The Rake Magazine

Sweet Land, 2006. Written and directed by Ali Selim. Starring Elizabeth Reaser, Tim Guinee, Alan Cumming, John Heard, Alex Kingston, Ned Beatty, Lois Smith, Patrick Heusinger, and Stephen Pelinski.

Now showing at the Edina Cinema (and a few others around the Twin Cities).

Someday I'll be wise and watch movies like Sweet Land when they actually arrive at our theaters, and not months later. Maybe I'll even review them in good time, in the hopes that my meager words will convince someone to avoid such highbrow garbage like The Good German and turn to this little movie. For Sweet Land is an absolute joy. Just as a bite of fresh bread reminds us of flavor and the blessings of wheat, salt, water and heat, then Sweet Land reminds us, visually, what it is to fall slowly and deeply in love, of the power of friendship and community, of hard work and of the world that surrounds us. Amazingly, the filmmaker, Ali Salim, read Will Wheaton's short story "A Gravestone Made of Wheat", fell in love with it, but decided to make a real movie out of the tale, and not some narrated silver screen reenactment. He eschewed moving his production to a distant land, choosing instead to stay in the story's locale, where his talented cast and crew could walk the farmlands of our flat state, their footsteps heavy with the rich mud. Selim has an eye for people who struggle and fall in love under dark, late-summer clouds, framed by stalks of dry corn. If you seek a picture to make you experience such emotions, if you are aching to encounter a work of art that will remind you of life and its abundant, though small, pleasures, if you're hoping for movie that has all the surprise of an old picture falling from the family bible, then Sweet Land is your movie.

It is the story of a young woman, Inge (Elizabeth Reaser, just stellar), who comes to rural Minnesota to meet and marry Olaf (a handsome Tim Guinee), a Norwegian farmer. Unfortunately for the both of them, she cannot locate her immigration papers, and, even worse, is part German. This is especially troubling in the wake of World War I, and the community, mostly from Nordway, and with their uptight ways, dislike the German peoples, often wondering, aloud, if she'll try to spread subversiveness, or even prostitution to their quiet hamlet.

The town pastor (John Heard) will not allow a wedding to take place; the girl will have to sleep at a friend of Olaf's, Frandsen. Frandsen (Alan Cummings) is a friendly, child-like fellow, another farmer, saddled with debts, but wth the treasure of a lovely wife and nine fine children. Inge quickly grows tired of sleeping at Frandsen's place, amongst his wife Brownie (Alex Kingston) and in a bed with the nine kids, sharing bathtubs and shoving feet out of her face each night in bed. So she steals away to live at Olaf's house, walking across the midnight fields beneath buzzing Northern Lights to take a private bath in Olaf's kitchen. After all, they would be betrothed were it not for the pesky preacher and the prejudices of the community. They agree that, in the interest of propriety, he'll sleep in the barn while she takes his room. And makes him breakfast and strong coffee. Which gets the bees buzzing in the townsfolk's collective bonnet.

There's not much more than this in Sweet Land. For the Good Lord's sake, it is an especial pleasure to see a film with great acting, beautiful photography, and strong sense of its story. Selim has tremendous confidence in both his story and his audience, avoiding beating us to death with excessive crane shots and a soundtrack to force us to feel. Moments of great gravity are left for us to figure out: Inge and Olaf clearing his many dozen acres of corn is shot with a simple camera style, the long, empty furrows reaching out to a distant horizon behind the two, who are nothing more than filthy and happy with their triumph. I shudder to think what a 'greater' director would do, say, Terrence Malick or Spielberg. Undoubtedly, one would drown us in sunsets, the other sugarcoat that scene with a John Williams score and an edgy camera (not to mention a boatload of sweet-faced urchins). Selim's film moves patiently, building the subplots with the care of a farmer trying to coax his beans to grow in a hot summer, his characters flexing their personalities without distracting from the considerable tension. At times cliches spring up--there's a subplot involving a banker busting a farmer's land for a past-due mortgage--but the people in this film respond strangely, as people do, to these crises, looking irritated as twists of fate interrupt their lives and loves and concerns, and then moving on. History is present but doesn't turn into a lecture--there's a socialist, the first tractor, responses to the War to End All Wars, but in each instance they are skillfully weaved into a plot whose sole concern is to illuminate the lives of these fascinating people. Lovely.

