TIFF: Day 5 (Monday 9/13)

Note: You can check out Detroit's Metro Times version of this post (with pictures!) by clicking here.

The big deal for the first Monday of the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival was that the brand new TIFF Bell Lightbox officially opened for business (and I had my first volunteer shift there). TIFF’s state of the art new headquarters in the middle of downtown Toronto’s Entertainment District, the Bell Lightbox features five theaters and screening rooms, lecture halls, gallery and exhibit space, a film reference library, a gift shop, and, of course, the TIFF offices.

The doors officially opened yesterday, celebrated by a huge block party and live music on the streets, but today is the first day that TIFF screenings are being held there. The building is being called “the house that film built,” and to celebrate it’s first year, the TIFF brain trust created a list of 100 Essential Films from throughout history, each of which will screen in one of the Bell Lightbox theaters sometime over the next several months. (Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey will screen in December in their original 70mm prints—an event I’m strongly considering trekking back up to Toronto for.) Also opened at the Bell Lightbox today was an exhibit showcasing art and memorabilia from each of these 100 Essential Films, including gorgeous original posters, costumes, props, and photographs from the productions. For my volunteer shift at the TIFF Bell Lightbox today, I was one of many people assigned to help patrol the exhibit and help answer patron questions.

After the shift, I caught three screenings (all of which were pretty heavy and serious in subject), and two of them were among the best of the Fest… as well as potential Best Picture nominees.

Movie: 127 Hours

What Is It? The true story of hiker/mountain climber Aron Ralston, who got trapped under a boulder in a Utah canyon in 2003. After 127 hours, and running out of both food and water, Ralston severed his own arm to free himself.

Director: Danny Boyle—Winner of the Best Director Oscar for his last film, Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle is also responsible for the modern classics Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, as well as the interesting-yet-flawed The Beach and Sunshine.

Notable Cast: James Franco (Milk, Pineapple Express, Spider-Man) plays Ralston, who is really the only character on screen for much of the film. Kate Mara (Shooter) has a small part as another hiker Ralston encounters prior to his entrapment.

Notable Crew: Boyle worked mostly with his Slumdog crew again, as Simon Beaufoy adapts Ralston’s book, and A.R. Rahman provides the score

The Grade: A-

Thoughts: The first thing you need to know is that James Franco WILL be receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. I’m not saying he’ll win, but a nomination is absolutely in the bag. The second thing you need to know is that this movie becomes difficult to watch at times. It’s an extremely intense experience that is often grueling for the viewer, and when Ralston finally has to resort to cutting off his own arm, it’s a pretty gruesome sequence. The third thing you need to know is that Danny Boyle continues to prove why he’s one of contemporary cinema’s most interesting directors. The exciting opening credits alone are worth the price of admission, and the vivid colors and landscapes are truly gorgeous. Boyle also gets creative with how to hold the audience’s attention, but I won’t spoil anything there.

And the last thing you need to know is, if you can stomach through the hard parts, this is the year’s most uplifting movie. I actually started tearing up at the end watching Ralston gain his freedom (remember, even after lopping off his arm, he then had to get out of the canyon with one arm and having gone well over a full day without food or water). Boyle chooses his music at the end perfectly—it’s a Sigur Ros song called “Festival”—and the film closes with the real Ralston with his wife and daughter. It’s a truly inspiring tale of the human spirit, very similar to 2007’s Into the Wild, but without the downer ending.

Movie: Miral

What Is It? The true story of Miral, an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in Israel in the wake of the Six Days War. She finds herself drawn into the conflict before eventually becoming a sympathizer for both sides.

Diretor: Juilan Schnabel—One of the modern era’s most renowned visual artists, Schnabel entered filmmaking in 1996 with the biopic Basquiat. He has since made 2000’s Before Night Falls, which starred Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp, and 2007’s outstanding The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which earned him a Best Director nomination.

Notable Cast: Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) plays Miral. Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe are also in the movie, but their parts are so minuscule and inconsequential that I don’t understand why they bothered.

Notable Crew: The real Miral helped adapt her own autobiography with Schnabel.

The Grade: B-

Thoughts: The first movie of the festival that I was disappointed in; it certainly wasn’t bad, but Schnabel’s previous film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, simply set the bar too high. With that film, Schnabel found remarkably interesting ways to tell the story that could seemingly have only come from a visual artist. With his follow-up, I was expecting another masterpiece, and sadly, I didn’t get one. Miral definitely has some interesting moments, and there are a few flashes of the brilliance Schnabel showed with Butterfly, but for the most part, it’s nothing more than a well-made film of a fairly conventional story that does little to distinguish itself.

Movie: Black Swan

What Is It? Nina, a New York ballerina wins the starring role she’s always coveted, but the director forces her to lose control and embrace her dark side to fully commit to the character. In doing so, Nina begins a decent into her own psyche that just may cause her to lose her grip on reality.

Director: Darren Aronofsky—The director of some of contemporary cinema’s most disturbing and memorable films, including Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, and 2008’s The Wrestler.

Notable Cast: Natalie Portman stars as Nina, while Mila Kunis (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Winona Ryder play rival ballerinas. The great French actor, Vincent Cassel (Ocean’s 12 & 13, Eastern Promises) plays the Ballet director.

The Grade: A

Thoughts: I managed to score the last ticket available at 7:00am this morning, and it was worth it—the best of the Fest so far, and a truly absorbing movie-going experience. The beautiful visuals and the epic slow-build of tension and intrigue ensure that you simply can’t take your eyes off the screen.

If you can imagine a cross between The Shining and Showgirls (only an alternate reality version where Showgirls was really good), then you’re just about there. There’s also some substantial similarity to Aronofsky’s previous film, The Wrestler, which is no accident. Aronofsky said he views them as companion pieces—one is about what people might call the lowest art form, and one is about what could be called the highest art form, but both are about people who sacrifice every aspect of themselves for their art.

Portman is extremely impressive with the range of emotions she captures, and it appears that she did most of her own dancing. She’s nearly as much of a lock for an Oscar nomination as James Franco.

Word of mouth on this film has been great throughout the Festival, and it inspired the longest standing ovation I’ve seen thus far.

