toledoblade.com --

A general malaise.

That’s how Jimmy Carter famously described the state of the nation in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, and that definitely strikes a chord. But whether or not those times feel a lot like these times, there is unquestionably a malaise in our movies. If there was a trend in film in 2006, it was exhaustion and deep suspicion — in lieu of tales of hope and uplift, audiences flocked to stories of dislocation and conspiracy, of ominous inevitability.

And they kinda liked it.

Never mind that audiences headed back to movie theaters this year, after 2005 gave the industry a scare and delivered the lowest box office in a decade: Ticket sales are now up 6.5 percent, attendance is up 5 percent, international box office is doing even better, and overall box office is expected to top $9 billion for the first time since 2002. (Sony alone has topped $1.2 billion in ticket sales since January.) Apparently, you even like the films you’re turning out for — the entertainment firm PA Consulting just released a survey that says 83 percent of you are satisfied with the movie choices.

Which is startling.

Because it’s a mopey bunch.

Superman returned, stronger, but with more sadness than ever. The year’s biggest hit, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, ends on a down note. The Da Vinci Code treated a beach read like a gospel. The studios addressed 9/11 for the first time with United 93 and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. And the year’s indie breakouts, Little Miss Sunshine and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, tackled the lack of expectations of a downwardly mobile, suicidal family and the odds that global warming will provide Toledo with a lovely a view of the Atlantic Ocean sometime before the century is done.

War, anxiety, financial woe.

In short, the conditions were ripe for good films, if not innovation; almost as a reminder of the last time conditions were ripe, during those mythic ’70s. Robert Altman died at 81 and Martin Scorsese reminded us why he’s beloved with a rampaging return to form, The Departed. YouTube might be the next outlet for that innovation; and Apple and Microsoft did start selling movies this year through iTunes and Xbox Live. The question is, have we reached our limit of silliness?

Hype in 2006 was defined by Snakes on a Plane — and it bombed. Meanwhile, though just as hyped, Borat and its squirmy portrait of America floored ’em and put the phrase “release form” into the national consciousness. America’s formerly favorite crank Spike Lee timed his return well and roared back to relevance with Inside Man and When the Levees Broke, while Alec Baldwin, who never went away, came back not as a leading man but America’s favorite character sleaze. If you wanted talking animals, you could get a new one every month, but the only talking animal film that hit big, Happy Feet, is the grimmest.

Zoom | Photo Reprints

The only escapism?

Via Ohio, that would be the birth of Suri Cruise and the marriage of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise — Toledo’s favorite son-in-law? We didn’t even want to see his movie Mission: Impossible III that bad — just his life.

What follows, paradoxically, are not the grimmest bunch of the past year — just my picks for the best. And I’m surprised how many actually provide a ray of hope and a dash of compassion. Some of these haven’t opened here yet, but have opened elsewhere to qualify for the Oscars.

Happy viewing:

10. Half Nelson. Once in a blue moon a film upends a formula so entirely it reminds you of what was true about that formula to begin with. Ryan Fleck’s tough-minded high-school picture shakes off every cliche in the inner-city-teacher-who-made-a-difference genre, and anchored with a moving performance by Ryan Gosling, finds no panacea for social ills, only students, and a history. (Out on video Feb. 13.)

9. United 93. If it doesn’t turn up next year at the Oscars — well, that’s the price director Paul Greengrass will pay for making a film so intense and overwhelming you may have to wait a long time before seeing it again. Though it had the unfortunate task of being the first major studio picture to address 9/11, Greengrass makes nearly every decision with tact and more than a bit of style, honoring the dead by building a dispassionate timeline of events that provides perspective for the living. (Available on video now.)

8. Friends With Money. Dismiss as a Jennifer Aniston picture at your own risk. Writer-director Nicole Holofcener makes a movie every five years or so. Catherine Keener takes a role. And somehow an exquisite, terrible honesty about the way we live seeps out. With Frances McDormand and Joan Cusack, it’s not merely a showcase for our best contemporary actresses, but packed with insights to a recognizable and pampered, perpetually irritated upper-middle class American. (Available on video now.)

