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  • A Year in the Temple

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    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 World’s Fastest Indian    –fun film that prompted my neighbor, an elderly gent obsessed with making a steam-powered motorcycle, and a pal who is in love with engines himself, to tear up over Anthony Hopkins’ small victories.

    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.

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  • Playwrights: The opposite of people

    Amazing. This is yet another Monday on which men- and women-about-town will find something above-average to do. The noted playwright, or if you prefer the Most Important Living Playwright, Tom Stoppard stars in the 2006 Global Voices lecture at the Guthrie; and I believe it’s being moderated by Joe Dowling. This gives damn good excuse to all the haters out there. If you’ve been too busy complaining about the Guthrie’s 2006-07 season, and thus haven’t made it to one of the plays and stepped out onto the enchanting “bridge to nowhere” (or, as I hear Charles Mee wanted to call it, the “playwrights’ leap”), here’s your chance. I have no idea what Stoppard will actually cover this evening. Perhaps he’ll discuss his new project, The Coast of Utopia, a trilogy of plays set to mid-19th century Russia. (The New York Times gave it a required reading list.)

  • R. Riggins, Grade Four, Edison Elementary

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    Richard Riggins had a little red robot that made his bed each morning and put his shoes in neat rows in the bedroom closet. He also had a chimpanzee that played ping-pong with him in the basement. Richard and the monkey liked the same programs on television, and whenever Richard laughed the chimp would bounce up and down, clap his hands, and expose his big yellow teeth.

    Richard had received the chimpanzee from his father, who was an astronaut and had traveled all over outer space in a rocket. Because his father was so busy, he did not live with Richard and his mother. He would, though, sometimes come for a visit, arriving on each occasion in a helicopter that he piloted and landed in the parking lot of the Mormon church across the street from Richard’s house. Besides his work as an astronaut, Richard’s father was also a famous scientist. He was a strong and handsome man with a fine singing voice.

    Richard’s mother refused to acknowledge any of these things about the man who had fathered her child and had once been her husband. To Richard’s consternation she also refused to acknowledge the existence of the robot and the monkey. All of these subjects, in fact, only seemed to make her even more unhappy, and she would often yell at Richard and slap him until he cowered or fled to his bedroom.

    Things didn’t get much easier for Richard Riggins when he went to school at Thomas Edison Elementary. He was shy and small for his age. He had bright red hair that his mother cut with an old sewing scissors, and his clothes were ill-fitting and infrequently laundered. The other children picked on him and said things about his mother, who was known to make scenes at the Piggly Wiggly and had written checks that were taped to the wall behind the cash register at the Walgreen’s drug store.

    Richard didn’t dare tell any of his classmates or teachers about his father or his robot or his monkey. His mother had warned him that he wasn’t to mention any of these things to anyone.

    At night Richard would often sit at his bedroom window in the dark, staring out across the neighborhood of small, low houses. Far in the distance he could see the town’s water tower and the big sign above the 24-hour Conoco station near the highway. For some reason the water tower and the light of the sign made him think of his father. He was determined that the next time he spoke with him he would ask his father to give him a talking bird for Christmas.

    Richard’s father would call late at night. Richard would have to tip-toe through the living room where his mother was usually asleep in front of the television. Sometimes one of her cigarettes would still be smoldering in the ashtray next to the recliner, and Richard would quietly stub it out before proceeding to the kitchen to answer the phone. The ringing never seemed to wake his mother.

    His father’s voice always sounded like it was coming from someplace far, far away, almost as if he were calling from his rocketship. Richard liked to imagine his father in his space suit, turning cartwheels in the air as he chatted with his son on the telephone. His father would ask him about school, and when Richard told him that he was having a hard time his father would say, “It’s ok. Things will get better.” They would talk about the monkey and the robot, and Richard’s father would laugh at the stories he told.

    One night after it had snowed all day Richard’s father called him from a tropical island where he was on a deep sea diving expedition. Richard told him that he wanted a talking bird for Christmas and his father had been silent for a moment.

    “I think I might have just the bird for you,” he said. “The one potential problem is that it speaks only French, and you will have to teach it to speak English.”

    Richard’s father asked him what words he would teach the bird, and Richard had answered without hesitation. “I will teach him,” he said, “to say ‘I love you.’”

