Where Are My Cigarettes?

Ponsonby Road

For the next couple of weeks I'll be in New Zealand, using part of a vacation to hang out with my friends Mike and Rosemary Riddell.  I'll be writing a blog dedicated to the revelation of how 'The Insatiable Moon' went from being an idea in Mike Riddell's head, to a novel, to a screenplay, and especially a film.  Hope you don't mind, but I'll cross-post some stuff here from that site.  We'd love the blog and facebook page to be places for conversation and anticipation about the rising Moon, so please do feel free to comment here or there. I'm delighted to be able to use some of my vacation in New Zealand to drop in on set and will do my best to keep you posted about what's happening in and around the making of the film.

This morning, my second observing the set of ‘The Insatiable Moon’, I was walking up Ponsonby Road on the way to the church where one of the pivotal scenes was being shot. Walking through mild rain and high humidity, to the emotional soundtrack of mild annoyance at being highly lost, having taken a wrong turn from the Production Office.Had a bag of strawberries in one hand – one of the pleasures of being here from the US/UK is the fact that I’m experiencing my first December summer, and therefore get to eat fruit that went out of season where I live a couple of months ago, and my MacBook bag in the other, looking forward to what would unfold in the church as one of our beloved characters makes a speech that we hope will be something audiences remember for a long time after seeing the movie.

But it wasn’t meant to be – I was stopped in my tracks by a bloke wearing a long black leather coat, also carrying two bags, eyes hidden behind massive dark glasses. As he passed me, he let out an agitated scream: ‘WHERE ARE MY CIGARETTES’.The surprise made me jump, feel a little uncomfortable, and it was a few seconds before I could focus my thoughts. Who was this man? Why was he screaming? Screaming for the location of his smokes, on a wet Ponsonby afternoon? People sat at the sidewalk cafes looked up at him, and then at me; some tried to conceal a smile – let’s face it, a bloke shouting on the street is funny in the way that someone tripping on a pavement is funny.It’s a natural reaction to the misfortune of others. But it’s also unfair. What was strange to me was the fact that the pity of the crowd seemed reserved for me, rather than the poor guy who’d lost his Pall Malls.

I remember first reading the novel ‘The Insatiable Moon’ twelve years ago – it was the Clinton era, the year the Paul Thomas Anderson’s first feature ‘Hard Eight’ was released and had to compete with ‘Men in Black’ for an audience; the year Princess Diana and Mother Teresa died; and a time when the New Zealand film industry was yet to receive global attention in the form of a shot in the arm from J RR Tolkien. One of the motifs to which the book returns again and again is the place of marginalized people in our society, in the story, on Ponsonby Road. Blokes who walk up and down the high street screaming for their cigarettes, part of them trapped inside the complex labyrinth of mental health difficulties and God knows what else.The film being made here in Ponsonby is part love story, part drama, part postmodern religious epic, and part whatever you want it to be; but one of the most beautiful things about it is the fact that it focuses on people that usually get sidelined by the stories that often get told at the movies. It’s about the occurrence of magic in everyday life; it’s about the sacred and profane meeting each other, and being mixed into something new that becomes far more than the sum of its parts.

The ostensibly innocuous moment when I was confronted by a guy shouting for his cigarettes collided with my need to get to the set to see what was happening next. And on the way, I remembered something that one of my favourite actors used to say. The sadly late, and undeniably very great Jack Lemmon used to close his eyes just before the cameras rolled, and repeat a mantra that got him in the right zone to perform, to create on screen the heightened vision of reality that always occurs when movies work. His two words could serve as the motto for what’s happening here, as a motley crew of people dedicated to very-hard-working the vision to fruition, in the hope that together they may make a film that entertains, compels, challenges, inspires, makes the audience feel grateful to be alive and maybe just a little more ready to see each other for what we are; in short, to turn a story of ordinary people on Ponsonby Road into something that transcends our sense of just what is ordinary. I think Jack Lemmon might be right at home here. His two words?  Magic Time.

