But what if we have been thinking of this all wrong, and the entire movie is just a pretext for something else altogether? It may be narrative idiocy of the first water — but it is, we must admit, the single best cinematic representation of the global financial crisis yet contrived, immeasurably better than Inside Job or Capitalism: A Love Story.

A weaponized concentration of capital seems to be dragged about by supermen; it is in fact dragging them around, laying waste to the world before it, destroying houses and urban centers and bodies as it races for safety — before recognizing that there is no safety and it should just turn violently on its pursuers in a festival of destruction.

In the textbook definition, capital is generally self-valorizing value; in a crisis it is inverted, and becomes self-annihilating value. The supermoney that seemed to run the world is revealed as “fictitious capital,” unrealized and finally unrealizable, but still in its auto-destruction capable of laying low the world around it. Which explains what would otherwise be the most intolerable plot device. In the end, it turns out that Dom and Brian have been hauling the fake vault through the city, while the actual box is spirited away, loot enclosed. As a scheme, it’s ludricous. As a reading of crisis in the world system, it’s immaculate — as if Hollywood had come to an intimate knowledge of volume 3 of Capital without reading, simply by bathing in the current of world money — and should complete the contemporary genre. I am seriously considering renaming this column “The Marx and the Furious.”

Sure it’s a bit of a stretch and an empty academic exercise, but you have to appreciate such an insane breakdown of the most absurd action sequence of 2011.

Drive is not the Fast and Furious-esque action car movie it is portrayed as in most of its marketing. I was even a bit fooled despite reading up a bit on the film; I should have taken heed when I read an interview with Ryan Gosling where he said he wanted to make a “violent Pretty in Pink”. There are a few car chases, and they are shot extremely well without the ubiquitous  shaky-cam, but they are definitely not the focus, nor all that impressive as set-pieces (the first 10 minutes or so are brilliant stuff, though). What’s here is an 80s love story with the requisite soundtrack that turns into a slasher flick with Cronenberg-styled violence. I’ve seen that last point mentioned numerous times, but my friend said it exiting the theater; I’m taking that connection from him, not fellow amateur internet film critics.

This film is not for people who cannot stand silence. There are long pauses that I thought were a bit too much at times, where Gosling’s character (this is all I can refer to him as, since his name is never uttered) comes off too stilted. But I guess he’s so damn handsome that his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) can’t help but fall in love with him. It doesn’t hurt that he’s good with her kid and helps with the groceries, I guess. Oh, and that he’s a badass stunt driver and wears a sweet bomber jacket. What girl with a husband in prison wouldn’t die for a man like that? But obviously, once that husband is released from prison, all hell breaks loose.

The drawn-out silences and patient, long shots make the sudden and brutal violence in the film all that more shocking. There is a great scene where the violent nature under the shy and almost mute veneer of Gosling’s character is hinted at, and once he’s thrown into a situation where he needs to protect his cute neighbor and kid, it’s no-holds-barred retribution. The only previous Nicholas Winding Refn film I had seen was Bronson and that was pretty brutal, but I wasn’t expecting such explicit bursts of blood spatter in every way imaginable. That such violence occurs in what is otherwise an extremely slick and cool film could make it seem indulgent, but it works in the framework of the film. Once the switch in Driver (ok, I’ll just call him that now) is flicked, he turns into some Travis Bickle-type character; now this is the reading that I’ve stolen from other internet film nerds. And it’s not like the film doesn’t acknowledge how crazy the violence is — there’s one amazing scene in particular that cements Driver as a psychopath.

While the film is really all about Driver, the small supporting roles from Albert Brooks and Bryan Cranston are both fantastic, and Carey Mulligan is perfect as the prototypical cute neighbor. I would have probably liked to see a bit more of the first two, but Drive is streamlined to a barebones plot where no scene is superfluous. So while some scenes might seem like they drag, there is nothing pointless in the 100-minute running time. There’s no backstory to Driver, the romance between Driver and Irene is set up through a few quiet scenes and a montage scored with a song straight of out the 80s (that’s a bit too cheesy for my taste), and the criminal associations in the film are relayed through brief conversations where there’s almost always something else going on.

