So, I don’t know if you know this, but every year I keep a running tally and ranking of every movie I see because apparently I can’t just enjoy anything. I’ve seen forty movies so far this year (first ten) (first twenty) (first thirty) — and I’ll keep updating this list as I see 2011 movies well into 2012 (although I might have to switch to a different format, because these posts are getting looooong) — here’s how I liked ‘em so far (new additions to the list are bolded; if something isn’t bolded I probably wrote more about it earlier):
1. Contagion — A star-studded romp from the director of Ocean’s Eleven!
2. Beginners — Give that dog an Oscar.
3. The Artist — A trifle, but what a gorgeous trifle it is — a beautiful example of form elevating content in consistent and surprising ways. It’s possible that if I were as familiar with silent movie tropes as I am with, say, the Muppets, I would find the constant homages/rip-offs to be grating and skin deep appropriations, but as it stands, this is the most fun I had at the movie theater all year. Give that dog an Oscar.
4. 50/50 — Unlike some other movies in my top twenty that fade with time, the more I think about 50/50, the more I like it. I don’t know what it says about me that four of my top five movies are all about death. I recently made a list of all the people I knew who died — it was less than twenty. I wonder if as I get closer to death, and more of my loved ones pass away, it’ll be less fascinating/terrifying to me. (Or more?)
5. The Descendants — I like Citizen Ruth and Election so much, it took me a while to get on board with Alexander Payne’s transition into making serious films for grown-ups, but I think this movie is much better than About Schmidt and Sideways. As usual, George Clooney doesn’t really stretch as an actor, but also as usual, his usual schtick is solid enough to carry the film. The movie has enough jagged edges to give it texture — nobody gets off too easy — and it hits a mark Payne sometimes misses: it’s darkly funny without being suffocating and quietly sweet without being cloying.
WARNING: this movie features about eight different kinds of crying, so bring a notepad if you’re interested in taking a master class.
6. Bridesmaids — For all the talk about the arrival of the Dirty Woman’s Comedy, and as funny as the dress shop scene was, can we all agree that the best parts of the movie were the small character moments? Wiig and Rudolph joking around over breakfast; Wiig and Byrne’s awkward speech-off; Wiig grumbling to herself while driving up the long driveway and drinking the fresh lemonade; “Civil rights. It’s the nineties.” I guess that’s true of most comedies: the big set-pieces get people into the theater, but it’s the smaller hilarious moments that make you fall in love with the characters.
7. Martha Marcy May Marlene — When describing the plot of Martha Marcy May Marlene, or MMMM, it’s important to do it to the melody of that horrible Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm song from the 90s. “Once… there was this girl who… wanted to feel wanted so she fell into a cult and… “
8. Young Adult — Admittedly, this kind of thing is my bag, baby — unsentimental portraits of prickly characters — and I loved all the nuance and specificity of the protagonist’s everyday life, the difference between her Off and On, and all the effort that goes into switching from one to the other.
I think that one’s enjoyment of Jason Reitman’s movies depends on where one places him in the film landscape. If you consider him an indie auteur, it can be disappointing how he sometimes seems to take refuge in cuteness instead of truly diving into the darkness of his characters — it’s tempting to imagine a Noah Baumbach’s Young Adult, a Nicole Holofcener’s Juno, or a Sofia Coppola’s Up In The Air — but if you view Reitman as a big commercial director on the fringes of the mainstream, as I tend to, his movies are a refreshingly complicated and cluttered antidote to the sterile and straightforward standard Hollywood fare. Reitman denies his audience the catharsis movies have taught us to expect, which sometimes feels cheap, and not so much Refreshingly Truthful as A Different Kind Of Unearned, but at their best moments, his movies say things that no one else in Hollywood is saying, with a striking confidence and a deceptively professional sheen, and there’s something thrillingly off-putting about that. It’s cherry-flavored medicine, and it doesn’t always go down easy.
