Isabelle Huppert,Lesley Manville, Michelle Williams and Ed Harris in the Best Films of 2010 You Never Saw

Isabelle Huppert White Material
Peter Weir's epic adventure The Way Back was in theaters for barely a week in the area where I live. Blue Valentine, for which Michelle Williams received an Oscar nomination, wasn't around much longer.  Another Year and White Material, two critically acclaimed films that are among the best of the year, lasted just two weeks at the local art house. 

Lesley Manville  Another Year

Few of us had much opportunity to see these great films. Producers, with their convoluted distribution methods, haphazardly release so many good films,with such minimal promotion and screen time, that even the most dedicated cinephiles have to be quick and aware to catch these movies.  

    

So every year MLB turns the spotlight on those few films, those standouts, that are just as good, if not better, than any Academy Award nominee movies that have garnered critical raves and boast terrific performances; movies that, for reasons even marketing gurus can't explain, you never got a chance to see.

                                 

Michelle Williams  Blue Valentine                  

And keep in mind, studios relegate January through April for dumping their worst, lowest end movies. So seeking out these neglected gems is a better bet than patronizing new releases.
For a chance to see them on the big screen, second run theaters
are the way to go. Or go the DVD route.

Either way, don't, don't miss them.

Ed Harris The Way Back

ANOTHER YEAR: MIKE LEIGH
British filmmaker Mike Leigh makes movies that can only be described as closely observed and honest, creating a world that reflects people in normal circumstances -- good, bad, caring, indifferent. He creates real and unique characters that, conventional though they may be, come off as almost enchanting. He is known for shaping scripts from the improvisations of his cast, allowing them to inhabit the people they play. And it works. Leigh's characters are as authentic as your neighbors, or, just as likely, you and me.

I measure his success based on his superb last film, Happy- Go- Lucky (2008). It was about a constantly happy school teacher who's perpetual optimism is too loud, too much, and annoying to everyone. It had a knock-your-socks-off performance by Sally Hawkins -- so good that all these years later she's still in my mind.

Lesley Manville

So I was pleasantly shocked to see Leigh not only direct another virtuoso performance from an actress in Another Year, but make a movie just as good as his last.  Lesley Manville is nuanced, rich, and most importantly, not maudlin as Mary, a lonely, yearning, over-drinking middle-age woman. At first you like her, then, as she can't help but publicly cultivate her private pain, becomes a nuisance. The power in her performance comes from how uneasy she makes you feel while pulling at you with an affect that's almost attractive. She elicits a gut reaction of empathy you can't quite believe. I thought Manville's performance topped all of Oscar's 2010 best actress nominees. She wasn't even nominated.

The movie is about the doings of a middle age couple Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) through the course of one year. They're happy, make fun of their cartoon character names, have people over for dinner, and garden; like many couples you know. Leigh stages scene after scene of their regular lives -- work, family, kitchen conversations -- and the magic comes in how he connects you with each character through everyday events. Love them, shocked by them, desire to be like them, whatever you feel, as in Happy-Go-Lucky, you'll come away remembering and caring for them all.

THE WAY BACK:  PETER WEIR

Seeing The American starring George Clooney last year, I thought 'how wonderful:" this movie so effectively recreated those Jean Pierre Melville tough guy movies from the sixties, so accurately captured that sang-froid, smooth veneer, it offered the opportunity for current generations, who have never seen these kind of movies, to discover this genre. The Way Back does the same for that bygone era of David Lean wide vista, classic adventure sagas.

Set in 1940, a hard-wired gang of Gulag prisoner-of-war escapees cross thousands of miles of desert, mountains, and forests in Siberia, India, and China trying not only to reach freedom, but to wrest the future of their own lives from those governing forces beyond their control, both natural and political. It's an arresting and detailed depiction of the journey. In one superbly composed and edited sequence, master cinematographer Russell Boyd creates a palpable feel for the gritty rawness of wind and sand as the group runs for cover in advance of a sandstorm. It had me ducking, an experience I haven't had at the movies in a long time. Cold and wet, hungry and thirsty, slogging through the boring and brutal, and most of all, ratcheting up the cruel energy and exhilaration necessary in the hard struggle to survive, is what this movie is about.      

Those who have criticized the film's characters for being remote, estranged even, have missed the point. Here action is character, and Ed Harris stands out as the restrained,wise, knowing-life-is-unfair stoic. He carries our eyes and minds through this struggle of trying to stay human in an inhumane world.

This is Peter Weir's first film since his exhilarating Master and Commander in 2003. After making the film festival rounds in the fall of 2010, and garnering critical raves and good word of mouth, The Way Back was dumped into general theaters by distributor Newmarket in January 2011 without so much as a word of promotion. Nothing could overcome that deficiency, so it was no surprise when the movie didn't attract an audience and Newmarket pulled it immediately. Hopefully it'll find new life in second run theaters before ending up on DVD and Netflix.

WHITE MATERIAL: CLAIRE DENIS
At age 58, French icon Isabelle Huppert continues to offer audiences more intimacy and energy than actresses half her age (check her out in Michael Haneke's film The Piano Teacher). She embodies her roles like no one else I can think of, expressing through body movement, face, and eyes what her character feels and thinks -- and what action she's going take next. Her natural sixth sense of physical communication, like all the best actresses, transcends dialogue.

