Oh, America.

Altman’s Nashville is so good because watching it is such an even balance of cerebral and visceral experiences; a tug of war that is laid out in the film’s opener in which a calculated, but solid, song about the nation’s bicentennial is being recorded in the same building as a hootin’ and hollerin’ gospel choir who allows their emotions to guide the music. Meanwhile, Henry Gibson’s Haven Hamilton, singing 200 Years, stops, and restarts, his song’s recording every time his pianist, Frog, makes a mistake. It’s a perfect pre-summary of one the film’s themes: the censorship of emotion and instinct in favor of the clean, measured, and reserved. Altman’s film is a hybrid of this duality, structurally and narratively. It’s an intuitive, fluid film about these structured procedures; dirty politics and soulful music, portraying events that are simultaneously scripted and natural. Some of the actors are real life musicians, and some of them aren’t, but everyone sings their own part, regardless. I know this is nothing too unique, especially today with a plethora of music biopics that use this strategy (Walk The Line, Ray, and, for one song at least, La môme), but it’s so significant here because of the beef that some of these characters receive when they don’t sing well. Altman’s Nashville is one defined by its inhabitants’ ability to sing (which may not be far from the real thing). Barbara Jeanne, who at many points is treated like a god in this town, and is the beating heart of this film, is booed off the stage when her mental state prevents her from completing a set. She and her husband shun the political backdrop of the moment, refusing to promote any party on the stage, and the moment she succumbs and performs in front of a banner at a huge political rally, it spells the end for her, and, thus, the film itself. Like in life, you can’t do it all, but it doesn’t mean that some aren’t expected to.

I’d never noticed how much Jacques Tati there was in the film until this most recent viewing, but the film’s structure and humor have notable similarities to the French master’s work. Crisscrossing dialogue in crowds (and with the monstrous cast and scope of this film, there is almost always a crowd) makes for a dense sound design that drops in snips and pieces of conversations from major characters and off-screen extras that mixes into absurd arrangements that recall great moments from Playtime‘s invention convention. The freeway pile up could be right out of the script for Trafic, providing one of several moments for almost the entire cast to interact candidly with each other. And then there is the complexity of the mise-en-scène, which, also like Playtime, often gives the viewer over a dozen points in the frame at a given moment in which there is significant action taking place. Especially at the opries and rallies, there are things that I caught while seeing this in the theatre that I never even detected on the DVD. Much of it is insignificant silliness, like a brief scuffle between strangers or a little kid up to no good, but it adds to the chaos of the time and place that are no doubt important in Altman’s vision.

Seeing this film and appreciating it more each time makes it more and more difficult to perceive Altman’s similarly realized Short Cuts as having much weight. It is, formally, almost a direct copy of Nashville. The looming, ominous helicopters spraying Los Angeles with insecticides, mirroring the patrolling van promoting one of the candidates through megaphones across Nashville, unite each city superficially by creating an element that one knows the characters all share as a common experience. The fixation on celebrity, the mundanity and plotlessness, and even the running time is mimicked in the inferior copy. Altman’s better homage to Nashville was his final film, A Prairie Home Companion, focusing especially on the music, comparatively folky and music-hally, lined with American tradition, celebrating life despite the unavoidability of death, as in the devastating “It Don’t Worry Me” redux that closes Nashville’s curtain after its beating heart has been shot.

I’d never seen anything Star Trek related before this film, not one episode, and not one movie. I was familiar with it enough, though. I knew about Spock and Captain Kirk and the guys with the strange foreheads and the space ship. I even think I tried to get into it at one point when i was little but got bored and turned it off. Born in the mid-80s, I just assumed it was too late to get into it, it would require too much back-tracking and education of the Star Trek principles and all that. And frankly I just don’t have an interest in science fiction fantasy. So, J. J. Abrams seems to have set out to make the Star Trek film exactly for someone like me; someone that really doesn’t give a damn about the frontier and its sci-fi fantasy genre. Abrams has made, with his Star Trek vision, an action film with Star Trek names and costumes and lingo. Out with one unappealing, nerdy – yet stylized and original – aesthetic and tone, and in with an even more rancid, blockbuster facelift. How every self-proclaimed Trekkie in the world isn’t burning crosses on Abrams’ lawn after this film is beyond me, let alone that so many are clamoring for a sequel. This film’s quality is on par with every single Star Wars ‘update,’ another franchise I never cared for but still had enough knowledge of to be offended by the inanity of George Lucas’ pathetic grasps at duplicating a nostalgia that cannot die peacefully, or soon enough.

