Movies
for Music
Lovers:
2011
Edition


Click here
for the
2010
edition

Some of these films premiered in the US in 2010, but didn't make
their way to Seattle until this year, in which case I deferred to lo-
cal release dates. Some missed the city altogether, in which case I
caught up via DVD, Blu-ray, or download. Altogether, I saw over
250 titles, and wrote about most of them for Amazon, Siffblog,
Line Out, and Video Librarian (the links lead to my reviews).

Just as my 2011 music list revolves around post-punk, a post-
punk vibe runs through many of these films. Animals also a-
bound, as do animalistic human beings, like Ryan Gosling's
Driver with his scorpion jacket (a clue to his true nature).

The Tops:
1. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
2. Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
3. Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
4. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki)
5. Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga)
6. Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
7. The Skin I Live In / La Piel Que Habito (Pedro Almodóvar)
8. Project Nim (James Marsh)
9. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)
10. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives /
Loong Boonmee Raleuk Chat (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)



Runners-up:
1. The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
2. Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)
3. A Screaming Man / Un Homme
Qui Crie (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
4. The Help (Tate Taylor)
5. Beginners (Mike Mills)
6. Weekend (Alexander Haigh)
7. The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
8. Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
9. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
10. The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman)



Note: I enjoyed The Help. I realize I'm supposed to hate it, but
I can't stand it when people do my thinking for me or assume that
I don't know anything about African or African American cinema.

I can like The Help and I can like A Screaming Man, too. The thing
is: Tate Taylor's mainstream movie got to me in a way Mahamat-Saleh
Haroun's art house entry didn't. Which doesn't make it the superior
picture; just one that had more personal resonance. I live for '50s-style
melodramas about ordinary women, especially those who triumph
over their small-minded oppressors, whether they're white, black, or
red-eyed space aliens. The critical opprobrium heaped on this film
carried a trace of misogyny that made me deeply uncomfortable.

Apparently, I'm not supposed to like The Artist either, in part because
Harvey Weinstein produced it. But he didn't direct it, and the story
centers on a man who refuses to compromise or to impose his will on
others--un-Harvey-like qualities. In the film, he triumphs over adver-
sity. In real life, it doesn't always work that way, but The Artist and
Hugo are movies about movies and their makers. Not their producers.



Second Runners-up:
1. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
2. Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
3. The Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier)
4. Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung)
5. Hanna (Joe Wright)
6. Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)
7. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
8. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)
9. The Yellow Sea (Na Hong-jin)
10. Winnie the Pooh (Don Hall and Stephen J. Anderson)

Openings: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens at the Metro Cinemas
(and other theaters) on 1/6 and A Separation on 2/3 (venue TBA).



Worthy of note: 50/50 (Jonathan Levine), The Arbor (Clio
Barnard), Aurora (Cristi Puiu), Bellflower (Evan Glodell), Car-
ancho (Pablo Trapero), Circumstance (Maryam Keshavarz),
Contagion (Steven Soderbergh), Curling (Denis Côté), Gods / Dioses (Josué Méndez), The Guard (John Michael McDonagh),
Henry's Crime (Malcolm Venville), The Girl / Flickan (Fredrik
Edfeldt), Hideaway / Le Refuge (François Ozon), The Ides of
March (George Clooney), Kaboom (Gregg Araki), The Piano in
a Factory (Zhang Meng), Putty Hill (Matt Porterfield), The Rum Diary (Bruce Robinson), Submarine (Richard Ayoade), Toast
(S.J. Clarkson), The Tree (Julie Bertuccelli), Vampire*, Vanishing
on 7th Street (Brad Anderson), The War Horse (Steven Spielberg), Warrior (Gavin O'Connor), Win Win (Tom McCarthy), X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn), and Young Adult (Jason Reitman).

* I left out the director and don't want to reformat the whole paragraph. Vampire
is the first English-language effort from All About Lily Chou Chou's Shunji Iwai.



They've done better: A Dangerous Method (David Cron-
enberg), The Future (Miranda July), My Week with Marilyn
(Richard Curtis), The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillat), Take
Shelter (Jeff Nichols), and The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick).



