Happy Birthday JT

Dear Justin Timberlake, I'm writing to wish you a happy 26th birthday, and to tell you that you're dead to me.

It wasn't always like this. You may remember that I enthusiastically praised the first single, "SexyBack," from your latest album, Futuresex/Lovesounds. It was the best song released last year. I was even going to give in and buy the CD. I still love that song; it's the only top 40 song I heard a lot and never got sick of.

But then you released "My Love," which you may remember me criticizing. It wasn't about you, it was about the rap interlude by T.I. (who, on his own terms, I like, especially "What You Know"). I disliked some of his awful rhymes, but on further listening it turns out it's worse than that. His rap is a complete demolition of the entire song. In your lovely falsetto, you croon a simple, even silly, love song: "If I wrote you a love note, and made you smile with every word I wrote"; "This ring here represents my heart, but there is just one thing I need from you / Say I do." But then T.I. comes in and changes the tone of the entire song: "I hate to have to cancel my vacation so you can't deny / I'm patient, but I ain't gonna try / If you don't come, I ain't gonna die." What the hell, JT? Still, I liked the rest of the song, and I had grand plans of doing a T.I.-free remix after I bought the album.

Until I heard your latest single, "What Goes Around Comes Around." Did you really craft a song around "what goes around comes around"? Tell me you didn't. (You did.) Justin, even as clichés go, that's tired. It's so tired it's dead, dried up like a frog next to a prefab subdivision that used to be a swamp. And no matter how much Timbaland kisses it with his studio skills, it will never turn into a prince. And from what I've heard, it's indicative of the rest of the album (aside, of course, from "SexyBack").

And then there's Alpha Dog, your new, long-delayed movie. I... I don't want to talk about Alpha Dog. And I don't think you should call here anymore.

2006 Goaties: Best Sound and Sound Effects

Throughout Inland Empire there's an unsettling bass tone, a sort of vibration that gets inside the fillings in your teeth and makes it uncomfortable to sit back in your seat. Not that the rest of the film doesn't achieve the same goals, but still: the sound is brilliant, both when it's there—I whimpered at the end when Laura Dern confronts... but never mind about that—and when it's not. Throw in Angelo Badalamenti's almost non-score (was there music, or just notes? does it matter?), and you have—well, you have a David Lynch movie, and the most inventive sound design of the year.

And a million miles away from Inland Empire, even if it's set in the same city, is Crank with its riotously funny and effective sound effects. Ever wondered what it would sound like to stick your hand in a waffle iron (or a sewing machine)? Wonder no more. From the wet pop at the end of the, um, the Chinatown scene, to that crazy cellphone that sounded like it was drowning, Crank's sound team went overboard (in keeping with the rest of the film). And always is the slurping, muffled thumping of Statham's heart, which affects all other sounds in the film: when it slows down, the world slows too, becoming muffled and out-of-sync.

Goatdog, Big Screen, Big Apple

I'm the luckiest guy on the lower east side. Why? Because Unauthorized and Proud of It: Todd Loren's Rock 'n' Roll Comics, a film I associate produced, is arriving in the Big Apple. It's playing on Monday, March 19 at 7:00 pm at the Pioneer Theater on East 3rd Street between Avenues A and B.

It's a documentary about a comic-book publisher who released unauthorized biographies of rock stars. They sued, he won, and then someone killed him. Was it Axl Rose? Was it Andrew Cunanan? Was it somebody else? (Probably the latter.)

Learn! about this maverick businessman! Feel! his passion for the First Amendment! Hear! the story of his sexuality, which he kept hidden even from his closest friends! And experience! Mojo Nixon, ah, being Mojo Nixon.

Advance tickets are already available; buy yours now, because it's going to sell out (we hope, we hope).