In White Material, Huppert's corporal aesthetic matches the boldly physical, fluid action sequences that characterize French director Claire Denis. Huppert plays Maria,who runs a coffee plantation in an unnamed African country in an unknown time, who is fearlessly trying to get her crop in during an armed and bloody revolution. Sure, the movie has a message about white colonials exploiting African nations, but Denis (who was raised in French colonized Senegal and Cameroon) is after so much more.

Isabelle Huppert: Vulnerable yet Determined in White Material

Maria, who can't stop her employees, frightened of the hard-edged cruelty practiced by both sides, from fleeing the plantation to seek safety, sets off on an individual journey to find the labor, trucks, and help she needs to harvest the coffee. Everyone is against her; they tell her she should leave for her own safety, but she won't, she can't. Even though the revolution has over-turned the former power structure and she is no longer top dog, this is her home, she has no where else to go.

The photo still above is just one example of how Denis visually uses Huppert's physical acting to portray this conflict: Maria, in the middle of her plantation, is searching; a road going nowhere, somewhere?  The land is dry, the road is dusty, the crop is drying out. Sundress blowing in the warm breeze, with that diminutive, girlish figure, she's certainly a vulnerable target. But her shoulders are strong and firm and the stance is determined, confrontational. The people she has lived with and hired, knows as colleagues and friends, are now against her, and she has no idea why. She's not with the other whites, not a part of those exploitive white colonials.

Who is she then? Maria's myopic point of view is almost delusional. But Denis pulls us along with this not so likable heroine who's disconnected from the people of her country. Maria could be a just a conventional movie representative of the evils of colonization, but Denis makes it personal, as if we're part of this, which we are.




BLUE VALENTINE: DEREK CIANFRANCE
Blue Valentine is more than a candid story of a dissolving marriage; it's about the end of a love. A blue collar married couple, Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling), both caring parents, reach the point they can no longer be together, or remember how they ever became a couple in the first place. There are lots of reasons how they came to this, but neither could actually explain the how or why. Starting off where most movies end, when that "happily ever after" glow has disappeared and life happens to love, these two are fighting a battle neither can win.

Writer-director Cianfrance's screenplay doesn't take sides or cast blame. There's no moral lesson here. When Cindy and Dean fight in the office where Cindy works, the gritty and frightening reality to all the screaming and chaos makes you squirm and feel embarrassed -- then moves to where you feel empathy for both characters. In my favorite scene, Cindy and Dean have a discussion-fight driving to a hotel room in a vain attempt to spice up their marriage. Shot from the back seat, speaking to the other one shot at a time, like they're talking to thin air, they talk about  Cindy's old boyfriend. Why did she bring him up? Why is he jealous?  These two are so distant that even as they try to be together and loving, everything they say creates more fear and mistrust.

What raises this movie above the level of a kitchen-sink soap opera is the candid writing, the visual, open-to-both sides directing, and the remarkable intimacy and intensity of the acting. Cianfrance is said to have had Williams and Gosling live together for two weeks before filming started. If so, it certainly shows on the screen. But to focus on Williams because she was a  best actress Oscar nominee is to short change Gosling. He became hugely famous years back for that kissing-in-the-rain scene from The Notebook (see blog "Kissin' in the Rain" from Feb. 2010); but here, as a working class husband and father overwhelmed by life's changes, who doesn't know how or why he's losing his wife, and feels impotent about what to do, he matches Williams scene for scene. The movie wouldn't work if he didn't. You believe they are a real couple.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED SHORTS: LIVE ACTION

NA WEWE

THE CRUSH

Boys of all ages, sizes and different situations, dominate the live action short nominees this year. The Crush and The Confession tell coming-of-age stories about 8-10 year-olds; a last wish from a 15 year-old terminal cancer patient is the story of Wish 143; twenty-somethings behave like teens in God of Love; and in Na Wewe a boy is terrified as he's being sorted out for execution in Burundi's tribal warfare.

Who knows how this year's nominees ended up being so boy crazy. But, resemblance aside, these films offer emotional variety and complexity. And some lively, worthwhile viewing.

GOD OF LOVE  Luke Matheny  USA/18 min

Cool, fifties black and white cinematography mix with a jazzy, bohemian band and a comic story of unrequited love.  Raymond, lead singer and dart champion (yes, it works) loves Kelly, the drummer, who only has eyes for Fozzie, the guitar player, who doesn’t love Kelly back and, well, you get the idea. It’s when Raymond magically recieves a set of “love darts” he uses to make Kelly fall in love with him that the fun begins. All the silly illogic of who pairs up with who comes to be more enjoyable than most feature romantic comedies. A shout out to cameraman Bobby Webster for creating a hip, beat look to all the goings-on.

