10 Year Milestone Number One: My Favorite Film of Each Year

I started blogging for my classes a little earlier than May, but the project that launched my movie blog started in May of 2010. A new class schedule was starting and I ended up with a three week gap between when my Spring Semester classes ended and my Summer classes began. Frustrated by the delay in getting started on the new term, I chose to fill some of the time with a project. I decided to write a post everyday that Summer on films I'd seen as a youngster growing up in the 1970s. I limited my selections to films that opened in the summertime and the posts were not always reviews, sometimes they were simple trips down memory lane. I posted something everyday from Memorial Day to Labor Day, hence the title of my blog.

There were a few random posts to fill out the year, including a top ten list, and then January 1, 2011,  I adjusted the blog to review/comment and report on film going experiences that were contemporary.  Most of the subsequent posts are immediate reactions posted the same day or one day later from the event. I decided that anytime I saw a film in a theater, there would be a post on it. So this blog has been a fairly accurate measure of my movie going but not necessarily my movie watching. Home video and streaming take up a lot of my time but it is rare that anything like that is included except for special occasions.

For the next few weeks, I'm going to post some lookback articles and add some commentary along the way. If you are a longtime reader, I hope you will enjoy the retrospective, if you are new to the blog, take a deep dive and look at some of the things from the last decade. Just because it did not come out this last weekend, is no reason to miss a discussion of a movie.

Favorite Films of Each Year of the Blog

2010

There may not be another movie on the list that is so satisfying to me as this pastiche comic book, comedy, action, superhero, movie geek porn.  I don't have a full review of this because it came out before I started the project. I will have to do a retrospective review of my love for this movie at another time, let me simply say, I love all the characters in this movie, but Hit Girl is my favorite. The second movie was never going to be as great as the first but I enjoy it as well and there is a review of that on the site that you can find here.

2011

If ever a movie needed to be rediscovered on home video, this is it. This terrific story is brutal in the fight scenes and in the emotions that it forces us to face. The fact that it was not a box office hit just goes to show how marketing can fail an audience. People should have been embracing this movie and sharing it with their friends. I did what I could, and now I'm doing it again. If you have not seen this gem, put it at the top of your watchlist.

2012

You had to know there was going to be a James Bond film on the list somewhere. 2012 was when I became very active in a cinema blogging community as I discovered a number of sites that had enthusiastic 007 content. I did a series of posts in anticipation of Skyfall and we shared them on one site where everybody could collectively pump each other up for the film. I was so happy that it exceeded my expectations, and I was not the only one who had "Skyfall" as their top film that year.

2013

This movie was a complete surprise to me. I was surprised at where the story went, I was surprised by the actors who turned up in the film, and I was really surprised that Matthew McConaughey, was so good in the film. He won his Best actor Award the next year for a different film, but as often happens, the Academy was simply catching up for what they had missed in an earlier year. This is a small film, it is a coming of age story mixed with a crime thriller. It also has a couple of great performances by the young co-stars.

2014

One of the most brutal movies you will ever see, without violence. This was an emotional assault that spares no one. When you think of Frankenstein, do you see the Doctor or the Monster as the villain of the piece? This movie asks the same question. The cruelly sadistic teacher in pursuit of perfection meets his match in a surface level sympathetic character who may be as twisted by ambition as the "mentor" is in his objectives. Miles Tellar must have worked his butt off to be able to carry off the drumming sequences. J.K. Simmons however, will give you nightmares for the rest of your life. This movie was edited like a thriller and it will hold you in your seat as it bashes you around and wrings you out at the end.

2015

This is a basic science fiction idea, turned into a beautiful movie with some ugly people involved. The premise is as contemporary as you could wish for, but the ideas go back a century. What is human intelligence? Can a machine learn to be human? How will we be able to tell the difference between Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence? Oh, and just as you are getting comfortable with the philosophizing,  the story structure takes over and you will become emotionally invested and maybe heartbroken.

2016

I admit that I have cheated here. When my original list for the year went up, "La La Land was at the top. It was the stylized movie and the most beautiful I saw that year [barring Kubo and the Two Strings]. The more I watched "hell or High Water" however, the more I admired it and it's performances. I wrote a second post for "Hell or High Water" for the Lamb, and I think that was the point where I could no longer decide which one I liked better. So this will be the one year where there is a tie. If you feel a compelling need to break the tie, flip a coin, I'll be happy with either outcome.