Films of the Decade: The 'B' List

Records used to have 'b' sides, Armond White produces a 'better than/worse than' list every year, and the decade's still winding down, which can only mean one thing: I've found a flimsy but good enough reason for today's post: The Films I Liked in the 2000s but not enough to go to the mountaintop.  Or Something Like That.  (See here for Part 1: The Most Over-Rated and Under-Rated Films of the Decade?) So, mere days from the unleashing of the FINAL LIST (cue thunder clap/drum beat/'Psycho' strings), which I haven't decided what to call (Favourite Movies of the Decade?;  Greatest Movies?; Movies I Remember the Most?; Movies That If I Put Them On  A Greatest List Will Make Me Look Smart/Pretentious/Knowledgeable/Contrarian/Honest/Ignorant?  I'm open to suggestions in the comments section...) here's movies that I enjoyed a lot at the time, but haven't stayed with me; or, frankly just weren't quite good enough to make the cut. In alphabetical order:

Ae Fond Kiss: The predictably unpredictable Ken Loach serves up a thoughtful little drama about racism and mixed marriage in Scotland.

After the Wedding: Danish drama featuring an act of kindness so selfless that it might make you want to live generously for the rest of your life; and beautiful character nuances in facing with peace what Bertrand Russell called 'our common doom'.

Ali: First time most of us had the chance to see Will Smith actually act.

Almost Famous: Billy Crudup is a 'golden god'; Cameron Crowe loves a certain kind of mode, and I love watching people living it, because then I don't have to.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil: An exhilirating, hilarious and touching documentary whose central conflict out-Taps the great divorce of David St Hubbins and Nigel Tufnell.

Atonement: Powerful drama which does not offer a simplistic exploration of the title; and, among other things, extraordinary photography.

Australia: Jett's right: 'It's better than Gone with the Wind'; and gives the iconic Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil the last word on the portrayal of his people's suffering and gifts.

The Aviator: I'm not sure about the blue peas, but a classy ride nonetheless.

Big Fish: A gorgeous myth about making peace with our parents' mistakes (and recognising we'll make some of the same ones ourselves).  Bonus: Best De Vito of the decade.

Birth: Nicole Kidman's best performance, in a story as bleak as the film is shot.

Brokeback Mountain: A finely-told story, believable in every respect; although a game-changer in terms of the portrayal of sexual identity.

Cloverfield: A monster movie that took risks - with the audience's nausea threshold, and our expectations of who gets eaten and who survives.

The Constant Gardener: A sad puff of resignation from John le Carre - as if he's saying that there is no escape from the powers that be; the grief of the central character so well played by Ralph Fiennes that you understand why he doesn't want to escape anyway.

Dark Days: Early example of the 'new' documentary; give a guy a cheap camera, let him make what he wants, and you'll get an extraordinary rendition of an entirely different New York underground.

Il Divo: Paolo Sorrentino's discordant music video of the life of Giuilio Andreotti makes Silvio Berlusconi look like Jimmy Stewart in 'It's a Wonderful Life'

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Life all of Julian Schnabel's films, it's about an artist, and looks like the kind of movie that artist might make.

Dogville: Lars von Trier (listen to our 'Antichrist' podcast here) never seems quite sure if he knows what he's doing; is his point that even grace can be exhausted?  Or that women are untrustable?  Or that everyone will betray you?  I don't like any of those ideas; but he made a bloody wonderful film to explore them.

Dreamgirls: So, I'm sitting in the Dublin Road Moviehouse in Belfast, which used to be Vue Cinemas which used to be MGM cinemas which used to be Virgin cinemas (and reminds me why this decade might have seen the end of moviegoing as a pleasurable experience, in which the theatres had individuated character and the staff knew or cared something about films).  And 'Dreamgirls' starts, a film for which I have only moderate expectations.  But within five minutes has declared itself to be something rather special.  It looks great, it sounds great, I'll be darned if it isn't a bloody classic Hollywood musical made with an almost all black cast and got Jennifer Hudson an Oscar for one scene that was so exhilirating I wanted to leave the theatre and go somewhere else just so I could watch it again from the start.

Elegy: Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz as the most loving on screen couple since Piggy and Kermie (with the roles reversed).

(500) Days of Summer: I know it's cool to diss this film; but, you know what?  I like love stories that feel like the kind of love stories I, as a signed up (if involuntary) member of Generation X, have observed and even inherited.  AND it made LA look beautiful without resorting to Michael Mann late night blue light.

