So Reverse Shot came out with their/(our?) Top Ten list last night.

I’m proud to say I was asked to submit a list as part of the process. Here’s what I submitted:

1. I’m Not There (Haynes)
2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Mungiu)
3. Regular Lovers (Garrel)
4. Syndromes and a Century (Weerasethakul)
5. Away from Her (Polley)
6. Zoo (Devor)
7. Day Night Day Night (Loktev)
8. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Lumet)
9. Offside (Panahi)
10. Paprika (Kon)

I don’t even know if it’s true, though. Part of me wants to dip the Lumet and the Kon and add Superbad and Red Road or Lights in the Dusk or Billy the Kid and about twenty other films to the list. It’s dumb to discount the value of a Top 10 list as far as its power to influence the viewing habits of others, but it’s also dumb to expect that any top 10 list really summarizes a year’s worth of viewing experiences, especially for someone who sees a lot of movies (read: anyone likely to produce a Top 10 list).

I’ve written about most of these films here or elsewhere before, and failing a burst of inspiration that takes me away from my creative writing (as well as a pair of pieces I’m writing for the upcoming year-in-review edition of RS), I’m unlikely to expound further on these films at this time. Some are divisive (the Lumet and Loktev, the latter of which even I have a hard time justifying, given my distaste for snuff like United 93), some are obvious (#1->#5). Some I still can’t quite grasp, but I’m inexorably drawn to them (Zoo, which I haven’t written about before here, but which overwhelmed me with its beauty and its curious desire to understand). And suffice it to say I’m actually a little embarrassed by how groupthinky my Top Ten ends up looking - all of my top four ended up in the RS top five, and my #9 is their #9 as well. I had no idea what anyone else was voting for, honest to blog.

I’ve never felt comfortable doing a clusterfuck five-post Top 25 list for my favorite movies like I always do for albums. So instead of that, this year I’m just posting a list of the ten moments that defined the year in film for me. Not surprisingly, many of them are related to the films that made my top ten. There’s a great deal of clustering around Telluride, as well, which should be of no surprise. But I think it’s a good list, one that far better describes what I was going through as a filmgoer than insisting that Red Road was one step better than Lights in the Dusk (btw, how did neither of those movies make anyone’s year-end lists? in any other year…):

10. Saura at Lincoln Center

What would happen if the best screen in town was showing beautiful prints by one of the great living art filmmakers? It’s not the 60s, so let’s not pretend we’d get lines around the block, but how about a line? How about a sneeze? I saw a crapload of films by the Spanish master Carlos Saura this year, and I never saw more than 10 or 11 people at any of the screenings. That’s sad. Why has Saura missed out on a spot in the canon? Is it that his films just never got the international distribution of other filmmakers? Are people wary of dance films?

Anyway, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but you guys missed out on something really special here - a rare opportunity to fully acquaint oneself with a unique voice. Even the misfires (Lament for a Bandit, Stress-es tres-tres) are fascinating, and the best (Cria!, Elisa My Love, Cousin Angelica) are downright inspiring.

9. Syndromes in a Shoebox

And a whole host of other movies I had to see on the last day they were running because they ended way earlier than they should’ve. Syndromes and a Century is astonishing, a large-screen emotional experience that deserves to completely envelop your field of vision. But when I saw it at the IFC Center not long after its opening, it had been relegated already to their coffin-like Theater #3, which really gave it a home-theater feeling. A total bummer, but I loved the movie anyway. I could turn this into one of those obnoxious piteous rants about Why People Aren’t Going to Art Movies (see #10), but seriously guys, how could you miss out on Syndromes and a Century? Or Regular Lovers? Or Offside?

And how could I have missed out on Lake of Fire, which only ran for one week at Film Forum? I had just assumed it was going to stay…

8. …Not Just for Kids…!

Animation, that is. This year has been an AMAZING year for animation nerds (like me), so I’m just going to enumerate a few of the things we had to be happy about in 2007:

1) Ratatouille - The most mature Pixar work to date. Saying the latest Pixar film is a technical marvel is a bit unnecessary, but the reason why Ratatouille is Pixar’s best film since Monsters, Inc. is because how little it’s about advancing technique and how much it’s about refining storycraft and building real, moving relationships between characters. When I saw it in theaters (twice), the adults were appreciating it more than the kids. What a joy of a movie.

2) Paprika - Satoshi Kon makes a film-theory mindbomb. The best Japanese animated film since Mind Game?

3) Surf’s Up - A shockingly entertaining mockumentary that was terribly marketed as some dumb fart-joke movie. If I hadn’t seen this on an airplane, I might’ve never made the effort. Seek this one out.

Also: on a similar note, since it’s clearly not a 2007 film: I watched Over the Hedge while I was on break and was extremely impressed. Likable characters, a dead-on anti-sprawl message (shades of Pom Poko) and a casual, relaxed tone add up to a really enjoyable film.

4) Persepolis - For all my griping about the necessity of this film, it’s pretty decent, and it’s certainly a pleasure to see any adult-aimed animation (in French, no less) get released in the United States.