2017

I rarely get embittered about the Academy Awards. They are often the Film Industry's way of virtue signalling and will miss merit for a good social image at the drop of a hat. Somebody this year dropped a hat. "Dunkirk" is a movie about a critical historical moment that needs to be part of every persons knowledge of WWII. The fact that it lost to a fairy tale of invented prejudice, with a monster of a human being as the villain is unfortunate. This film tells three stories, set days, hours and minutes apart, and it does so coherently with craft that is hard to imagine. My second post for The Lamb was not second guessing, it was a second chance to champion this film.

2018

It's a Wes Anderson movie, and it's an animated movie, and best of all, it's about dogs. This is incredibly inventive, a little weird but charming as heck. The effort to make the movie is worth of a high ranking, even if the film did not hold together. Joyfully for us, it does hold together very well. Amazingly enough, it not only was not nominated for Best Picture, it lost to another good film in the Best Animated Category. This was a perfect example of recency bias, as it came out early in the year and was neglected at awards time. That's OK, I did not neglect, it was the Best Film I saw in 2018.

2019  

A technical masterpiece that will seem to some a repeat of two years earlier. That's because it was a war film which deserved so much more, that lost out to a virtue signalling Foreign Language thriller. The way the movie is shot, as a continuous  take, and the way it is photographed are marvels of modern film making.  You won't feel like you are watching a movie, you will feel like you are living it.

Obviously these are all personal favorites. They may not represent in all cases my opinion of what the Best film of the year was, but rather, the one that I most appreciated.

DUNE 1984 David Lynch/Frank Herbert Interview

OK folks, this is a link to an unlisted You Tube Video containing an 1984 interview with Director David Lynch and Author Frank Herbert about the upcoming motion picture "Dune".  It was among the usual debris of personal acquisitions that I have been sorting through. I thought the Dune fans might like to listen. 

Pop Art Podcast

My online blogging colleague Howard Casner started a Podcast recently with a great conceit. His guest will choose a popular picture and he will match it with a counterpart that may be more obscure, artsy or off center. I was honored to be the second guest on his show and we had a fun time talking about spies. Have a listen.

Laser Wall Update

Well we've all been locked out of theaters for a while, so clearly there will be time to make a few adjustments at home. This week I took all the Laserdiscs off my Walls and out of the 2x4 Kallax shelves in my office and relocated them to the vacant 5x5 Kallax unit in my daughters former room.

Originally I'd planned on rotating the discs on the walls and doing themes from time to time, but because everything was so tightly packed and close to the floor, I only managed once or twice to move things around since I first put up the system for displaying them.

The original films on the wall sometimes were subsequently covered up by Big Sleeve Editions on contemporary films or newly acquired discs without much of a plan.

I'm going to try to keep the look less clustered but my first new theme did use all three walls. You should be able to tell where this is going. 

So there you are, a virtual tour of the display in my office. When I get tired of this theme, I'll try something else. Feel free to leave some suggestions.

King Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World

Do you ever sit down for a movie with a rush of excitement pumping through your chest? Have you ever broken your face from grinning from ear to ear? Have you ever been so happy that you gasp at, laugh at and cheer lines from the movie you are watching? If you have done none of these things I can confidently say you have not seen King Kong on the big screen. Another Fathom Event presented by TCM got me out of the house during this time of "Social Distancing" and although I am a little lightheaded, it's not due to exposure to COVID-19, rather it is a result of being contaminated by this 87 year old treasure.

"King Kong" is a cultural touchstone for cinema fans. The groundbreaking special effects laid the groundwork for the kinds of fantasy films that we see today. The mix of animated articulated models, stop motion photography and rear projection. made it possible for the world to imagine the impossible and we have done so ever since. Kong continues to be a character in films but even more importantly, the concept of bringing our imagination to life has accelerated every decade, exponentially, ever since. Young audiences need to forget their prejudices about B&W films, old style acting and antique special effects. It is the heart of this movie that matters and the energy it imbues in a viewer should always be inspiring.