On Tap For Tomorrow: The Great Bruce Springsteen Adventure: will your fearless author get to meet his idol? Stay tuned…

TIFF: Day 4 (Sunday 9/12)

Note: You can check out the Metro Times version of this post (with pictures!) by clicking here.

Not too much to report today besides the screenings (I caught three), so I’ll cut to the chase…

Movie: The Town

What Is It? Four bank robbers from the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown take a beautiful young woman hostage during their latest heist. When the leader of the crew visits her a few days later to try to find out if she knows anything, he begins to fall in love with her.

Director: Ben Affleck—A major Hollywood star since the late 90s, this is Affleck’s second go behind the camera. The first, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, I picked as one of that year’s ten best.

Notable Cast: Affleck, Jeremy Renner (an Oscar nominee last year for The Hurt Locker), Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Please Give), Jon Hamm (star of AMC’s “Mad Men”), Blake Lively (TV’s “Gossip Girl”), and Chris Cooper (an Oscar winner in 2002 for Adaptation).

Notable Crew: Affleck helped write the screenplay, his third co-writing credit after Gone Baby Gone and Good Will Hunting, for which he won an Original Screenplay Oscar. And the film was shot by Robert Elswit, who was responsible for the incredible imagery of Good Night, and Good Luck and There Will Be Blood.

The Grade: A-

Thoughts: I left The Town feeling absolutely certain of two things—1) Blake Lively has breast implants, and 2) Ben Affleck is ready to enter the upper echelon of American filmmaking. The first one needs no explanation, so we’ll concentrate on number two. The Town isn’t going to be getting any Best Picture love or anything, because, at its heart, it’s just an excellent genre film. But excellent genre films don’t grow on trees, and I expect this one to be a critical and commercial success.

As an actor, Affleck has inspired more jokes than praise, but he does an admirable job here, holding his own with a great cast. Renner proves The Hurt Locker was no fluke (he’s great), and the gorgeous and talented Rebecca Hall looks ready for the big time. Hamm, looking like he’s enjoying the chance to sport a bit of stubble, provides reliable supporting work as the FBI agent on the case.

In many respects, The Town is like Michael Mann’s 1995 bank robber epic Heat, but an hour shorter. I would have been the first to argue that Heat couldn’t—and shouldn’t—be any shorter, but at just over two hours, The Town doesn’t feel like it short changed any aspects of the plot. This is only Affleck’s second film behind the camera, but he’s proven with both that he’s got the goods. Other than an ending that veers a little too much towards Shawshank Redemption territory, The Town is without flaws, and Affleck’s natural story-telling ability is incredibly apparent.

Movie: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

What Is It? We follow four related Londoners in committed relationships as they each begin to wonder about meeting someone else. The idea of finding a new romantic interest is followed within each of them to varying degrees, and the outcome of each real or imagined infidelity is explored.

Director: Woody Allen—I’m hoping he needs no explanation, but it should be noted that he’s enjoyed a bit of a resurgence lately since he began setting his films in Europe with 2005’s Matchpoint. 2008’s Vicky Christina Barcelona was his best in almost twenty years.

Notable Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), Gemma Jones, and newcomer Lucy Punch.

Notable Crew: Allen wrote the screenplay (as usual), and the film was shot by the great Vilmos Zsigmond, who worked on such classics as The Deer Hunter and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The Grade: B+

Thoughts: The key quality of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is that it’s not about people having affairs and then arguing about it. In fact, we barely see a single scene of couples arguing about affairs. Instead, we see circumstances and encounters that attract people to the idea of an affair, and then we see how they feel about what decision they made. It’s a new approach to an ancient subject, and it feels quite fresh. All of the actors do well, but particularly outstanding are Gemma Jones as Naomi Watts’ mother, and Lucy Punch (who may find herself with an Oscar nomination) as a vacuous hooker that Anthony Hopkins tries to turn into a trophy housewife. Like many Woody Allen films, we don’t reach a conclusion so much as a stopping point, but it serves the story well and humorously.

Movie: Tamara Drewe

What Is It? After many years away, Tamara Drewe returns to her English countryside home with a new nose that makes her startlingly beautiful. A writer’s retreat is occurring at the neighbors, which she has a profound effect on. Meanwhile, two local teenage girls become very jealous of Tamara’s latest love interest, the drummer of a popular London rock band.

Director: Stephen Frears—One of the most dependable directors of the last twenty-five years, it’s unfortunate Frears doesn’t have more name recognition. Among his many films are The Queen (for which Helen Mirren won an Oscar in 2006), Dirty Pretty Things, The Grifters, Dangerous Liaisons, and High Fidelity—one of my personal favorites.

Notable Cast: Gemma Arterton (Strawberry Fields in the latest Bond flick) plays the title character, and she gets excellent supporting work from a handful of British character actors and newcomers.

Notable Crew: The screenplay was adapted from the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds.

The Grade: B+

Thoughts: Most of what happens in Tamara Drewe defies explanation. The plot involves a ton of shagging, a stampede of cows, a failing American crime writer, and a hilarious teenage girl with a vocabulary that George Carlin would approve of (played by Jessica Barden, she does the best scene stealing work of the year so far; I simply couldn’t wait for her to get back on screen). Sadly, though, without any stars (Arterton isn’t quite there yet, though she will be), I don’t think this little British countryside comedy will be lighting the box office on fire. But if you do get the chance to see it, consider it recommended. It’s an extremely funny film made by a director whose work always has the utmost care and integrity.

On Tap For Tomorrow: The grand opening of the new TIFF headquarters (where my next five volunteer shifts will be), new movies by Danny Boyle and Julian Schnabel, and my last ditch attempt to get in the Black Swan premiere—arguably the fest’s hottest ticket.

TIFF: Day 3 (Saturday 9/11)

Note: Click here to see the Metro Times version of this post, which features many photos I took through the day.

Woke up at 7am today to try and get more tickets—at TIFF, shows often go off sale when there are still some tickets left, and then those remaining tickets are released at 7am the day of the show. I already had tickets today for Little White Lies and It’s Kind of a Funny Story, but I was really hoping to add Biutiful (Javier Bardem drama by the director of Babel) and Never Let Me Go (adapted from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro and starring Carey Mulligan & Keira Knightley). Struck out on Biutiful, nabbed a ticket for Never Let Me Go, then promptly went back to bed for three more hours.

