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I have a friend — I'll call him "Domenic" because his name is Domenic — who is as big a fan of the Star Wars prequel trilogy as I am ... not.
He's of the opinion that Revenge of the Sith is the best of the Star Wars movies while I rank it somewhere ahead of The Phantom Menace and just behind every other movie ever made not starring Hayden Christensen, up to and including a student film I took part in when I was in college called Das Volkswagen.
But it's not like his perspective is out of the ordinary. A lot of people share his opinion (see, e.g., here, here and here).
So I'm thinking, what's the deal? How could one of us be so fundamentally wrong about something so unimportant, while I, as usual, am so right? And I puzzled and puzzed 'til my puzzler was sore, then I thought of something I hadn't thought of before — maybe Christmas, I thought, doesn't come from a store Domenic is half my age. And that actually makes a difference.
When I saw my first Star Wars movie, I was sixteen, it was the summer of 1977, and there was and only ever had been the one Star Wars movie, a standalone sci-fi action adventure flick playing in theaters for the first time that year. Han shot first, there was no Jabba the Hut sequence, the attack on the death star was half as long ...
And you also have to remember, there were no science fiction movies in those days. We had 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968, some B-pictures from the '50s, Star Trek and Lost in Space reruns on television — and that was it! No Aliens franchise, no Indiana Jones, no Terminator, no Blade Runner, no Predator, no Lord of the Rings, no Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not even a Superman movie!
No nothing, just Star Wars ... and it was like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
It was three years before the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back came out, and three more after that before the rather disappointing Muppets in Space, a.k.a. Return of the Jedi, finished off the trilogy.
And then there was nothing for seventeen years.
In the meantime, if you cared about such things, you had to work out Darth Vader's backstory in your own head. Me, I pictured him as a hero of the Clone Wars, a hot shot pilot who, in a moment of extreme peril for his family or friends or the Republic, turned to the dark side and in the process, lost his soul.
Basically, Michael Corleone in space.
Not that it mattered. The original trilogy was the story of Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader was not much more than the evil MacGuffin that kept the plot moving. How he turned out to be Luke's father, well, space pilots are a typically randy bunch, I figured, prone to picking up green hookers in space bars ... you know, it didn't really matter!
And then the prequel trilogy came along and, what the holy hell!, Darth Vader turned out to be a little boy who grew up to be a whiny, cockblocked teenager who took his revenge on the galaxy because he couldn't spend all his time mooning over Natalie Portman.
Talk about your letdowns!
But look at that story from Domenic's perspective. A child of the 1990s, he saw the first six Star Wars movies in the order George Lucas now intends them to be seen, starting with The Phantom Menace and ending with Return of the Jedi. And that series was never about Luke Skywalker, it was about Anakin Skywalker (the future Mr. Darth Vader to you, pal).
For Domenic, Star Wars only ever unfolded in one way. No opportunity to be disappointed, no reason to be.
The point being, no work of art is ever a pristine, unchanging monument to objective truth. You bring a lifetime of experiences and expectations and prejudices with you every time you walk into a theater or a museum and that colors your interpretation of what you see. There's not one Mona Lisa, there are seven billion, and yours is probably just as valid as mine.
Something to think about before you go yelling at the kids to get off your lawn.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I don't know who, if anyone, will agree with me, but I think Lindsay Lohan's work in the (superior) remakes of The Parent Trap and Freaky Friday, along with the classic Tina Fey comedy Mean Girls (celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year), is proof enough that she was a major talent, at least for a little while.
That Lohan was later undone by her manipulative parents, our vicious, celebrity-obsessed culture and her own inner demons doesn't make it any less so.
As someone once said, "The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long" ... or maybe we just like to break pretty girls on the rack from time to time.
We here at the Monkey wish her well.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
2003 was a year for very good movies that I'm not sure I've ever watched twice.
When I set up these polls, I voted for Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation and had nearly completed a review of it when I realized The Lord of the Rings is the sort of movie — well-made, wildly popular, with a long-lasting impact on the culture — I often argue the Academy ought to recognize, usually doesn't, but in this case actually did, so figured I should put my money where my mouth is and, despite the fact that it's not my cup of tea, vote for it.