Neither is a shot wasted (outside of one bizarre slow-motion, inside-the-car shot — you’ll know what I’m talking about). I’m glad I got to see the film in one of the big theaters in my local multiplex, because Refn, as @MilesTrahan put it, “can shoot the fuck out of a film.” The cinematography alone makes the film worth a watch, but when it’s combined with a character as memorable as Gosling’s despite his paucity of lines, a bunch of great supporting performances, unflinchingly awesome violence, and an atmospheric synthetic soundtrack, you’ve got one of the better films of the year — despite it going against mainstream expectations. Take a date if she can stomach seeing the life get stomped out of a guy’s face.

Over the weekend, the internet “leaked” a red band trailer of the American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the version I’ve been looking forward to since the announcement of David Fincher at its helm. Many people have put the quotation marks around “leaked” since Sony Pictures could have taken down the YouTube’d bootleg trailer before it came close to accumulating a few hundred thousand views. But it seems now the green band trailer has officially hit the web. The difference between red band and green band is that the former indicates an R-rated trailer, which means the latter has cut out the blood and boobs. I naturally prefer the red band, as it revels in the violent nature of the material more, but the two trailers are in almost every way exactly alike.

Trailer courtesy of Movie-List, via The Film Stage.

Other than Fincher’s involvement, I’m looking forward to the film due to Trent Reznor composing another score for him. I have no clue whether the trailer music is reflective of the film score, but no matter how you may feel about the cover of “Immigrant Song”, you have to admit it fits the trailer perfectly. Add that to Reznor’s fantastic work on The Social Network, and I’m confident he will know exactly how to score anal rape and serial killing.

And that brings me to why I’m looking forward to Fincher tackling this book: he does his best work when dealing with serial killers. Not to mention his movies are stylish as fuck. Anyone who can cut the story of Facebook into a fast-paced two-hour film simultaneously following the initial creation of the website, along with two separate depositions for lawsuits that were spawned by the site, is an extremely talented director. Ok, maybe he had help from Aaron Sorkin in creating the script that made those scenes so entertaining, but Fincher’s directing was probably the star of the film. I need to watch The King’s Speech just so I can say how little directing was even needed for such Oscar bait. “Just point the camera at the great actor with the stutter! People will eat that shit up!”

While The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is over half a year away (note the “Feel Bad Movie of Christmas” tagline), the next piece of entertainment is even further away. It should be arriving next year, but who knows with Blizzard? I could be talking about either Diablo III or the first expansion to Starcraft II here. But this time I’ll just post the first gameplay footage of SCII: Heart of the Swarm. There’s not really much to get excited about in the video, though, especially considering how shitty appearance of the main character, Kerrigan. I’ll probably make a dedicated post to Diablo III in the near future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRWzB7T0LBw

To get to something that will come out soon, a trailer for the fourth season of Breaking Bad hit the web yesterday. It consists solely of scenes from previous seasons — whether that’s a positive or negative is up to you. I’m just glad I got a reminder one of the two best shows on television is back in July, which is only one month away. This summer has really sneaked up on me. If you haven’t watched Breaking Bad yet, get started now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alFsfEUtDmQ

Now, I have known of the great Alamo Drafthouse theaters for a while now, as they’ve been touted at the coolest places to go see a movie countless times. Unfortunately(?), I don’t live in Texas, so I’ve never been to one (ok, there’s one in Virginia, but whatever). Although, I have seen some of the badass posters that have adored their walls — I just didn’t know until recently that there was one website where all of them are put up for sale.

