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.

This is how I imagine my wedding toast will go...

Ladies and gentlemen, since I'm here tonight in a tuxedo, and because I started drinking at 9am, I'd like to sway to my feet and say a few words about the wonderful thing we've just witnessed. Some of you may not know this, but PJ spent a lot of time looking for the right person to spend his life with. He went to Singapore, he went to Hong Kong, and he went to Hydrate. He went to Bangkok, up and down the Reguliersdwarsstraat, up to the Gold Coast Cafe, over to Tokyo, down to the Bijou with a fist full of poppers, to Kuala Lumpur, to Bangcock (the other one), and of course he took the red line down to Chinatown. All that time he was just looking for the perfect match, waiting to hear what the Dutch call the Witte Muis Gepiep, or “white mouse squeak”. It's like the black snake moan, only more, um, disconcerted and disappointed. But of course, the person PJ was looking for the whole time wasn't in any of those places... he was in St. Anthony Park, but he was already married, so all those homoerotic wrestling matches they used to get into on my couch were for naught. I know you were all expecting a storybook ending to that story... actually so was I, but I totally forgot where I was going with it. Something about if Drew Barrymore were Chinese...

Okay, forget that, and let me tell you how I knew these two people were ready to be joined in holy matrimony. Consider, if Lian were stuck on a desert island, and she had to choose between Paul and say, like a bucket of hamburgers, and I mean really good hamburgers, with crisp lettuce, some fresh tomatoes... oh and the buns would stay good too, which is difficult to do if you're around all that wet salt air all the time. You could take your bucket up to the top of a hill or something, like if it was that island Tom Hanks was stuck on with Wilson, but they'd still dry out, if it was a big bucket and it took a while to eat them all. But that's love, ladies and gentlemen. That's love.

And now for a few words from a man so opposed to interracial marriage he won't eat oreos, ladies and gentlemen, Captain P.

The Captain: Wow, those jokes about me being a racist really take me back to 1995, because that's about when they started getting stale. But really I do have a few words to say: It's been a long road for PJ, getting from there to here. It's been a long time, but his time is finally here. And he will see his dream come alive at last, he will touch the SKY, people. And his fears are not going to hold him down no more, no they're not gonna hold him now, because he's got faith... of the heart. He's going where his heart can take him, he's got faith to BELIEVE he can do anything. He's got strength of the soul, and no one's going to bend or break him. You can reach any star... because you've got faith. Faith of the HEART. And now you'll boldly go where no man has gone before... well, actually I've gone there. Oh fuck that came out wrong, I just mean I've gotten married, not that I had your wife... you know, I'm just going to sit down now.

Wow, he tapped that ass and brought it up at her wedding, ladies and gentlemen, this man is my hero. Mary's definitely going to be cracking out the Klingon pain sticks back in your room tonight. (Captain: He's just kidding, honey! Lian, I am so sorry, I never should have put him on my bar tab.) Bryan, anything you'd like to add?

Bryan: Just that I can't believe anybody would invite you to their wedding, much less give you a microphone. To anybody blaming this on the Illinois champagne we've been drinking going to his head: he's even worse when he's sober. Lian, stop crying, have some more of this bubbling Night Train your husband sprang for, you'll be feeling no pain.

Hey that reminds me, let's give a hand to Panda Express for all this great food, I'm glad to see you guys spared no expense on your special day. I knew there'd be a cash bar, but the groom bringing a check to the table after dinner was a new one... and where do you of all people get off adding a 15% gratuity? Hell, if he was at the Last Supper there's no way PJ would have left more than one of his 30 pieces of silver as a tip. Hey, table one isn't looking so happy, let's get the happy couple's parents another box of chardonnay so they'll quit glaring at me. Uh-oh, do we need to coax a few words from the man who can put a smile on anybody's face? That's right, I bet you didn't think he'd be here, but the jolliest man in Zurich wasn't about to miss this occasion. Come on, stand up and toast the happy couple, Dr. Euler!

