#21 - The Descendants (directed by Alexander Payne)
In Alexander Payne's films, especially those of the last decade, locations almost become living entities all their own, either as dramatic counterpoints or as sources of strength and character for those who populate them, from About Schmidt's road trip through America's heartland, to the California wine country of Sideways, and now Hawaii in The Descendants. His films live and breathe the native lands where they are filmed, and The Descendants is no exception, weaving the state's history, culture, beauty, and popular misconception as an idle paradise expertly into a story of a man trying to hold his family and himself together after a tragic boating accident leaves his wife in a coma and allegations of her infidelity surface. As Matt King, George Clooney is the film's moral center, in a career-best performance that adds a profound humility to his on-camera talents, while consistently grounding the film and smoothing over the screenplay's more acute observations on life and our journey through it. The Descendants wants to be one of the most realistic and natural films you will ever see, and it's because of George Clooney that it succeeds.
#22 - Sleeping Beauty (directed by Julia Leigh)
Presented by Jane Campion, there are many times when Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty comes off like a bad Peter Greenaway film, and I think that is exactly what the director has intended. Similar to the films of Greenaway in the sense that the story takes a backseat to its agenda and ideology, in this case the explicit dissection of female gender roles, but not similar in its embrace of a crude visual aesthetic within a proscenium arch. Sleeping Beauty's aggressively clinical tone is evident in every, mostly static frame, from its abundant depictions of a nude Emily Browning that are stripped of any trace of eroticism, to its sexualizing of a medical experiment involving the swallowing of a long tube. Browning plays a struggling college student who responds to a help-wanted ad, which ultimately involves her willfully taking a drug that puts her to sleep, and lying unconscious and naked in a lavish bedroom while a man who has paid a pretty penny gets to do whatever he wants to her, just short of an actual, physical sex act. Yeah, we're a long way from Disney here. Sleeping Beauty has endless layers of meaning, through its examination of complicity, subjugation, objectification, and sexuality, all depicted with the sensuality of a visit to the doctor, and completely different depending on whether you are a man or a woman who is watching the thing. This film is completely ridiculous, pretentious, brilliant, reflective, prurient, disgusting, offensive, OR beautiful, etc; depending on who you are, your feelings about it reveal more about yourself than about the film. Watch at your own risk.
#23 - The Ides Of March (directed by George Clooney)
George Clooney's fourth effort as director is a welcome revisiting of the classic Hollywood political drama, like discovering a lost Sidney Lumet film. Click here for my review. A character study of a wide-eyed optimist's gradual discovery of the dangers of idealizing in its depiction of Ryan Gosling's descent, or rise, depending on how one looks at it, into political expediency, The Ides Of March effectively opens up its source material as a play, to the demands of film, while retaining the crackling intensity of its dialogue. A film of characters in rooms talking, every supporting actor from Paul Giamatti to Philip Seymour Hoffman makes the absolute best of their moments, peeling away the layers of Gosling's idealism to expose the harsh reality of politics. Like the best of old-school Hollywood, the beauty of The Ides Of March is in its mostly transparent visual style, which allows occasional moments of formalism to really pack a punch, like two silhouettes arguing against a massive blue-screened American flag. But it probably wouldn't be on this list if all it did was tell a story well. Ultimately, it serves, in an election year, to give a potential back story to, and hold a mirror up to any of the talking heads we see trying to sell us their candidate for change. Do they really believe, or are they just doing what they are supposed to do? And if they really believe, are they Ryan Gosling from the beginning of the film, or the end of the film?
#24 - Rampart (directed by Oren Moverman)
Named after the division of the Los Angeles Police Department mired in corruption scandals towards the end of the nineties, Rampart is a character study of a corrupt police officer slowly losing control and descending into utter ruin, and features Woody Harrelson in one of the finest performances of his career. Told completely from his perspective, the film begins just prior to a creeping inability in him to juggle the many elements of his world, from living with two ex-wives who happen to be sisters, both of whom he has a child with, to his daily on-the-job mentality which occasionally leads to charges of police brutality. Harrelson achieves the slowest of burns in his creation of officer David Brown, like an internalized version of Mickey Knox from Natural Born Killers, and perfectly matches director Oren Moverman's deliberate pacing. Coming ten years after Training Day, it seems the corrupt cop genre has finally transcended the sensationalism of its predecessors. Rampart avoids elaborate set pieces and the constant brandishing of firearms, interested instead in a portrait of the self-destructive nature of pure evil, and in David Brown has one of the more fascinating monsters of cinema in recent memory. But the film's greatness lies beneath the surface, where under all the many layers of corruption, lies a man whose very core is inextricably tied to a rapidly disappearing world and expired ideology, and we watch, and also become an audience to the unchangeable aspects of our own lives that the passing of time is swallowing whole.
#25 - Cars 2 (directed by John Lasseter & Brad Lewis)
Ok, I will confess that the only reason I did not do the traditional top ten list with ten runners-up is so that I could include Cars 2. I know, I know, it was not as good as Cars, blah, blah, blah; there I said it, so let's move on. Somehow along the way Pixar Animation Studios has become the reluctant arbiter of what constitutes a perfect animated film. I hear people say all the time in regards to live-action blockbusters, things like, "leave your brain at the door," or "just enjoy it for what it is," or "what do you expect, Citizen Kane?" Clearly they did not ever expect to say such things about a Pixar film, as a chorus of "Pixar's First Flop" could be heard, even after the film grossed near 200 million dollars. In reality, Cars 2 is just the first Pixar film that does not set out to change the world. Instead Lasseter took his Cars characters and played with them, like what Andy does in each of the Toy Story films, only for an entire two hours. He weaves a rather complicated plot involving mistaken identity and the current hot-button issue of alternative fuel, and borrows heavily from the spy thriller genre, to create an incredibly expansive diorama and global stage with which to crash, smash and blow-up his beloved toys. The film must be an eight-year-old boy's dream come true, a chronological sequel made for the current age of fans of the first film, a point which went all but ignored by the film's detractors, yet remains one of the key praises of the Harry Potter films. And at the heart of Cars 2 is Larry The Cable Guy, who delivers with Mater, one of the greatest vocal performances I have ever heard in an animated film. Robbed of an Oscar nomination, yes he is that good, or at the very least better than Max von Sydow (if you can be seen and not heard and get nominated, I think it's time you can be heard and not seen), Larry took what was essentially a Mater spin-off, owned the sole responsibility of imbuing the film with enough heart to make up for the "moral of the story" subtext that seems to be required of all Pixar films, which Lasseter wisely underplayed in this film, and he delivered a flawless performance. I'm not sure what the future holds for the Cars franchise, but losing myself in Lasseter's imagination was one of the most visceral experiences I've had all year at the theatre, and I would gladly do it again.
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