The "Mid-Year" Top Ten, #5 - #1

MOVIES.

5. BUBBLE (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
***1/2 out of ****

Steven Soderbergh has made a career out of rotation. Rising into the Hollywood limelight in 1989 with the small-market indie SEX, LIES & VIDEOTAPE, Soderbergh has spent the majority of his career attempting to balance big-budget projects like the Danny Ocean films and 2000's TRAFFIC with smaller, more personal films financed through his own production company that, as he admits, are designed to "keep him true to his roots." Whether or not this process works is debatable - certainly, OCEAN'S 13 feels like a paycheck movie - but it has also led to some of Soderbergh's strongest work, including 1996's SCHIZOPOLIS, the ERIN BROKOVICH follow-up, SOLARIS, and now the blink-and-you'll-miss-it BUBBLE. The idea behind BUBBLE is simple: write the bare bones of a script about three co-workers in blue collar America, cast non-actors in the main parts, rely on improvisation for 90% of the film's dialogue and let the essential low-budget independent movie unspool in front of you. Yet even more impressive than the guts behind this experiment is the strange and humbling film that this apparent stunt produces; BUBBLE is a shockingly well-realized movie with a tight and meaninglful plot, strong visual direction and startlingly good performances. The result of this collective effort excels not only as an efficient "purge" for its Hollywood crew, but also as a moving statement about the drama that fuels human lives - and the genuine horror of a cause-and-effect situation that entangles the film's three main characters in a way that feels as fated and unavoidable as the jobs and lives they each possess. Released simultaneously in theaters and on DVD, I recommend checking this one out - unfortunately, you won't see anything else like it this year.

4. MONSTER HOUSE (dir. Gil Kenan)
***1/2 out of ****

Alright, for those of you who are throwing out my credibility right about...now, I offer the following items for my defense: THE PRINCESS BRIDE. THE GOONIES. STAND BY ME. For those of you who turn your noses up at the notion of celebrating a "kids" movie, just take this moment to look back at your own childhood and the movies that shaped it, and now tell me with a straight face that there wasn't something special and united in the movies you remember. Maybe it was a sense of daring, a seemingly-unnecessary curse word, the sight of something gross or scary or mean-spirited that at the time seemed so delightfully out of place in the movie you were watching. For me, I think about two things: the faces melting in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and the dead body in STAND BY ME. I'll never shake how much seeing those two images made me feel like I had finally grown out of Saturday morning cartoons and moved into an infinitely more tantalizing and taboo adulthood. Now, is MONSTER HOUSE one of those films? In a way, yes - there are dead bodies, murders, suicides, even a snaggle-toothed Jason Lee drinking and pissing on an old man's lawn. But more importantly, MONSTER HOUSE is a movie about those kinds of films, and particularly, those kinds of moments - and when it comes to mixing the shock of the macabre with the curious delight of childhood, Kenan's very-solid animated film delivers on both fronts. And it should also be noted that it has one helluva monster house. Don't say I didn't warn you.

3. V FOR VENDETTA (dir. James McTeigue)
***1/2 out of ****

Often unfairly compared to the MATRIX films, McTeigue (who directed exactly none of the Matrix movies) gives us a film that relies on style, sure, but one that also tries awfully hard to have something more to say by the time the credits roll than "Whoa." VENDETTA, which uses a dystopian London as an obvious stand-in for contemporary America, does its best to not only critique a global power system that seems to slant ever-dramatically toward authoritarianism, but also indicts quite harshly those truly responsible in any democratic state: the masses. The moves within the film to this extreme - the masked anyman and everyman, V, the tempered rebel Evey (played very well by Natalie Portman), the pattern of social injustices aimed not at individuals but transparent types - all work incredibly well, and by the time the film reaches its climax, it has not only braved the question of terrorism, it has moved through it and past it to a conclusion that feels frighteningly right - and that is by far any film of this nature's greatest strength and accomplishment.

2. THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (dir. Tommy Lee Jones)
***1/2 out of ****

It is surprisingly difficult for me to sum up my thoughts on this movie. Jones's film, which weaves in and out of a variety of flashbacks to tell the story of a Border Patrol agent (Barry Pepper) who accidentally kills a Mexican man only to face the vengeance of that man's best friend, American cowboy, Pete (director Jones), works less as a film narrative and more as a film experience. To clarify this awfully fuzzy distinction, let me talk about Pete: Pete is that rarest of movie characters - a man of marginal intelligence played both convincingly and without condescension. For Pete, Melquiades's death is an absurdity, something almost entirely incomprehensible. The Mexican man, whom Pete hired and worked with on a small Texas farm, means so much more to the cowboy than even a traditional Hollywood notion of love encompasses - he was, simply put, Pete's best friend, and for his life to be taken in an act of allegedly instigated violence goes against everything Pete understands about his world. All that follows this initial act - Pete's kidnapping of the Border Patrol agent, the disastrous journey - with corpse in tow - to Melquiades hometown in Mexico - is still tied deeply to Pete's own grieving process, and this beautiful and tragic fulfilment, paced literally to the steps of Pete's understanding, works not only as an enjoyable and moving film experience, but also as a singularly unfolding depiction of cause and effect as it might exist when removed from linear constraints. Okay, fair enough - you say that's impossible. But watch the movie. Then tell me what you would call this trick Jones's film does so, so well.

1. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (dir. Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)
***1/2 out of ****


So, the top of the list. What can I say? I've bought into this year's indie darling, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. I knew this was going to happen. I saw it coming, slowly from town to town, in releases larger and more widespread, and I tried to brace myself for its stream of adulation, its wave of both gotta-see-it love and don't-buy-the-hype cynicism that would, inevitably, shape my own view of the film. But this last Saturday, as I walked out of the theater, I couldn't shake this amazing smile that, if only for a moment, kept me from thinking along the lines of any of the dozen reviews and articles I'd read since SUNSHINE debuted at Cannes last spring. Instead, all I could focus on was just how good the movie I just saw was. I don't know exactly what I can say to defend this position; sure, the plot worked alright, the characters were all unique and enjoyable, the big point of the whole thing felt good and unforced, but there was something else in this movie that really clicked with me, and it wasn't until I was half way home from the theater that I realized just what it was: I really, really dig unironic symbolism. There was something so downright pleasant about the metaphorical family vehicle that was that bizarro family's yellow VW van - this immediately-available and sincere image of a totally misfit family sticking together simply because they couldn't get anywhere alone. From the moment that van's clutch went out and I saw Steve Carell's suicidal homosexual Frank pushing alongside eight-year-old beauty contestant Olive, the Nietzche-obsessed misanthrope Dwayne and their ridiculously self-help obsessed father, Richard, I knew this was an image I wouldn't shake - and sometimes, that's perfect. You can complain about coincidence all you like, but there's no attempt here at realism - this is a movie about a wacked-out family driving 70o miles to deliver their bespectacled daughter to a beauty pageant she's a fish-out-of-water at - but its shooting at something both accepting and cohesive about the way we interact with each other - and if a movie can do that and make me laugh out loud - well, I have to say, it's on to something wonderful.

So, there we go: the Mid-Year Top Ten. Are there some big holes here? Well, yep, there's not denying it. But believe me, we could do worse than those top few movies - and with any luck, these next four months will bring a lot of movies that are even better. I know I've got my picks for the fall season, as I'm sure you do (that's a whole different list), but for now, these ten will have to do - and warts and all, these are movies we owe it to ourselves to remember before that Oscar rush sweeps all us movie-lovers up in an awards-crazy wave that each and every year leaves a special handful of movies from the previous spring and summer behind - unless, of course, we take the time to "list" them. After all, what could be more debatable than that?

Until December, enjoy yourselves everyone.

KMC