2006 Goaties: Best Musical Moment

Because I can't think of a single original song that I liked this year (I especially disliked the ones from Dreamgirls, which bogarted three of the five Oscar nominations), I've created a new category to replace it: Best Musical Moment. It honors the best, well, musical moment in a film: a scene that used music to a particularly impressive end, a great musical number, whatever. And this is the only category in which I'm going to allow myself a tie, and a three-way one at that.

First up is Chicago rapper Kanye West's entrance into Dave Chappelle's Block Party, to the tune of his song "Jesus Walks." It ordinarily opens with male voices chanting "bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp-BOMP-bomp," which was incidentally used to good effect in Jarhead. But instead of the chanting, we have the brass section of the Central State University marching band, pumping along behind West, who strides at the front of the band like a general. It's among the coolest things I saw or heard all year.

Also from Dave Chappelle's Block Party is moment #2, the surprise reunification of the Fugees. Even if you weren't a Fugees fan—I liked the songs I heard, but never looked further than that—the blast of energy from the crowd is both undeniable and catching: something important was happening, and even if I wasn't there, I was there.

Finally, but not last by any measure (this is a three-way tie, remember), is Jennifer Hudson's performance of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls, all the angry, anguished grief of a broken heart distilled into a four- or five-minute song. What can I say? I cried like a baby, and so did everyone else in the audience.

2006 Goaties: Best Supporting Actress

Amy Smart floats through Crank on a devilishly ditzy cloud, like a cross between Gracie Allen and the Buddha. She's surrounded by chaos—hails of gunfire accompanying the news that her boyfriend (Jason Statham) is (1) a hitman and (2) dying—but she remains mostly unfazed. Half of it she doesn't notice; she's too busy picking up the contents of her spilled purse to acknowledge the bullets flying by her head. The other half she refuses to process; surely Statham is spinning stories as an excuse to break up with her. Besides, she has the hiccups. The accompanying giggle, like she's getting away with something and wants us to know it, encapsulates everything I love about her in this film.

It would be possible to be deeply offended by her characterization, if one were to choose to completely ignore the film she's inhabiting: from start to finish, it's a hilarious sendup of the action-movie genre, and every element is cranked up to 11—including the innocent girlfriend/wife role. Smart knows this, and every movement and statement is calculated to amp up what we've come to expect from the Token Girl. When she's finally processed what all the shooting and screaming is about, she's game: watch her little hoppy, shrieky dance, complete with pinwheeling forearms, during the gunfight in the warehouse. She's accepted that her boyfriend is a badass—"Don't talk to him like that! My boyfriend kills people!" she shouts at a factory worker—but she can still look mildly shocked when he punches someone and crestfallen when he kills someone. Action movies need a sensual interlude, and even when it occurs in the middle of Chinatown, she's willing to play along: "You filthy animal," she croons like the audio track on a porno, "do it right here," oblivious-but-not-oblivious to the gathering crowd. And when he whines about her stopping mid-blowjob (not to mention mid-gunfight and mid-car chase), she has the film's best rejoinder: "So you can fall asleep like you always do?"

To dismiss it as yet another dumb blonde role would be like dismissing Charles Foster Kane as yet another newspaperman, or (with a little less hyperbole) Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday as yet another dumb blonde. Smart's the smartest player in the film, and her comic timing is essential to its success.

Runner-up: In Babel, Adriana Barraza wrests the film away from the director's obsessions about fate and chance, providing it with a human center that it doesn't seem interested in developing. Unlike all the other performers, she remains unbent by the weight of all the things she's supposed to symbolize.

2006 Goaties: Best Actor

Instead of following my old format, which consisted of a simple list of categories, winners, and runners-up, I'm going to discuss each winner individually, in hopes of explaining why I chose him or her. I'll post a compilation on my review site when I'm done. Who knows how long this will take.