This all may come off as a little backhanded, but if so I don’t mean it as a backhanded compliment, I mean it as a backhanded rave.
9. Moneyball — Great, decent, good. Even knowing the movie’s postscript ahead of time doesn’t dampen its uplift, which is quite an achievement, although Ben Joseph’s hilarious takedown of the film’s use of “The Show” is a fair critique. ALSO: It took me way too long to figure this out, but this movie really cemented why baseball is the only sport I can get into on any level. It’s for nerds. Baseball, with its box scores and batting averages and playing the percentages, is a game for nerds. The jocks get football, the popular kids get basketball, the preps get polo, and the artsy kids stay indoors. If you’re shy or easily startled you can get into golf; if you were born anywhere other than America, enjoy your soccer. Pool is for cool kids, lacrosse is for the intellectually curious, and rugby is for rebels. But baseball is for nerds. Long live baseball.
10. Another Earth — I don’t really have much new to say about Another Earth — it’s great; I loved it — so I’m going to use this space to talk about how stupid We Bought A Zoo looks. What the fuck? You bought a zoo? “You don’t need any special knowledge to run a zoo, what you need is a lot of heart.” What?! Wrong! So wrong! You need so much special knowledge to run a zoo!
11. Attack the Block — WHY WOULD ANYBODY BUY A ZOO?!?! Okay, sorry. Back to the list. Attack the Block is a delight.
12. The Future — The characters in this movie were so aimless and depressed in ways heartbreakingly and terrifyingly familiar. Maybe, in order to give their lives some purpose, they should have bought a zoo.
13. The Ides of March — Right now this movie holds the record for most actors that I also saw in other movies this year. It’s one of three Ryan Gosling movies, three Paul Giamatti movies, two George Clooneys, two Philip Seymour Hoffmans, and two Marisa Tomeis. I don’t know if that’s any kind of accomplishment, but it’s certainly something.
14. X-Men: First Class — ”You know what America wants to see? A sexually predatory Professor X!” “Brilliant! Write it up!” I’m being snide, but you know what? IT WEIRDLY KIND OF WORKS.
15. Rise of The Planet of the Apes — It’s strange that Hollywood keeps rebooting franchises earlier and earlier. Nevertheless, this is a fun prequel to the Contagion series.
16. Cedar Rapids — Is John C. Reilly ever not great? Even in so-so movies (SEE DIRECTLY BELOW), he stands out.
17. Carnage — I saw God of Carnage on Broadway, and I have similar opinions about the play and the film: all the early awkward comedy of manners stuff is fantastic, but once it gets into larger statements about the nature of the universe, the narrative loses me. The actors all great, but at a certain point their characters get replaced with IDEAS and the whole thing becomes a forced joke: ha ha, aren’t these straw men we made up ridiculous? It’s never a good sign if halfway through your movie you switch to handheld cameras and things get less real. Still though, some hilarious moments up top before the whole thing turns into a Polanski movie.
18. Midnight in Paris — So were Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams reprising their Wedding Crashers characters or what? How did things get so sour between them? And how did Wilson transition from his career in divorce arbitration to screenwriting? And what happened to Vince Vaughn and Isla Fischer? Now that I think about it, this sequel sure had a lot of holes.
19. The Adjustment Bureau — Fun new game: pretend you’re a member of the Adjustment Bureau and every time you inconvenience one of your friends, it’s for some greater purpose. “Dude, could you ask next time, before just reaching over and stealing one of my fries?” “YOUR LUNCH HAS BEEN ADJUSTED.”
20. Jack and Jill — OKAY, I KNOW, BUT HEAR ME OUT.
I really enjoyed Jack and Jill, as did Margaret and Emily who saw it with me, as did the big opening weekend crowd at the Grove. Now I don’t mean, we all liked it in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way; I mean we liked it. We laughed at the parts that were supposed to be funny and afterward, we all looked at each other and said, “Uhhh, that was kind of good, right?”