NA WEWE (YOU TOO)
Ivan Goldschmidt  Belgium/19min

                                                                                                        
Burundi 1994. Passengers on a bus traveling a country road fall right into the middle of the civil war between the nation’s Hutus and Tutsis tribes -- basically impulsive, irrational kids with guns, real guns. Everyone seems to get more frightened by the minute as gunmen try to sort who among the passengers is a Hutu or Tutsi. Goldschmidt is good at building the tension, and showing the confusion and fear of  both sides. In a nice added touch, he has a white man sitting in the bus just watching the whole scene.

THE CONFESSION  Tanel Toom  UK/26 min

Many Catholics have questioned the why of having young children go to confession. In its twisted, entertaining way, this short takes up that question. A couple of ten-year old boys commit a crime, because, because, well, they really have nothing to confess and you can't go to the priest with zilch in the way of sins. Things go from fun  to cruel and then, as if sliding on their own momentum, to horror film like deadly. Winner of best foreign film at the Student Academy Awards.
  

THE CRUSH  Michael Creagh  Ireland/15min

Michael Creagh directs his young son Oran in this mysteriously comic tale of an elementary school boy who falls in love with his teacher. The story goes along predictably until the young lad challenges the teacher's stunned boyfriend to a duel. Then the pace picks up and Creagh keeps you guessing as to what's going to, and what truthfully, happens.

WISH 143  Ian Barnes  UK/24 min

David suffers from terminal cancer and wants to have sex before he dies. Out of frustration, and good will, a with-it priest tending him in the hospital sets things up. Director Barnes and lead actor Sam Holland keep things from descending to pathos with a stream of steady humor and witty lines. There are some real funny bits spaced throughout. With an ending that's as true to what has gone before as it is sad and sweet.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED SHORTS -- ANIMATION

THE LOST THING

One great thing about the Academy Awards is how they provide much needed

notoriety to the booming market of short films. Every year

hundreds and hundreds make the rounds at film festivals all over the world,

and as a lover of shorts of every genre, I see as many as I can.

And The Academy does a terrific job in nominating the best.

            DAY AND NIGHT       Teddy Newton  USA/6min

PIXAR's decade long excellence in animation keeps rollin' as their features and shorts seem to get nominated, and win, every year. When bright, energetic Daytime meets dark, moody Nighttime an instant struggle between crescent moons and sunshine, rainbows and fireworks results as one tries to understand the other. An uncredited Wayne Dyer in a concluding voice gives you a clue as to the message. As a lead in to Toy Story 3 this is probably the most seen of the nominees; an edge with voters.

                             MADAGASCAR, CARNET DE VOYAGE                            
Bastien Dubois    France/11min

This visual diary takes us page by page through the African island nation with drawings that shift from pencil to water colors to realism. We ride through the country, walk through village, watch people go about their lives, and watch them watch back. Points of view shift quickly as the pages turn, creating the feel of being on the island yourself. Adding to the feel, video animator Dubois uses the rich, vibrant reds, oranges, and banana yellows that are so much a part of the island. High spirits through the closing credits, which are basically another short in themselves.

LET'S POLLUTE  GeeFwee Boedoe  USA/6min

"Don't Delay, Pollute Today."
This satire of those lame educational films from the 50s and 60s is from ex-Pixar animator Geefwee Boedoe with help from Day and Night's Teddy Newton. They've recreated that old-time, on the cheap animation to perfection and the energetic images keep the obvious message interesting. Good thing, too, for this short's shortness is a plus. Geared for younger viewers.

THE GRUFFALO
Jakob Schuh, Max Lange  UK/Germany/27 min

Adapted from a 1999 picture book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, this animated bedtime story was a huge hit on British TV. About the antics of a sharp and skillful mouse who avoids predators in the woods with tales of a make believe monster, he has to be even smarter when the monster, The Gruffalo, becomes real. With a visual nod to Maurice Sendak, the voice talents of Helen Bonham Carter, Tom Wilkinson, and John Hurt and, rare for a short, a memorable score by Rene Aubry. A wonderful production youngsters will enjoy.

THE LOST THING
Shaun Tan,  Andrew Ruhemann
Australia/UK  15min

This short's complex imagery mixes Joan Miro's surrealist paintings and the novel 1984, if you can imagine.Yet the story is simple -- when a young lad finds a "thing" while looking for bottle caps on a beach, he  takes it home to figure out what to do with it. No one seems to notice or care about "thing," including the boy's parents.

Tan not only wrote the picture book on which this animated short is based, he also worked on WALL-E (there's Pixar again). The Ruhemann- Tan team create eye-riveting landscapes that convey complex and contradictory moods -- a sort of melancholic hopefulness -- yet you never lose track of the story.

This is the best of the nominees and has my vote as the winner. Worth repeated viewings so will be a good buy on DVD.

THE COW WHO WANTED TO BE A HAMBURGER
Bill Plympton  USA/6min

This short made the last cut, but wasn't
nominated. I'm including it because I'm a big fan of Plympton's Plymptoons since seeing his 2008 three-minute animation Santa, The Fascist Years. His child-like imagery and fairy-tale style belie a subversive agenda about capitalism, advertising, and their influence on the young and impressionable. A calf watching hamburger ads  naturally wants to be the best hamburger ever. He even works out to get bigger and stronger. Then he finds out how misleading the ads were and is forced to face the true finality of his decision. An effective message, nicely told.