Most awards shows devalue comedy. Heck, I tend to devalue comedy: in the six years I've been doing this internet criticism thing, I've granted my prestigious first- or second-place awards to only nine comedic performances. I think I'm still doing better than Oscar, but it's a pretty sorry total. Perhaps to make up for it this year, or perhaps because I really think he delivered the best performance by a leading actor (I hope it's more the latter), I'm giving Sacha Baron Cohen my Best Actor goatie for his work in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

If anything, Cohen had to work harder than most dramatic actors. He had to create a complete character from scratch. He had to know exactly what that character would do in any given situation. This wasn't just Method character development, but necessary for the film to even exist. No matter what happened, he had to stay in character, reacting to unpredictable situations and people. The entire success of the film depended on it, even more than many films depend on their dramatic performances. There are usually other levels of support, from supporting players to the musical score to the cinematography. In Borat, Cohen stood alone, naked (often literally). He was side-splittingly hilarious throughout, which, contrary to popular belief, takes incredible skill as an actor.

Runner-up: This is hard. The Last King of Scotland provided two towering performances, one from Forest Whitaker and the other an even more magnetic and accomplished James McAvoy, but I'll have to go with Ryan Gosling, who was phenomenal as a drug-addicted teacher in Half Nelson.

It's That Time of Year Again

The second annual Goatdog's Movies Oscar Contest is up and running.

Entries are due by 5:00 PM (CST) on Friday, February 23, and I'll announce the winner on Monday, February 26. Last year's winner had the sense to turn down a DVD of the Best Picture winner, and instead chose Rebel Without a Cause. Maybe this year's Best Picture winner will deserve the title.

Five Reasons to Skip Bullets over Hollywood

Here are five reasons you shouldn't bother with John McCarty's Bullets Over Hollywood: The American Gangster Picture from the Silents to "The Sopranos" (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2004). Several are quite nit-picky, I admit, but they were things that bugged me, and they snowballed together. (The paperback copy's subtitle changed to "The Screen Gangster" instead of "The American Gangster Picture," but it doesn't sound like his focus is any more international than it was in the hardcover.)

5. When he attempts to be a film snob, he messes it up. Example: when he wants to make "film noir" plural, he says "films noir." If you're going to bother attempting the French, it's "films noirs." Better not to bother. (Now, I know there's some debate over this, including from that sage resource Wikipedia, which says that "films noir" is "arguably the most grammatical English," a statement that is in itself arguable. And then Webster's says that they're all equal variants: "film noirs" or "films noir" or "films noirs." But I can still be annoyed, even if the point's debatability caused me to move it from #4 to #5.)

4. Sloppy, sloppy errors, including ones designed to make him look smart but end up making him look not so smart. For example, he abuses the Latin term sic, used to indicate that there's a mistake in the original source for a quote. He sics the New York Times incorrectly: "He had secured most of his facial distortions by holding foreign substances of divers [sic] shapes and sizes in his mouth." A dictionary (buy one—they're cheap) could have told him that's a perfectly acceptable word in that situation: "divers" is an adjective meaning "several; various; sundry." There are many such lazy errors in the book, like when he refers to Michael Cimino as Michael Camino.

3. Because he never states a definition of "gangster" (see below), he uses various tortured descriptive phrases to pull in as many different films as possible: "gangster outlaws," "classic noir gangster films," "noir gangster and crime films," and "gangster films noir and neo-noir."

2. He quotes James Cagney saying "You dirty rat!" in Taxi!. Specifically, he has him saying "You dirty rat, I'm going to get rid of you just like you gave it to my brother!" (page 156). Come on. Many people know Cagney never said that (I'm being generous with the "many people"). I can google it in five seconds and find dozens of references to the fact that it's a misquote, including the correct quote, "Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!"—which is even farther off from what McCarty says. It was really hard not putting this at #1. But there's a more fundamental problem with the book.