Sweet Land is being touted locally and in Los Angeles, where it is filling theaters to the rafters. I was surrounded by eager patrons, most of whom were elderly, including a lady who couldn't stop grunting and groaning at the action that unfolded, irritated, say, by the things a banker said, or someone's inability to make a good cup of coffee. Sweet Land is a movie made by decent people for us decent people--a movie that does not patronize like local don Garrison Keillor and his "above average" Lutherans from Wobegon. Here, Selim chooses to allow struggles to define his characters, and if there's a joke, they're in on it as well. Where Keillor is cynical and distant, Selim is hopeful, real, and empathetic. Perhaps that is why its immigration message is so appealing to the Hispanics of Los Angeles, who are also seeing this film in droves. Sweet Land is specific to Minnesota, it is a story of farmers and Norwegians and Germans. But it is also the story of immigrants, the story of the struggle to make life work, and resonates to every one of us who has ever walked beneath a stormy sky, who has ever ached for a good dinner made by a loving hand, or has fallen into a frustrating love that might go unrequited for whatever circumstance. And with its close, of Olaf and Inge waltzing on a perfect summer's day, you might just find yourself thanking your lucky stars for Sweet Land, for your own memories, and for the lovely magic of your friends, family, and the one you love. I ask you: What more do you want in a movie?

"I don't quite get it--Apocalypto is about Iraq and George W.? When? Bush is cutting the heads off liberals? The Blue Man group? Jaguar Paw is Barack Obama? The Spaniards are the Islamic terrorists?

"If Gibson weren't such an unholy square, I'd say he was smoking some pretty serious shit if that's what you get out of that mess. I mean, holy living shit, you're really putting a lot of meaning inside a guy getting his head cut off..."

...

"So I heard that Children of Men is about the future, man, when women can't have babies, you know, but Clive Owen is this guy who figures out, by getting blitzed on this strawberry ganja, how to get preggers himself. So that's what the title's gigging on, you know, men having wombs, men having babies, and the whole freakin' society goes gay, man. Shit, I don't know who the hell would wanta see something like that..."

...

"Happy Feet. I'm telling you, what is it with these penguins? They're ubiquitous. March of the Penguins, Madagascar, now this. And I guess Happy Feet's as much of a polemic as An Inconvenient Truth. Maybe if Al Gore dressed up like a penguin, he'd be the President!"

...

"Yeah, I took Mom to see The Nativity Story. Who would have thought the life of Christ could be so boring!"

...

"That was so awesome! In Casino Royale, Bond plays Texas Hold 'em. I play Texas Hold 'Em, man! And 'member, 'member when we were playing for a case the other night, and I won, man, and the guy betting, what's his name, didn't have the case or the money for the case, shit, that was just like that La Chiffon guy from the movie. Awesome! I'm like James Bond, man!"

...

"Don't care if it's the book, that awful old cartoon or this new movie--which isn't so bad. Charlotte's Web will make me cry and cry and cry, always and forever. And I'm so glad that there's something in this life that still moves me enough to cry..."

...

"Jennifer Hudson deserves an Oscar for Dreamgirls. The girl is fat, and us fat girls need heroes with Oscars. She was beautiful, a beautiful fat girl, and what happens to her is awful, just because she's fat. So she better win. I think that would be good for fat people."

...

"No one understands Almodovar. That's why his movies never make any money outside of New York. And I have to say that sometimes I see one of his movies when I'm not in Manhattan, and you know what, I really don't get them. It's like you gotta be in a big city, with the whores and gays and trannies to understand. This Midwestern city life just isn't attuned to his stuff."

...

