Fair Game (2010)

FAIR GAME  (2010)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Doug Liman

    Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, David Andrews,

    Bruce McGill, Sam Shepard, Liraz Charhi

In 2002, the CIA sent retired diplomat Joseph Wilson to Africa to investigate the alleged link between uranium coming from Niger and Iraq's nuclear weapons program. What Wilson found there was - nothing. That wasn't what the hawks in the Bush Administration wanted to hear, so they faked the intelligence and went to war anyway. When Wilson blew the whistle in the New York Times, the Bush people struck back, outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as an undercover agent, and doing everything possible to smear both of them. There's a good movie to be made from that story, maybe along the lines of "Three Days of the Condor", or "All the President's Men", or even "In the Loop", and "Fair Game" is not that movie. It's overstated and melodramatic, with too much of the focus on the Wilsons' marriage, and not enough on the role of guys like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney in a plot that probably should have landed them in prison. To its credit, the movie doesn't sanctify the Wilsons, either. Joe is his own worst enemy, a knowledgeable and conscientious foreign service veteran who talks too much. Plame's primary obsession is her job, not her family. She's constantly slipping out of the house at odd hours, going on unannounced trips "to Cleveland," leaving Joe and the kids to carry on without her. He enjoys the spotlight in a way his wife doesn't, and the public attention he attracts as he makes his case puts her work and even their lives in peril. Once her cover is blown, her covert career is over. Penn and Watts are good playing the Wilsons - you expect that - but they're stuck with the heavy end of the script. The most convincing performances are in the supporting roles, the actors playing Plame's bureaucratic colleagues at Langley, and especially David Andrews as Cheney's loyal henchman and eventual fall guy, Scooter Libby. That only Libby took the rap in the Wilson affair shows how much our top-level government criminals have learned since Watergate. Maybe history will straighten that out someday. We can only hope.

Hoodoo Ann (1916)

HOODOO ANN  (1916)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Rex Ingraham

    Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, William H. Brown,

    Wilbur Higby, Loyola O'Connor, Mildred Harris

Like Mary Pickford, Mae Marsh was a great silent actress who seemed to get typecast playing girls who were younger than she was and acted even younger than that. Here she plays the title role in a Cinderella story about a servant girl working in an orphanage who survives several near-tragic adventures on her way to finding true love with an aspiring cartoonist played by Robert Harron. A real old-fashioned melodrama that doesn't take itself too seriously, especially during a lengthy film-within-a-film, a comically awful western whose plot anticipates what happens to Marsh's character later on. Marsh and Harron played the struggling young couple in the modern segment of "Intolerance", released the same year. Mildred Harris, who plays the spoiled orphan girl Goldie, was Charlie Chaplin's first wife.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD  (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Edgar Wright

    Michael Cera, Ellen Wong, Mary Elizabeth Winstead,

    Mark Webber, Allison Pill, Johnny Simmons,

    Anna Kendrick, Jason Schwartzman, Kieran Culkin

Here's a movie that was made a few thousand miles from Hollywood, and that's a good thing. Michael Cera plays the title character, the bass player in a low-end rock-&-roll band, scuffling around Toronto and trying to juggle the affection of a would-be groupie named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) and his own attraction to a girl named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). To win over Ramona, our hero has to fight each of her seven ex-lovers, and even then there's no guarantee Ramona will care. No wonder he's hooked on Ramona. It's another movie based on a comic book, and it zips along on its own tossed-off, video-game, comic-book vibe. It's smart and funny and it totally gets what the world looks like when you're young and in love and out of control and and too wired to care. Music fans of a certain age should get a kick out of a garage band with a guitarist named Stephen Stills and a backup bass player called Young Neil.

Flashback: 10 Best Lists

  

    In Don McKellar's apocalyptic comedy "Last Night", a radio DJ, knowing the world will end at midnight, counts down the minutes and hours by playing the greatest songs of all time. He plays them in order, so that the last song, the best one ever, will go out on the air at exactly 12 o'clock. It's only as he's cuing up the final song that he admits to his listeners that he's simply playing the songs he wants to hear.