1. He never states a definition of "gangster," which allows him an incredible amount of leeway to talk about whatever movie he feels like talking about at any particular moment. His working definition seems to be "any film in which one or more criminals engage in crime." I'll give him pre-Mafia gangsters, even pre-Prohibition gangsters (like the gangs in Gangs of New York). I'll even grudgingly give him The Unholy Three, about three jewel thieves who work together. What I will not accept is that the following movies, by any stretch of the imagination, are gangster movies: Gun Crazy, which is about a pair of bank-robbing lovers on the run; The Last Seduction, which is about an über-femme fatale; The Desperate Hours, which is about a trio of previously unaligned escaped convicts who kidnap a family; and The Getaway, which is about a robber and his moll who work for a crooked businessman. Then there's Chicago, to which he devotes three pages—after saying "there are no actual gangsters in sight." This isn't an exhaustive list, either, just a sampling of the ones that made me grumble the loudest. It seems like it should be simple—something that an undergrad, writing that first research paper, would learn from his or her professor: define your terms.

It's not all bad. There are some nice descriptions of the filming history of several films, and I did get a list of twenty or so gangster movies I want to see. But there must be better, more helpful books on the genre out there. Suggestions?

The 1927 Blog-a-Thon (Origin)

You're invited to take part in a blogathonic celebration of the year that changed Hollywood: 1927 saw, among other things, the beginning of sync sound, the last great silents, and the birth of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Over the weekend of March 23-25, 2007, post something pertaining to film in 1927: a film released that year, a great performance, something historical—whatever strikes your fancy, as long as you can connect it to both film and 1927. All bloggers or writers are welcome, even if you don't normally write about film. During the blessed weekend, email me a link to your post, and I'll link to all of the entries as they come in.

If you would like to participate, email me and let me know. I'll send out periodic, but not naggy, reminders as the event approaches.

If you want to help advertise, feel free to use any of these images, and spread the word at your favorite bloggy hangouts.

 

 

 

If you'd like to take part but aren't sure what to write about, Thom at Film of the Year has put up a helpful research guide.

Latest Reviews

I've been busy over at the movie site. I just posted a review of the first feature-length gangster movie, Raoul Walsh's Regeneration (1915). It's historically interesting, and it also features a good performance by Rockliffe Fellowes, who should have been a bigger star. Henry Hathaway's Sundown (1941) is a different kind of WW2 action movie; it has a better sense of the global scale of the conflict than many higher-budget films.

On the new release side, Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men is a thrilling, scarily believable dystopian film that has quite a few problems with its underlying politics, but is still well worth watching. And Will Smith's (who cares who the director of this is) Pursuit of Happyness is almost worth watching for Smith's performance, or maybe to learn what that stupid misspelling is about.

Film Blog Roundup

Best of the Best/Worst of the Best

It's not too late to take part in the Best and Worst of the Best Actresses survey over at Edward Copeland on Film. He's taking ballots for the five best and five worst performances to win the Best Actress Oscar; for handy reference, he has the complete list, so you don't even have to do any research. The deadline is midnight on Friday, January 19. As usual, the Self-Styled Siren's list is worth a look.

Film Bitch

Nathaniel R. is making progress on his annual Film Bitch awards.

Film of the Year

If you haven't been over to Film of the Year and you're interested in film history, please go check it out. Thom started with the birth of the cinema, and he's working his way to the present, year by year. It's my favorite film-blog discovery; I only wish he had more free time to write more entries.

Periodic Live-Blogging the Globes

I started watching out of the corner of my eye when Jennifer Hudson won her Best Supporting Actress in a Musical or Comedy award, or whatever it was. I'm editing during the commercials and TV awards, and I thought I'd share my pithy comments. (It might become apparent that I don't care very much about the Golden Globes ceremony.)

Justin Timberlake has a sense of humor!

Miss Golden Globe? Come on.

David Spade looks grumpy. He should thank the gods for any exposure he can get.

I think someone sewed Renee Zellwegger's eyes shut.

They're playing Massive Attack's "Teardrop" during Hugh Laurie's walk to the stage. I like that song.

They do have one thing right: let the winners talk. It's their moment; don't have stickman cut them off with insipid music.