  • When the fine days

    What to do this weekend:

    First, on a sad note, I note the passing of yet another record store. Know Name Records in Dinkytown–situated in an architectural relic of the 70s era during which it was born–is shuttering its doors. The last day to drop by is tomorrow-Saturday. And there’s a bit of a party in the works; the long list of live in-stores includes Paul Metzger, Vampire Hands, and Bridge Club.

    Another notable music happening takes place this very evening at the Nomad Pub: 2024 Records and Vitriol Radio, two of the more important businesses involved in the local music industry these days, are hosting their annual joint-holiday party. Everybody’s invited! And they’ve put together an enticing lineup: Romantica (fronted by Mr. Dream Beau, Ben Kyle), Ghost In The Water (sort of an electro alterego of the band Fitzgerald, from what I understand), The Glad Version, and Arch Stanton, a good band that hasn’t played in three years.

    And speaking of dream pop (I can’t shake that track-jacketed Romantica frontman), The Owls shall play the Electric Arc Radio season finale tomorrow afternoon at the Ritz. Props to the Lit 6 Project and all the success they’ve enjoyed this season. I knew ’em when they were wee things.

    As for theater, the Burning House Group (yet another troupe that went missing many years) wraps its production of Waiting For Godot this weekend. I hear it’s rather good, as far as Waiting For Godot productions go.

  • He Had Many Fine Qualities As Well, But Yes…

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    Everything requires careful consideration if one is to understand it. In ancient times, as I recollect, people often ate human beings, but I am rather hazy about it. I tried to look this up, but my history has no chronology, and scrawled all over each page are the words: ‘virtue’ and ‘morality.’ Since I could not sleep anyway, I read intently half the night, until I began to see words between the lines, the whole book being filled with the two words –‘Eat People.’

    –Lu Hsun, “Diary of a Madman”

    There are cases at the present time in which the practice of using human flesh for food is customary on a large and systematic scale. On the island of New Britain human flesh is sold in shops as butcher’s meat is sold among us. In at least some of the Solomon Islands victims (preferably women) are fattened for a feast, like pigs.


    –William Graham Sumner, Folkways

    I have in my possession a song of one of these prisoners, which contains this challenge: that all come boldly and gather to dine of him, for they will be eating at the same time of their own fathers and grandfathers who have served to feed and nourish his body. ‘These muscles, this flesh and these veins are yours, poor fools that you are; you do not see that the substance of your ancestors’ limbs is still contained in them; but savor them well and you will taste the flavor of your own flesh.’

    –Montaigne, “On Cannibals”

    One unusual feature of Hangzhou in that period (the Song Dynasty) is that there were establishments that served human flesh. That of women, old men, young girls, and children was served in separate dishes, since each had its own distinctive taste. The food in general was referred to as ‘two-legged mutton.’

    –Alasdair Clayre, The Heart of the Dragon

    None of the tribes of West Africa eat human flesh, but the interior tribes eat any corpse regardless of the cause of death. Families hesitate to eat their own dead, but they sell or exchange them for the dead of other families.

    –Sumner, Folkways

    I don’t intend to stand here before you and attempt to deny that my client did, in fact, cook children and eat them. The preponderance of evidence on this point is clear and overwhelming, and though the prosecution has chosen –for what I would maintain are purely the purposes of pandering to public outrage– to emphasize the cooking and eating of children, it should be noted that my client has also acknowledged that he cooked and ate many others as well –many, many others, as you have heard.

    He has cooked and eaten adults –the able-bodied, the elderly and infirm– as well as children. And while I cannot defend my client’s actions, I will attempt to show that, as offensive as this behavior may well be, and perhaps rightfully should be, to our modern sensibilities, it was not, in fact, all that long ago that the predilection for human meat was common in many parts of the world.

    Indeed, there are reports from the field of anthropology that indicate that this practice is still being carried out in some areas of the globe today.

    As such I would maintain that my client’s crime is the product of a rare atavistic condition, and purely genetic in nature; you have heard evidence that the practice of the cooking and eating of children was long a tradition in my client’s family. For many generations his family has largely subsisted on human flesh.

    That said, we make no excuses in pleading for your leniency. My client takes full responsibility for behavior which doubtless strikes many of you as reprehensible, yet given his otherwise exemplary conduct –he has raised four productive children of his own that he did not cook and eat, and who do not themselves cook and eat children– and his years of political service to his country, I would ask that you recognize his potential for full reform in considering his sentence.

