Author: James

James grew up in a house where Friday night was Movie night, which meant that he’d watched more movies than anybody else his age before he was even old enough to watch the rated R ones. He’ll watch just about anything, though he tends to avoid the horror movies without a sense of humor. Among his favorite movies are: Alien, Fargo, True Romance, Ed Wood, and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. He’s a die-hard LOST fan and a Brown Coat. As a writer, story usually comes first for James. Memorable characters and sharp dialogue are the things that separate the classics from the chaff. That said, he does his best to keep having fun at the movies. He’s seen plenty of critics who would once have accepted summer blockbusters as entertainment become jaded and nit-picky. Sure James loves the art of film and storytelling, but fun comes first, the fun that he had watching Raiders when he was little. Also, E.T. scares the pants off him.

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James’ Top Twenty of Twenty-Eleven

 This has been a fun year of movies for me. My grand total came to 58 this year, which was certainly more than I’ve seen in past years but what made this year particularly special was the variety. Without doing the podcast with my good friends I wouldn’t have been drug to movies like Fright Night or had the chance to see Drive and 50/50 in theaters. This was the year that I got to see Red State when Kevin Smith brought it to town and I got to stand up and ask him a question.

But as you look over this list I hope that it’s clear what things I value most in movies because what they all have in common is strong characters wrapped with important stories.

Twenty

Fast Five

There’s no reason for the fifth Fast and Furious movie to be as good as this. I went into the theater with a tongue in cheek attitude and ended up having a surprising amount of fun. Fast Five brings back characters from previous movies and lays emotional weight on their stories in ways that should be clunky and pointless, especially to the majority of people who haven’t suffered through all the sequels that came before this one. But it is thanks to a descent script that asks move of actors than has been asked of them in years and an injection of The Rock that this movie becomes a tight, thilling heist film that crescendos with a car chase that may final dethrone Bad Boys II in my heart as the winner of “Most Car Chase” car chase in cinema.

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Nineteen

Captain America: The First Avenger

For all the things this movie was asked to do to set up the Avengers movie it is truly a surprise that it turned out watchable, much less exciting, visually impressive, and emotionally charged. Joe Johnson and the screenwriters chose wisely to put the characterization of Steve Rogers at the core of the movie, so that even when the action isn’t the most original, or perfectly paced, we still care about Steve. Without the well-formed heart of Steve Rogers this movie falls apart, and so does The Avengers. This is the secret that Marvel understands and DC doesn’t. (Though not as secret because writers have known this since Gilgamesh)

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Eighteen

X-Men: First Class

It’s amazing how a different time period can freshen up a dead franchise. This is a movie that deserves to be higher on my list. The story of how Eric and Charles become friends and the unbiased way it analyzes the different viewpoints of these two characters makes Magneto feel less like an arbitrary villain and more like a bitter cynic; not evil, just the part of us that we try our hardest not to be.

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Seventeen

Attack The Block

This is what’s beautiful about indie film today. Where the idea of guerrilla film-making once meant that certain sacrifices had to be made, this movie was able to tell an interesting, high-concept story with some of the more exciting and stylish CG in years.

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Sixteen

Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

There is no reason why you should not have seen this movie, unless you don’t like gore… or comedy. There have been plenty of spoof movies over the past ten years but where those movies produce schlock, this movie becomes one of the most memorable comedies of the year.

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Fifteen

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

All the facets of this movie should make it a contender for my number one. A complex mystery, a strong woman, David Fincher’s style and direction, and a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch, but in the end I was left impressed, interested, but untouched. The mystery is undermined by a shortage of suspects—likely as a result of being a compressed version of the novel—and the characters are given too little time to grow for me to fall in love with them or be inspired by their strength. While Lisbeth is still given her subplot with the rapist to help characterize her, the extreme nature of that situation is undone by its brevity, too complex and too loud to flesh out a great character. A good movie in the end, but perhaps the only way that it will stay with me is that it caused me to order the book.

Fourteen

The Muppets

I didn’t always have hope that this movie could deliver but I’m excited to say that it did. As a true fan, Jason Segal was able to isolate the things that made The Muppets so much different from the movies that we get today.

