I haven't blogged in a while, though I haven't stopped seeing movies. I see AVATAR today, saw SHERLOCK HOLMES yesterday (enjoyed it a lot, but it feels like they were just getting started - film suffers a tiny bit when Jude Law isn't onscreen with Downey). So far my favorite film of the year remains INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS.

I missed BNAT this year due to some unfortunate accidents and situations that frankly I could have prevented had I been a little bit more responsible in my driving. I'm still in a funk over it, but slowly I'm getting over it. Next year, people, next year.

Nothing much else to write about, although I'll try to have something in the pipe about AVATAR in the next couple of days.

"Childhood is messy and joyful, dangerous and crude. Everything is truly an adventure, and nothing is certain. The kids cuss, like I certainly did. They ride their bikes recklessly, just one skid or sharp turn away from slamming into the pavement and serious injury. There is a sense of danger every day. And when you're a kid, you LOVE it. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, like waking up a summer's day and having no idea what the day will bring."

I wrote that two years ago for a retrospective on E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL. I think I may have overromantized childhood a bit. Much of childhood contains fear, confusion, and a questioning of your place in the world. When you're a kid, it's all about you, which seems very self-centered but it's really not. Kids aren't capable of seeing the big picture most of the time. That's what growing up is - a slow, incremental build-up to the real world and everything it brings with it. It's not necessarily a loss of innocence as it is a loss of a certain kind of perspective.

Spike Jonze's new film, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (based on the bestselling children's book by Maurice Sendak) understands that perfectly. Jonze understands that kids mold their reality for easy consumption. Mom's new boyfriend, her job, your sister's alienation of you as she gets older - these are difficult concepts to swallow. Giant monsters, vampires that eat buildings, forts - that's easy. The rules are clear because they're your rules. You dictate the terms and lay the foundations. And then, slowly, you let the real world creep in in ways that you can handle. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is that rare film about childhood as opposed to being for children. It's about that moment in your childhood, that first step - and it's a tiny one - to adulthood where your perspective starts to shift into that larger sense of things.

The first time we see Max (Max Records), he's in a joyful rage, chasing the family dog around the house, not caring what's in the way. Jonze shoots much of the film in a handheld style but it's never incoherent like so many other shaky-cam films. And here, he captures full-on childhood in about 15 seconds. It's a wonderful beginning and sets the film up for the audience - a mainline injection of childhood wonder straight to the brain. It's interesting that Jonze uses his experiences on JACKASS, of all shows, to great effect to show the general mayhem and chaos of childhood. Max goes outside and plays with his imaginary friends and builds himself a snow fort. Then he sees his sister and her friends, and what starts out as a snowball fight quickly escalates into more than Max can handle. Frightened and emotional, Max retreats home.

Max's mom (Catherine Keener) is both frustrated and deeply loving to Max. He's too much to handle, but there's a creative mind there that's so beautiful that every moment has to be captured somehow. This scene of the film, in a way, I related to the most. When I was 9 I bubbled up with stories, wrote them down, and even when I was a very young child I wanted to tell stories. There's a need to express yourself at that age, as real a need as hunger or thirst, and when you can't articulate something it sends you in a rage so deep and wide you can't see the end of it. That's where Max is in his life, and when that rage springs out after an evening of confusing messages and a strange new man in his mom's life, he bites her and runs out the door. There, he comes to a sea with a boat, and Max travels the vast ocean to an island of giant monsters, the Wild Things, who need someone to guide them. Now THIS Max can understand, and so Max, using his creativity, becomes their king. But Max soon discovers that, much like the real world, things change in life and he's not equipped to handle all of those changes.

The effects work on the Wild Things is absolutely wonderful. The mix of giant suits and CGI faces is essential for the film to work. There's no sense of disconnect with them - they occupy space, they breathe, they even have snotty noses. It's some of the best use of digital effects I've ever seen. The main monster, Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), seems to represent Max's childhood resistance to change, but it's not exactly that simple. All the monsters represent aspects of Max, from his family relations, to his creativity, to his inability to communicate, but there's never a moment when you can pinpoint what one monster is to Max as it's constantly shifting perspective. In his way, Max is working out his tumultuous life in easy ways that he can understand.