Dr. Euler: Ja, mein fuhrer. I vas so pleased to be invited to such a happy occasion, and to see the new home of Der salat-werfen Mann. That is the name we used to call him on Freudenbergstrasse, Lian, in English das is like der man who throws the salad, maybe you don't have that word here, but of course, it is der idiomatische Deutsche, so it has nothing to do with der Salat. But he vas so good, you see, everyone in Zurich knew if you needed your Salat geworfen he vas the man to see, ja? Every day when PJ would go to verk, everybody in their garden would wave and say, “Gruzei, der salat-werfen Mann!” And now even though we are no longer neighbors, I hope Lian and der salat-werfen Mann are very happy in their new home. Although I must say that I am not happy about the satellite dish on the roof. I cannot see it from my flat in Zurich and it does not concern me in any way, but I do feel such things should be verboten and I have decided to climb up to your roof and take it down while you are on your honeymoon. Everyone will be much happier, ja? So congratulations, and Sieg Heil!

Okay, well that was... sit down, Captain, one Nazi salute is bad enough without you joining in. You know folks, I'm also reminded of another happy occasion we all gathered together for, when The Captain tied the knot with his first officer... because there was this woman there in a thong, at least that's what the bridesmaids told me. And twins, who were possibly underage. And possibly not twins. But I'm sure the Captain will back me up on this, it's at his wedding that a man first sees the most beautiful sight he'll see, because beauty is something we only see as a pale reflection, a shadow. Until a man sees his lover for the first time in the fullness of what it is to be a woman, something I don't think he can ever fathom until he sees her in that white dress, because that's when he knows he's ready to give himself over and realize he'd lie forever in that white silk embrace.

And for me, it's not so much at the wedding, but the night before and many times after, when I watch Japanese strippers whipping people with their own belts, that I catch that glimpse of something I could fall into, and never ever climb my way back out of it's moist velvet walls, and for one transcendent moment, I drift away with Trixx and Brittany into the the smoky ether of the club, and all the insistent noise and chaos of this world fades to the background leaving nothing but the flapping of dollar bills in a g-string. In that haze of perfume and baby oil it's as if Precious turns back the clock to when God and her were born, where Eve was whole woman and yet still innocent babe. In the breeze from the flapping bacon strips of her post-partem vagina, sometimes I think that's when I get all this, the flowers, the layer cake, friends and family all gathered together for that beautiful moment when she'd look into my eyes and slide her finger into that ring, working that big rock at the top and with a ragged breath shyly offering me her ring as my finger rises to meet it... but while my dream is all over in a click of her clear heels, today we're here to celebrate something eternal. As long as this man is able to continue to deny his homosexuality and sublimate his craving for the male sex organ into a relentless fever for shooting off giant rockets, they'll be together.

Well, I think it's about time for me to turn things over to tonight's entertainment, featuring the dulcet tones of DJ Bigfoot... gosh, this is just like the Oscars where they have the orchestra play you out, as soon as I see that ventriloquist dummy start talking, I know my time is up, don't I? I know the happy couple are anxious to get out onto that cardboard square for their first dance as man and wife, and while they're breaking it I know I'm anxious to find some lonely bridesmaids... seriously, I knew Paul and Lian would be good hosts, but put a whole table of single girls into ugly dresses and serve cheap champagne, I'm going to run out of hotel room keys to give out. Ladies, my minibar and I are here for your pleasure... I'll be cracking fortune cookies until the year of the rat. Come on Lian, don't cry, it's been such a beautiful day, don't spoil it. So how about a toast to two happy couples... PJ and Lian, and I'm thinking me and that girl over there with the thick glasses I see looking for a refill of champagne. Ganbei! Prost! Cheers! Ladies drink free in my hotel room! And that includes the lesbians in attendance, because I think of it as less of a strike-out and more of an intentional walk from a left-handed reliever. Seriously, help me get the lonely straight girls drunk and we'll see who gets more open-minded, everybody wins. So fill up your glasses... come on, fuller than that... and let's toast the newlyweds! Seriously, down those glasses, ladies, you don't want to just sip at this champail and risk actually tasting it.