Fanboys might wet their pants when the original Spock shows up in an elaborate plot twist, and they’ll probably shed a tear and applaud as he says that “Live long and prosper” line (which is obviously the raison d‘être of his presence in the film, and thus his entire subplot), but one wonders why a fan would be proud instead of angry at this exploitation, getting poor old Spock to eke out the line with his raspy voice, no doubt a whimper of what he used to be. Imagine if Mohammad Ali were brought in to fight a climatic match in Mann’s Ali for an idea of the embarrassment. Just watch Spock say it on the DVD if the slogan empowers you so much. I suppose the idea behind a project like this is that Trekkies watch modern action films and enjoy them well enough, but occasionally will catch a scene and think ‘man, imagine how awesome/hilarious that would have been if Spock/Kirk/whoever else had done/said that!’ And then we have it realized here. And then there will be more, and it will be the same film again and again, same explosions, same empty nostalgic references, and no invention or development or progression of any kind; just more bastardization of the past.

This is a dynamic list, so it’ll be updated each time I see a film which had its world premiere in 2009 that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

1. Wild Grass (Alain Resnais)
2. In Comparison (Harun Farocki)
3. Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)
4. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
5. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu)
6. Happy End (Jean-Marie & Arnaud Larrieu)
7. Rapt (Lucas Belvaux)
8. Ne change rien (Pedro Costa)
9. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
10. Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont)

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2009 (applies to films made before the 21st century; obviously, this list will remain static.)

1. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
2. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
3. A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)
4. Where is the Friend’s Home? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
5. Cria Cuervos… (Carlos Saura, 1976)
6. Train of Shadows (José Luis Guerín, 1997)
7. News From Home (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
8. The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966)
9. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987)
10. Benilde, or The Virgin Mother (Manoel de Oliveira, 1975)

Other 2009 films I’ve seen (Alphabetical)

• About Elly (Asghar Farhadi)
• Act of God (Jennifer Baichwal)
• After Last Season (Mark Region)
• Ajami (Yaron Shani & Scandar Copti)
• Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio)
• All Fall Down (Philip Hoffman)
• Amer (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani)
• The Anchorage (Anders Edström & C.W. Winter)
• Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
• Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette)
• Art & Copy (Doug Pray)
• Audition (Nelofer Pazira)
• Avatar (James Cameron)
• The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
• Beeswax (Andrew Bujalski)
• Best Worst Movie (Michael Stephenson)
• Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)
• The Box (Richard Kelly)
• Bright Star (Jane Campion)
• Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodóvar)
• Brüno (Larry Charles)
• Call of the Wild (Richard Gabai)
• Carcasses (Denis Côté)
• Cat Ladies (Christie Callan-Jones)
• Chloe (Atom Egoyan)
• A Christmas Carol (Robert Zemeckis)
• City of Life and Death (Lu Chuan)
• Clubland (Eric Geringas)
• Coraline (Henry Selick)
• The Cove (Louie Psihoyos)
• Crab Trap (Oscar Ruiz Navia)
• Craneway Event (Tacita Dean)
• Disco and Atomic War (Jaak Kilmi)
• Disorder (Huang Weikai)
• District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)
• Double Take (Johan Grimonprez)
• Double Tide (Sharon Lockhart)
• Daniel & Ana (Michel Franco)
• Drag Me To Hell (Sam Raimi)
• Duplicity (Tony Gilroy)
• Eastern Plays (Kamen Kalev)
• Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
• Eden is West (Costa-Gavras)
• Eighteen (Jang Kun-jae)
• Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé)
• Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
• The Exploding Girl (Bradley Rust Gray)
• Face (Tsai Ming-liang)
• Farewell (Ditteke Mensink)
• The Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Løve)
• Fig Trees (John Greyson)
• The Final Destination (David R. Ellis)
• Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
• The Forest (Piotr Dumala)
• 45365 (Bill Ross VI & Turner Ross)
• Gamer (Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor)
• General Orders No. 9 (Robert Persons)
• The Girl on the Train (André Téchiné)
• The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh)
• Greetings From the Woods (Mikel Cee Karlsson)
• The Happiest Girl in the World (Radu Jude)
• A Hard Name (Alan Zweig)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates)
• Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea)
• The Hole (Joe Dante)
• Humpday (Lynn Shelton)
• I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)
• I Am Not Your Friend (György Pálfi)
• I Killed My Mother (Xavier Dolan)
• I Love You Phillip Morris (Glenn Ficarra & John Requa)
• I Shot My Love (Tomer Heymann)
• I Went To the Zoo the Other Day (Luo Li)
• In the Loop (Armando Iannucci)
• Independencia (Raya Martin)
• The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh)
• The Invention of Dr. NakaMats (Astrup Schröder)
• Irene (Alain Cavalier)
• Jackpot (Alan Black)
• Kanikôsen (Sabu)
• Karaoke (Chris Chong Chan Fui)
• Katalin Varga (Peter Strickland)
• Kill Daddy Goodnight (Michael Glawogger)
• Kinatay (Brillante Mendoza)
• The King of Escape (Alain Guiraudie)
• La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (Frederick Wiseman)
• Lebanon (Samuel Maoz)
• The Legacy (Bernard Émond)
• Let Each One Go Where He May (Ben Russell)
• Letters to Father Jacob (Klaus Härö)
• Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)
• Like You Know it All (Hong Sang-soo)
• The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
• Lourdes (Jessica Hausner)
• The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson)
• Lula, Son of Brazil (Fábio Barreto & Marcelo Santiago)
• Mammoth (Lukas Moodysson)
• Mark (Mike Hoolboom)
• Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa)
• Moloch Tropical (Raoul Peck)
• Moon (Duncan Jones)
• Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
• The Mouth of the Wolf (Pietro Marcello)
• My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (Werner Herzog)
• No One Knows About Persian Cats (Bahman Ghobadi)
• Nothing Personal (Urszula Antoniak)
• Objectified (Gary Hustwit)
• Optical Illusions (Cristián Jiménez)
• Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin)
• Petropolis (Peter Mettler)
• Polytechnique (Denis Villeneuve)
• P.opular S.ky (Ryan Trecartin)
• Precious (Lee Daniels)
• A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
• Public Enemies (Michael Mann)
• The Road (John Hillcoat)
• Ruhr (James Benning)
• Samson and Delilah (Warwick Tornton)
• A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• She, a Chinese (Guo Xiaolu)
• Soul Kitchen (Fatih Akin)
• Spring Fever (Lou Ye)
• Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)
• Sweet Rush (Andrzej Wajda)
• Symbol (Hitoshi Matsumoto)
• Tales From the Golden Age (Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, & Ioana Uricaru)
• Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola)
• The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman)
• To Die Like a Man (João Pedro Rodrigues)
• A Town Called Panic (Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar)
• Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine) – 4.6
• Unmade Beds (Alexis Dos Santos)
• Up (Pete Docter)
• Vincere (Marco Bellocchio)
• Vision (Margarethe Von Trotta)
• Waste Land (Lucy Walker, Karen Harley, & João Jardim)
• Whatever Works (Woody Allen)
• Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
• Whip it (Drew Barrymore)
• White Material (Claire Denis)
• The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
• The Wind Journeys (Ciro Guerra)
• The Wolfberg Family (Axelle Ropert)
• Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat)