I'm really resisting getting into how emotional the film made me. For one thing, it's probably going to affect everyone who sees it in different ways. The parts that really emotionally moved me the most were actually very early on in the film. Like Max, I have an older sister, and I completely understand Max's frustration at how she slowly grows apart from him as siblings tend to do, and how Max retreats into his fantasy world to deal with that. It was the family scenes before Max runs off to the island that deeply affected me. Sitting by your mom, telling her a story off the top of your head - I've done that. Max is extremely creative and intelligent, but he isn't capable yet of understanding the world around him - not yet.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is about that first step out of childhood, in dealing with the pain and confusion that it brings, and seeing the world with new eyes. Spike Jonze has made a film for the ages here. It's not exactly a film for children as it is a film about childhood, and the deep emotions and ideas it evokes probably won't be understood by younger kids who are still in the thick of it. They'll probably wonder why their parents are brushing tears away from their eyes. Enjoy it why you can, kids. Because it never, ever comes back.

The Best Films Of The Year So Far...

I've been neglectful of this blog this year. I've been lazy and not very inspired to write much. It's becoming clear to me that I need to push myself out of whatever funk I'm in and get back to writing. So, this will be fairly short, but something to prime the pump so to speak.

I think 2009, as far as films go, has been fairly amazing. I haven't seen nearly everything that I want to, and most of the films I have seen have been terrific. I figure I'll leave this list to 5 for now, and I anticipate by the end of the year I'll have an awful lot more to add.

In my opinion, Quentin Tarantino's best film. Before IB, I considered him an already great filmmaker, but with this film he eschews much of the pop culture references and instead concentrates on a solid, engaging story. All the characters feel alive in a way that feels very different from his previous works. The performances are top-notch, especially Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa, the Jew Hunter Nazi investigator. Menacing and intelligent, Landa stops at nothing to manipulate events to get what he wants. And even then, he's caught off guard by the blunt instrument that is Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine. This film's operating on multiple levels - we can cheer the bloodthirsty ending and at the same time question what exactly we're cheering. So far, my favorite film of the year.

Pixar is in the business of making masterpieces, at least so far. UP is no exception. A moving tale of an old man seeking resolution with his loss in life, this could have been a dour, dry enterprise. Instead, it's at times very funny, the imagery is wonderful (especially in 3D) and the story and characters are compelling. I can't ever get tired of proclaiming that Pixar is the best thing since the wheel, and they never cease to amaze me.

A hell of a directing debut by Neill Blomkamp. A science-fiction film that embraces a thoughtful premise instead of just having things blow up (although D9 does blow up things exceedingly well). Sharlto Copley gives a performance that reminded me an awful lot of Daniel Day-Lewis in the fact that he disappears in the part, and you stop thinking that it's "acting." I don't think a studio would have touched this in a million years, so it's a great thing that Peter Jackson and Blomkamp made this film without interference. Only time will tell what kind of filmmaker Blomkamp will turn out to be but you can't ask for a better start out of the gate than DISTRICT 9.

Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq War film is great for one reason - it doesn't pass judgment. That's why all the other films on this subject, in varying degrees, don't work. They pass judgment. Instead, Bigelow makes a film of real verisimilitude. It feels true and accurate. Jeremy Renner's performance of an adrenaline-junkie soldier probably won't be recognized by any awards ceremonies, simply for the reason thathe doesn't show off. Instead, he embodies it. There's action sequences in this film, shot with a first-person view, that reminded me (in a good way) of the intensity of a great video game, but with consequences. Intense and difficult to shake off.

Duncan Jones' debut feature is science fiction in the purest sense. It doesn't rely on explosions or silly toy lines, and Jones understands that the best special effects are the ones in the mind. Sam Rockwell, in an amazing performance, plays a labor worker on the moon who, after three years, is headed back home to his family. But he discovers that he's been manipulated in a way that he never imagined, and to tell more would be cruel. It's a hell of a performance, one that the Oscars simply won't recognize. Jones makes a film about ideas and it feels bigger than it's $5 million budget would suggest. Another amazing debut.

These are simply 5 I've picked for the year. I've left out quite a bit. ADVENTURELAND, WORLD'S GREATEST DAD, IN THE LOOP, WATCHMEN, OBSERVE AND REPORT, and there's still a lot to see this year, like AVATAR, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, A SERIOUS MAN, UP IN THE AIR... it's been an exceptional year for movies and I anticipate a lot more good films to come. See you at the theater.

WATCHMEN

I'm seeing WATCHMEN again today, likely, but as far as my opinion goes of the film...