I get as caught up in the excitement of the film as Carl Denham does when he tries to convince Ann Darrow to join his expedition.  He is the antithesis of Ian Malcolm. The devil with the natural world, he is going to subjugate it and exploit it and do so unashamedly.  John Hammond is Carl Denham on tranquilizers. As the film moves along you can quickly understand why. We are in awe of the towering gate that the natives of Skull Island hide behind. We are amazed at the animals from the "dinosaur" family that we encounter, and we are terrified but also thrilled at the appearance of the majestic alpha of the island. Denham want to photograph the native ceremony, put Ann in a scene with Kong himself, and finally he gets the idea of capturing the beast and bringing him back to civilization.

The opening of the film in New York during the Great Depression is haunting with it's sadness and desperation. It is also a nice time machine to let us see the world of that era. The electric lights that make up the ads around Time Square are dazzling today, much less 87 years ago. The women lining up at the shelter are haunting but not in the way that today's homeless population is. The sexism of Jack Driscoll would have him tarred and feathered today, but even in 1933 it seems quaintly romantic. It's not toxic masculinity, he has old fashioned thoughts but mostly in a desire to protect the female of the species. He is not a bad guy, just a product of his times.

"Kong" is of course the real star, and the combination of special effects and story make him a
compelling character, even though he is a monster. You may sympathize with him occasionally, but then you watch him stomp on a native villager, or bite one of the sailors into pieces. Remember, he not only derails and crushes a carload of people on an elevated train, he grabs a sleeping women out of her bed in a high rise, and when he sees that she is not Ann, he simply tosses her away, twenty stories to the ground and death.

The music from Max Steiner innovativly creates suspense and character. It is not simply filler or background music, it is part of how the story is being told. The Overture goes for five minutes before the film starts and it gets you worked up for what is coming very effectively. This was a TCM Event so Ben Mankiewicz hosted and provided a nice into and brief exit for the film. The reason to go however id that you get to see The Eighth Wonder of the World in his natural habitat, a movie theater.

Onward

The strength of Pixar films has always been the way they manage to take an original idea and flesh it out into something the audience can relate to. Some of the concepts have been straightforward; a family of superheros, the secret life of toys, cars as people. Other concepts have been downright strange; a rat who cooks, a lonely robot, a princess who turns her mother into a bear. Regardless of the oddity of the conceit, the Pixar crew has managed to make these movies work to a large degree. Our current example is one of the weird ones. In a fantasy world that has forgotten magic, two elves must finish a spell to bring their dead father back for just one day.

I think the reason that the films of Pixar succeed for the most part is the way the creators wholeheartedly embrace their idea and run with it. Director Dan Scanlon and his collaborators Jason Headley and Keith Bunin have grabbed their idea and run with it. They commit to the universe they are creating and try to play with it as much as possible. There may be occasional inconsistencies, but they hardly matter as we plunge quickly into the story and become familiar with the characters.  The plot is a basic mash up of a high school coming of age story and a fantasy quest. The fact that these ideas are familiar to us may explain why we don't worry too much about the characters we encounter. We will just go with the flow if we can have some characters to relate to.

"Onward" gives us two characters that we will understand immediately but also come to care for by the end of the film. Tom Holland is not really stretching much by playing an awkward teen with unforeseen powers.  We've seen the Spider-Man movies. Here the character is animated but it continues to be Holland's slightly nasally voice and young sounding pitch that sells the character to us. Ian Lightfoot is turning sixteen and it makes him nervous. In fact everything makes him nervous, partially because he missed ever meeting his father who died before he was born. Lack of confidence is not the weakness of his older brother "Barley" however,  he dives in head first with enthusiasm to most things. The bravado of the character is also perfectly realized by the voice talents of Holland;s Avengers co-star Chris Pratt. The two of them together are a mismatched pair of brothers out on a road trip. The scenario creates plenty of opportunities for humor but you know that a Pixar film is not going to forgo the sentiment. There is an interesting switch in the purpose of their quest, which manages to make the movie more poignant at the end. It is another example of the writers taking a concept and finding ways to work it that are not obvious from the start. Maybe the quest is predictable, but the emotions are not.