NOW, I can accept that when it comes to this movie, I am wrong and everybody else is right, and I’m furthermore aware that I watched the trailer for the new Three Stooges movie like four times the day it came out, and giggled like an idiot each time, so maybe there’s just a piece of my brain missing.
There were definitely some really bad parts in Jack and Jill — mostly involving farting or pooping — but a lot of it was really funny. I urge you all to watch the movie’s final scene with Al Pacino — I thought it was amazing, and I’m ninety percent sure that wasn’t just the Stockholm Syndrome setting in.
I do think Armond White’s observation that Jill is a representation of the assimilated Jack’s ethnic shame is actually pretty on-point — the characters’ relative Jewishness is discussed at length, as is the WASPiness of Jack’s wife Katie Holmes — but it’s obviously pretty understated/underdeveloped and I think the film could have pushed further in that direction (not that it ever seriously would). This is also Sandler’s most nakedly sentimental movie since Click (I’m not counting Funny People or Reign Over Me as Adam Sandler movies), and while Click was way too dark, I really appreciated in this movie how seriously all the characters took the movie’s ridiculous central relationship. Not to spoil anything, but the emotional breakthrough of the film happens during a completely straight-faced and understated conversation between Al Pacino playing himself and Adam Sandler playing Jack disguised as Jill. I don’t want to oversell this movie, but it’s certainly a lot more sophisticated than Norbit.
This is by no means an unequivocal endorsement. Please put everything I said in a parentheses labeled “I AM TALKING ABOUT ADAM SANDLER’S CROSS-DRESSING COMEDY JACK AND JILL.” Make no mistake, this movie is a phenomenal clusterfuck, but I’ll take a fascinating mess over a well-constructed bore any day.
21. Drive —I didn’t like Drive as much as I liked Jack and Jill.
22. Captain America: The First Avenger — Hey, Captain America! You just discovered that you’ve been frozen for 60 years, the world is not at all the one you left, and everyone you ever knew is dead. What’s the first thing you’re going to do? Make a dumb inside joke that nobody you’re talking to will understand! Cut to credits!
23. Tree of Life — I didn’t like Tree of Life as much as I liked Jack and Jill.
24. No Strings Attached — Sooo… can sex friends stay best friends?
25. Source Code — If only I could go back in time and relive the last seven minutes of editing this movie, maybe I could have prevented them from including that bullshit ending that knocks the whole movie down a full letter grade.
26. The Trip — I don’t know if I would have ever seen this British mini-series had it not been cobbled together as a feature for American audiences, but I bet I would have enjoyed the TV version more. The thing feels like a TV show, and had I watched it in 30-minute chunks I’m sure I would look forward to every morsel, as opposed to rolling my eyes at how repetitious everything was. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have an unbelievable chemistry which I hope they exploit further, and the thing is full of great moments, both hilarious and moving, but even the film’s strong undercurrent of sadness doesn’t change the fact that you’re basically just watching two guys joking around in a car for two hours.
27. Super 8 — FUN FACT: The movie Cloverfield was named after the exit you take off the freeway to get to Bad Robot’s office in Santa Monica. It was a dummy title they were using before they came up with a real title, but then they never got around to renaming it. FUN FACT: I HAVE TAKEN THAT EXIT. #tumblbrag
28. Thor — “Hey, guy with a lisp, did you like this movie?” “Thorta.”
29. Horrible Bosses — IDEAS FOR SEQUELS: 1) DEPLORABLE BOSSES: just like the horrible bosses, but even worse. 2) ADORABLE BOSSES: the bosses are all kitty cats! 3) IGNORABLE BOSSES: the bosses aren’t really good or bad, they’re just kind of there. 4) HOORAY FOR CAPTAIN SPAULDING THE AFRICAN EXPLORABLE BOSSES: did someone call me schnorrible bosses? Hooray, hooray, hooray!
