The Illusionist

The Illusionist is a beautiful traditionally animated film by the same people who gave us The Triplets of Belleville. Based on a 1956 unproduced script by Jacques Tati it was a story he wrote but did not have a chance to make into a film. 

The story is about a magician (played by Tati) who travels around Europe performing in small theaters and night clubs with his rabbit. In a small Scottish village where he is invited to perform in a pub he meets a young girl who befriends him and innocently believes his magic is real. The girl follows him back to Paris where through the course of the film she matures into a woman just as the magician is running out of money to support her.

The movie shows how small town girls are seduced by the big city ways of life and fashion and how the old traditional forms of entertainment have been replaced by new ones. The film is like a typical Jacques Tati film in that it has very little dialogue and relies on visual humor of awkward or unusual situations. The physical humor of Jacques Tati is very accurately recreated here and the film may seem slow to someone not used to Tati’s type of humor. I recommend you see some of Jacques Tati’s classic films first like Jour de Fête, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Playtime.

The hand drawn animation is very detailed and looks extraordinarily beautiful as it depicts, very realistically, locations in Europe from small coastal villages to big city landscapes. The film is set in an unknown past but it looks to be around 1959 as many old ways were giving way to new ones.

Like all of Jacques Tati’s films it is well worth seeing and has a very intimate old world theatrical feel to it as you get to know the characters only through their actions and expressions.

JP

Moon

Similar to a young George Lucas when he made his first visually innovative feature film THX-1138 (1971) with a minimal budget but a smart, thought provoking story, set in the near future about an individual escaping against all odds from a society exploiting its citizens with mind controlling drugs, a young sci-fi geek of the next generation who grew up with these films from the 70s and 80s has now come out with his own debut, low budget film and the results are just as innovative and thought provoking. 

Duncan Jones will be one to watch as George Lucas was in his time. His first feature film Moon is the child born of such brainy sci-fi films as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Silent Running (1972), Outland (1981) and the first Alien (1979) movie, which itself was inspired by Star Wars (1977). But it also has other elements from classic dystopian sci-fi films such as Blade Runner (1982), and The Island (2005).

Moon is a gem of a film. Like THX-1138, Alien, Blade Runner and The Island, Moon is about escaping from a predetermined destiny imposed by an oppressive Corporate entity and concerns itself with the exploitation of innocent people and unethical use of clones. A person left for three years to work on the moon for a company that mines an energy resource discovers that he is not alone. After he has an accident and is knocked unconscious there suddenly appears another person that looks and acts just like him. Together they are able to find out the sinister policies of the company they work for. While the company sends out a team to deal with the situation the two clones work together to plan their escape. This visually stark but beautiful and interesting movie is thought provoking, smart and keeps you in suspense to the very end.

Moon is a project of passion made by self-professed, dedicated sci-fi fans Duncan Jones, who is the son of singer/rock star David Bowie, and the star of the film Sam Rockwell from Galaxy Quest (1999) and Conviction (2010). Duncan who is a big fan of Sam Rockwell’s work wanted him in his first feature film and wrote the movie just for him, hoping he would accept the role. The script, the visuals and Sam’s performance were so amazing that Kevin Spacey also came on board to lend his voice as a HAL 9000 type computer assistant robot. 

The movie has a beautiful, retro aesthetic and set design inspired by futurists Syd Mead and Ron Cobb who also worked on Alien, and Blade Runner. The special effects combined the time honored traditional miniature models photography with CGI to get the best visual look for the limited money that was available.

Moon was made with heart and resourcefulness that would not have been possible to do with this kind of visual flare on such a bare-bones budget even 5 years ago. But this team of film makers pulled it off with great success.

Duncan has already made his next film called ‘Source Code’, which opens at the South by South West interactive Music and Film festival in Austin, Texas in March and in theaters April 1, 2011 and stars Jake Gyllenhaal. An action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. Let’s hope it has the same heart and innovation that Moon had.

 

Duncan is also working on a sci-fi homage to Blade Runner, one of his favorite films, called Mute which will get a graphic novel treatment to attract investors before it can be made into a movie.

JP

2010 Oscar Winners

The King’s Speech and Inception rule at the Oscars with 4 Oscars each.

Not exactly the results that I would have expected or hoped for. None of the films that were nominated got an overwhelming amount of Oscar love.

The King’s Speech with 12 nominations only won 4 Oscars but it won in all of the important categories including Best Picture, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay. Remember it was voted the People’s Choice award this past September at The Toronto International Film Festival. Toronto audiences again showing that they are the early predictors of the Oscar winning best film.

