73. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
It’s easier to immerse yourself in a movie with interesting characters when they are played with actors you don’t recognize. That’s especially the case in this Danish film and with the very convincing Swedish Noomi Rapace in the title role. I was carried away by this surprisingly violent and disturbing story. (That it’s part of a trilogy and in Swedish is called “Millenium: Men Who Hate Women” says a lot) The film looks great, the acting is convincing, and it’s full of full of odd twists. It’s long, but all the better to sink into this claustrophobic world of deceit, corruption, and a constellation of very flawed individuals.
Like the film ‘Insomnia’ it will probably be remade in an English speaking version for no discernible reason, so see this first.

70. Benny’s Video (1992) (Michael Heneke)
That this was done 18 years ago is testament to Heneke’s long search for moral clarity. A boy murders a young girl and catches the whole thing on his elaborate home video recording set up. He shows it to has parents, whose first questions are; “Did anybody see this?” rather than ‘get thee to a nuthouse’. You can anticipate elements of Cache, White Ribbon, Music Teacher and others in this slow and disturbing story. It also anticipates the onset of the ubiquitous world of YouTube visuals and perhaps suggests (for parents, in particular) it’s time for greater commitment to a moral point of view that we don’t all descend into a numb and passive society of watchers. The ending is a shocker.

71. 1408 (2007 w/John Cusak)
This was recommended as being really strange and disturbing. It’s about a paranormal researcher who checks into a haunted hotel room. Based on a Steven King story, it’s a fun idea – the horrific and the mundane a la King – Cusak commits himself game-fully. But anything can happen in this wacky haunted hallucination of a hotel room – and it does – so after a while the characters might as well be shouting “BOO!”. There are some creepy and some creative moments, but it adds up to silly. And it goes on and on. I found myself admiring the pluck of the actors who commit themselves to these kind of endless unlikelihoods.

69. Daddy Longlegs (Josh and Benny Safdie)
Not the 1955 Fred Astaire movie by a long shot. Done mostly handheld and very New York with Ronald Bronstein as a less than responsible dad who wants to make the two weeks he gets with his two little boys as fun and memorable as possible. But the guy is a mess. I found Bronstein’s own film Frownland, another Brooklyn improv style ‘mumblecorps’ (sort of), enormously unpleasant, but his disarray as an actor and his terrific improv skills work perfectly here.
The film is, as Ray Carney called it, ‘exploratory’. The Safdie brothers are working out issues with their own father on whom this is based. It’s somewhat of a Rorschach test for parenting. Some are really put off by certain behaviors in the dad (myself included) others feel the love this dad has for his boys, and that trumps his irresponsibility. Either way the film sets up a really authentic looking and deeply felt test of audience empathy. It’s a unique, compelling, and accomplished independent film by two very talented brothers.

68. Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)
The minimalist settings, doubled storytelling and interplay between two little sisters reading a version of Bluebeard by Charles Perrault, and the story of Bluebeard depicted in simple, clean, stark detail turns the audience into wide eyed children. The movie has all the fun of being read a great and scary yarn as a kid, but with the complexity and primal anxiety of fairy tale. There are religious overtones, sibling rivalries, lost fathers, radiant faces, memorable picture-book set pieces, and dark fairy tale lessons about disobedient children. The ending is wonderfully provocative. Her images are laugh out loud minimalistic, and some gorgeous stagings between the resplendent young wife and her dark, shadowy ogre of a husband, Bluebeard, who loves mushrooms, and who may have a soft spot in his heart for his child bride, if only he weren’t a mass murderer. It’s a zippy 75 minutes of great artsy movie making. I find it unfortunate that audiences may not have the attention and patience for Breillat’s clean, patient, complex and beautifully humanist vision.

67. Sergio
The life and death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, Secretary General to Iraq and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is one of those stories you have to see to reaffirm knowing their exists contemporary political heroes about whom we would otherwise remain ignorant. It’s on HBO. This revolutionary student turned world diplomat had dashing good looks and remarkable commitment to justice and humanity. He participated with remarkable nerve in crucial world events only to die way too soon in a targeted bomb attack in Iraq. The film is beautifully and suspenseful structured. Beyond the subjects remarkable life is the bravery and voices of the two soldiers who attempted his rescue. It’s made all the more sad that this was editor Karen Schmeer’s final and gorgeously realized achievement before her own untimely end. A great film. I kept thinking, this is a truly remarkable man, and the cause of this – Bush – is so, so small and cowardly in comparison. Sad and enlightening, and engaging and inspirational.
66. The Woodsman(2004)
Finally catching up with Lee Daniels second produced movie after Monsters Ball has wonderful performances you can expect from him, even though he didn’t direct it. The tough subject of humanizing a child molester on release from prison goes where you hope it won’t go, but also has some really striking twists. In addition, the ‘bad guy’ is the protagonist, and a terse cop played well by Mos Def is the good guy. Everything turns on its head and it’s really well acted by Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. So much happens in the small glances.
65. Babies
Two easy reasons why this movie has been written about – a release just before Mother’s Day, and two features in the Times on babies the same day. But what makes it so wonderful is stunning photography and a perfectly universal idea. This nature/nurture formula is given a magnificent cross cultural platform. It is entirely fascinating and engaging for its entire 70 minutes.
64. Exit Through the Gift Shop
What director Banksy has done is remarkable. By telling the story of video camera fanatic and street art super enthusiast Thierry Guetta, he manages to balance a surprising number of ideas while spinning a great yarn. To put it briefly Guetta, a Frenchman with nerve, enthusiasm, but questionable talent, documents some of the great street artists of the 90’s eventually falling into the rare confidence of anonymous ‘Banksy’, the real genius of that movement, who is seen only with his face in shadows and voice altered. The film eventually questions the legitimacy of street art and pop celebrity itself. The difference between Banky’s own art provocations and the commercial pop versions of the work he creates seems as clear as the difference between an original Warhol and those pop portraits available for order on-line. This is a complex, and amazing study of an important piece of the contemporary art world done by an artist of great wit, intelligence, and creative genius. And I don’t mean Thierry Guetta. The movie is not what you think it will be. It’s a story that questions its own validity, sort of the cinema version of Banky’s art. Brilliant.
63. Mother and Child (Rodrigo García)
The son of Gabriel García Márquez has written and directed a really adult and complex film about adoption, family, loss, need, and powered solely by the women characters who are some hard cases. The plot is pretty intricate, but it’s so beautifully underwritten and scenes play out with huge emotional resonance often with little or no dialogue. And it has probably the best ensemble cast you’ll see this summer including great Annette Benning and daring Naomi Watts performances. Race is a factor in the film but never discussed, and never a plot point, so the multiple stories are not like in Crash. It’s a wonderful handling of an optimistic post racial society, nevertheless fraught with deep personal problems based on loss and adoption. This will be the “other” Annette Benning adoption movie, but the one worth seeing.
62. The Square (Nash Edgerton)
Nicely made thriller in real noir tradition. Like the best old films in that genre, things go from bad to worse and worse for the most tawdry of reasons. The film really makes you squirm, not from violence but because at every turn the character of Raymond gets in deeper and deeper shit. Written by stunt man Edgerton and his brother. Great.