Anger

I moved a table at a sidewalk cafe in Cambridge, NZ, the other day.  A man growled at me.  It was his table.  I didn't know this.  He growled at me again.  I got angry.  He was already angry*.  We parted, and I remembered the Bertrand Russell quotation that I had seen a week earlier, taken from 'The Free Man's Worship', and quoted in Frank Schaeffer's wonderful book 'Patience with God'.  Maybe this is patronising (I don't intend it as such); maybe it's too melodramatic (unless you see all of life as sacred, in which case all of life can be dramatic too); maybe it's just an excuse for a blog post.  But here it is: “United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need, of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves.”

* I have just been asked by a resident of Cambridge to state unequivocally that 'we're not all like that' and 'it was probably someone from Auckland visiting for the day'.  Happy to oblige.

Frugal Film-making on Jervois Road

Director Rose Riddell and D.O.P. Tom Burstyn on set

I'm in New Zealand writing the production blog for 'The Insatiable Moon', a movie based on the 1997 novel by Mike Riddell - a magic realist story of mental health and miracles among marginalised people in Auckland.  I'll re-post some of the journey here too - you can follow the whole story here.

There was a time when the term ‘independent film’ was a near-guarantee of quality or at least interest – making a film like ‘sex lies and videotape’ or ‘Reservoir Dogs’ required so much superhuman effort that it was a miracle if they were even finished. Distributors, alas, needed an economic reason to invest, rather than merely their aesthetic sense, and if your small film with no stars didn't happen to be lucky enough to attract the attention of a wealthy gatekeeper, it wasn’t likely to be released.

It was easier for big-budget special effects-laden extravaganzas to get seen simply because audiences can be trusted to flock to them simply because we all want to see ever more spectacular ways of destroying New York, or to the latest film starring whoever happens to be really famous at the moment merely on account of the fact that they're in it. Without the stars, or a decapitated Statue of Liberty for much of the audience, there is no show. Or so the superficial received wisdom goes...

Independent film-making eventually adopted major stars, and you’re now as likely to see a marquee name in an independent film as you are to see a well-known character actor from the 1970s in a Roland Emmerich disaster movie. The lines have become blurred – indie has become cool, and of course, indie has become far more accessible than ever. The equipment has never been as cheap, the opportunities to learn from the internet never more available. Everybody wants to make a movie. And sometimes remarkable things occur when people put the resources of time and talent and money to the service of a human story. Tom Burstyn, Director of Photography on ‘The Insatiable Moon’ has been on both sides of the indie/corporate canyon, having shot more than 70 movies, and worked with actors including Oprah Winfrey, Matt Dillon, Jessica Tandy; he shot Paul Newman’s late classic ‘Where the Money Is’, a vastly underrated, smart little film, and has worked on massive mini series such as a recent endeavour to represent the life of Marco Polo on screen.

Why, then, do we find him in a small Baptist church on Jervois Road in Ponsonby, shooting with a hand-held Fig Rig, only using two lights, and with a crew small enough to fit in my living room?

One obvious thing about Tom is his love of the local, so when we sat down for some food to talk about his philosophy of cinema, it was for the most amazing bowl of Vietnamese chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had. He had some mint spring rolls, but they sat quietly on the plate while he talked at length about what he calls 'frugal film-making'.

Tom’s critique of the status quo could be summed up as his view that ‘Producers are too often obsessed with gimmickry rather than being interested in expressing an idea’ – so fifteen lights and computer generated graphics and an exploding suspension bridge take precedence over the way the breeze is bending flowers and the look in a character’s eye. ‘The system of film-making is fear based,’ he says, with the ultimate fear being that the film being made won’t turn a massive profit for whatever bank owns it. Of course, the possibility of profit is partly determined by how much is being spent on the movie in the first place; and fear, you might imagine, and creativity do not happy bedfellows make.

Hence Tom’s passion for frugal film-making; a manifesto rooted in the notion that, as he puts it, once you have ‘a good script, a good director, and a good cast…artistry is taking things out, not adding them’. (You can read more about frugal film-making here.) Tom’s made two films with a crew of two; so ‘The Insatiable Moon’ must feel like a riot; but as I’ve observed him work over the past few days, it’s clear that his unruffled demeanour pays dividends among the rest of the crew. Too often film sets and other creative endeavours are full of anxiety; writers will perhaps contend that you need this – that a creative foment can occur when you take a work seriously enough to be anxious about it. Fair enough – but I think us writers would also say that, for the most part, it’s up to us to feel the anxiety and turn it into words before we arrive on set.

