The Greatest Films of All Time

As Sight and Sound Magazine unveils their list of the Greatest Films of All Time today, I thought it would be a good idea to publish my own list.  It's in alphabetical order, so it's not ranked.

Citizen Kane (Welles)

Yes, you knew it had to be on the list.  And it deserves to be on the list, not just for its technical and narrative innovations, but for the simple fact that it is just a fantastic movie.  I get the sense that many people who haven't seen it, but hear the phrase "greatest film of all time" are under the impression that Citizen Kane is long and boring.  On the contrary, it is less than two hours long and ferociously paced with scenes that jump through enormous spans of time in a matter of seconds ("Merry Christmas, Charles...").  The early scenes are wildly entertaining, but as the film moves on, the weight of years begins to sink in.  Not that it becomes boring, mind you, but we begin to get a sense of the fact that this movie is dealing with the full story of a man's life.  And though it's the story of an important (fictional?) public figure, it's not just the story of newspaper headlines, political campaigns, divorces and scandals.  It's also about the small moments that make up life: a child playing in the snow, a marriage falling apart over breakfast(s), shadow puppets on a wall, a girl with a white parasol.  At the end of the movie, there is a sequence showing a group of reporters picking through the last remanants of a man's life, things that have very little meaning to these people.  But we recognize them from earlier in the movie, and it feels as if they really are memories from a long time ago, instead of two hours.  And then there is that haunting shot when the camera glides through the great hall of Xanadu over statues, trophies, bed posts, and far more things beyond count, finally resting on the one object that everyone in this movie has been looking for, something that a man once lost and never recovered, something that explains everything and nothing about Charles Foster Kane.

A Hard Day's Night (Lester)

It's as if they took pure unadulterated joy and turned it into a movie.  The entire film is bursting with the energy and excitement of seeing and (as the film makes it seem) being The Beatles.  Even the camera gets possessed by this.  As the Fab Four run away from hordes of screaming girls, the handheld camera runs alongside them.  Who would even think of locking the camera down for this movie?  And what a daring movie it is.  Not content to simply coast on being a pop culture entity, the picture is filled with surprising, surrealist sequences that if only made a few years later would be termed Pythonesque: John disappearing in the bathwater; "She looks more like him than I do"; a marketing executive who claims to know what the kids like but doesn't recognize George Harrison.  And then there are the scenes that serve no narrative purpose but are absolutely indispensable: the boys playing in a field to "Can't Buy Me Love" and of course the lengthy (yet far too short) concert scene culminating in "She Loves You."  And while it's always great to see The Beatles performing, what makes this one of the greatest films of all time and not just an extended Ed Sullivan Show performance is intercutting The Beatles with closeups of the audience as they scream and cry because (why else?) IT'S THE BEATLES!

Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)

A vast and empty desert fills the 70mm frame.  The sun beats down mercilessly from the sky as a young man stares out into the emptiness, waiting for something.  Then, the young man starts moving forward on his camel, and just like him, the camera pushes forward into the desert, slowly at first, but soon it begins moving faster.  Suddenly, we realize that the desert isn't empty after all: there is a tiny dot on the horizon, and slowly but surely, this dot turns into a human being.  A bold, humanist statement done entirely with images and music.  This movie isn't about the desert; it's about that tiny dot on the horizon.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson)

The greatest cinematic fantasy, the standard-bearer for the best that CGI-aided cinema has to offer, and a testament to cinema's ability to create wonderful images and tell absolutely thrilling stories.  Using what is perhaps the greatest literary fantasy as its foundation, Peter Jackson brings a complete world to the screen, where every place and creature has a history, sometimes spoken of, but always suggested in the locations and the set design.  Think of the ruined Dwarf kingdom in the Mines of Moria, the enormous statues of the Argonath guarding the passage down the river, the cities of Edoras and Minas Tirith.  The entire trilogy is a work of beauty, but the first film in the series is the best: a film of joy and terror, an elegy, and a wonderful adventure, directed with the spirit of a Ray Harryhausen monster movie combined with Jackson's earlier horror/splatter pictures.  Yes, the story has not been finished after this movie is over, but I couldn't ask for a better ending: a gloriously pulpy third act; a mighty, yet flawed character who redeems himself in death; a man who finally decides to accept his destiny; and a hobbit who realizes he can't really continue his journey alone; and of course: "We travel light.  Let's hunt some orc."  Every time the end credits roll after this movie, I remember what it was like to be nine years old, seeing it for the first time, and not being able to wait until I could either see it again or see the rest of the story.  You mean there's still more adventure to come?  Yes!

My Darling Clementine (Ford)

The greatest film from the master of the Western, it is a retelling of the Wyatt Earp legend with Henry Fonda as the famous marshall and Walter Brennan as the head of the evil Clantons.  It's a classic Western in many ways, yet it stands apart even from Ford's other great films.  It's all there in the title, really.  The movie is named not for the Earps, the Clantons or the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but for Clementine, the young woman from the East who has come to Tombstone chasing after "Doctor John Holliday."  Even though Ford perfectly sets up the mythic confrontation between the Earps and the Clantons, the moments that I remember most are the quiet ones, the ones that suggest that the era of the Old West, the era of gunfights is coming to an end, and a new era is beginning.  One of the strangest and most poetic scenes in all of cinema comes when a Shakespearean actor visits Tombstone and drunkenly recites Hamlet's famous soliloquy in a bar at gunpoint; when he stops midway through, it is Doc Holliday who finishes for him, and the entire world seems to come to a halt as Doc recites these words.  It is his soliloquy, too.  But of course, the most important scene in perhaps any Western comes when Wyatt Earp escorts Clementine to a church dance.  As Ford's favorite hymn plays ("Shall We Gather at the River"), he pulls to a wide shot to show Wyatt and Clementine slowly walking together.  John Ford painted his Western mythology in larger-than-life images: think of his frequent filming locations in Monument Valley, or for that matter, his frequent collaborations with John Wayne.  Yet, in the stately way that these two characters walk to the dance in My Darling Clementine, Ford creates another kind of mythic image.  This time, it is to mark the end of a legend.  In these few shots, he marks its passing, but it is crucial that he is not really mourning it.  After all, they are not going to church for a funeral.  They are going there for a dance.

