Les trois couronnes du matelot

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies, Raoul Ruiz

Les trois couronnes du matelot (Three Crowns of the Sailor) – Art 6/5 Ent 3/5 Worth 6/5

10 minutes into this film, there wasn’t anything that indicated this would be in any way different from Raoul Ruiz’s other pictures, which even when they’re bad from the perspective of his raised expectations, they’re still without question worthy of your time. It featured some staples of Ruiz’s technique: the immediate surrender of dramatic narrative to filmic narrative, manipulations of foreground and background that defy the traditional elasticity of screen space, the ambiguous and almost perfectly poetic dialogue that makes you easily forget the way people talk in reality. Then it hit me. The key to this obscure chamber of myth, the unconscious and the surreal is to approach it as you would a Bob Dylan song: submitting your suspension of disbelief as collateral for entrance to hear a bluesy folk song about things jarring, cruel and romantic.

Ruiz mixes in a jambalaya of Chilean mythology, the soulful stories of sailors who frequent far eastern ports, whore houses and blarney taverns, and writes it into a slowly unraveling stream of competing authors’ consciousness and unconsciousness. Characters speak with a frankness that disorients the audience, while other characters obscure their meaning. There’s a dozen or so stories that together tell a collage. The abstraction left a proletarian demented sailor to shoulder the burden of a story that had little to do with him and his journey, and something quite more to do with the harsh randomness of life.

Ruiz could have flopped with this one pretty easily. He could have tripped up on himself and spewed out a column of convoluted celluloid that made Caligula look grounded. It succeeds on multiple levels for having been written with electricity in its art, meat in its heart and music in its poetry. Some of Sacha Vierny’s shots are incredible, especially for being low budget, and low budget 30 years ago on top of that. I felt a definite cinematic influence from Jean-Luc Godard’s post-New Wave films. An all around masterpiece that makes film as art something intuitively enjoyable the second and third time through. This is in the reach of Tarkovsky, but extremely different.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084824/

Condemned Horror: 21 Films in from the Dark

Tags

a serbian film, Antichrist, blair witch project, dario argento, demons, giallo, grotesque, horror, Night of the Living Dead, Roman Polanski, rosemary's baby, salo, Satan, slasher films, texas chainsaw massacre, the descent, the ring, vampires, Zombies

The horror, thriller, crime and supernatural genres all sport an enormous collection of films, many of which I haven’t seen. Out of those I have, there are certain types that serve certain roles. The best in each role I’ve outlined below. Condemned Movies’ favored horror pictures of the modern era:

These actually kept me up at night:

The Blair Witch Project

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/

When I went to see this in theater, the terror it struck in my psyche didn’t quite manifest while I was in the dark theater with about 300 other kids my age on a Friday night. The gasps and tremors effected only a smile on my face, no terror, knowing that I’m in a brigade of generation y kids who will face any specter or demon that would thrust itself out of the screen. Once my friends and I made our way back home after the movie, it became quite another story. One of them suggested we immediately go camping, because in no simpler terms I think he’s a fucktard. Of course, we all considered it, and started gathering camping supplies, but after taking one look into the bush, filled with a massive grizzly bear and wolf population, that was visible just beyond my neighbor’s backyard, we reconsidered for “practical” reasons, obscuring the surreal reasoning: how exactly were we to know the Blair Witch wouldn’t leave little straw trinkets outside our campground? The first person shaky cam revolution may not have begun here, but it hit its fever pitch here, proliferating a dizzying and tired style that seems inappropriate when not being chased by redneck phantasms.

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The Descent

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435625/

I went into this movie expecting some scares, and yet I was also expecting a pedestrian thriller with creepy crawlers. I left this movie with a trace amount of post-traumatic stress. I stared at the dashboard in my Cadillac for 10 minutes, baking in the sun, trying to process what just happened in that dark, unpopulated theater. The only other time I left a movie swearing that fighting in combat wasn’t worth it for any reason was after the opening minutes of Saving Private Ryan. The harsh doling of mortality quickly made the cruelties of the universe well present in The Descent, I remember seeing three ladies walk, nay, dash out of this film as soon as the roller coaster began. There are few movies that can match the claustrophobic panic of this one.

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The Ring

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298130/

Call me a sacrilegious oaf, but I enjoyed the American version far more. The DVD came with a tongue-firmly-in-cheek feature that connected you directly with the narrative ploy featured in the film, conveniently titled “Don’t Watch This”, which held the prospect of the girl crawling out of your very own television, much like those in the film. I didn’t click it. I’m not an adventurous spirit by heart, I enjoy staying home and watching Squidbillies when all the excitement is going down. But for the love of Christ I will never, ever, click “Don’t Watch This”.

Iconic classics:

Night of the Living Dead

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/

Every boy worth his salt is schooled in every possible scenario and “what if” of the eternally perplexing question: what would you do in the, albeit rare, case of the eventual Zombie invasion? … steal an AK-47 and a box full of motrin IB then dash to Isle Royale. The zombie movie (and vampire movie) prior to Romero’s classic was easily dismissed as an archaic romp not necessarily worth one’s time. Mummies and Frankenstein. Such does not sate the mind’s curious search for meaning through the portal of mortification. “What if”, expanded radically with racist and sexist themes in this landmark film, would continue with a critique of the consumer culture in the sequel “Dawn of the Dead”. This film is indeed “patient zero” for most horror films made today.

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Rosemary’s Baby

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/

Lucifer is an extremely popular villain, and anti-hero (since Milton’s Paradise Lost), but his progeny is a pop culture villain of recent vintage. The Satanic cult was a fresh invention in the time of Rosemary’s Baby, and some cruel arithmetic in the universe had it that Roman Polanski would feel the sting of the inferno quickly after making this film. Mia Farrow gave up a role in The Detective to star in this timeless creeper, despite the admonition of her recent beau Frank Sinatra, resulting in her divorce. Such trivia only serve to make such painful flux hovering around this picture all the more attention-grabbing, with other cultish rumors and general inexplicables floating around. The film itself and the narrative were shocking for their time, and inspired countless other pale shadows. Polanski’s fetish for the devilish noir would not end here.

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072271/

Ick. Just ick. Texas is ick. Leatherface is ick. Inbred southerners are ick. Meathooks are ick. Chainsaws are ick. Every … single … thing …. about this film is ick. TCM inspired countless other horror films that came after, with the sheer terror, the obscured character of the primary villain, and the gruesomeness that separated all that followed from the candyass slapstick murder that preceded. Are we worse off because filmmakers decided that realism counts for something more than atmosphere? Well, we’ve always had people like this, maybe TCM just woke us up to their presence.

The new gothic atmosphere:

Alien

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/

I’ve told this story before: while watching this movie in theater in the ‘70s, my mother and her friend jumped out of their seats in the infamous chestburster scene and immediately went out for pizza, never considering watching another second for another ten years, once I watched it all the way through myself at an inappropriately young age. Though we might not really understand it today, with the over-commercialization of a niche monster movie series, the original Alien scared the bejeesus out of people. Before this, they hadn’t much dark sci-fi to go on. They probably expected Wookies monging about like Yogi Bear on meth. The effervescent psychosexual tension between a 7-foot tall penis monster and the female object(s) of its murderous desire make this one disgusting cornucopia of Freudian frustration splattered on screen. And to think, they made children’s toys out of this within the decade.

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Let the Right One In

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/

I’m of the opinion that this film cheats in exporting a cultural norm with Scandinavian decorum. Like Italians exporting food or Brazilians exporting music, this borderline turkey gets away with a few oohs and aahs abroad despite its failings. If you’ve ever been to Luleå, or sifted through the metal section of a record store (what are those?), you know just how god damn dreary, moody and laconic the Scandinavian joie de vivre is. In any case, they pulled off an interesting enough marker of the vampire tale, Viking-style. Unfortunately, we’re deprived of the rich bile-churning disgust that the novel presents, which is Lolita meets Bram Stoker. Profits dictate that will have to wait until we’re truly a degenerate society.

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The Ninth Gate

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142688/

You probably won’t like this movie. You won’t get it. You won’t want to get it. You may even be discriminatory because of the fact that Polanski is directing it. If you’re a real putz, you probably don’t care much for the narrative. Most likely, you just feel jilted by the ending. No worries, folks. This film is entirely worth it solely for the Ayn Randesque characters and the uncompromisingly rich cinematography. I always hear how people want to watch movies so they can travel to Europe. If you want to see the Europe that everyone else sees outside of tourist season, this is it. But even better, if you want to see a Europe that takes The Third Man and shoves him up Satan’s asshole, sows him in, and cuts him out of the horse innards in a Bahomet ritual … Polanski did it for you. The puzzling symbols and clues are left scattered throughout the film, only serving our intellect like a French butler, while the British cook boils us up a hot bowl of funny red mushrooms to digest in the final scene.

Delicious pastiche:

Amer

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1426352/

The filmmakers (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani) deliver the goods in this homage to giallo slashers of the ‘70s. Included are some haunted house and psychosexual dreamscape luciferean romances, as we plod through a film virtually bereft of dialogue, something that deeply pleases anybody sick to death of pathetic attempts at dialog by genre writers unfit to write book reports on A Confederacy of Dunces. The vibrant colors are a given, with their objective in mind. The insanely beautiful framing and detailed shots are painful to sit through because of their presence in a mere stabby mcvagina movie. Nevertheless, what more praise can I give this film than it raises all the wrong passions in me, just like it aspires to do.