The principles of frugal film-making being applied to ‘The Insatiable Moon’ certainly make it a set not driven by fear; but it doesn’t diminish the quality of the work either – the actors are given room to breathe because they’re not worried about being in the right position vis a vis an invisible Godzilla that will be painted in later; and they’re not worn out by unnecessary multiple takes. The people embodying the characters of the people on Jervois Road go in, incarnate their lines, and the crew collect the information. Tom Burstyn once wrote a document called ‘Kamikaze Film-making: A Sociopolitical Manifesto on the Enlightenment of a Film-Set’; I’m not sure what the ‘kamikaze’ was referring to, because I think he’s slaying myths about the way movies are supposed to be made, rather than shooting himself (or anyone else) in the foot.

81 Films of the Decade

In the year 2000 I was 25 and single, finishing up a Ph.D., stressed out of my tree, working with a small NGO on peace and non-violence issues, trying figure out what it was that I wanted to be when I grew up.

Now as 2010 approaches, I’m a month away from being 35 and married, I haven’t published the Ph.D., but am less stressed, working as a writer and doing some other things, and trying to figure out what it is that I want to be when I grow up.  The consolations of life this past decade have been the same all along – the richness of friendships old and new, the life-force that is sparked when I look at natural beauty – of mountains or oceanscapes or my lover’s face, the enlightenment or delight that is present when I read a well-calibrated sentence or hear astonishing music, turning over to go to sleep, and the feeling of potential that I still hope for every time the lights go down when I’m at the movies.

This has been a tough decade for many of the people that I presume read this blog – we’ve been confronted by the unintended side-effects of globalization, and taught to see life as a way to be daily afraid; we've experienced an economic tightening that came as a shock; we’ve all been angered by this politician or that; some of us have even lost a great deal in the wars that are still being fought.  At the same time, of course, some of us have seen peace come to places no one ever believed were ripe for such change.

I may be naïve – in fact, I know I am – but, whether I'm experiencing life as what Ignatian spirituality calls desolation or consolation,  I still mark my time in movies.  I’m writing this from a café in Ponsonby, New Zealand, where I’m visiting friends who are making a movie from a script I read five years ago, and a novel I read when Bill Clinton was still in office.  Things come dropping slow, says Yeats; things come dropping slow.  Things like the first time I was wet-eyed at the climax of ‘Together/Tilsammans’, and had confirmed to me the possibility that we might eventually learn to get along with each other, even in what appears to be our species' infancy; the first time I saw the little boy read his thoughts about how old he feels to his grandmother in her coffin at the end of ‘Yi-Yi’; the first time I saw Hugh Jackman decide that his girl was right to ask him to stop working and just love her instead of looking for the Fountain of youth; the first time I saw Bryce Dallas Howard choose the possibility of death outside the Village for the sake of keeping her love alive; the first time I watched the android David pray to the blue fairy to be reunited with his mother;  well, these times were a long time ago.  Much happened to me in the past ten years; some of it amazing, some of it difficult enough to wonder if I’d get through it.  But I did.  I imagine it's the same for you.  And the movies marked my time.  And for these, I’m grateful.

As for today, well, my indulgent week of attempting a comprehensive retrospective of the films of the decade is drawing to a close.  These posts have been so long that I feel the need to post edited highlights - that's a task for the weekend.  For now, my final list: The Best Films of the Decade

A couple of caveats before we proceed.  I write as a working film critic (part-time), who receives little or no direct financial compensation due to the collapse of traditional models for resourcing film journalism.  I lived most of the decade in Belfast, northern Ireland, and have for the past 16 months been resident in the US American South.  My opportunities to see films have been circumscribed therefore by the 'regional' status of my home towns, and by whatever was on offer in the places I've been privileged to travel to, until, latterly Netflix has opened up a world previously inaccessible to those of us who did not live in NYC or LA or London, or get paid to go to film festivals.  You may therefore look at my list and wonder why this or that film didn't make it; and while I hope that it's because I had the chance to see and evaluate it for myself (in which case you may find it on one of my earlier lists of under- and over-rated films, and some that I think deserve a second look but which I didn't feel should be on this list), but it's also possible that I just haven't had the opportunity.  So I'd be very happy to hear from anyone your recommendations of films you hold dear from the past decade that don't appear on this list; I'll be glad to watch those that I'm able.