Mondo only sells a limited run of each poster, and once they sell out they are flipped on eBay for three to ten times the price. It sucks for a person like me who goes back and sees dozens of posters he wants, only to find out they are either impossible to find or impossible for any sane human being sans six-figure salary to buy without feeling immense guilt and shame.

If you want to look through all their past posters, the Mondo blog is the place to go, even though it’ll take you a while to get through all 50+ tumblr pages. This guy has an insane collection that I hope he amassed solely from direct purchases.

I’ll just post one of my favorites below created by Olly Moss — maybe just because it’s There Will Be Blood. There are plenty of other posters worthy of displaying here.

Dogtooth

Like most movies, I think this one could have benefitted from me not being half-asleep through most of it. The word every single person uses to describe Dogtooth is “disturbing”. I think the cover displaying a girl with a bleeding mouth and missing tooth warn you of what you’re getting into. That said, I’m pretty sure I was totally out during the most unnerving scene in the movie. I woke up and there was a dead animal on the ground and the characters standing around it. I don’t think that’s all that spoilery, but maybe my indifference towards the film affects my judgment when it comes to revealing plot points.

The entire film revolves around a dysfunctional family where the children are obviously not normal. As the film unfolds, you realize they’ve been totally secluded from the outside world, and taught all sorts of strange and incorrect things by their batshit parents. But I could never get invested in the concept at all. Sure, it’s a commentary on how control and isolation can wreak havoc on impressionable and powerless subjects, but the concept is so totally out there and weird that it never clicked with me. And it didn’t stick with me, either. Most parents that control their children as much as possible usually do it for what they think is their benefit. What’s the benefit of the licking other people’s bodies? Not sure why that stands out to me now, but jesus if that wasn’t the most irrationally strange thing ever. Maybe I missed something while I was too busy falling asleep and someone can explain it to me?

Basically nothing clicked at all here. There are parts that are clearly meant to be darkly amusing, but the only thing that elicited a smile was one of the girls reenacting Rocky. Oh, and I guess a vagina being called a keyboard was funny enough. But I’ve already undermined my thoughts by saying how I wanted to snooze 15 minutes after starting it up on Netflix Instant Watch (and ultimately succeeded). I didn’t know Greek people got this weird, I thought they just liked having corrupt governments.

Enter The Void

I almost made it through this movie without falling asleep. I may have even only half-dozed off. In this case, it has less to do with the content of the movie than the length. My God, is this shit incomprehensibly long. The first half of the movie is pretty damn great, as the first-person perspective and the dreaminess that comes along with it creates shots that remain in your mind. And there’s one scene repeated throughout the movie that definitely won’t exit my mind for a long while. I remember being maybe two-thirds through the movie and thinking that scene was done with and it came back and almost gave me a heart attack and I wanted to curse Gaspar Noe. I haven’t seen Irreversible, but I know some people had a similar reaction to that entire film.

Anyway, the second half is where it drags on forever, with the camera swinging back and forth across Tokyo, giving me a goddamn headache, showing the lives of the residents connected to the main character. Like in Boardwalk Empire, Paz De La Huerta is naked seemingly most of the time she’s on screen (it’s to distract people from her face), and she’s still a terrible actress — as is the main character. I’m not sure if it was a conscious choice on Noe’s part to have the protagonist — who you see almost exclusively from behind — speak with absolutely no inflection at all. It’s totally disconcerting and frustrating. I would consider the possibility that Noe wanted the viewer to insert himself into the role as much as possible, but then he would have stuck with the first-person perspective instead of pulling the camera back behind the dude’s head. He definitely wanted the sensation of the protagonist watching his own life — a life where he spoke in a monotone voice, apparently.