Flags of our Fathers: The best kind of anti-war film, because it denounced the propaganda without denying the value of the cause.

George Washington: An amazing early film from David Gordon Green, who along with Ramin Bahrani, a North Carolina-brewed director with an open-minded sensibility, and a stunning knack for capturing the subtleties of life the way Terrence Malick sees it.

Gone Baby Gone: A serious, bleak and troubling film that proves Ben Affleck should direct more.

Good Night, and Good Luck: 93 minutes of dramatic beguilement, political provocation, and pitch-perfect performance.

Gosford Park: As in 'Nashville', Altman dissects an entire culture as if he knew it before it was born.

Grizzly Man: An almost unbelievable true story, and testimony to Werner Herzog's desire to keep learning.

Happy-Go-Lucky: A film driven by the notion that being kind to others might just be the purpose of life; Sally Hawkins won deserved praise, but Eddie Marsan is one of our favourite actors for a reason.

Hero: A vibrant challenge to the myth that violence solves anything.

A History of Violence: A vibrant paean to the myth that violence solves everything.

Hot Fuzz: A chance for Edward Woodward to remind us why we always loved him.  And a reason for the also thoroughly entertaining and slyly satirical 'Zombieland' to screen in a double bill.

House of Flying Daggers:  A spectacular display of visual imagination.

Hunger: A film that aims to find a human truth amidst a political minefield; that we all suffered in northern Ireland, that there was no point to it, and that we must not go back there.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: I know I'm not supposed to like it, but one can only respond as one sees things; and this felt like nothing so much as an Indiana Jones film, doing only what Indiana Jones films are supposed to do.

I've Loved You So Long: A film about people trying to get by in the middle of the most awful of circumstances, and finding a way to come back to life after a living death.

Jindabyne: Ray Lawrence coaxes Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne to the most real performances of their careers, and just as delicately represents the country's particular need for racial reconciliation.

The King of Kong: A documentary that makes the battle for video game supremacy look like the Peloponessian Wars.

Kinsey: Liam Neeson plays the sex doctor as a humble man searching for genuine answers to universal questions; there's a lovely 'Vertigo' homage at the end too.

Kung Fu Hustle: Absurdly entertaining mishmash of 'The Godfather', 'Crouching Tiger', 'The Untouchables', 'The Mission', and 'Parenthood'.

Lilya 4-Ever: Lukas Moodysson may have the most extreme emotional polarities of any director working today; his 'Together'/'Tillsammans' might be the most life-affirming, community-embracing film I've ever seen; 'Lilya 4-Ever' wants to affirm life too, but does it through the lens of forcing the audience to confront the horror of human trafficking.  It's unrelenting, but tells an awful truth.

Little Children: Todd Field may be acknowledged as the best director of the next ten years, if he keeps making films as good as this and 'In the Bedroom'; films that reveal the shadow side of middle class anomie, what, I suppose, Trent Reznor is striving for in singing 'I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel'.  And in the midst of all the darkness, when his characters are confronted by the consequences of their actions, they weep in hopes that we might get it right next time.

Little Miss Sunshine: This is one of those films that faded pretty quickly after hype; but you know what?  These people tried to act their way into appearing like a real family - no weirder than yours or mine; and prepared to deal with the trickiness of such things as Grandpa's drug use, Uncle's suicide attempt, Dad's failed business proposition, by allowing themselves to be publicly humiliated for the sake of love.  And it made me laugh and cry and think that life is just like that.

The Lives of Others: Written in a monastery, von Donnersmarck's film about keeping and telling secrets has the discipline of a monk.

Lost in Translation: Some people (including Jett) hated this movie, and of course they're entitled to do so; I was utterly beguiled.  'But you have to try.'

Man Push Cart: Ramin Bahrani got noticed with this controlled rage explosion about the struggle of being an immigrant.

Memento: I genuinely thought I had memory problems after seeing it.

Michael Clayton: Better than its Seventies forebears because I could believe every part; Tilda Swinton was magnificent as caught-between-greed-and-morality; and the horse scene (a homage to a certain Brother Rublev) was perfect cinematic breathing space.

Milk: The best fusion of Gus van Sant's 'arty' and 'mainstream' side; seeing it in the Castro theatre was the most moving experience I had at the movies this decade.