Bryan (opening cell phone): I can have CPD here in five minutes to haul him out. Just say the word, Lian.

The women saved SNL, and nobody told me?

I never thought Saturday Night Live would recover from the nadir it hit in the 90s, because as opposed to previous rough spots, the flaws were more structural than cyclical. But now in my opinion it's truly funny again. And the thing I find remarkable is that it's almost entirely because the women. I don't think I could say about any previous cast that I tuned in just to see the female cast, but with the exception of Darrell Hammond, nobody comes close to Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Kristen Wiig. SNL had a long-standing reputation for being a tough place for women, but it feels to me like the over the years I've watched it off and on that there was evidence of opening up a female-driven perspective... but maybe there are just a lot more humorous references to menstruation. That shift may have resulted from Tina Fey's tenure running the writers' room, but hopefully it continues despite her leaving to do 30 Rock.

In my opinion Amy Poehler is the new star of the show, the way John Belushi, Dana Carvey, and Will Ferrell were in previous eras, because she owns every sketch she's in. When she came onto Weekend Update replacing Jimmy Fallon-*, that may have been the beginning of the return to its previous glory. I would even say the most outstanding thing about Seth Meyers is his rapport with Amy Poehler in their sketches together and on Weekend Update, and the two of them are hilarious together. The recurring characters “The Couple Who Should be Divorced” would have gotten old a long time ago if it wasn't for the flare with which Amy and Seth just tear into each other, first with the insults and then the public make-up sex. And that isn't the only sketch I've greeted with a bit of a grimace only to be won over by Amy Poehler's antics. And I won't ever see Avril Lavigne anywhere, in any context, without picturing Amy Poehler in a tie yelling “I wear black tampons because I'm a punk!”

Maya Rudolph has had for a long time a whole stable of impressions and characters that form the basis of a lot of sketches, but the person I'm really impressed with at present is Kristen Wiig. She's only been on a short while but the richness of some of the impressions she's done makes her possibly the equivalent to the role Phil Hartman and Darrell Hammond have played on the show: the Man of a Thousand Faces, because she smoothly slides into every sketch. For the 50% of my readership that are grand connoisseurs of the work of Drew Barrymore, her impression captures Mlle Barrymore's speaking style so perfectly that after a single line I found myself thinking “Wow, I never realized Drew Barrymore talks like that.” I also think she's about the most attractive women to ever appear on SNL, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with my affection for her.

*-Getting so into your own performance that you laugh at all your own jokes worked better for Dennis Miller. Probably because Dennis Miller also immersed himself in eating shit when a joke flopped, and he didn't do Jimmy Fallon's thing of turning to the audience to laugh at his own sketches like his own version of The Gary Shandling Show, a Pirandellian sitcom which was apparently seen by nobody but me.

Doctor Hugh?

I don't know how serious the rumors were that there was serious consideration of Hugh Grant joining Doctor Who as Christopher (don't call me Ian) Eccleston's replacement, but it's an interesting idea. He did once play the Doctor for about a minute in “The Curse of the Fatal Death”, and he has the wit and sincerity to perhaps create his own style of the alien charm that is the character. This might have been a good idea for him too, since he's faced for a long time the problem of being typecast into the same type of character in an endless stream of romantic comedies, after helming the flagship of the genre, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and he did just do a movie with the queen of the RomCom section at the video store (if not the box office), Drew Barrymore. He himself has commented on the difficulty of finding a fresh take on the guy from 4W+1F when he's asked to play him for the seventeenth time. I could be forgetting something, but the last time I remember seeing him do something else besides feckless charm in a RomCom was a small part in The Remains of the Day, and that was going on 15 years ago. I suppose his character from About a Boy was enough of a selfish bastard to avoid that trap, and in Love, Actually he was essentially playing Tony Blair, and not the guy from Notting Hill, again. The other nice thing would have been that with Hugh Grant as the lead, Doctor Who would have gotten more mindshare in America, and we might have gotten more of it over here a little quicker. As it is, David Tennant has been great as the new Doctor, with a perfect mix of solemnity and humor, but I can't help wondering about the road not taken.