So while I was sucked in by the first half of the movie, with its bright flashing Tokyo lights seen from the perspective of a drug-dealing and -taking kid, the second half eventually lost its appeal somewhere around minute 130. Yes, there’s a point to the length that’s pointed out earlier in the film, but it still didn’t make it any less unbearable. Yet, I’d still recommend it. And if I could see it in a proper theater tomorrow, I’d be all over it. I’d probably feel the need to take some sort of drugs beforehand, but either way, it’s the type of movie that lends itself to a big screen. Unlike Dogtooth, which did not move me at all, there’s something here that sticks with you — whether it’s the spectacular credits, or the eerie feeling of being a ghost drifting through the world, or the thought of re-living your life in the same manner portrayed in the film.  It’s a ride that goes on for too long, but it’s a ride nonetheless.

The credits sequence is a necessary YouTube embed, but it’s nothing like watching it on your HDTV in pitch black, which is nothing like watching it in a movie theater:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0lNGXoP8E

Animal Kingdom

Hey, a more traditional movie! Like Enter the Void, this one is also in English, but instead of from France, this comes from Australia. A crime film that centers around the youngest member of the crime family and his place in the world after his mother passes away to start the film. Guy Pierce, who is fucking awesome and underappreciated, plays the role that introduces the idea of natural selection and the food chain. Somehow this is handled without being cheesy, as Pierce comes across as a cop trying to both intimidate and reason with the teenage protagonist stuck in the middle of a terrifying and crumbling mess of a family.

There’s quite a few twists in the film, and even more moments where my heart was in my throat either from shock at what had just taken place on screen, or from a achingly tense scene. There’s one shot in particular where you know something is going to happen — and then it doesn’t. The movie is filled with encounters that turn out completely unlike how you would expect, and it’s for the better in almost every instance.

I feel like it takes the movie a while to kick into gear, but the last 45 minutes on the whole are close to flawless. It also took me pretty much until the very last scene for me to warm up to the main character. He seemed like a deaf and dumb teenage with a sullen look on his face most of the time; I guess that can happen when your mom dies. It’s very different from the lead performance in another foreign crime film released in the past couple of years, A Prophet, which is probably a superior film.

The Secret in Their Eyes

I haven’t seen many Spanish-speaking movies, but something about this one just felt Hispanic as hell.  The way love is handled and the flirting and the drinking — I can just see the world of this film reflected in my Puerto Rican mother. To be specific, this is an Argentinian film, and it’s also the odd man out here, as it was released in 2009.

It’s strange; I enjoyed this movie quite a bit, but I can’t find too much to say about it. I will admit it’s interesting how the movie works as two mysteries 25 years apart, one a murder case, and one  just a lingering sense of doubt. In an amusing coincidence, I was talking with a middle-aged female co-worker who said how she liked “epic” movies that took place over a long period of time, and also mysteries. It was like she described this film. I just remembered the soccer stadium scene that adds to the perceived scope of the film — and also the Hispanic-ness.

The ending does feel immensely clichéd, even though the events that lead up to it are very affecting. But it’s also an ending I’m sure this co-worker would eat up. Yeah, I’m spent talking about movies, I think. I don’t know how Roger Ebert does it.

Here are the 2010 results (complete with movie posters!), which are visible for non-members. For those of you who would rather not click, here’s the top 20 in list form. Think of these as the Nerd Oscars.

1. Inception
2. The Social Network
3. Black Swan
4. Toy Story 3
5. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
6. True Grit
7. The King’s Speech
8. Kick-Ass
9. How to Train Your Dragon
10. The Town
———————————————————————————————–
11. Exit Through the Gift Shop
12. Shutter Island
13. Winter’s Bone
14. 127 Hours
15. The Ghost Writer
16. The Fighter
17. Dogtooth
18. Animal Kingdom
19. Blue Valentine
20. Enter the Void

There are probably plenty of critics who have top tens that are very similar to the bottom ten above. It was a really good year for film.

My personal list:

1. Blue Valentine
2. The Social Network
3. Inception
4. The Ghost Writer
5. Animal Kingdom
6. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
7. Shutter Island
8. The Town
9. Black Swan
10. Enter the Void

Some really quick random thoughts:

- Blue Valentine just devastated me so much that I couldn’t imagine selecting any other movie as #1, not even Inception.