Nashville (Altman)

"I'm just trying to be heard."  It doesn't really matter which character in Robert Altman's masterpiece actually says this line because all of them are saying it in some way or another.  No filmmaker listens quite like Altman, and in this movie, he hears the voices of more than 20 major characters (he designed an entirely new sound system in order to do this).  The film is aimless and generally plotless, watching and listening as all of these characters go about their lives over the course of a few days in Nashville, Tennessee.  The first experience of watching the film creates that glorious feeling of being lost in the world of the movie, but when you watch it again and again (the film demands multiple viewings), try picking out a few characters that you hadn't really paid attention to before and follow their storylines closely.  Then, choose a different set of characters next time.  It's amazing how Altman juggles so many characters, and yet, if you watch closely enough, you'll see that he gives each of them their due.  He hears everyone singing (even the ones that don't sing), and even though not everyone is willing to listen to them, Altman is more than willing.  And when tragedy strikes at the end, someone who has never really been heard in her entire life has the chance (or maybe duty) to sing.  It's the most emotionally devastating ending in all of cinema, and perhaps the greatest American film ever made.  "Life may be a one way street.  It don't worry me."

Notorious (Hitchcock)

The Master's (not just of Suspense) most entertaining picture: a spy drama, a romance, a visual wonder, and an exploration of Hitchcock's obsession with the difference between a man's idea of a woman and who she actually is.  This is really a movie about irrational behavior; the entire plot is based on a decision that no rational person would make.  Ingrid Bergman is the daughter of a Nazi spy who is recruited by U.S. Intelligence man Cary Grant to spy on some of her father's friends after her father goes to prison.  There is the suggestion that she is doing this to redeem herself for her country: patriotism, itself an irrational behavior.  But it takes more than patriotism for her to perform her assignment, which is to sleep with the head of a Nazi spy ring in Brazil.  She does this because she has fallen in love with Cary Grant and she thinks that he wants her to do it, very irrational indeed.  The movie is filled with sequences marked by Hitchcock's exhilirating visual style and scenes of incredible suspense.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that this movie is essentially a catalogue of behaviors that really should not make sense, and are therefore very human.  Alcohol plays an enormous role in the movie.  Wine bottles are not only the MacGuffin, but there is also a wonderful scene at a party where the stock of bottles acts as a kind of timebomb.  There is also an interesting connection between the enormous amount of drinking that Bergman does at the beginning of the film and the drink that the Nazis use to poison her near the end (which ends up confusing Cary Grant).  But of course, the movie is really about the most human and irrational feeling of all: love; how irrational it is to love someone who does not love you back (two characters are guilty of this) and how irrational it is not to love someone who loves you.  The climax of the movie is sequence in which two men both realize how irrational they really were.  And then it ends with one final irrational decision as a character walks up a staircase to his death.

The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)

Every time I see this film, I am simply in awe of it.  It is without question the greatest action picture ever made, and maybe the greatest cinematic epic. The running time is nearly four hours long, and yet the film is paced so that it zips by faster than most 90 minute films.  The action sequences are breathtaking, the locations and situations so well-established beforehand, and the action so frenetically intense when it arrives.  The story of a group of samurai hired to defend a village from bandits is one of the most influential plots in all of movies.  Between this film, Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress, American action pictures might owe their very existence to Akira Kurosawa.  Yet, The Seven Samurai is anything but simplistic.  The villagers are not innocent victims.  They don't trust the samurai who are dying to protect them, and they have their own secrets about past dealings with samurai.  When their samurai protectors find out their secret, one of them says, "I would like to kill every farmer in this village."  And yet, these samurai still fight to protect this village, even though they stand to gain nothing from it other than three meals a day.  They get no money and no honor.  In fact, most of them are ronin who have no honor anyway.  Even if they win, the victory will not really be theirs.  Yet, they fight and some die for villagers who aren't sure that they want the samurai.  The answer to this mystery may be found in the master swordsman who joins the group.  At first, he refuses because his only concern is in perfecting his craft.  Then why does he ultimately join?  Perhaps because this endeavor, fighting for a nearly hopeless cause that does not promise any reward, is the only way to truly perfect the craft of the warrior.

Sunrise (Murnau)

This silent masterpiece is often celebrated for its techinical excellence: the expressionistic images typical of F.W. Murnau, the use of few (and when used, often beautiful) title cards, the freely moving camera that seems to glide through the air.  But beyond these wonders, Sunrise is a demonstration of the emotional power of cinema.  The history of the medium has shown that cinema is far more adept at expressing emotions than ideas or messages.  Sunrise is 90 minutes of pure emotion.  There is no complex plot here, only the simply story of a man rediscovering his love for his wife after he has an affair.  Of course, the plot is a little more complicated (and darker) than that, but that essentially describes what happens in the picture.  The opening scenes do a fantastic job of establishing everything: the farmer and his wife, the small village they live in, the woman from the city, and the farmer's plot to murder his wife before he realizes his mistake.  The final scenes poise of the edge of heartbreak as the farmer fears that his wife has died in a storm.  But this all pales in comparison to the audacious middle section of the film in which the couple visits the city after taking a trip across the water.  There are few words here and really not much of a plot once the wife has forgiven her husband (this is after he breaks down in tears before her in a wonderful moment that would probably be over the top in a sound picture but is perfect in a silent).  The couple wanders aimlessly around the city for a long stretch of time, lost in the joy of being together.  They stop at a restaurant, a church and a barbershop.  They get a picture taken together.  And in one of the gloriously romantic moments in cinema, they stop and kiss in the middle of a street, causing a major traffic jam.  What a wonderful, bold and thoroughly cinematic idea.  Instead of telling a story with words, Sunrise tells a story with pure and simple emotion.