"Good German. Good Shephard. Having seen both, I'll tell you that I'm starting to wonder if a movie has the word 'good' in the title, it means exactly the opposite..."

...

"Rocky Balboa? Rocky Balboa? You want to have a nice dinner and see Rocky Balboa. Really? You know, maybe it's time we should have a talk about where this relationship is going..."

The Shop Around the Corner, 1940. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch; written by Miklos Laszlo, Samson Raphaelson, and Ben Hecht. Starring James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan, Felix Bressart, Joseph Schildkraut, and William Tracy.

Available at DVD stores, your public library, and hopefully in whatever paradise we'll find in the afterlife...

Did Margaret Sullavan finally kill herself in 1960 because life would never match The Shop Around the Corner? Did Frank Morgan, Felix Bressart, Joe Schildkraut and William Tracy all succumb to the melancholy of life, unable to touch the magic of this sweet little film? Did they watch the movie in darkened rooms, alone, wondering to themselves about missed opportunities? Or did they sit with another, their faces silvered, holding hands and inching closer as the film rises to its inevitable, heartbreaking (and heartwarming) climax? Did Margaret wonder which of the many people who breezed through her life could have been the one to give her what we all seek? When we finish with this movie, when the videotape is rewinding or the DVD has ceased to spin, we have to ask ourselves: can life ever match The Shop Around the Corner? Keep looking for answers... and watch the movie.

For those of you who are sick and tired of the great It's A Wonderful Life--which is an amazing film, in spite of its being bear-hugged by corporate bastards--you could do no better than finding a copy of The Shop Around the Corner, which, in my mind, is the greatest Christmas gift a filmmaker ever left the world. It is about what Christmas really means, and that doesn't mean gifts or gatherings or even the reason for the season, H.R.H. Jesus Christ. It's about love: which is really what the whole religion's about anyway, isn't it?

Director Ernst Lubitsch's little world spins in Budapest during the depression, in a gift shop called Matuschek & Co., run by the grumpy Hugo Matuschek, played by the Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan. The film begins as the employees gather on the sidewalk, waiting for the store to open. The setup is deceptively simple: there's seething Alfred Krelik, captured by a young Jimmy Stewart, himself the greatest of the long-suffering men, already in a slow-boil, suffering from indigestion. There's his cheapskate pal Hugo Pirovich (Felix Bressart, just fabulous), the irritable delivery-boy Pepe (William Tracy), and the louse Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut)--all actors who bring real moxie to their small roles, and make this little comedy run like a well-oiled music box.

Alfred Krelik's got a sweet secret that he confides in his good friend Hugo: he's engaged in writing and receiving beautiful love letters from an anonymous woman who makes his heart flutter and his soul snap in the wind like a kite up high. She is amazing, and she makes his humdrum world seem so worth living.

Now enter Klara Novak. Margaret Sullavan fills this role the way a gust of wind fills a tree and makes its leaves shudder, a girl with the wide eyes, quick to scowl and argue, a woman who can look so young when she's happy, drained and aged when misery falls upon her. She speaks, as one critic says, "like singing in the snow", and it's intoxicating to soak in all the conflicting energy that flows from her, all these years later. Klara desperately needs a job. Alfred claims that Mr. Matuschek can't afford her. Old man Matuschek disagrees (or rather, is tricked by the wily Klara into disagreeing and hiring her), and from then on Sullavan and Stewart are at odds, loathing one another, sniping, grousing, and unbeknownst to them, falling in love.

For Sullavan's Klara also has a secret: she's engaged in writing and receiving letters from an anonymous man whose words make her feel alive and her heart beat faster with every envelope, her soul flitting about like a light and living thing and not some rock upon which the world's troubles can rest.

