Released in 2011 | Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson

I’m counting this sweet little movie even though I saw half of it on a plane last year. It’s not a great movie, but I really enjoyed it: the fight scenes are beautifully animated and I love how they really capture Jack Black’s ridiculous facial expressions via the titular kung fu panda, Po. Also, definitely a movie to watch for Gary Oldman fans, as he gives a surprisingly well-rounded and committed performance as the film’s Big Bad, a peacock (yes) with razor-sharp feathers. Worth a viewing, and full of intriguing sequel possibilities. Also notable: It is currently the highest-grossing film directed by a woman. Imagine that.

8 down, 357 to go.

Released in 2008 | Directed by Martin McDonagh

Maybe that’s what hell is, the entire rest of eternity spent in fucking Bruges.

I just finished this movie but I was too excited not to write about it right away.

Earlier this week I watched a movie that I’m fairly confident will be the best movie I see from 2011, A Separation. This movie, an Iranian morality play centered around a divorce, was beautifully written, deeply thought and completely one of the best movies I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in a long time. I’m lucky enough to see a movie like A Separation about once every few months - one that really stands out, and makes me remember why I love movies so much. In Bruges, however, is different. They say when you become a lover of film, you have to make two categories: the films you consider the best ever, and the films you consider your personal favourites. The latter category doesn’t require greatness; it’s deeply personal and unique, and that’s what makes it the more important list, the one that really informs a person’s personality and their reason for their love of film. By now you’ve guessed that In Bruges is likely to fall into the latter category.

Everything about this movie clicked for me. The humour, so black that no light can escape from it. The setting and its role in giving the film its unique atmosphere. The themes of purgatory, guilt and, surprisingly, friendship. The troupe of fleshed-out supporting characters and the beautifully written and acted trio of Ray, Ken and Harry, played by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, respectively. And, most of all, the dialogue. There are so many quotable lines in this film that I’m having a hard time not simply copying and pasting the IMDb quotes page and skipping the rest of the reviewing process. This is a movie that manages to fit in A) a discussion about the nature of heaven and hell in a quaint Belgian art gallery, B) a debate over which nationalities would side with which in a white vs. black world war and C) a heart-pounding chase scene played out remarkably devoid of any action movie clichés or tropes through cobblestone streets and the set of a Eurotrash dream sequence featuring a midget - although he prefers the term “dwarf”.

I loved, loved, loved In Bruges, if you couldn’t tell. I’m not playing my cards close to the chest on this one, and there’s better movies than this one out there that I won’t ever re-watch half as many times. Movies like this are the ones that keep the inner film nerd alive and well, and I would be a lucky man if I found a movie a month that I loved half as much as this one. Definitely, one-hundred-per-cent recommended by yours truly, In Bruges is funny, suspenseful, cathartic and often just plain weird. But more than that, it tells an interesting story in an interesting way; and at the end of the day, isn’t that why we bother with this whole “moving pictures” thing anyway?

7 down, 358 to go.

Released in 2011 | Directed by Tate Taylor

I have some serious issues with The Help, and I find it a very hard movie to review. There are good aspects to it - inspired performances from Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer and generally capable filmmaking - which at first had me walking away with a good, albeit mild, review in my pocket. But after putting off the review for several days, I began to think about the film a little more, and my opinion began to change. Overall, despite its pleasant aftertaste and semi-sweet segregation story, The Help is not a very good movie. This is why:

As an amateur history buff with plans to make a career out of that interest, I immediate noticed some pretty glaring flaws in The Help that take some steam out of its heavy-handed anti-racist message. Firstly, and probably most importantly, the movie glossed over some of the awful ordeals that black housemaids went through during the time: notably sexual abuse and lynching, both of which were very real threats for many maids working in white households. I also noticed that the film pays little attention to black men: many are abusive or simply not around for the majority of the film. Aibileen and Minny have a pretty strong “black” vernacular, eat fried chicken blissfully at many points throughout the film and generally seem unaware of the civil rights activism that was historically happening in Jackson, Mississippi at the time. Like many a movie before it, The Help frames the civil rights movement as white people helping black people, and this is a crucial misunderstanding. From novelist Martha Southgate’s review of the film and book:

The architects, visionaries, prime movers, and most of the on-ground labourers of the civil rights movement were African-Americans. Many white Americans stood beside them, and some even died beside them, but it was not their fight - and more important, it was not their idea.