True Grit with 10 nominations very surprisingly won no Oscars at all. It reminded me of the year that Gangs of New York was nominated for 10 Oscars and also won nothing. But I thought that True Grit was a much better film and many predicted it would win an Oscar for Roger Deakins' Cinematography which he lost to Inception. This was his 8th nomination for Cinematography.

Inception did very well winning 4 of its 6 nominations in the technical categories of Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Cinematography.

127 Hours which got very high praise this year and is the 7th highest rated film of the year, just behind The King's Speech, but didn't win any of it's 6 nominations.
 
Black Swan which was highly critically praised, getting on to many top 10 lists and the 2nd highest rated film of the year, only won 1 of its 5 Oscar nominations, winning for Best Actress Natalie Portman.

Most surprising was The Social Network which was the number one highest critically acclaimed film of the year, winning almost every Critics Choice Award in North America and at the top of every Critics list (see previous blog post below) only won 3 of its 8 nominated Oscars, winning for Best Editing, Adapted Screenplay and Original Score. David Fincher was widely expected to win for best Director but lost to The King's Speech director Tom Hooper.

The Fighter won 2 of its 7 nominations, winning for Supporting Actor Christian Bale and Supporting Actress Melissa Leo.

Toy Story 3 also won 2 Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song “We Belong Together” by Randy Newman who has been nominated 20 times and won twice. His Uncle Alfred Newman was nominated 54 times and winning 9 Oscars including for The King and I. Randy also had one of the funniest acceptance speeches of the evening.

For a complete list of winners see side bar link to Oscar ballots 2010.

JP

The Social Network tops the best films of 2010

OK, here it is! After compiling a collection of 145 movie critics top ten film lists from newspapers, magazines and web sites across the US and Canada, I finally have the best 29 films of the year in order of the most listed and highest rated.

It was in some ways a more difficult year to judge than others as there were many films that were very close to call. But the number one film of the year won by a huge margin, appearing on 109 lists out of 145 and 31 times as number one on the list. The next closest film, Black Swan, in the number two spot appeared on 66 lists and only 11 times as the number one film. The Social Network even beat out last year’s winner The Hurt Locker which appeared on 69 lists and only 17 times as number one.

David Fincher’s The Social Network is the Slumdog Millionaire of 2010 and should win most of the major awards. It has already won the Critic’s Choice award for best film of the year and now the Golden Globes have awarded it for Best Picture, Director, Screenwriter, and Score. It will probably go on to win the same at the Oscars.

Whenever I ask people if they’ve seen The Social Network their response is always the same. They say that the subject matter doesn’t interest them. Well I can assure anyone who isn’t interested in seeing the movie that the film is far better than they imagine. It is not so much about the invention of Facebook as it is about how relationships and friendships are destroyed by fame, money and ambition in the very fast moving world of the internet. It is beautifully photographed and edited, and the music score and screenplay are perfect.  It has some of the most realistic performances I’ve seen by the young cast of actors Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake.  As the screenwriter said at the Golden Globes in his acceptance speech “the director David Fincher makes watching a movie about people looking at computer screens so suspenseful that it’s like watching a slow motion car crash.” It is a film I could watch over and over again, and enjoy every time.

The Social Network is now available to rent or buy on DVD and Blu-ray. I highly recommend you see this excellent film ASAP. It will keep you glued to your seat.

Here then are the Critics highest rated films of 2010.  

(Find the complete 2010 Critics top 10 lists in the right margin of this blog)

Summary of 2010 Critics Top 10 Lists
1	The Social Network
2	Black Swan
3	Inception
4	Winter’s Bone
5	Toy Story 3
6	The King’s Speech
7	127 Hours
8	The Ghost Writer
9	Carlos
10	The Kids are All Right
11	Another Year
12	True Grit
13	Exit Through the Gift Shop
14	A Prophet
15	The Fighter
16	Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
17	Dogtooth
18	Blue Valentine
19	Inside Job
20	Let Me In
21	Animal Kingdom
22	I Am Love
23	Red Riding Trilogy
24	Shutter Island
25	Four Lions
26	Never Let Me Go
27	Rabbit Hole
28	Mother
29	Please Give

Here is a list of 20 Best films of 2010 compiled from Film Comment magazine’s editor’s and contributors top ten lists.

This is a more international list as there is a larger selection of foreign films due to many of the contributing critics being from different parts of the world. But notice that The Social Network still comes in at number two, very close behind the number one film, even on this more international list.