Second, I want to make a point about the lens through which we consider films 'great', 'favourite', 'important' or 'best'.  The latter is easy - it's not a competition, and although it is of course possible to evaluate one piece of art relative to another, I'd much rather let each speak for itself; or at least be judged on the merits of what it's trying to do.  In that regard, 'La vie en Rose' and 'Dreamgirls' or 'Inglourious Basterds' and 'The Matrix Revolutions' are perhaps more easily comparable than '2012' and 'Goodbye Solo' or 'Japon' and 'Lost in Translation'.  Each of these films does a more or less excellent job of what it's attempting (yes, even 2012: listen to our podcast here and join the debate if you like); I happen to like one of them more than the others.  But the category of 'best' doesn't seem to have any point to it when I'd like to encourage you to watch all of them.

Similarly, I'd like to comment on how it has become fashionable to equate critical maturity with downgrading the value of comedy and romance; and that the harder a film is to penetrate, the better it must be.  I'm grateful to people like Richard Brody (who has the courage to rate 'Knocked Up' alongside 'Eloge de l'amour' on his list); but still, an openness to films that are usually reduced to being called 'heart-warming' is too often apparently seen as something embarrassing, to be hidden if one wants to be taken seriously as a critic.  Now, of course, I want to be taken seriously, or at least I want to be read - otherwise why would I write this post? - but I don't write and talk about films in order to prove myself a 'better' critic than anyone else.  That route may appeal to some, but I would suggest there's a reason why the near-superhuman art critic character in Coppola's 'Tetro' is called 'Alone'.  I write about movies because they move me.  And I want to tell people about it, so that they might be moved too.  And this telling is a privilege; for who am I to tell anyone anything? Well, here's a little of who I am:

I am rapt in admiration for 'Andrei Rublev' and 'Solaris' and 'The Sacrifice'; and 'Fanny and Alexander'; and 'Novocento'; and 'Ikiru'.  But those ones are easy - you're supposed to think Tarkovsky and Bergman and Bertolucci and Kurosawa are Something.  What's harder, in a critical culture which equates cynicism with maturity, is to admit to yourself that you also were thrilled by 'Wall-E' and that you think that 'The Dark Knight' is philosophically profound, and that there's more going on in 'Back to the Future' than fun with DeLoreans and plutonium.  So, here's what I want to invite you to: My list of the 81 films of the past decade that really made an impact on me, that I admired deeply, that, if I was forced to admit it, some part of me thinks really are 'the best'.  I didn't write it to make anyone else feel left out - so please don't get angry if your choices aren't here: write your own list, put it in the comments section, and let's talk.  Not so that we can persuade each other where we're wrong, but so that we might, together, shed a little more light.

So, to the list:

Adaptation: Makes the nightmarish process of writing anything (From initial inspiration to Who the hell am I to be writing this?  Why will anyone care?  I’m a complete failure.  Help me.  Aha, here’s a new idea…) seem a little less lonely.

All or Nothing: Mike Leigh’s film about a taxi driver trying to hold it together gives Timothy Spall the chance to have one of the most powerful breakdowns in cinema; thoughtful portrayals of masculinity got a good run at the movies in the past ten years, and his is one of the most memorable.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: The birth of American celebrity as the end of innocence; and Andrew Dominik as the next Terrence Malick.

The Barbarian Invasions: Denys Arcand follows up ‘The Decline of the American Empire’ 16 years later, looking at the same French-Canadian intellectuals we sneered at in the late 80s, and manages to create an utterly compelling film of otherwise boring people talking about, and experiencing death; leaving me wanting to take my own life more seriously.

Cache: Georges goes to sleep instead of facing his culpability in genocide; Haneke’s films confront the audience with what it means to be a citizen of an interdependent world.  There are no laughs, yet.

Children of Men: So many recent films sought to deal with how human beings would behave in the face of catastrophe; Clive Owen stands for the possibility

A Christmas Tale: As rich a stew as Fanny and Alexander, family as it’s meant to be seen: all over the place, falling apart, and the answer to everything.

Collateral: The post-modern jazz-loving serial assassin’s ‘Goodbye Solo’.

