10. Burn After Reading (My review)(Buy the DVD)
Anybody who thinks Burn After Reading is a throwaway after the masterpiece of No Country For Old Men might not quite ‘get’ the Coen Bros. This movie is so much them, and so filled with their tricks and gags and winks that it only serves to heighten the alien nature of No Country when viewed against the rest of their filmography. This is a deliriously wonderful comedy, one that’s as black as coal and as hateful as Ebenezer Scrooge on the day before Christmas Eve. No one is unscathed by this film, and everyone is some sort of idiot, buffoon or asshole. And I’m dreading the ‘Performance to savor’ section below, since this movie is stuffed with astounding comedic work. I love No Country, but maybe I’m a heathen, since this is the kind of Coen Bros movie I tend to like the best. I know I’ll be watching this one a whole lot more than their masterpiece.
Current rating: 9.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: The paranoid thrillers of the 70s and the high tech espionage movies of the 90s are dated. This movie is how we understand the intelligence complex now: stupid, baffled and prone not to evil plots but idiotic pratfalls.
Performance to savor: Brad Pitt will probably get an Oscar nom for his zen-like Benjamin Button, but his best character work was with the dim but lovable Chad.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Your nose will burn after laughing when you spit up a Coke!”
9. Iron Man (My review)(Buy the DVD)
I was always a Marvel Comics kid. DC Comics, with its immortal pantheon of unstoppable heroes, always seemed like it was aimed at kids (and now with their endlessly dire series of grim heroes suffering it feels like they’re aimed at people whose child inside died and turned into some kind of hideous rotting zombie), but Marvel’s heroes with feet of clay and their realistic universe felt like it was aimed at me, a pretty bright 12 year old. Jon Favreau’s Iron Man made me feel not like that 12 year old but how that 12 year old felt when he would open up the pages of the latest Marvel Comic at the local Te Amo. And that cameo at the end made me remember what it felt like when Jim Shooter ran the company and Spider-Man would swing by the X-Factor Tower in his own title. It’s that sense of the joy of a shared universe before the shared universe became a goal in and of itself, and thus a burden.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: While his action leaves something to be desired, Jon Favreau excels with his characters, and the secret that Marvel learned was that it’s all about the characters and not about what they’re doing. As long as you care about the people you’ll forgive less than stellar issues, or less than exciting action directing.
Performance to savor: Robert Downey Jr, of course. Here’s a secret I want to let a lot of genre fans in on: you don’t have to be either light and dumb or dark and heavy. You can be light and fun while being smart and having moral issues and flaws, and RDJ proves that in spades.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Heavy boots of lead fill the summer with fun!”
8. Timecrimes (My review)(pre-order the DVD)
Another Sundance movie! Nacho Vigolando is not a name you know right now, but with luck and some justice, he’s just a few years from being one of those directors whose every project gets you salivating. One of the earliest films I championed here at CHUD was Primer, a low budget time travel movie that is one of the best science fiction movies I have ever seen. Timecrimes is the Spanish, slightly freakier version of that. Vigolando’s script keeps doubling back on itself, and every time you think you’ve caught him in a paradox, he blows you away with the answer. At the heart is an every day schmo and a bizarre figure whose face is wrapped in bloody bandages. Timecrimes is thrilling, funny and incredibly intellectually satisfying.
Current rating: 9.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: Nacho’s script is tighter than the face of any of the Real Housewives of Orange County. Everything comes into play, and there’s almost nothing in the film wasted. Also, the design of the creepy bandage faced guy is the stuff of which iconic horror characters are made, which is why I love his origin all the more.
Performance to savor: Karra Elejalde plays Hector, the schlub at the center of all the chronal craziness, and he brings humor, goofiness, tenderness, physicality and a certain darkness to the role. Tour de force, as they say.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “I want to go back in time and see this movie again!”
7. The Wackness (My review)(pre-order the DVD)
While I’m no wigger, The Wackness spoke to me on levels that are almost creepy. The movie, which is a coming of age story with all of the hoariness that implies, is gracefully set against New York City’s most recent coming of age – the Giuliani years, when Disney kicked the dime bags out of Times Square. Those were monumental years for me too, even though I’m a little older than lead character Josh Shapiro. Director Jonathan Levine approaches the coming of age story and the period with such honesty and such reality that it transcends the cliches of which its made (and let’s be honest: many of those cliches are truths we’ve all experienced in our own lives) and becomes a whole other level of film. This is Levine’s second feature (his first is the shelf-stricken horror film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane), and it shows that he has a gift for real characters and simple honesty. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Current rating: 9.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: Made up almost entirely of hip hop from 1994, The Wackness has the best soundtrack of any movie this year. And it has Olivia Thirlby, exactly correctly cast as the almost attainable dream girl.
Performance to savor: I guess Josh Peck was some children show star? And he was fat? You’d never know it from his spot-on Luke Shapiro. I went to high school with this guy. He sold me weed.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Yeah boyee, this movie is the dopeness!”
6. Trick ‘r Treat (My sort of review. A real one coming)(There’s no DVD. Order the awesome book instead)
Yeah, I’m cheating. Trick ‘r Treat didn’t come out this year. It also didn’t come out in 2007, when it was supposed to hit theaters. And I don’t know that it’ll come out in 2009. I went back and forth on including the film here, and in the end decided that this fucker quite simply earned the spot. Trick ‘r Treat is the best Halloween movie ever made, a film that, if Warner Bros knew what they were doing, would be an iconic seasonal treat that gets replayed in homes on DVD every October 31st and revived in cool theaters every Samhain. An interconnected series of short horror tales, Trick ‘r Treat plays out like Creepshow if Spielberg had gone dark and directed it. Imagine if those suburban Amblin kids didn’t meet lovable aliens and delightful supernatural beings but rather violent, bloody death. You’ve imagined Trick ‘r Treat. I love this film, and if Warner Bros hasn’t gotten their act together by October 31st of 2009 and released this sucker in theaters, I’m going to be leading the charge to organize a cool screening here in Los Angeles, at the very least.
Current rating: 9.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: Instead of setting the movie on Halloween, writer/director Michael Dougherty infuses the film with Halloween legend and ritual. While I, like everybody else, love Halloween, that movie could take place on almost any other day of the year. Trick ‘r Treat, though, could only take place in one 24 hour period.
Performance to savor: Just when you got past Dylan Baker as a pedophile in Happiness he plays a grade school principal with a penchant for poisoning the Halloween candy he hands out.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Let’s all TP the Warner Bros studio lot until they release this horror gem!”