Of course, Stewart and Sullavan are the letter writers. Of course, nothing in the world could ever get these two cranks together. Of course, their mutual hatred is part of what will make them such a lovely couple at film's end. In the meantime, Mr. Matuschek believes, correctly, that he is being cuckolded, and he believes, incorrectly, that it is his most trusting and loyal employee, Alfred Kralik. So Kralik loses his job on the same day that he discovers Klara is the one writing him the letters. That same night Mr. Matuschek tries to kill himself when he discovers his error, but is saved. Kralik and Klara meet in a hilarious scene in which he knows the truth but doesn't let on. In the end, all is well: Alfred and Klara are together and deeply in love, Pepe the delivery-boy is finally a clerk, and Pirovich is together his wife, son and little baby. And Mr. Matuschek--lonely, wifeless, rejected three times for dinner from different employees--finally encourages the new boy, a young dope who doesn't seem to have a lick of sense about him, to join him for a dinner of goose and cucumber salad on Christmas Eve. "Oh boy, Mr. Matuschek!" the kid says. Oh, boy, indeed.

And yet, The Shop Around the Corner is terrifying and fraught with anxiety. There is scene after scene of some of the most touching moments in film history: Klara reaching into her mailbox to look for a letter that is not there; Alfred happily looking to get the raise he deserves from Mr. Matuschek, the man he looks upon as his father, only to be fired (in a scene so damn real it makes your throat ache); Mr. Matuschek, realizing his error, walking amongst the sheet covered store, floating in sadness and looking like a ghost; the way that everyone goes from appearing alive to dead in a heartbeat--all because of love. Love between husband and wife, between fathers and sons, between friends. Love is the reason for the season to Ernst Lubitsch and the folks of The Shop Around the Corner. These people who argue and bicker and laugh behind each other's backs, well, they love one another. And yet they are all so close to never seeing one another again: leaving the job, a letter lost, almost dying by your own hand... I cannot think of a film that so acutely observes, as David Thomson writes, "the fear of good people missing their chances".

The laughter is intense in The Shop Around the Corner because the pain is equally so: you would be hard-pressed to find a movie that jumps so nimbly between both. The film contains, like all great stories, a lesson: Matuschek & Co. is your own home, it is the place you work, the bars you frequent, your community. Ignore these lessons at your peril.

As you watch this movie, think of those moments in your life when you might have missed your chance, or cling tightly to the one that you truly love. When Jimmy Stewart pins the red carnation to his lapel to show tragic Margaret Sullavan that it is he who is her true love, inch closer to that person, touch them, let those feelings overwhelm you in the silvery light of the screen, the multicolored hue of your Christmas lights. This is Christmas. And laugh, a bit nervously perhaps, just to release the tension. Each one of us can look back at moments when a different drive, a different movie, a different step would have altered the happiness in our lives... or just the opposite, given us what we so desperately long for. If you're lucky, you have found the red carnation on each other's lapel, and Christmas has meaning. I wonder: had Ms. Sullavan?

Volver, 2006. Written and directed by Pedro Almodovar. Starring Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo, Chus Lampreave, Antonio de la Torre, and Carlos Blanco.

Now showing at the Edina Cinema.

As a strong, hot wind rages in a La Mancha graveyard, as groups of determined women scrub and brush down the marble headstones of the men who have proceeded them in death. The women have their hair pulled back, their skirts rustle in the harsh, hot winds of La Mancha and they work, work, work, struggling to keep the dust off the headstones, which is a task of almost hilarious futility for all the wind that rages through the countryside. The men are at rest, enjoying what Borges described as sleep and indifference. Alive, the women carry on, laughing, crying, haunting, farting... and carrying the weight of this miraculous world on their shoulders. This is Almodovar's world.

Volver is the latest film by perhaps our greatest living filmmaker, and though it's a slight movie by his lofty standards, lacking perhaps the intensity and surprise of classics like Talk to Her, it is nonetheless a supreme entertainment. Ostensibly a murder mystery, an homage to Hitchcock (with a score that reminds us of Bernard Herriman) and Mildred Pierce had it been really a picture about women (and not eventually dismissive of strong women), Volver is like many of Almodovar's films--informed by movies, by art design, by color, by theater, but most of all, and most importantly, by the torrent of emotion that grips each and every character and undoubtedly the director himself. Volver is melodrama, but it is never turgid. Volver flatters its female characters (some of whom are murderers), relies on some bathroom humor, gives us great bursts of bright color, and suggests, most prominently, that murder and incest take a backseat to the vicissitudes of friendship and family. It is one of the best films of the year, and a movie whose technical accomplishments, sharp writing, and spot-on acting would have made a lesser director shoot to the front of film magazines and art-house accolades in an instant. As it is, since we've become accustomed to Pedro's work, Volver is likely to vanish from theaters in a few weeks, forgotten for the doggrel that takes up space and counts as decent filmmaking.

