THE BEST OF 2012: #16-20

#20 Sleepwalk with Me (dir. Mike Birbiglia & Seth Barrish):

Mike Birbiglia tells the film-going public the same long, rambling anecdote that he shared with the This American Life cult back in 2008 and, surprisingly, it doesn't feel like an old story.  With the help of This American Life guru Ira Glass and co-director Seth Barrish, Birbiglia's given birth to 2012's best substitution for a decent Woody Allen film.  Oh, and nobody seems to be mentioning Lauren Ambrose when writing about this movie, so let me correct that by ending this sentence with the following statement: she's very good in it.

Sleepwalk with Me is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


#19 Compliance (dir. Craig Zobel):

Did I already say that Snowtown was the most disturbing film I saw in 2012 in that last chunk of my best of 2012 list?  Okay, it was, but, if that's the case, Craig Zobel's (The Great World of Sound) Compliance makes it in as a close second place holder.  Zobel's characters display actions that are so questionable that there were multiple times during the film that I completely lost track of the idea that the film is based on true events.  No, I did not feel good about myself or humanity after watching this film, but I couldn't shake it from memory, either.

Read my review of Compliance here. 

Compliance is scheduled for release on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, January 8th.


#18 The Miners' Hymns (dir. Bill Morrison):

Bill Morrison's work can be located at the intersection of the experimental and the just plain cool.  General audiences probably aren't ready for anything he's produced, but, keep in mind, such viewers are to blame for the sequels to National Treasure and Night at the Museum (yeah, you buy into that crap, and someone's always going to line up to shovel more down your throat).  Having said that, this is probably his most accessible film to date; it's the one you could watch with your dad.  With The Miners' Hymns, Morrison weaves imagery drawn from history into a mesmerizing gaze back at a time and place that's nearly unrecognizable from the present.

Read my review of The Miners' Hymns here. 

The Miners' Hymns is available on DVD and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video.


#17 Beauty is Embarrassing (dir. Neil Berkeley):

Wayne White calls 'em like he sees 'em and, in Neil Berkeley's documentary Beauty is Embarrassing, the puppeteer turned multidisciplinary artist doesn't hold back at all, especially when it comes to talking about his experiences in Hollywood.  White is funny, unpredictable, and, best of all, completely committed to the act of creation and telling others that they can to do the same.  I probably saw 10 times as many documentaries as I did features in 2012; Beauty is Embarrassing was the one that made me feel the most inspired.

Read my review of Beauty is Embarrassing here.

Beauty is Embarrassing will be released on DVD on January 22nd and currently can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video.


#16 Buoy (dir. Steve Doughton):

Buoy takes an action that would, at the most, fill a couple of minutes in any other movie and stretches it out to feature length.  Outside of its first 10 minutes, the entire film is centered around a woman (Tina Holmes) talking to her brother (Matthew Del Negro, who never appears on camera) on the phone.  In the hands of writer/director Steve Doughton, it's compelling, emotional, and, above all, compulsively watchable.  Who knew that eavesdropping on the conversations of others could be so cathartic?  Buoy proves that, in the right hands, less can definitely be more.  Seeing is believing and I'd highly recommend seeking this one out when it becomes more widely available.

Buoy is currently unavailable on home video, though plans are being made for an eventual release.  For now, you can check out the film's website.

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56 UP: STILL COMPELLING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

It's been seven years since 49 Up and, like clockwork, director Michael Apted returns with 56 Up,  the latest installment in his groundbreaking Up series.  Checking in with the lives its English subjects every seven years since they were young schoolchildren, this series of made-for-television documentaries has yielded an amazingly emotional look at ordinary lives lived; their failures and triumphs aired for all the world to witness.  It's one thing to appreciate the idea that informs these films, but watching them is an entirely different experience, as it's possible to be drawn into the otherwise private details of the lives of complete strangers.

If this sounds roughly like the effect of watching a season of reality tv, it's probably due to the undeniable influence that the Up series has had on that genre; Apted's initial chapter in the series predates An American Family, PBS' 1971 experiment in reality-based television, by seven years.  The difference between the Up series and, say, Jersey Shore, is profound; whereas most reality television takes on a leering gaze, the Up series has always had more anthropological aims in mind.  In Apted's hands, the 14 subjects who have taken part in the series have been less representatives of themselves than of the universal experience that is living life and gathering stories along the way.

