There are a few movies in my top ten that some of you people really dropped the ball on. Starting with number ten.
10. INHERENT VICE (Anderson, 2014)
Paul Thomas Anderson's pitch-perfect
Thomas Pynchon adaptation couldn't help but win over the hearts and
minds of cinephiles, yet somehow it mostly did. I couldn't have been
more shocked to read dismissive reviews from reputable critics who
found it boring, off-key, joyless, or whatever. I had no explanation
for it then, and after about ten more viewings, I remain every bit as
baffled.
Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) may be
the most endearing protagonist of the decade, a stoner detective who
still believes in the Utopian Dream of the '60s while also mourning
its now-obvious loss as the calendar flips to 1970. Like the
honorable cowboy in a world that no longer needs cowboys, Doc rides
the high country of Los Angeles through a rough landscape of hippies,
black-power activists, Neo-Nazi bikers, and rogue dentists on a quest
for a missing husband (among others) and for the love of his
ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterston). The eccentric shaggy-dog story
is hilarious, but is also imbued with an at-times overwhelming
poignancy by the constant longing for that lost paradise, a feeling
powerfully evoked by the film's opening image, a shot between two
beach houses looking out at the placid water.
Anderson populates the film with
fantastic supporting actors. From the instant she appears on screen,
Jeannie Berlin's flinty Aunt Reet practically demands her own
spin-off franchise. And as Bigfoot Bjornsen, the real L.A. cop who
plays a TV cop, Josh Brolin provides an antagonist to match ol' Doc,
equal parts authoritarian monster and pathetic coward. And Bigfoot
sure knows how to thaw a frozen banana.
I loved “Inherent Vice” so much I
raced back to the theater each of the next two days while I still had
the opportunity to lose myself in its elegiac world on the big
screen. And to soak up the killer soundtrack again. The movie also inspired me to read Thomas Pynchon, not just
“Inherent Vice” but all of Pynchon, from “V.” through
“Bleeding Edge.” “Mason & Dixon” is my favorite, in case
you want to know. That alone makes “Inherent Vice” one of the
films that has had the most direct and significant positive impact on
my life. It's difficult to write about it without wanting to return
for one more visit with Doc and the gang. Moto panakeiku!
9. HOLY MOTORS (Carax, 2012)
Director Leos Carax celebrates the
archaic but adaptable machine known as the human body from the film's
opening shots featuring Etienne-Jules Marey's 19th-century studies in
locomotion. It can't be a coincidence that Carax chose Kylie Minogue,
whose first pop hit was a cover of “The Loco-Motion,” for a major
cameo, right?
Human (???) dynamo Denis Lavant proves
to be a living, breathing Marey study himself, a lithe, feral body in
constant motion who, as the multi-talented Monsieur Oscar, conducts a
series of clandestine missions in Paris while being chauffeured in a
limo (another sleek, archaic machine) by Edith Scob. M. Oscar's
missions involve donning a motion-capture suit to write around with a
remarkably pliable actress, literally chewing the scenery, and
squeezing the hell out of an accordion in the most memorable musical number of the decade. There is truly no film performer in the world
even remotely similar to Denis Lavant.
“Holy Motors” maintains its kinetic
fury as it mourns losses both great and small, many of which involve
the modern consumer's unquestioning embrace of anything small and
portable and convenient because, as we all know, convenience is the
mother of all great art. For those of you who think that all the
fussing over the digital transformation of cinema (and other aspects
of culture and history) is just a bunch of Neo-Luddite hand-wringing,
all I have to say to you is : trois, douze, merde!
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