OK, they do have one thing wrong: I want to see little clips from the performances as they're listing the nominees.

Yep, Renee Zellwegger's eyes are sewn shut.

Everyone's face is very shiny, like they all go to the same car wash.

I really like it when they show a nominee, and in the background a guy is talking on his cell phone, like he realizes that there are probably more important things going on somewhere.

Nathaniel R. must be apoplectic to see Hilary Swank on stage with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Bah! The screenplay is the worst thing about The Queen. But at least they didn't reward Little Children.

Djimon Hounsou gets to come to the stage twice: once to present the Foreign Language Film award (you know, because he's foreign), and again when he accepts his Best Hoarse Screaming by a Supporting Actor award later in the ceremony. But the Foreign Language Film award goes to Clint Eastwood, who is hoarse all the time. How fitting. (Uh, I should actually look at the nominees: Hounsou wasn't nominated, so this was his only trip to the stage.)

Please please please give Clint Mansell the Score award. Not Philip Glass. Please not Philip Glass. Pleeeeeeeeeeasssssssse.... oh, he wasn't even nominated. Good.

John Stamos is on E.R. now? Let's see... in the beginning, there was George Clooney. Now, there's John Stamos. Yep.

Tom Hanks! He's the Tom Hanks of the Golden Globes!

You know, Warren Beatty hasn't really done much of anything in a long time. Only three films since Bugsy, and one of them is Town & Country. But he's still hip and with-it: you can tell because he's doing a Borat imitation.

Oh, Best Director. Clint's up twice. Marty's up once. Yeah Marty! If he doesn't get his Oscar next month, I'll... well, I'll complain a lot. Am I the only person who thinks he's starting to look a little like Woody Allen?

Reese Witherspoon's chin is starting to look more like Shaggy's every day. She needs to eat something.

Dreamgirls. Eh. OK, they do drown speakers out with music, which is offensive. Not even the producer of Dreamgirls deserves that.

I can't believe Helen Mirren won. Oh, wait: I can, because she gave the best performance by an actress in a motion picture last year. And she'll get her Oscar too.

Best Actor: Why is Leo up for Blood Diamond? Doesn't matter, because this isn't his year. How many people actually saw Venus? Doesn't matter, because this isn't poor Peter O'Toole's year. I love Forest Whitaker's "gosh, me?" attitude. Completely incoherent, but charming.

Doubleyou tee eff? Babel? Dear Lord. I'm glad the Globes are so bad at predicting the Oscars. Aren't they? Please let them be. (But god bless Iñárritu for the "papers" crack.)

---

Well this has been fun. Back to editing.

Neighborhood Movie Theaters

I'm doing research again, working on a couple of projects that require me to sift through old newspapers (more to come on that), and I keep running across movie listings. Now, I knew that there were hundreds of neighborhood theaters in the early days of the cinema, but it never occurred to me what that really meant until I noticed how many were in pretty close proximity to my house.

If I had wanted to see a movie eighty years ago today, I could have walked just around the corner to the Kimbark Theater (pictured at right as it looks today), at 6240 S. Kimbark, to see Bebe Daniels in Stranded in Paris; or two blocks to the Lexington at 1162 E. 63rd to see Corporal Kate with Vera Reynolds; or six blocks to the Drexel at 838 E. 63rd to see Hoot Gibson in The Silent Rider (listed on IMDB as a 1928 release, but it was playing in Chicago in 1927); or seven blocks to the Tivoli at 63rd and Cottage Grove to see the Bennie Kruger Orchestra on stage and The Flaming Forest (by Michigan native James Oliver Curwood) on the screen; or nine blocks to the Frolic, at 55th and Ellis, for Stranded in Paris again; or eleven blocks to the Jackson Park, at 67th and Stony Island, to see Madge Bellamy in Summer Bachelors; or fourteen blocks to the Vernon at 61st and Vernon to see Jack Mulhall in God Gave Me Twenty Cents; or fourteen blocks up to 53rd and Harper for Corporal Kate at the Harper (with three vaudeville acts, but you know me well enough to know I wouldn't walk that far); or the train down 63rd street to 63rd and Harvard for Valencia with Mae Murray.