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Thirteen

Fright Night

I tend to hate horror movies. Too often they emphasize content over character and are accompanied by unpolished scripts and dispassionate, unfocused directors. But Fright Night is none of those things. Marti Noxon’s script has the punch and wit of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, and coming off of The United States of Tara, Director Craig Cillespie has the vision to create long, intense shots—like the scene with the apple—and he has the guts to let the character moments breath. Where other horror movies may be concerned with what crazy things they can show you, this remake of Fright Night focuses on what crazy things it can make you feel.

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Twelve

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

We don’t get enough romantic comedies like this one.

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Eleven

Young Adult

Jason Reitman is perhaps the most exciting filmmaker in Hollywood for me. Up in the Air remains one of my favorite scripts so I was disappointed when his next film was not one he’d written but Young Adult shows both growth in Diablo Cody as a writer as well as the musings of Jason Reitman and his habits of answer-less questions.

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Ten

The Adventures of Tintin

This movie may not quite have a main character who pops the way that Indiana Jones does but it’s in the same wheelhouse. The adventure is fun and the animation is beautiful. It’s a good time at the movies and after an afternoon watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that’s really all I needed.

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Nine

The Help

It would be easy to buy the wardrobe on the cheap and sling together an easy villain and some cliched scenes about overcoming adversity and tie it all together with a smart-mouthing black woman and call it ‘inspiring when it’s not offensive’, but that’s not The Help. This is a movie that focuses more on the culture of Jackson, Mississippi than it does on the issues of race. A movie like the one I imagined would have no place for Celia Foote or a dynamic understanding of the social webbing that these women are entwined that this movie seeks to expose. Rather than create a straw man out of racism and beat it like a cruel nazi until dull audiences cheer and go home, The Help adds color to what otherwise might be our black-and-white understanding of this issue (Pun intended).

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Eight

Red State

Kevin Smith has meant something special to me over the past six years and I can’t explain to you exactly why but to see him take such a drastic change at this point in his career was to finally turn to all those people who unfairly judge him and show that he has the talent to do something that would have been hard for even the most respected writers. This movie breaks so many of the basic rules of story-telling that the narrative should fall on its face but somehow it holds together. It functions both as a fun thriller and as a magnifying glass on one of the most despicable and shaming groups over people in our country. I feel like stealing some of Smith’s own words from the introduction he wrote to the second trade of Garth Ennis’ Preacher:

“And if this book offends the delicate sensibilities of some people due to their religious convictions—well, that saddens me. Because, as a man who has an unflappable, fervent, and devout faith in God, let me assure those who find this book spiritually questionable that I know—in my heart and soul—the Lord to be mighty, just, loving, and righteous…

…and a huge and of” Red State.

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Seven

Rango

I dunno… see this movie.

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Six

Thor

When I heard they were going to make a Thor movie and that it would be one of the stepping stones on the way to The Avengers I worried that this would be the movie that let this whole Marvel plan fall apart. But the choice to put Kenneth Branagh in charge of the movie was a stroke of genius. Branagh’s instincts turned what could have been a silly cosmic story that audiences couldn’t connect with—like The Green Lantern—into perhaps the most dramatic super-hero film we’ve had yet. No matter how inhuman our heroes and their foes may be in this movie we see our humanity in their desires and their failures.

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Five

50/50

This movie proves that being funny doesn’t mean that you can’t deal with serious issues or walk through very dramatic territory. In the land of Hangovers and Bridesmaids this movie aims for lasting greatness because it has something to say beyond it’s excuse for comedic situations. You can see writer Will Reiser working through his actual emotions about his experience with cancer on the page as he refuses to give even himself any easy outs. These are real people living through real life situations and in the end sometimes life is funny too.

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Four

Drive

Everything about this movie is quietly cool. That’s all I have.

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Three

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

The only way I can explain how this movie could ever be as fresh and exciting as it turned out is that because Brad Bird came from animation no one ever told him about any of the limitations in place in live-action film-making, and so for him they didn’t exist. This movie is a true spectacle on the scale of a Jim Cameron film but without any of the hangups that come from being artificially inflated. Anyone who isn’t already a super-spy in a fantastical world of stolen nuclear missiles and moving invisible walls needs to see this movie.