5) DVDs - Oh man, was this a banner year for animation DVD releases. Popeye Vol. 1, Looney Tunes Vol. 5, Woody Woodpecker Vol. 1, The Complete Droopy, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, The Complete Donald Vol. 3, and that’s just scratching the surface.

7. Kenny Luby, On the Lot

This fuckin’ guy. I just laugh thinking about it.

6. Eddie Vedder sings “Society,” Brendon LOLs at inappropriate moment in film.
I’m so torn. Half of me (a lot more than half, let’s be honest) hates this movie - it’s pretty much a complete misfire, with sloppy, hamfistedly ‘artsy’ direction by Sean Penn and some diarrhetic performances by William Hurt, Vince Vaughn (told to improvise by Penn, Vaughn provides some of the most chortle-worthy screen acting in a long time), and Marcia Gay Harden. But as much as I want to dismiss it, there’s actually much to recommend about Into the Wild. Hal Holbrook and Emile Hirsch are very good. Brian Dierker, a non-actor river guide basically playing himself, is awesome. I want more movies with this guy in it. There’s an honesty and naivete to his performance sorely lacking in most films, and if Into the Wild has any strengths, it’s that it’s hopelessly naive, painfully earnest in a way that’s almost kinda inspiring in the Age of Intensified Continuity.

But there are two points in this film that just… I can’t do it. I can’t recommend this to anyone. First is when Eddie Vedder’s performance of Jerry Hannan’s horrifically literal “Society” emerges on the soundtrack, baby-stepping the viewer through the film’s meager thematic misreading of Jon Krakauer’s work on the life of Christopher McCandless (”We have a greed / With which we have agreed… Society / Have mercy on me / I hope you’re not angry / If I disagree”). That the song - Vedder’s slurred pronouncement of the title word, the cringe-inducing piety toward McCandless’s self-righteous misanthropy) instantly became an in-joke among many of my friends is a sign of just how repellent it is.

The second, of course, is when Hirsch, during one of his unfortunate improvisations, breaks the fourth wall while eating an apple to make a silly face at the camera. Don’t blame the actor - he was probably just frustrated at the stupidity of having to monologue to a fucking Braeburn. Blame the filmmaker for actually keeping that shit in the movie. I mean, seriously.

5. Shock and Awe: Aleksei Balabanov’s Cargo 200

HUGE SPOILER ALERT:

It’s the moment I can’t get out of my head, no matter how hard I try: Angelika (Agniya Kuznetsova) cries as a fat Russian rapes her from behind at the command of the reprehensible, impotent Putin-lookalike Captain Zhurov (Aleksei Poluyan). Next to her lies the rotting corpse of her boyfriend, killed in the war in Afghanistan and confiscated by the sadistic captain. As soon as the anonymous rapist finishes, Zhurov destroys him with a shotgun. I’ve never been more upset in all my years of filmgoing. It’s a punishing, brutal scene, shot in an unflinching high-angle long take. It’s completely abhorrent, and it’s without a doubt one of the defining moments of my year watching movies.

OKAY, THAT’S DONE.

Aleksei Balabanov’s film is a lot of things - ‘evil’ is the first adjective that comes to mind. Then cruel, scabrous, polemical, courageous, intelligent, and maybe even sublime. It’s a tremendous moment for the filmmaker, whose violent crime films of the 1990s (including Brat and Brat 2) signaled a rising fervor among Russian youth and stand as the primary texts of the horrifically unhinged capitalization of the Russian economy. Balabanov sees his primary audience - a generation of young Russian men who are fervently observing the nostalgic cult of personality surrounding Putin - and offers them a backhanded rejoinder, an exploitation horror film about the corruption of the Soviet Union and the danger of those who would fashion themselves ubermenschen. It portrays a nihilistic generation of Soviet youth - the ones currently in power - ignorantly dancing to inane pop while the world falls apart around them. It’s probably ethically unforgivable, but as a document of Russia now, it’s completely indispensible.

4. “Pressing On” and “This Time Tomorrow” (x2)

Let’s get back to one of my favorite topics - music in movies. Probably my two single favorite moments in a theater this year were musical sequences. First, from Todd Haynes’ masterpiece (ugh, that word - but it’s true!) I’m Not There, is Christian Bale (actually John Doe) singing “Pressing On,” from Dylan’s gospel album Saved. The scene plays like brilliant found footage, Bale, strung out in a Mike Brady fro and a bolo, simply commands the screen. Shot in long take from a mostly unflinching mockumentary camera, the scene plays with the notion of documentary/cinematic objectivity, especially when it lets loose with an awesomely timed mini-zoom toward Bale as he launches into one of the song’s earthshattering choruses.

Secondly, from Regular Lovers, the sequence about halfway through the film in which the narrative pretty much pauses to allow Garrel’s beautiful and bored would-be revolutionaries to dance to The Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow.” The choreography of camera and figures is immaculate. I sat with mouth agape as William Lubtschansky’s glorious high-con lighting captured the ecstatic joy of these characters I had grown to be enamored of dance.