Million Dollar Baby: Hilary Swank wins Oscars every time she makes a good movie.

Minority Report: So much smarter than it gets credited.

Monsters Inc.: The detail on John Goodman's fur coat was breathtaking; like everything else in this Pixar-as-usual (which means intelligent, funny, and appealing to kids and adults.)

Moulin Rouge!: Did something new, and did it with utter abandon.  (And gave the mighty Jim Broadbent a new career.)

Munich: Told the truth about the Gandhian adage: an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Mystic River: Can you have too much Sean Penn, Clint Eastwood, Laura Linney, Tim Robbins and Laurence Fishburne?

My Summer of Love: A truthful madness about late teenage confusion, desire, selfishness and ambition.

My Winnipeg: Guy Maddin made Winnipeg look like a movie you'd want to visit.

Paradise Now: One of the more thoughtful post-9/11 films; captures the reality of Palestinian hardship perfectly, and seeks to find a way to represent the suicide bomber's dilemma without recourse to cheap moralising or easy resolution.

The Polar Express: A quantum leap forward in the use of 3-D spectacle; Zemeckis refined it in 'Beowulf' and 'A Christmas Carol', both of which had their charms, but 'The Polar Express' was the first Christmas movie that made me feel Christmas-y since Bill Murray repented and won Karen Allen back in 'Scrooged'.

Punch-Drunk Love: Paul Thomas Anderson drags Adam Sandler into the rank of pitch-perfect vulnerable actors; portraying the madness of human affections as elliptical pastel scopitones is one of the most appropriate visual metaphors of the decade.

Quantum of Solace: A Bond film in which, as Jett first noticed, he looks like he's actually working for a living; the plot takes place in a world that is (somewhat) recognisably real; and where killing people leaves scars on the people doing the killing.

The Queen: Like Michael Jackson's 'This is It', shows a side of a real person whom, for most, might as well be a fictional character.

Quills: A film in which the great Geoffrey Rush turns eating a crucifix gets turned into a sacramental act.

Rachel Getting Married: A film that feels as if it's taking place while you're watching it.

Ratatouille: Over the top delirious.

Ray: A slick Hollywood biopic, but perfectly realised.

Requiem for a Dream: Ellen Burstyn gives the best performance of her career while a monstrous fridge tries to eat her.

Riding Giants: A fantasy vision of what life for surfers was like in the good old days.

A Scanner Darkly: Best Philip K Dick adaptation since Rutger Hauer stuck a nail through Harrison Ford's hands.

Seven Pounds: The most depressing feelgood movie I've ever seen; one that takes questions of self-sacrifice and our responsibility to other human beings deadly seriously.

Shotgun Stories: A brilliant, humane drama about refusing to take an eye for an eye.

Shut Up & Sing: Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's inspirational film of what happened when the Dixie Chicks spoke out against President Bush and his war.

Sideways: A substantially comforting film for a failing writer.

Signs: Shyamalan's fatalism is a paper-thin philosophy, but he does a beautiful job of representing it.

Sita Sings the Blues: An astonishing solo animation work, which mingles Hindi scriptures with 1920s blues music and produces everything you could possibly hope for from such a stew.

Spanglish: A little noticed James L Brooks 'dramedy', as some may insist on calling it, which once again displays Sandler's talent for humane noticing, and Brooks' for re-envisioning the American family myth.

Spirited Away: Magnificent animation and thrilling storytelling about childhood.

Starting Out in the Evening: The best Frank Langella performance of 2008; if only 'Frost/Nixon' had been released a few months earlier, this film might have found an audience.  Small New York story of a hard working elderly writer being rediscovered by a grad student's mixed motives.  Call it 'Driving Mr Roth', call it what you will, but give it a try on Netflix watch instantly and you might be very surprised.

The Station Agent: The first pitch perfect film by Tom McCarthy - it's easy to rant about films in which self-conscious liberals act in a self-consciously liberal way; but this ain't that film.  This is the human drama unfolding just like it does for you and me, even if we don't live in an abandoned train station or count an exuberant coffee salesman as our best friend/person we most want to avoid.

Stay: Marc Forster made a film that is part psychological thriller, part something else that I can't tell you because that would be a spoiler; its ending made me reconsider everything that went before, its use of psychedelic imagery was a perfect fit, and I wept like a baby as Damien Rice sang 'The Blower's Daughter' after one of the most bittersweet endings I've ever seen.