The Films of Luc Besson

Apparently in his native France Luc Besson is referred to as an American director for making what come across as very Spielburgesque commercial films. Which makes it even funnier when they get chopped up or remade by American producers, like it's some sort of taunt to French critics: "You think that's American? WE'LL show you American!" Anyways, he has declared he will likely not direct any more films after Arthur et les Minimoys, his tenth, although he has written several others (including District B13). So since nobody asked, here's a look at his ten films, most of which I haven't seen.

1. Le Dernier Combat (1983)

This is one I've never gotten around to seeing, starring Jean Reno as a scarred survivor of a crumbling post-apocalyptic world in which humans have lost the ability to speak. It's a cheaply made, black and white, stark image of that world, expanding on an even cheaper black and white short film, which started the trend for Besson of casting Jean Reno in every movie he made for the next 12 years.

2. Subway (1985)

I love Subway, although I cannot explain why. Christophe Lambert, who was the mysterious Scotsman with an intermittent French accent in Highlander, gets to create another mysterious, unnervingly strange character here in Fred. This film is full of another Besson smirk, English names that sound ridiculous in French: this film's characters include Fred (Fhhhhred), Big Bill (Beeg Beeyill), and Batman et Robin (Botmon and Rhhhoa-Been). Fred is a strange character who crashes a high class party in a tuxedo and impulsively cracks a safe, then escapes into the Paris Metro where he hides out with the strange subculture that lives underground, including the Florist, the Drummer, and a roller-skating purse snatcher (The Roller), all pursued by the underground crime-fighting duo of Parisian cops nicknamed Batman and Robin, as well as the smitten wife of the man whose safe Fred has cracked. There's a non-conformist charm in all of these characters, who lie and steal and lurk in the tunnels underneath a thriving city.

3. The Big Blue

I don't care what anybody says, this is one of my favorite movies of all time, and at one time was my best trick to prove my romantic heart to vulnerable, cerebral girls. (Not that I was trying, it just seemed to happen that way... I've been assured I'm only non-maliciously manipulative.) This is based on the true story of Jacques Mayoll and Enzo Molinari, the first two free divers to go below 100 meters, at a time when conventional wisdom was that a diver's lungs would collapse under that pressure, and such a dive would be suicide without diving equipment. The rivalry between childhood friends Mayoll and Molinari that drove them so far below the surface, as well as Mayoll's uncanny affinity for dolphins and incompatibility with normal human relationships, made this an incredibly captivating film for me. As a friend put it, anybody who can make a movie about holding your breath interesting has some talent. The Big Blue has a noticeably happier American edit, which Besson apparently hated but I actually really enjoy, while the director's cut adds an hour that changes the entire meaning of a lot of the film, making it a lot deeper and more sorrowful, but incredibly moving. Seriously, you people who keep accusing me of not watching enough romantic films because I don't watch a lot of Drew Barrymore romcoms, watch this movie and then shut up.

4. Nikita

Also known for commercial reasons related to its release date as La Femme Nikita, this is possibly my favorite spy movie of all time. The absolutely bad-ass Nikita, excruciatingly sexy, impulsive, and incredibly dangerous, sets the standard for the Sydney Bristows of the world. She begins the story as a drug addict sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in a poorly conceived robbery attempt, forcibly recruited to work for the French government as an assassin. What I love about Nikita is usually a woman in a spy film has to be some boring, unquestionable paragon, and Nikita is instead a person capable of the most horrific violence that the state found unfit to continue to live. She's not a hooker with a heart of gold either, and her traumatic emotional state prevents her from making normal emotional connections to other human beings, or from dropping right into a normal cover life. The gritty, need-to-know existence of a spy, her violent past, and the difficulty of opening up to somebody who loves her enough to suffer her strange behavior all combines into an impossible situation. This is all tied up in a wild ride full of gun battles, betrayal, emergency corpse disposal, and a brief but memorable appearance by Jean Reno as Victor, the Cleaner.