- I believe I’ve already commented on here on the slickness of The Social Network; this blog post goes into extreme film buff detail about the incredible directing job by David Fincher.

- The Ghost Writer is just a really well-constructed old-school thriller made by a rapist.

- Animal Kingdom is a massively under-the-radar Australian crime film — a slow burner that only gets better as it unravels, concluding in the most satisfying way possible.

- I enjoyed Scott Pilgrim, alright? I appreciate Edgar Wright’s comic and stylistic sensibilities. -

- Shutter Island would have been amazing in black-and-white, but that cinematography made the colorful dream sequences stand out that much more.

- The Town cemented Ben Affleck as a damn good director (what?). Meanwhile, Darren Aronofsky put together a bit of a hot mess in Black Swan — the guy sure has style, though.

- Enter the Void is painfully overlong, but it sticks in your head for even longer, which is why it deserved a spot on the list.

- In case you were wondering, I saw Exit Through the Gift Shop and I didn’t love it. Jackass 3D is above it in the documentary category.

- Movies that I want to see but haven’t yet: True Grit, Toy Story 3, The King’s Speech, Winter’s Bone, 127 Hours, The Fighter.

I’m going to write a bit more about some recently watched movies (including some mentioned here) sometime this week.

- Obviously, both “Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor)” and “Lux Aeterna (Winter)” have parenthesis in their titles.

- The trailer for Sunshine used the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers trailer remix of “Lux Aeterna” — which is the overused version.

Since I’m pretty sure I’ve never posted the song on here before, I might as well do it now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQXVzg2PiZw

It’s a terrific song, and one that fit the ultimate sacrifice which it scored in the film. It was a death that happened in possibly the most epic way possible — incineration by the sun. A very similar arrangement of the song was also used by John Murphy himself in Kick-Ass, albeit somewhat effectively during a slow-motion rescue scene. Tonight on The Walking Dead, it was used during an RV and station wagon road trip montage. Not exactly the same type of impact there.

The song was also used in a recent trailer that I needed to look up on Wikipedia to remember — The Adjustment Bureau. And apparently an arrangement was also used in the last scene of the season finale of V.  I guess the people behind the music for these trailers and TV shows have figured they’ve drained one well and it’s time to make everyone sick of another song. I just hope they never start using “Death is the Road to Awe“, which I prefer to both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3F2pr2FbfQ

The Tron: Legacy soundtrack doesn’t even come out for another two weeks or so, with the movie releasing a week and a half after that, but naturally it has already been leaked to the internet. I’d say listening to a soundtrack before seeing the movie might lessen the impact, but I’m not sure how much it’ll affect the vacuous laser show that Tron: Legacy will likely be. The Clint Mansell-orchestrated Black Swan soundtrack is a different story.

So this soundtrack is really, really good (keep in mind that YouTube quality is garbage). I picked this song because it’s probably the most epic track and while it doesn’t feature much of Daft Punk’s signature electronic sound, it throws a little in there. I could have also gone with “The Game Has Changed“, but that was used in one of the trailers already. And don’t worry if you don’t like Hans Zimmer, there are plenty of tracks with heavy synthesizer use, like “Derezzed“, along with more atmospheric songs like “Solar Sailer” and “Adagio for TRON“. But no one should be shocked that Daft Punk wanted to go a bit more traditional and classical when they got the chance to do the score for a major motion picture. If you obviously have the talent to utilize a 90-piece orchestra, why not do something you’ve never done before?

It took me far too long to watch this film. When it was first announced, I thought it was a disgusting exploitation of 9/11 or some similarly moronic teenage bullshit. I realize now how much of an idiot I was. I should have listened to not just the critics that lauded the film, but fellow internet denizens who absolutely loved it.