My day then commenced with the revelation that the showers where I’m staying were temporarily out of commission, which meant no bathing for me today because I’m on a timetable. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this would be a powerful omen for how the rest of the day would go. After lunch and some writing at a café, I headed to Roy Thomson Hall for the gala premiere of Little White Lies, a film I was really looking forward to. Directed by Guillaume Canet (who starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach and directed the great 2006 French thriller Tell No One), Marion Cotillard heads an all-star French cast on a weekend picnic outing of Parisian high society. I arrived at the premiere about thirty minutes before it was scheduled to start, and then waited in line for almost an hour and a half. When they finally herded us in, Canet and Cotillard came out on the stage to announce that they had just flown from Paris to present the film to us, but the new state of the art projection system wasn’t registering the subtitles. So, here was the compromise: anyone that spoke French could stay there and watch the film, and anyone that didn’t could take a four block walk to another theater where the film would be shown with subtitles. Sadly, that means the new show time would be shortly after 3pm, the movie was two hours and thirty-five minutes long, and my ticket to Never Let Me Go was for 6pm and a long trek across town. So Little White Lies and I were not destined to be, at least not today.

After some more writing I headed to the Ryerson Theater, where my next two movies were showing back to back. I bet you’d love to believe this meant I could just stay in the theater, but ooohhhh no, not that easy. After the first showing I had to exit and get in line for the next one, already wrapped around the block. After both films (reviews are below), I then tried to rush the midnight movie, Bunraku. Allow me to translate: TIFF holds a midnight movie at the Ryerson every night of the fest. These are often horror, sci-fi, lowbrow/low budget action, etc. The midnight movie for Saturday was Bunraku, some sort of crime noir with Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, and Josh Hartnett that sounded interesting. It was sold out, but I tried to rush it, which is an option for every screening at TIFF. Basically, a rush line forms at a screening for anyone that wants to see the movie but doesn’t have a ticket. Then, when the show’s about to start, festival staff counts the number of empty seats and lets that many people in from the rush line. The production and distribution companies for each film are usually allotted an obscene amount of tickets, most of which don’t get used, so this is where the empty seats get created. Often times, over 100 people from the rush line will get into a screening. But for whatever reason, last night at the Ryerson, there was only one person working the box office to sell tickets to the people in the rush line. So by the time they got to my spot in the rush line, the movie had started twenty minutes ago. The guys behind me didn’t seem to think this was a big deal, and they happily shuffled in, but I’m a purist; if I can’t see a movie from the first second, I’m not interested. So I called it a night.

End result for Saturday: tried to see five movies, succeeded with two, and waited in three hours worth of lines for movies I didn’t even get to see. Hopefully Sunday will be better.

Movie: Never Let Me Go

What Is It? Taking place in an alternate present-day England with no disease, people are bred to be organ donors. By their mid-20s, these people begin their donations, and after three or four, they “complete” (die). Living sheltered lives away from real society, three of these people—Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy—have a romantic triangle that plays out against their short, devalued lives.

Director: Mark Romanek—known as one of the best music video directors around (he’s responsible for two of my all-time favorites: Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer,” and Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”), Romanek made his feature film debut with 2002’s Robin Williams drama One Hour Photo. This is his second film.

Notable Cast: Carey Mulligan (an Oscar nominee last year for the wonderful An Education), Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield (star of the upcoming The Social Network and recently cast as the next Spider-Man) play the three lead characters.

Notable Crew: Alex Garland, writer of The Beach, adapted the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.

The Grade: B-

Thoughts: Overall, it was good, but I liked it better when it was called Blade Runner. Sure, the movies are radically different, but the themes they tackle are so uniquely similar that it’s impossible not to draw comparisons. You can safely think of this as Blade Runner minus the sci-fi elements, with a touch of British class drama thrown in.

As is the case with all of Romanek’s videos, the visuals are generally quite stunning, and the three leads do a wonderful job, particularly Mulligan’s melancholy narration and a scene towards the end where Garfield’s character lets his whole soul pour out.

But the film still has a major flaw that will be obvious even to people who haven’t seen Blade Runner. After we find out who these people are and what they’re destined for about twenty minutes in, very little happens over the next hour. In fact, I started to nod off at times, and I talked to a few other people who felt the same. The film’s final act, where our three characters meet their fates, is truly phenomenal, but the story just didn’t know how to get them there in a way that the audience cares about. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless. Even still, the last twenty minutes make the film overall worthwhile.

Movie: It’s Kind of a Funny Story

What is it? Craig, a typical sixteen-year old in NYC, is feeling suicidal, so he checks himself into the psych ward at a hospital, without realizing that means he must stay a minimum of five days. He meets Bobby, who’s sort of like a fat Yoda to the rest of the ward, and Noelle, also a teen suicide risk, but a foxy one.

Director: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, the same team that made 2008’s Sugar and 2006’s Half Nelson (which earned Ryan Gosling an Oscar nomination).

Notable Cast: Zach Galifianakis (the break-out star of last summer’s The Hangover) plays Bobby, while relative unknowns Emma Roberts and Keir Gilchrist plays Noelle and Craig.

The Grade: A-

Thoughts: A really enjoyable film that I suspect will find a sizable audience through great word of mouth, a la Little Miss Sunshine and Juno. The most amazing aspect might have been the ability to craft a mental institution dramedy without really recalling One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which is about as easy as making a nuclear war comedy without referencing Dr. Strangelove. Using a dazzling array of styles and visual techniques, Fleck & Boden recall the look of films like (500) Days of Summer and The Science of Sleep, but make the outcome feel original.

Some of the best scenes involve slight departures from reality, such as an animated sequence of the cityscapes Craig likes to draw, and a fever dream music video of the ward patients performing Bowie & Queen’s “Under Pressure,” which looked like one of the most fun days of shooting any movie could ever have. Galifianakis also shows in the movie that he has true acting chops beyond just his obvious comedic talent, and I’m making a bold prediction: he’ll get an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The flaw of the movie is that it acts as though a sixteen-year old can solve many of the problems in a hospital psyche ward after a five-day visit, which is, of course, a slightly over-simplified reality. But the conclusion leaves the characters not with happily ever after, but instead just happy to be, and that should be the dream of any mental patient.