However, it was nine below zero outside; in the past 48 hours, eleven people had died from the cold, and there had been 310 fires resulting from overheated furnaces and other cold-related business, so maybe I'd just stay home.

Dreams Can Become Unveiled

It's only halfway through January, and I've already started on my New Year's Resolution films! It was April before I got started last time around. At this rate, I'll be done in no time! Uh, right. Anyway.

Hour of the Wolf (1968), reportedly Ingmar Bergman's only horror film, is only partly successful. It's the story of an artist and his wife living on a remote island; the artist is slowly losing his mind, and his wife is tottering on the edge of joining him. Max von Sydow is Johan, the artist, and Liv Ullmann is Alma, his pregnant wife. He's moody and paranoid; late at night, after she's fallen asleep, demons or ghosts visit him. He draws them and shows the drawings to his wife, but never to us: we never see any of his art, a devious device, because if this film is as personal as it feels, we've been looking at his art since the opening credits rolled. These first scenes are claustrophobic; Sven Nyqvist's camera feels like an observer in the room with us, maybe sitting right behind us, and we feel like looking over our shoulders the way Von Sydow keeps looking over his. One day one of his ghosts approaches Ullman as she's hanging out the laundry. This is the film's point of perfect balance between dream and reality, but much of the rest of the film wanders into heavy-handed surrealism, ten years before David Lynch's debut, but David Lynch territory nonetheless (mind you, I like David Lynch territory, but it doesn't feel right in this film). A bizarre collection of dissipated eccentrics from the castle on the other side of the island begin tormenting him, but much of this is rather silly, full of fish-eye closeups of craggy old faces. There's another near-perfect scene in which Johan encounters a boy while fishing; its meaning is unclear, but what is clear is that we're balancing on that line between sanity and madness again. It's these moments of perfection, along with Liv Ullmann's fragile performance, that make me recommend it, but only to the kind of person who thinks a surrealist Bergman horror film sounds like something to seek out. 3 goats.

Is This It?

The Producers Guild nominees look strangely similar to the Directors Guild nominees. Is this going to be our lineup for Best Picture at the Oscars? How depressing. One ambitious but terminally disjointed epic (Babel), one overrated musical (Dreamgirls, which is even more overrated than other overrated musicals in recent years), one very cute but essentially weightless road comedy (Little Miss Sunshine), one decent TV movie with a hell of a lead performance (The Queen), and then The Departed, the only film I can get behind. This would be the worst lineup in years; they're not bad films (well, most of them aren't), but they're not Oscar-worthy. It's almost enough to make a man stop watching the Oscars. (OK, I didn't mean that.)

Top Ten Rentals/Revivals

Let the listmaking commence! Here are the top 10 films I either rented or saw at a revival house last year. I had a hard time narrowing it down to 10; I refuse to cheat by doubling up entries or making it a top 11 or 12 because I hate it when other critics do that. There were another three or four films that might make the list if I were to redo it next week (it was very difficult to drop the genre-bending meta-action-comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, for example), but here's the list that will stand for all eternity.

1. Elevator to the Gallows (France, 1958). Three distinctly "French" stories intertwine in this devilish concoction: a guy who's doomed no matter what he does; a pair of youthful offenders out, well, youthfully offending; and a lonely woman walking desolately through the rain accompanied by Miles Davis. Louis Malle's debut feature (and a hell of a debut at that) switches gears effortlessly, from comic desperation to serious desperation to existential desperation. Paris has never looked more mournful, and the divine Jeanne Moreau has never looked so beautiful (and without makeup).