The Corporation: Smartest documentary of the decade: not merely a polemic, but a genuine intellectual exploration.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Spectacular vision; more powerful than ‘Atonement’ in its revelation of how a person can compensate for their own destructiveness.

The Dancer Upstairs: John Malkovich not only directed the best use of Nina Simone’s music in a film, but made an honest story about the moral complexity of political revolution.

Downfall: One of two portrayals of Hitler this decade with real substance (the other is Noah Taylor in 'Max'): if he wasn't a human being like the rest of us, how can he be understood?

The Dreamers: Gorgeous evocation of Paris 1968; Bertolucci has a habit of making one great movie a decade, and this was it.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:  Chases its tail without eating it.

Etre et Avoir: A documentary that felt like watching new life being born.

Far from Heaven: As if Todd Haynes had made a secret film on a Douglas Sirk set; hidden in a time capsule, and only now available for us mere mortals to watch.  One of several films that revealed the surprise of Dennis Quaid as a compelling screen presence.

The Fog of War: An utterly necessary film when it was released; now too.

Goodbye Solo: Bahrani frames real life and shoots it; a film whose characters are so realistic that their suffering compelled me to flee the cinema for some fresh air.   And that’s a compliment.

Gran Torino: Clint takes Dirty Harry to the fairest conclusion: a recognition that the only way violence works is when you absorb it on behalf of others.

Hero: See Gran Torino

I Heart Huckabees: You need a philosophy Ph.D. to understand it, but not to enjoy it.

Inglourious Basterds: A film buff’s love letter to cinema, a star is born in Christoph Waltz, and a magnificent subversion of the myth of redemptive violence.

In the Loop: The best political satire since ‘Dr Strangelove’ – a film so smart and on the money about the venality of the run-up to the war in Iraq that it stops being funny after the first ten minutes.

Into Great Silence: A feature length meditation.  But not in the same way that film critics usually mean when we say 'meditation'.

It’s All Gone Pete Tong:  Brings beauty out of hell.

Jump Tomorrow: The most beguiling love story of the decade.

Letters From Iwo Jima: Clint Eastwood wouldn't want to be known as a liberal, one presumes; but if 'liberal' means, as my former colleague David Tombs would say, 'someone who believes the possibilities of truth have not been exhausted', then Clint's a liberal: his courageous film allows Japanese soldiers to speak for themselves, and stands as an astonishing example of the promotion of re-humanisation in times of war.

The Life Aquatic: Bill Murray’s encounter with the shark that killed his friend may be the greatest love scene in Wes Anderson’s work.

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Magnificent exploration of the paranoid style in American culture; one of the best alien invasion dramas I’ve ever seen.

Mary and Max: A compelling, vastly entertaining stop motion animated film that treats Asperger’s syndrome with greater honesty than you’d expect.

The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions: I know saying this puts my reputation at stake (if I even have one by now): but these sequels were deeply misunderstood.  Evidence?  Can you name another big budget action film series that ends with the opposing parties being reconciled through a non-violent negotiation?  Doesn't this make The Matrix trilogy one that at least has a compelling central idea, and vast imagination compared with its reputation?

The Messenger: Sparse and painful, the postscript to the Iraq war film arc: what happens when the guys don’t come home?

Miami Vice: See Jett's post.  It helped me understand what I was thinking.

Monsoon Wedding: Exuberant and realistic, Mira Nair’s film envelopes the audience in the complications of family gatherings; a perfect marriage of Bollywood and New York sensibilities.

My Life without Me: Isabel Coixet makes delicately observed, powerfully emotional films about women facing awful truths; Sara Polley here takes a character arc that could have been cheesy, and makes it into a deeply moving representation of realistic trauma and gift.  She and Coixet did the same in The Secret Life of Words.

No Country for Old Men: The only film I can think of that climaxes with a serial killer giving up violence without being forced to do so by a gun or handcuffs.

O Brother Where Art Thou: A work of satiric and heartfelt genius; which recognises in its treatment of racism that the best defence against horror is to mock it.

Old Joy: A bittersweet exploration of the ebb and flow of friendship.

Rabbit-Proof Fence: It’s a polemic, but totally compelling, and beautifully put together.