    Compiling a year-end 10 best list is a little like that. Whatever contortions you go through to appear even-handed and objective, your choices are idiosyncratic. You're picking your personal favorites. At the same time, drawing up a list can provide some perspective on what kind of year you had going to the movies. Some years are better than others.

    For the record, my approach to creating a top 10 list works something like this:

    Sometime around the middle of January, when all my reviews for the year are in the can, I go back and sort the titles, using my notoriously fallible zero-to-¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ rating system. Any new release rated ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ or higher automatically makes the year-end list. If there are more than 10 ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ movies (the sign of a good year), I add five more titles to accommodate them all. If there are fewer than 10, I go to the movies rated ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2. The ratings are subjective to begin with, so the notion that I'm doing anything the least bit scientific would probably not hold up in court. Or anywhere else.

    On my list for 2010, there's one ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2 movie, six rated ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢, and three at ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2. (Technically, there are five at ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2. I cheated.) Which might suggest that 2010 wasn't a real good movie year, but I'm not sure that's the case. It's more that there were a lot of movies I admired last year that didn't quite blow me away. Movies like "Please Give" and "The Social Network" and "The King's Speech" and "Black Swan". All good movies, maybe even real good ones, but not films that made me want to run right out and buy the DVD. It comes back to that personal element. Everybody's different.

    Factor in all the movies I didn't get to last year, pictures like "The Kids Are All Right" and "127 Hours" and "Winter's Bone" and "Shutter Island", and you can see what an inexact enterprise this is.

    Despite all that, and maybe partly because of it, making a 10 best list is one of the most fun things I get to do on the blog. It might not amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but I'm pretty sure another list in all its whimsical imperfection will turn up here next January.

    Meanwhile, if you want to know what song the world ends on, the one the DJ in the movie spins at the stroke of midnight, you'll just have to watch "Last Night".

The 10 Best Movies of 2010

THE TEN BEST:

"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"

"Machete"

"Micmacs"

"True Grit"

"The Secret In Their Eyes"

"Harry Brown"

"The Tempest"

The "Millennium" Trilogy

"Four Lions"

"Rare Exports"

SECRET TREASURES:

"Fish Tank"

"Every Day Is a Holiday"

"Nowhere Boy"

GUILTY PLEASURES:

"Kick-Ass"

"Red"

"The Warrior's Way"

BACK ON THE BIG SCREEN:

"The Seven Samurai"

"The Hidden Fortress"

"Sometimes a Great Notion"

"Casablanca"

FOUR FROM THE VIDEO STORE:

"This Gun For Hire"

"Night Train To Munich"

"Hell Ride"

"The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid"

The Deep (1977)

THE DEEP  (1977)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Peter Yates

    Robert Shaw, Jacqueline Bisset, Nick Nolte,

    Louis Gossett, Eli Wallach, Robert Tessier

Sunken ships, deep sea divers, Spanish treasure, good guys, bad guys, sharks, a boatload of high explosives, 4,000 vials of morphine and Jacqueline Bisset in a famous wet T-shirt. This is pretty exciting as long as it stays underwater. Whenever it breaks to the surface, the actors are stuck with the script. Still, there's that T-shirt. Screenplay by Peter "Jaws" Benchley, based on his novel.

Peter Yates

(1929-2011)

Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK  (1955)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Sturges

    Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine,

    Walter Brennan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger,

    Lee Marvin, John Ericson, Russell Collins

Classic paranoid thriller about a one-armed stranger (Spencer Tracy) who gets off the train in the hole-in-the-desert town of Black Rock, checks into the local hotel, and incurs the wrath of just about everybody when he starts poking around asking questions about a Japanese truck farmer who vanished from the community at the start of World War Two. Like "High Noon", which in some ways it resembles, it's a study in concise cinematic storytelling, with standout performances by Tracy and a great supporting cast. According to the lore on the video package, it was originally made without music, but preview audiences didn't know what to make of that, so a nonstop score by Andre Previn wound up on the soundtrack. It's too bad. The impact of all that silence, in this movie, could be devastating.