7. The Queen. What a year for movies about the insulated. Stephen Frears’ nimble reminder of how unnecessary the Royal family is, but how important tradition and good sense remain. Set in the week after Diana Spencer’s death, it’s a deft blend of tawdry miniseries and finely-observed character study so tangled with loyalties and meanings you just know what Shakespeare would be writing about if he were alive today. (Currently in theaters.)

Zoom | Photo Reprints

6. Inside Man. Sometimes it takes working with no expectations for an artist to rediscover their voice. After years of semi-coherence, Spike Lee stepped back, remembered the idiosyncratic touches that made him a joy, and, for once, dropped all the pretense. On the surface, it’s a generic heist picture with Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster. But the result: crowd-pleasing filmmaking the way we once expected it — entertaining, sophisticated, with an underlying social conscious, and machine tooled. (Available on video now.)

5. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. Michael Winterbottom’s delirious, quasi-adaptation of a 19th century drawing-room classic no one has read — including the actors, and most of the crew. Prolific and ever restless (his other film this year was the excellent Road to Guantanamo), Winterbottom has made a playful movie about drearier movies, a weary shrug at how hard it is to get art to look so right. (Available on video now.)

4. Marie Antoinette. Politically irresponsible and anachronistic, with no real story, and no inevitably lopped heads. Sophia Coppola’s third movie is, instead, a surprisingly emphatic, graceful portrait of the trouble with living in an (18th century) media bubble. Coppola is not her father’s daughter. She is much more original than that. (Currently in theaters.)

3. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. A great big smile of a movie. Michel Gondry’s exuberant concert picture didn’t revitalize the genre, or even give Chappelle’s career a second act. It’s charm is in its modest antidote to the self-importance and marketing steamroller that is smothering hip hop and the way we think about it. Chappelle goes to his hometown in southern Ohio, rounds up a marching band, puts on a concert in Brooklyn with friends while French director Gondry roves around and meets the neighbors. (Available on video now.)

2. The Departed. Martin Scorsese returns from the dreary Land of Oscar Baiters, and rude and crude becomes him. Not the most profound picture of his long career, but as relentless, hilarious, nihilistic, and assured as studio moviemaking gets. It crackles with so much electricity, and the performances bounce with so much energy, you feel the entire production surge through the theater. (Currently in theaters.)

1. When the Levees Broke. Perhaps I’m cheating with this one. Spike Lee’s second masterpiece this year played only a handful of movie houses and festivals and was released primarily on HBO, but across four and half hours, it’s a towering achievement — a monument to the resiliency and soul of New Orleans, an aria to its heartbreak, an outraged (and detailed) fist at the tragic response, and the most intimate, exhaustive account of an American tragedy ever committed to film. Certain to outlive us all, but if you miss it, don’t worry — your kid’s won’t, neither will their kid’s kids. (Available on video now.)

(DOT)
And lastly, here are the very worst. To qualify, a film need show a little ambition while failing miserably, and squandering its talent and promise:

10. Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. A flatulent, obese Cheez-It.

9. Basic Instinct 2. First, I felt bad for Sharon Stone, and now it’s just getting kind of awkward.

8. X-Men: The Last Stand. No seriously, that’s the grand finale?

7. All the King’s Men. Sean Penn is Joe Cocker! The dream cast of the year, a literary pedigree to kill for, and no life at all.

6. The Quiet. OK, new rule: You can’t make a “provocative” picture about the sickness of suburbia from your $3,500-a-month walk-up in the West Village.

5. The Libertine. Johnny Depp, the Dinner Theater Years.

4. Running With Scissors. Just because it “happened” doesn’t mean we believe it happened.

3. Bobby. Hating this is like throwing a puppy under a bus. Emilio Estevez’s epic ode to RFK, and utterly beyond his abilities.

2. The DaVinci Code. Next up for Ron Howard, Daniel Day-Lewis in Tuesdays with Morrie.

1. Lady in the Water. Glub.

Contact Christopher Borrelli at: cborrelli@theblade.com or 419-724-6117.

Permanent Link