After the screening of It’s Kind of a Funny Story, the cast and directors stuck around for a pretty engaging Q & A, with Zach Galifianakis inciting some uproarious laughter simply with his mannerisms. I even managed to get a question in for the directors; I asked about whether they write scenes with specific songs in mind, and what happens if they can’t get the rights to some of the songs they envision being in the film. Fleck said that sometimes they have backup plans, but it almost always works out. Though he added that in the case of “Under Pressure,” when a bit of difficulty arose, he and Boden told their producers that they wouldn’t make the movie without that song in it. One thing that amazed me at the Q & A is that, while most high school characters in TV and film are played by actors in their mid-twenties, Keir Gilchrist played a sixteen-year old but didn’t even look Bar Mitzvah ready in person.

On Tap for Tomorrow: I have a ticket for Ben Affleck’s The Town, and I’m hoping to get several others (plus it’d be nice to actually see all the movies I have tickets for).

TIFF: Day 2 (Friday 9/10)

Note: I'm having trouble with pictures on this blog, so I'm abandoning them for now. But, you can check me out at The Metro Times for the version with photos!

Today I went to my first volunteer shift and my first gala premiere. My volunteer shift was about five hours long and I was stationed at the Scotiabank Theater complex. This, I found out, is the site of the majority of the Press & Industry screenings, which I didn’t even know existed. Apparently, the huge schedule that’s given out to everyone which has the times & locations of nearly 1,000 screenings ONLY lists the public screenings, and there are another few hundred screenings just for Press & Industry. So, my job for this shift was to help with line control and crowd organization inside the Scotiabank complex for the P & I crowd.

A bit of knowledge I gleaned from this experience: people with Press & Industry credentials DO NOT like waiting in lines. They seem to think that, even though there are probably a few thousand people with the exact same P & I lanyards, they should be able to go directly to the front of the line. But what fascinated me was that it wasn’t the true media big shots that were disgruntled about the crowds; they, clearly, have done this before and know what to expect. Instead, it was the people who write for some paper in Delaware that’s surely about to go belly-up, or some website that maybe gets ten hits a month, and they think they’re P & I lanyard is a free pass out of ever waiting for anything. I solemnly vow that once I’m successful enough to be lanyard worthy, I won’t be that guy.

The best part of this experience was that two of my true writing heroes, Roger Ebert and Lisa Schwarzbaum, went through the line I was working and I got to check their credentials (as though I didn’t know they belonged). I was really thrilled to see Ebert, jawless, unable to speak, having difficulty moving around, and yet still doing what he loves. I once read an interview with Dustin Hoffman, where Hoffman said, “people retire from a job, but you never retire from your work.” Ebert’s livelihood is about seeing movies and helping to guide the public decision of what is worth our time and money, and he’s still doing it, no matter that it’s become infinitely more difficult, and he certainly doesn’t need the money. You gotta respect that. And Schwarzbaum, it should be noted, was one of the few P & I people through the entire day who took the time for basic social graces; she said hello to the volunteers, and said thank you when we let her in. Sometimes it’s the little things.

After the volunteer shift, I started to get ready for the big gig of the night, the world premiere of the film Trust, much of which was filmed locally in Ann Arbor this past spring (The Gandy Dancer is visible at one point, and Clive Owen & Catherine Keener spin the cube sculpture in front of the U of M administration building). This event brought out the full red carpet, paparazzi, and a line that was the longest I’d seen yet. The general demeanor of the crowd made it seem like we were about to enter a New York opera. Everyone was decked out, and the feeling that we were at something important was inescapable (even if inaccurate). The screening started about 20 minutes late, and I’ve a hunch that’s going to be a frequent occurrence with the gala screenings. David Schwimmer, who directed, was on hand to introduce the film, and stars Clive Owen and Catherine Keener were also present, but apparently just to wave and elicit applause, as neither were given an opportunity to speak.

Movie: Trust

What is it? A domestic drama about fourteen-year old Annie, who starts a romance with a boy online she believes to be sixteen, but who turns out to be a sexual predator in his thirties. Clive Owen and Catherine Keener play the parents trying to handle Annie’s emotions, and their own.

Director: David Schwimmer—Ross from “Friends,” who’s lately turned to directing. His first film, Run, Fatboy, Run, starred Simon Pegg and played at TIFF a few years ago.

Notable Cast: Clive Owen, Catherine Keener, Viola Davis (an Oscar nominee for Doubt), and newcomer Liana Liberato as Annie.

Notable Crew: The screenplay was co-written by Robert Festinger, who also authored 2001’s Best Picture nominee In the Bedroom.

The Grade: B

Thoughts: I won’t lie—I was prepared to completely write this movie off about 1/3 of the way through. It had the feel of a Lifetime movie whose purpose is to be shown in seventh-grade health classes, and Annie makes so many horrendously illogical decisions in the film’s first act that it’s actually difficult to sympathize with her character (even when taking into account that fourteen-year olds are illogical by nature)

But, to the credit of David Schwimmer and his cast, and a subtle shift in focus from Annie to her parents, I got pulled back in to what turned out to be a pretty decent movie. The acting is a huge part of it; Keener is one of Hollywood’s most reliable actresses, Clive Owen is a master of domestic rage (which he harnessed wonderfully in 2004’s Closer), and Liana Liberato is a revelation as Annie, who makes what initially felt absurd actually sort of resonate. Schwimmer hasn’t developed much of a visual style yet, and for the most part he plays it safe, but he does two things here that may point the way to a good career behind the camera: he draws a wonderful performance out of his cast, and he has the balls to end the movie at a place one might not think an ending ought to go. One of the most important abilities a filmmaker has is to control what their audience feels as they leave the theater, and Schwimmer does that quite well with Trust.

On Tap for Tomorrow: My first full day of film going, with tickets to movies starring Marion Cotillard, Keira Knightley, and Zach Galifianakis… but it didn’t quite go off without a hitch.

TIFF: Day 1 (Thursday 9/9)

And so it begins…

I got to town today late afternoon, picked up my tickets for the shows I had lined up so far, and then headed to my first screening, where I found… wait for it… a line that was literally three blocks long. It was like a voice from on high shouted at me “Welcome to a film festival, rookie!” Luckily, I quickly found out this is par for the course and it’s nothing to worry about. The lines are caused by 1) everyone wants to arrive to screenings early because seats are first come/first serve and sitting in the front row sucks, and 2) every theater used in the film festival is tightly booked and often one screening doesn’t let out until 20-25 minutes before the next one starts. So when people arrive to a show an hour (or more) early, and can’t start getting in until shortly before show time, well, that’s how you get a three block line.