2. Grey Gardens (1975). This decidedly weird documentary is considered by some to be the best film ever made (well, by one person I know). I'm not convinced, but it does rank pretty high on my list of the best documentaries ever. The story of some shut-in relatives of Jackie Kennedy, it's a window onto a pair of real-life Miss Havishams. It forces you to think about the techniques of documentaries: what they leave out, what kind of manipulation is going on behind and in front of the camera, where the line between documenting and exploiting is, and what to do if your subjects fall in love with you. (You keep rolling.)

3. Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979). The best stand-up performance of all time, delivered by the best comedian of all time. I've never laughed so hard or learned so much about comedy in one sitting. Sure, it's basically a camera following one guy around a stage, but film techniques should serve their subject, and there's nothing better for stand-up. The routine about his monkeys is priceless, but then so is the rest of the film.

4. Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976). This film about a miners' strike in Kentucky is one of the best documentaries ever made. It's actually documenting, in the best verité style, an incredibly fraught period. In a film full of powerful moments, there are two that stand out: one is when a miner's wife sings "Which Side Are You On?" a song that still brings chills when I think about it; and the other is the famous scene when thugs hired to break up the strike shoot at the striking miners, including Kopple and her cameraman. I hesitate to call it a "scene," because it's so shockingly real.

5. Army of Shadows (France, 1969). I was thinking about following the lead of many critics and putting this on my 2006 list, since it wasn't released in the US until last year, but I'd have a hard time reconcililng it: both the idea of putting a 37-year-old movie atop my new releases list (because that's where it would go—atop), and figuring out how to get my website's top ten page to deal with it. (The first issue was more important, FYI.) Anyway, this is a tense film about bureaucratic drudgery, following several higher-ups in the French resistance during World War II. They spend most of their time not blowing up trains and killing Nazis but waiting in cramped rooms and trying to figure out who they can trust. The should-be-famous opening shot, of thousands of Nazis marching beneath the Arch of Triumph, is one of the most moving things I saw all year.

6. The Steel Helmet (1951). Sam Fuller's no-nonsense (he'd probably say no-bullshit) Korean war film just might be one of the best combat films of all time. Our main character is a selfish and unlikeable grunt (Gene Evans) who follows Fuller's mantra that "That's what war is about, killing and death and staying alive [not] the girl back home or politics or stealing gold or whatever the hell bullshit": he just wants to kill communists and stay alive, and he's only interested in other American troops if they can help him meet one of these objectives. Fuller manages to slip some politics in, though: there are some criticisms of race relations in the US (delilvered by a North Korean officer!) that probably helped earn Fuller his reputation for being a Red. The climax is a stunning battle scene in which the Americans are cornered by Chinese troops in a Buddhist temple.

7. Make Way for Tomorrow (1937). I'm not quite ready to accept Leo McCarey's contention that this, not The Awful Truth, was his best film of 1937 (even the makers of comedy devalue comedy), but I'm not going to expend a lot of energy arguing, because both films are phenomenal. This is the heartbreaking story of an elderly couple who are foced to split up because they can't afford to live together and none of their selfish children are willing to take both parents in. It could have been a mawkish disaster, but instead it's a lyrical, understated masterpiece. Have your hankies ready for the couple's last evening together in New York.

8. The Heiress (1949). Worth watching if only for the clash of the acting styles both on and offscreen: Montgomery Clift is all twitchy and emotive, Olivia de Havilland is all classic Hollywood clarity, and Sir Ralph Richardson is all stentorian and sharp. There are two scenes that by themselves would earn this film a spot on this list: in one, Richardson's character's disgust for Clift's character seems to extend beyond the film itself, as Richardson-the-actor seems disgusted with Clift-the-actor's quavery voice and edginess; in the other, De Havilland seems to age twenty years as she ignores Clift's frantic door-pounding. But those scenes aren't by themselves: there's also Miriam Hopkins in a great supporting turn, the lush turn-of-the-century sets, and one of the most bitter endings in classic Hollywood.

