The Cap'n, despite a hectic schedule involving way too much reading and blackboard-ing, does continue to watch movies. Not as much or as frequently as I'd like to, but I had been putting off this column in the instance I saw something that really stood out. But as I'm still only halfway through City of Ember and I started watching it, like, Saturday, holding off on this column could take forever.
Besides, I have five movies already that I know not enough of you have seen. Many haven't seen them at all, and so I'll propose a trade: you watch ALL FIVE of these movies and I will make a concerted effort to watch films that won Oscars still in theatres. Sound fair?
Don't be surprised if this entire list of comprised of movies I've gushed over in the past. I rarely give up on something I think you REALLY should see, and it's criminal how at least four of these movies just slid under the radar.
Oh, and #5: I mean it. I'll qualify why when we get there, but I was pleasantly surprised, both times I saw it.
1. Redbelt - How this vanished from everyone's radar is a crime. It's a damn shame that only the David Mamet faithful caught wind of this exceptional neo-noir. I don't even know when / if it played here, but when it arrived on dvd I brought it home and instantly wished I'd seen it sooner.
David Mamet makes movies in fits and bursts, kind of like Jim Jarmusch. For a while there, he was going back to back with The Spanish Prisoner, The Winslow Boy, Heist, and State and Main. Then he took some downtime and came back with a story I can only closely approximate my saying "what if David Mamet made his version of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai?" Take the warrior's code, insert it into a intricately designed neo-noir that zigs when you expect zags.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (Serenity) is fantastic as Mike Terry, a jujitsu instructor slowly drawn into the world of mixed martial arts fighting against his will. Mike, like Ghost Dog, adheres to his code of conduct and refuses to compromise his principles, no matter how rough it gets. And this is David Mamet, so it gets pretty heavy. Ricky Jay, David Paymer, Randy Couture, Emily Mortimer, and Alice Braga also do some great work, but the big surprise is Tim Allen's small role as a catalyst for Mike's entrance to MMA.
Even if you think you know where Redbelt is going, the movie is likely to surprise you, and why more people haven't seen this baffles me. This is Mamet in top form, surprisingly vulgarity-lite, but entirely appropriate for the subject manner. See it.
2. Man on Wire - Now that the film has an Oscar for Best Documentary, I imagine many of you are queue-ing it up, and well you should.
One of the things that fascinates me about Man on Wire, aside from the way it just lets the participants tell the story, is how the weight of history hangs on this film. The story of Phillipe Petit sneaking into the World Trade Center, setting up a wire between the two buildings, and then walking it one August morning in 1975 is amazing enough. And yet, it's impossible to watch this movie and not have 9/11 in the backdrop, even though the film never mentions it.
Watching the construction of the Towers, the footage of the new buildings, especially from the roof is occasionally disarming. There's a shot in the beginning of the foundation of the Towers that could be mistaken for footage from 2001-02. And yet, Man on Wire is strong enough that the whimsy of Petit and his all consuming desire to pull off this impossible feat overcome the strangeness of seeing the Twin Towers again.
Man on Wire incorporates some shaky "re-enactment" footage in the narrative, but before long, it shifts to actual film footage Petit and his friends made while wire walking Notre Dame, in Sydney, Australia, and tests preparing for New York. It really is something to see come together, and it's a story that isn't terribly well known, somehow.
3. In Bruges - The Oscars undersold all of the films nominated for writing with those terrible clips, but In Bruges is a film that's very difficult to see out of context. It's not wrong to assume it's a crime comedy, because in many ways it is, but what I love about the film is how is transitions seamlessly from comedy to caper to thriller and even drama. And it never feels inauthentic.
Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell own this movie, which is something else you don't get from the trailers. Yes, Ralph Fiennes figures prominently into the film, and his appearance in the third act is memorable for a number of reasons, but it isn't his movie. In Bruges is a movie about two criminals sent to "cool off" after something simple goes very, very wrong. One of them is relatively new, and the other is old hat in the game, but both of them recognize the gravity of what happened.
Gleeson anchors most of the movie, but Farrell has to sell a character arc you don't see coming until a mid-film flashback. Part of why I love this film so much is that when it shifts, Farrell never makes it feel inauthentic. He's better in this movie than I can remember, maybe ever. Do check it out.
4. Appaloosa - Ed Harris reunites with Viggo Mortenson after A History of Violence and directs a different kind of western. The town of Appaloosa has a problem: Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), a man who claims to have connections to President Chester A. Arthur, and uses that clout to do whatever he wants with his gang. When Bragg kills the Sherriff and his deputies in cold blood, the city officials agree to turn Appaloosa over to Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett Hitch (Mortenson), hired guns who bring order to chaos.
That's the set up, the first fifteen minutes or so. Most Westerns would be content simply to build up to the inevitable showdown, but Harris has more in mind. Appaloosa has a number of interesting developments and twists that keeps an already interesting movie fresh. You'd also expect more violence in a film about hired guns and rowdy gangs, but Ed Harris is more interested in exploring the relationship between Virgil and Everett with Bragg hovering outside.
Appaloosa is nothing like 3:10 to Yuma, nor is it like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. What Appaloosa is, though, turns out to be a distillation of western conventions told in a leisurely, unique manner. If you're a fan of any names you've seen above, or Timothy Spall, Lance Henriksen, or Renee Zelwegger, please check this out.
5. Death Race - I know. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. It would take a LOT for me to speak kindly of a Paul W.S. Anderson movie, but I'll be damned if Death Race isn't entertaining. This movie doesn't really bother to remake Death Race 2000 (in fact, if you pay attention, it might be a sequel) or have any clever moments of social commentary. Instead, Anderson strips everything away, removes pretense, and settles on incomprehensible exploitation.
Here's the thing with incomprehensible exploitation for me: If you can do it in a way that entertains, I'm going to be much kinder. Death Race does so many inexplicably stupid things: suggesting a character is gay for no reason relevant to the story, ripping off every bad "prison movie" convention, an introduction that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, flagrantly breaking the fourth wall. Yet, somehow this stupid little movie, comprised of one bad idea after the other, manages to make you chuckle and get over things that should never get a pass.
Death Race is the kind of movie that tells you what's going to happen and then does it, but it does it in such a ridiculous manner that I can't hate it. I tried, both times. Maybe it's Jason Statham, who takes the most retarded plot twists seriously, or Joan Allen (clearly looking for a paycheck) chewing scenery as the MOST EVIL WARDEN EVER, or the inexplicable quality of the plot twists (if you can call them that). By the time Ian McShane addresses the audience directly, it's hard not to appreciate the shamelessly sleazy nature of Death Race.
And I'm not alone in this assertion. Ask Davis. Ask Cranpire. There's no reason for this movie to work, but if it stubbornly does anyway. Check it out if you want some free time for the cranium, but in a good way.
If I had two more weeks, I'm betting I'd add Transsiberian and Let the Right One In to this list, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
Tomorrow, I'm going to extend this with an growing list of movies that weren't necessarily overlooked, but were perhaps maligned unjustly.
Until then, I remain the Cap'n.
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