5. Leon

Like Nikita, this film got its title changed for an American release, to The Professional. This breaks up the symmetry between the two films, which are both about assassins. Inspired by Jean Reno's cameo as the cleaner in Nikita, this is a movie about what the ghostly, inhumanly efficient hit man does when he's off the clock. In the case of Leon, he goes home and drinks a big glass of milk before going to bed. Leon has no purpose, no real life, beyond the people who exploit his remarkable ability to kill, and no passion besides slipping off to showings of old black and white movies. When his neighbor's entire family is brutally murdered by a insane Mozart afficionado and drug lord played with considerable relish by Gary Oldman, Leon allows his neighbor's 12-year old daughter Mathilda sanctuary in his apartment (Nathalie Portman in her first and best acting job). The bond between Leon and Mathilda grows as she teaches him what she knows, how to read, and he teaches her about the world of contract killings. Nikita and Leon are a great pair of films, fascinating and resonant in their characters, but great rides because of the ridiculous and fun Luc Besson action movie style.

6. The 5th Element

This is definitely a movie where I don't care what the rest of you all say, I love every frame of it. The futuristic New York with such own flamboyant and alien sense of style is great all by itself, an even more vertical Manhattan where Bruce Willis can order sushi from a guy on a blimp who pulls up to his window. The speculation on the evolution of fashion is amusing, showcased in Jean-Paul Gaultier's personal design of several hundred costumes for extras. Chris Tucker is perfect as the MTV VJ of the future, with several hundred years to become more ridiculous and self-absorbed, and this is also the film that began my infatuation with Mila Jovovich. Often I see comic-book movies that take the unique visual artistry of the comic and squash it into something much more drab and mundane that looks like any other movie, and this is in a way what they all should have been aiming for, a movie where everybody looks like they just stepped off the page
in bright colors and impossible outfits, especially Gary Oldman as a fantastically evil comic book villain. I thought Eric Serra's score for this film and Nikita were his best, especially the alien opera that no human singer could reproduce.

7. The Messenger

Er, I guess they can't all be perfect. I did like Mila Jovovich as Joan of Arc, if for no other reason than Jeanne's possibly schizophrenic, possibly divine dialogues with a phantasmal Dustin Hoffman. Appearing to Jeanne as amongst other things Jesus and the Devil, he questions her divine inspiration, and offers mundane explanations for every sign she receives from God. That element was at least interesting.

8-10. Angel-A, Arthur et les Minimoys, Atlantis

I have not seen these, so I'm going to be a complete fanboy and assume they're all great films. So there.

Banlieue 13, aka District B13

District B13 reminded me of an earlier era in American popcorn films, when they were immersed in the popular issues of their time. Night of the Living Dead, Dirty Harry, or even When a Stranger Calls, while by no means subtle political films, all tweak the wider emotional concerns of the society they were created to entertain. Now, the American films are all soulless copies of those earlier films, cashing in on the name without understanding anything about why these films captured anyone's attention. There are certain exceptions, Drew Barrymore seems to have known what she was doing when she promoted making the first Charlie's Angels film. But usually it's something like "Let's remake When a Stranger Calls, only instead of using a familiar suburban setting to play on everyday fears, let's put it in some billionaire's remote mountain aerie that will look cooler on-screen!"