Sunshine State: John Sayles knows what he's about: what it's like to live in America, and how to rise above the crap.  'Sunshine State' took him to Florida to examine the decimation of long-standing communities by idiotic golf course and gated housing developments; he also gave Timothy Hutton his best role in years.

Sweeney Todd: It looked great, it sounded great, it smelled awful.  It was Tim Burton and Johnny Depp atoning for losing the plot in the Chocolate Factory; and I was enthralled.

Syriana: If the world as portrayed in this film really looked like this, then I'd be afraid to go outside; but its polemical labyrinth includes usual suspects who seem worthy of the name: military-industrial-entertainment-Christopher-Plummer complex, anyone?

Tell Them Who You Are: This documentary about the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler, by his son Mark lets its subject breathe and be seen in his emotional complexity.

Touching the Void: Heart-stopping reconstruction of a heroic act.

3:10 to Yuma: The 'coming out' party for Ben Foster, one of our favourite actors; Russell Crowe's best film of the decade; Christian Bale does restraint; and Marco Beltrami scores it to hell and back.

21 Grams: The other Inarritu film that felt real, before 'Babel' made me wonder if I'd jumped the gun.

Two Lovers: A drama filmed as if Dostoeyevksy was born in JD Salinger's house.

United 93: Challenged my commitment to pacifism; but the best choice Greengrass made was to confront the audience with the impossible choice: what would you do?

Up: A near-perfect film which lost me by killing its villain - the easy recourse to violent death rather than any other option being as much a problem in Pixar's imagination as anyone else.

Vanilla Sky:  If you've stayed with me thus far, you're either loyal or like a good fight; I freely acknowledge that Crowe's remake of 'Abre los Ojos' isn't everyone's cup of tea, and feels like it's got plot holes a-plenty; but, like Tom Cruise's previous endeavour with Mr Kubrick, it's a freakin' dream!

La Vie en Rose: An Edith Piaf biopic that made me feel a) guilty for enjoying her music, given how much suffering it seemed to cause her; and b) awe at Marion Cotillard's extraordinary, immersive performance.

We Own the Night: Another of James Gray's films about masculinity in the New York Metropolitan area that leaves you wondering why he's not better know.

Where the Wild Things Are: Tells - from the inside out - the story of adult fears about not realising our dreams; does it with style and grace.

Zodiac: A film as much about the nuances of being a cop; of living in 70s-era San Francisco; of Mark Ruffalo's facial hair; of obsession, and inhumanity, and the purpose of life and work. A far more mature film than 'Se7en'.

The Most Over-Rated and Under-Rated Films of the Decade?

The Most Under-Rated Movie of the Last Ten Years? The decade draws to a close, and most of us will be feeling a sense of surreality as we reflect on what we were doing on New Year's Eve 1999 - I was with four of my dearest friends; we had a gorgeous dinner by the fire, watched the London Millennium Dome's opening ceremony define New Labour's hubris (until a certain war in the Gulf); at midnight we literally did stand on the street and shout hello to everyone else who opened their door.  At that moment, I hadn't seen 'Magnolia', soon to supplant 'Wings of Desire' as the film-most-likely-to-be-named-my-favourite-when-you-ask (I'd say they're both pretty even now; the passage of time tends to iron out all your favourite movies into one long film marathon.  Film I've seen the most often?  Field of Dreams.  Film I'd most like to see again right now?  Hirokazu Koreeda's After Life.  Film that every time I see it becomes increasingly difficult to deny a place as 'Greatest Ever Made' TM?  2001.  Or Touch of Evil.  Or Vertigo.  Or La Regle du Jeu.  Or La Belle et la Bete.  Or Close Encounters.  Or Once Upon a Time in America.  Or Fantasia.  Or Solaris.  Or.  Or.  Or)

And now we approach the end of another decade.  The friends I was with on Millennium Eve don't see each other so often anymore; only two of the five even live in the same city, but we're still in touch, from time to time at least.  Sometimes we talk about movies.  There have been at least 2500 films released in the US, UK and Ireland since January 1st, 2000.  I've probably seen a third of them. The decade's end provides the opportunity to, as they say, discuss.  So please do join me.