The Third Man (Reed)

For me, this film is the epitome of what cinema should accomplish.  That does not necessarily mean that it is the greatest film of all time, just that this movie represents everything that a movie should be.  It is non-stop excitement from the beginning to the end.  Yet, even though the movie is a wonderful entertainment, there is a deep and utter darkness beneath its surface.  The movie has the feel of a jaunty adventure at the beginning as a visiting American in postwar Vienna tries to solve the mystery of friend's death, but the more time he spends there, we begin to realize that he really does not understand this place.  Like many Americans, he thinks that the world is going to be like a bad Western: he'll ride into town, shoot the bad guy with the black hat and then ride out.  But postwar Europe is not nearly as simple as he thinks it is.  The film is really the supreme artistic work on American naiveté in foreign affairs and should probably be required viewing for anyone going into U.S. foreign policy.  It is also an interesting take on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, as our hero meets another visitor who has discovered and embraced the darkness in a place that has just recently endured hell on earth.  The movie is an exhilarating entertainment with the most gorgeous cinematography ever put on film.  And yet it also contains this speech on a Ferris wheel above a park: "Look down there.  Would you really feel anything if one of those dots stopped moving forever?  If I gave you 20,000 pounds for every dot that stopped moving, would you really tell me to keep my money or would you...calculate how many of those dots you could afford to lose?"

Film Nerd Blasphemy

Spoilers for Memento and Inception ahead.

It’s hard for me to know how I would have reacted to Memento if I had seen it when it was first released without knowing anything about it.  Maybe I would have been as enthusiastic about it as just about everyone else was.  All I can possibly know is that when I finally saw it after seeing every one of Christopher Nolan’s other films at that time (it was sometime in 2011), I was underwhelmed and a little disappointed.

What went wrong?  Nolan is one of my favorite modern filmmakers (as a quick glance through this blog’s archive will tell you).  I consider The Dark Knight and Inception to be among the very best films of recent years, and I think Batman Begins and The Prestige are fantastic movies.  I even enjoyed Insomnia and his very first feature Following.  So why couldn’t I enjoy the movie that many consider to be Nolan’s first masterpiece, that even many of his detractors acknowledge as a good film.

Maybe, as I suggested above, part of it had to do with knowing too much about the movie before viewing.  It’s a little ironic (given the famous structure of the film) that Memento, the movie that launched Nolan’s career was the last of his films that I went back to watch.  By that point, I already knew a lot about it: that the protagonist has short-term memory loss, that the film is told backwards and that it is eventually revealed that the protagonist is responsible for his wife’s death.  This is one of the problems that arises when a movie with a twist of some kind becomes a pop culture phenomenon: it becomes hard to avoid spoilers.  There are examples of movies that I have enjoyed even when I already knew The Big Secret: Fight Club, The Sixth Sense and The Crying Game come to mind.  But there are also movies that depend so heavily on a big reveal at the end that the movie becomes hard for me to enjoy if I already know the secret: The Usual Suspects comes to mind.

Memento fell into the latter category for me.  The purpose of the backwards-chronology narrative is to give viewers a sense of memory loss similar to the protagonist’s (Leonard).  But if you already know the secret, the movie becomes a game of trying to figure out how the pieces are eventually going to fit the way you expect them to.  It also creates the frustrating situation of knowing that a character is on a wild-goose chase, which means that I tend to stop caring about what happens because I know that it ultimately won’t matter.

Obviously, this is not really Nolan’s fault.  He constructed a movie that is intended to be seen (like all movies) with open eyes and no preconceptions.  However, Nolan is responsible for a movie that cannot stand up to repeated viewings.  Unlike Inception (which I think requires multiple viewings in order to understand the movie’s themes), Memento begins to fall apart the second time through.  The behavior of Carrie-Anne Moss’ character in particular makes no sense upon second viewing.  In terms of the film’s narrative, her behavior follows the rhythms of a standard film noir femme fatale: at first the audience trusts her because we think she’s helping the (anti-)hero, but then she reveals that she can’t be trusted.  But since the movie is told in reverse, her actual behavior is that she uses him for her own purposes first, and after she has used him, she helps him and acts like he should trust her. 

I really don’t understand why she helps him at this point.  She knows that Teddy arranged the meeting that got her boyfriend killed, but there is nothing to suggest that she knows she is giving him Teddy’s real name.  Even if she does, she could not possibly have known his license plate from Leonard’s tattoo.  So, the idea that she is still using him for her own purposes is out.  Maybe she has begun to feel sympathy for him?  But I don’t really buy that either (despite what Leonard writes on his Polaroid of her).  She has gotten frustrated with his constant talk of his wife, and she has used several unkind words to describe her.  There is a nice scene when she takes off his shirt and sees his tattoos, so maybe seeing the extent of his obsession makes her want to help him.  But it still doesn’t make sense that she would take off his shirt in the first place.  Her behavior essentially feels dictated by the plot and not by her character.  Nolan has never been particularly good at writing parts for women, but I think his characterization of Mal in Inception is a way of acknowledging this, so hopefully this weekend will reveal that he has broken that streak.

I like that Nolan was playing around with story structure in Memento, but the film is full of elements that he has been able to do much better in subsequent films.  After the brilliant opening scene showing Leonard killing Teddy in reverse, the rhythm of the first few scenes feels wrong.  The scenes are frustratingly short so not only is the audience confused (which is fine), but I was also feeling like I was being jerked around.  It doesn’t help that each short scene is bookended by quick fades to and from black, creating a sense that these are just separate scenes placed one after the other instead of a complete movie (he used a similar technique in Following).  My dad tells me he almost walked out on the movie when he first saw it and with this frustrating opening, I can’t say that I really blame him.  In contrast, Nolan’s film The Prestige has a far less frustrating time-shifting narrative.  The crucial difference is that almost every transition in this film is done with a straight cut rather than fading to black as Memento does to distinguish different timelines.  As a result, The Prestige flows much more easily as a narrative than Memento.

The emotional purpose of Memento’s structure is to create a sense of reaching further into a character’s past while the story is moving forward, eventually arriving at a major secret, but I think Nolan does this to a much more powerful effect in Inception.  Part of this is because Nolan disguises it in Inception by making the audience think that we are watching a straightforward narrative film.  There is a fascinating tension as realize that while the story is moving forward, we have also been moving steadily backward in Cobb’s past.  The timeline here is marked with three utterances of a line, the first two times by Mal, the third time by Cobb: “You’re waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away.  You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure…”  Each time this line appears, it takes on more meaning until we arrive at its origin.  The tension between a forward narrative direction and a backward emotional direction make this all the more powerful.  Yet in Memento, the audience knows after a certain point that the story is being told in reverse and that they should expect a big revelation at the end.  It lacks the narrative tension that makes the revelation in Inception so powerful. 