Then I decided I don't have an opinion.
It happens every now and then.
I leave it to you to sort things out.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Three directors made the best films of their careers in 2002 — Todd Haynes, Hayao Miyazaki and Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund. Well, that's four directors, but between them, they made three movies ...
In addition, Peter Jackson reached the midpoint in his mammoth Lord of the Rings trilogy. And some guy named Steven Spielberg made not one but two really good movies.
Lots to choose from.
I went with Miyazaki because the only person who plausibly rivals him for the title of history's greatest animator is Walt Disney. No Miyazaki, no Japanese anime, at least not on this side of the Pacific.
By the way, here's one of my favorite quotes from the late great Roger Ebert about animation generally and Miyazaki specifically:
"Already I have heard from a few people who don't want to see it "because it's Japanese." This is solid-gold ignorance. "Is it only dubbed?" I was asked. You dummy! All animated films are dubbed! Little Nemo can’t really speak!"
The man was a genius. Miss him every Friday ...
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I recently took time to revisit the works of Wes Anderson, from his tentative first outing Bottle Rocket to last year's entertainingly peculiar paean to the early days of the space race, Asteroid City — and everything in between.
And I swear I wrote a lengthy post, ranking his films, etc. But I can't find it anywhere. Maybe it's in a mislabeled file someplace. Maybe I only thought I wrote it. Maybe I just laid it all out for the dog on one of our long morning walks (as I am wont to do) and then forgot to type it up.
Well, if I did, the dog's not giving it up and my brain has already dumped that part of my memory to make room for Thursday night trivia.
Suffice it to say, after initially dismissing it during its run twenty-plus years ago, I now feel that Anderson's 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums is worthy of nominations for picture, actor, director and supporting actress. Anderson is a quirky director — "twee" is the word most often associated with his work — and it takes time and the right frame of mind to get used to him.
I've acquired the taste.
The Royal Tenenbaums, a comedy that plays like a lost chapter from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, explores one of Anderson's favorite themes — family dysfunction. Gene Hackman is a charming con man who would like to reconnect with his brilliant but thoroughly screwed up kids (Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow) — because he's dying? Because he loves and misses them? Or because he's broke and just got thrown out of his apartment?
Well, as we've spent the last decade or so learning to our chagrin, truth is at best flexible and very much in the eye of the beholder.
The first time around, I found it all insufferably wacky but on second viewing, it felt more like one of those classic 1930s screwball comedies with an undercurrent of melancholy running through it — very much like My Man Godfrey, say, filmed in bright primary colors instead of glorious black-and-white.
In fact, I'll bet you could swap out William Powell for Gene Hackman and get just as big a kick out of both movies ... just thinking out loud here in the Monkey house.
Also stars Anjelica Huston, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Danny Glover and Seymour Cassel.
My favorite Wes Anderson film is still The Grand Budapest Hotel (read my review here) but I'd also recommend The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch (if you like old New Yorker magazine articles) and the aforementioned Asteroid City.
On the whole, whimsical, gentle, amusing.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I've trashed the infamous Sight & Sound movie poll often enough (here and here) that it's only fair to mention when they get one right.
Directed by Wong Kar-wai, In the Mood for Love is a bittersweet romance between two lonely people (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung) who realize their spouses are cheating on them, meet to commiserate and, inevitably, fall in love. But instead of a traditional rom-com, noir thriller or sweaty sex drama, the film is filled with longing, misunderstanding and fidelity to a moral code that serves no great purpose.
To quote film critic Peter Travers, "in the hands of a hack, In the Mood for Love could have been a snickering sex farce. In the hands of Wong Kar-wai ... the film is alive with delicacy and feeling." And Scott Tobias wrote, "Further complemented by the gentle lull of Nat King Cole songs, In The Mood For Love casts a dreamy and melancholic spell that remains unbroken long after the closing credits have rolled."
In the Mood for Love was an immediate hit with audiences and critics alike, and directly influenced such filmmakers as Sofia Coppola and Barry Jenkins.
Highly recommended.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
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