HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY RUSHMORE CHRISTMAS WITH A WES ANDERSON HOLIDAY TRIPLE FEATURE

Cinema 21's still in the midst of A Bit of the Old Ultra-Kubrick, their four film Stanley Kubrick series, which comes to a close on Thursday.  I was thrilled to see last night's DCP screening of the digitally restored Dr. Strangelove last night and still hope to make it a 35mm showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey after catching an advance screening of Hyde Park on Hudson tomorrow night.  And while news of their upcoming bookings of the 4K digital restoration of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia as well as Sergio Corbucci's spaghetti-western classic Django (nicely timed to take advantage of the holiday release of Q.T.'s Nero-indebted latest film, Django Unchained) are bound to thrill film fanatics, it's pretty likely that a whole bunch more excitement is going to be generated when folks hear that there's a Wes Anderson series a comin' to Cinema 21 this holiday season.

The announcement certainly comes at an interesting moment in Anderson's career.  His latest, Moonrise Kingdom, has done much to illustrate a critical and popular divide between those who revile his style and the fans who lap it up.  Personally, I liked Moonrise Kingdom quite a bit and really don't agree with the all-too-often cited issue that some have with Anderson's work--the notion that he's just making the same film over and over again.  Still, I'm not as enamored with some of his films (The Life Aquatic, though it has its fervent defenders, felt pretty flat to me) as I am with what I feel are the true highlights of his career.

The upcoming holiday series at Cinema 21 nicely sidesteps this debate, which mostly seems centered on his post-Tenenbaums work, by programming Anderson's initial three releases.  Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums are, in my opinion, truly solid films that even the most miserly of film goers would have to concede as having sprung from the imagination of a creative and talented original.  There might be plenty of films out there approximating Wes Anderson's moves (Thumbsucker, Rocket Science, Boy, Submarine, etc.), but few sport the authenticity suggested by his considerable influence.

Here's what Cinema 21 owner Tom Ranieri has to say about the Anderson triple feature:

He is the origin of several parodies and even more copy-cats.  He is an oeuvre unto himself.  He is, according to Martin Scorsese, "the Next Martin Scorsese." 

Cinema 21 is exceedingly proud to announce: 

A VERY WES ANDERSON CHRISTMAS His first three feature films on vibrant 35mm prints. 
-Bottle Rocket (1996, 91 mins.) 
-Rushmore (1998, 93 mins.) 
-The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, 110 mins.) 

Starting Christmas Day! Don't take this for granted! In a very dark room, on a big, bright screen. The colors, the music, the charm, the humor, the nostalgia, the dysfunction, the obsession, the outright joy! It will bowl you over. This is the perfect opportunity to re-discover the birth of the most unique voice in American cinema over the last two decades. 

-$6 for one film, $9 for two, or $12 for a triple feature! 
Celebrate the holidays watching relationships even more dysfunctional than your own.


Now on to the trailers:

As a bonus, here's the original 1994 Bottle Rocket short that Anderson made prior to his feature debut:

And here's Anderson in conversation with director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) on the subject of how Bottle Rocket was seen as a failure on its initial release:

A Very Wes Anderson Christmas begins on Tuesday, December 25th and runs through Sunday, December 30th.  Keep an eye on the Cinema 21 webpage for soon to be announced showtimes (TBA) and more.

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Best of 2011: The Runners Up

Ah, 2011...we hardly knew ye.  Luckily, there's never a shortage of "best of" lists each year to aid us in remembering the good times (or, in most cases, to help us catch up...whatever that means).  With this in mind, what's the harm of one more, eh?

The compiled list of top favorites will have to wait for now, since I found it nearly impossible to limit myself to only 20 selections for the year.  As a result, I've put together this list of honorable mentions.  Think of them as films that were, for some reason or other, edged out of the top 20.

It's worth mentioning that on both lists there are a few films that were released prior to 2011.  My rationalization for including these films is simple: I didn't have the opportunity to see them until 2011.  An example?  One of the highest ranking flicks on the upcoming top 20 list screened at festivals all over the world in 2010 but didn't hit Portland until last February.

So, in no particular order, here are the runners up---->>>


Midnight in Paris (dir. Woody Allen):

Just pure fun.  Owen Wilson hasn't been this likeable in years.  Meanwhile, Paris actually resembles a city you'd want to visit, rather than a picked over, tourist hell.  Probably the best film Allen's made since Deconstructing Harry, definitely his best comedy since then.  It also contains wonderful supporting performances by Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway and Michael Sheen as the kind of boring "pseudo-intellectual" that Allen (or his proxy in those pictures where he's absent onscreen) routinely lambasts in his movies.

Amer (dir. Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani):

An edgy, experimental and provocative homage to Italian horror of the 60s and 70s, Amer transcended the horror genre (is it really a horror film at all?) by mixing the stylistic flourishes it grabbed from giallo cinema with a post-modern take on feminist film theory.  Hit the link to see what I said about it when it came out on dvd in October.

Poetry (dir. Chang-dong Lee):

It's hard to say which event is sadder in this one; the protagonist's discovery of the evil her grandson has wrought or the too little, too late opening up to the beauty of the everyday.  Either way, the delicate balance that is built between the two is fully fleshed out by the transcendent performance of Jeong-hie Yun.

Submarine (dir. Richard Ayoade):

There are some who would try to convince you that this is just a less effective Wes Anderson film.  Sure, Anderson's conceits are in the mix, but so is James Thurber's short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", the temporal freedom of the French new wave, Hal Ashby's whimsical morbidity and the warped fantasies of Billy Liar (a film also in debt to Thurber's henpecked husband).  Hit the link to read what I had to say back in October.