    It is my belief that a moderate prison term, during which my client would be subjected to a strenuous program of dietary reeducation, is in society’s best interest, and will insure that he is eventually and successfully reintroduced in full standing to the human community, where his leadership skills and winning charisma can once again be utilized for the greater good and the benefit of his many political constituents.

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  • Two holiday shows

    If you’re managing to keep in the holiday spirit, you might want to know about that a couple promising Christmas shows open tonight. Both are reprises. There’s Ballet of the Dolls’s irreverent take on The Nutcracker, which bears the telling subhead (Not So) Suite. This plays at the Ritz. There’s also The Seven Poor Travellers, local actor/writer Charlie Bethel’s one-man adaptation of Charles Dickens’s short story, which plays at Illusion Theater. I saw it last year, and was rather enchanted by the generous spirit of the thing, which still managed, against all odds, to avoid too much earnestness or sap. (Sentimentality is a constant criticism hurled at Dickens. But in this instance I don’t find that to be the case.) It’s thick on words though, so it should only be considered by fierce lovers of florid Victorian prose. I can’t seem to locate the year-old freelance review I wrote about the show for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. But I do remember quoting something I overheard in the lobby later that evening: “That was a perpetual language machine,” remarked a young, and probably fairly hung-over, theatergoer. But even a perpetual language machine can be endured when it’s only an hour long.

  • Bacon Plus One

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    like it even needs embellishment…

    I thought I knew what I would make for those little holiday gift bundles of hand-made goodies that simply must be handed out.

    But now that I know of the existence of chicken fried bacon, I might have to re-think.

    WARNING: Don’t be surprised by the dizziness and dull ache in your chest, it’s merely a heady mix of temptation and revulsion.

  • The inside track on Pedro Almodovar's weird world

    Tonight, the Lagoon Cinema is hosting a free, advance screening of Volver, Pedro Almodovar’s latest film starring Penelope Cruz. I haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t offer my personal endorsement. However, our much-trusted film guy, Peter Schilling, seems to like it. On the other hand, plenty of critics have panned the thing, as is often the case with Almodovar’s work. For example, I did overhear a remark made by another prominent local film critic. (I was eavesdropping on his conversation with Landmark Cinema’s local PR guy.) His basic assessment was a confused “What?!”

    In any case, you’ll need a pass to make good on these free tickets. According to an ad in our December issue, passes are available at Puerta Azul, a restaurant in St. Paul. But we here at Rake Media Worldwide are big fans of Almodovar as well, and so we happen to have a stash at our front desk–while supplies last. You might quietly enter our suite, tell the receptionist what you’re up to, and swiftly take one away.

  • An Inconvenience, Really, Is What It Is

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    I have a drain where my brain ought to be. Everything that comes into my head runs straight down into my stomach, where it gets churned into mulch. The drain is a rickety thing. When I shake my head I can hear the drain rattling around in my skull. If I sleep on my side I can feel it fluttering up against my ear whenever I snore.

    The drain puts me in a bit of pickle, particularly as I have urgent work to do, work that requires some careful thought.

    The problem is this: I built a duck, and now I need to create some sort of pond in a hurry or I fear the duck will die. I’ve been keeping it in the kitchen sink for the time being, as I already have a red-headed mermaid living in my bathtub and she’s threatened to eat the duck if it tries to encroach on her space.

    The mermaid’s been living in the tub for almost a month now, after escaping from a shampoo bottle that I dropped while taking a shower. I guess I’d have to describe the mermaid as malevolent, or at the very least ill-tempered, at the very least ornery as all get out. It’s possible, I’ve decided, that she has a bit of dragon or sea serpent in her, based on her generally aggressive manner and the amount of time she spends thrashing around in there and roaring imprecations. She creates so much steam that some days it feels like I’m living in the clouds, and I’ve grown so afraid of her that I’ve taken to pissing in the sink down in the laundry room.

    I’ve thought about killing the mermaid somehow, but every time the idea starts to take shape in my head it gets gurgled straight away down the drain.

  • Pumphouse Gift

    Didja know that Pumphouse Creamery has decided to stay open all year long?

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    Come on, I know that baby it’s cold outside, but what’s your deal with not eating ice cream in the winter?

    Pumpkin ice cream, oatmeal cookie ice cream, Guiness ice cream, for godness sake, are all appropriate post-feast options.

    Plus, HELLO FORTY DEGREES! Give me a break, you know you considered wearing shorts on Sunday so go. Just go.