The movie is also pretty wrought with tropes and clichés. The character of Hilly is often portrayed as a comical villain who gets her comeuppance through a problem pie, although she is clearly a bitter and hateful racist. The movie’s full of the Magical Negro stock character, and a quick look at Wikipedia’s page for the Mammy archetype will show that the film is also an apt continuation of the myth. The movie’s often cheesy and phoned-in emotionally. Most importantly, the character of Skeeter is clearly an author avatar for Stockett, which helps to frame the film as a sweet coming-of-age story for a young white protagonist who uses the experiences of African-American maids to A) frame her own life and help her understand the challenges she’s going through and B) help her get a job in New York City. If any movie this year should have committed to having the protagonist be African-American, it’s this one.

The Help has become an extremely popular book and subsequent movie, and although it’s frustrating it’s also easy to understand why. The movie supports gender roles that were worn out twenty years ago, a vision of soft racism that betrays the realities of the time, and the myth that there’s a happy ending to it all. Stockett might have hoped to show how we’ve beaten racism, because look how bad it was back then! But the battle isn’t won yet. No matter how many white people write books or do their part to fight racism, it’s not our battle, and it never will be. To read more about the inaccurate history of The Help, check out this ColorLines article, a review of the film by Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC, and an open statement from the Association of Black Women Historians.

6 down, 359 to go.

Released in 2011 | Directed by Asghar Farhadi

A Separation, Iran’s entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category for this year’s Oscars, is much more like a novel than a film. It slowly unfolds, and depends on the patience of its audience in spinning a complex tale of religion, feminism and male privilege, courtroom drama, adolescence, secrets and lies, divorce in a patriarchal society, tragedy and, above all, morality. The film is so subtle in painting its characters and coaxing its audience into their lives that one does not realize just how invested they have become until each character is pushed to their limit, whatever that limit might be. A Separation is a great film because it doesn’t designate any of its characters as heroic or morally superior; instead, each character reacts justifiably to the increasingly tense situations they are thrown into. The question of morality is posed to the viewer.

I can’t praise this film enough. The setting of modern-day Iran compliments the film’s basic themes of truth, religion and moral obligation beautifully. The acting is fantastic and unrestrained. The film is beautifully shot and rife with symbolism, my favorite occurring during the film’s final scene and involving a carefully placed transparent wall. Farhadi’s script allows for scenes to last as long as they have to, denying the audience immediate satisfaction in favor of a slow, simmering build. The film is unpredictable yet realistic; graceful yet unrelenting. Like a great novel, A Separation is not disposable or easily digested. The moral questions posed in the film linger, as each character makes decisions that toy with preconceptions of what’s morally right and wrong. In their own way, each character is deceitful, and as it always does, the truth slowly rises to the surface. By the film’s end, the audience is unsure whose side to take, and for good reason. There are no easy answers.

I would recommend A Separation to anyone who loves movies, novels or any sort of dramatic fiction. It requires patience, but good things come to those who wait. Hopefully as I continue my 365 Film Challenge, I’ll be able to watch more films I’ve missed from 2011, but I find it unlikely that many will surpass this one.

5 down, 360 to go.

Released in 1925 | Directed by Sergei Eisenstein

As someone interested in the history and mechanics of filmmaking, I regret having put off seeing Battleship Potemkin for so long. There are few films that have had such a profound effect on the craft. From Eisenstein’s use of editing to heighten tension and to introduce emotional cues as to which characters are the film’s heroes and villains, to his famous Odessa steps sequence, still one of the most frightening, raw scenes in film to this day, Eisenstein created one of the first masterpieces - and certainly one of the most enduring - of the silver screen. Lenin would have been proud.

Eisenstein created the film, which dramatizes a riot on a Russian battleship during the Russo-Japanese War and encourages socialist revolution, both as a political statement and as an experiment in techniques such as film editing, camera angles and montage. Eisenstein was disappointed when Battleship failed to provoke the response from his comrades he had expected, but the film found appreciators worldwide for his creative use of the medium. Interestingly enough, his techniques of editing and, in later films such as October, intellectual montage, would lead to trouble with the Soviet film community, whose style of choice had become socialist realism.