Antoine, which follows blind Quebecer Antoine throughout his daily routines at school and his playtime with his friends, falls short in most of its aspirations: a magical realist fantasy for children, an account of the experience of growing up or caring for the blind, or a character study of a bratty, overpriviledged adolescent. It likely would have succeeded had it focused on only one of these topics, but became a film without a goal or a purpose by cramming all of it in. Antoine is most memorable as a documentary of the fictions that children create, portraying Antoine and his friends’ hunt for a woman who turned into water as if it were a reality. It is a fun exercise that must have been a dream come true for these kids – getting a movie made about the movie world that they so clearly wish they inhabited – but it strays from the film’s focus on Antoine as a blind child. Nothing in the playtime is a product of Antoine’s disability; his imagination isn’t shown to be stronger or more/less diverse than those with vision, or really different at all from his friends. It has the same feeling as if any group of children were allowed to turn one of their imaginary games into a film, which is the same as a poorly shot fiction scripted by children: perhaps fun as a short, but not quality material to plaster a feature into.

Scenes of Antoine at school also had potential, especially when he starts telling his friends that he isn’t their friend anymore, and starts hitting some of them. This is never expounded upon by talking to the friends he wants to abandon, or Antoine’s parents to see if there are troubles at home, or even Antoine’s perspective on why he did this. We only see Antoine getting disciplined by his teacher for a couple of minutes while Antoine cries, and then the issue is never addressed again. In a film about an autistic or ADHD child, this might be acceptable, but it is too significant of a departure from Antoine’s projected behavior up to this point to let it slide under the rug. The parents also apparently wanted the documentary abandoned halfway through filming because of its effects on Antoine, but this is not detectable in the film, let alone addressed. It is yet another example of the truth being avoided for the filmmaker’s predetermined goals for the film, which is a rambling, only occassionally watchable misfire from a filmmaker who seems to only have talent for visual styling.