Top documentaries:
1. Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of
a Tribe Called Quest (Michael Rapaport)
2. How to Die in Oregon (Peter D. Richardson)
3. Tabloid (Errol Morris)
4. Page One: Inside the New York Times (Andrew Rossi)
5. Tie: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
and Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog)
6. The Woodmans (C. Scott Willis)
7. Ne Chien Range (Pedro Costa)
8. Nénette (Nicolas Philibert)
9. Public Speaking (Martin Scorsese)
10. Bobby Fischer Against the World (Liz Garbus)



Worthy of note: Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press),
Broken Doors (Goro Toshima), Color Me Obsessed (Gorman Be-
chard), Crooked Beauty (Ken Paul Rosenthal), Girls on the Wall
(Heather Ross), (POM Wonderful Presents) The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (Morgan Spurlock), Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (Stuart Schulberg), Pearl Jam Twenty (Cameron Crowe), Rachel
(Simone Bitton), Silver Girls / Frauenzimmer (Saara Alia Waas-
ner), Sin by Silence (Olivia Klaus), Still Bill (Damani Baker and
Alex Vlack), The Weird World of Blowfly (Jonathan Furmanski).



Reissues and Rediscoveries:
1. Kuroneko - The Criterion Collection (Kaneto Shindo)
2. Cronos - The Criterion Collection (Guillermo del Toro)
3. Videodrome - Criterion Collection (David Cronenberg)
4. Raging Bull - 30th Anniversary Edition (Martin Scorsese)
5. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
6. Kes - The Criterion Collection (Ken Loach)
7. Prowler (Joseph Losey)
8. The Soft Skin (François Truffaut)
9. Four Nights with Anna (Jerzy Skolimowski)
10. Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories (David Kaplan)



Odds and sods: Bal /Honey (Semih Kaplanoğlu), Boardwalk
Empire - The Complete First Season, The Double Life of Véron-
ique - The Criterion Collection (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Master-
piece Classic - Downton Abbey, Hamilton (Matt Porterfield),
The Hour, Season One, and Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes).



Missed (or haven't seen yet): 13 Assassins (Takashi Miike), A
Brighter Summer Day / Gu Ling Jie Shao Nian Sha Ren Shi Jian
(Edward Yang), The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg), Cap-
tain America (Joe Johnston), Carnage (Roman Polanski), Cedar
Rapids (Miguel Arteta), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David
Fincher), Incendies (Denis Villeneuve), The Interrupters (Steve
James), J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood), Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan),
Margin Call (J.C. Chandor), The Muppets (James Frawley), Mys-
teries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz), Nostalgia for the Light / Nostalgia de
la Luz (Patricio Guzmán), Shame (Steve McQueen), Source Code
(Duncan Jones), Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder), Terri (Azazel Jac-
obs), Tomboy (Céline Sciamma), The Trip (Michael Winterbot-
tom), and We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay).



Note: Tomboy, which played the 2011 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, opens at SIFF Cinema on 1/6. Certified Copy, Nostalgia for the Light, and Of Gods and Men made my 2010 "missed" list...and I still haven't caught up with any of them yet. Looking forward to it.



Yes, I did see...Bridesmaids. And I sure didn't laugh much, but I'm glad that Jill Clayburgh, perfectly cast as Kristin Wiig's mother, went out with a hit. Clayburgh's daughter (with David Rabe), Lily Rabe, who also got her start on the stage, proves her own mettle in Christopher Munch's Letters from the Big Man, an animal-oriented film almost as strange as Uncle Boonmee.



A final thought: Shame on The New Yorker's David Denby
for breaking the review embargo regarding Fincher's The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo--but more so for his spoiler regard-
ing The Skin I Live In. And shame on his colleague, Richard
Brody, for spreading the disease by quoting from Denby's Skin
review (though I still enjoyed Brody's comments about Tom
Cruise in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol). Critics!



Endnote: Cross-posted here. Drive image from Collider.

SKIDOO: You Gotta Be There!

The following was
written by North-
west Film Forum
program director
Adam Sekuler to
promote a
screening of this
under-seen gem.
I'm posting it
with his permis-
sion on the occa-
sion of the film's
long-awaited ar-
rival on DVD.

SKIDOO
(Otto Preminger, US, 1968, 97 mins.)

The best film screening the first week of SIFF is easily Skidoo. It's this
Sunday at 3pm at the Film Forum, not in the SIFF program actually, but is
a part of our Secret Sunday matinee series. We don't typically divulge the
feature, but this is just that rare and just that good. I can't recommend
this enough, and in my typically verbose way, here's why you HAVE to be
here for it. Its not available on DVD or VHS, and the film rarely plays!

Skidoo presents an unlikely domestic situation in which Jackie Gleason
plays a retired San Francisco hit man-turned-car wash owner and Carol
Channing plays his daffy wife. Yes, Gleason and Channing as man and
wife; can you imagine them making love? Gleason soon finds himself on a
mission from God. Not the God of the Father-Son-and-Holy Spirit fame,
but the head of the local mob who is known as God. God is played by
Groucho Marx, and if you can believe Groucho as a mafia chieftain…



Anyway, Gleason is ordered by God to get himself arrested and sent to
Alcatraz, where he is to do a hit on a former gangster who turned infor-
mer. Unfortunately for Gleason, this target (played by Mickey Rooney,
who seems to be reading his lines from cue cards) is in ultra-tight protec-
tive custody and is thus immune from unpleasant visitors carrying shanks.