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Two

Moneyball

As the one person on the podcast who didn’t see The Artist, I can call Moneyball a masterful use of silence. Perhaps greater even in theory because that silence is in such contrast to the rest of the movie that when all the sound drops out your heart drops with it. This isn’t as simple as a sports movie, or a movie about overcoming adversity or a lack of faith, this is really a piece about a man’s search to explain why his life hasn’t gone the way it should have. All his work goes into proving that the system he disappointed was broken to begin with. The movie is fascinating, doubly so to someone like me to doesn’t follow baseball. These are people playing an unfair game, and we love them for it.

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One

Super 8

When I think of Jaws I think of Quint’s speech about the Indianapolis. Given another few seconds to think and I remember the dinner table seen when chief Brody tells his son to give him a kiss. I don’t think about the shark because I don’t love the shark. Likewise, when I think about Super 8 I forget, at first, about the alien because that is a maguffin, it’s an excuse for me to explore the lives of these children and their friendships. I envy these kids for the lives they live and the adventure they get sucked into.

That’s not to discount just how wonderful the alien storyline in this movie is, because that part is good too. The suspense at Kelvin’s gas station is among Abram’s best work. The train wreck is a magnificent. The movie recreates the tone and atmosphere of the eighties with the same sepia-toned realism as American Graffiti. And Giacchino’s score might be his best yet.

But as good as all that is, when hero someone talk about this movie, or when I hear the theme used in trailers over the next twenty years, my first thought will be to Joe and Alice sitting on the carpet with the projector shining in our eyes as they finally let go the weight that children like them should never be asked to carry. I love this movie.

Articles

FOR KIDS! (Mature Storytellers Only)

 

– James Hart

                       

Recently I’ve found myself turning the TV to Nicktoons quite often. Now that isn’t a sentence I am comfortable with, mostly because of the grueling commercials for Hot Wheels and Cabbage Patch dolls that come with adoption papers, but unfortunately there is a show so great that I’m willing to endure this punishment… for nothing more than reruns of episodes I’ve seen… at least twice.

I wasn’t turned on to Avater: The Last Airbender until well into it’s second season. I lived alone at the time and I was in constant need of something to watch so I gave it a shot. What I found was—doing my best to ignore my nostalgia for the shows of my own childhood—the best cartoon show ever made.

It’s a kid’s show that has attracted a huge fanbase, including adult fans like I’ve never seen, and has even had an episode written by JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof. So what is it that makes this show different.

From here on out Avatar: The Last Airbender will be referred to simply as Avatarbecause it deserves the title far more than Jim Cameron’s flashy, derivative cash cow—seriously, look up the word, it’s a smart title for Avatar and a lazy one forAvatar.

Avatar is a concise, character-driven story, set is an imaginative world. Where other cartoon shows tell simple stories, usually in an episodic format, with lessons that are superficial, Avatar never takes the easy road. Sure some of its storytelling is not as subtle as other shows—a symptom of its target audience—the lessons themselves are not unlike the complex and classic lessons of the modern epics. Characters are multifaceted, even the side characters, and their relationships are never as simple as they would be in a lesser show.

Let me give an example. Uncle Iroh (voiced by the legendary actor Mako) is generally used as the comic relief in the show. Especially in season one when his nephew Zuko is trying to find and kill our hero, Iroh mostly just shows up to either make a joke or calm Zuko down. He is one of the most beloved characters in the show because of this lightheartedness, but his character is much deeper than should be necessary in a children’s show.

The episode titled “The Tales of Ba Sing Se” is a series of vignettes that focuses on character traits and relationships that mostly go unaddressed. The first story is a very short anecdote about the two girls in the show, Katara and Toph, spending an afternoon together. The two characters don’t interact much in the show and Toph is usually characterized as a tough fighter, but when Katara takes her out and girlies her up a bit Toph gets made fun of by the locals and we see a crack where their once was solid marble. It’s a beautiful and touching story that most cartoons would never take the time, nor have the balls to tell. But that doesn’t hold a candle to Iroh’s tale. Where the first story is touching, the second story is moving. The Tale of Iroh simply follows Iroh during a day when there’s nothing else going on. He goes to the shops and buys a picnic basket, he runs into a small boy who’s crying and sings him a little song called ‘Leaves from the Vine’ to cheer him up, he moves a flower from the sun into the shade to keep it from overheating, and when a young man tries to mug him he teaches the man a better fighting stance and sends him on his way. But then it takes a turn. This normally fun and wise character arrives at the grave of his son with the picnic basket and offers up a melencholy gem—“if only I could have helped you”—and then begins to sing ‘Leaves from the Vine’ as he cries. End of story. The episode goes on and some of the other stories are more fun and uplifting, but simply put, cartoons don’t do this. This is serious character drama directed at kids because it respects them.

