Oceans 13", a movie I saw multiple times in the theater and enjoyed each time. The movie needs a strong villian to wash out the moral ambiguity of the heist and Pacino's character really deserves what happens to him.

The Simpsons Movie It says something about the vitality of "The Simpsons" that the series is still going while the movie came out over the summer. It says even more that the movie was so good proving that they aren't entirely out of ideas. Whether you thought it was a glorified episode or not, you couldn't deny it was made of what it is that makes The Simpsons great.

Spider-man 3 This was a different kind of Spider-man movie. Action was eschewed for emotion. I don't know if I would've liked this movie as much if I weren't in a relationship. But I liked the ending when Peter comes back Mary Jane, she goes to meet him and they are just back together.

Stardust Well, Neil Gaiman wrote it so you know the story will be good. And DeNiro is in it. And Claire Danes. And Ricky Gervais too. Then something awful happens to Rupert Everett's character and you say, "Oh, it's silly fantasy. I get it."

Superbad How great was this movie? That the phrase "I am McLovin'," didn't become annoying along the lines of "Yeah, baby!" is a testament to how many good jokes it had to spare. This movie almost snaked its way into the top flight of my favorite movies this year just on its quotability and rewatchability.

The Ten Now that the Apatow crew has gone above ground, The State/Stella/Wet Hot American Summer group is the best thing in the fringe. I was even willing to see this movie all by myself because of my love for their last movie, "The Baxter." Yet another which fits in the paradigm of having the jokes and "The Ten" has them in spades.

There Will Be Blood Another movie I saw after the New Year and I was going to write an entire entry about it. Instead I'll just summarize here.

Seeing a Paul Thomas Anderson movie can be like eating a salad. You get it in your head to eat right and so you order a salad. At first, you feel great because you're eating all of the croutons and cherry tomatos. Then it seems like there is too much fucking lettuce to eat in your whole life. Somehow though you stick out the lettuce and you finish the salad. You aren't particularly full and think maybe you should've ordered a steak. Then two days later you're still thinking about how good you were by ordering a salad. You even congratulate yourself for having the salad.

Ladies and gentlemen, I feel good about seeing "There Will Be Blood" in the same way I feel good about eating a salad.

Walk Hard After a few consecutive years of Oscar-baiting musician biographies, it was about time for someone to parody the genre. That it feel to Judd Apatow and his compatriots is comedy gold. The best part is that, since John C. Reilly can actually sing, it's actually able to be a good movie in the genre it simultaneously lampoons. If it were based on actual events, that is.

2007 - The Year in Film, Part 1

Since the year is over, by default it's time for my column about my favorite movies of the last year. (Happy New Year by the way and sorry for not posting in December.) I saw 55 different movies this year which is a prodigious number and still 30% fewer than I saw in 2006. Maybe the less I say about 2006 from now on the better.

First are the special categories.

The Worst Movie of the Year - 30 Days of Night

It was tough being the worst movie this year with films like "The Darjeeling Limited", "Across the Universe", "Transformers" and "The Invasion" all finding their ways into multiplexes. But somehow "30 Days of Night" eclipsed them all.

It took an interesting twist on vampire movies by isolating their victims in the endless night above the Arctic Circle and then wrapping a flaccid plot around it. There really is no reason to see this movie if you think the concept is novel because it's the only redeeming quality of the film. Once you grasp its uniqueness, the movie you imagine will be much better than the one which made it onto the screen. In that regard, it's this year's "Hellboy" (even down to being based on an independent comic book).

The Best Movie from Last Year That I Saw This Year - Ehhhh...

There weren't a lot of movies I didn't see last year that I ended up seeing this year. Based on what CJ and Elaine tell me, "Air Guitar Nation" would've been that movie if it had ever been at the video store when Susie and I went to rent a movie. So instead I'll use this space to talk about my growing interest in the Harry Potter movies.

First, let me qualify a little bit. I read about 100 pages into the first Potter book and decided, "No thanks. Not for me." So I did give them a try and, like I said, it wasn't for me. Second, I'd always heard from people who had read the books, "Oh, you have to get to the third book and then it picks up." As though I want to plow through 600 pages and then find out if it really does pick up. But the last two movies, "Goblet of Fire" from two years ago and "Order of the Phoenix" from this year, caught my fancy as Susie (the real reason I ended up seeing them) will watch them at home.

I like "Goblet" and "Phoenix" because they have Voldemort in it. The world construction and character introduction and the behaviors and rituals of the world J.K. Rowling is imagining isn't really that interesting to me. I'm not into that kind of stuff and thus that rules out 95% of fantasy novels for me. Yet these two movies (and, I guess, novels) are when things start to go bad. The fit is hitting the shan, people are freaking out and there's actually something at stake.

Without that apocalyptic presence of Voldemort, the stories are too sitcom-esque for me. If you just wait 90 minutes, the world will be okay and everyone one can go one living their happy lives. At the end of "Goblet" and "Phoenix", the world is much worse off after 90 minutes and not everyone even made it out alive. It follows the "end times" archetype perfectly and it breathed something into the Harry Potter franchise which was never there for me before. Perhaps that's what people meant about waiting until the third book.

The "14 Year Old Boy Inside Me" Award - 300

This award goes each year to the movie I guilty enjoyed because it had all of the things someone half my age wants in a movie. I was going to give this to the Rob Zombie "Halloween" remake because of the amount of nakedness in the movie. However I didn't want to encourage anyone to actually see the Rob Zombie "Halloween" remake.

Instead I'll give this award over to "300" without hesitation. The movie was instantly quotable, the action sequences were the best of the year, there was a solid enough plot to the movie to pull it all together and it didn't skimp on the testosterone. Hey, there's even some well-placed nakedness in this movie too.

So eventhough the contemporary Mike liked "300" for different reasons (see my following entry), I'm sure the Mike who is half his age would've really dug it too.