Nolan also accomplishes the revelation in Memento with what is essentially an enormous info dump.  A common criticism of Nolan’s films is that he uses dialogue rather than images to explain things.  Memento is the worst offender in this regard, which makes it odd that Nolan detractors sometimes consider this to be his best work.  Inception uses dialogue to explain its revelation, but the power of this scene doesn’t come from Cobb’s description of planting a thought in Mal’s head, but from the circumstances surrounding the third utterance of the repeated line: that we’ve heard it before, but each time from Mal; that Cobb is now saying it; that we can see where they are when Cobb says it.  Now, we understand what this means.  It’s a combination of dialogue, images, placement in the structure of the story, and the fact that this revelation is occurring at the same time as an enormous action climax involving three other sets of characters (just thinking about all of that is making my heart pound a little faster).  Memento’s dialogue-driven revelation just comes up short.

For me, the most disappointing thing about Memento is that the ironic twist just makes things feel smaller.  After two viewings, it leaves me with a feeling that nothing in the movie really matters.  This also contributed to my lack of interest in the film during my second viewing.  I just didn’t really care.  The idea of a man seeking revenge because he can’t remember that he has already accomplished it is an interesting idea, but I don’t think Memento really makes it work.  I think Nolan intends the movie to be a tragic film noir (listen to the music; it’s clearly scored for something powerful and significant), and it is possible to do this.  Look at The Third Man or The Dark Knight for that matter.  Hell, “Hamlet” is essentially a noir tragedy.  But the ending of Memento reveals that is neither noir nor tragedy.  The essence of noir is of a man (traditionally) trying to accomplish something, trying to do good for himself or someone else, and discovering that the world is a place that won’t let him do this.  The world won’t let him be a hero.  In Memento, it’s not the world or the system that has trapped Leonard.  Leonard has knowingly trapped himself using his own mental condition (knowing both that he has trapped himself and that he will forget the trap).  This is not the same as a character trapped in his own mistakes or his own hubris.  The deliberate decision to do this just doesn’t really fit with film noir.  It’s more absurdist than noir, more Waiting for Godot or The Myth of Sisyphus than Double Indemnity (come to think of it, Sisyphus is a really good comparison with Leonard).  And before you say anything, yes, noir can be existential (Le Samourai, The American), but existentialism and absurdism are two different things.  Existentialism questions whether there is meaning in life.  Absurdism believes there is no meaning. 

I suppose there could be an absurdist noir, but certainly not an absurdist tragedy.  Tragedy can certainly be pessimistic, but there must be meaning in it, there must be a catharsis.  Above all, tragedy demands that the audience care about what happens.  The first time seeing Memento, I did feel something for Leonard, but it was closer to pity than sympathy.  I felt that it was a sad situation for him to be in, but that certainly is not enough emotion for tragedy.  After the second viewing, I honestly didn’t care about Leonard at all.  In fact, the only character I felt anything for was Teddy (yes, I know that’s not his real name).  The last shot of Teddy in the movie is of him scrounging through bushes looking for his keys while Leonard plots his death.  Teddy isn’t a good guy, but he isn’t particularly evil.  He’s a fool with a goofy smile, and I felt some pity for him knowing that he was going to get his head blown to pieces at the beginning/end of the movie.  But like I said before, pity is not enough emotion for tragedy.  Maybe if Leonard had a different relationship with Teddy there would be some tragedy in the knowledge that Leonard would eventually kill him.  But as it is, Teddy’s just a silly goof who gets his head blown off by a guy who isn’t even going to remember it.

Is all this to say that Memento is a bad film?  No, just one that I found disappointing.  There are moments that I like (“I don’t feel drunk” and “No, he’s chasing me” are particularly memorable).  Almost all of the individual scenes work well.  It’s a great-looking movie (Nolan’s first collaboration with Wally Pfister!), and it’s clear from Memento that Nolan is a good director.  And Guy Pearce does a good job with the difficult role of playing a character who doesn’t really grow or change and can’t really know anything in any scene.  But for a movie with its reputation, it was quite a letdown when I finally saw it (I guess I understand how people felt when they weren’t as impressed with The Dark Knight and Inception as lots of people).  I don’t approve of the term “overrated,” but if I were going to use it, I would use it to describe Memento.  Essentially, I think it’s a clever screenwriting exercise by a filmmaker who would go on to make much better movies.

A Memo to My Fellow Christopher Nolan Fans

Hi there.  How are you?  I know.  The Dark Knight Rises is less than one week away.  I’m excited, too.  I start shaking with excitement every time I think about it.  I’m sure many of you already have your IMAX tickets, like me.  But before this weekend rolls around, I think there are a few things we need to discuss.

As of this writing, The Dark Knight Rises has a score of 90 on Metacritic, corresponding to “Universal Acclaim” (granted, this is out of 9 reviews).  4 out of these 9 reviews are scored at 100.  It is very likely that there will be more raves like this.  But before you start holding out hope that maybe, just maybe, the movie won’t receive a single negative review, over at Rotten Tomatoes, two negative reviews have popped up.  Not only that, but one of these reviews (by Marshall Fine) compares it to Transformers.  And here…we…go!

And suddenly, the raves in Time, Empire and Rolling Stone don’t matter anymore.  It doesn’t matter that Christy Lemire’s negative review refers to Christopher Nolan as an “exceptional, visionary filmmaker” (full disclosure: I have not read any reviews beyond the blurbs on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic).  None of that matters.  Someone has spoiled a possible perfect 100% Tomatometer score for The Dark Knight Rises and nerdom is furious!

Yes, I know.  When something is important to you, it can be hard to accept criticism of it.  Anyone who truly values cinema knows how important a film can be.  The experiences of seeing The Dark Knight and Inception for the first time were very important experiences for me, and I know that I am not the only person who feels that way.  But at a certain point, we have to recognize that not only is it possible that other people have not had this same experience, but also that it is impossible for anything to take this experience away from us, not even Stephanie Zacharek’s scathing review of Inception (honestly, I am a little scared to see her review of The Dark Knight Rises).  That of course, describes reacting to reviews of movies that you have seen.  There is absolutely no excuse for trolling a review of a movie you have not even seen.

But I have hope.  I think nerdom is better than this.  Since none of us can have a legitimate reaction to The Dark Knight Rises at this point (unless you have already seen it at a screening), I think there is still time to set some ground rules for the coming storm.