This film reminded me of Spurloch’s Super Size Me in that it is entertaining, has an important agenda, but takes the wrong approach to make an entirely successful documentary. It will draw crowds, it will please them, and it will probably at least get many people to stop ordering tuna at sushi restaurants, which, like Spurloch’s film getting me to nix fast food from my diet, is laudable. But this is essentially a heist film with a forced pay-off. Richard O’Barry, the protagonist, former trainer of Flipper, dolphin rights activist, wants to make Japanese fisherman out to be satanic demons of the sea, but ignores the film’s most interesting argument, which he vocally dismisses in the film: Why is killing dolphins for food in Japan any worse than killing cows, chickens, turkeys, lamb, and deer for meat everywhere else? It is very upsetting and emotionally traumatic to see the massacre of the dolphins at the end of this film, but so would it be to witness any of the inhumane ways that the aforementioned animals are killed. Psihoyos also must think that Japanese citizens (and the viewers of his film) are not very intelligent, as he shows interviews with 4 or 5 pedestrians in Tokyo who claim that they didn’t know that dolphins were killed for food, expects us to believe that this is a common ignorance. Give me a break. And then to whip out his iPhone to show them, standing on the sidewalk, footage of dolphins being slaughtered, and expect it to be telling or a revelation that these people watch the video in horror, is just manipulative filmmaking. O’Barry’s narcissism comes full circle as he blasts triumphant victory music when he walks into an International Whaling Comission meeting with a TV strapped to his body showing the footage of the dolphin slaughter, as if he has accomplished something despite all of the apathetic faces in the room who, literally, have bigger fish to fry. I like what this film wanted to say on animal rights, captivity, training, and what not, but the film blatantly ignores every other animal that is eaten (the filmmaker actually does think it is more unjust to eat a dolphin than a cow because dolphins have larger brains), as well as zoos, circuses, and what the Japanese really think about this.

Basically a real-life twist on Au Hasard Balthazar, the emotion emitting from every frame of this film was exponentially more affecting for me than Bresson’s film. Old Partner tracks the final months of an ox’s life and the owner(s) who are so dependent on him. The ox is owned by an elderly Korean couple, but mostly by the husband, who seems to be living his life for the sole purpose of caring for the ox. He farms and employs his wife to help him in order to feed the ox, much to his wife’s dismay. The relationship between the couple is cute and heartbreaking, as they exhibit the kind of crankiness and grumpiness toward each other that is stereotypical of the elderly, though they are constantly distraught that their time on Earth, and with each other, is reaching its end. Only the age of the ox is given in the film (approaching 40), but I’d have guessed that these people are nearing the century mark. The tragedy of seeing the ox eke out every last ounce of his life to pull these people around town, which it had undoubtedly done for every day of its 40 years, is so affecting because he is so loved by the owner; neglect and abuse would have made the film more about pity. The man is damn near deaf, missing/ignoring most of his wife’s rants, but is gripped and attentive when the ox makes a sound. He refuses to spray their crops with insecticides, which would make their farming a hell of a lot easier, and ease his and his wife’s lifestyles, because it would be unhealthy for the ox. As the film winds down, and the lives of the ox and his owners do the same, I had a lump in my throat that lasted through the rest of the night. The film is only diminished by a melodramatic score that is completely disposable – really, I would pay the filmmaker to take it out, it hurts some of the film’s best moments. Fables and timeless tales don’t come better written and more moving than this.

I haven’t seen Hustwit’s Helvetica, which sounds interesting, if trendy, but Objectified is just the sort of film I expected it to be given that film’s presence on Hustwit’s résumé. The film is clean, sleek, and polished, just like the Helvetica font, and has a similar commercial plasticity that he atrocious Art & Copy has, but at least it has the decency to stay on topic. While this film is well-organized, well-researched, and occasionally thought-provoking, it left me feeling like it had only scratched the surface. Like Art & Copy, Objectified is mainly interested in the big shots. The film’s first significant subject is Apple, which makes sense given all of the talk in the film about the simplicity, elegance, and intuition that is exhibited a ‘good’ design. The film goes on to feature Ikea and some important designers of cellphones, toys, and chairs. Halfway through, the film shifts gears to talk about longevity; specifically, the environmental harm of producing something that will end up in a landfill in only a few years time, if not much less. It was pleasant to see the film take the responsibility and put forth such close attention, to this facet of design.