The Odessa steps sequence is still a tense and strikingly violent scene, featuring frightening imagery such as the Tsarist soldiers’ mechanical pace and disregard for the bodies littering the steps, the old nurse wailing with blood pouring down her face and, most famously, the newly orphaned baby’s carriage rolling down the steps. Also notable are the images of rotten meat covered in maggots and the soldiers jumping into the water to save their leader, Vakulinchuk.

I would recommend Battleship Potemkin to anyone interested in Russian history, propaganda, silent films or filmmaking in general. I’m glad I took the time to have watched it: in fact, if you’re so inclined, the film is public domain in many areas and can be watched for free here.

4 down, 361 to go.

Released in 2010 | Directed by Nathan Greno and Bryan Howard

Actually, I thought Tangled was really sweet. The characters and settings are richly animated and the visual humor is top-notch. Sure, the plot is pretty formulaic, but I wasn’t expecting otherwise.

3 down, 362 to go.

Released in 1957 | Directed by Sidney Lumet

There’s a moment at the very end of Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men where the 12 Jurors, who have spent the entirety of the film inside a single room, leave the courthouse and go their separate ways. These perfect strangers, who may very well never see each other again, are quick to return to their everyday lives, the routines and rituals that comfort them and give their lives purpose. Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda, is stopped by Juror #9, an elderly man who was the first to sympathize with his point of view on the murder trail the jury was meant to judge. He asks for the Juror’s name. “Davis”, he replies. “My name’s McCardle”, Juror #9 replies, smiling and shaking his hand. Both of them comfortably exist in this moment, now knowing one another more fully, before going their separate ways.

12 Angry Men is a great film for many reasons, but the reason which struck me - and likely the reason why the film is still considered among the greatest of all time - is the role that dialogue plays in advancing the story and building the characters. It is no small feat to tell a complex, interesting and engaging story in a single room with twelve characters, none of whom have met before. Of course, if we were to know more about the Jurors, which we come to know by number rather than name, it would weaken the film. We learn bits and pieces about their lives casually through exposition - Juror #12 is an ad exec from the city, Juror #5 grew up in a poor neighbourhood - but the writer’s decision not to offer too much information about the characters is one of my favorite aspects of the film. Knowing very little about their class, their history, or their beliefs, we are left to judge them solely by their character. It’s hard to build an interesting story around something as simple as a jury coming to consensus, but Reginald Rose - who wrote the original teleplay as well as the adaptation for stage - tells his story with a grace and subtlety that never feels anything but natural.

Credit should be given also to Sidney Lumet, of Network and Dog Day Afternoon fame (a fame which is well-deserved), whose choice of a simple, grounded direction style never distracts from or contrasts with the story’s pace and flow. The actors are all worthy of credit as well, and each Juror becomes so unique as the story progresses that it becomes fascinating just to watch each one’s personality bounce off of one another. The strongest performance in my eyes is that of Lee J. Cobb, who plays the troubled Juror #3 so strongly that his eventual catharsis marks the film’s best and most memorable moment. Each person to have taken part in the making of this film did so much with so little, and that is truly remarkable.

12 Angry Men is one of the most popular films of its time, and for good reason - its characters are so strongly written and so well-defined that despite their challenges, which seem very much of their time, they resonate with viewers now who may see aspects of themselves in the nameless twelve on which the film rests. This is a writer’s movie, an actor’s movie, and a movie to be studied for those who wish to tell compelling stories and write compelling characters. I loved the hell out of it.

2 down, 363 to go.

Released in 2007 | Directed by Jeffrey Blitz

Not exactly the feel-good movie of the year. Rocket Science is well-made, and Reece Thompson gives an inspired performance as Hal, but the film has a drab, sorry aftertaste to it that A) made it more realistic and true to life and B) made it at times something of a depressing and unfortunate spectacle. I’d recommend it, but I would also say not to expect the sort of optimism and silver lining that most high school movies offer. Though this almost certainly makes the film much more like actually being in high school than most.

1 down, 364 to go.