Rule Number One: “You’re just too stupid to get it” is not legitimate film criticism.  This really should be self-explanatory.  Just because someone disagrees with you does not mean that this person is stupid.  The whole concept of reasoned debate depends on this principle.

Rule Number Two: This also is not legitimate film criticism: “You liked something I didn’t like, therefore your opinion on this particular film is not valid.”  Of course, this is usually rephrased as something along the lines of: “Battleship fresh?  WTF?!”  (Seriously, don’t Rotten Tomatoes commenters have better things to do than check all of Christy Lemire’s past reviews?)  Perhaps if these commenters started checking all past reviews of critics who gave positive reviews to TDKR in order to invalidate their opinions, then this would be fair, though still not legitimate.

Rule Number Three: Please, please, for the love of Cobb, don’t say anything along the lines of: “Stop overanalyzing it and just enjoy the movie.”  This one really makes me mad, since I have found great enjoyment from overanalyzing the hell out of some of my favorite movies (see this series on Inception).  If you truly love a movie, then you must believe that it will stand up to analysis.  And that leads into…

Rule Number Four: Instead of using the above-mentioned lines of idiocy, how about constructing an actual counterargument showing why you love the movie using actual evidence from the movie?  Having to argue against someone with a contrarian opinion can actually help you to make your ideas about the film stronger.  Once you have constructed a legitimate argument that respects your opponent’s opinion, but still shows why you think that opinion is wrong, you will be more confident in your own views.

Because that’s what this really boils down to: a lack of confidence.  The people who lash out (anonymously, usually) on comment threats are doing this because they seek validation of their own opinions, and when someone disagrees, it feels like a personal affront.  I do know how that feels, but guess what?  I decided that feeling like that is childish, and I grew out of it.  It’s that simple.  I’m tired of reading that fans of Christopher Nolan are the worst on the Internet, mostly because that is kind of true to a certain extent.  Realize that other people disagree with you, and either respond to them reasonably or just accept it and move on.  Because when you act like a moronic child in defense of a movie, it makes things that much harder for those of us who love that movie, too.

Update:
I wrote this piece before seeing many of the comments that followed these reviews.  I intended this mainly to be about critical thinking and reasoned debate in a mostly general sense.  But I think I may have been fighting the previous war by listing things that I mainly saw in comments during the TDK and Inception wars, and as such, I was completely unprepared for the vitriol of the actual comments.  I assumed things would be bad, but not this bad.  So I have to add a couple of new rules to the ones already listed: no death threats, no misogynistic comments (Shouldn't this be obvious?), no threats of physical abuse, generally nothing that would make any sane person question your basic humanity.  Ok, got that.  Now let's get back to talking about movies.

Before We All Get Too Excited About The Artist…

Yes, I know. It’s really something, isn’t it? This time last year, did you expect a black-and-white and (mostly) silent movie to win Best Picture? No, of course you didn’t. For this reason alone, The Artist winning Best Picture is something to celebrate. It also helps that it’s a pretty good movie, too. Even for those of us who had some problems with the film, it’s hard to get caught up in the usual Best Picture backlash. It’s just so darned loveable.

But I can’t help but think that part of the reason why the Academy and the majority of critics have been showering so much praise on The Artist is the hope that if a lot of people see it and are charmed by it, they will seek out more silent movies and discover the joys of Lang, Murnau, Chaplin and Keaton. Yes, that would be fantastic. And maybe some people will do that. But unfortunately, I don’t think that The Artist will lead to a mass rediscovery of silent film by the movie-going public.

Part of that has to do with the fact that a Best Picture win might not be enough to convince people to see a silent movie. It is possible that the Weinstein machine can provide The Artist with a success similar to The King’s Speech from last year, but I think The Artist will probably end up looking more like The Hurt Locker and No Country for Old Men.

But even if The Artist draws a large post-Oscar audience, it still won’t convince people to seek out silent films. I know this because as charming as the movie was, one of the most dispiriting moments I have ever experienced in a movie theater occurred during this movie (spoilers ahead). Yes, The Artist is a silent movie for the most part. And for the most part, seeing a silent movie in a packed theater with an audience that was enjoying it was an exhilarating experience. And they were enjoying it. But like I said, The Artist is not an entirely silent film. There’s a nice dream sequence where George Valentin’s subconscious is seemingly taken over by a Foley crew that forgot to ADR his voice (why was this scene, a scene with sound, chosen by the Oscars to highlight Jean Dujardin’s silent performance?). But there’s also a moment at the end when George Valentin finally makes the transition to talkies and sound comes in for good. As we heard the characters speak for the first time, some people in the audience began to applaud, and my heart sank. To be fair, it wasn’t the entire audience applauding; it was probably about five people. But I think this audience reaction reflects a truth about The Artist and the people who have seen it.

The hardest part of getting people to watch classic movies is convincing them that there isn’t something missing when a movie is silent or in black and white, that these movies aren’t broken versions of “normal” movies, that in fact, being silent or in black and white (or both) can actually make a movie better. This is a little easier to do with black and white than it is with silents. Most people are already familiar with black and white from TV Land, music videos and sometimes modern mainstream cinema even if they’ve never seen a movie made before 1980.

It’s a little harder to convince people to watch silent movies. Now, it could be that I make this distinction because, while I was raised on black and white movies, I wasn’t raised on silents. But the more that I think about it, the more this seems like it might be a common experience, even among cinephiles. I think this is probably because black and white remained part of the entertainment experience for a long time after the introduction of color, while silent cinema disappeared fairly quickly after the transition to sound. Not only were a great number of movies still being made in black and white, television was almost exclusively in black and white for many years. Television was never silent. Children born in the Sixties were still accustomed to watching movies and TV in black and white. For them to show their favorite movies to their children (my generation), they would most likely have to show black and white movies at some point. I don’t recall ever complaining about watching a black and white movie as a child. I have no way of knowing if my experience is a common one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.

My point is that while black and white was still considered to be a normal way of watching movies for a long time, silent cinema quickly became something abnormal, either the domain of academia or something that was too silly to be taken seriously as entertainment. This makes it even harder to convince a modern audience to watch silent movies.