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Scream

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117571/

A highly amusing byproduct of this film is the Scary Movie series, in two respects. For one, at least the very first Scary Movie served as a hilarious send-up of Scream and similar late 90’s slasher revivals. But furthermore, the redundancy of Scary Movie is made clear in how they’re parodying a pastiche. Scream was a fine enough self-reference on the slasher pic, it didn’t necessarily need a Budweiser commercial spoof. Wes Craven is at home with horror/thrillers, and this might as well be his magnum opus in that regard. In otherwise underwhelming careers, the cast here works out splendidly for their archetypal roles. Finding people who haven’t seen this movie is a pure delight, because its relation to middle class suburban American households, enjoying a film on a dark Friday night, works out to keep you on the edge of your seat, regardless of how many shotguns you have on your gun rack.

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Shaun of the Dead

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/

The Zombie film has largely met all of its creative cult-de-sacs by the time ‘Shaun’ came out. It had tried out goofy camp, darker and more evil re-makes, and even a complacent return to pre-Matheson Zombies that sleepwalked through the kitchen for orange juice. A triple-punch of 28 Days Later, the Dawn remake, and Shaun of the Dead returned to life in a revenant dance the latest generation of Zombie fanatics, whose fantasies are spilled out into Left 4 Dead, comic books and the ever intriguing “what if” scenarios. Shaun held itself above the others by being conscious of the Zombie clichés and having fun with them, but it also struck new territory because it explored the adventures of the 21^st century inept beta male.

Cult classics:

Evil Dead II

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092991/

The sequel is pretty much a direct re-make of the first Evil Dead, but it’s the difference between a Rolex and a water-proof Nickelodeon Spongebob watch. Even better, Raimi and Campbell developed a more sardonic sense of humor for the sequel that made it less of a taxing experience and a richer leaping-off-point for the cheese-o-rama adventure film that completed the trilogy. Like the “Night of the Demons” series, Evil Dead gives us the conflated monster of lazy thinking: the Zemon. Part Demon, part Zombie, 100% Ty Cobb swinging dick monster truck-driving cornswogglin’ evil undead. Bruce Campbell might not be the second coming of Peter Sellers, but he serves his purpose in Evil Dead II, and makes the movie an enjoyable watch.

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Hellraiser

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/

The creative, check that, destructive mind behind this story should, in any safe society, be locked away with the other lunatics who urinate in public and eat glass. That man would be Clive Barker, and I think anybody who watches Hellraiser will be feeling the tortured imagination swirling in a black cloud of hate in his mind for some time. Pinhead using flying meathooks to tear random people to shreds just because they played with some rubix cube has to be the most arbitrary demonry imaginable. The other causations just make me want to puke. I won’t give them away. Just terrific.

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Night of the Demons

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093624/

I discovered this one in a backwards way after seeing the sequel on subscription cable at 3AM, which galvanized my black leather-wearing rebellious years. A decade and a half later, I’m looking back in morbid disgust at the laziness abound in that sequel, but I’ve really gained an appreciation for the more raw and visceral original. I should have been clued in when I noticed the sequel sparing absolutely no expense by lifting entire scenes from the original. Like I mentioned about Evil Dead II, this movie has the venerable Zemon monster foe (part Demon, part Zombie). Once bitten, twice converted, six hundred and sixty six times lathered with makeup in the matter of seconds. The camp is existent here in an unassuming ‘80s kind of way, but if there were such a thing, this is a candidate for supernatural realism in its matter-of-fact presentation of just the facts. The comedy doesn’t pacify the creepiness of this gem.

The philosopher’s skullfuck:

Antichrist

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/

There’s no getting around the fact that this movie has some of the most visually powerful scenes in recent cinematic history. That only bears the sledge hammer’s weight heavier upon your nutsack. Von Trier pulled a few public stunts to preface the reception of this film, coloring the overactive imagination of cultural theorists to anticipate misogyny and other Freudian ‘issues’. In a word, he’s a prick. Don’t shy away from exploring it, the tantalizing meaning behind each and every “wtf” experienced in this movie is worth prodding. With our powerful relationships thus deconstructed, how far are we all from the state of nature? Clubbing bitches upside the head for procreation … thinking like bears in our murderous neglect of children that leads to heightened sexuality in the mother … forcing a controlling hold over the mentality of one’s lover to manipulate their emotions to our benefit. Von Trier is, in effect, the opposite of Dr. Phil vis a vis healing the marriage crisis.

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Deep Red

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073582/

Before committing to his various kills, Dario Argento planned out each scene with the meticulous design used by the obsessive compulsives who figure prominently in his features. Some of the deaths have their own foreshadowing, ringing a poetic note in tune with an empty-souled organ player. The murderer is given a circumspect and drawn-out appreciative camera for each death. The camera builds a world that can only be soaked in on slow motion. David Hemmings continues into another noir picture with another Italian luminary, and throws into the thriller genre to consummate the frustrated implications leftover from Antonioni’s Blow-Up. Argento taps into some pretty deeply-rooted cords wrapped around our psyche in Deep Red, making us feel disjointed and tipping over the edge of a cliff with surreal imagery and attempts to make us feel calm and safe. Hitchcock on LSD, as it were.

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Funny Games

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119167/

Michael Haneke must have woken up one day and said to himself: “Michael, today we’re going to write a screenplay where a couple of sick sunsabitches terrorize the audience by first breaking the fourth wall, and then directing the narrative”. I don’t like this movie on a personal level. It’s fucked up. It plays cinematic games while the characters play sadistic ones. Some viewers propbably can’t tell which ones affected them more. I haven’t seen this movie in a good 8 or 9 years, and I think that’s too fresh in my memory. Even the final category below doesn’t compare to the story in Funny Games, because of its quintessential attitude, where Haneke treats it as an elaborate terrorist beheading that takes a giant shit all over structural narrative assumptions we’ve been subjected to in other thrillers. The re-make is supposedly a shot-for-shot deal. I’m not watching that one either.

God is not a loving god:

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099763/

Low budget. Gruesome pathology. Stendhal meets Hannibal Lecter. There’s just all kinds of shit wrong with taking a realistic take on a prolific and … a recent at the time, let’s not forget that … a recent serial killer. Michael Rooker had a field day with this career-maligning role that he might’ve felt was just worth it. This is disturbing to watch in how cheap the production is, and how unromantic and gritty the act of murder becomes. Re-living it within the mise-en-abyme prism of the characters watching a massacre over in VHS is just too hard to bear. Fire and forget is the key here. I’m not watching this shit again. And it’s not even that bad compared to the two below.

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Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/

The source material for Pasolini’s choral ode to murderous sexual humiliation was, surprise of all surprises, the Marquis de Sade. De Sade wrote 120 Days of Sodom as a reaction to the Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau, who assumed a natural grace in reason and human progress. De Sade held the aristocratic assumption that humans were limited in their rational faculties, but he took it a step further than anybody else would ever conceive through the next century and a half: he posed our limitations as a gross middle finger shoved right into our faces. Napoleon, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao – what unites them? They had a common assumption that they utilized human reason to devise a grand new strategy for living and being in their respective polities. They were all wrong. Their end results uniformly matched exactly what you watch in Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom. Eating buckets of shit. An aristocratic insolence towards the dignity of the common people. The use of the common people as objects of pleasure and mortification for the whimsy of dignitaries. The Italian fascists aren’t the only ones given a nod here, but everyone who is so converted to a material culture that their grasp of pain and pleasure is alienated enough to permit them an unfeeling hold over inter-personal relations to any degree where Orwellian language covers up mass suffering.

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A Serbian Film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1273235/

I hate people. I officially hate people. If I can specifically target Serbs for my hatred, I would. I know how complicit they are in a psychopathic national attitude in regards to what they did in Bosnia and Kosovo. I would just love to have it so simple as to single Serbs out as a bunch of monsters, but of course, and depressingly, I know better. The filmmakers of this disgustathon wanted it to be a testament to the political culture that emanates from the Milosevic ultranationalist state that emerged in the post-Tito Civil War era. Everything depicted here, other than coincidental incest, was very likely a casual if not endorsed action during the Civil War. I’m sorry, I know some of you might think it only ironically feeds into the cycle, but all of that only makes me feel even better about having bombed them. This is a nation that took offense to a harmless joke by Chelsea Handler and issued hundreds of death threats to her. I’m sorry, I can’t resist saying it: Serbs, ya’ll are fuckin’ clownin’.

