a superfluous list by Jason Wilson
When I got the idea to put together a series of lists based on the opinions of friends and colleagues about the best media had to offer since 2000 I thought it would be a fun exercise. We get to look back and analyze the movies, music, television, books, etc. that meant the most to us over the last ten years. Of course these lists always bring out the wolves challenging your choices and that’s half the fun.
Movies have meant a lot to me since I was young. My folks rented me Dumbo and I watched it obsessively. It’s still my favourite non-Pixar Disney movie, based mostly on nostalgia. Since then, and maybe my parents regret it, they have been responsible for my growing love of cinema. They took me to Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park. When I was 13, they rented Goodfellas and I somehow managed to convince them to let me stay in the room despite the amount of vulgarity and violence. So here I sit, with thousands of dollars invested in a movie collection and I like to think I’m a reasonably well-adjusted individual despite my movie geek status. Then again I had initially compiled a list of my top 100 of the decade. I’ll spare you that whole list.
Honourable mentions: Up in the Air (2009 – Jason Reitman), Memento (2000 – Chris Nolan), There Will Be Blood (2007 – PT. Anderson), The Departed (2007 – Martin Scorsese), The Damned United (2009 – Tom Hooper), The Life Aquatic (2004 – Wes Anderson), Traffic (2000 – Steven Soderbergh), Shaun of the Dead (2004 – Edgar Wright), Sin City (2005 – Robert Rodriguez), Kill Bill 1 & 2 (2003-04 – Quentin Tarantino), Requiem For a Dream (2000 – Darren Aronofsky), Spider (2002 – David Cronenberg), Oldboy (2003 – Park Chan-wook), Big Fish (2003 – Tim Burton), Into the Wild (2007 – Sean Penn), Wonder Boys (2000 – Curtis Hanson).
And now, onto the top 10!
10. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001 – Wes Anderson)
I was living in Halifax when Tenenbaums came out. It looked like a quirky, funny movie and while it certainly was it ended up being much more than that. It’s a portrait of a broken family seemingly beyond repair, a cautionary tale that skill and money and success does not ensure your happiness in the world. If you act like a shit you’re going to feel like it eventually. 2001, I was fresh out of high school, living on my own for the first time and still figuring out what kind of person I am. Tenenbaums is hilarious but at the same time it shows the audience a glimpse of cartoonish reality hinged on despair and missed opportunities. It has forever forged an important connection to my heart because of its honesty and lack of compromise.
9. Broken Flowers (2005 – Jim Jarmusch)
Bill Murray’s renaissance has been built upon playing aging men whose lives have passed them by. After a string of terrible flops after the great Groundhog Day in 93, he reinvented himself in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Since then he has adopted the sad sack persona in film and hasn’t been better than here. While many credit Lost in Translation as his magnum opus as an actor, it’s Broken Flowers that I took to. Sexual conquest is a stereotypical rite of passage for men and he exemplified one such character. He made it rich, had fling after fling, and now stares mortality with the cold realization of the inevitable. But he doesn’t just sit there. He hits the road to trace his steps to find both a potential son and a greater meaning to all he has been and all he has done. It’s a bittersweet tale that fuels wanderlust and a longing to reconnect with those who have disappeared from our lives over the years.
8. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005 – Shane Black)
What a pleasant surprise. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in their finest form and a sharp performance from Michelle Monaghan who has not been this good since. It’s comic noir in the vein of Raymond Chandler and before HBO hit the scene with Bored to Death last fall. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang takes the private detective motif and spins it on its head while maintaining many of the old conventions of the days of Bogart and Bacall. Downey plays a chronic screw up, which he’s good at since, well, he is one as far as his media coverage has led me to believe. But he is on a quest for some sort of redemption, fixing his past mistakes. Mix that journey with a bunch of slapstick, great dialogue and a bunch of twists and turns and you have one of the most entertaining movies of the decade.
7. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
I wasn’t going to include this. I hadn’t had the opportunity to see my favourites from 2009 a second time to verify my initial reactions until over New Year’s I watched Basterds again with a few friends. It was better the second time through and I am inclined to say it’s my favourite Tarantino film. From the opening sequence, an intense interrogation fueled by dialogue with music and shots straight from the best Sergio Leone; to Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna in the restaurant years later with a glass of milk in front of her; to the proper German way to order three scotches; Inglourious Basterds is equally entertaining and suspenseful. Then the Basterds themselves come in and punctuate the proceedings with a comic bookish flare that truly sets this apart from your standard WW2 flick.
6. No Country for Old Men (2007 – Joel and Ethan Coen)
No Country for Old Men is a rare beast. You could miss the real story the first time through. Sure, the surface plot is a chase between an arrogant man taking a chance with a stolen sack of cash and the psychopathic hunter chasing him down. Maybe it’s been beaten into the heads of everyone by now and it might be more obvious than I’m giving people credit for (it’s the meaning of the title for the love of God!). But it’s how the old sheriff has reached his limits of understanding how to deal with the world and the violence therein. Nothing has really changed in the world itself except he no longer has the capability to deal with it. It’s a young man’s game and his old guard is losing its grip. Of course the chase itself is such an incredibly woven story that it becomes the front-loaded storyline, though there is good reason why Moss’ fate happens offscreen. In my opinion, it’s even more effective this way.