My method?  Well, Top 100 lists are obvious, Top 50 too restrictive, our friend Glenn Kenny has gone for a happy medium, having just posted a Top 70 (and his comments section suggests it will be soon be a Top 71, as there's always at least one film that gets left out).  And so, emboldened by Glenn, I'll be posting some thoughts about the decade 2000-2009 over the next few weeks (My thoughts on Roger Corman's 'The Intruder', previously planned for today will have to wait).

So, if you're interested in my thoughts on ten years at the movies, let's make a start.

I'm going to do three posts on this topic - beginning with the most over-rated and under-rated films; then a 'runners-up' list; then a list of the best films of the decade.  These lists are, of their nature, entirely subjective, rooted in my particular prejudices, wounds, joys, knowledge and desire.  You may dearly love a film that isn't here; or you may loathe one that I adore.  That's fine with me - this list doesn't exist to validate or challenge anyone else's preferences (although I do want to challenge some of the accepted norms of what passes for entertainment, and to shine a light on some films that might otherwise be too easily ignored).

Some initial headlines:

• There are no films by Woody Allen on any of these lists, despite the fact he made ten films in this period.  I would list 7 of his films from the previous decade; 9 from the 80s; 6 from the 70s that I'd be happy to watch any day of the week; one of which I consider one of the wisest and most comforting films I've ever seen.  I guess I'll just say that we all want Woody to come back; and I'd be happy just to be working at 74 years old (Happy Birthday next week).
• There is only one movie by Martin Scorsese on my list of the best films of the decade, and it's not the one you're thinking.
• Ridley Scott isn't on the best-of either; he makes it onto the 'films I'm not supposed to like but did' part of the list; and he's disproportionately represented on the 'over-rated' list.
• I still haven't had the chance/been in the right zone to see the following: 'In the Mood for Love', 'Dancer in the Dark', 'Ivans XTC', 'The Pianist', 'Monster', 'The Fall', or 'The White Ribbon'.
• This decade saw the retirement from screen acting of Gene Hackman.  Having just seen the extraordinary (and troubling) Hackman-Marvin-Spacek-Ritchie thriller 'Prime Cut' for the first time last night, I am only confirmed in my view that one Gene Hackman film could have covered a multitude of 'Wanted'-types (for what it's worth, that Jolie-Freeman-Bekmambetov 'thriller's my nominee for the most graceless movie of the decade).  We also lost Robert Altman, who was making movies til the day he died and helps me understand (and feel at home in) America better than any other film-maker.
• I still wish that Kieslowski hadn't died in 1995; that River Phoenix was still with us; that Robert de Niro hadn't made any of the 19 (!) films he acted in this decade (the good news is 'Everybody's Fine', which we'll review next week; I'm not allowed to say much about it yet, but I'm sure it's ok to tell you that it's much, much better than most of us might have expected; we might even have a new Christmas classic on our hands.)
• I want someone to give Kelly Reichardt, Ramin Bahrani, Lukas Moodysson, Carlos Reygadas, Ray Lawrence, Paolo Sorrentino, John Hillcoat, Sean Penn, Rolf de Heer, John Carney, Tommy Lee Jones, James Marsh, Jason Lehel, Nicolas Klotz, Tom McCarthy, Philip Groning, and Sylvain Chomet the money to make whatever films they want.
• The best (and most diverse) career in directing in the 2000s?  Marc Forster.  Check out his filmography and let me know if I'm wrong.

And so, the lists begin:

Films of the Past Decade that I'm Not Supposed to Admit to Liking But Do

Finding Forrester: for being the only film in which Sean Connery cries without winking at the audience.

Cast Away: for a truly great central performance and honest engagement with the question of loss.

Thirteen Days: for being a political film about US foreign policy that lionises dialogue over threats; and turns that dialogue into the most exciting fuel for a thriller you could imagine.

Black Hawk Down: for trusting the audience with a recognition that war is horrifying, and that Somalis are human beings.

Crazy/Beautiful: for providing Kirsten Dunst with a platform for her considerably subtle acting chops, and giving the great Bruce Davison the meatiest role he had all decade.

Changing Lanes: for being far more intriguing about addiction and racism than its reputation would permit.