As a bit of a comparison, go watch The Darjeeling Limited (or don’t) and see how ho-hum Anderson’s treatment of the song is during that Brody/Murray footrace for the train at the very beginning. What a crappy movie.

3. Disliking Juno

A badge of honor: I was the first person to dislike Juno. At the now-legendary sneak preview screening just 18 hours after the first print had been struck, I beheld America’s sweetheart and I retched.

Of course, she wasn’t America’s sweetheart yet. At that point she was The Little Movie That Could. Jason Reitman pulled a huge coup with this movie that he wasn’t even able to pull with his awful, critic-baiting Thank You for Smoking. Where that film looked slick, this film is slick - slick, dishonest, inauthentic, cloying, and repellent.

Which is not to say it’s all bad. JK Simmons manages to come out looking pretty good. So does Alison Janney, in a thankless role.

But that central performance? Nope. The more I think about it, the less I have any use for it. At the time, I thought Page did a pretty competent job with material that was poorly written, but the more I think about it, the more I think that Page plays Juno as comic strip character, all wisecrack without any real sign of interiority. Cf. Thora Birch in Ghost World, and the way that similarly snap-tongued girl articulates a host of conflicting emotions that give context to her impudent wit.

And not to beat a dead horse, but how can anyone like a movie with a line of dialogue like this one:

Juno: (shakes the phone) Can you hold on? I’m on a hamburger phone.

or this horrifying routine:

Rollo: Maybe you’re having twins. Maybe your little boyfriend’s got mutant sperms and he knocked you up twice!
Juno: Silencio! I just drank my weight in Sunny D and I have to go, pronto.
Rollo: Well, you know where the lavatory key is. You pay for that pee stick when you’re done! Don’t think it’s yours just because you’ve marked it with your urine!
Juno: Jesus, I didn’t say it was.
Rollo: Well, it’s not. You’re not a lion in a pride! These kids, acting like lions with their unplanned pregnancies and their Sunny Delights.
…
Rollo: So what’s the prognosis, Fertile Myrtle? Plus or minus?
Juno: I don’t know. It’s not… seasoned yet. Wait. Huh. Yeah, there’s that pink plus sign again. God, it’s unholy. (She shakes the stick)
Rollo: That ain’t no Etch-a-Sketch. This is one doodle that can’t be undid, homeskillet.

DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE.

2. Loving Superbad

Lately, I’ve been committing a bit of a fallacy when talking about Juno, which is that I’m placing it in opposition to a very different film that’s trying to do a very different thing. That movie is Superbad, which I’ve already embarrassed myself over on this blog and which remains one of my favorite films of the year. Though I’ve taken a lot of heat for it, I feel no shame in hyperbolically loving Superbad, and a recent second viewing confirmed for me the film’s strengths. It’s an extraordinarily touching, even gentle film about the bonds between boys who are being torn apart by their collegiate fates and their own genitalia. Juno’s intentions and scope are different, and its prestige is greater, though I can not for the life of me figure out why.

But thinking about Juno in relation to Superbad is helping to confirm what I dislike about the former and like about the latter. Where Juno rings false - in its dialogue, in its characterization, in its understanding of class relations, in its understanding of family - Superbad seems entirely honest. These are real teenagers who relate to each other in a way real teenagers do. Their friendships are remarkable power struggles.

And let’s not neglect an important consideration: Superbad is not only heartwarming, but it offers two beautiful moments of grace: first in its bedroom sequence between Evan and Becca, and then in Evan’s basement, as a drunken Evan and Seth come to terms with their impending separation.

And if Ellen Page - who is mediocre in Juno and simply awful in the abhorrent Hard Candy, her breakthrough film - can get an Oscar nomination for playing Juno (and she will), let me start the campaign for a performer who is funnier, conveys a broader and subtler range of emotions, and commands every sequence he’s in with a lived-in comic sensibility and a keen understanding of his character:

Jonah Hill for Best Actor. And I’m not entirely joking.

1. Dillinger is Dead eats my face

Pretty much. If I had one moment that eclipsed all others as far as filmgoing this year, it was of course going to Telluride for a third year. And if I had one moment that stands out from Telluride, it’s probably sitting in the fourth row at the Masons’ Hall and watching a new print of Marco Ferreri’s hard-to-see masterpiece Dillinger is Dead unspool before me. It’s a remarkable, indescribable film - some have compared it to Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. I’d actually relate it more to like the world’s most challenging and emotionally engaging Where’s Waldo. Michel Piccoli’s Glauco is on-screen nearly the entire film, but we’re left adrift trying to piece together the mystery of his behavior and where he’s going to take us. Where he does go prompts comparisons to Petri, Godard, and Bunuel. I still hesitate, even within the context of this entry, to tell you anything about the narrative. Suffice it to say it’s about the crisis of conscience presented by bourgoise leisure, the relation between material goods and human action, and the beautiful and ugly places the idle human imagination can take a person.

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