I loved it. I have a few nitpicky issues, but as a whole, I think Snyder's brought the comic to life. I've inundated myself with reviews, good and bad, so that by the time I actually sat down to the thing I was pretty numb to all of it. And I'm finding some of the larger complaints to be, well, a little ridiculous.

Malin Akerman was fine. Better than fine - she was good. It was never a struggle for me to believe in her character at all. The way some people were describing it, she couldn't even deliver a line of dialogue well. But I really liked her character a lot, and I understood what motivated her. Her relationship with her mother was well done. No complaints at all about Akerman.

The Nixon makeup weirded me out some, but it wasn't any kind of dealbreaker. Carla Gugino's makeup was fine. My wife, who hasn't read the comic, had no difficulty following the plot, even the endgame. She's a film fan like myself, and I barely had to explain anything plotwise to her. 

Would a better-known actor, a "star" for lack of a better word, been preferable to Matthew Goode as Ozymandias? Well, yeah. But Goode held his own. The action scenes were amped up and heightened, but I thought that was Snyder basically riffing on action scenes in superhero movies in general. I had no issues with that.

Patrick Wilson, in his way, had the hardest job of all the actors. He doesn't get great big moments like almost everyone else gets, and he plays him as an impotent, restrained and terrified loser. It's not flashy, but it's not meant to be, and Wilson sells it perfectly. You believe in the character, believe in his reality, and that's due to Wilson's work and performance.

But there's something that needs to be stated: Jackie Earle Haley and Billy Crudup deserve massive recognition for their work here. In the comic, when Rorschach meets his end, to me there was nothing of the emotion to the scene that Haley brings here. It was devastating to watch. His Rorschach is one for the ages - I'd put it up there with Ledger's Joker - and people may give Snyder shit, but he got some tremendous performances out of his actors, which brings me to Billy Crudup.

His Dr. Manhattan is one of the most compelling, fascinating, enigmatic characters ever to be in a film. It's stunning how CGI can catch the absolute subtlety of a facial expression, how in the entire film Manhattan is denying that he feels anything but the screen, and his face, don't lie - Manhattan is such a deeply emotional person, so divorced from human contact but at the same time remembers everything about it as vividly as I remember what I did only 5 minutes ago. I don't know how much Crudup was on set - from what I understand he was on set all the time - but whoever rendered him did an amazing job. Like Gollum before him, this merging of acting and technology won't be recognized because it's too difficult to grasp what that performance means in the larger scheme of things. But if it were up to me, I'd happily hand an Oscar to both Haley and Crudup for their work here.

What do I think of the ending? I think for the most part, it works. Something the comic has over the film is that the ending was set up fairly early and hints of it were strewn throughout all the books, so that when the final event occurs, the impact is extremely powerful. In the film, I could feel, especially after the prison scene, everything started to speed up and some of the tragic nature of Veidt's plan was lost. When the heroes (save Rorschach) in the book decide that they have to keep Veidt's secret, there's something horrifying about it, but here, things are simply moving too fast to take real stock in the emotional reality of 15 million dead people. Those lingering shots on the bodies in the comic strike home the evil, horrible nature of Veidt's plan, but in the film it trades that for some cool special effects and very little emotional weight. Possibly some of those minor characters that die in the comic will be given some more time in the extended version and we can feel the loss then. But for the theatrical cut, oddly enough, the film really needed to slow down at that point, for the audience to feel it. But the nature of the act, blaming it on Manhattan as opposed to a giant alien squid, plotwise that works just fine. Veidt's explanation was concise and I don't understand how anyone could complain about any difficulty following what happened. It made perfect sense to me, and more importantly, my wife, who didn't know the source.

I think Snyder's made an amazing film here. I think he adapted the "unadaptable". Some reviews complain that he's too loyal, some complain that he's not loyal enough. Personally, I thought he got it just right, injecting his own take and his own style on the material and yet letting the work stand for itself. I wish Moore would see this, but since he won't, maybe Dave Gibbons will understand that. WATCHMEN is a terrific film, one that demands to be seen twice, and it's been a while since a movie's come out where one could make that claim. That said, I'm glad Snyder's doing his own project now, as I'd like to see what his personal vision is, as opposed to others. But he's one of the best visual directors working today, in my opinion, and barring a truly exceptional year for film WATCHMEN will likely be what I consider one of the best of 2009.