As we pick up once again with the familiar faces in 56 Up, many of them are beginning to evaluate where they are in their lives, often within the context of the series and how it has and has not fairly represented them.  Some complain that it has offered the public a sense of identification that isn't earned, and, surely, being repeatedly approached by complete strangers who want to commiserate with you over the private details of your life must be exhausting.  Neil Hughes, whose past struggles with homelessness made him the subject that most viewers worried about in prior chapters, has found stability and is probably the most vocal in his protests that people don't know how he feels just because they've seen small slices of his life on the telly every seven years.

All in all, 56 Up isn't going to surprise viewers, whether or not they've checked in with the series before.  But it does offer the same comforts as the past few chapters, mainly the possibility of transformation over time, as many of the "characters" found within have achieved some form of peace with the way their lives have unfolded.  Like previous installments, 56 Up betrays its roots in television, especially how each person's story remains a discrete section of the larger whole; Apted doesn't cut between the tales as he might were he presenting a feature documentary, so, even if we're seeing it in theaters in the U.S., the overall style is that of the small screen.  This should in no way dissuade anyone from checking in with it, though, as this latest chunk of the Up series retains its fascinating power to pull viewers into the lives of its subjects.

Highly recommended.

56 Up premieres at the IFC Center in NYC on Friday, January 4th.  It opens locally at Cinema 21 on January 25th.  More info available here.

 
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GLOW - THE STORY OF THE GORGEOUS LADIES OF WRESTLING: THE RETURN OF BIG BAD MAMA

Where was I when ladies wrestling was a regular fixture on broadcast television?  Brett Whitcomb's new documentary GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling paints a picture of massive fame, if not fortune, experienced by these very 1980s ladies, plucked out of obscurity and placed in a televised ring of glory.  The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (go ahead, try the link--you'll be amazed) filled the screen on Saturday mornings for years, offering an alternative, but no less campy, option to the testosterone fueled WWF (now WWE) of the time.  Partly due to the program's day and time slot, the fan base that developed around GLOW was primarily made up of children, although, as one of the film's subjects points out, hung-over frat boys were a big part of that crowd, too.

As a film, GLOW has a lot of the essential elements in place.  There's the undeniably oddball story of a Vegas-financed, all-female wrestling team, made up of mostly non-wrestlers who had to learn their trade on the job.  Whitcomb has access to all the colorfully named personalities on hand: Mt. Fiji, Little Egypt, Matilda the Hun, Jailbait, and Big Bad Mama, to name just a few.  And since we're talking about a television show, there's a ton of archival footage on hand, too, including one nasty looking injury and a large slathering of posturing in line with what we think of when we think of televised wrestling.  If there's one thing missing from the story, it's the perspective of the fans; the size of GLOW's following is mentioned often, yet there's never any insight offered up from the rabid audience that developed around these Gorgeous Ladies.

Still, Whitcomb offers up a deep look into a forgotten moment from our not so distant pop culture past.  A doc like GLOW promises on the surface to supply viewers with something to laugh at--and there's certainly more than enough ridiculous stuff to giggle about here--but, surprisingly, the film digs below the surface, unearthing a more emotional perspective than one expects from a documentary about ladies' wrestling.  If you're not moved by the story of Mt. Fiji, you're not human.  Even if you find wrestling exceedingly dull, the excitement that GLOW generates will spare you the sleeper hold.

GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling plays two-nights-only at the Hollywood Theatre beginning on Saturday, January 5th at 7pm.  More info available here.

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ANY DAY NOW: KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY

Travis Fine's Any Day Now is a well-intentioned, 1970s period piece exploring a gay couple's fight to retain custody of a child with special needs.  Based on a true story, the film's aims are regrettably matched with an overly melodramatic, tin-eared script that isn't up to the task of breathing life into a scenario that really shouldn't require any punching up at all.  It's a film that never surprises, always embracing the safest, most oft-trod path to describing its characters and their conflict.  To make matters worse, actors Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt pour just about everything they've got into the portrayal of their characters.  Their efforts do rescue several scenes from the bland, go-nowhere tendencies of the script, but it's not enough to combat Fine's worst impulses, which continually drag the piece through one tired cliché after another.