Oh, and of course, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin are both amazing.
5. High Fidelity (2000 – Stephen Frears)
My mother read Nick Hornby’s book High Fidelity several years ago. I had already seen the movie…probably three times by then. She laughed and said “you are Rob Gordon.” Now considering my unhealthy appreciation for all things John Cusack I was elated. The more I thought about it I’m sure she meant it was due to my compulsive list-making (no shock there) and my overall neurotic behaviour. This could be seen as a more light-hearted sister movie to the aforementioned Broken Flowers. Rob Gordon, like Bill Murray’s Don Johnston loses a love and is forced to look deep within himself and his past relationships. The humour is what really sets this one apart along with the supporting cast including Jack Black, Tim Robbins, Todd Louiso and Iben Hjejle. It has one of the best soundtracks around and talks about music in the way music lovers do…yes we are that abrasive…
4. Children of Men (2006 – Alfonso Cuaron)
The top of this list is mostly interchangeable. Hell, the whole top ten are movies I can watch over and over again. Children of Men is one I paid to see twice in theaters. It’s a perfect film experience and I wasn’t prepared for what I was getting into. It’s an apocalyptic tale that while it’s still very far-fetched is played out with so seriously that it becomes believable. That’s the difficulty with science fiction. Within the context of the story it is real. It helps that it is filmed with a tenacity filled with honest performances and an amazing script. You can’t help but get lost in the narrative and the sense of hope permeating throughout its bleak landscape.
3. City of God (2002 – Fernando Mereilles)
The ultimate gut punch of a movie. An unflinching account of the side of paradise not known to tourists and the struggles to survive in extreme poverty. It’s a beautiful movie where hopes and dreams are by and large crushed but a sliver of optimism remains. I’m sure if you’ve been told about City of God, chances are it’s been recommended to you as a must see. The violence isn’t glorified. Not a shot is wasted. And in this case, the lack of known actors helps the wallop the movie carries with it. There is never a separation from the story as it is woven. One of the most absorbing movies of the decade.
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004 – Michel Gondry)
Falling in love and falling out of love are two of the most universal experiences we share. And yet, Eternal Sunshine is unlike any other portrayal of love and loss in the history of film. It goes beyond the non-linear storytelling too. Sure, it’s science fiction and completely off the deep end in terms of plot believability but in terms of how realistic the relationship between Joel and Clementine is, it’s something I think most of us would be able to relate to. Watching Joel relive all the terrible moments of his relationship as his memories disappear only to realize he’s getting rid of the good ones too and wants to stop is harrowing. Looking back on relationships, we isolate the good and bad but they are not exclusive. It’s a harsh reality, but love is never all roses no matter what tricks we play on ourselves.
1. Zodiac (2007 – David Fincher)
It’s a serial killer movie with more in common with All the President’s Men than with Fincher’s previous effort Se7en. It’s a procedural piece and a tale of obsession in the face of fear. Maybe it’s the journalist in me that elevates this movie as high as it is but I never feel like I’ve watched a three-hour movie when it finishes. I had just gotten a job at a Chapters in Fredericton when this was released in theaters. Bought my ticket on my lunch break and when they asked if I could stay later on my first day of work I told them I couldn’t because I had a movie to see. Good thing too because my love of Zodiac grows every day. The look and feel of the film is sharp yet gritty. It makes general assumptions about the truth but mostly because it is told from a very specific perspective (Robert Graysmith, who wrote the book it is based on). As long as you don’t hold it as 100 per cent accurate it should still provide an amazing portrait of the early 1970s in San Francisco and surrounding areas. This is easily my favourite David Fincher film, though Se7en is still right up there.
Epilogue
I numbered them though it was unnecessary. It was mostly because while they are interchangeable, Eternal Sunshine and Zodiac are the two above the rest for me and to run them in any other sequence would have ruined it…for me…remember, I’m a compulsive list making Rob Gordon type, though I don’t own my own record store.
Within the next couple weeks or so, these lists will have run their course. It was a fun exercise and I hope readers have enjoyed them. Now we can get back to original pieces, etc. that were the basis of the website in the first place. My goal, a resolution perhaps, is to get more fiction on the site as well as artwork. As much as I love writing, I was hoping to maintain a balance with the other art forms. Remember, if you ever wish to contribute, just drop a line.
Jason
Jan
2010
Criterion Conquest: Seven Samurai
by Jason Wilson
Seven Samurai (1954)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni
Starring Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Kato, Minoru Chiaki, Isao Kimura, Seiji Miyaguchi and Toshiro Mifune.
