Five movies nobody's heard of that I won't shut up about (annoying, isn't it?)

Other than this spring, when the foreign film Oscar nominees and the rest of the awards stragglers like last year's Cannes winner The Wind that Shakes the Barley came and went, the first half of this year has been pretty uninspiring. Which means first and foremost, anybody who missed Zwartboek and The Wind that Shakes the Barley will have nothing to tide them over until winter but their memories of 300, Transformers, Hostel, and other statements of protest against the use of the definite article, but it also means the new DVD releases are pretty barren, given that three or four months ago there wasn't much of anything coming out in the states. There's been such a vacuum Lindsay Lohan snuck like six movies into theaters... but that's another story. So as a public service, here are five movies I keep inventing excuses to rave about, generally to blank stares since they're all somewhat obscure. (I only tracked them down because they were up for major awards: a benefit of my "OCD Spells Oscar" project of checking off every award nominee.)

1. Dead Man's Shoes

This is about the cheapest looking movie I've ever seen, and one I can guarantee nobody's heard of since it had a $1,825 opening weekend in it's North American release. I thought it was a miracle it was available on a region one DVD until I saw it, and realized film students are going to be watching this for years to see how to make an award-winning film in three weeks for less than the price of a Happy Meal. The underlying story owes a bit to Get Carter, but of all the remakes of that plot, Dead Man's Shoes and Steven Soderbergh's The Limey are the two worth seeing. Actually I already raved about it at length here, so I'll just add that the lead in this film, Paddy Considine, is fantastic in about everything I've ever seen him in, including small parts in 24 Hour Party People, and Hot Fuzz, as well as in BAFTA winner and all-around excellent film My Summer of Love, featuring Paddy Considine perfecting his fascinating, gentle yet menacing, "saved by the grace of God but I could still choke the life out of you" persona, and Emily Blunt, best known for a scene stealing part as the hysterically bitchy first assistant in The Devil Wears Prada. Paddy Considine also shows up soon in The Bourne Ultimatum, and I hope that means we'll see more of both him and Emily Blunt in America.

2. Me Without You

This film along with Elling and Igby Goes Down formed the Rufus Trilogy of 2002, a group of films populated with eerily familiar characters... halfway through I realized I'd almost ended up married to the protagonist of that film (only she wasn't English) and Michelle Williams' entire career seems like some cruel practical joke where she keeps playing eerily familiar analogues of my ex-girlfriends. Another film in the Rufus Trilogy featured another eerily familiar scene which I couldn't watch without wondering, "Didn't a girl exactly like that try to tell me the same thing about myself... possibly also in a NYC diner?" Because of all that, I know I can't evaluate any of those three films in a detached way, so I asked somebody to watch it and give me an independent review, and she concurred with my opinion as to the greatness of Me Without You, but then again she also dated me and was one of the people Michelle Williams seemed to channel as an eerie blonde specter, so her taste and judgment is equally questionable. In any case, Me Without You is the story of two inseparable friends who grow up next door to each other in England, and find over years of growing up, going to university, and beyond that their friendship may be entirely too intimate to be healthy. Michelle Williams and Anna Friel are great as Holly and Marina, and both remain tragically underrated.

3. No Man's Land

This film was promoted like the most claustrophobic and depressing, pointless tragedy that could be captured on film, in other words, as the quintessential American image of foreign film. The premise is certainly a bit dour: a Croat and a Serb are stuck together in a trench in no man's land during the civil war in Yugoslavia, at each other's throats with another injured Croat lying prone on a land mine, unable to move for fear it will explode and kill them all. In truth, it's a fairly grim comedy and comment about Europe helplessly watching Yugoslavia disintegrate in the early 1990s, also including a French sergeant with the UN peace keepers who finds that even when everyone theoretically sort of wants the same thing it's still impossible to help. It's blessedly more Catch-22 than All Quiet on the Western Front, and deserved its Oscar win in 2002, beating out Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain, which only doesn't make my list because people I talk to have actually heard of it (even if they won't watch it).