But, I had a ticket, so nothing to worry about. Or so I thought. Pop quiz: you know what sucks worse than the front row? Sitting in the last seat on one side of a tightly packed, sold out show, and not having enough room to angle your whole body towards the screen. So instead I watched my first TIFF movie with my neck craned at a 40-degree angle for over two hours. Luckily, the movie was great, and the director & producer were on hand to introduce the film as well as take a few questions afterwards.

Movie: Inside Job

What is it? A scathing documentary about not just the global financial meltdown of 2008, but how every bad decision our economic leaders made over the last three decades directly led to our current financial reality.

Director: Charles Ferguson—his only previous film was 2007’s Oscar-nominated documentary No End in Sight, about the botched handling of the Iraq War by the Bush administration.

Notable Cast: Matt Damon narrates, and he did so “for well under his market value,” as Ferguson put it when introducing the film to the TIFF audience.

The Grade: A

Thoughts: First thing’s first: See this movie. When Ferguson spoke for a bit to the TIFF audience prior to the screening, he said that his motivation for making the film was that very few people seemed to understand the origins of our global financial meltdown, and that most people viewed it as some sort of accident. Ferguson, who received his PhD from M.I.T. in political science & economics, knew the reasons behind what happened, and, more importantly, knew they were relatively easy to understand, if only someone were willing to thoroughly explain them. Ferguson also commented that he wanted to make a film that didn’t belong to any political party, and he succeeded. Every President of the last thirty years gets spotlighted on several bad decisions.

Inside Job uses its running time to do two things. Firstly, through Damon’s narration and interviews with several academics, an incredibly detailed (yet easy to grasp) account of exactly how this happened begins to emerge. Secondly, and more entertaining, Ferguson uses new interviews and archival footage of the people that screwed us, and asks them the tough questions. Sadly, most of them refused to be interviewed, which the film uses for comedic effect. (The producer told the TIFF audience that she wouldn’t accept people simply not responding to her requests as a “no.” Instead, she hounded them until they actually declined to be interviewed, so their refusal to take part was on the official record.) Amazingly though, a handful of people did allow themselves to be interviewed, such as one of Bush’s financial advisors who stepped down just two months before the crash because, as he says, “one of my textbooks needed revising.” You might think that would be one of the best quotes from the film, but it’s not even close. Just wait until you see footage of Michigan senator Carl Levin brutally grilling an AIG executive during a congressional hearing. The amount of squirming some of these people do on camera as Ferguson asks them uncomfortable questions is just one of the many rewards of the film.

But the really great thing about this film isn’t just that the subject matter is handled thoroughly and intelligently, but that it exhibits true filmmaking technique to get its ideas across. When the film is covering the “greed is good” glory days of Wall Street in the 1980s, Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” is being pumped out at deafening volumes. In an interview with a pre-scandal Elliot Spitzer, Ferguson has him comment on the “vices” of Wall Street moneymen spending vast sums on prostitutes, which Spitzer smirks and laughs at. In a movie that should be anything but comedic, Ferguson still understands how to use humor to great effect. The pacing of the movie feels like a Hollywood action movie, except the villains win—they took over the world and left it for dead. It’s said that those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it; well, if the current financial status quo isn’t something you’re eager to see repeated, then you owe it to yourself to see this movie.

On Tap for Tomorrow: The red carpet premiere of Trust (a Michigan-filmed domestic drama starring Clive Owen), and my first volunteer shift.

ALSO, check out my latest review for annarbor.com here.

In Theaters: The American

The American

Directed by Anton Corbijn

The Grade: C+

Midway through The American, we see a few moments of Sergio Leone’s classic Spaghetti Western Once Upon a Time in the West playing in the background. This is wildly appropriate for two reasons; firstly, the Leone style of limited dialogue, long, stark, and sterile passages, and wide angle shots mixed with extreme close-ups is honorably recreated in The American. But more interestingly, Once Upon a Time in the West is appropriate to allude to because it took Henry Fonda, one of the most beloved and gentle figures in Hollywood history, and turned him into an unlikable killer—which is exactly what George Clooney is in The American.

Clooney plays Jack (or Edward, depending who he’s talking to), a sometimes assassin and/or crafter of extremely specific weaponry, who’s hiding out in Sweden enjoying semi-retirement. The movie opens with an attempt on Jack’s life, and Jack reacts in a way that ensures the audience loathes his character from the get-go. Quickly relocating to a small Italian village, Jack gets a contract to provide a rifle for a mysterious and beautiful young woman. Most of the next hour plus is spent watching Jack make a gun, walk about town, and have sex with a prostitute named Clara.

The director, Anton Corbijn, gambles that a good film can still be crafted around the story of an unlikable rogue trying to escape his fate, and normally he’d be right. But when your main character is both unlikable and boring? Well, now you’ve got problems.

To his credit, Corbijn still made an interesting movie, I just don’t know that “good” is an appropriate term to describe it. This is only Corbijn’s second feature, and the first time he’s ever left his rock ‘n’ roll comfort zone. He’s spent the majority of his career as one of the world’s best rock photographers (he’s likely taken every photo of U2 you’ve ever seen, including the great cover of their 2000 album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind,” which featured the band in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport), and his first film, 2007’s Control, was a biopic of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division. Adapted from the novel “A Very Private Gentleman,” by Martin Booth, The American is the first time Corbijn has ever worked in fiction.

Even though very little happens, The American is still mildly enthralling, if only for the expertly crafted visuals and Leone-like pacing. Corbijn’s photography has always thrived on the use of negative space, and The American follows the same aesthetic. Clooney is constantly tucked to one side of the frame, with the background typically being the main subject of each carefully orchestrated shot.

The movie concludes on a few interesting high notes, though Jack’s inevitable romantic interest for Clara verges on the ridiculous. As far as the viewer can discern, the only quality Clara possesses is that she spends most of her screen time in various states of undress. The American is, as one would expect from a photographer director, beautiful to look at, but it’s ultimately a fairly sterile and nihilistic experience.