Frida: Julie Taymor's first utterly fascinating and visually astonishing film of the decade.

Across the Universe: Taymor's second.

The Hulk: Shot like a real comic book, presenting the struggle to get out from under your parents as the most titanic battle of all; best Nick Nolte rants of the decade.

Crash: It made me think about how we relate to each other; and that anything can happen.  That's what it was trying to do.  I know it's fashionable to denounce this film as if the fact that it feels staged (like a play, or, shall we say, a movie?) makes it the cinematic equivalent of demonic spawn; another way of looking at it would be to say that 'Crash' seems to have been critically mauled simply because it succeeded in what it was trying to do.

De-Lovely: The vastly undervalued Kevin Kline as Cole Porter in a film that comes alive with fantasy: perhaps the best musical of the decade.

Friday Night Lights: An American sports film which isn't afraid to let its subjects lose.

Shall We Dance: The most entertaining Richard Gere/J Lo dance flick you're ever likely to see.

Kingdom of Heaven: A much more thoughtful representation of Christians and Muslims fighting than had ever previously been filmed.

The Lord of the Rings: They're huge, they're brash, they're unsubtle, and Peter Jackson is far too quick to resort to sweeping overhead shots of battlefields and rivers.  But it actually does tell a fun story - with some archetypal meaning - very well; and you can't say fairer than that.

Inside Man: A thoroughly entertaining heist thriller with the best Christopher-Plummer-says-Dear-God scene in cinema history.  And a little bit of post-9/11 Spike Lee politicking too.

The Prestige: It tricked me, and I liked it.

Bobby: Like watching 'Airport' or 'Hotel' as written by Robert Frost with a touch of Naomi Klein.  When you're in the right mood, that's a good thing.

Apocalypto: Like being dragged behind that Raiders truck, Indy-style.  Except it was fun.

The Lost City: Andy Garcia's polemic about Castro's Cuba; politically skewed, but gorgeous to look at, and even moreso, to hear.

Kung Fu Panda: Amazingly enough, you will believe a Panda can fly.

Keeping the Faith: Amazingly enough, you will also believe that a Ben Stiller-Ed Norton/Rabbi-Priest comedy could remind you of Billy Wilder (and I've always liked him ;-))

Films I'm Either Supposed to Like but Don't; or Were Already Bad to Start With

Be Kind Rewind: The most disappointing missed opportunity ratio of trailer-to-actual-film I can think of

Watchmen: Took a brilliant piece of philosophical reflection and turned it into a blood bath that included the burning alive of an African American man by hot frying oil.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: To paraphrase Jett, I get older faster just by thinking about it.

Gladiator: Guys fight several times; there's a tiger; some guys in togas.  It's very loud.

A Beautiful Mind: Shockingly inaccurate film about serious mental health issues.

Religulous: Shockingly disingenuous film about religion.

An American Carol: Shockingly dishonest film about politics. (Great Robert Davi performance, though.)

K-Pax: Shockingly inaccurate film about serious mental health issues (part 2).

Pearl Harbor: The Second World War as fought by robots who didn't know it began before December 1941.

Swordfish: A pro-American terrorist film starring John Travolta and Halle Berry's chest.

Chicago: A film in which no discovery seems apparent: everything's in a plastic mold.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: A film in which one of the characters is doing graduate studies in 'Chinese' but hasn't learned that there's no such thing.

City of God: A well-edited film that made the horror of childhood violence look like a music video.

Anger Management: Perhaps the reason Jack Nicholson is now apparently semi-retired.

Kill Bill: A hymn of worship to female-aping-male-violence is not pro-women.

The Life of David Gale: A film that portrays anti-capital punishment activists as willing to be executed themselves to prove the point is as nuanced in its view of mental distress as 'A Beautiful Mind'.

Man on Fire: A film that tries to make Denzel Washington look like Jesus just after going on a murderous rampage, and portrays Mexico as hell on earth before printing an apology on the end credits.  Probably the most unpleasant experience I had at the movies in the past ten years.

The Motorcycle Diaries: Like Soderbergh's later (and pretty magnificent in some ways) film, this Che biopic refuses to engage with the dark side of Guevera.  It seems so committed to playing him as an angel that telling the truth (that he killed people; lots of people; and sometimes summarily) eludes it.