Cumming plays Rudy.  He's living in a squalid, dump of an apartment building, barely making ends meet and putting up with the loud parties of the junkie (Jamie Anne Allman) who lives next door.  When Rudy discovers that his neighbor has left her young son, Marco (Isaac Leyva), without adult supervision, he tries to comfort the boy.  When he finds out that she's been arrested, he decides to take in this discarded child with Down Syndrome.  Somewhere in between all this, Rudy and Paul (Dillahunt) meet at the bar where Rudy performs as a lip-syncing drag queen.  Their attraction is immediate and they act on it.  And, whad'ya know, Rudy soon pulls Paul, who works as a lawyer in the district attorney's office, into his attempts to hang on to Marco.

I know what you're thinking.  All of this sounds compelling enough, but the film often feels like its trying to fulfill the time requirement to qualify as feature length.  It's only 97 minutes long, but, if you took out all the filler (like the parts about Rudy's desire to be a real singer, or Paul's struggle to remain in the closet at work), it might only clock in at barely over an hour.  Still, a more streamlined film that kept its focus on the couple's fight to retain custody in the face of rampant prejudice would have been a far more successful film, narrative-wise (witness the similarly-themed accomplishment that was last year's In the Family).  What we have here instead is a sad story relayed in a manner that is always sure to indicate when we're supposed to feel sad; cue melancholic music.  The cast and story deserved far better.

Any Day Now begins its run at Living Room Theaters on Friday, January 4th.  More info available here.


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UNIVERSAL 100TH ANNIVERSARY SERIES STARTS TOMORROW AT THE NW FILM CENTER

This coming Friday night, the Northwest Film Center begins their month-long cinema party for the newest centenarian on the block, Universal Pictures.  What that celebration translates to is the return of 17 films dating from between 1916 (Lois Weber & Phillips Smalley's rarely screened silent Where are My Children?) and 1989 (Spike Lee's career-best Do the Right Thing).

There's a whole lot of good running throughout the schedule, but, if I could only pick a few to see, I wouldn't miss Douglas Sirk's 1954 melodrama Magnificent Obsession, Erich von Stroheim's 1919 silent Blind Husbands, or Anthony Mann's 1950 western Winchester '73.  And, of course, you can never go wrong with Jaws or To Kill a Mockingbird.

Here's a blurb pertaining to the series from the UCLA Film and Television Archive that I swiped off the Film Center's site:

“The Universal Film Manufacturing Company incorporated in 1912, the result of a merger between a number of independent companies that had been battling Thomas Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Trust. Universal would go on to become the oldest continuously operating film producer and distributor in the United States. In an industry defined by change, Universal’s spinning globe logo has remained, along with its back lot and tour in Universal City, Calif. 

From its beginning under Carl Laemmle, there existed a tension between Universal’s need to produce low-budget ‘programmers’ and the ‘major minor’s’ desire to compete alongside better-capitalized studios—with their national theater chains—on the level of big-budget A pictures. Ironically, while several of Universal’s early ‘prestige’ titles are beloved classics today, including ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930), it remains the B pictures, including its iconic 1930s horror cycle (FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA, THE MUMMY), that epitomize its contribution to film art and commerce. This irony informs Universal’s post-war emergence as a global entertainment power. After anti-trust actions leveled the playing field in the 1940s, Universal moved into the A-list with superlative mass entertainment that ennobled populist genres, including westerns (WINCHESTER ’73), thrillers (THE BIRDS), and sex farces (PILLOW TALK). Universal also innovated new industry practices, pioneering the ‘percentage deal’ and embracing television production. 

 It changed the game again with JAWS (1975), which established the ‘blockbuster’ formula that still dominates the industry today. Throughout its history, Universal has translated economic necessity into a uniquely American challenge to the distinctions between prestigious and popular entertainment.”

And here's an awesome video clip featuring all the various permutations of the Universal Pictures logo over the years:

 Now on to the trailers!!!

The Universal Pictures: Celebrating 100 Years series begins at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Friday, January 4th at 7pm.  More info available here.

 
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WOODY MANIA DESCENDS ON CINEMA 21, BUT STILL NO BANANAS

Cinema 21 extends their ongoing winning streak of retrospective 35mm programming with a series of five of Woody Allen's most loved films.  Entitled Yes, We Have No Bananas: Five Films By Woody Allen, their Woody mini-fest covers the basics for fans and newbies alike, gathering together his two unassailable masterpieces of the late 70s (Best Picture winner Annie Hall and the b&w beauty that is Manhattan), a pair of his best films of the 80s (Crimes and Misdemeanors & Hannah and Her Sisters), and a charmingly sturdy cult fave (The Purple Rose of Cairo) whose reputation has only grown with time.

