Hey Remember Films?

So apparently Ross thinks he's hot stuff for out-listing me (don't forget folks, you can see my taste evolving on a daily basis at the Bedbugs sister site Chaff and a Half. I don't "get" the name either).

But as I told Busdriver's reigning internet superfan (with a notable computer tan), I don't like ranking movies. At least not since Patty Zimmermann and Michel Foucault came and deconstructed my fanboy brain into mush. I don't know what to hate anymore. But I still like a bunch of stuff, which is why I'm prepared to do a half-year film update...right now!

A quick note before I begin (just kidding, it's a longwinded note!): I don't watch a lot of films in the theater. Due to a tricky combination of agoraphobia, supercool hipster ennui, and moneylessness, I stick mostly to a strict regiment of Important Foreign Films and Documentaries from Netflix. But as I feel woefully unqualified to sing the praises of Fitzcarraldo (and then, based on Burden of Dreams, retroactively wring my hands over praising it at all...I mean, I'm not an expert in sound ethnographic filmmaking practices, but that's brutal), I will instead stick to multi- and indie-plex fodder. In alphabetical order to confound listfreaks (including myself).

Batman Begins
A compelling rumination on...what was it again? Oh yeah, FEAR. I forgot that this movie is about FEAR. Ironically enough, I had a massive anxiety attack, either from FEAR or from perilously low blood sugar which as we all know is actually the result of FEAR, and missed the last hour of the film. If it's any compensation to people who would burn me alive for thinking of "skipping out" on this movie (out of FEAR), I spent like five hours crying. *** 1/2 until further notice.

Last Days
Gus Van Sant is an asshole. This will be examined further in a subsequent post.

March of the Penguins
Hey, did you know that penguins "love" each other, and that when a penguin egg breaks the mother penguin is actually "bereft," and that when a seal kills a female penguin it's actually "taking two lives"? Amazingly, this fascinating documentary on penguin mating is narrated not by Rick Santorum, but by Morgan Freeman, whose soothing voice almost, but not quite, detracts from the creepy, pandering, blink-and-you-missed-it-conservative "family values" script. Winged Migration is visually more mesmerizing and keeps the talk at a New Age minimum of misguided anthropomorphizing -- but hey, they had like 7,000 cinematographers and weren't shooting in fucking ANTARCTICA. French people are crazy.

Murderball
Murderball is a thoughtful examination of the many trials -- imposed by both societal taboos regarding the physically challenged and the literal physical impediments of quadripelegia -- that a group of young men must...holy shit, they're playing rugby in commando Mad Max chairs!!! This documentary is pretty amazing, so not too much to add to the chorus. I wish it were longer and more "difficult," but secretly I just want everyone else to like it less. Yo check this ad out!

EDIT: Palindromes

I completely forgot that I saw this at (siiiigh) The Best Theatre Ever. I won't go too into detail about my own feelings, but will make two observations outside the film itself: 1) The audience at the film festival at which this was shown thought the film's most disturbing moments were hilarious. I was taken aback by how openly people "got" whatever "jokes" were apparent in Todd Solondz's characteristically ambiguous black humor screenplay. Frankly, Palindromes isn't very funny, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. 2) In the supplemental essay we picked up, Solondz in an interview claims this movie -- which uses a twelve-year-old girl's abortion of a baby she wants to keep as an entry point for a basic film suture experiment (several actresses and one actor of differing age, ethnicity, and physical appearance play the same girl) -- is "a film about one set of people who kill one way, and one set of people who kill another way." His parallels here are the girl's parents, who force her to have the abortion, and the "Sunshine" family, Christian pro-life zealots who are secretly responsible for mudering doctors who perform abortions. His simplification of the issue (for the record, and feel free to dispute, shooting a man is killing "one way," but pressuring a daughter to abort her child at age twelve is not necessarily "another way"...hence this Supreme Court business) makes me uncomfortable about his relationship with this material. But since the film is not really "about" abortion (the real focus is identity) and since the film certainly doesn't present the argument Solondz makes in his interview, it's possible to engage the film outside of his personal argument, which is the only thing keeping me from Van Santing my analysis the film.

The Sea Inside
I guess this counts toward 2004, but I'm counting it as 2005. Along with Murderball and Lifetime's upcoming Wilt: Schiavo's Strength, Schiavo's Shame, this deals with an uncomfortable social topic with dignity and compassion, as opposed to...uh, not.

Sin City
Best comic book movie ever made. This movie is spectacular, and any moral quibbles an ultra-concerned, anti-ironic, PC-but-OK-with-that 'aughts guy like myself might have about the film's content are diffused because it's just a comic book, people, and comic books are awesome.

I have not seen Me and You and Everyone Loves This Movie, Rize, Mad Hot Ballroom...I haven't seen a lot of stuff (besides, we all know I'm going to compile my year-end list from a film syllabus anyway). I did finally check out the "Up" Series, the 2006 edition of which in all likelihood will be better than anything that comes out this year or next. My pick for #1 of 2005 so far: Teratogenesis.

Werner Herzog once said, "I'm quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to filmmaking. Other than that, perhaps walking on foot." I'll leave you to ponder that.