Shine a Light: The reason I say at the start of every episode of The Film Talk that ‘Fanny and Alexander’ and ‘Shine a Light’ are the same film is simple: they’re both about the way men fail to understand women.  Scorsese makes better use of his cameras here than in ‘The Aviator’ or ‘The Departed’, Keith and Ronnie look like they’re teenage boys sneaking a smoke behind the bike sheds, Mick looks like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and Albert Maysles keeps on working.

Solaris: Steven Soderbergh called this a new version of the Stanislaw Lem book rather than a remake of Tarkovsky's film; but he ended up making something unique in recent cinema (at least as I remember it): a Westernised version of an Eastern story that helps interpret the original so well that I can't think about either of them without thinking of both.

Superbad: The nuances of adolescent male friendship never were so delicately handled.  Nor gross.  Nor funny.  Nor tender.

Synecdoche New York: I have a feeling this film will only become more like a friend as I watch and re-watch; nothing less than an attempt at conveying in cinema the experience of one person building a whole life.

Tarnation: Jonathan Caouette's magnificent, searing documentary is his own synecdoche.

Ten Canoes: Stunning light shines in this perfectly realized tale of our common mythic origins; shot as if the crew had traveled back in time and hidden their cameras.

Ten Minutes Older: The Cello/One Moment: Along with Sean Penn/Ernest Borgnine's piece in '11.09.01', the best short film of the decade: footage of Rudof Hrusinsky, an actor unknown to audiences outside the Czech Republic culled together from his 57 year long career; we see him looking more beautiful than the young Brad Pitt, and older than the Skeksis in ‘The Dark Crystal’; a whole life unfolds in ten minutes.

Tetro: Coppola's light-bearing family drama; a film which he told us marked the early stages of the 'second half' of his career; he makes Klaus Maria Brandauer look like Brando, gets Vincent Gallo to calm down for the camera, and creates something utterly compelling.

There Will Be Blood: A story about oil and greed that isn’t a metaphor for anything.  It’s just a story about oil and greed.

U2 3-D: A concert film that becomes an experience of immersive religion: the Bono-ego may be easy to criticize, but when he sings to his Buenos Aires audience of his hope that we might all ‘wake up in the dream’ of Dr King, he’s standing in a tradition of prophetic utterance that reaches very far back, and is ore vitally necessary today perhaps than ever, simply because it is so undervalued.

The Visitor: The troubles of immigration and grief meet over a djembe in a vision of New York that looks far more inviting than it has since the days when Woody Allen made it seem like heaven on earth.

And finally....Films that edged their way into my top ten.  As I am both a) a film critic with a big heart, and b) undisciplined, there are 28 films on this list.

28: The Dark Knight: George W Bush’s retirement tribute video; the best-looking critique of the ancient scapegoat myth that ever made a billion dollars.

27: The Triplets of Belleville: Extraordinary animation mingles Josephine Baker, the French mafia, and pro-cycling to create a delirious story of familial love.

26: A Serious Man: The Coen Brothers retell the story of Job as a middle-class tragedy in late 60s Minnesota; a wise evocation of the strengths and failings of good and bad religion.

25: Junebug: A most delicately observed story of culture clash; the nice surprise is that the conservative family folks end up being the most attractive of all.

24: Wall-E: The first forty minutes have a sense of place comparable to Blade Runner and Lawrence of Arabia; the second half is a coruscating satire of consumerism; the whole thing is a masterpiece.

23: The Road: The end of the world is so plausible they don’t have to explain it; the fact that virtue outlasts hopelessness even moreso.

22: Once: Like a home-movie musical; utterly convincing story of a love that had to be requited through friendship alone.

21: Man on Wire: A film about a man living totally free; which makes walking on a tightrope two feet off the ground in his garden look spectacular.

20: Gaia: One possible future for cinema: $28000 to shoot a treatment (no script), using natural light, live locations,  non-professional actors, and an unpaid crew letting the spirit guide them to put their love on screen.

19: Sexy Beast: Existential gangsterism for anyone who ever wanted to retire to Spain; Jonathan Glazer’s visual style makes a perfect marriage with a script that doesn’t care about what the audience expects.

18: The Hours: An unfilmable novel became an undefinable film – a central character abandons her family and we’re not sure whether or not we’re supposed to like her; Meryl Streep gets the only decent role she’s had in years (with the exception of her having enormous fun in ‘Mamma Mia’ – a film that is only not enjoyable if you don’t know how to laugh at silly exuberance); and Philip Glass writes his best score since ‘Koyaanisqatsi’.  Two characters take their own lives, and one is at least indirectly responsible for the death of another, but you emerge from watching ‘The Hours’ full of gratitude for being alive.