                           

‘The Tale of Iroh’ is dedicated to Mako, who unfortunately passed away not long after recording season two.

This might be a good time to point out how often I’ve talked about “cartoons” and “shows for children” like there’s really something horrid, and how many times I’ve implied that their audiences aren’t smart enough to enjoy anything better written. I want to make it clear that I don’t believe that. In fact, that’s a big part of why I think this show is so special, why I wish it had been around when I was little, and why I think that every kid from now till judgment day ought to have the opportunity to watch it because it refuses to condescend to them. Avatar tells beautiful and complex stories to kids in a mature way. It assumes that they know death and pain and betrayal as well as love and fun and hope, and it assumes that they understand them as more than just facile constants and rather as multidimensional, intangible, and subjective emotions. Perhaps the lesson Avatarteaches us adults is that children are just like any other human being, they crave stories and characters with real soul to them; people, imaginary as they may be, that they can love.

I had a whole paragraph here explaining how wonderful Zuko’s character arch is but if I haven’t convinced you by now I probably wont. However, let me say that Zuko’s redemption rivals that of Ben Linus and Darth Vader. There: hyperbole hyperbolized.

Now lets talk about the production quickly because that’s the other side of this well-crafted coin. The animators closely studied a number of different martial arts do give the fighting a grounded and accurate feel that makes the action in the show something like a realistic Samurai Jack. It not only calls back to the great martial arts films but also to some of the greatest animes in cinema history—note how much Appa looks like Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro. Avatar was created among a havoc of anime inspired American cartoons, but where all the others borrowed the visual style and the cheap animation in a way that felt prompted by a fad, Avatar embraces this fusion style as a form of art, and as such it is often breathtaking.

I feel like after all this trying to defend the show’s maturity I should reiterate just how kick-ass it is. The stakes here are high and our heroes are more than willing to do what it takes.

I unabashedly love this show and I think that anyone who can put away their expectations and their hiccups about it will love it too. Do whatever you have to do. Watch it alone, in the dark, with the sound very, very low if need be. No one ever has to know you’ve seen it but I’d bet that if you give it a shot you’ll find yourself slipping me notes and cornering me in empty rooms to talk about your newfound secret passions.

And if you’re reading this and you’ve got kids then do them a favor and buy them lots of legos because it teaches them problem solving and creativity. And then when you’ve done that show them Avatar.

Every episode of the complete three season Avatar Saga is on Netflix streaming and the sequel series Avatar: the Legend of Korra is expected to air next year. There is a live action adaptation but we’re better off pretending there isn’t.

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Ten Movies: That you’ve probably never seen

These aren’t the Best ten movies you’ve probably never seen, these just are ten movies that you’ve probably never seen, but should.

Rodger Dodger

Roger Swanson (Campbell Scott) is a cynical man who believes he has the singles scene figured out and uses what he knows to manipulate women until his teenaged nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) visits and asks Roger to take him under his wing for a night to help him solve the frustration of his virginity.

This 2002 film won a handful of independent awards and yet it seems to have sunk into obscurity. Eisenberg turns in a wonderful performance as a hopeless romantic who is seemingly alone in a world that doesn’t believe in love—I’ve often called Adventureland a spiritual successor to Roger Dodger. Out of everything on this list, this is the one you’re least likely to have seen, and yet, it may be one of those that deserves your attention most.

Primer

Two men build a box in their garage that allows them to travel backwards in time. As they circle through time, carefully scheduling their lives around what’s in the box and when, we begin to see that more is happening than seems physics-ly possible (Sorry).

Shane Carruth’s Primer is a masterpiece of science fiction. A quiet and thoughtful movie, Primer takes advantage of Carruth’s seemingly intricate knowledge of physics in a way that usually confuses audiences on the first viewing. It spawned a number of similar films including the popular french film Time Crimes. While Carruth still hasn’t followed up on Primer (his second film, A Topiary, is due out in 2013) he still has quite a name for himself on the independent film scene and was asked to lend his expertise to Rian Johnson’s Looper, due out next year. If you consider yourself a sci-fi fan this is a must see.