Kynodontas

Kynodontas (Dogtooth) – Art 4/5 Ent 3/5 Worth 6/5

I am not European. As much as I wish I grew up in Central Europe, I did not. I grew up in the last frontier of the United States. I’m practically a redneck. So almost every European film I begin watching, I have a fairly high rate of attrition, meaning I give up easily because most European films are fucking boring and useless. A lot of the supposedly interesting and canonical films are just a bunch of Marxist or Post-Structuralist claptrap that isn’t worth anybody’s time. So I almost gave up on this movie. I’m very glad I didn’t. There’s something awfully familiar, yet also new about this story. It’s a little bit Lord of the Flies, it’s a little bit M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, a little bit Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema. But it has a darkly humor to it that raises my fancy immediately. It has a little bit of developmental fun, in a twins studies kind of way, on how kids would develop if their only connection to the world outside their family compound is through their parents, their VHS players, and a girl who whores herself out to the family. One girl constructs a personality from videos, reciting lines from famous American movies, and creating dance moves both from pornos and Jennifer Beals’ moves in Flashdance. By the end, I wasn’t only sold, it had me in stitches.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1379182/

The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice

Tags

Orson Welles, Shakespeare

The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1952) – Art 5/5 Ent 4/5 Worth 6/5

How different would have Welles’ career been should this movie had the fortune of being completed on schedule, with ample funding. The judges at Cannes forgave an incomplete project, the most trying of the audience’s patience is the poorly synced audio, but the movie went completely unnoticed in America until its restoration and modification by Welles’ daughter. Orson Welles is somebody we already accept as a lion of the cinema, but his fights with the studios set him on an uneasy path that I think we can all agree left his potential unmet. If some investor had the balls to throw money into this project, we might have been graced with a more prolific Welles in the States. The merits of this work have been listed in abundance everywhere. The impossibly gorgeous architecture of the camera that takes Eisenstein to new heights is worth sitting through Shakespeare even if you don’t understand a word of that early modern English poesy. The emphasis on ‘honor’ was a reading of the play that gained more traction at the time, in part because Orson conveniently latched on to it. Is the blackface offensive? Uhm .. no. It’s barely noticeable at any rate. Some of the shots in this film are pure genius: the shadows of the revelers on the wall, the dizzying end, the exterior shots of ‘Cyprus’. This is a visual feast, by which we’re not easily sated.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045251/

Midnight in Paris

Tags

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Midnight in Paris – Art 4/5 Ent 5/5 Worth 5/5

This is just a wonderful film, and almost made me forget that it was a Woody Allen flick. Aside from his incessant desire to turn all his lead actors into an annoying and snarky iteration of himself (including Rebecca Hall in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but more convincingly Larry David in Whatever Works), this movie is less like the Woody Allen films of the past two decades, and the ’70s, a little more like Stardust Memories and Zelig, but it’s altogether refreshingly new from somebody who should by all rights be retired by now. Leave it to Woody Allen to make a love note out of his travelogue become both charming and serious. I really loved this movie for its ability to combine Samantha Brown’s adventures with Bill and Ted’s. I would have loved to explore some of my own “Golden Age”(-s , indeed, I have more than one). Although I doubt I would have ever become disillusioned with them, because although I see progress in history and don’t mind a bit of trouble and complexity here and there (if anything I revel in it), I still accept the past with historicist context. So just bring some Motrin IB and some sunscreen and let’s go visit the building of the pyramids. Seeing Rachel McAdams as a bit of a bitch was really fun. Of course, it’s Woody Allen making that happen.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1605783/

Favorite Contemporary Actresses

The following is a group of my favorite female actors, chosen out of all the working talent today. There are different reasons for liking actresses, some are role players, some are good at whatever they do, some are just genius actresses, and I’ve sub-grouped them accordingly.

Condemned Movies official stamp of approval for favorite actresses:

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Isabelle Adjani – Victim of her own talent
Resume: Camille Claudel, The Story of Adele H, Possession, Queen Margot, Skirt Day, Subway, Nosferatu the Vampyre, One Deadly Summer, The Brontë Sisters, The Tenant, The Driver

A crazy woman known for portraying crazy women, despite her intensity she always did so with a very lucid comprehension of the job, and she’s always been one of the best in the game. Starting in the ’70s with the stonewalling of Francois Truffaut’s attempt to devour another one of his actresses while filming The Story of Adele H, she brought it to bear that she’s one tough redoubt to crack. Her tempestuous personality and love affair with solitude, not to mention the dumbass decision to do Ishtar while having a fling with Warren Beatty (ruining a career in Hollywood) kept her from claiming a bigger slice of international pop culture. After falling off the map, she’s recently found renewed relevance with an award winning performance in La Journee de la jupe, and maybe a second wind like Catherine Deneuve managed in her later career.

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Jennifer Beals – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: The L Word, Flashdance, Four Rooms, The Book of Eli, Roger Dodger, 13 Moons, Devil in a Blue Dress, The Bride, The Last Days of Disco, The Prophecy II

She’s just a steeltown girl on a saturday night, lookin .. yeah, okay, I’ll stop. She’s a Yale girl, she shouldn’t be pigeonholed as a frizzy-haired stripper her whole life, and besides, she showed us in The L Word that Hollywood made a grave mistake spitting her out like a cherry seed. In virtually anything she does, she’s good, which is kind of unfortunate, because most of her jobs are crap, supporting roles or indies. Here’s hoping she can turn it around with a wave of success from the Showtime lipstick lesbian series.

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Emmanuelle Béart – Jane of all trades
Resume: Time Regained, 8 Women, Manon of the Spring, La Belle noiseuse, A Heart in Winter, Mission Impossible, Hell (two movies with the name), Sentimental Destinies,

So I included my dream woman, take it up with my lawyer. She’s slipped, in more ways than one, and has largely lost her stardom, but from the mid ’80s to the early ’00s, her exhaustive acting output gave us some of the best performances in French cinema, winning a César for Best Actress in Manon of the Spring. Now this might sound like a justification for keeping her off of this list, but Béart is precisely the opposite of Cate Blanchett: she’s never had a truly outstanding performance, but she’s had a half dozen outstanding films. There’s something to be said for having good taste in projects. At any rate, I put a few people on this list for much less than what she’s done.

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Cate Blanchett – Mistress of all trades
Resume: Elizabeth, Little Fish, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Notes on a Scandal, Charlotte Gray, Heaven, I’m Not There, Veronica Guerin, Babel, The Aviator, Oscar and Lucinda, The Shipping News, An Ideal Husband, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Good German, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Man Who Cried, The Lord of the Rings, Bandits, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Well there you have it people, I make no exception to the obviously indisputable fact that Cate is the best actress or actor alive today. She can do anything Messers Depp and Day-Lewis can do, and she’s a perfection of what Meryl Streep began. If you’ve ever seen an interview with her, it’s more mesmerizing than her work, because despite the fact that she’s kind of a scatterbrain, and incredibly demure, shy and humble, she has the air of an Orson Welles, Peter O’Toole or even Elvis. She has a natural lightness in her step, or as the guy from Hot Shots said about himself, she’s an F-18 deploying its ordinance with explosive fingertips. The greatest tragedy of this all is that she hasn’t had a crescendo in her career. For one, because practically every script she accepts leads to numerous accolades and awards, but also because no single script has been a masterpiece worthy of illuminating her efforts. A Russian dominatrix? Bitch, please. She’s not going anywhere, so it’ll arrive soon enough.

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Helena Bonham Carter – Jane of all trades
Resume: Fight Club, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The King’s Speech, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Enid, Novocaine, Live from Baghdad, A Room with a View, The Wings of the Dove, Planet of the Apes, Merlin, Harry Potter, Hamlet, Howard’s End, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,

You simply must love Helena. Really, that’s a command. A virtuosa with aristocratic heritage, HBC is solely limited in her undying taste oscillating between the absurd and costume dramas. Say what you will about The King’s Speech – a movie that suffers most of all from the plaudits heaped upon it in a vacuum of better sentimental options – her performance showed a woman who’s come a very long way from A Room with a view. Most of what she does is simply great fun.

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Lizzy Caplan – Future doyenne
Resume: Party Down, True Blood, Mean Girls, Cloverfield, My Best Friend’s Girl, Hot Tub Time Machine

Call me sexist if you will, but there really aren’t any comedic female actors who can compete with Sacha Baron Cohen or Zach Galifianakis in making me laugh. Lizzy Caplan comes awfully close. However, it’s mostly limited to snarky and sardonic roles like Party Down and Mean Girls. That doesn’t really do it. Luckily for her, she is in no way limited as a “funny girl”, and I see a bright future for her, despite having Party Down as the brightest spot on her resume right now. Any aspiring filmmaker wanting a rising star for their project would be smart to sign her up for a leading role.

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Charlotte Gainsbourg – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Antichrist, Jane Eyre (1996), Lemming, Golden Door, The Science of Sleep, The Sun Also Shines at Night, L’effrontée, The Little Thief, 21 Grams, The Cement Garden, I’m Not There, Persecution

There are graveyards full of the careers of the children of great artists, but in spite of that, the families of artists promote their own. Charlotte is the inferred natural product of the controversially (at the time) lurid song “Je t’aime… moi non plus”, sung by her parents, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. It isn’t surprising that she’d desire a career in the arts as well, but what is surprising is how god damn good she became after cutting out on her own, away from music – the medium her father conquered in France – into acting. Ambitiously, she went even further out of her comfort zone by taking a lead role in an English film (she may be Anglo-French, but she’s a fish out of water in English productions, and is distinctively French in her demeanor). And her Jane Eyre was the first interpretation I’d ever seen, and I compare all others to her. Perhaps I view them all with a bit of bias, but none so far have surpassed her. If you weren’t impressed by her in Antichrist, I just don’t know what to tell you. Her career is taking off quickly right now, and it’s terrific to see.