9. The Set-Up (1949). It's the film's setup that's fascinating: a washed-up boxer's manager bets against him, but the boxer manages to pull out a win, causing the mobsters to come after him. Usually the boxing match is the first act, followed by two acts of running and shooting. This film is different, in that the boxing match is the focus. It's no surprise that it influenced Scorsese's Raging Bull: it's a brutal, almost sadistic affair that seems endless (sort of like real boxing), with emphasis on the various creeps who come to third-rate boxing matches for visceral thrills. I'd say the mob action is an afterthought, but it's so poetically shot and ironic (of the cosmic sort) that it's a masterpiece in itself. I'm getting the sense that director Robert Wise was an incredibly versatile director: I know him best as the director behind such glossy musicals as West Side Story (one of the greatest musicals of all time) and The Sound of Music (not one of the greatest musicals of all time).

10. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933). Frank Capra's finest film? It's got my vote. Capra out-Sternbergs Josef von Sternberg in this lush, almost decadent tale of forbidden love. He manages to both cater to and defy 1930s conventions about interracial romance as he recounts the story of a Chinese general (Nils Asther) and an American missionary (Barbara Stanwyck) whose relationship transmutes from captivity to love (which is, in the film's eyes, another form of captivity). It's one of the grand doomed romances of classic Hollywood.

Soon—maybe next week?—I'll have my top 10 new releases ready. That list won't be as hard—no, it will be hard for a different reason. Because 2006 was a lousy year for movies, it will be hard to find 10 films that I was enthusiastic enough about.

Dear Screen Actors Guild

Thank you for not nominating Jack Nicholson this year. I know he'll end up with an Oscar nomination, possibly a win, for his typical Jack Nicholson performance in The Departed, but you're standing up and saying no! Enough!

Sure, you aren't perfect (Bobby? come on!), but you got one important thing right, and for that I applaud you.

New Year's Resolutions: Movies (Take 2)

A: Not well at all.
Q: What's a good phrase to describe how well Goatdog followed his movie-watching resolutions last year?

But this is the United States of America, the land of second chances, so I'm going to give my 2006 resolutions another go. I really want to see these movies. I have many of them in my possession. I could walk to the DVD player right. now. and put one of them in. In 2007, I hope to do that a little more often. (But how could I not?)

Three Ingmar Bergman films
1. Autumn Sonata (1978)
2. The Hour of the Wolf (1968)
3. Persona (1966)

Three Federico Fellini films
1. La Dolce Vita (1960)
2. Nights of Cabiria (1957)
3. Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

Three Rainer Werner Fassbinder films
1. The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)
2. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
3. Fox and His Friends (1975)

Three older Japanese films that aren't directed by Akira Kurosawa
1. Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953)
2. Masahiro Shinoda's Double Suicide (1969)
3. Kihachi Okamoto's Sword of Doom (1966). Brief review here.

Three Iranian films
1. Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (1997)
2. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh (1996)
3. Samira Makhmalbaf's Blackboards (2000). Full review here.

Three Russian films
1. Mikheil Kalatozishvili's The Cranes Are Flying (1957). I saw this one but didn't write anything about it. 4 goats.
2. Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1969)
3. Aleksandr Sokurov's Russian Ark (2002)

Three films from the Balkans
1. Emir Kusturica's Underground (1995)
2. Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain (1994)
3. Goran Paskaljevic's Cabaret Balkan (1998)

Three African films
1. Ousmane Sembene's Xala (1975)
2. Abderrahmane Sissako's Life on Earth (1998)
3. Issa Serge Coelo's Daresalam (2000). Full review here.

Three "important" documentaries (you know, the ones that end up on best-of lists)
1. Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976). I saw this one, but didn't write anything about it. 5 goats.
2. The Maysles brothers' Grey Gardens (1975). Same with this one: the viewing, the not writing, and the rating.
3. Robert J. Flaherty Nanook of the North (1922)