Unable to fulfill his assignment and stuck in Alcatraz on a bogus
rap, Gleason finds an escape by accident: he shares a cell with
a draft-dodging writer (Austin Pendleton, in his film debut)
who laced the glue of his stationery envelopes with LSD.

Meanwhile,
Channing is
coping with the
news their
teenage daugh-
ter [Alexandra
Hay] has fallen
in with a group
of hippies. The
mod mom hap-
pily embraces
the hippies
and brings
them into her
home. She
tries to get
to God by seducing a young mobster (Frankie Avalon; yes, that
Frankie Avalon). When that fails, she and the hippies commandeer a
small armada and sail off to God's yacht off the San Francisco coast.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

In 2009, the NWFF screened Model Shop as part of their 1969 series. Jacques
Demy's Los Angeles effort also features Alexandra Hay, the daughter in Skidoo.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Meanwhile, Gleason spikes the soup in the Alcatraz commissar-
y with the LSD-laced envelopes and creates a makeshift balloon
out of garbage bags and a garbage can. He and his druggie cell-
mate fly off to God's yacht just as the hippie fleet arrives. After
much to-do, God and the acid-tripping writer abandon ship to-
gether and sail off into the sunset with a bountiful supply of acid.

Skidoo is such a wild assault on the senses that it's hard to im-
agine the film was ever made. Under Preminger's direction, LSD
is a liberating and empowering tool; it makes Gleason and Marx's
characters end their criminal ways in pursuit of a greater truth. It
also allows an astonishing number of guest stars in the Alcatraz
sequences (including Rooney, Peter Lawford, Richard Kiel,
Burgess Meredith and Frank Gorshin) tripping on acid.

If that's not enough, the film is packed with other unlikely star
turns including Cesar Romero as Avalon's dad, George Raft
as the skipper of God's yacht, Arnold Stang as Gleason's stooge,
and the great character actor Fred Clark and singer Harry
Nilsson (who wrote the music) as prison guards.

As for the acid
trips, Premin-
ger fills the
screen with
such imagery
as the Green
Bay Packers
mooning the
camera and
an elaborate
dance se-
quence with
women dressed in garbage cans doing a mock ballet under a
red light. Preminger reportedly experimented with Timothy
Leary to get a feel for what one experiences on LSD, even
insisting that everyone try LSD before making the film!

Skidoo is one of the most wonderfully rude movies ever made. It is
so blatantly weird and in such marvelously bad taste that it feels as if
Preminger was prescient on the pending rise of underground counter-
culture comedy such as John Waters and Cheech and Chong.

It is a film where the druggies are the heroes and even criminals can
become angels if they just learn to chill with LSD. It is a movie where
Hollywood's icons happily ham it up while being under the narcotic in-
fluence and the closing shot, with Groucho Marx and Austin Pendleton
dressed as Hare Krishnas in a boat full of drugs is too funny to endure.

Okay, that's a hell of a lot about this film, but it's really the best
thing screening this week in Seattle, and you only have this one
chance to see it. Even if its 79 degrees on Sunday, don't miss out!

--Adam Sekuler, Wednesday, May 20, 2009



Endnote: Images from Talking Moviezzz and Paper.

Revenge is a dish best served… to the lions!

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

Sunday July 17, 7:30pm, The Castro, San Francisco



A gifted scientist is betrayed by his mentor who discredits him, then steals his research, and his wife. Humiliated, Paul Beaumont (Lon Chaney) disappears into self-exile and the anonymity of life as a circus clown. He contently suffers for years until his nemesis re-appears and plots to corrupt the lovely young bareback rider Consuelo (Norma Shearer) with the help of her wretched father.

The first original Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production had to be spectacular and it was. Based on the play by Leonid Andreyev, He Who Gets Slapped (1924) was the second of nine Hollywood films directed by Swedish master Victor Sjöström. Ethereal images of clowns used thematically throughout the film are both hauntingly beautiful and horrifying. Chaney delivers a searing (and possibly his best) role as a broken, demoralized shell of a man, opposite a luminous Shearer, John Gilbert as Bezano her intended, Tully Marshall, Ford Sterling and of course, Leo.



The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and Midnites for Maniacs present Lon Chaney in Victor Sjöström's MGM masterpiece, He Who Gets Slapped (1924) with live misical accompaniment performed returning artists, The Matti Bye Ensemble.