The plot is as typically bizarre as anything that springs from the mind of Almodovar: three years prior, a house fire killed the mother and father of Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) and Soledad (Lola Duenas). Their parents were a supposedly happy couple who were locked in a loving embrace as the flames devoured them. After polishing their folks' headstone, the girls, with Raimunda's daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) in tow, go to visit their addled aunt, sister of the deceased woman. They discover that this poor lady believes that she is being visited on occasion by the ghost of their dead mother. A childhood friend, Augustina (Blanca Portillo) whose mother disappeared on the same day, lives across the street and attests to the hauntings. Returning to Madrid, Raimunda and Paula run afoul of the husband, a drunken, masturbating soul who tries to screw his daughter one night in the kitchen. The girl responds by driving a knife into chest, killing him. Like Mildred Pierce before her, Raimunda will not allow her daughter to hang for this crime--instead, she cleans up, hides the body in a freezer (later to be buried on the riverside with the help of a local whore), and opens her own restaurant.

Ignoring its deeper meanings, Volver is, above all, a blast. Its plot twists are pure Almodovar, nearly ridiculous events that are at once shocking and hilarious, like the murder punctuated by Cruz having to tuck her husband's cock back into his pants, or explaining away a smudge of blood on her neck to a male neighbor as 'female troubles'. Indeed. Kisses are amplified into loud smooches, tears flow like the mojitos Raimunda serves at the restaurant, memories are shared with wide-eyed glee, and in no time we find ourselves caught in the friendships of these women, hoping for their emotional success--even if it means getting away with murder. Almodovar is on record that he consider's Cruz' bustline to be the greatest in the world and films this treasure with as if it were the most beautiful sculpture in Europe--a wonderful concession for a gay man to give to his heterosexual audience members. Little scenes stand out--the sisters sitting opposite their cancer-stricken friend, offering them pot while the daughter lounges on a chair, and the mise-en-scene is startling for its beauty. At their Aunt's funeral, Soledad and Augustina are the 'primary mourners' and walk into a room and are converged upon by fan-fluttering ladies dressed in black, shot from above, like moths attracted to a loving flame.

There are murders and incest here, but unlike, say, Hitchcock and Pierce, Almodovar is intrigued only by the way these women survive such turmoils. And in how they learn to forgive and move on. Ultimately, Volver--Spanish for 'The Return'--is a film of forgiveness. Pedro has returned to the La Mancha that rejected him, his actress Carmen Maura has returned to his loving fold after a notable split many years ago, and the characters have returned to caring for the people who have hurt them, from the mother to even the man who is murdered, carefully buried in a spot that he once loved.

There has been a number of critical backlash against Almodovar's seeming disregard for men in his films, especially here, and yet I can't help but wonder what the fuss is all about. This is a film about women, just as Apocalypto or Flags of Our Fathers are about men. Penelope Cruz' tough stance against the murder of her husband is little different than Apocalypto's Jaguar Paw's fighting to return to his wife, who isn't anything more than a womb trapped in a hole in the ground.

But Almodovar's intense respect for his characters makes this film shine brighter and with more joy than anything I've seen this year. From the senile, beautiful old Aunt that he lovingly frames behind shiny glasses, to the dignity of her friends, including a whore, not with a heart of gold but who is interested in her neighbor's life and seeks to get ahead herself, honestly and with dignity. This, in spite of a plot whose inner workings hinge on incest, murder, lying, and all the other bittersweet confections in Almodovar's chocolate box. In the end, however, mothers and daughters fight and forgive, and the ghost is a creature of nearly unbearable kindness. Volver is a beauty, a film that wears its kindness proudly on its sleeve.