Anne Francis

(1930-2011)

The Notorious Bettie Page (2006)

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE  (2006)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Mary Harron

    Gretchen Mol, Chris Bauer, Jared Harris,

    Lili Taylor, Cara Seymour, John Cullum,

    David Strathairn, Austin Pendleton, Dallas Roberts

Bettie Page might not be the world's most famous pinup model, but she's probably the most famous pinup model whose fame derives entirely from being a pinup model. Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch and Nastassja Kinski were famous pinups, too, but they had significant acting careers, a goal that eluded Bettie Page. This movie zeroes in on the period from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, when Bettie, played ingenuously by Gretchen Mol, made her mark posing for private photographers and tabloid periodicals, often sold under the counter in shadowy bookstores and newsstands. It's a sketch more than a portrait, but Harron's use of both black and white and supersaturated color effectively captures the look and feel of the world Page hung around in, and the players seem right at home in the middle of the 20th century. The effect is a little like looking at one of Bettie's photographs, where you see this nice girl from Nashville playing dress-up in and out of lingerie and bondage gear, projecting an unlikely (but undeniable) air of beguiling innocence, and inviting the viewer, with a wink and a smile, to make up the rest.

Brassed Off (1996)

BRASSED OFF  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Mark Herman

    Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald, Ewan McGregor,

    Jim Carter, Stephen Tompkinson, Peter Gunn

A great piece of working-class propaganda, about a depressed English coal-mining community and the amateur brass band that helps hold it together. A movie that wears its emotions, especially its anger, on its sleeve, with no qualifications or apologies to anybody. It plays like a giant gob of spit in the eye of Margaret Thatcher, but it's so funny, honest and well-aimed that you'd have to be a stone-hearted Tory not to be affected by it. The day I saw it, the company I was working for laid off 10 percent of its work force. Hopefully, your timing will be less dramatic than that.

Pete Postlethwaite

(1946-2011)

Final Reel 2010

ERIC ROHMER, 89, writer, director

"My Night At Maud's"

"Chloe In the Afternoon"

"Claire's Knee"

JEAN SIMMONS, 80, actress

"The Robe"

"Elmer Gantry"

"Spartacus"

IAN CARMICHAEL, 89, actor

"I'm All Right, Jack"

"School For Scoundrels"

"Smashing Time"

KATHRYN GRAYSON, 88, actress

"Anchors Aweigh"

"Show Boat"

"Kiss Me Kate"

LIONEL JEFFRIES, 83, actor, director

"Camelot"

"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"

"The Railway Children"

PETER GRAVES, 83, actor

"Airplane!"

"The Night of the Hunter"

"Stalag 17"

ROBERT CULP, 79, actor

"PT-109"

"Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice"

"Hickey and Boggs"

JOHN FORSYTHE, 92, actor

"The Trouble With Harry"

"Topaz"

"In Cold Blood"

DEDE ALLEN, 86, editor

"The Hustler"

"Bonnie and Clyde"

"Dog Day Afternoon"

DOROTHY PROVINE, 75, actress

"The Great Race"

"Good Neighbor Sam"

"It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"

JOSEPH W. SARNO, 89, writer, director

"Inga"

"Wall of Flesh"

"Vampire Ecstasy"

LYNN REDGRAVE, 67, actress

"Georgy Girl"

"Smashing Time"

"Gods and Monsters"

LENA HORNE, 92, singer, actress

"Cabin In the Sky"

"Stormy Weather"

"Death of a Gunfighter"

DAVID E. DURSTON, 88, writer, director

"Felicia"

"Stigma"

"I Drink Your Blood"

DENNIS HOPPER, 74, actor, director

"Easy Rider"

"Blue Velvet"

"Apocalypse Now"

WILLIAM A. FRAKER, 86, cinematographer

"Bullitt"

"The President's Analyst"

"Tombstone"

RONALD NEAME, 99, producer, director, cinematographer

"Oliver Twist"

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"

"The Poseidon Adventure"

ROBERT B. RADNITZ, 85, producer

"Sounder"

"Island of the Blue Dolphins"

"Cross Creek"

ELLIOTT KASTNER, 80, producer

"Harper"

"Equus"

"Where Eagles Dare"