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Eva Green – Future doyenne
Resume: The Dreamers, Kingdom of Heaven, Casino Royale, Cracks, Camelot, The Golden Compass

Not since Kate Hepburn has a woman entranced an audience merely with the way she moves her head. After her breakthrough role in The Dreamers, she had me, but then she had to go off and make one of the most underrated epics in a generation with Kingdom of Heaven, and without catching her breath she pulled off, for my money, the best Bond Woman there ever was, helping to revitalize the hugely successful franchise from its previous sordid state. Honestly, she’s done enough to sign off as it is, but she’s plenty young and has bigger and better things ahead of her (acting opposite Johnny Depp in a Dark Shadows remake next year, looks good!). That said, she should really stop trying to pull off a natural accent in English. Charlotte Gainsbourg has a hard enough time and her mother is English. At least Schwarzenegger doesn’t even try. Once again, I find myself telling people, learn from Arnold.

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Rebecca Hall – Future doyenne
Resume: The Town, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Prestige, Frost/Nixon, Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974, Everything Must Go, Dorian Gray

Even if you don’t like action films, or Ben Affleck, or Boston … you really ought to take a few hours and watch The Town primarily for Ms. Hall. It was, for sure, her big debut, when all the heavyweight producers and casting agents were watching, and she did not disappoint. Another from a family of artists (her father, a director of film and the stage, chartered the Royal Shakespeare Company; her mother was an American opera singer), Rebecca Hall is quickly gaining ground in Britain and America as top billed talent, and deservingly so. But I have to say, I hope she does more work quickly, because the two biggest roles of hers to date have been excuses to let loose a lot of pathetic feelings of self-hatred as a spastic douche canoe who can’t figure out what she wants as one of the title characters in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and as a fragile hostage dealing with minor post-traumatic stress in The Town.

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Anne Hathaway – Future doyenne
Resume: Rachel Getting Married, Brokeback Mountain, Love and Other Drugs, Get Smart, The Devil Wears Prada, The Princess Diaries, Alice in Wonderland, Becoming Jane, Nicholas Nickleby, Ella Enchanted, Bride Wars

I wasn’t fully convinced that Anne was anything more than a dime-a-dozen Disney star they produce out of some plasticine bubble gum factory until I saw her in Rachel Getting Married. Though her supporting background role in Brokeback Mountain slightly eroded those suspicions, it could have just been a stroke of luck. She’s testing my patience with all the other crap she’s doing lately, but I’ve been far more lenient with a lot of actors, so I should lay off. Everyone seemed to pan the Oscar hosting job by her and James Franco, but most of them blamed her with guilt by association. Should have just left it to her, but then again, people are to ready to hate anything in that tedious schmaltz fest. Ms. Hathaway is slated for Catwoman in the next Dark Knight movie. She might not go bananas like Heath Ledger did, but she’s a competent professional and will get the job done. Watch her become Hollywood royalty afterwards.

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Isabelle Huppert – Mistress of all trades
Resume: The Piano Teacher, Coup de torchon, Heaven’s Gate, White Material, Comedy of Innocense, Home, Every Man for Himself, The King’s Daughters, Time of the Wolf, Violette Nozière, La Séparation, Story of Women, Gabrielle, The School of Flesh, I Heart Huckabees, 8 Women, La Cérémonie, Fantastic Mr. Fox (French version)

Honestly, I haven’t seen as much of her work as I’d like to, and she’s done a LOT of it, but from her performances I have seen, I have every desire to pluck every title off the shelf that she has her name on, regardless of quality. Her work this side of the Atlantic hasn’t made her into a household name, but it’s quite the opposite in Europe. If The Piano Teacher were an American film, she’d be bigger than Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. She can do any genre or any role, she can carry films on her back, she can make good films great or bad films interesting, and she can perform with exactness working for some of the great directors (Jean-Luc Godard, Raoul Ruiz, Michael Haneke, Bertrand Tavernier, Claude Chabrol, Olivier Assayas, Francois Ozon). There’s just something supernatural about her ability to disappear into characters without any flamboyance.

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Catherine Keener – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Capote, Being John Malkovich, Simpatico, Full Frontal, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Synecdoche New York, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Into the Wild, Where the Wild Things Are, An American Crime, Please Give

I’ve always really liked Catherine Keener for the simple reason that she never does a weak character. Every role is natural or fun, and every movie she’s in is worth watching. Good agent, good taste, I guess, but that’s not all there is to see. Her leading roles make me wonder why she’s relegated to supporting roles or low key films more often than I’d like. In any case, playing Nelle Harper Lee in Capote and the weird lady in Being John Malkovich are two career highlights many would kill for, and both films were brought up from being just above average movies by selecting her.

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Mia Kirshner – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: The L Word, Exotica, The Black Dahlia, Not Another Teen Movie, Anna Karenina (1997), 24, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, The Crow: City of Angels

Yikes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is one spicy nacho that can eat you alive. Isabelle Adjani and Charlotte Gainsbourg may play at being crazy ass bitches, but I wouldn’t want to ever be locked in a room with the real Mia. I’m sure she’s a sweetheart, and I wouldn’t want to denigrate her great performances by saying she’s pulling from her personal life and the reality matches the fiction … but I loved the Lion King too when I was a kid, doesn’t mean I’d climb over the fence at the Zoo. I think it’s safe to say that there won’t be any female character in a television series as deliciously nuts and narcissistic as Jenny Schecter any time soon – by far one of my favorite performances in film or television.

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Frances McDormand – Jane of all trades
Resume: Fargo, Almost Famous, Burn After Reading, Wonder Boys, Mississippi Burning, Raising Arizona, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Laurel Canyon, North Country, Something’s Gotta Give, Short Cuts, Palookaville, Primal Fear

Being married to Joel Coen certainly helped her career, but it would have been for nothing if it weren’t for the fact that she hits a home run whenever she’s at the plate. The Oscar for Fargo was one of the few times the Academy got it right, and it’s a small consolation that she was at least nominated for Burn After Reading – one of the funniest characters in film in recent memory. When the Coens loaned her out to other directors, she repeated her success, proving she’s not their puppet with Joel’s hand up her butt. Almost Famous, the Cameron Crowe self-love fest, and the Michael Douglas / Robert Downey Jr. comeback vehicle Wonder Boys both showed the quirky girl could play it sane. Anytime a Midwesterner shows those coastal knuckleheads how it’s done, I have a laugh.

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Chloë Moretz – Please avoid the cocaine
Resume: Kick-Ass, Let Me In, (500) Days of Summer, The Amityville Horror, Wicked Little Things, Room 6

This poor girl is just a disaster waiting to happen. She’s done more horror movies than many scream queens of the ’80s and she isn’t but 14. Either that, or she can look forward to having a career like McCaulay Culkin or Haley Joel Osment, and wind up getting her mug-shot online for smoking crack in Louisiana. Or she could be like Christina Ricci and just stagnate, start doing a lot of crap. Oh well, hopefully it all works out, because anybody who can make me watch a Nicholas Cage movie must have something going for them.

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Samantha Morton – Jane of all trades
Resume: The Libertine, In America, The Messenger, Synecdoche New York, Sweet and Lowdown, Control, River Queen, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Minority Report, Morvern Callar, Under the Skin, Longford

Yeah she’s talented beyond belief. Yeah she’ll turn you upside down in an otherwise mediocre film. And yeah, she can convincingly play an Irish woman and an American woman, and pull off any accent in the book (though most English actors are trained for that). But for god’s sake, lighten the fuck up, will you lady? In the words of Peter Griffin, somebody throw a pie already! She’s what made The Libertine just that much more great playing opposite a lecherous narcissistic drunkard in Johnny Depp’s character Wilmot. Put her to any task in any film and she gets it done perfectly. Except comedy, I guess.

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Carey Mulligan – Future doyenne
Resume: An Education, Never Let Me Go, Pride & Prejudice, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Public Enemies

I’m including her mostly for her role in An Education, which was a real breath of fresh air coming from a new talent in the industry. She went and squandered my good will as soon as she made the dumbass Wall Street sequel, but she wasn’t exactly bad in it. I admire young actors who can portray young people as they are: full of shit but brimming with equal parts confidence and trepidation. Coming of age stories are almost uniformly stupid, credit to her and the writers for making An Education more than a mere bildungsroman autobiography about class and status in ’60s England.

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Molly Parker – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Deadwood, The Road, Max, The Center of the World, Waking the Dead, Sunshine, Last Wedding, Wonderland, Kissed, Six Feet Under, Swingtown

Molly Parker has done a lot of work, and not all of it in very interesting films. She’s never had a lead role in a big movie, and she’s never really even had a supporting role in a big movie either. She’s never really brought a bad performance, however, so, she’s a well-traveled old mitt, I guess is what I’m trying to say. She’s definitely deserving of more success than she’s had so far. I’ll definitely watch any piece of crap that she’s in, especially because she takes some very kinky roles like a necrophiliac or a prostitute hanging out with Peter Sarsgaard all day.