30. The Green Hornet — As I was about to write about The Green Hornet, either Seth Rogen just walked into this cafe, or a stocky, hairy guy with glasses just walked into this cafe and I thought it was Seth Rogen because I was just thinking about The Green Hornet. Either way, pretty spooky, right?
31. Submarine — This movie contains no actual submarines.
32. Make Believe — I’ve never read the Harry Potter books, but they’re pretty much like this, right?
33. Like Crazy — This movie gorgeously captures the swells and aches of being young and in love. You know what it doesn’t capture? Why I should give a shit. Next!
34. Crazy, Stupid, Love — I kind of wish I was given the opportunity to give a round of notes on this movie before it went into production, because I feel like it could’ve been exponentially better if they’d just gotten rid of that awful kid. That kid — not the actor, his story — was such a black hole, it sucked in everything that got near it. The further away from the kid the stories got, the better they were. OBSERVE: the horrible kid < the teenage girl the kid had a crush on < Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore, whose story had a lot of great moments but suffered from some major kid-influence in the third act < the Carrell-Gosling bromance < the courtship of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone
35. A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas — Before we saw this movie, my friends and I wanted to make sure we got in the right mindset, if you catch my drift, and I think I got a little too in the mindset, if you get my meaning, because I could barely follow what was happening. Still, we all had a lot of fun, I think.
36. The Hangover Part II — I really hope the third movie takes place on an international space station.
37. Win Win — Hey, Tom McCarthy, this is embarrassing, but you accidentally wrote “win” twice in the title. I guess your script could’ve used a second draft.
38. The Muppets — I hope it doesn’t totally undercut my The Muppets was kind of sexist argument if I say I totally didn’t like The Muppets for a bunch of other reasons too.
I’m a little torn on the very idea of making new Muppets movies. Part of me feels like Jim Henson was the Muppets in the same way Peter Sellers was Inspector Clouseau, and making new Muppets movies after he died, and without Frank Oz, and without Richard Hunt, and without Jerry Nelson, would be like making a Woody Allen movie without Woody Allen. But another part of me believes that Everything is a Remix and our myths belong to us all and why shouldn’t other people get a chance to play around in the sandbox with these iconic characters?
The answer, as it turns out, is because they end up making a movie less about the Muppets than about how much Jason Segel loves the Muppets.
There are a few interesting plot strands in the movie — I would love a richer backstory about why the gang split up, or more specifically what happened between Kermit and Miss Piggy — but everything gets second billing to the main plot of the movie: We’re not as famous as we used to be and isn’t that sad and boy wouldn’t it be great to be popular again?
I’ve never seen a billion dollar franchise feel so sorry for itself. Dude, the legacy of the Muppets is secure. If enthusiasm has waned over the years, it’s not because they all went away for a while; it’s because they wouldn’t go away, thrusting more and more inferior products on their loyal fan base. There’s a scene in the movie where an evil executive threatens to take control of the Muppets’ name and use the rights to make whatever he wants regardless of the opinions of the original Muppets, and I whispered to Caroline, “Uuuuhhh, is this movie real life? Because that’s exactly what happened when Disney took control of the franchise.”
There’s something morbid about hearing a Jim Henson impressionist sing A Rainbow Connection. There’s something metatextually off-putting about introducing “The Moopets,” a band of cynically off-brand Muppets and contrasting them with the “real Muppets” who may have the same felt as the original characters, but not their voice.
The whole thing had a strange Weekend At Bernie’s feel to it. As much as I wanted to get into it, to be swept up in the nostalgia, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching dancing corpses.
39. Just Go With It — Look, I have no one to blame but myself for seeing so many Adam Sandler movies, but I wish that didn’t also have to automatically mean I’ve seen so many Nick Swardson movies.
40. Bad Teacher — With Segel in this, and Franco and Rogen in Green Hornet, is Cameron Diaz working her way through the entire Freaks and Geeks cast? Looking forward to her upcoming romantic period epic co-starring Samm Levine.
