The Trailer Issue Vol. 3

Shine A Light - Won't be the intimate portrait of a group or the retrospective of a music era like Last Waltz but it just looks like both the Stones and Marty had a lot of fun here, which means you probably will too.

Pineapple Express - The innocent bystander getting in way over his head with real bad guys is a movie you've seen what 30 times? But the trailer for Pineapple Express looks like this Seth Rogan wrote/David Gordon Green helmed entry into the genre will be fresh and hilarious.

The Dark Knight - Since Where the Wild Things Are won't be released until 2009, is there any doubt what the best movie of 2008 will be?

Paranoid Park - I already saw it and amazingly it both bores you to death and grips you with a clenched fist (exactly like Elephant.)

The Fall - This visually stunning film is presented by Spike Jonze and David Fincher and that's enough for me.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - At least Harrison Ford looks better than Keith Richards does in this trailer.

Taxi to the Dark Side - It just makes your blood boil.

#1

There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson

Maybe this was a foregone conclusion; maybe this was my favorite movie of the year three years ago when it was first announced. Paul Thomas Anderson is my favorite director and I’m a PTA apologist. The subject matter, an Upton Sinclair novel about oil, or the first teaser trailer didn’t particularly enamor me but I was a fan; I had faith. Preview screenings had movie critics gushing like fan boys – There Will Be Blood was cinematic heroin, a masterpiece and worthy to be mentioned alongside the best works of Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles. My expectations were high.

The best thing I can say about There Will Be Blood is that it pointed out the flaws in some of my favorite movies, PTA's first four films - Hard Eight had clumsy dialogue, Boogie Nights suffered from Attention Defecit Disorder, Magnolia was pretentious, Punch-Drunk Love was too self-conscious for its own good. There Will Be Blood is the work of a filmmaker all grown up. His earlier films started with title cards (A PT Anderson Picture, Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Executive Producer Paul Thomas Anderson) letting everyone know exactly who was responsible for the film you were about to see, There Will Be Blood starts with a swarm of strings from Jonny Greenwood's orchestra, a barren landscape and the only title card that preceded the film (There Will Be Blood in gothic typeface.) Here the movie is the star and everything that people used to criticize PTA about (ostentatious camera, length etc.) is here to serve the movie and not the director's ego.

I'm not sure where I'd rate There Will Be Blood among his other films but thats hardly the point. There is something endearing about the young brash auteur’s earlier bold and reckless masterpieces, but TWBB is Paul Thomas Anderson’s best movie, whether I agree with that statement or not. It signifies such a dramatic maturation and should put to rest any questions on who'll be the best filmmaker of PT Anderson's generation.

#2

No Country for Old Men
Coen Brothers

Cormac McCarthy custom made this book for the Coen Brothers to adapt. The Coens must have realized that McCarthy's noir appealed to their sensibilities and that they didn’t need to change a thing; which explains the very literal adaptation: The 1970s West Texas setting let the Coens play around with over-the-top characterizations. Anton Chigurh, resembling other Coen villains like manhunter Leonard Small (Raising Arizona) and everyman turned satan Charlie Meadows (Barton Fink), uses a pneumatic air gun as his weapon of choice which is certainly in line with the Coens who once disposed of a body using a wood chipper. Sherriff Bell, like a one man Greek Chorus espousing morality tales, plays like Marge Gunderson (Fargo).

Then there is the issue of money. It doesn’t matter how large a sum (In Blood Simple it was $10,000, in Fargo it was $80,000 and a new car, here it’s 2 million) but the corrupting effect of money has been a common theme in the Coens’ films. One mistake or lapse of judgment leads to a harsh chain of events – the punishment always far exceeding the original transgression. Some people criticized No Country’s ending, where the protagonist dies off camera at the hands of some local drug runners – a type of unromantic death usually reserved for Henchman number 4. I thought it was brilliant. So senseless and random the violence, that when the Coens add one more casualty to the heap of dead bodies, it isn’t shocking but just another victim of a cruel and unforgiving world.

The plot summary on the back of the book implies a connection between Llewelyn Moss taking that money and the Iraq War. That connection might be a stretch but it’s more of stretch to think the Coens make movies this bleak for the hell of it.

#3

The Diving Bell
and the Butterfly
Julian Schnabel

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the French Elle editor afflicted with Locked In Syndrome, writing his memoir. Since Bauby was paralyzed and mute, he had to write his book one letter at a time listening to a nurse recite the alphabet and blinking when she said the right letter. This process is repeated many times in the film and Schnabel makes no attempt to make it feel less repetitive - this is afterall how Bauby communicates. This repetition never gets old however because Schnabel has faith in his audience - faith that we'll be able to understand just how extraordinary the creation of this memoir was without over sentimentalizing or leaning too hard on the "life is beautiful" angle. It is just an honest document of Bauby's life - no more no less - and that was enough.

#4

Reprise
Joachim Trier

A bit of a stretch here. Technically released in 2006, Reprise rode the festival circuit before making its way to the US in the spring of 2007 at the New Directors/New Films Festival. I caught it during its two day stop in New York last April and was captivated by its energy and inventive story structure. Reprise is like a more measured and polished French New Wave film, exhibiting those films’ freedom while never straying from a coherent and poignant storyline.

Reprise is a film about growing up, in particular about artists growing up. It’s a film we’ve all seen before, probably numerous times. It's kind of exactly like Garden State, only if Garden State was in Norwegian and was not marred by corny sentimentality and self-conscious stabs at indie credibility.

#5

Zodiac
David Fincher

David Fincher makes movies and films. Fight Club was a film and Panic Room was a movie. Under these classifications, Zodiac is the best “movie” David Fincher has made. Zodiac is in the company of the touchstones of the police thriller genre because like “movies” such as Silence of the Lambs, The French Connection and Seven, there is a tangible eeriness throughout.

The first half of Zodiac depicts the San Francisco bay area gripped by fear and the media frenzy created by the Zodiac killings. As the murders become less frequent, Fincher shifts his focus to the obsessives - a true crime reporter, a hardboiled detective, a newspaper cartoonist - those who can't leave the case even though everyone else has.

My only problem with the movie was the ending: why did Fincher try and "solve" the case for us? The case is still technically unsolved so it wouldn't have been absurd if Fincher would have left the strings untied. This is a guy who ended a movie with a cop arrested for shooting a serial killer because he found his wife's head in a box and now he is giving us a somewhat forced Hollywood ending to a gritty crime thriller. What gives Fincher?

#6

The Darjeeling Limited
Wes Anderson

I remember very little about this movie. I remember being more than just a little surprised. I remember thinking that Jason Schwartzman, for years flying under my radar, was one of my favorite actors. I remember thinking that Wes had made a well-needed adjustment following the uneven Life Aquatic (at the time I wrote "The Life Aquatic lumbered along as characters paused reflectively after each piece of dialogue; Anderson's attempt to give more meaning to words that had none to begin with. The Darjeeling Limited, charging forward like a runaway train, wasn't prone to such pretensions.")

And I remember, when leaving the theater, feeling like I awakened from a meditative state and was now exposed to the harsh environment around me; the boyfriend grabbing his girl's ass, the egg smelling urine from the bathroom, and the vulgarities shouted from some local kids who were up past their bedtime. All of this unpleasantness was magnified when juxtaposed with Wes Anderson's tranquil and pastel cloaked India.