Popcorn

Rants, raves, top fives, and bottom 10s from shining lights of the local movie community

Reviewing the '05 output, I must say that I was most moved with X X's doc The X in X, constructed around the finally(!) released photos of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse. It had been a long wait, and, to be honest with you, I was really starting to think people would just forget about it, distracted by giant-ape remakes and fatuous romantic comedies. I suspected that citizens would by default relieve their government – and the documentary community – of its responsibility to make all those pictures public. That's why I was so gratified to see justice done! At last the evidence of military arrogance and cruelty was brought to the light of day, as provided for by our enlightened democratic system.

When the material was edited together by Ms. X, arguably America's sharpest film essayist, I could not help but feel deeply moved by the way her camera advanced through the montage, with simple craft and understated compositions that did not detract from or trivialize the raw documentary power of the photographic record.

This brave maker – whom I am proud to claim as a product of a journalism department right here in our own backyard – also displayed the same gravitas in last year's exposé on Guantánamo, A X in X, for which she certainly should have been Oscar-nominated. I am afraid to say her chances are even worse with this year's masterwork. I mean, with practically no one seeing her feature-length piece, what can you really expect?

Craig Baldwin, Other Cinema

. . .

1. Memoirs of a Geisha (Rob Marshall, USA). Chinese actresses play Japanese women – offensive to Japanese purists (an insult, really), offensive to Chinese nationalists, offensive to Yoon-jin Kim (some Korean actress on a crap TV show). Most of it was shot in California, in Thousand Oaks (an affluent suburb with rich, model-minority Asians) and Golden Gate Park. Director Rob Marshall claims it's an interpretation of Japan – a Japan where everyone speaks broken English or a strange species of Engrish.

But it's not about Japan at all; it's really about Asians in America (Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees). We don't wear signs anymore saying we're not Japanese. When we're good, we're docile; when we're better, we're superhot chicks.

And so the geisha suffers because of the war. I'm waiting for the Rob Reiner directed Rape of Nanking starring Julia Roberts as the last foot-bound survivor. It'll have a happy ending, and Americans will eat it up.

Lost in Translation made fun of the Japanese; Memoirs slaps all Asians in the face. Even the requisite leering white Americans are present. A gift-wrapped piece of shit for Xmas is exactly what we need – this movie is the truth, and many of us know it. It is Asian America.

2. Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, Germany/Italy/Austria)

3. Werner Herzog's The White Diamond (Germany), Grizzly Man (USA), and Wild Blue Yonder (USA)

4. North Korean agitprop video Fucking USA

5. Any program at Other Cinema – take a risk

6. CCTV and NHK news on Aug. 15

7. Tai Hang Shan Shang, a.k.a. On the Mountain of Tai Hang (Wei Lian and Chen Jian, China). Chinese war movie with one of the Tony Leungs and a lot of CG Zeros

8. March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet, France). A chapter of Guns, Germs, and Steel starring birds

9. Any news footage of Chai Vang's trial

10. Fox News interview with Louis Farrakhan, then Minutemen Project founder Jim Gilchrist

James T. Hong, director, Spear of Destiny and other films

. . .

1. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, USA). This gave me the good cry I was needing.

2. Capote (Bennett Miller, USA). I saw it twice, and it made me want to be less bitchy.

3. "See Begien" at Edinburgh Castle Film Night, 12/5/05. The drugs were really good at that party.

4. Last Life in the Universe (Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Thailand). Cute and romantic

5. 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, China/France/Germany/Hong Kong). Cathy made me put this on – no, really, I loved it.

6. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, USA)

7. Dear Frankie (Shona Auerbach, UK). This one made me cry too.

8. Ben Armington's werewolf movie at Edinburgh Castle Film Night's "Tales of Werewolfery," 10/24/05

9. Junebug (Phil Morrison, USA)

10. Rize (David LaChapelle, USA)

11. And because we can't count – all those silly Stella Artois commercials at Landmark theaters.

Jose Rodriguez (with a little help from Cathy Begien)

. . .

The 'how can we miss you if you won't leave?' top 10

1. Jennifer Lopez. Though we're sure it's all been a terrible misunderstanding and she's really very talented and nice

2. "It's funny cuz the one guy is, like, black, and the other guy is soooo white" buddy comedies. Please, let this subgenre die with Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy's The Man.

3. Morgan Freeman narrating everything. After a while, even being the voice of compassionate dignity begins to feel like just another form of tokenism.

4. Lars Von Trier telling America it is bad. The sentiment would play better if he thought something, anything, was good – raped, retarded, and/or executed waif-heroines aside, of course.