There are two missing pieces in this film that I think make it suffer: the brief time spent with consumers, getting to know how satisfied they are with certain designs and how closely they feel a product function according to the designer’s intent; and the other is a perspective from bad designers, like makers of mass-produced junk ($.99 toothbrushes, cheap DVD players, modern turntables, and hazardous children’s toys). Not to mention that the film ignores Ikea’s reputation for producing short-term furniture that breaks and falls apart within a couple of years (Ikea is only praised in the film for their innovative design, pshh). The film is essentially a broad FAQ for modern industrial design, touching on important things, but skipping the intricate details which would ask more insightful questions. The measured pacing of the film makes it feel like it was crafted by a robot rather than a human, which comes off brilliantly given the subject matter.

I haven’t seen Greenaway’s Nightwatching, his other film on Rembrandt’s famous, potentially infamous, painting The Night Watch; nor have I seen any Greenaway films until now (embarrassing, I know; still waiting for that Criterion The Cook, The Thief…). Rembrandt’s JAccuse is, from what I understand, another incarnation of Greenaway’s obsession over solving The Night Watch; Nightwatching is a fictionalization of the process and aftermath of painting the piece, and J’Accuse is a handheld walk through the ’30 mysteries’ of The Night Watch, narrated and theorized by Greenaway himself. To say that I didn’t learn anything from this film would be a lie, same for saying that most of it wasn’t surprisingly entertaining; but, I still question the point of it. Most of the information in this film could just as easily have been conveyed in a well-organized and elegantly designed brochure (and much quicker, too). The film is literally divided into 30 chapters, each numbered and dedicated to one of the apparently well-known 30 mysteries. Much of the ‘solving’ of the mysteries in the film is done by showing clips from Nightwatching, with a picture-in-picture frontal view of Greenaway speaking to the audience (why this ugly box, placed just below the center of the frame, couldn’t have been eliminated in favor of a simple voiceover, I do not know). Over-dramatic music is pervasive, and evoked the decade’s other bizarre, painting-solving film, The Da Vinci Code. The picture-in-picture narration, as well as all kinds of clip art swipes, wipes, hops, zooms and scrolling texts gave the film a Powerpoint aesthetic that cheapened an otherwise well-produced assemblage. There are questionable things in the ‘clues’ that Greenaway relies on in the film (most obviously his claims that the man in the center of the painting is holding a right-handed glove, when it is clearly left-handed), but much of it is thought-provoking, if a bit Art History 101. The cumulative effect is likely to make someone more curious about the subtext and symbolism in 16th and 17th century paintings, which is commendable.

This is initially a pretty perplexing follow-up to Zweig’s ‘narcissism’ trilogy, of which I have only seen the first, Vinyl. As a filmmaker whose career seemed to be completely fixated on his own troubles, A Hard Name is refreshingly selfless, following 6 or 7 subjects who had recently been released from prison, and have spent a very large fraction of their lives in prison. The film is comprised almost entirely of interviews and talking heads, but my memory of it has so many variances to that structure, where much of the film, in retrospect, feels as if it takes place in either a prison or on the streets. Doing exactly what I love to see in interview documentaries, Zweig makes sure to keep his questions in the film, which helped to expand the film’s conversation to the viewer. And Zweig asks great questions, too. He is less confrontational and more respectful thank Michael Moore, and actually appears to be interested in his subjects aside from the meat they provide for his film; Zweig has all of Moore’s good qualities and then some. Zweig asks these ex-prisoners what we want to ask them ourselves, and these subjects trust him enough to open up completely. Words cannot aptly describe how potent this film is; it does full justice to big ideas like self-destruction, forgiveness, and environmental corruption.

This film is just as bad as Clubland, only it feels twice as worse because the material had so much more potential. This film is an offensive misfire that is the definition of how NOT to make a documentary. As a ‘study’ on modern advertising it is one-sided in its unquestioned praise of commercial ads, narrow in its look at, almost exclusively, television commercials made since the 1980s for major companies (Apple, Nike, Budweiser, etc.), boring in its narcissistic use of music, polished cinematography of things that have nothing to do at all with advertising (rockets going into outer space, satellites, industrial factories, etc), and maddening for being a ‘well’-produced enough documentary that another, unquestionably better one won’t come along in a long time, if ever. At least 15% of the film involves watching a commercial that everyone has already seen too many times (Mac’s 1984 commercial, Budweiser’s frog commercials, Got Milk commercials, Nike ‘Just Do It’ commercials, etc.) in their entireties, often as a lead up to nothing more than an inane interview with the guy that thought it up, in which he talks about how much of a genius he is. The rest of the film plays indie rock while revealing, in text, ‘critical’ facts about modern culture, like “Americans watch so-and-so hours of TV every day” Boo hoo.