17: Talk to Her: Almodovar wants us to see majesty in small things, and possibility in what look like dead ends (a long term coma produces new life; a near-paralysis leads to the birth of love; a prison suicide sets its victim free).

16: The New World: When Colin Farrell’s Captain John Smith first sees America, it’s framed through the cinema-screen shaped wooden window of his boat prison; Malick is showing us our first vision of the new world as if America always has been a movie.  In his three previous features love was ungraspable – always either out of reach or confused with passion.  In ‘The New World’, Pocahontas narrates her realization – and Malick’s contention – that love is nothing less than the meaning of everything.

15: Lawless Heart: A little-seen masterpiece of British drama, ‘Rashomon’-style; several different takes on the same story reveal the layers of complexity in every human relationship, the consequences of grief, and the way we are driven to seek the numinous in the everyday.

14: Amores Perros: I’m beginning to realise that all the films I like the most are about the same thing: the redemption of otherwise broken men.  Except when they're about robots.

13: Lantana: Brilliant little Australian drama, evocative of Altman’s ‘Short Cuts’ – there’s a murder mystery and a love story and a lot of regret, but mostly a desire for truth and love.

12: Stranger than Fiction: Will Ferrell can act; Dustin Hoffman can teach literature; Emma Thompson can write books; Queen Latifah (apologies to Mo'nique for the earlier confusion) can edit them; Marc Forster is the most versatile director working in Hollywood today; and this film is the best revelation of the power of art to change a person’s perspective, and the risk of death that every publicly creative act is.

11: La Question Humaine/Heartbeat Detector: An elegant, overwhelming psychological drama about the legacy of when commerce leverages humanity.

10: The Royal Tenenbaums: The Magnificent Ambersons, finished.  (Calm down, Jett, it's only a list ;-))

9: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada: The best depiction of friendship, and loyalty between men, not to mention immigration, racism, and the yearning for meaning that characterises this generation.

8: Japon: The aftermath of Carlos Reygadas’ film has the distinction of being one of the very few that I have felt compelled (as a non-smoker, most of the time) to have a cigarette.  Reygadas may be the natural heir to Tarkovsky, for his lush images of humans in nature always collide with their yearning for God.  The last scene of ‘Japon’ may be the most pessimistic thing you’ll see on screen this side of the 2004 Bush-Kerry election results.

7: Into the Wild: The tragedy of a man who realized that happiness is made most real when it’s shared once it was too late for him to save himself; the adventure of a man who decided to actually do something with his life.

6: The Consequences of Love: Sorrentino’s and Toni Servillo’s other incredible collaboration of the decade: a mafia revenge drama that ends up being about regret for lost opportunity, and the joy of childhood friendship.

5: The Village: Perhaps the most misunderstood film on this list; a deeply thoughtful, serious questioning of how to respond when everything is terrifying; featuring one of the most heroic acts in cinema, leading to one of the most realistic happy-but-ambivalent endings I’ve ever seen.  Trust me.

4: Together: Presents the notion that human community, the sharing of resources, the bearing of each other’s burdens, and real forgiveness might actually be possible.  (And does it far more realistically than ‘Chocolat’.)

3: The Fountain: The most divisive film on the show, as you know.  I probably can’t persuade the naysayers; and those of you that love it know why.  But if you haven’t seen it yet, just give it a chance, will ya?

2: Yi-Yi: Edward Yang made this masterpiece about family life and its collision with commerce his last film.  It made me want to be a better person.

1: AI Artificial Intelligence: A film which ends with the protagonist having his dream come true, and then dying is not a film with a happy ending.  But if it’s Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s vision of Brian Aldiss’ short story ‘Super Toys Last All Summer Long’, it’s a visually astonishing, profoundly spiritual movie about (along with the de-humanisiang effects of technology, the emptiness of lives unthinkingly circumscribed by privatised capitalism, and the difference between dependent and interdependent families) how the meaning of life is found at least partly in how we deal with its inevitable end.  It may not be stretching a point to say that 'AI' made me think of what Bertrand Russell might have been talking about when he said: ‘United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love.’

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'.