In Theaters: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Directed by Edgar Wright

The Grade: B+

The last decade or so has given us a handful of movies based on videogames (Max Payne, Resident Evil, etc), and a sizable number of movies that quite unintentionally looked like video games (300 and the “new” Star Wars trilogy immediately come to mind). But Scott Pilgrim vs. the World might be the first movie to look like a videogame on purpose, as well as use videogame logic to tell its story. The result feels quite refreshing, and like so many great ideas, it makes one wonder why no one had thought of it before.

Michael Cera, who has evolved into the nerd equivalent of America’s sweetheart (Superbad, Juno, cult-classic TV series Arrested Development), plays the title character: a 22-year old bassist in the yet-to-make-it garage rock trio Sex Bob-Omb. Sharing a squalid Toronto apartment (and bed) with his gay roommate Wallace and Wallace’s unending parade of unlikely male conquests, Scott has started dating a painfully naïve high-schooler named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), who his band mates worry will “geek out” on them. But Scott’s world changes forever when he sees Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), first in his dreams, and then at a party, where he tries to pique her interest with obscure Pac-Man trivia. With her neon-dyed hair and New York bred personality, Scott hopelessly falls for her before finding out the catch: to win Ramona as his girlfriend, he must first defeat, in battle, her seven evil ex-boyfriends.

Adapted from the popular series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim was directed and co-written by Edgar Wright, who previously made the enjoyable genre homages Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Like those first two films, Wright uses Scott Pilgrim to write a love-letter to an art form that is generally perceived as lowbrow. Even before the movie begins, cinema reality is distorted as the Universal Studios logo is pixilated into 16-bit and the iconic score is adapted to sound like it came from the Nintendo classic Metroid.

The key element in Scott Pilgrim’s visual identity is not to craft entire scenes out of CGI, but rather to layer graphics over the frame that evoke recognizable gaming conventions. For example, each time Scott Pilgrim faces off against a new nemesis, a giant “vs.” appears between the combatants and they receive life bars, just as they would in, say, Street Fighter II. Scott receives things like a “1-up,” and his vanquished enemies explode into coins. Various fight scenes pay tribute to classic games like Super Smash Brothers, Guitar Hero, and Tony Hawk.

But the most interesting thing about Pilgrim isn’t its visual ingenuity, but rather how it uses the inane logic of classic scrolling action games to tell its story and segue between scenes. Just as Super Mario could descend through a pipe and be in an entirely different location, Scott Pilgrim can walk through a door and end up further away than the next room. Each stage of the game that is his life comes packaged with it’s own “boss”—one of Ramona’s evil exes—that must be defeated before he can move on to the next level. In the best scene, Scott even harnesses an extra life to restart a level when he doesn’t like how things were progressing on the first go around.

This may all sound ridiculous, and it is. There’s a very good possibility that anyone raised before Nintendo became an inescapable part of childhood will think this is a laughably bad movie. But with original songs by Beck, and a great supporting cast that includes Jason Schwartzman and Chris Evans as villains unreluctant to ham it up, Anna Kendrick as Scott’s gossipy sister, and Hung star Thomas Jane in a cameo as a member of the Vegan police, Pilgrim definitely has a lot going for it. The deciding factor might be this: if you can still name some of the characters from Mortal Kombat, then chances are decent you’ll love this movie. But if you read the previous sentence and thought “kombat” is spelled wrong, Scott Pilgrim might not be for you.

In Theaters: I Am Love

I Am Love

Directed by Luda Guadagnino

The Grade: C+

It begins like The Godfather. A large, wealthy Italian family gathers for a celebration (a birthday in this case, rather than a wedding), and the family business becomes an important topic of conversation. Director Luda Guadagnino (working from a script he co-wrote with three others) uses the same strategy Francis Ford Coppola harnessed almost forty years earlier to quickly and fluidly introduce every member of a large family and where they stand in the hierarchy.

Tilda Swinton, in perhaps the best role of her career so far (she also co-produced) plays Emma, a beautiful Russian woman who completely recreated herself as an Italian when she married into the Recchis, a powerful and affluent Milanese family. Her husband, Tancredi, and their eldest son, Edoardo, have just been informed they will inherit control of their family’s textile business from Tancredi’s father. We also meet Elisabetta, daughter to Emma and Tancredi, and Antonio, a talented chef and friend to Edoardo. When Antonio later becomes a fixture of the Recchi household (he and Edoardo plan to open a restaurant together) his presence and cooking acumen awaken in Emma a desire to pursue more passion in her life—a challenge Emma is inspired to undertake when Elisabetta emerges as a lesbian. And, as these things so often do, this pursuit of passion results in an affair with Antonio.

The beautifully shot opening sequence is meant to portray the buried emptiness that hides in Emma’s soul, but what it really introduces us to is the emptiness of the movie. From the passing of the torch in the Recchi family that opens the film, and continuing until the final moment, none of the major events that change the characters seem to change them in ways that make sense—and some of those events make even less sense. When Emma begins her affair with Antonio, she seems to exude more passion for his cooking than for him. There is a lengthy and dramatic scene of Emma eating Antonio’s cooking for the first time, where she reacts to a plate of shrimp as though it were sex on a stick. (In an interview with Charlie Rose, Swinton said she and Guadagnino jokingly referred to this scene as “prawnography,” and that it was inspired by the way food was portrayed in the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille.) Yet when it comes to making love for the first time, Emma and Antonio act as though they are performing a carefully plotted lab experiment; step one: unbutton blouse, step two: unzip pants, etc. We’re supposed to see the passionate core of Emma’s true being coming into its own, but how can we buy into that idea when Emma’s actions don’t really let us?

I Am Love has three things going for it: The cinematography, the score, and Tilda Swinton. Swinton, who has always been a good actress (she won an Oscar for 2007’s George Clooney-starring legal drama Michael Clayton), creates interest and sympathy even during sequences when the story seems to betray her character. And, as anyone who’s seen a trailer for the film can attest, it looks gorgeous. Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (whose most notable previous credit would probably be 2003’s Swimming Pool) excels at finding the beauty and serenity in closely focused shots of ordinary things—flowers, bugs, food, architecture, water, etc. Even many of the shots of people in motion are framed in unique and aesthetically exciting ways, including a faux-chase sequence in San Remo that was clearly inspired by Hitchcock.