Unfortunately, The Artist simply doesn’t do a very good job of convincing the audience that there isn’t something missing from the movie. Most of this is due to the fact that, despite what you may have heard, The Artist is not really a silent movie. It is a parody of silent movies. A loving parody to be sure, but it’s primarily concerned with gently spoofing the conventions of silent cinema rather than really trying to create a silent movie. To convince an audience that a silent movie is not missing something, the audience should not be aware that the movie is silent. With The Artist, the audience is constantly aware that it is watching a silent movie. Maybe it would be impossible to make the audience forget that the movie is silent, but The Artist doesn’t really make an attempt to do this. The most obvious example is the fact that the movie uses sound. The ending reveals to the audience that not only was the movie missing sound, but that the filmmakers have been withholding sound from the audience. Sound in The Artist essentially becomes the shark in Jaws, something that the audience wants to see (or, in this case, hear), but the director is keeping away from us.

But there are less obvious ways in which The Artist is telling the audience that sound is missing from the movie. Let’s take just about any dialogue scene in the film. Obviously, this story requires people to talk with each other, but the problem is that Michel Hazanavicius shoots his dialogue scenes as if he is shooting a sound movie. There is usually at least a minute of cutting between rather boring medium shots of two characters moving their mouths with no words coming out, intercut with title cards. The instinctive reaction of the audience is to notice that something is missing. Hazanavicius wants the audience to know that something is missing. He wants us to recognize that we are watching a silent film because, of course, the nature of parody requires that we know what is being parodied.

If Hazanavicius really wanted to pay homage to silent cinema, why not try to create a truly great silent film, one that convinces the audience that it is watching a movie and allows it to forget about the fact that the sound is gone? Silent filmmakers like F.W. Murnau knew that too many title cards would break the spell of the story, so they had to use visual ingenuity in order to tell stories with pictures. The best moments in The Artist come when it uses its visual strengths, and these usually come from the physicality of the performances.

But the greatest strength of silent cinema is in its ability to create an experience that is dreamlike and completely unreal. To do this, the filmmakers have to convince the audience that silence is a good thing. In Murnau’s Sunrise, what could the husband possibly say to his wife after he has tried to murder her? What words could make her love him again? Instead of words, Murnau gives us pure emotion that he creates entirely from images. As his camera glides behind the couple while they walk heedlessly through the traffic of a big city, we know all that we need to know. Words are unnecessary.

We can understand the greatness of silent cinema through silent masterpieces like Sunrise, but we can also look at the early talkies. If we look at Fritz Lang’s M, we’ll see a sound film that barely has any sound. Since Lang was a visionary silent film director, he knew the true power of silence and sound. There are extraordinarily suspenseful passages of silence in M, and when they are broken (most often by the murderer whistling The Hall of the Mountain King), the effect is chilling.

But what is perhaps more enlightening is to look at how, in many ways, early sound films were inferior to silent pictures. Take Victor Halperin’s 1932 film White Zombie. The movie is pretty lackluster, not to mention cringe-inducingly racist, and at 69 minutes, nearly interminable. Part of this may be due to the terrible condition of the picture on the DVD, but it’s mostly due to some truly bad performances. The exception is Bela Lugosi, who knew how to use his voice to create an unearthly and memorable character, just like he did in Tod Browning’s Dracula, which also surrounds him with normal characters whose performances have not aged well, particularly Dwight Frye whose fingernails-on-the-chalkboard performance nearly kills the wonderfully atmospheric first act of Browning’s film. Though White Zombie makes some occasionally good uses of sound, it mostly creaks along until a surprisingly lyrical and visually poetic silent climactic sequence. The movie immediately becomes better, more haunting, and more dreamlike without the sound. Several scenes in Browning’s Dracula work the same way (I love those long shots of mist rolling across the lawn of the mansion). As much as I would miss the sound of Lugosi’s voice, much of White Zombie (and probably Dracula, too) would work better as silent.

The highest function of combining black and white and silence is to make a movie much more unreal and dreamlike. Maybe this is why The Artist could only really function as a self-conscious silent movie. The story is too dependent on reality, too dependent on meetings and financial troubles to create the dreamlike effect that is the pinnacle of silent cinema. Instead of making an obviously silent film, why not pursue Murnau’s dream of making a silent film that can function without title cards? This is what is necessary to convince an audience that silent cinema is just as legitimate as sound. Otherwise, it’s just a strange kind of novelty, a funny way that people used to watch movies. A movie that gets people to look at silent cinema has to convince them that they will enjoy a silent movie just as much as they would enjoy one with sound. The audience that I saw The Artist with surely enjoyed the movie, but the ones who clapped toward the end were relieved that sound had returned. If you make a truly great silent movie, the audience shouldn’t miss sound at all. They should realize that if people come to the movies for dreams, then silent movies are the most dreamlike of all.

A Celebration of Cinema

Lists are kind of silly aren’t they? Particularly lists of movies, and most particularly, those that rank movies. I wish I could say that this was my reason for not really doing a Top 10 list this year, that I came to some epiphany about the pointlessness of making lists like that. No, the truth is that I was kind of lazy and kept pushing it back. And when I started thinking about it (after all, who’s rules would I be breaking to post a Top 10 list in February?), I realized how silly it would be to exclude a bunch of movies and hold up ten as THE BEST, especially when there are still so many films from last year that I haven’t seen yet. Instead of telling you what I think are the best films of 2011, why not just celebrate all that I loved about film last year, especially since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is doing the same thing tonight? To be fair, this will look very similar to a Top 10 list, but I think it’ll be less rigid, more relaxed. Whose rules do we have to follow anyway? Will I return to the usual format of the Top 10 list next year? Maybe. We’ll see how this goes. I might do this again next year, just, you know, earlier.

So, let’s get started with my favorite movies of 2011, in order:

Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life may have been one of the main reasons why I postponed making my list. I absolutely loved it when it came out last May, saw it three times in the theater, and it became my de facto favorite movie of the year. Yet in the months that I went without seeing it, I began to question my reaction to it? Was it really the soaring cinematic achievement that I thought it was, or had I just been going along with the standard critical opinion? I knew that I needed to see it again before declaring it to be the Best Film of the Year.

And after seeing it for a fourth time, it remains my favorite film of 2011. I am still in awe of Malick’s ambition, which is no less than to capture all of existence into one film. Yet, ambition alone is not sufficient to make a great film. The (in)famous sequence depicting the creation of the universe is not a random IMAX documentary dropped into the film. It is a glorious ballet of light, color, sound and music. The memories of 1950s Texas, which make up the bulk of the film are meandering and seemingly disconnected, but they are a fantastic evocation of childhood. It is ironic that a movie that spans the entire history of the universe could create such an incredibly distinct sense of time and place.