JAMES GAMMON, 70, actor

"Cold Mountain"

"Silverado"

"Major League"

MAURY CHAYKIN, 61, actor

"Bartleby"

"Leaving Normal"

"Dances With Wolves"

TOM MANKIEWICZ, 68, writer

"Live and Let Die"

"The Eagle Has Landed"

"Mother, Jugs & Speed"

PATRICIA NEAL, 84, actress

"The Day the Earth Stood Still"

"Hud"

"Cookie's Fortune"

ABBEY LINCOLN, 80, singer, actress

"Nothing But a Man"

"For Love of Ivy"

"Mo' Better Blues"

SATOSHI KON, 46, writer, director

"Paprika"

"Tokyo Godfathers"

"Millennium Actress"

CLIVE DONNER, 84, director

"What's New Pussycat?"

"Old Dracula"

"A Christmas Carol" (1984)

KEVIN MCCARTHY, 96, actor

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers"

"The Best Man"

"Mirage"

CLAUDE CHABROL, 80, writer, director

"L'Enfer"

"Story of Women"

"The Girl Cut In Two"

IRVING RAVETCH, 89, writer

"The Long, Hot Summer"

"Hud"

"Norma Rae"

GLORIA STUART, 100, actress

"The Old Dark House"

"The Invisible Man"

"Titanic" (1997)

ARTHUR PENN, 88, director

"The Miracle Worker"

"Alice's Restaurant"

"Bonnie and Clyde"

TONY CURTIS, 85, actor

"Sweet Smell of Success"

"Some Like It Hot"

"The Boston Strangler"

JOE MANTELL, 94, actor

"Marty"

"Chinatown"

"The Two Jakes"

WILLIAM NORTON, 85, writer

"The Scalphunters"

"The McKenzie Break"

"I Dismember Mama"

ROY WARD BAKER, 93, director

"A Night To Remember"

"Scars of Dracula"

"Don't Bother To Knock"

JOHNNY SHEFFIELD, 79, actor

"Tarzan Finds a Son"

"Tarzan's New York Adventure"

"Bomba On Panther Island"

GEORGE HICKENLOOPER, 47, director

"Factory Girl"

"Casino Jack"

"Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse"

JAMES MACARTHUR, 72, actor

"Hang 'Em High"

"The Interns"

"The Bedford Incident"

LISA BLOUNT, 53, actress

"Femme Fatale"

"Blind Fury"

"An Officer and a Gentleman"

JILL CLAYBURGH, 66, actress

"Silver Streak"

"An Unmarried Woman"

"Starting Over"

DINO DE LAURENTIIS, 91, producer

"La Strada"

"Three Days of the Condor"

"Blue Velvet"

ROBBINS BARSTOW, 91, home-movie auteur

"Tarzan and the Rocky Gorge"

"Disneyland Dream"

INGRID PITT, 73, actress

"Where Eagles Dare"

"The Vampire Lovers"

"The Wicker Man" (1973)

LESLIE NIELSEN, 84, actor

"Forbidden Planet"

"Airplane!"

"Men With Brooms"

IRVIN KERSHNER, 87, director

"The Flim-Flam Man"

"Loving"

"Eyes of Laura Mars"
JOHN LESLIE, 65, actor, director

"Talk Dirty To Me"

"Curse of the Catwoman"

"Fresh Meat #2"

BLAKE EDWARDS, 88, writer, director

"Operation Petticoat"

"Breakfast At Tiffany's"

"The Pink Panther"

PER OSCARSSON, 83, actor

"Hunger"

"The Last Valley"

"The Girl Who Played With Fire"

"What are they gonna say about him? What are
they gonna say? That he was a kind man? That
he was a wise man? That he had plans, man?
That he had wisdom? Bullshit, man!"

Dennis Hopper

in "Apocalypse Now"

Days of Thunder (1990)

DAYS OF THUNDER  (1990)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Tony Scott

    Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman,

    Randy Quaid, Michael Rooker, Cary Elwes

Tom Cruise drives stock cars real fast while Robert Duvall radioes instructions from the pits and Nicole Kidman, M.D., stands by to administer first aid. Vroom, vroom.