The best and worst films of 2006.

We critics like to play our little games at the end of every year, whereby we bestow certain movies the gift of being shortlisted as the best (or worst) of that particular year. Of course, this is always a personal choice, influenced by the tastes of the writer, but written as if part of a great canon that will be taught in hallowed halls for years to come. Usually, we like to slip something in that comes as a 'surprise'--in my case, perhaps, that would be Slither--as if to indicate we're ahead of the curve in some respects. I can't speak for other critics, but I imagine everyone wishes they could have recognized, say, Blade Runner as the classic that it would turn out to be, or like Pauline Kael, see the new Bonnie and Clyde in 13 Tzameti. It's a sincere hope of mine that something I've pegged as a best of will settle, like a leaf on the soft mud, and harden into something that will be studied in years to come.

But it's certain scenes in a picture, in conjunction with a feeling, or a moment of sublimity, that helps to make a film endure. I've chosen to list the films that moved me this year, remembering certain parts, certain responses I overheard, or my own particular feelings when confronted with an arresting image: a subtle gesture, a breast exposed, some gore, a reaction on a character's face to witnessed gore, the irritable grunt behind me to something that is not quite satisfactory. If you're still reading this site after this year, you know that this has been a personal journey, watching these movies. This is what I encountered in the dark over the last year, the best in movies in 2006, in somewhat chronological order. (The worst are at the very bottom):

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada--Tommy Lee Jones' melacholy western, which seems to be all they make anymore, but an exciting film with a strong ensemble cast...

Eight Below starring the critically beleaguered Paul Walker, an actor whose range is probably as limited as a hermit crab's, reacting to the abandonment of his dogs as if they were really his...

The Monster of Phantom Lake is a local black and white b-grade movie that's lots of fun, and is usually screened with its director and producer in tow. Also, I sat next to one of the pretty stars, dressed to a 'T'...

Slither features zombies, space aliens shooting spikes into people's guts, a guy pumping baby slugs into a white-trash woman, slugs that burrow into people's brain's through their mouths, no nudity, lots of gore, and healthy lack of respect for anything except the genre...

In The Bridge, one of the Walker's Marshall Plan films, a pair of soldiers waltz together on a tarmac to the music in a teddy bear, one of the most striking moments I saw this year...

Don't Come Knocking is as beautiful as a paint truck colliding with an ice cream vendor. This colorful mess was written by both Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard, who penned it in Shepard's remote Minnesota cabin, which eventually was taken over by Japanese beetles. Some great music in this movie that will probably never end up in a soundtrack...

Brick suggests that the noirest of all worlds in America today is the local high school. What kid wouldn't want to have been a dork shamus like Joseph Gordon-Levitt...

L'Enfant, the relentlessly bleak Palme D'or winner by the Dardenne Brothers, took a perfectly melancholy morning, a cold, rainy morning, and left me thinking, holy shit, there but for the grace of God go I...

United 93 transcended Rush Limbaugh's blowhard urgency and relived the horrors of September 11, without being a polemic. Marvel at Ben Sliney, playing himself, who, at one moment, looks to a screen filled with literally thousands of little dots representing airbound planes and taking the leap to ground them...

The Proposition is a western from Australia about flies. The damned flies crawl over everything, sticking to the sweat on a man's brow, his back, and tickle the lips and ears of every filthy, compromised man. This vision of hell was unjustly overlooked, it's violence more intense and real than anything Mel Gibson has ever accomplished. With the great Ray Winstone in a performance that should not be soon forgotten (but has been forgotten already, for the most part)...

The Da Vinci Code is unquestionably the best comedy of the year, with the best line: "I've got to get to a library!". With its seething albino monk (a performance as great as anything from Monty Python), snarling Frenchies, lengthy explanations of Jesus's progeny, piles of riotous backstory, and Hanks as a long-haired professor, there's no better comedy than this...