It took me a long time to fully immerse myself in foreign films. I was all about the Hollywood system and watched the Oscars every year like a good little boy and accepted that they were pretty much spot on (though I never agreed with Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas or Titanic over L.A. Confidential). I can’t say for sure but I don’t think it was until university where I decided to dabble with foreign language films. High school was my discovery phase of film in general. I started with the newer stuff and slowly took in the Godfather films and older Spielberg stuff like Jaws and even some Kubrick and Hitchcock.
*A quick note: Access was always a problem. I lived in rural New Brunswick and foreign films weren’t at the ready until the last couple years. Even now classic foreign movies like anything by Kurosawa are hard to come by in my hometown.*
After a couple film classes here and there, my appreciation for global cinema started to breathe. I had started watching old Westerns by Sergio Leone like Fistful of Dollars and learned it was based on Yojimbo, another Kurosawa movie. Through my reading I came to learn The Magnificent Seven was not an original story but one based on Seven Samurai. Luckily, living in Fredericton, I was able to find a rental copy and it blew me away.
Cut to several years later and I’ve seen a fair chunk of Kurosawa’s filmography but had yet to revisit the one that got me started. I’m an obsessive and tend to re-watch movies multiple times, especially the ones I love and even some I hate (I’ve seen Daredevil three times). I figured I could definitely stand to watch Seven Samurai again.
It’s a sprawling epic that embarrasses pretty much any of its kind released today. It’s a deep character study with intensity and wild action and swordplay. It’s three and a half hours long but the time is used economically and not a minute is wasted. Each of the seven ronin are fully developed and maintain their own identity, none of them are one-dimensional characters and none are used as mere window dressing. Even the supposed secondary characters like the farmers they are hired to protect are presented with depth and dignity unseen in many epics of today (I will give credit to Braveheart in this regard though, Gibson and company had a colourful cast of people in that flick).
The story in a nutshell is a group of bandits are discovered to be plotting a raid on a village of farmers once their barley harvest is ready. The farmers decide, at the behest of an elder, to hire samurai to protect the village. Kanbei (played by the fantastic Takashi Shimura) is the first one recruited. He’s an aging samurai without a master expecting to live out the rest of his days as a vagabond. Out of a sense of duty to morality he takes on the farmer’s cause even though he knows he may die and they cannot pay him. He slowly recruits others and the seven of them journey to the village to prepare for the onslaught.
It follows a formula of the lone wolf hero (multiplied by seven) or gun for hire but focuses on the human elements of the story. But it’s not treated as above the action. Instead the characters, the story, the action and the themes are all treated as equal and thus the film is one of the most well rounded and thoughtful action films ever committed to film. Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) could easily be considered the comic relief but in the same breath he could be considered the most tragic character among the samurai. His past his slowly revealed as the movie progresses; there are hints and guesses by other characters until he has two specific breaking points where he reveals his lineage and history.
It’s incredible because in many stories like this a love story will seem completely out of place but Kurosawa even gets that right. The farmers don’t trust the samurai even though they rely on them for their salvation. The farmers force their daughters to cut their hair and dress like boys so they will not fall into the romantic trap of the village protectors. Of course this has to be visited again later on and it addresses the disparity between social classes and the idea that love between two people regardless of their status is a beautiful thing. Kurosawa and his co-writers Hashimoto and Oguni put together a complex yet simple to understand story that works on every aspect of humanity. It lives up to the hype because it takes itself seriously with a sense of whimsy.
The three-disc edition released by the Criterion Collection is one of the best DVDs ever released. While the special features may seem minimal despite the three discs, it makes up for it with the quality of each. There are two feature-length commentaries (neither of which I was able to listen to…I must purchase this DVD). One by five film scholars and the other by Japanese film expert Michael Jeck.
There are two 50-minute documentaries; one on the making of the film itself and another on the impact of samurai cinema and traditions and how Kurosawa was influenced. There’s also a two-hour long interview with Kurosawa himself from 1993 (he died in 1998) with filmmaker Nagisa Oshima covering most of the films of his career and his early life as well. If you purchase the DVD you’ll also get a booklet of essays on the film. By the end you’ll know all you need to know so you can brag to all your friends about your expertise on the samurai genre. The Seven Samurai set provides an intimate look at Kurosawa and what many consider his masterpiece (take imdb with a grain of salt but this film rests at #15 on their top 250 of all time).
It’s a humanistic movie with amazing action and intensity. It doesn’t feel like its runtime, if anything it feels like it should be longer. That’s not to say Kurosawa left anything out, he didn’t, but by the end the audience is so attached to the goings on that more of the story would be welcome. Instead we can revisit it over and over again. I gladly will…if for no other reason than I should see it more times than I’ve seen Daredevil.
Next on the Criterion Conquest: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes
Tags: akira kurosawa, commentary, criterion, criterion collection, daredevil, dvd, foreign language film, high school, japanese film, jason wilson, samurai, seven samurai, special features, subtitles, toshiro mifune
Posted in Essays, Reviews