Film Comment Magazine’s Final Cut 2010 Critics Top 10 Lists
1	Carlos
2	The Social Network
3	White Material
4	The Ghost Writer
5	A Prophet
6	Winter’s Bone
7	Inside Job
8	Wild Grass
9	Everyone Else
10	Greenberg
11	Mother
12	Toy Story 3
13	Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl
14	Another Year
15	The Strange Case of Angelica
16	The Kids are All Right
17	Shutter Island
18	Around a Small Mountain
19	Our Beloved Month of August
20	Ne change rein

The British film magazine Sight & Sound: The International Film Magazine has compiled a list of top 13 films of 2010 from its 85 contributing critics and curators. Even on this list of films compiled from a very international group of critics and curators The Social Network still comes out on top. Winter’s Bone and Carlos also rank very high on all three lists. 

But notice that The King’s Speech, which is favored to win the Oscar this year, is nowhere to be found on either the Film Comment list or the Sight & Sound list and only comes in at number 6 in North America’s list.

 

Sight & Sound – The International Film Magazine’s Final Top 13 List of 2010 films compiled from 85 of it’s critics and curators
1	The Social Network
2	Uncle Boonmee who can Recall His Past Lives
3	Another Year
4	Carlos
5	The Arbor
6	Winter’s Bone
7	I Am Love
8	The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu
9	Film Socialisme
10	The Illusionist
11	Nostalgia for the Light
12	Poetry
13	A Prophet

JP

A quick summary of the 2010 film year

Which films made us sit up and say ‘Wow!, that was an amazing story’ or ‘that was amazingly well done’ or ‘that was so much fun, I’ve got to see that on my 50” Plasma when it comes out on Blu-ray.

3D was everywhere and for the first time it’s no longer a novelty but the norm, especially with computer animated films. There were more 3D films last year than any other year before, thanks to new 3D technology, and there is no sign of letting up for next year. Even TVs are now made for 3D.

It was not a great year for Sci-fi films. There was nothing as ground-breaking as Avatar, but there were some beautiful fantasy stories that made excellent use of digital technology. The ones I enjoyed most were Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Iron Man 2 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Although many people loved Chris Nolan’s Inception and it was highly praised by critics, I was not a fan of this film about people with the ability to walk around in other people’s dreams while sleeping in order to steal their secrets. It seemed like it was cashing in on the popularity of the Matrix films. Instead of using an alternate computer manufactured reality, they used the subconscious mind to move around in. The visuals were also similar to the recent Matrix films. It is an interesting concept but ultimately too derivative and definitely not for everyone. At this time I have not yet watched Tron Legacy and Splice but I've heard good things about both films and will definitely watch them soon.

This was a very good year for Action Adventure/thriller however. There were a number of films like Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, James Mangold’s Knight and Day, Phillip Noyce's Salt, Anton Corbijn's The American, Ben Affleck’s The Town, Tony Scott’s Unstoppable, Wilson Yip's Ip Man and The Disappearance of Alice Creed that were surprisingly good films. But the real big surprise was Kick-Ass. Kick-Ass kicked ass as a mix of teen-angst comedy and action super-hero movie in equal parts. Filmed in Toronto it was like watching a Quentin Tarantino Kill Bill movie and a Spider-man movie rolled into one but better than both. Films which I have not yet seen but which I can't wait to see because they’re on so many top 10 lists this year are The Fighter, A Prophet and Mother.

It was also an excellent year for Dramas and Documentaries. The most notable and best dramas I’ve seen include films like The Social Network, Hereafter, The Secret in their Eyes, The Kids are All Right, I Am Love, Winter’s Bone, Carlos, Black Swan, The King’s Speech and True Grit. Dramas which I have not yet watched but are getting a lot of good press are Rabbit Hole, Animal Kingdom, Another Year and White Material.

Documentaries were many and excellent. Some of the best ones that I saw were Marwencol, Babies, Restrepo and Oceans. Some of the ones I did not see yet but will eventually, because they got excellent reviews and made it to many top 10 lists are Exit Through the Gift Shop, Inside Job, The Tillman Story, Last Train Home, Waiting for ‘Superman’, Boxing Gym and Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.

War movies were very few this year but Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone is a definite stand out in any year. See more about Green Zone in my prior blogs below.

There were some good comedies this year. The ones I really enjoyed include Jean-Pierre Jeunet's MicMacs, Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Easy A, It's Kind of a Funny Story and Due Date. 

Animation this year was mostly excellent and had the extra benefit of 3D to boost it. Now I know that 3D will not make a bad movie better but it is more fun to watch a film in 3D and some films benefit more than others from the 3D effect.