5. Trailers that reveal everything. Why yes, that is the heartbreaking final shot of Brokeback Mountain! Right where it belongs, sandwiched right between antipiracy threats and Aeon Flux.

6. Un-Steady-Cam. Filmmakers, please: No one wants to spend $10 to see images as jittery as a bar mitzvah video.

7. Remaking something that kinda sucked in the first place. See: The Honeymooners, The Bad News Bears, The Amityville Horror, Yours Mine and Ours, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Bewitched, and The Fog. Better yet, don't.

8. Rob Schneider. More than ever, a boon to those who yearn to see Pauly Shore's artistry appreciated like Jerry Lewis's.

9. New Age documentaries. Hubris highlighted by One: The Movie's press-release claim (no worse than the film itself): "Backyard Indy-Film from Midwest May Just Serve As 'Wake-Up' Call for Humanity."

10. Various "I can't help being so thin – it's my metabolism!" blond actresses. Open wide: Syrup-soaked waffles are coming in for a landing.

Dennis Harvey

. . .

The insanely busy schedule I keep as an international superstar, filmmaker, and actress leaves little time for moviegoing. I'm real fancy. I did, however, see five fierce films that get the "PC" seal of approval.

5. Palindromes (Todd Solondz, USA). While not as inspired as Welcome to the Dollhouse or as brilliant as Happiness, Todd Solondz's misunderstood abortion comedy is a really great, sick movie. It will appropriately appall any uptight friends. Recommend it to them!

4. Capote (Bennett Miller, USA). I was really moved by this beautifully subtle snapshot of a flamboyant, eccentric, alcoholic writer inspired by murder and violence. It actually hit a little too close to home, if you know what I mean! A great actor plays gay for all the right reasons.

3. Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, USA/Netherlands). Gregg Araki's best film yet. Beautiful, brave, agonizing, accomplished.

2. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, China/Hong Kong). Oh ... my ... god. I cannot even begin to accurately tell you how good Kung Fu Hustle is. Way too many people missed this relentlessly violent, action-packed, hilariously over-the-top fairy tale.

1. The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, USA). Rob Zombie's movie masterpiece is a gorgeously updated send-up of exploitation horror films of the '70s. He did not set out to make a crowd-pleaser. He crafted a fun, violent, and grippingly effective movie targeted at all of us splatter dorks and scream queens. The fantastic cameos, references to old movies, and hilarious performances worked magically, giving birth to a brand new cult classic. Rob Zombie, I'm seriously in love with you.

Peaches Christ, hostess of Midnight Mass and star of the "Tran-ilogy of Terror" series

. . .

10 assorted bests

1. Best examples of hype actually paying off: Batman Begins, Rachel McAdams

2. Best example of too much hype biting a movie (or a movie star) in the ass: Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Orlando Bloom

3. Best example of what seemed like too much hype at the time but actually paid off in the end: War of the Worlds

4. Best new martial arts star: Tony Jaa, Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

5. Best supporting blonds: January Jones, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada; Taryn Manning, Hustle and Flow; Maria Bello, A History of Violence; Val Kilmer, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; Anne Hathaway, the final third of Brokeback Mountain

6. Best never-ending story I would have paid good money to see on the big screen: R. Kelly's 12-part (so far) video for "Trapped in the Closet"

7. Best line from a bad movie: "Respect the cave!," The Cave

8. Best duet: Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

9. Best set: Andy's apartment, The 40-Year-Old Virgin

10. Best movie-theater moment: seeing a mouse scuttle across the bottom of the screen during Cinderella Man's nauseating "you are the champion of my heart" speech

Cheryl Eddy

. . .

1. Sin City (Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, USA)

2. Murderball (Henry Alex Adam and Dana Adam Shapiro, USA)

3. March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet, France)

4. Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids (Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, India/USA)

5. Four Eyed Monsters (Susan Bruce and Arin Crumley, USA)

6. Jarhead (Sam Mendes, USA)

7. Crash (Paul Haggis, USA/Germany)

8. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, USA)

9. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, USA)

10. Wedding Crashers (David Dobkin, USA)

Nic Hill, director, Piece by Piece, www.piecebypiecemovie.com

. . .

1. Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi, Iran/France/Iraq). The first film to be filmed in Iraq since the takeover, this poetic fictional account of the week before the US recently spread its "freedom," starring actual afflicted children, will leave you haunted and sober for the rest of your life.

2. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, USA). America's family values are deconstructed in this brutal and quiet masterpiece. How universally scary is it to watch Maria Bello's love for her man and her country turn into apathy and contempt?

3. "The Hand," from Eros (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong). This snuck in under the radar while Wong's haunting 2046 received all the attention. Chang Chen's tragic love for Gong Li hit me heavier than any feature-length film this year. Seek out this 40-minute treasure, and skip Soderberg's and Antonioni's embarrassing entries.