Life before von Sternberg

The Woman Men Yearn For (1928)

Saturday July 16, 8.30pm, The Castro, San Francisco



A prince of industry abandons his bride when his head is turned by a mysterious and beautiful woman. Catching a glimpse of Staacha (Marlene Dietrich) through a train window, Henri LeBlanc (Uno Henning) is instantly bewitched. His resolve crumbles as she pleads for his help to escape her sinister travelling companion Dr. Karoff (Fritz Kortner). She only reveals the truth after Henri is hopelessly under her spell.

Based on Max Brod's original novel, The Woman Men Yearn For (1929) stars Dietrich the year before her breakout film The Blue Angel in a largely forgotten and surprisingly substantial role as the femme fatale with a twist. Excellent use of miniatures, industrial montage, spectacular costumes and the furious New Years Eve party are memorable.
Director Curtis Bernhardt immigrated to Hollywood in 1940, establishing himself as a women's director in films starring Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and many others.



The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the Film Noir Foundation, the Goethe-Institut San Francisco and German Consulate of San Francisco present The Women Men Yearn For (1929) with live musical accompaniment performed for returning artists, The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

"Mother isn't quite herself today."

The Goose Woman (1925)

Saturday July 16, 4pm, The Castro, San Francisco



A bitter old woman drowns her sorrows in gin and recalls her career as a great opera singer that ended with the illegitimate birth of her child. Long forgotten, the great Marie de Nardi (Louise Dresser) is known as Mary Holmes, the "Goose Woman" to her village, until detectives discover her past while investigating a murder. In an attempt to regain her lost fame she fabricates an eyewitness account of the crime which implicates her son.

Produced by Universal Pictures and directed by Clarence Brown, The Goose Woman (1925) begins as a beautifully stylized and modest character piece, but develops into a sensational morality play with a compelling performance by Miss Dresser as the title character. The supporting cast includes Gustav von Seyfertitz as Mr. Vogel, the States Attorney, Jack Pickford (inexplicably with top billing) as Mary's son Gerald Holmes and lovely young Constance Bennett as his fiancée Hazel Woods.


The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and San Francisco Opera present Louise Dresser in The Goose Woman (1925), with live musical accompaniment performed by returning pianist Stephen Horne.

A Chump from Oxford

Mr. Fix-It (1918)

Saturday July 16, 6.30pm, The Castro, San Francisco



An American at Oxford sends his "happy-go-lucky" roommate home in his place to fix looming family problems. Reginald (Leslie Stuart) hasn't been to the states in fifteen years, so his sister, aunts and uncle are clueless when Remington (Douglas Fairbanks) shows up and turns their blue-nosed, stogy lives upside down. Before long, marriage engagements are broken, the house is filled with playful orphans and "Mr. Fix-It" is climbing the stairs on his hands.

Written and directed by Hollywood legend and Fairbanks favorite Allan Dwan, Mr. Fix-It (1918) is a shining example of the light comedy and physical gymnastics that made "Doug" a Broadway star. His dinner table tricks, antics with the kids and a spectacular mid-picture brawl are worthy of particular note. Mr. Fix-It was also released in April 1918 only days after Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin and Mary Pickford appeared before thousands at rallies promoting the third Liberty Loan drive.


The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and Wells Fargo present Douglas Fairbanks in Mr. Fix-It (1918), presented with live musical accompaniment performed by returning organist Dennis James at the Castro's 4/21 Wurlitzer.


Chaplin and Fairbanks on Wall Street, April 8, 1918

Boyz wilb Boyz

Huckleberry Finn (1920)
Friday July 15, 2pm, The Castro, San Francisco


An old maid adopts motherless Huckleberry Finn to "sivilize" his coarse, free-spirited behavior. Her plans are thwarted when the boy is kidnapped by his father, the abusive town drunk. Huck escapes by faking his own murder and befriends a runaway slave. Their tranquil life of rafting on the river is interrupted by two seedy con-men who sell Jim and involve Huck in fraud, while he masquerades as his best friend Tom Sawyer and falls in love.

Missing the satirical bite and social consciousness of Mark Twain's 1885 novel, director William Desmond Taylor's Huckleberry Finn (1920) displays a sentimental fondness for the story in a production that typifies the consistent quality associated with Taylor and Paramount Pictures. Huckleberry Finn is also noteworthy as the first theatrical film version of the book and for Esther Ralston's oldest surviving performance in a feature film, as the object of Huck's affection Mary Jane Wilkes.


The 16th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the California Historical Society present William Desmond Taylor's Huckleberry Finn (1920), with live musical accompaniment performed by returning pianist Donald Sosin.