While the title of the series singles out the absence of Allen's 1971 screwball film Bananas, I'm completely fine without it (sure, it's really funny, but I've always had a strong preference for Sleeper over any of the other films Allen made during his early, visual gag-oriented period).  Plus, it's hard to quibble over what's not there when looking at what is actually present in the line up.  Woody may have become notoriously hit or miss over the past couple of decades, but here's a chance to revisit a time when he was all hit and no miss.

Yes, We Have No Bananas: 5 Films by Woody Allen begins on Friday, January 4th.  More info available here.


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THE BEST OF 2012: THE RUNNERS UP

Well, there goes another twelve months.  Just like last year, I've put together a top 20 film list, but--yet again--that's not nearly enough space to fit in all the great films from last year (truth be told, I winnowed that list down from well over 40 films worthy of consideration), so here are, in no particular order, the runners up.

Some readers may point out that a few of the titles on this list AND the top 20 list were produced and/or released somewhere in 2011.  Here's the thing: this blog is being written in Portland, OR.  So, sure, some of these films toured the festival circuit in 2011 or had an Oscar qualifying run in NY or L.A. in final weeks that year, but, unless it opened in PDX before 2012, it's eligible for the best of 2012 list.  Yup.  Well, now that we've covered that minor detail, on with the show.


Bullhead (dir. Michaël R. Roskam):

Michaël R. Roskam's Bullhead subverts expectations surrounding how a mob film should play out, emphasizing the damage that lies in its protagonist's past over any of his present concerns, no matter how largely they may loom.  Matthias Schoenaerts portrayal of hormone addled mobster Jacky Vanmarsenille, as a lumbering giant with scars that will never heal, powers the film.  Bullhead dons the wardrobe of a crime thriller, but its concerns are that of a character-driven drama.

Read my review of Bullhead here.

Bullhead is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


The Deep Blue Sea (dir. Terence Davies):

  
The level to which The Deep Blue Sea visually approximates the emotional distress of Rachel Weisz' Hester is both astounding and profoundly disturbing.  Terence Davies' camera spins frightfully fast down an ecstatic whirlpool as Hester falls deeper into an affair that threatens to be her undoing.  Elsewhere, all sense of time is frozen in amber as an unyielding depression overcomes her.  The Deep Blue Sea is romantic in the same way that Romeo and Juliet is, describing a feeling of love so intense that the suggestion of its denial is synonymous with one's own death.

Read my review of The Deep Blue Sea here.

The Deep Blue Sea is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


Moonrise Kingdom (dir. Wes Anderson):

Wes Anderson's films tend to be overly designed, and that's at times both the major strength and weakness of his work.  His best films match the fussy visual organization with an equal amount of emotional heft, raising the material to awe-inspiring levels of storytelling.  Moonrise Kingdom offers a well-balanced recipe of both ingredients, resulting in Anderson's best film since The Royal Tenenbaums.

Moonrise Kingdom is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video and VUDU.


The Queen of Versailles (dir. Lauren Greenfield):

The nouveau riche have never looked so vulgar as they do in Lauren Greenfield's documentary The Queen of Versailles.  But the harsh truth is that the Siegel family is uniquely American in their desires.  The film ends up being a spot on (and oddly amusing) indictment of consumer drive flying in the face of bottom line truths, something that just about any post-recession American can relate to, even if the levels of excess on display here are particularly outsized in their grotesquery.

The Queen of Versailles is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.

  
Declaration of War (dir. Valérie Donzelli):

   
I've found it really difficult to convince people that they should give Valérie Donzelli's second feature a chance.  It's not because tons of viewer saw her first film as a director (2009's Queen of Hearts) and didn't like it.  Nope, it's due entirely to three little words: kid with cancer.  

Yeah, that's a scary prospect and a topic that most folks would rather not think about at all.  But Declaration of War does an amazing thing with the premise; it doesn't make it about the kid.  The entire film rests on the relationship of the adults dealing with this crisis and it's a refreshing, energetic, sometimes heartbreaking, but often funny turn away from the standard tropes employed in just about any film dealing with illness and terminal diseases.  Plainly put, this movie rocks.

Read my review of Declaration of War here. 