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Sarah Polley – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Dawn of the Dead (2004), Go, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Beowulf & Grendel, John Adams, Splice, The Weight of Water, My Life Without Me, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Mr. Nobody

I’ll admit it, Beowulf & Grendel really brought me around to liking Sarah Polley as more than that chick in Atom Egoyan films and the Dawn remake. She’s been in a lot of mediocre forgettable crap (Splice?, Weight of Water?), so it comes as no surprise that she isn’t a bigger name. Get a better agent Ms. Polley, you’re fucking talented as shit, get with the program.

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Natalie Portman – Jane of all trades
Resume: Black Swan, V for Vendetta, The Professional, Garden State, Closer, The Other Boleyn Girl, Brothers, Paris je t’aime, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, The Darjeeling Limited, Goya’s Ghosts, Star Wars prequels, Heat, Anywhere but Here, Where the Heart Is, No Strings Attached

Okay, so she does a lot of shitty movies. Like Thor and Star Wars, for instance. You’re allowed to chide her for her romance and sad scenes in the prequels, by all means. But she’s done more work than that, so let’s not let the daisies in with the daffodils. I’ll even admit it, I was never convinced that she was capable of much until Black Swan came out. To put it lightly, that role swept me right off my feet. So I went back through her career and felt that I never gave her the benefit of the doubt after the Star Dorks hack fest. She can keep doing stupid ass movies with Ashton Kutcher for all I care, so long as she does at least one movie like Black Swan per decade.

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Parker Posey – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Personal Velocity, Clockwatchers, Party Girl, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration, Dazed and Confused, The House of Yes, You’ve Got Mail, Scream 3, Blade: Trinity, Superman Returns

I love the ’90s, indeed. Parker “Queen of the Indies” Posey is everybody’s favorite “holy shit, it’s ___________” while watching random movies, because she’s been in at least 5 dozen films but never quite got to the point where she sold movies with her presence. I’m sure she’s real broken up about the fact that she’s had steady work for 2 decades, though. Although I love ’90s indies, because they bring you back to a simpler, new antebellum era, when the budget was balanced and we weren’t at war with a bunch of hairy religious psychos, I still have to tip my hat to her work as part of Christopher Guest’s troupe in their various ensemble comedies like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. She’s smart, funny and versatile … somebody put her in the next Lord of the Ding Dongs movie and more idiots will appreciate her.

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Emma Roberts – Future doyenne
Resume: Scream 4, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, What’s Wrong with Virginia, Twelve, Wild Child, Lymelife, Hotel for Dogs, Nancy Drew, Unfabulous, Ice Princess, Aquamarine, Blow

Jesus, look at that mouth on her, it’s even bigger than Julia’s. She’s gonna eat us all. So, Emma has three incredibly bad things going against her: 1) her father is Eric Roberts, 2) her aunt is Julia Roberts, 3) she started out as a Nickelodeon house pet. We all grow up at some point, well, most of us anyway, and if Scream 4 isn’t growing up, I don’t know what is. I’d like to call it her breakthrough performance, but it’s still relatively minor, and she’s not broken away from the ties that bind, so to speak. Let’s call it her violent stab away performance, wanting to get into something that isn’t insipid garbage or boring nonsense. It’s Kind of a Funny Story gives me hope that she’s going in the right direction. We’ll have to wait and see.

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Chloë Sevigny – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Big Love, Zodiac, Boys Don’t Cry, The Brown Bunny, The Killing Room, Dogville, American Psycho, Kids, Party Monster, The Last Days of Disco, Julien Donkey-Boy, If These Walls Could Talk 2, Shattered Glass, Manderlay, Broken Flowers

God I love Chloe. Parker Posey may have dabbled in cute little indies, but Chloe launched head-first into some real art house shit that they only air on the Sundance Channel at 3AM. I have to give a special thank you to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 for giving me the trailer for Kids, which was maybe the most painfully ’90s movie you could get. Chloe went on to do a lot of avant garde and fashionable flicks, most of which are only worth seeing today if you’re into slow going abstraction or nostalgia, but her role on Big Love as the scheming little wolverine of a sister-wife, Nikki Grant (one of my all-time favorite characters), really convinced me that she could hold up more mainstream productions.

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Meryl Streep – Jane of all trades
Resume: Doubt, Adaptation, Sophie’s Choice, The Deer Hunter, Still of the Night, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Kramer vs. Kramer, Death Becomes Her, Out of Africa, Silkwood, The Manchurian Candidate, Julie & Julia, Mamma Mia!, Rendition, The Bridges of Madison County, The Devil Wears Prada, A Prairie Home Companion

For as long as I can remember, I never really noticed Meryl Streep in anything she did. She’s such a plain jane, the kind of actress that only other women can appreciate. But when you start paying attention to actors, and how they work their magic (which is maybe the most deceptively difficult profession in the world, in that just everybody thinks they can do it but so precious few actually can), you start seeing people like Streep leap out in front of everybody else. Sophie’s Choice and Doubt are two movies I didn’t see until just lately, both validating her talents and suspending all criticism I had. But it’s in crap movies like Still of the Night, Death Becomes Her or Devil Wears Prada that you see her having the most fun with it all. It’s not just that she’s matched Newsweek in monthly production, but she is just literally everywhere and doing an amazing job in every role, being amply awarded (and nominated, a running gag for the Academy schmucks). Nah, Meryl’s got it.

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Emma Thompson – Jane of all trades
Resume: The Remains of the Day, Sense and Sensibility, Angels in America, Wit, In the Name of the Father, Nanny McPhee, Stranger than Fiction, Impromptu, Howards End, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Junior, Harry Potter, The Winter Guest, Primary Colors, Love Actually, Brideshead Revisited, Last Chance Harvey, An Education

When I began seeing ads for Wit on HBO back in the day, and saw that it was Emma Thompson starring in it, I was like “yeah, she’s witty, so what? You’re making a movie about that? Seriously?” Well, yeah, she actually is awfully witty, and I just keep laughing about the time she was on The Daily Show to promote the latest Nanny McPhee, and interrupting her cute anecdotes, Jon Stewart stopped her in her tracks by saying “Well you’re just charming aren’t you?”. Emma is one of my favorite actresses because she brings a warmth and life to a variance of characters in many very well written films, and the one I like the most was as an English housekeeper with painfully subtle heartbreak in Remains of the Day. If Emma’s in it, you know it’ll be fun.

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Naomi Watts – Mistress of all trades
Resume: Mulholland Drive, Eastern Promises, 21 Grams, Funny Games (2008), The Ring, King Kong, Le Divorce, Tank Girl, We Don’t Live Here Anymore, The International, Fair Game

We can all thank David Lynch for dragging this gem of a woman out of obscurity for Mulholland Drive. With little over a decade of major roles coming her way, she’s established herself as both a flawless actor and an internationally bankable leading star. She’s one great project away from an Oscar (or, knowing them, one mediocre project that panders to the plebs). Working with Lynch, Innaritu, Haneke, Cronenberg and that weird Hobbit fellow has really given her lush territory to explore, but I really think she’s only getting started. Most of us just ignored her role in Fair Game as Valerie Plame, the CIA operative outed by the Bush administration on account of her husband’s intransigence, however, compare that role with 21 Grams or Mulholland. She doesn’t fuck around kids, she knows what she’s doing and she takes every little obsessive detail about these roles seriously. We can expect a lot more from her in the future.

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Kate Winslet - Mistress of all trades
Resume: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sense and Sensibility, Heavenly Creatures, Iris, Titanic, The Reader, Little Children, Finding Neverland, Quills, Enigma, Revolutionary Road, Mildred Pierce, Romance & Cigarettes, All the King’s Men, Hideous Kinky, Hamlet (1996)

I have a hard time deciding who I like more in the battle of the K/Cates … Winslet or Blanchett. They’re together unparalleled, and they both take on very different roles and some very similar roles. I guess the reason Kate gets the dubious distinction of having the other one talked about in my rationalizing for her spot on this list is that I’ve always had Cate above her. I’m perhaps biased in thinking so, because anybody who’s seen some of the tremendous pictures Winslet has been in can attest to her perfection of the art. Eternal Sunshine? Little Children? She’s had both box office (Titanic) and critical acclaim, while Cate’s only had cameos in the Lord of the Ding Dongs movies. But Kate has an achilles heel: she’s too grounded of a person to allow any transmigration into the bizarre characters that Cate pulls out of her back pocket. Ms. Blanchett seemingly has no strong grasp of her center, she’s too easily adrift in mimicry, whereas Ms. Winslet has to work at it. Nevertheless, these two ladies are only in each other’s company.

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Evan Rachel Wood – Future doyenne
Resume: The Wrestler, Whatever Works, True Blood, Mildred Pierce, The Life Before Her Eyes, Across the Universe, Thirteen, Practical Magic, Running with Scissors, Down in the Valley, The Conspirator

I remember watching Thirteen way back when and thinking, “damn, why don’t they make more shoestring budget movies if everybody and their sister is naturally this talented”. So after one of those girls went on to be in the Twilight movies and this one went on to be in True Blood, I guess child actors can be temporarily, deceptively good, if only for a lack of competition. ERW is one weird ass chick, you can see why in all the tabloids, but the weird ones are usually packing some very fun facades for their acting. Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and Woody Allen’s Whatever Works both showcase the beginning of what could be an impressive career for Evan Rachel Wood, and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Favorite Contemporary Actors

The following is a group of my favorite male actors, chosen out of all the working talent today … and Heath Ledger. There are different reasons for liking actors, some are role players, some are good at whatever they do, some are just genius actors, and I’ve sub-grouped them accordingly.