The best animated films this year at the top of my list are Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon. Toy Story 3 is actually better to watch in 2D as it did not benefit much from many dramatic 3D effects and the animation looked better in 2D, but the story was great. How to Train Your Dragon however really looked amazing and wowed in 3D as the film had much more dramatic 3D sequences that popped out. For pure visual excitement How to Train Your Dragon wins hands down, plus it had the added benefit of having one of the best cinematographers in Hollywood, Roger Deakins, as a visual consultant. He also worked on Wall-E for Pixar and True Grit for the Coen Brothers.

Other excellent animated films this year, in 2D or 3D, included Tangled, Despicable Me, Megamind, Shrek for Ever After, and Legend of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga’Hoole from the Australian company who brought us Happy Feet.

For a full list of animated films released this year and rated by Rottentomatoes.com see my Animation Rated link in the margin lower down on the right of my movie blog.

JP

The complete Metropolis

The original epic sci-fi classic art film, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, has not been seen in its original complete form since it opened in Berlin in 1927. It has taken 80 years to finally get it back to its original state.

Just in time for a blu-ray debut, a copy of the original cut of the classic film has miraculously been discovered in Buenos Aires by the curator of the Museo del Cine with an additional 25 minutes of lost footage, restoring this classic back to its original length and its original composition.

Back in January of 1927 when Metropolis first opened it was a two hour and thirty three minute epic film, but the US distributors thought that it was way too long and boring for an American audience, so before it was released in the US later that year, it was cut down to approximately 90 minutes (one hour and 30minutes), cutting the film by an hour in length. The film has never been seen in its original state since.

Over the years there have been many attempts to restore the film, as little bits and pieces of lost footage were found around the world and re-edited back into the film as best as could be determined, ( it was unknown how the original version was edited together), but the most recent version of the film still only ran 124 minutes.

The Argentine find, which was a 16mm duplicate of the original negative, is not only the longest version of the film yet found, with 25 minutes of extra footage, but also shows the film as it was originally edited together. Metropolis now runs a total of 147 minutes which is only 6 minutes shorter than its original release. This is probably the most complete version of the film modern audiences will ever see.

Unfortunately, due to the poor quality of the duplicate copy, much of the damage is still noticeable in the extra footage even after digital restoration techniques were used, so that the Argentine footage is easily noticeable compared to the rest of the film, which benefits from better source material.

The Story:

The hero’s journey begins as a privileged son of the ruler of a futuristic city stumbles upon another world hidden beneath the modern metropolis. As he investigates more closely and follows a beautiful girl into the bowels of the city, he discovers that this Under World beneath his feet is a world of slave labor. He witnesses the horrible conditions in which people are working around the clock servicing huge machines that run the city. Appalled by what he sees, he implores his father, the ruler of the city, to do something about it. When his plea is met with indifference, he decides to secretly take matters into his own hands. Back in the Lower City the son discovers that there is a movement among the frustrated workers to destroy the machines and kill the ruler of the city above. The son who has connections in the city above is eventually able to mediate reconciliation and equality between his father and the workers.

Metropolis is a cult classic of German expressionism, and dystopian future worlds that foreshadowed films like Blade Runner and The Matrix.

JP

Awards

The awards season is fast approaching yet again. I always look forward to it because with so many movies and books being released during a one year period (around 350 movies) and who knows how many books, and with so many different tastes (books and movies are very subjective) it’s not easy to know what you are going to like and what you won’t, especially with books. Sure you could read all the reviews but not many people do; there are just too many. We only see a small portion of the films that are released and only hear about and read an even smaller number of books. You would have to spend a lot of time browsing the book and video stores in order to find something you like.

Awards make the search a little easier for us every year, not because the winners are guaranteed to be great or suit our taste, no, but because the award nominees narrow down the field for us to look through. All the nominees for awards are going to be worth watching or reading regardless of whether they suit our particular taste. The winner is not important because the winner is rarely the film or book we would have chosen, but if you search through the nominees there is bound to be something of interest or to your taste.

Most of the time the film that I like the best does not win the Academy Award for best picture but it will inevitably win some awards for things that are important to me, like Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Editing, Art Direction and Directing.

Last year my favorite film lost to The Hurt Locker. Now while I liked The Hurt Locker and felt it was definitely a good film worth watching I did not think it was better than or as big of an achievement in film making as Avatar was. That award year was very similar to the award year of 1977 when the largest achievement in film making history Star Wars lost out to an ordinary low key, low budget Woody Allen comedy Annie Hall. While I like Annie Hall, it’s a fun film, it has definitely not had the impact and achieved the huge cult status among film goers and film makers and changed the film industry the way that Star Wars has.

There were other great films nominated last year like Up and Up in the Air which are also some of my favorites now. Up I would have seen anyway because I’m a fan of Pixar and Animation in general but Up in the Air I probably would not have noticed if not for the Award nominations it got. And it was a really cool film, far better than I expected.