The score, by Pulitzer Prize winning composer John Adams, is an interesting matter, because it’s both fantastic, and fantastically out of place. There’s barely a moment when the score doesn’t call attention to itself, but is that really a good thing? In the film’s closing moments, the music crescendos with such bombastic pomp and circumstance that it felt like we were hearing the audio track to the wrong film. It was the sound of The Death Star being destroyed, and evil being vanquished from the galaxy. What it was most certainly not the sound of is the conclusion of a domestic drama. Too bad that’s what was on screen.

For most of I Am Love’s duration, Swinton’s daring performance and Le Saux’s exciting camera work manage to overcompensate for a poorly executed story. But a major event in the movie’s final act, which changes the status quo of the Recchi family in a way that just seems cheap and unfair, really leaves a sour after-taste to a movie that was only vaguely sweet to begin with. I Am Love feels like it’s supposed to be a film about the necessity of pursuing one’s passions, but it nearly turns into a cautionary tale on why not to.

In Theaters: The Kids are All Right

The Kids are All Right

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko

The Grade: A-

There’s been an increasingly distressing problem with Indie-movies over the last several months, but we’ve finally been delivered the antidote in the form of Lisa Cholodenko’s wonderful comedy The Kids are All Right. The film stars Annette Benning and Julianne Moore as a Southern California lesbian couple (Nic and Jules, respectively) with two teenage children from an anonymous sperm donor, and their world gets chaotic when their daughter (Alice in Wonderland’s Mia Wasikowska) turns eighteen, making her legally allowed to hunt down her biological father. When Paul, the father played by Mark Ruffalo, shows up as an über-cool, motorcycle-driving, restaurant proprietor, only Nic is hesitant to accept him into the carefully balanced family fold, and, as you might expect, hilarity ensues. But something else ensues as well, and it’s that movie rarity we call truth.

The epidemic with Indie-movies of recent vintage has been, quite simply, a lack of reality. This problem, I believe, goes back to the tremendous box office success of 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, which was an enjoyable and funny film, but it created an appetite in audiences to see ironic comedies about families in which every member has an impossibly unique eccentricity (a genre birthed from Wes Anderson movies and the cult TV series Arrested Development). The result has been recent movies like Greenberg, City Island, and Cyrus, which were all funny, and all way too ridiculous for their own good. In each of these movies, the main characters have been so utterly whacked out with increasingly bizarre personality disorders, that it’s been difficult to find a glimmer of reality amidst the comedic devices. An example: when Ben Stiller’s titular Greenberg makes out his grocery list, it contains exactly two items: whiskey and ice cream sandwiches. Did I laugh? Of course I did (it’s funny!), but unless you have a similar grocery list, on what level are we supposed to relate to characters like these?

What The Kids are All Right really has going for it is that it doesn’t feel the need to mortgage the characters’ psyches in exchange for a cheap laugh. Every funny moment in the movie (and trust me, they are bountiful) feels born from genuine human interaction, and so does every moment of heartbreak (yup, there are a few of those too). When we see the first meeting between Paul and his two teenage children, it’s remarkably awkward because none of the three parties know how to temper real conversation with the far more important task of feeling each other out. But in some of the genuine advice Paul later doles out to his kids, we see that maybe fatherhood comes more naturally than he (or we) realized.

But while the title may tell us point blank how the kids are, the great unknown that the movie deals with is in whether the parents are all right. The upheaval that Paul’s presence creates in the meticulously orchestrated family structure that Nic and Jules have created threatens not just the kids’ behavior (watch out, the daughter’s on a motorcycle!), but also the parents. When Paul hires Jules to kick off her new landscaping business with a massive project on his backyard, Nic is queasy about the idea; does she not want Paul and Jules spending time together, or does she have a deeper desire to see Jules fail at her business so she can still feel needed in her role as emotional caregiver of the family?

Cholodenko has made a few movies prior to this one (2002’s Laurel Canyon being the most notable), and she and co-writer Stuart Blumberg drew from her real-life relationship with Wendy Melvoin, former lead guitarist of Prince’s 1980s backing band, The Revolution. But you’d be foolish if you think this movie will somehow not be about real relationships simply because the protagonists are a same-sex couple. Julianne Moore delivers a monologue towards the end of the film that was like a double shot of espresso truth; it’ll really wake you up, and we’ll probably be seeing snippets of it again next awards season.

Really, the only justification I have for a slight docking of the movie’s otherwise perfect grade is the uncertainty in the way one of the characters is left at the film’s conclusion, but it’s not fair to give away too much. 2010 is now more than half over, and this is—along with Toy Story 3—the year’s most original and perfect comedy/drama so far. And how interesting and ironic is it that the originality of The Kids are All Right is rooted in its adherence to reality instead of the departure from it?

In Theatres: Inception

In Theatres: Inception

Directed by Christopher Nolan

The Grade: A

I walked out of the theatre after Inception—2010’s most interesting movie thus far—with five big questions on my mind (none of which were “what the hell just happened?”):

1. Does Leonardo DiCaprio have a dead wife that he’s managed to hide from the paparazzi?

Over the last decade, one thing about Leonardo DiCaprio has become abundantly obvious: he’s not just in it for the money. DiCaprio has starred in exactly 10 movies in the last dozen calendar years, all of which have been prestige projects by Oscar-caliber directors. Despite a huge demand for his talents, DiCaprio doesn’t even make one movie a year, while most of his fellow A-listers more than double that output. So, it probably goes without saying that when the man agrees to make a movie, on at least some level, he must really love and identify with his character. With that thought in mind, consider this: In each of the last two movies DiCaprio has made, (Inception and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, which came out not even five months ago), he’s played a man so consumed with guilt over the death of his wife—for which he may or may not have been responsible—and so tortured over her continued appearances in his dreams, that he retreats into the farthest recesses of his own mind to cope with the memories. I suppose it could be coincidence, but that’s an extremely unique oeuvre for someone to make two consecutive movies in. It makes me want to ask the man “Umm, dude, is there something you’re not telling us?”