Condemned Movies official stamp of approval for favorite actors:

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Javier Bardem – Master of all trades
Resume: No Country for Old Men, Biutiful, Before Night Falls, The Sea Inside, Live Flesh, Jamon Jamon.

Almodovar was very lucky to have found these actors to make his great films better, and yet the audience is luckier still. Bardem’s acting is given a boost by the fact that he’s a damn interesting person himself, a multi-talented artist with bearing and vitality. In Biutiful, it’s difficult to get over the fact that we’re empathizing with a character who, if portrayed by any other person, we’d want to crucify. Like Mozart growing into a sublime musical genius from being a child impresario performing cheap novelty acts, Bardem isn’t made weak by such a naturally empathetic disposition, rather he builds a higher construct around it with the same acting techniques used by other greats. Al Pacino once left a rambling voicemail lauding him for his work on Before Night Falls. Throughout his career, we can witness characters extrapolated from different shades of his persona, and some shades you’d never imagine in an interview, and yet it’s more natural than Johnny Depp’s Scarlet Pimpernel routine. I think Bardem has much left to be done.

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Vincent Cassel – Jack of all trades
Resume: Black Swan, Eastern Promises, La Haine, Irreversible, The Apartment

Cassel is one of my favorite actors for his versatility and at the same time, his unique ability to merge archetypes for a jarring effect. For instance, he’s begins with a narcissus archetype as his palette, but he takes that persona from sociopathic warlord (The Messenger) to vendetta-seeking would-be hero (Irreversible) to suave hapless nemesis (Ocean’s Twelve) to corruptible power (Black Swan). Yet the variation on the theme is broken elsewhere in his work, taking sympathetic leads in many French films, comedic roles and more salt of the earth types as well. Cassel has a yeoman’s toolbox to do any role well.

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Sacha Baron Cohen – More than just comedic
Resume: Da Ali G Show, Borat, Bruno

In comedy, the two most important things are timing and surprise, and Cohen has an innate grasp of both that just aren’t matched by most people. His inventory of cultural satire is a thriving arsenal indeed, but it would be nothing if not for his ability to deliver it speedily and in proper form. Watch his interviews on Da Ali G Show with unsuspecting famous people to see his comedic skills at highest effect. But the most interesting thing about him is how he incorporates the political theory of Hannah Arendt into his comedy. The Banality of Evil is turned into a joke, and what’s funnier than that which scares the shit out of us?

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Tom Cruise – Victim of his own talent
Resume: Top Gun, Born on the Fourth of July, The Firm, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Collateral, Tropic Thunder

Coulda, woulda, shoulda for this poor soul. He had more going against him than just picking bad projects, he also stifled his growth as an actor early on by limiting himself. Once the ‘80s came to a close, we never saw the same courage from him until he allowed a little grey in his hair for Collateral, and then no hair at all for Tropic Thunder. It’s a good pattern for success, now if he could only rid himself of that scientology crap, he might have a golden age in his later years. For somebody so overrated generally, his actual talent is underrated in a way that would be tragic if it weren’t for the fact he’s incredibly successful anyway.

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Paul Dano – Future baller
Resume: There Will Be Blood, The Good Heart, Little Miss Sunshine, The Emperor’s Club, The Ballad of Jack and Rose

This guy is just brimming with talent. Though I suspect he’ll often be limited to secondary character roles, I see him somewhere between Vincent Gallo and Gene Hackman: a guy whose mental state is always suspicious, but reliably so. His role in There Will Be Blood may have been second best, but that’s like saying he came up second place in a bedding-women competition with Wilt Chamberlain. He may find a niche taking roles like in Edward Norton’s career path.

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Daniel Day-Lewis – Master of all trades
Resume: There Will Be Blood, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, In the Name of the Father, Gangs of New York, My Left Foot, Ballad of Jack and Rose

And speaking of Wilt … Daniel Day-Lewis is the perfection of the Method style, the gold standard by which all aspiring Method actors should measure themselves. His natural intensity and the dedication he puts into the roles are the stuff of legend. His selectivity in roles hasn’t been fortuitously bankable, but then, if that’s what you were expecting, you just don’t get DDL. Even lightweight productions like Ballad of Jack and Rose and The Boxer might not have been such excellent films (relatively speaking), but he was excellent in them. You have to go all the way back to A Room with a View to see a poorly chosen role. If you’re wondering, I do think he’s the best actor working today, but it’s a tie with …

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Johnny Depp – Master of all trades
Resume: The Libertine, Secret Window, The Ninth Gate, Pirates of the Caribbean, Donnie Brasco, Dead Man, Ed Wood, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Arizona Dream, Edward Scissorhands

What is there to say about Mr. Depp that Tiger Beat hasn’t already said? There’s nobody who can seamlessly disappear into a wider array of characters as he. His career has very interestingly followed the same pop culture route that the Beatles tread: he began a teen pop culture sensation, he delved into the avant garde and underground, and then went huge with a saccharine takeover of the medium. There was a time when the most bankable stars – Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Russel Crowe – all had to be naturally alpha males, ‘type A’, sexually unambiguous and also capable of beating the shit out of someone, or Tom Hanks. It’s one of those fateful moments of history that some schmuck at Disney dropped the ball and let Johnny churn out one of the most interesting characters in a deeply uninteresting movie series with Jack Sparrow. I’m totally not cynical (stoical if anything, which is related), so I’m extremely happy that such a brilliant actor is raking in the dineros, even in trashy movies like The Tourist. He’ll slip up and do something relevant again soon, and it will be great.

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Robert Downey Jr. – Victim of his own talent
Resume: Wonder Boys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Zodiac, Sherlock Holmes, Iron Man, A Scanner Darkly, Tropic Thunder

Downey is an incredibly interesting case of the reverse blow-up. He didn’t really begin with anything too interesting, good, or even lucrative. But his early life was just enough insanity to fuck him up, put him through rehab and get him into all sorts of trouble. But with maturity, and trying and re-trying the game, he sorted himself out, and perfected his craft. That tends to be a natural advantage in people, a little bit of inner emotional distress to understand the world in a peculiarly different way. Clearing up serious problems, however, is another story. Being high at any job is debilitating, but especially acting. And it’s good that he cleaned his act up, because his enthusiasm for roles and his professionalism are impeccable. His grasp of comedy is one of his greatest strengths. If Iron Man were Eric Stoltz, was there a prayer in hell of that movie being a cash cow?

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Jesse Eisenberg – Future baller
Resume: The Social Network, Zombieland, The Squid and the Whale, Roger Dodger, The Emperor’s Club

The anemic and sarcastic turd grew up in Social Network, and became an anemic and sarcastic sociopath. It was enough of a leap to convince me that this kid has an enormous future, with definite lead potential.

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Colin Farrell – Jack of all trades
Resume: In Bruges, Ondine, The New World, The Way Back, Minority Report, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Horrible Bosses, Alexander

This irish feller started out with a bunch of drab or forgettable roles, and he still does them on occasion, but his upward swing was impressive. He has all of the makings of a fantastic lead for the next summer blockbuster, but is perfectly suitable as a pathetic fisherman, an illiterate thug or a nepotistic coke fiend. His range is solid, and his abilities are proven. He’s on the cusp of something bigger.

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Michael Fassbender – Future baller
Resume: Jane Eyre, Inglourious Basterds, X-Men: First Class, Fish Tank, 300, Centurion, Band of Brothers

It’s kind of weird saying that his future is ahead of him, he could retire and remain an interesting figure of cinema and television as it is. He’s already accomplished more than River Phoenix, by which any working actor could measure their success. He’s slated for a number of big productions that could turn him into a household name, most interestingly to me is the Alien prequel, Prometheus. His interpretation of Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is slightly better than most of those who’ve preceded him. There’s plenty of depth to every one of his characters, even in throwaway roles for cheesy action films. His Magneto in X-Men belonged in a better narrative.

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Ralph Fiennes – Jack of all trades
Resume: Schindler’s List, In Bruges, The Constant Gardner, The Prince of Egypt, The Duchess, Harry Potter, Strange Days, Red Dragon, Quiz Show, The English Patient, Onegin

He’s as prolific as he is a perfectionist. I’d be remiss to keep him off the “Master” list, if not for the fact that he’s a dullard with zero comedic talent – something In Bruges adequately works around. We can’t all be ballers, I guess. Otherwise, there’s simply no role that “Rafe” can’t do. His quick cameo in The Hurt Locker showed that, if he fancied the notion, he could conquer action films as well. But it doesn’t interest him. His body of work is an enviable assortment of straight up killing it. Most serious actors rightfully look to him as a modern day lion of British acting, rivaling Olivier and Gielgud. And yet, I doubt we’ve seen his best efforts. I’m eagerly anticipating his take on Coriolanus.