V for Vendetta: One of several films that seem to think that a really cool, like, way to make people happy, like, would be to blow everything UP, man, and, like kill everyone who disagrees with us.

The Last King of Scotland: Which purports to offer some psychological insight into human evil, but turns into nothing much more than a well-crafted chase film.

And finally, a film whose awfulness speaks for itself, but whose lived experience is like sitting beside someone who changes the channels every ten seconds while hitting you in the face with a frying pan:

Antichrist, John Cusack, the End of the World and the Re-birth of Art

Over at The Film Talk we've just posted our next podcast episode in which we discuss three films that I think are hugely important - 'Antichrist', 'Gaia', and '2012'.  If you're interested in the end of the world and how to stop it; the politics of nation-building; the difference between provocation and mental illness; and in hearing about a film so good it's close to miraculous, check it out here.

The Insatiable Moon: One of the Best Films of Next Year?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmfHkB-i3fA] I’m going to turn 35 in January, which feels old enough to consider myself a man, inexperienced enough to still feel irresponsible; halfway to still being younger than Warren Beatty, alive enough to reflect on what really matters.  And what really matters?  Friendship.  If, as my amazing friend John O’Donohue often said, our identities are dependent on our memories, and how we interpret them, then who I am is inextricably linked to my memories of things I have done with friends.  Strange to think that I’ve been doing The Film Talk for nearly one tenth of my life.  Of course, if Operation Save The Film Talk is the resounding success we all hope it will be, perhaps it will outlast even me (and hey – if you haven’t signed up to support the show and site yet, please do click the link here and consider us – we have some gorgeous gifts on offer this week).  But for now, one tenth of my life still seems like a lot.

Which – in one of my patented not-all-that-subtle segues – brings me to Mike and Rosemary Riddell, writer & film-maker, former Baptist pastor and current family court judge, wearer of the most amazing hats and stylised gin afficianado (in appropriate does), a man who considers his dog a spiritual director, a woman who combines sass and spirit in measures I had never seen anywhere else before I met her, friends beyond my previous imagining of what friends could be; and people about whom you’ll be hearing a fair amount in the next year, because they are making a film whose script mingles the sensitivity of ‘Paris, Texas‘ with the humour of ‘Whale Rider‘, and hangs on the most unusual narrative hook this side of ‘Cold Souls‘: Arthur, a middle-aged homeless Maori fella with schizophrenia in Ponsonby, near Auckland, and believes that he is called to impregnate an unhappily married woman named Margaret with a view to her giving birth to the second incarnation of Jesus.  Simple enough.  He looks at the moon a lot – he made it, you see.  He thinks about life.  He gives good gifts to broken people.  Meanwhile, a cynical television reporter, doubting preacher, and friendly boarding-house owner dance their own way into a deeper appreciation of meaning.

Rosemary Riddell and Tom Burstyn on set

‘The Insatiable Moon‘ is the second best novel I’ve ever read; the script needs no such qualifier: I’ve been excited about this movie since I read the book 12 years ago.  Which means I’ve known Mike and Rose for over a third of my life.  They’re making the film at the moment, with the mighty actor Rawiri Paratene (Koro the grandfather in ‘Whale Rider’) starring as Arthur, and cinematography by Tom Burstyn, while Rosemary directs and Mike watches his words come alive.  The journey to production has been long and tortuous, with funders in and out, some well-known cast members withdrawing after the budget was cut, and only a few weeks ago a step-back-from-the-brink decision not to cancel the film altogether.

Mike Riddell, Tom Burstyn, Rawiri Paratene on set

Mike’s blogging the production here – there’s a delightful sense of a film being born; entirely appropriate, given the novel’s themes of birth and re-birth.  (You can become a fan on Facebook here too.)  The book’s been out of print for a while, but that will surely correct itself when the film is released.  So I’m sending good wishes from God is Not Elsewhere – we know how hard it is to make a film; we’re always thrilled when people put their heart and souls into cinema; if ‘The Insatiable Moon’ ends up being half the film it could be, the literary invention of Arthur in the mid-1990s will have been a gift to the world.

[The video above was made a couple of years ago to promote the fundraising for the film - but it gives a taste of things to come.]