Yet, Malick’s focus also goes smaller and deeper. When a wounded dinosaur (yes, there are dinosaurs in this movie) struggles helplessly under the foot of a predator, Malick is asking: what is the value of life, something so frail that it can disappear in an instant? Watch the way that Malick’s camera (guided by the amazing cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeski; here’s hoping he finally gets his Oscar tonight) moves through a playground full of children, and you’ll see that Malick has his answer. We keep expecting that he’ll focus on one of our main characters, but he doesn’t. He just keeps moving through. Any one of these children would be worthy subjects of a movie. Malick’s camera often glances around at other people who wander in and out the frame. There is, after all, nothing all that special about the O’Brien family, but for Malick, they are worthy subjects of a film simply because they have lived. The events that happen to them are normal and happen to many people. The father tries to accomplish great things, but ultimately his greatest accomplishment is simply having a family. For Malick, that is enough. For Malick, every human, every plant, every dinosaur, every life is worth something. What a wonderful, joyous, life-affirming film this is.

Woody Allen is at the top of his form as a writer and a director with Midnight in Paris, an exhilarating delight of a movie. Yes, there is an element of (thankfully unexplained) magic in the film, but the magic is present in art, music and the joys of a great city. This is a film about seeking wonderful things, and not closing our minds to them, no matter what age they are from, whether they are living or dead. In a year filled with nostalgia in cinema, Allen finds the perfect way to deal with it. Maybe nostalgia is denial (as the pedantic professor says), but there are still many things to celebrate in the past. And of course, the movie itself is an absolute joy from start to finish, with a wonderfully crafted screenplay, expert direction and a pitch-perfect ending.

Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is one of the very best action pictures to come along in recent years. It depicts a group of (you guessed it) 13 assassins who are ordered to kill a feudal lord who is so sadistic, so narcissistically pleased with his evil nature that he makes other recent movie villains pale in comparison. The first half of the film is an intricately plotted set up for the heart-pounding, gloriously violent second half, when the 13 assassins take on the feudal lord and his 200 bodyguards. As pure spectacle and entertainment, it works majestically. But it’s also an intriguing study about the nature of authority and disobedience. On the one hand, this is an elegy for the samurai era, which is already coming to close with the approach of the Meiji Restoration. The samurai in this film gladly sacrifice their individual lives to protect society, but on the other hand, their mission is to disobey authority, to kill a lord who is dangerous to society precisely because he thinks that individuals below him must sacrifice themselves for his pleasure. The eternal tension between the individual and society, always present in the samurai film, is at the heart of 13 Assassins, not as an obvious message, but as a fascinating argument, an argument that is ultimately fought out with arrows and swords (and don’t forget the exploding bulls).

Criminally overlooked by the Oscars, The Interrupters is an extraordinarily powerful and moving documentary about former gang members in Chicago placing themselves into the line of fire to stop gang violence. The film takes place over the course of an entire year in which Chicago essentially becomes a war zone. Director Steve James uses interviews and harrowing footage to create a distinct sense of time and place. But though this is an emotionally devastating film about unspeakable tragedies, it’s not depressing. It’s about families being ripped apart, but also about communities coming together to heal themselves. Despite all of the tragedies, there is so much joy in this film. This is a film about life, not just death.

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is a joy to behold, a movie filled with the magic and wonder of cinema. As a family picture, Hugo succeeds beautifully, telling the story of a young boy living in a Paris train station in the 1930s. Scorsese shows a surprising ability for physical comedy and harrowing adventure. His visual imagination knows no bounds, with a camera that glides around the train station with the same ease as Murnau’s camera in his silent films. Yet, this is also the story of an old man (I won’t say who he is, for those of you who haven’t seen the movie) who feels that he is past the prime of his life and has locked away the memories of his youth. In this way, Hugo bears a striking resemblance to Pixar’s Up, that other great recent children’s movie that isn’t really for children. Both films are about old men who, with the help of children, are able to reclaim the dreams of their youths. There is danger in this film, despair and tragedy, but there is also joy and wonder. I had an enormous smile on my face for the entirety of this movie.

Take Shelter looks and feels like a quiet, indie drama, but even at the beginning there is a growing dread in this film, and it slowly reveals itself to be an emotional and powerful tour de force. Michael Shannon should have received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a well-mannered, well-respected husband and father in the rural Midwest who begins to have visions of the apocalypse. Knowing that his family has a history of mental illness, he talks to counselors and tries to seek treatment. But just in case he isn’t crazy, he also begins preparing for a coming storm, to the growing alarm of his neighbors, his coworkers and his family. Shannon’s performance is a masterpiece of acting, and the scene when he finally explodes in public is a towering, heart-stopping storm unto itself. This is a film about a man driven to protect his family at all costs. He just doesn’t know if he has to protect them from the apocalypse or from himself.

One of the great cinematic sagas came to a close last year with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Perhaps inevitably, the conclusion has some difficulty standing on its own as a film, but the emotional power of the climax more than makes up for that. A great deal of that power comes from the fact that the film succeeds surprisingly well as a battle piece, rivaling such masterpieces as Zulu and Gettysburg. The preparations for the battle at Hogwarts are some of the finest of that variety in cinema, and the huge number of casualties creates a real sense of devastation and loss. In the three times that I’ve seen it, Harry’s last conversation with Hermione and Ron before he walks out to the forest never fails to put a lump in my throat. But most of the power comes from Alan Rickman’s brilliant performance as Snape (also worthy of an Oscar). The flashback scene when we learn the truth about Snape (so memorable in the book) is wonderfully rendered in the movie, perfectly capturing the longing that is so prevalent in this series. It’s all there in that brief moment when a little boy shows a little girl a little bit of magic on a hilltop: the innocence, the mystery, the wonder, the sadness, the joy and the longing of someone in the present looking back on the past.