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Jamie Foxx – Jack of all trades
Resume: Ray, The Soloist, Jarhead, In Living Color, Dreamgirls, Horrible Bosses, Any Given Sunday, Booty Call

I think Jamie Foxx is an excellent example of how easy it is for truly great comedic actors to switch to drama. Comedy in the Anglo world is the hardest performance to do, because we’ve democratized snobbery with regard to comedy to such an absurd degree compared to elsewhere. If you’re a brilliant comedic actor, it would be child’s play to calculate the appropriate effect in dramatic roles. Anybody who’s seen Booty Call or In Living Color knows Mr. Foxx’s adept comedic skills well. Despite the praise heaped on him for performances like Ray and Dreamgirls, I think his best moment was in Jarhead. If the entire movie followed him instead, well, I would bother watching it again. Instead I’ll just look at youtube clips.

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Zach Galifianakis – More than just comedic
Resume: Out Cold, The Hangover, Due Date, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Bored to Death, Between Two Ferns

My appreciation for Zach was slow to the show. I thought Out Cold was one of the better stoner movies in recent memory, but I didn’t separate him specifically from the film. In the ensuing decade, I was unimpressed with his stand-up, and didn’t notice him in anything. It wasn’t until I began seeing him explode onto the entertainment industry after The Hangover, and I saw him in Between Two Ferns, that I realized we were dealing with a comic genius here. That internet show alone is enough to impress, but his work, both comedic and dramatic, since taking off from the Hangover, has given birth to a new star. Enjoy the ride people.

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Vincent Gallo – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Buffalo ’66, Arizona Dream, Tetro, Brown Bunny, The Funeral, Essential Killing, Palookaville

The inspiration for Billy Walsh on Entourage, this guy is fucking nuts, and a little bit of a prick. And that’s exactly why I love his work so much. If it weren’t for the fact that he marches to the beat of his own drum, he would be a more prolific and praised actor. But obviously, he enjoys eschewing mainstream appreciation, and it’s hard to blame him. The work he does do, like Tetro, is extremely frustrating in this regard. He could be bigger than Johnny Depp, but has an insufferability that will never be copacetic with playing the game. Brown Bunny was a tad unbearable, and poor Chloe Sevigny supposedly had to go to therapy because of the blowjob scene, but the movie was worth it just for him.

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Heath Ledger – That one role
Resume: The Dark Knight, I’m Not There, Brokeback Mountain, The Four Feathers, Monster’s Ball, A Knight’s Tale, 10 Things I Hate About You

You couldn’t have written this tragedy any better. The only reason worth seeing Dark Knight over and over again, his signature role, and it’s the role that killed him. They’ll make a movie about him some day that will be more interesting than Dark Knight. I mean, if you’ve gotta go, go out large. I’d have preferred him to shock and amaze us in a role where the writing had layers of meaning that the actor was unaware of, instead of the other way around. Sad loss, but what little he did give us was enough for most careers.

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Tony Leung Chiu Wai – Jack of all trades
Resume: Hero, In the Mood for Love, Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Happy Together, Flowers of Shanghai, Red Cliff

I’ll admit it, Tony Leung is one of my favorite actors simply because he’s Kar Wai Wong’s go-to guy, but credit to him for finding such a competent and versatile actor. He’s not above comedy, sweeping historical epics and cheesy action, but he does leave the best stuff for his many auteur and art house films. If there were any justice in the world, he’d have more exposure this side of the Pacific. Time will tell.

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Viggo Mortensen – Jack of all trades
Resume: Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, The Road, Lord of the Rings, The Prophecy, The Indian Runner, Good

Viggo truly can do no wrong. He takes his job seriously enough to scare women and children with his Russian mafia tattoos at Burger King. A lot like Daniel Day Lewis, he may pick some mediocre films like Alatriste, but he always picks very interesting roles and performs them with aplomb. I’m very glad Lord of the ding dongs sent this guy’s career into star territory, but he has more potential to be a bankable star in his own right.

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Sean Penn – Master of all trades
Resume: Milk, 21 Grams, Mystic River, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sweet and Lowdown, The Thin Red Line, The Tree of Life, The Game, Dead Man Walking, Casualties of War

Sean Penn is a lot like Cate Blanchett, in that they’re both just utterly perfect in every way, for every role, but there aren’t many truly impressive films that either has been in, with a leading role. Daniel Day Lewis had There Will Be Blood, but Sean Penn only has Milk and Mystic River, which are both decent in their own right, but very limited in scope. Penn’s collaboration with Terrance Malick was limited by the roles, and Malick movies are more about Malick anyway. Sean Penn needs to work with Darren Aronofsky for the role of a lifetime, I believe.

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Michael Pitt – Future baller
Resume: The Dreamers, Boardwalk Empire, Funny Games, Last Days, Delirious

It wasn’t until Boardwalk Empire that I thought there’d be much range for Michael Pitt’s career, beyond brooding effete intellectual roles. Now if only he could branch out into comedy and more sympathetic roles, we might have something here. At any rate, he’s already established himself as a reliable and deeply interesting performer. Last Days might have just been a subtle homage to Kurt Cobain, but it’s worth seeing for Pitt’s acting – his take on “The Passion” to be sure.

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Tahar Rahim – Future baller
Resume: A Prophet

I really like this guy, and I can already see he had a number of good projects lined up. His ability to make an opportunist murdering sociopath into an essentially likable hero is more than Al Pacino has ever done.

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Jeremy Renner – Respectability in gun fights
Resume: The Hurt Locker, The Town, 28 Weeks Later, Fish in a Barrel

The new Jason Bourne, and they did a very good job in casting him. He’ll probably remain in largely action’y areas, but he’ll at least back them all up with a layered performance that you just don’t see from Vin Diesel or The Rock or whomever. Renner’s only going up from here.

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Mickey Rourke – Victim of his own talent
Resume: The Wrestler, The Pope of Greenwich Village, A Prayer for the Dying, Rumble Fish, Angel Heart, Barfly, Year of the Dragon, Sin City, Buffalo ’66, The Pledge, Rainmaker

An incredibly interesting career, because most of his work passed by the public consciousness. When he was redeemed with The Wrestler, I wondered what he’d been redeemed from. He’s always done very sharp work, but the reception of the films he chose to act in has never been that friendly. He didn’t have any truly remarkable films in the ‘80s, but a half-dozen tremendous performances in very decent ones. But then a stretch of bad projects here or there never really killed his career off. Solid but small roles in Sin City, The Pledge and Rainmaker kept him on everybody’s radar. Now he’s blowing it again with dumbass movies like Iron Man 2 and The Stallone muscle ensemble. Well, good for him, I guess.

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Mark Ruffalo – Jack of all trades
Resume: The Kids Are All Right, Shutter Island, You Can Count on Me, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Zodiac, All the King’s Men, 13 Going on 30, Just Like Heaven

Despite the fact that he’s often tapped for lame roles, it’s his work in very un-lame ones that impress me. The Kids Are All Right and Zodiac show me this guy has the stuff to do just about anything well. Sympathetic male love interests in chick flick rom-coms might be what pays the bills, but I think after The Avengers comes out, he’ll be in higher demand, and give us more to work with.

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David Thewlis – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Naked, Kingdom of Heaven, Seven Years in Tibet, Besieged, Total Eclipse, Black Beauty, DragonHeart, Harry Potter, Gangster No. 1

The British guy who’s in everything. His work on Mike Leigh’s Naked was an outstanding initial bang, that he’s had trouble following up with any significant lead roles. His supporting work is all very impressive and varied, and he keeps getting it, with good reason. A very reliable actor.

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Stanley Tucci – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: The Lovely Bones, The Impostors, Big Night, Winchell, Conspiracy, Captain America: The First Avenger, Julie & Julia, The Pelican Brief, Road to Perdition

I have to include Campbell Scott, Tucci’s buddy in the praise of Tucci himself, because the only reason I’m leaving George C. Scott’s kid off this list is because of the dearth of relevant films and the seeming tragic downward path of his career. You know you’re in trouble when you’re in an occasional supporting tv-series role on the USA Network. But anyways, Stanley Tucci is an outstanding character actor, and he’s made himself abundant, working tirelessly over the past decade and a half. Every role, he disappears into the character. He’s like the character actor version of Johnny Depp. His intelligence for the art of acting is infectious. His few lead roles have also been amazingly well done, but unfortunately he’ll never be a traditional lead.

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John Turturro – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Barton Fink, Quiz Show, Miller’s Crossing, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Secret Window, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski, The Good Shepherd, Transformers

Working with the Coen brothers and Spike Lee so much put John Turturro on the map, and he must have earned that loyalty between two very different sets of filmmakers somehow. His lead role in Barton Fink makes for one of the best films in the modern era. Like Bill Maher said when he invited him on his show recently, studios bring him on projects to give the films respectability. He’s the beard for crap movies (Transformers). Much like Stanley Tucci, there’s simply no role he’s incapable of perfecting, and he works in just about every movie being made, so far as scheduling will permit.

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Christoph Waltz – That one role (so far…)
Resume: Inglourious Basterds, Water for Elephants, The Green Hornet

So, unlike Heath, he’s not dead, but we’re kind of stuck with one signature role here that blew the competition out of the water, and it’s not looking great on him repeating that success. He’s no spring chicken either. He’s an old man, with one foot firmly in Central Europe. He could disappear just as easily as he appeared in the Anglo film world. I sure hope not, of course, because if he can reproduce the timeless performance as Hans Landa, of which he’s probably entirely capable, we’re all in for a treat. Word is that Quentin Tarantino isn’t retarded and has intentions to collaborate again in the near future. Good, I can dig that.