It is impossible for me to imagine a better film to chronicle the events of 9/11 than United 93. I haven’t seen World Trade Center and have no plans to, but Oliver Stone shouldn’t have even been allowed near the subject matter after this film already existed (a Twitter buddy pointed out that Stone shouldn’t be allowed near anything). Yeah, you could focus a story around the firefighters and policemen down at Ground Zero, but even United 93 sufficiently touched upon the feelings we had when we saw those terrifying images of the Twin Towers.

No matter what you might think of Paul Greengrass’ two Bourne films, the shaky-cam aesthetic works flawlessly here. Everything in the movie is happening in real-time, and Greengrass does a masterful job of putting you there right in the middle of the events.

Outside of some establishing scenes in the very beginning, the entire film takes place within air control centers, NORAD, and the eponymous flight. The film reminded me a bit of Apollo 13 in that sense, only the latter is typical Ron Howard melodramatic sap (still a good movie), while United 93 is far more restrained, yet still devastatingly affecting.

I’m not the first person to have this thought: “If United 93 was Schindler’s List, then World Trade Center would be Apollo 13.” That analogy might be a bit off, but I think you get it. Really, wouldn’t Saving Private Ryan in Apollo 13‘s spot make more sense in that analogy? But like me, the reviewer no doubt wanted to namedrop Apollo 13.

Which brings me to another (perhaps unfair) point: United 93 consists of mostly unknown actors. I recognized one, maybe two, people in the entire film. It’s not like Tom Hanks is the hero on the flight that rallies other passengers to storm the cockpit; nor is Nicholas Cage running around the rubble of the World Trade Center with a ridiculous mustache. The low-budget nature of the film allows it to feel more authentic by not pulling you out of the moment with an actor you’ve seen flying fighter jets or playing a international secret agent before. You feel as if these truly could have been the people on the flight, or the ones trying to make sense of the madness down on the ground.

It is through these people on the ground, in the control rooms, that Greengrass allows the viewer to re-experience the attacks of 9/11. It seems a bit strange that the National Air Traffic Control Center or NORAD wouldn’t realize what happened before they turn on CNN, but the film does allege to recreate the events as accurately as possible, and it’s those all-too-familiar television images that immediately evoke the feelings of that day. The controllers first seem nonplussed at the idea of a hijacked plane and then stand in disbelief and confusion once footage of the first attack comes up on the big screen. I immediately thought of my 10th grade history class, where another teacher came in the class and said something about a plane hitting the top of the Twin Towers; no one thought much of it, thinking it had to be some sort of freak accident with a small plane.

It wasn’t until another plane was hijacked that some sense of the exception situation sunk in, and I have to imagine everyone involved knew what was happening once that second plane took its course at downtown Manhattan. Nine years later, I still felt a twinge of dread watching it fly towards its final destination in the middle of the World Trade Center’s South Tower. It was something I didn’t see live. In fact, I didn’t know anything past the initial accident until I walked into my English class and my bit-of-a-hardass, middle-aged female teacher was visibly upset. I remember her trying her best not to cry — but failing miserably — while informing us the Twin Towers were gone. Totally gone.

But what I didn’t know at the point, and not until I got home at the very earliest, was that one flight had been stopped from reaching its intended target. It was a small victory on a tragic day, and United 93 chronicles it soberly and beautifully. The people on that flight didn’t want to die, but they knew — from being relayed information about the attacks through loved ones — that they were on a suicide missile. While most of the events on the plane probably had to be imagined, and it was a bit comical to have the one appeaser on the flight not be American (and unfair to the memory of the man who the character is based on), there’s nothing that stands out as unbelievable.

I don’t think any of the people on the flight would have characterized their actions as especially brave; they undoubtedly saw storming the cockpit as their only course of action, much like the New York City firemen who sacrificed their lives in the Twin Towers. But they were brave, and in their final moments, these regular people became heroes that deserved to be remembered as they are portrayed in this film.