Anyways, District B13 uses the rising tension of the banlieues as inspiration for a story set in Paris' grim future. Most of the point of the movie is to create opportunities for really cool fight scenes, gun battles, and open running stunts, not to delve deep into the social issues, but it does help that it's about something. The banlieues of this film are walled off as France has finally just given up on a segment of society, leaving them to a feudal existence under the thumb of criminal slum lords.

The opening action sequences feature David Belle, credited with creating the sport of Parkour, in a series of open running stunts escaping from drug-running thugs who control the banlieue. Belle is pretty impressive, moving through an urban landscape efficiently without regard to niceties like stairs or doorways. This sets an energetic tone in the same way Belle's friend Sebastien Foucan made Casino Royale instantly memorable with his free running stunts. (Exactly how free running diverges from Parkour remains a mystery to me.) Belle and Cyril Raffaelli are definitely entertaining in their various escapes, and in the severe beatings they dish out along the way.

The actual political comment of the film is over the attitude of its two protagonists. Leito (Belle) has given up on any faith in the society outside the banlieues or their values, and instead relies on his own fists, trying to protect the people in his building by force. Damien (Raffaelli) is a cop who believes in a grand, uplifting French society, and that he is responsible to see that everyone follows the law that makes that possible. The two of them must find a neutron bomb that has slipped into Banlieue 13 under mysterious circumstances. Leito cynically believes that this is no accident, and the bomb is intended to wipe out the undesirables of the Parisian underclass, while Damien believes such a thing is impossible, and just product of the hatred and paranoia of Leito's environment. Leito's chilling response, that 6 million were murdered for not having blond hair and blue eyes, so why think exterminating 2 million in Banlieue 13 is unimaginable, is the real sign that while this may be at heart a popcorn movie, it has wrapped its fluffy entertainment value around a kernel of something more serious . This film was also produced before last year's riots, making predictions that things were going to get a lot worse before the end.

I really enjoyed it, but I am a complete sucker for anything with Luc Besson's name on it. And to come full circle in this review, the only films associated with him I haven't enjoyed were the American attempts to remake his films, Taxi with Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah, and even worse, Point of No Return .

Calcio, Cancer, Castration, and Kazakhstan

After a quick binge on rentals, I discovered there were some things I was missing out on, and some I really, really wasn't.

Borat I obviously caught in the theater, and it really is funny. Borat pushes all the boundaries of good taste, but where it really rises above crude fun is when it pulls in the public and even its own audience. When this film exposes something in people, ranging from at its mildest gullibility to at its worst the racism and sexism and the condescending, ignorant xenophobia that Borat can bring out so easily, that's when it's truly memorable. The real joke is that people are willing to believe that Borat plans to kidnap Pamela Anderson in a homemade bag to drag her back to Kazakhstan, and so easily coaxed into defending slavery, or to warning him as a friendly aside to shave his mustache and not look so much like an Arab, in short that they actually believe in Borat's Kazakhstan, is hilarious. I was also impressed with the consistent tone of the film, where Cohen never winks, and never steps out of Borat's documentary.

Thank You for Smoking was pretty much everything I expected it to be, sharp, quick, and very entertaining. It's fairly light in both story and message, really not taking any of its characters anywhere new as a result of their experiences, so really it's just enjoyable to see a nice set of actors have fun dancing through an amusing script. One surprising consequence is that any meaningful comment is more subtle than I would have expected. For instance, the ironic smugness exhibited by Aaron Eckhart when he is given a nicotine overdose and the only thing that saves his life is being a smoker, I loved the refusal of the film to teach him a lesson. The look at the anti-smoking forces discussing proper auditioning of "cancer boys" mirroring the callousness of the tobacco lobby, and the general impression that everybody seems to have lost any sense of perspective they may have started out with lingers long after watching what is definitely an amusing film.

