My Favorite Movies

Writer-director Pedro Almodovar, he of the resurrection of Spanish cinema, spins a slight but brilliant tale of a young mother (Penelope Cruz, in her best performance since Almodovar?s All About My Mother in 1999!) in La Mancha whose husband is killed (no spoilers here), who must dispose of his body (and scandal) and who must go about her life. Meanwhile, her mother (Carmen Maura) returns (seemingly) from the dead to help guide her family back toward repair. Bittersweet, warm and oddly funny, this is a gorgeously devour-able confection well worth seeking out.

Robert Altman?s final film (as it turns out) was a remarkably entertaining, fun and often hilarious musical version of Garrison Keillor?s popular radio program, filmed in Minnesota. Keillor appeared as himself (essentially) and wrote the screenplay. The film concerned the mythical (and fictional) last night of Keillor?s popular A Prairie Home Companion radio variety program, with a cavalcade of semi-stars such as Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Lindsay Lohan, L.Q. Jones, Maya Rudolph, Tommy Lee Jones and Virginia Madsen making their way through one long, fun-filled night of bittersweet humor and great music. Just try not smiling for 105 minutes straight!

Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" is the much-anticipated American masterwork we've been waiting for for a LONG time (two years in the making!). It is a combination horror film, black comedy and epic portrait of two characters so consumed by greed, vindictiveness, misanthropy and evil that they are mesmerizing even as they repulse.

Daniel Day-Lewis is Daniel Plainview, the silver miner in 1898 New Mexico (at the outset) who eventually makes his way to California to be a self-proclaimed "oil man." Once there, he meets first Paul and then identical twin (? - or are they one in the same?) Eli Sunday (BOTH played by Paul Dano of "Little Miss Sunshine" and "L.I.E."), the former telling Daniel of the family's goat farm in the middle of nowhere, and the latter being a zealous, Evangelical faith healer whose Church of the Third Revelation is his sole passion.

Plainview is a horrific monster movie villain in the best sense of the word: he runs roughshod over everyone and everything, destroying all in his path. Dano is meek, small and humbly innocent-seeming by contrast, making him just as dangerous, if not more so (Plainview sees this clearly from the outset).

Plainview is a user of "these people" around him (including an adopted son who he attains as a very young business partner in the aftermath of the boy's biological father's violent death via misadventure). The scenes between Daniel and his son H.W. (played by newcomer Dillon Freasier) have an almost warm, heartfelt tone that is missing from EVERY SINGLE OTHER CONTACT that Plainview has with humanity. What Plainview does to H.W. is, ultimately, the beginning of the end for him and the film (though it may also be the ONE SOURCE of regret and repentance in his soul).

Plainview is a misanthropic loner who would probably live on the moon were it possible in the early 20th Century to do so (1898-1927 is the span of the picture). He has a magnificent mini-monologue about his "hatreds being built up over the years" that brings down the house!

Then there's the ending, about which the less said the better. I will simply say this: for those who read the screenplay, the on-the-nose nature of the final showdown between Daniel and Eli is missing here, but the twisted humor is still in tact!

Day-Lewis chews the scenery with relish, and Dano matches him almost measure for measure. This is definitely Day-Lewis' film though, as his portrait of a villain is the most horrific and weirdly lovable since...well, since he was Bill the Butcher in Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" (2002).

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has employed his usual crack team of collaborators, including longtime editor Dylan Tichenor, who lends the film a nice (appropriately) deliberate pace; Robert Elswit, whose camera snakes its way through the rough & tumble post-Old West landscape of New Mexico and California with great aplomb; and Radiohead musician Jonny Greenwood's original score, which is by turns warm and lush, cold and violent, underlies the whole enterprise with unspoken tension even in the most mundane scenes!

Much comparison has been made to "Citizen Kane" and "Giant" and those may be apt milemarkers for Anderson's achievement, but I was oddly reminded of Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" (1975). The story of a similarly misanthropic (or, at least, uncaring) young man who rose through the ranks to become a wealthy and powerful man who was, ultimately alone, it's a story often told, and just as well now as it was back then (the final credits music by Brahms doesn't hurt the feeling of similarity).

A film like this, though not Anderson's best work, is still a GREAT film and well worth seeking out. Much awards attention has already been bestowed upon the remarkable work done herein, and it is all well-deserved. This is almost the best film of 2007! Nominated for 8 Oscars including Best Picture, a tie with my #5 pick!

Ed Blum's Altman-esque romantic comedy is the latest ensemble mosaic from London (following in the footsteps of Winterbottom's WONDERLAND and Mike Leigh's entire career). This one is about a series of sexually-themed conversations in a famous London park on a bright, sunshiny day in which several couples and prospective couples chat and chat...and chat. Highlights include Ewan McGregor as an uncommitted half of a gay couple thinking about having kids, there's an old couple who seem to have fallen into a routine of running into one another and flirting, as if every time is the first time they met, there's Adrian Lester as a man who is in the middle of a divorce from the woman he loves, Oscar-nominee Sophie Okonedo (HOTEL RWANDA) as a strangely defensive girl who first antagonizes, then seduces a creepy loner, only to turn schizophrenic on him, and Gina McKee, that gorgeously melancholy English rose, as a middle-aged beauty on a blind date that goes from bad to worse. Funny, sweet, and ultimately moving, this is as inconsequential and as lovely as a nice spring day in the park.

Just about the best film in 2007 is writer-director Craig Brewer's sophomore effort following his 2005 debut, "Hustle & Flow." Starring Samuel L. Jackson as a blues musician who has lost his faith in the lord, as well as his marriage, Brewer's film sets up quite the improbable connection when Jackson finds the town slut (Christina Ricci) beaten and raped on the side of the road. Nursing her back to health, Jackson tells her she's been "put in his path" so he can cure her of her "wickedness." What follows is one of the most bizarrely touching and beautiful romances you're ever likely to see!

John Carney's "Once" is the heartwarming yet bittersweet, tiny Irish musical that could that it is cracked up to be. Glen Hansard (of the Frames) and Czech immigrant Marketa Irglova are, in a word, something approaching magical as a lonely, heartbroken Irish troubadour, The "Guy" (Hansard), who alternates his time between working in his father's vacuum repair shop and singing for pennies on the street with his knowledge of "established songs," as well as his trusty guitar to guide his original efforts.

Irglova plays The "Girl", a young beauty who has more than one surprise up her sleeve, and who quickly takes to the sad "old man" who is enchanted by her as well.

This romance cannot be, of course, but the music these two make together is adorable, catchy, and memorable. Carney doesn't interfere with fancy camerawork or even the typical jittery nature of digital video, on which the low-budget sensation was shot.

The real stars are the music and the characters, portrayed by two actors of extremely limited experience but great musical ability.

This is a gem! Nominated for an Oscar for Best Song.