The Strange Case of Angelica (dir. Manoel de Oliveira):

A magical film grounded in its own logic, detailing obsession and the passing of an era.  In The Strange Case of Angelica, photography, love and life itself is fleeting.  Oliveira's film possesses such a light touch that most of its themes wait until after the closing titles to surface; it's a film that stays with you.

Cedar Rapids (dir. Miguel Arteta):

Arteta's earlier films Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl were distinctive indie hits that bear repeated viewings.  His sadly forgotten debut Star Maps (still unavailable on dvd) was no slouch either.  The marketing strategy for Cedar Rapids sought to draw in the massive crowds that flocked to The Hangover.  This one's far less broad than that hit film, though.  It's actually quite touching at times, patiently wading through the emotional struggle of its protagonist with honesty.  In the hands of a lesser director, the same material could just have easily mined the central character's failings for cheap laughs.  Cedar Rapids ends up displaying far more depth for resisting the easy road.
 

Silent Souls (dir. Aleksei Fedorchenko):

A beautiful meditation on loss, both personal and cultural.  Hit the link to see what I had to say about it during PIFF last year.

If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (dir. Florin Serbin):

A tough look at life in a Romanian prison for adolescent boys.  Here's what I wrote back in February about it.

Rocaterrania (dir. Brett Ingram):

A documentary portrait of scientific illustrator Renaldo Kuhler; a man who funneled his woes into the life-long creation of an imaginary country that rests between the U.S. and Canada.  Rocaterrania relays this story mostly through Kuhler's art and words.  The film came out in 2009 but was really difficult to see until last year's release on dvd.

The Trip (dir. Michael Winterbottom):

Michael Winterbottom's six episode British television series as distilled down into a feature-length vehicle for U.S. audiences.  Do I wish we yanks had been given the full thing?  Of course.  But you can't argue with something as fun as watching Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon riffing on their own personalities as they travel through the English countryside.  It's The Odd Couple grafted to some kind of meta satire of reality tv, travel-based cuisine shows.

Barry Munday (dir. Chris D'Arienzo):

An unreasonable premise--a man made sterile by a brass instrument--is only the teeing off point for this very funny comedy.  Even with the well-worn redemption through loss motif in play, Barry Munday distinguishes itself by not treating its characters as the comedic material.  Surely, the joke is on them but it's the circumstances that are funny, not the failings of the people being portrayed.  Like Roccaterrania, this one was made in a previous year but only came under my radar after its release on dvd.

And that's it for now...
We'll hit you up with the a chunk of the top 20 list sometime over the next few days.  Keep an eye out for that post!


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SUBMARINE -- It's sink or swim out there

There's an age at which the fantasies of youth drain away and what we're left with is cold, wet reality.  To a great extent, Richard Ayoade's directorial debut, Submarine is completely wrapped up in one person's struggle to hang onto the fantasy after having caught a glimpse of the dour reality.  That individual is Oliver (Craig Roberts), our protagonist in a film that often comes off like a thematic successor to Wes Anderson's Rushmore cross-pollinated with the love child of Hal Ashby and the French New Wave (imagine Truffaut's characterizations meshed with the editing strategies of Godard's first films).

What this looks like in practice is a film that shifts seamlessly from the whimsy-driven heights of Oliver's fertile imagination to the harsh truth of living with parents (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor) on the edge of separation.  Ayoade cleverly uses the parental strife as a comparative device held up against Oliver's own budding relationship with a classmate named Jordana (Yasmin Paige); the latter being the primary focus, while the former provides the context for our young hero's romantic missteps.

And Oliver makes mistakes aplenty...a refreshing amount of them, actually.  As a result, the plot line dodges becoming a completely standard exercise in boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back mechanics, precisely because of how realistic Oliver's missteps appear in a movie that repeatedly darts in and out of the actual.  This is one confused kid and the film's structural looseness ably reflects Oliver's shambolic thought process, both literally via voice over and in the busy flow of the onscreen action.

Given that this is his first feature, it's tempting to label Ayoade a neglected genius who has arrived fully-formed on the scene.  But, as an actor and writer, he's been kicking around the biz for some time now.  Fans of British tv have likely come across his work on The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh, Snuff Box, etc.  He's also racked up more than a handful of directing credits for television, including "Critical Film Studies," a strong candidate for the best episode of NBC's Community.

It doesn't take long to discern that Ayoade's been waiting to sink his teeth into something with a bit more scope than sitcoms can offer.  And stretch out, he does.  This is a mature work that still makes plenty of room for non sequiturs and a woozy imbalance, projecting the uncertainty of youth.

That's not to say that Submarine is a perfect film, mind you.  It's a coming of age story and we've seen a lot of these elements played out on screen before.  It's also yet another display of adolescent male psychology, which had me wondering how the film might play out if it were more invested in Jordana's point of view...or if it were her story altogether.  Gender-bias and familiarity aside, it is the spark with which these well-worn bits are assembled that make Submarine fresh and worth recommending.

Bonus: 
I thought I'd go ahead and link a couple of clips from Ayoade's other work.   

Here's a bit from The IT Crowd:

Ayoade on The Mighty Boosh:

And, finally, Part 1 of 2 of Ayoade's episode of Community (fans of My Dinner With Andre and Pulp Fiction need to see this):

 

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