With Meek’s Cutoff, director Kelly Reichardt delivers a fascinating, patient and absolutely engrossing Western about a wagon train lost in the wilderness. Shooting the film in the old Academy ratio (1.33:1) has the curious effect of opening up the canvas, showing how small these people and their problems are in the vast expanse of nature. The women on the wagon train are outsiders: their faces are hidden in shadow beneath their hoods, and they can barely overhear enough of the men’s conversations to know that they are lost. But a steely tough woman played by Michelle Williams begins to show her strength, and the way in which she takes control is quietly thrilling. Ultimately, the film comes down to one striking image of a wagon rolling out of control down a hillside. Just like the wagon, these people are completely at the mercy of gravity, the wind, and the ground beneath them. They may come to a crashing end, but maybe, just maybe, they can stay upright and keep moving.

Just like Hugo seemed like a strange choice for Martin Scorsese, so does A Dangerous Method seem like a strange choice for David Cronenberg. The story of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and a rivalry between them centered around Sabina Spielrein, this is essentially a movie about people sitting in rooms and talking. But it is an absolutely fascinating character study beautifully directed by Cronenberg. A great deal of credit goes to the screenplay by Christopher Hampton (based in part on his play), but watch the wonderful ways in which Cronenberg ever so subtly plays with the visuals. I particularly love his use of deep focus, and the way that he tries to keep two people in the same frame when they are talking, though it’s just as exciting when he decides to cut the other person out and push in for a closeup. Though the material is fascinating, the performances by Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley and the direction by Cronenberg make it thoroughly engrossing.

Melancholia, director Lars von Trier’s film about the end of the world, is an emotionally draining and curiously life-affirming cinematic experience. It’s a film about madness and despair, but there’s such a strange joy in the storytelling, certainly helped by the powerhouse performances from Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsburg. Like Terence Malick, von Trier confronts enormous ideas on an incredibly personal and human level. In this film, the end of the world is not about last minute romances or panic in the streets. The end of the world is happening to these few characters alone. The greater part of the third act is so quiet and so lonely, but the very end is the exact opposite of quiet and lonely. It may have been the vibrations from the speaker system in the theater, but all I know is that the end of this film left me shaking.

The sign of a wonderful year for movies is the pain that comes when you have to eliminate movies from your list of favorites. So, here’s another top ten in alphabetical order:

City of Life and Death: A harrowing, unflinching chronicle of the Japanese occupation of Nanking, shot in beautiful black and white Cinemascope with strikingly disturbing and powerful images.

Give Up Tomorrow: A powerful, maddening and virtually unseen Filipino documentary about an infamous kidnapping and murder trial and a possible miscarriage of justice. The film paints an incredible portrait of two families on opposite sides of the case whose lives are devastated by a violent tragedy.

The Guard: John Michael McDonagh’s gloriously weird dark comedy with a wonderful performance by Brendan Gleeson as a cheerfully politically incorrect small town cop in Ireland.

Into the Abyss: Werner Herzog’s devastating documentary about the American capital punishment system. Herzog openly states his opinion on the death penalty, but he doesn’t judge any of his subjects or attempt to prove anyone’s innocence. He simply observes and listens to them, creating a piercing document of humanity.

Life, Above All: A wonderful, powerful movie about a girl in South Africa trying to keep her family together as it deals with tragedy. The threat of AIDS is barely whispered about, but its presence is always circling the events of the film. Khomotso Manyaka gives a spellbinding performance in the lead role.

Rango: A visually astonishing animated Western with dazzling images and exhilarating storytelling. Its Apocalypse Now-inspired chase scene through a canyon is one of the best action scenes in recent years.

Super 8: J. J. Abrams’ tribute to the golden age of Steven Spielberg films is a fantastic science-fiction adventure with a terrific group of young actors in the lead roles. Of course, the special effects and action scenes are dazzling, but the film is most exciting as a celebration of cinema and movie making.

Tabloid: Errol Morris’ documentary about 1970’s sex scandal in England is a fascinating look at an infamous media circus, but it’s also a wicked and hilarious study of human nature.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: A chilly and atmospheric adaptation of John le Carré’s classic Cold War spy thriller with a fantastic performance by Gary Oldman. Director Tomas Alfredson creates a distinct sense of a world that has been destroying these characters from the inside for longer than they can remember. Oldman’s recollection of a confrontation with his arch nemesis is a tour de force of acting, and the very last sequence of the film is one my favorite scenes of the year.

War Horse: A glorious epic from Steven Spielberg that follows two creatures, a horse and the boy who loves him from rural England to both sides of World War I. Spielberg fills the screen with masterful images throughout the film. The scene when the horse runs across No Man’s Land is pure cinematic poetry.

And even now, I still haven’t finished listing all of the movies that I enjoyed in 2011, so here are all the other pieces of cinema that brought me joy last year: The Adjustment Bureau, Amigo, The Artist, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey, Captain America: The First Avenger, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the opening sequence of Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Source Code, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, X-Men: First Class.

And as I mentioned earlier, there are still so many films that came out last year, that I still haven’t seen, which removes any attempt to claim that my list is at all definitive. Here are the films I wanted to see, but didn’t get a chance to: The Adventures of Tintin, Certified Copy, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, Contagion, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, 50/50, The Help, The Ides of March, J. Edgar, Louder Than a Bomb, The Mill and the Cross, Project Nim, A Separation, Shame, The Skin I Live In, The Swell Season, Terri, Tyrannosaur, Winter in Wartime.

I find it necessary to keep track of all the movies I’ve seen in a year, so the other day, I started making my list of movies seen in 2012. Most of the items on the list (there are about 5 titles so far) are movies I was catching up on from last year: The Artist, The Descendants, War Horse, etc. But I started to smile when I typed in the one new film I’ve seen so far this year: The Grey, a gloriously violent adventure film, easily the best of the recent Liam Neeson action vehicles. I smiled not just because I enjoyed the movie and the fact that my family refers to it as “Liam Neeson in Nice Doggie,” but also because I’m already looking forward to another year of cinema. As much as I enjoyed you 2011, it’s time to say farewell. This is what the Oscars should be about: waving goodbye to the movies of last year and celebrating them as we wave. Now tomorrow, after we’ve done our requisite grousing about who should have won and how the entire ceremony was completely illegitimate because The Interrupters wasn’t nominated for Best Documentary, it will be time to look ahead. After all, we’ve got The Hobbit to look forward to. And The Dark Knight Rises. And Prometheus. And new movies by Alfonso Cuarón and Wes Anderson. I’m getting excited already.