2. Does this movie have any antecedent?

The cliché in Hollywood has always been that everything is recycled in one way or another, but consensus seems to be that it’s been getting far worse of late. The past few summers, while still a dumping ground for a hefty amount of franchise trash, have at least given us some genuine classics like Wall-E, Inglorious Basterds, The Dark Knight, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Star Trek. But summer 2010 has not only been bereft of quality (Toy Story 3 has been the only good movie of the season thus far), it’s been downright putrid for originality. It’s one thing to reuse good ideas, but the movies flooding the multiplexes the last several Fridays have seemed to steal bad ideas (and deservedly, most of them have epically failed at the box office). The A-Team, compared to everything else, felt like a good movie simply because it reminded us of the 1980s. If that’s a strategy for quality, we’re in far worse shape than we thought.

And now comes Inception, Christopher Nolan’s latest spelunker of the mind. To say the movie is merely original doesn’t adequately get the point across, because calling something “original” these days might just mean it isn’t a threequel. There is undoubtedly a bit of influence from David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001), which was the first major movie to allow dream logic to permeate story structure, and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), which made a serious attempt to recreate the visual stylings of a person’s subconscious. Nolan does expound a bit on some of the “we’ll introduce the rules as we go along” narrative techniques he first used in Memento (2001), and I suppose it could also be said that the story has echoes of Phillip K. Dick, even though there aren’t any specific similarities. But really, that’s it. While Inception may have a distant uncle or two, it’s totally without parents. And really, how many movies can we say that about?

3. Does Inception have any hope of being considered a success with its alleged 160 million dollar budget?

I worry the simple answer here is “no.” Once you throw in marketing, Inception likely cost upwards of 180 million. On one hand, you could argue the budget is justified because it truly does show up on the screen. The special effects turn the dazzle up to eleven with stunning trickery and jarring visuals—wait until you see Paris turned over on itself—rather than mundane CGI details, and the locations hop from Tokyo to Morocco, then Paris to the Alps (most James Bond movies don’t even cover that much ground). But even though the budget translated directly to quality, I worry that spending that much money on a movie like Inception might have been a poor business decision.

Put simply, Inception has to make substantially over 200 million just to avoid being considered a failure, and it probably has to get within striking distance of 300 million to be deemed a total success. To put that in perspective, only three other movies from 2010 have hit the 300 million mark (Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2, and Toy Story 3—all stemming from major properties), while the alleged summer blockbusters Robin Hood, Prince of Persia, The A-Team, and Knight and Day haven’t even made 300 million combined—and those were all supposed to be crowd pleasers. It’s difficult to really call Inception a crowd pleaser because of how much mental heavy lifting it demands from the viewer. Combine that with the fact that Inception isn’t part of a franchise or related in any way to a previously existing property, and it’s difficult to understand how 300 million dollars worth of people will fill the seats. Inception’s marketing team is attempting to sell the movie based on four things: the director/screenwriter of the second most popular film of the last ten years, arguably the best lead actor under forty, a cool concept that has never really been seen before, and previews that give away virtually nothing of the story. Will that be enough? The success or failure of Inception will end up depending on two things—the compulsion many people will feel to see the movie twice, and great word of mouth. Repeat viewers shouldn’t be a problem, but great word of mouth depends on…

4. Will audiences be happy with Inception?

Again, I worry the simple answer is “no.” I have no doubt that sci-fi nerds and cinephiles (like me) will, by and large, love the movie. But what about the couples that go to a movie theatre once or twice a month? Will they like it enough to tell their friends? Or, in the worst possible scenario, will they tell their friends to stay away? Inception is a movie that demands a lot of attention, and doesn’t reward the viewer with easy-to-understand answers or unambiguous conclusions. The climactic half hour of the movie takes place simultaneously on five different planes of consciousness and requires the audience to keep track of the relationships between them. Most people will find the movie’s ending either brilliant or intolerably frustrating, with no in-between. Will viewers appreciate this?

Of course, maybe I’m just being overly cynical. After all, The Dark Knight was the smartest and most complex super-hero movie ever made, and it also made the most money. Sure, virtually every “tentpole” movie released this summer has bombed, but maybe that’s because they mostly sucked. Perhaps a brainy, trippy, well-crafted, innovative movie with astonishing visuals is exactly what audiences have been waiting for. We can only hope, because if Inception doesn’t make its money back, it’s the last 160 million dollar risk on an original concept we’ll be seeing for a looooong time. Savor it.

5. Is Christopher Nolan the best director working right now?

Discounting anyone whose made fewer than five movies (sorry Jason Reitman and Sophia Coppola, your body of work is too small to be in this discussion), and only going on the last 10-15 years of output, Nolan has six main competitors: The Coen Brothers, Clint Eastwood, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, and Quentin Tarantino. Soderbergh, for all of his virtues and risk-taking, has the worst quality batting average of the bunch, so he’s out. The Coens might be the best when they’re on their A-game, but they also released two shockingly bad movies in the past decade (The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty), so it’s difficult to place them at the top. Eastwood and Scorsese have remained unusually vital and prolific well into retirement age, releasing some truly great movies over the last seven or eight years, but Eastwood has also made a few too many average films (Invictus, Changeling, and Flags of Our Fathers), while Scorsese’s résumé is a bit too hampered by our knowledge that his prime was three decades ago. I think Fincher is great, but I remain in a small minority of people who completely loved The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, while barely anybody even saw Zodiac (and for shame—it was fantastic). I’m also keenly aware that I enjoy Quentin Tarantino’s eccentricities and stylistic arrogance—the same qualities that turn many people off his work—perhaps a little too much.

Christopher Nolan, though, doesn’t really have any red flags; he’s made seven movies in twelve years, three of which are masterpieces (Memento, The Dark Knight, and, yes, Inception), and none that rate worse than a “B.” His first movie, 1998’s Following, remains an undiscovered gem; Memento has been cited as one of the most influential of the 2000s; Batman Begins started the current fad of franchise reboots; and The Dark Knight might be the greatest ever of its genre (the super-hero flick). Nolan’s movies have achieved the rare Spielbergian quality of entertaining the masses without sacrificing substance and brains. Nolan would also make one hell of an auteur theory subject, as all of his films have, at their core, been about obsessions that run so deeply they threaten sanity and rationality. Christopher Nolan, until further notice, and with no real power vested in me, I hereby anoint you unofficial Alpha-Dog of the directing community—now please just don’t screw up Batman 3.