I wondered what I was missing by not having gotten around to catching Goal! The Dream Begins, which I presumed from the subtitle had further installments on the way. As it turns out, not a whole lot. This is really fluffy, and feels like the film that somebody who read Uplifting Sports Movies for Dummies would make. It's a collection of mild cliches, where our hero has to suffer very predictable defeats and betrayals yet score the big goal in the end, where every turn of the plot is so ordinary it really feels like it came from a checklist. Some things don't make a lot of sense, like how Santiago somehow doesn't need a work permit in England, but really I don't think this film needs too much nit-picking. While it never rises above mediocrity dramatically, I have to admit it pulled me in and gave a warm fuzzy feeling all over every time Santiago caught a break. The football is filmed nicely, and it has the usual cameos by legendary names which are for the most part nicely done, although Beckham's was perhaps appropriately a bit forced. It's watchable, and being so starved for quality soccer since the World Cup, I needed a fix. And Anna Friel may not be creme brulee, but she is like a chocolate-covered fortune cookie.

I also rented two films with creepy, disturbed children who invoke the story of Little Red Riding Hood, but exhibiting rather different levels of filmmaking. I haven't seen anything as clumsy as the horror movie Red Riding Hood in ages, and it was truly forgettable crap that tried to slap together superficial elements of as many horror films as it could find over terrible acting, just yikes. Hard Candy is actually a serious project, and about as far away in quality from the other as you can get. The two actors who are 99% of the film's focus are perfect as a charming photographer with an interest in teenage girls, and the emotional shadows that go over Ellen Page's face during any line are fascinating to watch on their own. The seeds of doubt and of guilt are enough to keep conflict alive and loyalties wavering all the way up to the last frame, as the film 's conflict can creepily enough be easily appreciated from both sides, predatory photographer and castrating child. The whole thing is beautifully shot, staying intimate with its actors faces under harsh light that shows every twitch. I'm actually still unnerved enough to pat my balls thankfully.

So basically, Hard Candy and Thank You For Smoking are both worth digging up and checking out if the latest Drew Barrymore romantic comedy is out of stock, and Goal! The Dream Begins is a nice guilty pleasure.

2006 Rufus Awards

Since I watch a ridiculous number of movies, and I am constantly amazed by the lack of taste and intellect shown by the voters of all the various end of year awards (the proof of lack of taste and intellect is disagreeing with me about anything), I thought I should list the films from last year that would be winners at a hypothetical Rufus Awards. And the Roofie goes to:

Best Picture - Drama: Brokeback Mountain

Best Picture - Musical or Comedy: Wedding Crashers

Best Foreign Film: Kung Fu Hustle

Most Horrifying Film: The Devil's Rejects

Best Animated Film: Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Best Popcorn Movie: Batman

Worst Film: Doom

And finally, the Pavilion Place Award for Best Film in any Category: Serenity

Best Actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman for "Capote"

Best Actress: Felicity Huffman for "Transamerica"

Best Music Actually Relevant to the Movie: Hustle & Flow

George Clooney Memorial "Better Social Commentary than Crash" Award: Land of the Dead

Paul Jessup Award for the Year's Best Drew Barrymore Romantic Comedy: Fever Pitch

Best Homicidal Teenager: My Summer of Love

Best Use of a Batman Villain: March of the Penguins

The Squeaky Award for best Period Piece: Pride & Prejudice

The Psych Ward Bible Guy Award for the Best Appearance by Jesus: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Frenchy's Award for Best Use of Naked Chicks: Mrs. Henderson Presents

Most Unintentionally Ironic Film: Mr. and Mrs. Smith

And a special Roofie to "9 Songs" for having the daring to combine boring concert footage, boring narration, and hardcore explicit (yet still boring) sex scenes into a truly boring movie which showed film-goers looking for a brief escape from their boring lives a badly lit and boring vision of two people's boring lives. Lead actress Margot Stilley seemed to be the only person involved with this project who had a pulse, but she also has more money shots than character development, so I can only wish her well in her acting career.

And finally, the 1st Lifetime Achievement Roofie goes to Philip Frank Preeshl, for his years of service in bringing the magic of film to the people of Roseville.