Cool Hand Luke

Arrested for taking the tops off of parking meters while drunk, Luke is the stand out prisoner in a southern chain gang trying his best not to cave in to the demands of the authorities.

This isn’t an unknown movie, but it’s one that most young people have probably never seen. In the list of great 60’s films that young movie fans feel are historically relevant enough to seek out, Cool Hand Luke doesn’t rank especially high, but it should. The source of a number of memorable quotes and strikingly unique sequences, Luke is one of my personal favorites and unlike some films from the time (Hang your heads in shame Vanishing Point and Five Easy Pieces) doesn’t suffer from age or an ere-specific vision.

Dark City

John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakes into a world that may be more malleable than he could have believed, though he doesn’t remember who he is enough to be sure. As he investigates a string of prostitute murders he discovers a group of bald strangers who seem to know what’s going on around him.

This 1998 film by Alex Proyas made him instantly, however temporarily, a favorite director among sci-fi fans. Proyas co-wrote the screenplay with Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight). Inspired by the bizarre writings of one of Sigmund Freud’s patients, Dark City is an adventure through a completely unique world. There aren’t enough sci-fi movies like this one and if you don’t take the time to see it you’ll miss something special.

The Machinist

Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) can’t sleep. He’s a man that seems to be wasting away and he doesn’t know why. When he catches a strange man watching him at work he realizes that someone out there may have unfortunate plans for him and he needs to find out why.

This is easily the most disturbing movie on the list, mostly because of the ridiculous amount of weight that Bale lost to play this role—only to put on so much muscle in the following months that when he interviewed for Batman they said he was too bulky. This is a thriller that will keep you guessing right up until you realize that the truth is made worse by its simplicity.

Brick

High school student Brendan doesn’t know where his ex-girlfriend Emily has disappeared to but he knows that it’s no where good. As he works to uncover the truth he stumbles upon a series of murders and a power struggle that could cause an extra-curricular civil war.

Writer-director Rian Johnson twists genres “like dead Russians write novels.” This is a noir detetive story that ranks among the best of the classics and yet the high school setting, played entirely straight, makes it feel fresh and fun. This movie is among my favorites and Johnson’s skillful writing is inspirational. There aren’t many movies like this one and Brick is done so well that it’ll be hard not to love.

Bubba Ho-tep

Sebastian Haff (Bruce Campbell), an old man confined in a nursing home, believes that he is the real Elvis Presley. He and his close friend Jack (Oasie Davis), who believes that he’s the real John F. Kennedy, discover that a mummy has moved into the neighborhood and is sucking the souls out of the nursing homes inhabitants through their butt-holes.

There really is nothing else like this movie, and maybe their shouldn’t be. I can’t say much about this other than that the only thing not perfect about this movie is the low-budget scarab effects. Bruce Campbell is amazing and so is the concept of this movie. This is a cult film that rewards multiple viewings.

City of God

City of God follows the lives of two young boys from the slums of Rio de Janeiro. As they make different choices in their lives and grow farther apart, they explore the underground world of Brazil from both sides.

This isn’t an unknown film—Roger Ebert considered it the second best film of 2002—but it isn’t one that most have seen, especially compared to its cousin Slumdog Millionaire. This isn’t a movie for everyone but it’s a powerful and emotionally resonant film that, for those inclined to this kind of film, will never forget.

Downfall

During the final days of the Third Reich, as Russian and American forces approach Berlin, Hitler and his generals hide in his Berlin bunker and attempt to build a strategy for the future of the Nazi regime.

The best performance by an actor playing Hitler. A realistic portrayal of Hitler during an under-examined period of WWII history. A quiet and angry character drama that feels like the closest thing to documentary as possible. Yes the entire movie is in German and it’s hard to watch without thinking about the popular meme it has spawned, but still, this is a great movie for anyone interested in the subject.

Duel

David Mann (Dennis Weaver), a business man driving across the desert to meet a client, passes an old tanker truck. The driver, seemingly offended, chases down Mann and threatens his life.

This was Steven Speilberg’s first feature film and it has more historical value than anything else. This movie is especially interesting once you’ve seen Jaws, because so much of the tricks and skills that he used to build suspense in Jaws were sharpened here. Even though this movie was a relatively unknown made-for-tv film, it still shows all the stylistic trappings of a Spielberg movie. While this may not end up being one of your new favorite movies, it is worth your time if you can get your hands on it.

-James Hart

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