Declaration of War is available on DVD and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


The Imposter (dir. Bart Layton):

Bart Layton's non-fiction film The Imposter pissed more than a few people off last year.  Constructed out of reenactments matched with interviews, the film strategically discloses the details of its story in guarded chunks that only tell part of the story.  Layton uses this method of delaying information to pile up the twists in the plot and that's where he got into trouble with some audience members.  Personally, I found the technique perfectly matched to the material, so I didn't mind the manipulation at all.  In its finest moments, The Imposter resembles Errol Morris' Tabloid, even as it aspires to be a 21st century version of The Thin Blue Line.

Read my review of The Imposter here.

The Imposter will be released on DVD on January 22nd and can be streamed now via Amazon Instant Video.


We Need to Talk About Kevin (dir. Lynne Ramsay):

It had been nearly a decade since Lynne Ramsay released Movern Callar, only her second film after her 1999 debut with Ratcatcher.  I'm not really sure what other people expected of her third film, We Need to Talk About Kevin, but, while working my final months as a video store clerk, it became pretty apparent that many viewers were disappointed by the film.  

I found We Need to Talk About Kevin to be pitch perfect, as it traces not only the contours of the specific relationship being described here--a terrible proximity to an inexorable violent atrocity--but also captures a hint of what it is that we're all unable to come to grips with when facing down such tragedies.  It all plays out like an unending nightmare where time is rendered an ineffective healer and the unspeakable continually loops back into memory.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video.


The Color Wheel (dir. Alex Ross Perry):

Alex Ross Perry's The Color Wheel isn't just a harbinger of great things to come from its director.  It's a pretty damn perfect stab at the big time from all the way down in the mumblecore gutter.  Featuring sometimes brilliant, sometimes shaky performances from Perry and co-star/co-author Carlen Altman, it's the writing, sense of timing, and chemistry between the leads that launches the film beyond the limitations of its budget and the experience of its makers.  A very funny film that I've thought about often throughout the year.

Read my review of The Color Wheel here.

The Color Wheel is due out on DVD soon and can be streamed currently via Amazon Instant Video.


Love Free or Die (dir. Macky Alston):

Mediated events on the national and/or international scale are so often blown out of proportion that they lose all trace of the human element.  Macky Alston's Love Free or Die, about Gene Robinson's ordination as the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church, rescues its story from the dehumanizing effects of the sound byte.  The tale of a everyday individual becoming something much more.

Read my review of Love Free or Die here. 

Love Free or Die is scheduled for release on DVD and VOD (video on demand) in 2013.


Snowtown (dir. Justin Kurzel):

Snowtown, or The Snowtown Murders, as it's been renamed for its release on home video, was probably the most disturbing film I watched during 2012.  It didn't help at all that I went into it with absolutely no idea that it was a serial killer flick (so, maybe, adding the word "murders" to the title is an appropriate move?) and that the only image I had to go on before the screening was a still from the film of kids eating ice cream on a street corner.  It was also undeniably well made, perfectly acted, and sported incredibly self-assured direction from first-timer Justin Kurzel. 

Read my review of Snowtown here. 

Snowtown is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


Footnote (dir. Joseph Cedar):

Footnote locates a dark strain of comedy in the competitive (some might say spiteful) relationship between a father and son, Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, both of whom are Talmudic scholars.  Eliezer, the elder Shkolnik, is a hardcore researcher whose life-long efforts were undone by a competitor having stumbled upon the fruits of his labor through happenstance.  His son, Uriel, despite being more of a pop philosopher in his academic aims, is the Shkolnik gathering accolades while his Eliezer's contributions are all but forgotten.  The already nasty strain of resentment between them gets kicked up a level when an award intended for the son is mistakenly promised to his father.

Footnote is hilarious and uncomfortable, often in the same moment.  It's a focused, well-orchestrated comedy with more than its share of twists and turns.  Director Joseph Cedar (Beaufort) knows when to play up the drama and when to slice through it with a lunge of sharp-edged humor.

Footnote is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video and VUDU.


The Cabin in the Woods (dir. Drew Goddard):

Joss Whedon's The Avengers might have kicked up some dust at the box office this summer, but The Cabin in the Woods was the best movie he was involved with in 2012.  Directed by Drew Goddard and scripted by Whedon, Cabin takes the conventions of the standard horror film and turns them upside down, injecting both new life and a whole lot of intelligence into the proceedings.  This is one film where it's best to go in without knowing a single, goddamn thing in advance; all the better to discover its pleasures as they unfold across the screen.

The Cabin in the Woods is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video and VUDU.

 
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