2008 was one of the few years where my favorite film actually also won the Academy Award for best Picture. The other films were of course all very good but I probably would not have seen any of them if not for the nominations they got. But Slumdog Millionaire was definitely the stand out achievement that year and I was happy they won.

Slumdog was also the most awarded film I had ever seen, winning at every other award ceremony going, and not just for best Picture but also for Direction, Screenwriting, Cinematography, Music and Editing. This film just could not be stopped. It was a real Cinderella story.

Most other years though are not like that. Some years I don’t really like any of the nominated films. 2007 for example was the year the most critically acclaimed film, No Country for Old Men, actually won the Academy Award but most of the rest of us, regular film goers did not like that film. I think that most people preferred Juno but in that case the small budget comedy did not win over the bigger film.

The year that The Departed won the Academy Award I thought that Babel deserved it more, and it was definitely the better film and bigger achievement in film making. Babel is now one of my favorite films made by one of the best directors working today, Alejandro González Iñárritu. If not for the nomination it received, I may not have noticed it, at least not right away.

The Queen was the other big achievement that was also nominated in the same year. I was very pleasantly surprised at how good it was when I saw it for the first time. And that’s a film that I probably would not have bothered with had it not been for the best picture nomination.

Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima was another excellent film that was nominated in the same year.

There are some years that my favorite films are not even nominated but the nominees are always worth checking out. You’re bound to find a gem in there even if it doesn’t actually win the Award.

JP

My favourite films of the decade 2000 - 2009

Below is a list of my favourite films of the past 10 years from 2000 – 2009. This list was created by selecting my 5 most highly recommended films from each year. I would consider these films to be must see films and can definitely be watched more than once. I have seen all these films multiple times and I would show these films to friends and guests when they come to visit and I never get tired of watching them. There is a mixture of Epic and intimate, funny and serious, animated and documentary, foreign and Hollywood but they are all universal stories that speak to us all. Try them and see…

Title                                                Year      Director

Avatar                                              2009      James Cameron

Star Trek                                          2009      J.J. Abrams

Defiance                                           2009      Edward Zwick

The Cove                                         2009        Louie Psihoyos

Up                                                   2009       Pete Docter, Bob Petersen

Fantastic Mr. Fox                              2009       Wes Anderson

Slumdog Millionaire                           2008      Danny Boyle

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation            2008      Cao Hamburger

Ben X                                               2008       Nic Balthazar

Man on Wire                                    2008        James Marsh

Son of Rambow                                2008       Garth Jennings

The Host                                          2007      Joon-ho Bong

Ratatouille                                        2007       Brad Bird

Lars and the Real Girl                        2007       Craig Gillespie

Days of Glory (Indigenes)                   2007        Rachid Bouchareb Algeria

The Darjeeling Limited                      2007       Wes Anderson

Babel                                               2006       Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles                2006       Zhang Yimou

I for India                                         2006       Sandhya Suri

Happy Feet                                      2006        George Miller

Manufactured Landscapes                  2006       Jennifer Baichwal

Head-On                                          2005      Fatih Akin

Born into Brothels                             2005      Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill      2005       Judy Irving

March of the Penguins                       2005        Luc Jacquet

War of the Worlds                            2005        Steven Spielberg

Hero                                                 2004      Zhang Yimou

House of Flying Daggers                     2004      Zhang Yimou

In this World                                     2004       Michael Winterbottom

The Incredibles                                 2004        Brad Bird

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring           2004        Kim Ki-duk

City of God (Cidade de Deus)                    2003      Fernando Meirelles Brazil

The Last Samurai                               2003      Edward Zwick

Lost in Translation                              2003       Sofia Coppola

Winged Migration                              2003        Jacques Perrin

Ten                                                   2003       Abbas Kiarostami

The Pianist                                        2002      Roman Polanski

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy              2002      Peter Jackson

Enlightenment Guaranteed                 2002       Doris Dorrie

Spirited Away                                    2002       Hayao Miyazaki

Y Tu Mama También                           2002       Alfonso Cuaron

Amélie                                              2001      Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Amores Perros                                  2001      Alejandro González Iñárritu

The Gleaners and I                            2001       Agnes Varda

Himalaya                                          2001       Eric Valli

Monsters, Inc.                                   2001       Pete Doctor

Malèna                                              2000      Giuseppe Tornatore

Gladiator                                           2000      Ridley Scott

Shower (Xizao)                                  2000       Zhang Yang

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon          2000       Ang Lee

Kikujiro                                            2000       Takeshi Kitano

JP