For years I’ve heard the phrase bandied around:

How do you like them apples?

Now I finally have a source. A little smart googling brought me to this entry in the Urban Dictionary site and it turns out it’s a line from Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo.

In the movie Stumpy, played by Walter Brennan, tosses a grenade and shouts How do ya like them apples?

Akeelah and the Bee is one of the great sport movies of all time- except that it does not really a sport. The sport is spelling, but the theme and plot are as old as rooting for the underdog. Read More »

I was debating whether to do this list in January or wait until I had seen most of the films I wanted to. I waited and now am bringing out my list in the middle of Oscar season. I will get the my Oscar favorites next week. For now, these are my favorite films of 2005. Not the ‘best’ films, I do not know what those are. In no particular order:

• Me and You and Everyone We Know- Hands down my favorite film of the year. Miranda July is my hero, a star- fresh and vibrant, a performance artist, writer, director and an actress after my heart. This is a film about simple love and simple sex and candid people with transparent intentions, with a straightforward manner a younger Hollywood. But was Hollywood ever this fresh and uncynical? The lack of cynicism is what makes the characters of Me and You… alike and sets them vastly apart from everyone else they encounter. The scene where Mirana July and John Hawkes walk to his car as a metaphor for the relationship they could have had was one of the best time I’ve had at the movies in years. That is, barring the next film on my list…


• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith- This was the best time I had at the movies last year. It is difficult to describe the impact of these films on me and I will not attempt it here. I love them dearly and loved this film like none other. The final scene on Tatooine was one of my most emotional. Are we prepared for life after Star Wars?


• Black- This is the only Hindi film on my list; from the great, mythical land of Bollywood. Black is not your traditional Bollywood movie, however. Hindi cinema’s former angry young man, Amitabh Bachchan, who for 30 years has been a super star, the likes of which have never been seen in Hollywood, stars as a man who teaches the deaf/blind/mute/beautiful Rani Mukherjee to live her life. Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who previously has given in to the excesses of Bollywood cinema, creates a sparse and subdued drama like none other


• Good Night, and Good Luck- George Clooney’s great triumph in this film was in keeping every single extraneous element out of the film and maintaining a documentary-style approach to Edward R. Murrow. We do not get to see how his family life is or whether his personal life was affected by his attacks on McCarthy. All we see is what he says at CBS, on camera and off. Everything else, Clooney and Straithairn let us create for ourself.
  

  His primary acheivement has been confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse descent from disloyalty. We must remember always, that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another, we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, we will remember we are not descendant from fearful men.—Edward R. Murrow

  
  


• Brokeback Mountain- Yes, I loved this film too; along with all those critics, Hollywood types and media hypers, I liked it too. It is a beautiful film to look at and harkens back to a simpler Hollywood if it ever had the fortitude to tackle a subject like this. The power of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is that it would have been a good film even if it was about a heterosexual romance that triumphs over obstacles. He doesn’t give the film more or less delicacy just because the romance was truly forbidden, instead of the family/lover/war/insert-manufactured-obstacle-here of regular Hollywood romances. Heath Ledger is brilliant and will loose out on the Oscars only because Joaquin Phoenix rescued Walk the Line.


• Howl’s Moving Castle- What a gorgeous film this was! I have no words and will use my own from June:
  

  There is no way to speak of this film without dealing in superlatives- Howl’s Moving Castle, from Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) is the most imaginative animated fantasy I have ever seen, the best animated film I have seen since Finding Nemo and probably the best film I have seen so far this year.

  
  I agree!


• Millions- This film and the next one, Turtles Can Fly, were those films that truly understand children and the worlds they create for themselves. In Millions, Danny Boyle (yes, that Danny Boyle! Yes, the guy who made Trainspotting!) allows the kid Alexander Nathan Etel to be the star; to create a character who is 10 years old, not a caricature or stereotype of a 10-year old. This is a true family film; a film that every single member of any family any where in the world will enjoy equally.


• Turtles Can Fly- This film is about a boy names Satellite in pre-war Iraq; but it is not about the war in Iraq, directly. It is about how the fearless children are the only ones who can really control the destiny of any society, and especially ones where the adults have been beaten into submission by despots, by beaureacracies and by age. Satellite is a particularly resourceful kid who rules his neighborhood by being a fearless child; and in a time and place where everyone is looking for trustworthy leaders, he is an unlikely, but charming one.

There are three more films I am not sure about; they are great films, among the best of all time, but I am not convinved they belong on my list yet. They are Steven Spielberg’s tremendous Munich, Woody Allen’s chilling Match Point and the most charming and surprisingly fresh Pride and Prejudice.

Also, I have not seen the following, which could enter my list if and when I see them: Sarkar, Transamerica, History of Violence and Hustle & Flow. We shall see.

My project that was Summer of Film 2005, where I had set out to watch 100 films in less than 100 days never fully materialized. Life intervened. This is not to say that I did not perform well; quite the contrary. Over and above the 29 films I partially reviewed I watched the following:

And the Prophet said, ‘And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.’

King Kong is a glorious film- it succeeds just as gloriously as it fails. The best thing Peter Jackson has going for himself here is that he respects Kong. The scenes between Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and King Kong (Andy Serkis in a Gollum-suit) are magic; they play like a beautiful romantic silent film. The two sunsets and a poignant playful ice dance between them are pure movie magic. The choice of actors is perfect- Jack Black, Colin Hanks and Adrian Brody are just right.

The trouble is that the middle act suffers from Lost-World-itis; a disorder of directors of creature flicks who have been told that their creatures make their movies great. They believe that more creatures will make it greater. It is the juvenile, sugar-high, Tarantinoesque obsession with more. Tarantino usually gets away with his distractions; mainly because his films are entirely distractions strung together until they gel into a coherent mess. Not so with King Kong. The middle act on Skull Island involves multiple creatures over and over and over and over and over…

There were 2 hours of the best film this year hidden in 3 hours of mess.

Summer of Film #29 of 100
Wonder Boys is a screenplay written to convince the writer that being a writer is actually a very cool thing. And while this is noble enough- the mistake it makes is in what it defines as coolness. I can the writer’s thought process now… Read More »

Summer of Film #28 of 100
But for the machismo, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull could be described as a ballet or an opera. It is a strange dance all men dance to a certain extent; one that we don’t like to talk about and would rather that it stay hidden behind the facade of who can grunt louder or spit farther or generally be more macho than his pears. Read More »

Summer of Film #27 of 100
Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories is the film equivalent of a mid-life crisis; I guess the appropriate description would be a mid-career crisis. However, instead of the flashy extravagance, Allen opts for moody instrospection as a character not unlike himself- a director who is trying to look for deeper meaning in his career. Why does he make films? Why does it matter that he does? Will it matter more if he make serious ones? Read More »

Summer of Film #26 of 100
The Deer Hunter, starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage and John Cazale, uses Russian roulete as an allegory for the war in Vietnam. While this is an engaging and harrowing ploy that makes for an engrossing second act, the crutches that it rests on- i.e. act one and three- do not provide adequate support. We do not know the characters well enough and when we do, their actions contradict what we would expect them to do. Considering the fact that it is a 3 hour film, this is a significant inadequacy. Read More »

Summer of Film #25 of 100
Before Night Falls reminds me of the old Einstein line

“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.”

The gay community all over the world have been subjected to the same brand of hypocrisy in modern times. In Before Night Falls, the Cuban poet Reynaldo Arenas (played by Javier Bardem) goes from a wide-eyed, young artist to a decaying middle-aged man before our eyes. We sense that but for a different sexual predilection he would have been a national hero. Read More »