Drawing Restraint 9 is a pointless, shallow, yet hilarious film involving Vaseline sculpture and sake toasting whalers...

Water is a classical story of a young girl, widowed at age eight, who finds herself in an ashram, to live the rest of her life as a mourner. The ashram is something out of Dickens--poor, each character clinging to dreams, the most beautiful prostituted out to keep the ashram afloat (and to keep the head woman in her eats). Beautifully shot, acted with verve by all the women, Water is another film that is ignored--and if it were made in the U.S. would have been an Oscar contender...

Scoop is certainly one of Woody Allen's lesser films, but don't tell that to the audience I encountered--charmed by Scarlett Johansson and her luscious boobs (as Allen undoubtedly was) and by the old man's Catskills shtick, Scoop was a blast, a film I hope never to see again, as the joy I encountered was lightning in a bottle, and will never be recaptured...

Cache is a small, quiet film, lacking a score, and seems, at times, static. But, good God, there's no movie I've seen this year (or in my memory) that is so disturbing. About terrorism, about our place in the world, about the secrets we're all guilty of hiding. I saw it in Saudi with a 12 year old who couldn't keep his eyes off it--this is a kid with the usual 12 year old tastes, who'd been enjoying the new Pink Panther over and over until Cache came on--and had to leave at the one scene of extreme violence. Perfect for an American in Saudi, but nothing that helped me to sleep on a sleepless vacation...

Nothing is resolved in Richard Linklater's cynical duo, A Scanner Darkly and Fast Food Nation, two nearly classic American films whose studio hadn't a clue as to how to market them. Both movies vanished, lost now to the afterlife of DVD and, hopefully, the imaginations of filmgoers uninterested in palliatives for their spiritual and political questions. With Altman dead, will anyone recognize Linklater as the successor--and, often, superior--to that acclaimed filmmaker? He's better with his actors, trusts his audience (which Altman never did), and doesn't shy away from hard endings...

Michael Winterbottom's Road to Guantanamo never found its audience, in part because it is a severely uneven film, at times a powerful indictment of conditions at Guantanamo (and the conditions) that brought poor souls to Guantanamo. But the scenes of the three men--the real people--who endured these years, is worth watching, their testimony and good manners reflecting their deep faith...

Army of Shadows, that existential French resistance noir masterpiece, finally hit U.S. shores after thirty some years of languishing in some French warehouse. Watch for the big, black cloud of nothingness that envelopes the protagonist, the meaninglessness that's more acutely threatening than the Nazis themselves...

Little Miss Sunshine is a fun movie, uneven and cliched, but boasting one of the best ensembles this year. "You're not speaking because of Friedrich Nietzsche?" asks Steve Carell, who plays the #1 Proust scholar in the United States is one gem; every scene with Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin is also to be cherished...

The Descent dumps you into dripping caves with white faced ghoulies, a horror flick with just enough intelligence and economy to make it a midnight staple...

The Science of Sleep. Oh, beloved Science of Sleep. Do not see this film alone. Watch it locked in the arms of someone you love and want to make love to, as it provokes your laughter, strengthens your soul, riles up your loins, and deepens your faith in other people and in movies that make you feel alive. Michael Gondry loves you and wants to people the planet with children borne from the love that his movie has made...

Hollywoodland is a near-classic noir, filled with weirdos and shot in a sun-bleached land, but was upended by its weakness for backstory. However, in making the thing a real mystery, in which a man's murder or suicide is not the point--the point is that he's lost his soul--gives the film a subtle grace...

Dead Man's Shoes is a small British film that never managed to get into theatres. It's a B-Movie to be compared with Ulmer's Detour: gritty, violent, and with its finger on the pulse of those lousy good-for-nothing little towns that exist here and in Britain...