4. Joyeux Noel

I may watch this movie every Christmas, along with Love, Actually and The Hebrew Hammer (also tragically underrated). Joyeux Noel is a fictitious story based on the real unofficial truce on December 24th, 1914, when all up and down the western front, British, French, and German soldiers all collectively took a break from killing each other and came out of their trenches to celebrate Christmas, playing football together, joining in prayer, and exchanging letters. There is a desire to connect to other human beings that this film celebrates, and the difference in men who have looked into each other's eyes when they return to their trenches the next day. Some called it schmaltzy, but I say it's the good kind, beginning with something that really happened up and down the line that night: in the film, a German soldier sings Stille Nacht to his platoon, and is answered by Scottish soldiers across no man's land playing bagpipes and singing Silent Night, while not to be outdone, the French soldiers join in with Douce Nuit. And now it occurs to me I already got all maudlin about this movie last Christmas anyways.

5. Elling

I think this movie is hilarious, despite how much of a tiresome collision course to wackiness it sounds like. Elling is a Norwegian mental patient with severe agoraphobia released to live in an apartment in Oslo with Kjell Bjarne, his borderline mentally retarded roommate, who is fascinated to the point of stupefaction by big breasts and pork. With nobody to count on but Kjell Bjarne and his faith in the Norwegian Labor Party, Elling has a rough adjustment to the outside world until he discovers poetry, and expresses himself as the mysterious underground poet "E", leaving poems in packages of sauerkraut at the supermarket. While I don't know anyone who has Elling's deep faith in the Norwegian Labor Party, this was familiar enough to make it part of the Rufus Trilogy of 2002, and it's quite funny. The shot of Elling and Kjell Bjarne eating dinner and staring with bewilderment and trepidation at their ringing phone, with the camera angle nervously tilting back and forth, still just cracks me up. Per Christian Ellefsen and Sven Nordin are so simultaneously hilarious and endearing in these mentally challenged roles, I just wanted to give them a big ol' hug (with nervous Elling squirming away).

I'll give an honorable mention to a film I just saw, La Tigre e la Neve, which was not a big award winner, or really nominated for much of anything prestigious. In comparison to Roberto Benigni's other films, it lacks the relentless hilarity of Il Mostro, or the depth of feeling of La Vita E Bella, and some criticize it for being a pale imitation of the latter without the unlikely gravitas Benigni was able to bring to his moving Holocaust fable. But I still like it. Benigni as always plays a bumbling trickster and Italian poet, Attilio, who pursues his true love Vittoria (as always, played by Nicoletta Braschi) long past the point of annoyance, ignoring every brush-off, and her insistence that they'll never be together before she sees a tiger in the snow in Rome. When on the eve of the American invasion Vittoria visits his friend Fuad, an Iraqi poet played by Jean Reno, Fuad must call Attilio to tell him Vittoria is with him in Baghdad but badly hurt and dying, and Attilio in the middle of a war decides he must find a way to Baghdad to save her. Amid bombings, widespread looting, and total chaos Attilio, who in Rome can't even remember where he parked his car, is determined he can cobble together enough modern medicine from the rubble of Baghdad to save Vittoria, much to the amazement of Fuad and her Iraqi doctor. There are hints of the same romance before calamity and the flirtation with magical realism of La Vita E Bella, which is why it draws the unflattering comparison to a much greater film, but La Tigre e la Neve is it's own film, in a sense devolving in the opposite way at its resolution for Attilio and Vittoria. Where Guido in La Vita E Bella drew beauty and color out of the mundane to fight off the horror sweeping into his world, Attilio begins with joy and panache, but has to concoct something real or lose Vittoria and his imaginary relationship. But anyways, thinking about Joyeux Noel and No Man's Land brought to mind another film set in the current war.

And to Amstelboy and the future Mrs Amstelboy (or is Amstelgirl? Amstelfemme? Amsteldragon?) I apologize for the grievous lack of Drew Barrymore content in a post about film, but her films are generally sufficiently well promoted.