As always with these computer generated dreams (or nightmares if you remember Cars 2), there is a fantastic look to the production. The characters are realized in ways that give us shorthand on their archetypes,  but they still look original. The two brothers are Elfish but in very distinctive ways. Their Mom's boyfriend is the nice guy cop, who maybe is a little bit of a nebbish despite being a centaur. The path that the kids take is fraught with adventure, but the biggest fright is simply being a new driver trying to merge onto the freeway. I loved the way they played with unicorns in the story, they are essentially the scavengers of this world, and like our own scavengers, they can look benign like a raccoon, but they can be pretty nasty as well. Sprites turn into bikers and dragons are made of rubble, and it works because the creatives found ways for us to relate to those images.

The secondary characters fill in some space and provide a little more opportunity to play with the fantasy world, but the focus is correctly placed on the two brothers. As usual, the music cues us in on emotional moments, but like many contemporary films, it relies on our knowledge to find the right feeling. You will hear some passages that sound like they are out of a spaghetti western, and some motifs that belong in a fantasy film. There are clear action beats as the Indiana Jones moments are playing out as well. I don't know how well the Disney team has marketed the film. I did not have a high degree of anticipation for it, but having seen it, I now know they have a solid film. I hope it lands with audiences the way it did with me.

Hamlet The Rock Musical

This is a change of pace for the site, this is a live stage event rather than a movie, but this is a venue that allows me to share with a variety of people who might find this worthwhile so please indulge me for this post.

Hamlet The Rock Musical has actually existed since the early 1970s. It is being revived for a run in North Hollywood by Concert Promoter David Carver, who saw it a dozen times as a kid and has dreamed of mounting it for the stage again for decades.

An abbreviated version of Shakespeare's longest play, it does not run five plus hours but rather a brisk two with a nicely placed intermission. If you are a theater buff, a fan of 70s style rock music, or a passionate fan of William Shakespeare, you really need to see this production.

The set design is cleverly minimalist, using an elaborate parapet that images are projected on to create an interior of a palace or an exterior graveyard. As with many stage productions, the cleverness of the set is simple with a couple of walls that open and close and a retractable set of stairs that can be used in multiple scenes. The atmospheric projections help set the mood from even before the play itself begins.

From the first strains of music I was set to really like this piece, The rock score starts out as strictly background music and it is stirring. Once the actors start singing however, it feels even more familiar, even though we don't really know the lyrics. This Musical is clearly influenced by the greatest Rock Opera of all time "Jesus Christ Superstar". All of the featured actors have spotlight moments and the songs range from metal style growling to R & B inflected pop. The voices of the actors are solid all around. My daughter who was with me thought that Fatima El-Bashir , who plays Ophelia, was fine but the weak link in the cast, which was exactly the opposite of my impression. She was soulful and emotionally on key for "Hello, Hello" and "If Not to You".

Hamlet, as played by Payson Lewis is stronger than he is usually portrayed in films, more Mel Gibson than Olivier or Branaugh. He has a strong voice and was athletic in the dance moves without becoming a ballet performer. Ian Littleworth is a good match in performance and voice as Laertes and the climax of the musical depends on the by-play between them during the duel/joust. Kevin Bailey as Claudis has to do a lot of the heavy lifting of the narrative in the songs but he pulls it off very effectively. Carly Thomas Smith as Gertrude was overshadowed for most of the play, as the character usually is, but there is a spotlight moment in the back half of the second act that gives her a chance to make the character more meaningful.

As usual with stage musicals, there are specialty players that steal moments and make the experience the thing that is so memorable about the play. Rozencrantz and Guildenstern have a delightful duo playing them and their introduction provides some sparkle to the first act. Kudos to Justin Michael Wilcox and Alli Miller for their amusing dance routine and comic timing. Another audience favorite will be the scenes with the Players. All of them were excellent but Bruce Merkle who is not credited as the Player King but who basically has that part, gets a lot of mileage out of his vocal range and the audience laughed loud.

This is clearly a labor of love, the cast of twenty make the production feel bigger than it really is. The offstage musicians play the music  with gusto and a bigger audience would probably help but even the moderate sized audience we saw it with was engaged and made it a theatrical experience.