Skid Row is the best film I've seen this year, part of Phil Harder's showing of found footage that he's collected and curated over the years, a handmade film of tremendous beauty, by the King of Skid Row, Johnny Rex. Mr. Rex filmed his charges, drunk, fighting, dancing, smiling and toasting the camera, all of this in glorious color and narrated by the King himself...

Flags of Our Fathers, the first part of Clint Eastwood's two-part Iwo Jima series, is about what it really means to be a soldier, one of the very few films that can ever make that claim. It's closing, with the boy soldiers swimming in the sea after a grueling battle, is as poignant as anything ever shot in a war movie...

Infamous got screwed. This wonderful and exciting picture was the second of the Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood films and far superior to the first. Toby Jones deserves the Oscar for being the wind-up toy that was Truman, but he'll be lucky if he gets his paper nomination...

The Last King of Scotland gave us a rollicking first half and Forest Whitaker's whacking take on Idi Amin--part Godfather, part Charlie Parker, pure evil and entertaining all the way...

For Your Consideration had a few dozen hilarious gags, gave us Parker Posey and Jane Lynch, kept the audience buckled over, but was strangely forgettable...

Jesus Christ, 13 Tzameti is the movie that every young filmmaker should study. Cheap black and white to create a haunting world of betrayal and distrust, the look of fear on the face of the protagonist as a gun is cocked to his head, a puff of smoke rising from a forehead, and a simple plot that will grind down your molars to stubs...

Jamestown: Life and Death of Peoples Temple is a powerful documentary, culling together some amazing footage and heartbreaking interviews, including an elderly woman, crying and mourning the loss of heaven. The film does not defend Jones, but nor does it damn his followers as kooks; rather, they are beautiful people seeking a better world...

Volver is certainly one of Almodovar's lesser films, but one of his minor masterpieces would validate the career of a hundred filmmakers. A film of considerable beauty, referencing Hitchcock, Capra, and Mildred Pierce, Volver makes the bold suggestion that the melodrama of those films is not as important as the flutterings of a human heart...

When I'm damned to hell, these will be the films playing in the Beezlebub Cineplex, over and over with only diet Sprite and unbuttered popcorn:

Friends With Money--hateful, shallow film about shitty people.
Kinky Boots--boring, unsexy Full Monty rip-off.
The Notorious Bettie Page--I walked out of this dull, zombified flick that hadn't a clue about its subject.
Down in the Valley--incomprehensible art-house, Oscar begging-flick with Ed Norton as cute Travis Bickle like character who is loved by those he shoots in the stomach.
Ask the Dust--a part of Robert Towne's What The Fuck Was I Thinking series, a pointless adaptation of one of the best novels ever written about So. California. Starring a pair of hardbodies in Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek, who play unattractive bums.
Mission: Impossible III and Superman Returns--To hell with the people who made these dull corporate time-wasters.
The Illusionist--decidedly unmagical film with Ed Norton trying again to get an Oscar nomination. Manages to make Paul Giamatti look awful.
Talladega Nights--Gotta have that NASCAR money, so this movie can't cut to the bone, instead making its few funny jokes ramble on and on and on. Wastes its female comedians shamelessly.
Al Franken: God Spoke and An Inconvenient Truth--two lengthy political advertisements that took up space at the art-houses (space that could have been better used Dead Man's Shoes or 13 Tzameti). Save this crap for the conventions, or PBS...
Factotum--Matt Dillon and Marisa Tomei as bums? Please...
World Trade Center--a real life Towering Inferno, only twice as dull.
Death of a President--Could have killed this president from utter boredom.
The Departed--marks the sad end to the Scorsese who used to take chances, used to cast small, decent actors in key roles (like, say, Ray Winstone over Jack Nicholson), and who used to know how to make his extravaganzas exciting.
Borat--Hateful, predicatble, and uncourageous film about how stupid certain people (frat boys, Southerners) can be. Sacha Baron Cohen seems like nothing more than an asshole.
Casino Royale--The best Bond in years--as crappy as the 70s Bonds, is a half an hour longer, and takes itself so much more seriously... which is something you should never do with James Fucking Bond.