A Film A Day; Favorite Moments

Films have served as a constant source of guidance, inspiration, solace, and company for me. I always come back to them, on rainy days and starry nights and summers afternoons and everything in-between. I’ve been trying to watch a film a day recently, and have also tried to reflect on each one I’ve watched in some written form. I’ve failed at both of these tasks, but seek to atone by sharing some thoughts and memories from the journey so far. In chronological order, here are some of my favorite moments from the past 2 months of films. These aren’t meant to be didactic views nor do I wish to throw these thoughts away in a puddle of utter subjectivity. Instead, I’ll simply say this is how I feel right now about many of these films. I want desperately to know what you think, of the films and the filmmakers and techniques and practices and industry and everything in-between.

I started with V/H/S 2. Watching it with a friend was a good idea. The second installment of the found footage horror anthology...anthology is mighty scary. It jumps off the screen and seems to creep into every room it is watched in. I found it thoroughly enjoyable. One of the most memorable films of the selection of five short films was Gareth Evans’ film, which went from slow-burn docu-drama to apocalyptic hellscape in 7 minutes. The set up for it was genius, the performance exactly what it needed to be. He also somehow managed to craft a clockwork puzzle of five interlocking characters who all manage to meet their respective fates in stunning, brutal, and terrifying fashions. The gopro film by the creators of The Blaire Witch project was SO creative, and just utterly inspiration. It was perfectly camp and sarcastic, and reaffirmed their whole approach to found footage. It is “meta” in the most obvious sense of the word; it models the kind of “found footage” we interact with every day and sculpts into a terrifying narrative. It does not seek to bend the rules of the subgenre to make it work (like Evans’ film does to a certain extent). It bases everything around the central premise of messing with the audience by framing the narrative in footage that is identical to 100,000 youtube videos.

I watched Fruitvale Station on my phone while crashing in a friend’s spare room. It is a humane, stunning, IMPORTANT film. It is also the only film I have ever watched which moved me to gushing, uncontrollable tears. I will watch Short Term 12 or The Wind Rises and cry a tiny bit, it is just incredibly unlike me to cry. And with this film, I couldn’t stop. I was nearly sobbing. Having made a documentary about a narrative not unlike (in theme not circumstance) the events of Fruitvale Station, I beg everyone to watch it, and to really think and speak up about what our country does to young black men. It is something that deserves more than a paragraph in a blog post. The violence is an epidemic; it should be on the front of every newspaper and every magazine and every blog and every piece of media. And for those affected, I ask forgiveness for mentioning it in the context of something more casual; I feel more wrong leaving it out. Oh, and Fruitvale is nearly perfect in terms of craft. Every decision is appropriate for what it is trying to do. Michael B Jordan blows my mind as well.
I saw Godzilla (the new one) in Imax 3D with friends. As a lover of visual effects, the film was absolutely stunning. As a lover of narrative, not as much. One particular moment I loved was ‘Zilla’s stubby foot comin in from the top of the frame. So much love and respect to the visual effects teams who created the film, but that shot was just too silly.

I had the privilege of making one of my films a test screening of an indie a friend is editing! I can’t say anything about the film itself; I can say it is always inspirational and wonderful to watch a friends work.

I watched Favereau’s Chef and Ratatouille back to back, and while they seem similar (two films about filmmaking which use the idea of cooking as a not-so-covert metaphor), they couldn’t be more different. While Chef delves deep into a selfish and masturbatory quest for Favereau (who stars as a metaphor for himself) to proclaim that if you didn’t like his films, it was his executives faults, Ratatouille takes a much more sophisticated and earnest approach. That is not to say that Chef isn’t a blast to watch and that what Favereau is saying isn’t 100% true. Indeed, both can coexist and both can work. Personally though, I prefer Ratatouille. The plotting is more succint, the story more visual and more compelling. Plus I am a sucker for great animation.

Attack the Block was something that had been sitting in my queue for what felt like years. Tom Townend (cinematographer) and Joe Cornish (writer/director) are both heroes and inspirations. Their collaboration results in a pulp, witty, unapologetic, utterly visceral science fiction which is as humane as it is hilarious. Just an incredible joy to watch, and a perfect use of a “hero” archetype to say something genuinely important and interesting.

Returning to Gareth Edwards from the 2014 Godzilla, I watched his first film, Monsters. The narrative is fine, even really good. But what inspired me about this film was Edwards process. With the Lord of the Rings behind the scenes on loop, he did all of the visual effects and post production himself. It doesn’t always look good, but it almost always works. The monsters in the end are wonderful, and his use of VFX to tell the story is rare and wonderful. The visual storytelling in the film makes up for the mumblecore-ish dialogue. And then some.