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Hugo Weaving – Respectability in gun fights
Resume: V for Vendetta, The Matrix, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Wolfman, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, Little Fish

There’s something unfortunate about the fact that out of three of Hugo’s biggest jobs, he only gets about 10 minutes of actual face time. And no, having 400 of his faces in the Matrix sequels doesn’t quite make up for it. His dramatic and comedic abilities are simply too profound to stick with action films, but it’s what interests him and pays the most, so whatever works. He could just as easily get away with being a romantic lead in a Jane Austen adaptation. I’ll see any movie with Hugo because he brings the rest of the production up a little regardless of surroundings.

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Michael K. Williams – Future baller
Resume: The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, The Road, Life During Wartime

MKW really does have a giant career ahead of him. President Obama has even named Omar (his character on the Wire) as one of his favorites in fiction, of course with the outward caveat that he doesn’t endorse the gay ghetto murdering Robin Hood’s pursuits or philosophies, but, in the words of Obama himself: “Where’s Omar at! That’s my man! He’s a man with code”. If any studio wanted somebody with raw talent for the art to become the next A-lister, Williams is exactly the man for the job.

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Michael Wincott – Eclectic eccentric
Resume: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Gunshy, Metro, Seraphim Falls, Along Came a Spider, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Alien Resurrection, Dead Man, The Three Muskateers, Strange Days, Basquiat, Before Night Falls

Principally cast as a villain, such as in the Kevin Costner meh-orama Robin Hood and 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Michael Wincott has a wider array of facades in his back pocket, so many in fact that it’s hard to keep up with his almost schizophrenic career choices. His collaborations with Julian Schnabel are particularly curious, but solid roles. He is unquestionably one of the most underrated talents in the business, and deserves so much more. Unfortunately, his work has been tailing off in recent years, and I don’t know if he’s acted at all recently.

Det sjunde inseglet

Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal) Art 5/5 Ent 4/5 Worth 6/5

The movie that made Ingmar Bergman, and brought art house cinema into the mainstream. This film has so deeply transformed our imaginations, I feel like it’s a decent gamble to suggest the creators of Rome had this movie in the back of their minds when they wrote the story of Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. Bergman’s a fantastic director, there’s no questioning that, that’s why they teach him in film school of course! But I love this masterpiece of his for multiple reasons. I connect as a New World scandihoovian, I connect as an amateur mediævalist, I connect as a follower of Bergman’s cinematic vision. The much-ballyhooed chess scene is hard to wipe from your memory. The sardonic and stoic humor is something I grew up around, and I assure you, it isn’t something native to the era of black plague. The seemingly meandering soliloquy here and there about faith and God are a pill to swallow, but worth listening to for some insight into Bergman’s own philosophy, which colors all of his works. Watching this with Fanny and Alexander gives you a quick grasp of that philosophy and its roots. Just one of the better films ever done, and remains to this day worth the while.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/

The Wrestler

The Wrestler – Art 3/5 Ent 5/5 Worth 6/5

Darren Aronofsky really hit a home run with The Wrestler, and it’s all the more interesting that he did it without reverting to the conventional narrative of Pi and Requiem for a Dream, nor relying on any narratives that delve into fantastical philosophical or psychological visual adventurism. This movie is minimal and gritty. It rides Mickey Rourke’s deservingly applauded comeback performance, but not as much praise is given to Marisa Tomei’s equally oustanding performance. This a rough tragedy through and through, and it will break your heart, but along the way there are moments of sheer delicacy that will melt your heart. Some of the content can be traced to the wear and tear on wrestlers’ bodies as seen in Beyond the Mat, and this also served as a narrative device like in Aronofsky’s next project: Black Swan. The tragedy is in the material destruction of their bodies being commensurate with the achievement in their life’s work, at the expense of their lives.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1125849/

The Dreamers

The Dreamers – Art 5/5 Ent 4/5 Worth 5/5

A true gem that went unnoticed, despite gaining some notoriety for marginally controversial subject matter. Much of the current world is driven by the ideas of people who became disillusioned with revolution in the ’60s, and the eureka moment for many of them came in 1967 and 1968. The May ’68 student uprisings in Paris separated dyed in the wool mindless ideologues and political hacks from intellectuals who put truth above ideology. When the students failed to cause a revolution and their supposed Comrades in the Communist Party sat idle scratching their heads doing nothing, the jig was up. De Gaulle solidified his position and extended the Fifth Republic’s lifespan for another 5 decades, but the lifespan of French hard leftism died immediately. This movie traces a filmic heritage that led up to the barricades and molotov cocktails, but which advocated nothing of the sort. Sorry for being the imperious American here, but it’s quite true that William Pitt’s character “got it”, while the French brother and sister seemed lost with their Maoism and Parisien philosophies that were about to collapse. The lifeblood of their jouissance was predicated on eliminating all sorts of structures, mindlessly. They could not exist in a post-’68 world without major compromise. Bertolucci doesn’t get enough credit, perhaps for not being as experimental as many of his contemporaries, but he really does not make bad films. If you’re not in love with Eva Green after this, you suck.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309987/

The Fountain

The Fountain – Art 7/5 Ent 5/5 Worth 6/5

There are only two other films that are in the same category of combing philosophical and narrative beauty, with quite the same success as The Fountain: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Terrance Malick’s The Tree of Life. Between the three, I feel that Kubrick’s antiquated technological handicap, slavish concentration on science fiction, and compulsory experimentation render 2001 the least of the three films. As I’ve stated elsewhere, I believe The Tree of Life to be the pinnacle achievement of cinema, but The Fountain came very, very close to accomplishing everything ‘Tree’ did. The Fountain comes short in relying on a blended wisdom of ancient mythology to make its case more than developing its own case. Yet the Fountain does not fail in any other conceivable way. Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman come up hugely competent in their roles. Aronofsky solidifies his place alongside the great auteurs of cinema. Its mesmerizing imagery is impossibly gorgeous. The first time I saw this in theaters, I swear I did not blink for the last 30 minutes. This is visual perfection. The narrative is a powerful combination of simplicity in archetypal romance, but simultaneously it’s profoundly complex, drawing on the same thematic Biblical allegories as The Tree of Life (amongst other spiritual mythologies), and dividing the story into the tragic reality with its subsidiary fictional escape within the surrounding tragedy, and the dream-like escape from tragedy into futuristic cosmic oneness. The Fountain is quite simply an amazing accomplishment.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/

Underground

Underground – Art 5/5 Ent 3/5 Worth 5/5

Is it possible to make a slightly avant garde, comedic and yet serious war epic, depicting the history of Yugoslavia through the Nazis, the Communists and the Civil War, right during the immediacy of the genocides, the NATO bombing of Bosnia and Serbia, and the rolling waves of retribution? Yes, it is, and Emir Kusturica did it. It’s hard not to love this movie, and to western eyes, it’s really not as foreign as you’d expect. The ties to the west are profuse throughout it metaphorically.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0114787/

Prospero’s Books

Prospero’s Books – Art 6/5 Ent 1/5 Worth 5/5

Greenaway and Shakespeare, that’s either a combustible potion or vodka in the creme brulee. If you’re willing to get art house as fuck, go straight for this. If you’re willing to get modern Shakespeare as fuck, go straight for this. If you want gun battles and fist fights and motorcycles, go straight for this. That last one, you might be a little disappointed, but I want you to see it anyway. John Gielgud being in this is outstanding, because of his extensive knowledge of Shakespearian works, this combines the old with the new in such a brilliant way that binds both to a higher vehicle.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0102722/

Mia aioniotita kai mia mera

Mia aioniotita kai mia mera (Eternity and a Day) – Art 4/5 Ent 1/5 Worth 5/5

This is not for everyone, and is extremely chill and meditative at almost Tarkovskian proportions, but I’d just like to point out that if you’ve watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, orThe Bucket List, and felt that both left you with a bad aftertaste even though you went in expecting more, this movie could very well please your aims in the respect of trying to delve into balkan culture, and absorb the emotions of an old man trying to find meaning before he shuffles off his mortal coil. The first time you watch this, you’ll think this belongs better in the ’60s, in some collection of Antonioni films, and you’d be partially right, because the screenwriter was Tonio Guerra, the go-to guy for many of the neo-realists when they began exiting that niche. Bruno Ganz is incredible in anything he does, and this movie is no exception.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156794/

Ta’m-e guilass

Ta’m-e guilass (Taste of Cherry) – Art 4/5 Ent 1/5 Worth 5/5

Like the Soviets, Iranian cinema is depressingly deserving of a better country. Movies like this will get you thrown into a dark cell and tortured these days, and after watching it, you’ll just have to ask how on earth one could find it politically incorrect, and not a universally beautiful tragedy of one man’s life winding its way around the final paths of its journey. The filming within cars is a theme of Kiarostami’s that he continues in Ten, and creates an intimate positioning whose intent is consummated in the final scene, which renders the connection to real life that reignites disbelief both distant and irrelevant. A high wire act, to convince the watcher that it’s not reality and yet it still is.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0120265/