4. A Hole in My Heart (Lukas Moodysson, Sweden/Denmark). Close your eyes and tell me what you see: This follow-up to the gut-wrenching Lilya 4-Ever bravely confronts the ever-growing contemporary confusion between documentaries, amateur porn, and reality TV. Not for everyone! (Including the actors, who were quite frustrated with the director throughout the making of the film.)

5. The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, USA). Holy Jesus God! This film not only re-creates the irresponsible feel of a '70s exploitation film, but it also actually represents the current irresponsible attitude that is running rampant through America. Sid Haig alone is so intense and brash that this film puts all other contemporary shockfests to shame.

6. Melinda and Melinda (Woody Allen, USA). This literary experiment beautifully blends two versions of the same story twice, one tragic and the other comic. Radha Mitchell gives a performance equal to Dianne Wiest's Oscar-winning take on Holly in Hannah and Her Sisters.

7. Kung-Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, Hong Kong). Hyperactive to the point of insanity, Chow's kung-fu/musical/romantic comedy makes you fall in love with every single character, from the Speedy Gonzalez of slumlords to the kung-fu-fighting faggot. This film deserves every single iota of praise and much, much more.

8. The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, USA). Smearing your sperm on girls' lockers, posing as an intellectual by calling Kafka's "Metamorphosis" "very Kafkaesque," and attempting to define yourself from your overly competitive father sure does ring a few bells regarding what it's like to grow up.

9. Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, USA). As early as the sequence where the goldfish is sitting helplessly on the trunk of a car, you realize this film is heartfelt and genuine and so well written that you want to watch it again and again. ("This year has seriously been the longest year of my life." "At least we're all in it together.")

10. Those amazing R-rated B movies (various directors, USA). Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark is mind-blowing from the opening backstory, a five-minute scroll of text that is actually narrated to you by Tara Reid, playing a museum curator – just count how many words she mispronounces! Renny Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning is Hollywood's greatest achievement of 2005: remaking Paul Schrader's ridiculously pretentious film ... in the very same year!

But most impressive is Peter Hyams's A Sound of Thunder. In a future not far away, Edward Burns works for a company that takes hunters back in time, allowing them to hunt dinosaurs. Unfortunately, once the past is altered, life begins to mutate, creating angry combo-animals such as a gigantic lizard-baboon that sleeps like a bat. The "special" effects take on new meaning in this high-budget ($80 million!), low-results adaptation of Ray Bradbury's story.

Thankfully, bodacious B-movies are still kicking and screaming in 2005 – they're the reason I fell in love with cinema in the first place.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, host, Midnites for Maniacs at the Castro Theatre (contact Jesse at freekyfridays@gmail.com)

. . .

10 movie disappointments

1. The New World (Terrence Malick, USA). Call the deprogrammers: Terrence Malick has been kidnapped by crystal-hanging, dreamcatcher-revering, interpretive-dancing space cadets of the anything-but-Eurocentric tribe! Admittedly, sunsets remain pretty.

2. Jane Fonda in Monster-in-Law (Robert Luketic, USA). She has iconic cultural (even political) status, five Oscar nominations, two wins, 25 years' professional absence. And she comes back for this piece of crap?!?

3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, USA), The Brothers Grimm (Terry Gilliam, Czech Republic/USA), and The Chronicles of Narnia (Andrew Adamson, USA). Indelible, formative childhood reading experiences, now reduced to hard little pills of CG excess for your own time-is-money, attention-deficit offspring!

4. Land of the Dead (George A. Romero, USA). This was good, actually, if not great. But its commercial failure means a great horror director will have to keep begging for financing while stupid PG-13 slasher knockoffs continue to get green-lighted.

5. The success of Crash (Paul Haggis, USA/Germany). How many over-rigged, "ironic" reversals of fate can you stuff into one screenplay and still have it hailed as a searing map of the contemporary soul? Elevendy gazillion, apparently.

6. Munich (Steven Spielberg, USA). So this was Spielberg's "serious" movie and War of the Worlds his popcorn exercise? Then why did the latter have a certain harrowing gravitas and the former taste like week-old Europudding?

7. The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza, USA). This is what comedians find funny? OK – maybe they are insecure, sniggering, stalled adolescents after all.

8. The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, USA). So much posturing "bad" attitude that it made psychopathic violence look like a Hollywood pseudo-biker fashion statement.

9. Dominion: A Prequel to the Exorcist (Paul Schrader, USA). Once shelved by the studio in favor of Renny Harlin's total reshoot (Exorcist: The Beginning), this proved that boring and pretentious does not trump ridiculous but fun.

10. Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan, Canada/UK/USA). When the latest Egoyan movie lands as number 10 on the year's local-industry-voted "10 Best Canadian Movies" list, you know he is in deep trouble. It made me laugh – not in a nice way.

DH

. . .

Top 10 reasons why the Duplass brothers' The Puffy Chair was my favorite movie of 2005

1. It made me laugh and it made me cry.

2. It was rejected by every major theatrical distributor.

3. It's not a stupid, boring remake like King Kong.

4. It has the best use of handheld video I've ever seen in a narrative film.

5. In a world of cinematic predictability, this film was utterly unpredictable.

6. It cost only $25,000 and proves that anyone can make a great film with next to no money.

7. It captures the zeitgeist.

8. The wedding scene was the most honest scene ever.

9. I recognize these people.

10. It's the best new American film since Funny Ha Ha.

Caveh Zahedi, writer-director, I Am a Sex Addict

. . .

Sure, there were lots of outstanding films by "name" directors last year. Cronenberg, Baumbach, Romero, Lee, Jarmusch, Haneke, Wong, July, Solondz, Van Sant, Desplechin, and others will be on plenty of other year-end lists, right? So, here – after first recognizing new works from David Aaron Clark, Lynn Marie Kirby, Andrew Bujalski, Joanna Angel, Liu Jiayin, and Peter Kubelka – is my alternative top 10 for 2005.

1. The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, France/Taiwan). Holy shit. One of our greatest living filmmakers runs off the rails with this insane, brilliant vision of watermelons, blow jobs, and campy musical numbers. The film stunned (and then silenced) the audience at the Berlin film festival screening I attended.

2. Sky Burial (Ellen Bruno, USA)

3. The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, USA). Finally, a contemporary take on '70s nihilistic horror that isn't lame

4. Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula (Francesco Vezzoli, Italy). For me, the highlight of the Venice Biennale; a funny, puzzling, loud, and star-studded trailer for a film that does not exist

5. L'intrus (Claire Denis, France). Unbearable on the first viewing, a near-masterpiece on the second

6. Six Feet Under finale, Episode 63: "Everyone's Waiting" (Alan Ball, USA)

7. Before the Flood (Yan Yu and Li Yifan, China). As the filmmakers observe without comment, we witness the dissolution of not only a community but also centuries of history, in the wake of the Three Gorges Dam project.

8. Corrales versus Castillo, 5/8/05. As hardcore as The Devil's Rejects; imagine the alien insects from Starship Troopers as lightweight Latinos, in a battle to the death in Las Vegas.

9. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, USA)

10. The Devil's Helper and Mr. Visit Show (Phil Chambliss, USA). Backwoods what-the-fuck cinema from the middle of nowhere.

Joel Shepard, film and video curator, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

. . .

Five movies I hated even more than The Pacifier (Adam Shankman, Canada/USA)

1. Cinderella Man (Ron Howard, USA)

2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, US/UK/Australia)

3. Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, USA)

4. Lord of War (Andrew Niccol, USA)

5. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (John Pasquin, USA)

CE

. . .

After a Sundance world premiere for my first feature, many wonderful screenings, mostly rave reviews, and even a few awards, I'd say 2005 was a pretty great year for me as a filmmaker. As usual my memory of theatrically released films of the year is a bit fuzzy, with the exception of Chicken Little (thumbs down) and Brokeback Mountain (thumbs up, but could the studio please stop saying, "it's not a gay film"?).

My heartiest 2005 enthusiasms are for the old and the not yet released. Look for a US theatrical release of Thom Fitzgerald's brilliant, devastating global AIDS epic, 3 Needles. I got to see a matinee at the Vancouver International Film Festival and was a wreck for 24 hours. This year I also rediscovered two personal lightning bolts from 1986 and was struck by how influential they were to me as a filmmaker. Ross McElwee's Sherman's March is a neurotic self-portrait of his pursuit of the women of the South (and part of a gorgeous newly released McElwee box set from First Run Features). Louis Malle's God's Country is an obscure made-for-PBS documentary about struggling farmers in Glencoe, Minn. (and is set for a 2006 DVD release from Criterion).

Sherman's March is clearly the more innovative of the two, and it has also enjoyed far greater acclaim and exposure. But God's Country is ultimately the more sophisticated. Both films draw portraits of human pathos. But where McElwee reveals wacky, delusional Southern women, with a palpable sense of disrespect for his subjects, Malle interacts with equally extreme characters in the North and manages to express a profound sense of respect and admiration, enabling viewer sympathy for the characters and, ultimately, for ourselves. God's Country is a truly transcendent personal documentary.

Jenni Olson, writer-director, The Joy of Life