Y Tu Mama Tambien; another film featuring another of my favorite Director/DP teams: Chivo and Cuaron. Not their first, but considered their first big feature together by many, it is just a film you absolutely have to see. It breaks all the rules, and makes the decisions that are right for it as a film. Cuaron’s work with the young actors is breathtaking too. Thinking about it makes me want to watch it again.

I love documentaries and don’t watch enough of them. The Unknown Known is Erol Morris’s latest in his trilogy of films about...war? Leadership? Mistakes? Tragedies? Morris’s outlook reminds me of that of Thomas Nagel; his wit is sharp and targeted, his irony earnest and heartbreaking. The Unknown Known is Morris at his best; confrontational, direct, merciless, and utterly respectful.

Boogie Nights. Boogie Nights is incredible.

In one rainy day I watched You’re Next, My Neighbor Totoro, Nebraska, and 22 Jump Street. All of them different. All of them wonderful. You’re Next is simple and executes perfectly; Totoro is a love filled letter to children, with sensibilities which are entirely humane, warm, and lovely. Nebraska is the essence of dignity. 22 Jump Street, a sharp comedy sequel which works as both an exploration of Lord and Miller’s relationship and a perfect take down of comedy sequels in general. Could say so much more about all of them. It was a really good day.

Watching Gravity loud, on a big screen, with another person/people, is the only way to watch that film. It is experiential. And Chivo and Cuaron’s mastery of the long take is terrifying and wonderful. They're so good it actually scares me. What can’t these two do? I would say the sky’s the limit but they’ve already broken through that and gone to fucking space.

One day I decided to revisit an old favorite. Singin’ In The Rain is just as much a joy now as it was when it came out, as it must have been as a screenplay and a shoot and an edit. It is sneaky how good it is; the visceral fun of the dance and song is so great that you don’t even notice the subtleties at play in the subtext. It’s perfect, simply but. I also love tap dance, and Gene Kelly is more than a star in that field, he’s a legend, and this film shows you why. He makes the hard stuff look easy, and the easy stuff look hard.

I caught Snowpiercer this passed week and found it to be a near perfect piece of science fiction, with more than traces of H.G. Wells and the greatest science fiction of the west. It’s a Korean film, which I think is really interesting and wonderful too; we seldom see the films that come out of Eastern studios. Ghibli and a few others slip through. But in terms of their visual sensibilities, they are doing some really interesting and cinematic things that bigger western films aren’t interested in; they’re telling their stories visually.

Edge of Tomorrow is a wonderful blockbuster and an exception to what I just mentioned. As somebody who studies editing and loves the craft of editing, it is an incredibly interesting film as well. Tom Cruise’s character’s decisions and thought processes are expressed so clearly in the editing as a mechanic of the film; it is exciting to get to see editors get to help in a more clear way. Editing is usually (and rightfully) the invisible art; the best editing is that which you don’t notice. But Edge of Tomorrow is an exception to a lot of rules. The VFX are also brilliant and a perfect example of the Favereau-pioneered strategy of a liberal combination of practical and CG to create photoreal and unintrusive results.

Once doesn’t look very good. It’s cinematography struggles both in its design, execution, and in the media. It was shot and finished in HDV, which is a codec which was great for its time, and has so little highlight preservation and so much grain, that it is hard to look at now. However, the film still has a lasting emotional affectation, and is still a joy to watch. While the all of the above matter, and do detract from the film, the music and story can still win the day. The scene in which Glen Hansard plays his father his EP encapsulates an experience every person who makes art (or for that matter, anything) has gone through. The line end of that scene floored me, inspired me, and made me feel whole and human.

Hayao Miyazaki might be my favorite director ever. I constantly come back to his films. I recently watched Ponyo, his little mermaid-esque kid’s movie, and Mononoke, which I would argue is the first film he made entirely for adults. The difference between the films is a testament to his versatility and mastery of his craft; the similarities show that he cares deeply for our world, our children, and understands how complex the moral framework of this whole biosphere really is. He combines an understanding of subtleties and intricacies with straightforward visual sensibilities and creates masterpieces. In many ways, he’s a great teacher who happens to be a filmmaker. We’re better because of him. Thank you so much for reading my unstructured, gushy, mostly innocuous and entirely silly thoughts on movies. Please let me know what you think, about the films, about the thoughts, about everything. My goal is for nothing but the best discussions on the art and creation and the biggest quesions of life. But until I figure out how to discuss all of those things, we should talk about movies. Cheers,
-Ben