There’s a lot more going on at The New TRC. Go and find out for yourselves.

-Ryan and Tom, Co-Founders of The Red Circle dot Com.

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[201]0 // 005 Pootie Tang [2002] dir. Louis C.K.

Wow.

I’m not even really sure what I just watched. I mean, it all made sense. There was a plot, and there were characters. They deliver lines, and there’s sort of a theme here. I can totally understand why this is almost universally regarded as one of the worst movies of all time. I don’t agree with that sentiment, though. It’s not a bad movie. It’s an off-its-rocker-balls-insane-ridiculous movie. It’s aimed at  only a certain taste, and those who don’t dig the entirely absurd won’t dig this.

There’s no point in trying to sum up the plot. Its just something that needs to be seen. But let me break down what you’re in for. This is not a blaxploitation spoof. It’s not even a 70′s spoof. It is the story of a man named Pootie Tang who is so cool, he doesn’t even need to speak real words. So, when you hear the words “Sine your pitty on the runny kine,” you know that you’re either gonna get your ass whipped by his magic belt (“You can whip anyone’s ass in the world using just this belt,” says his dad), or you’re in the running for some Pootie loving.

The movie is notable for making Wanda Sykes tolerable, even though she really only just dances the entire time, shooting off half-yelled dialogue. That sounds a little worse than it actually is. Her character is almost more of a narrative tool. She, along with the actual, real narrator, co-tells the story that we’re watching. It’s not a supremely effective way of getting the point across, and it seems like the whole thing was invented just so we could get a not-so-good narrator narrating his own conversation joke later in the film.

And I guess that’s sort of the problem I have with Pootie Tang. There are so many completely wild, unexpected sources of humor that its actually a little sad that some of the jokes are so painfully obvious and unfunny. But, as often as there are groaners (“Pootie was rejuvenated. Rejuvenated! He was juvenated, lost it, and got juvenated again. Rejuvenated!” Ugh.), there are sublime physical jokes and David Cross in blackface.

I’d like to thank Louis CK for that last one. The man’s been a huge force in stand-up for years, despite people’s complete ignorance of him, and his efforts bring a lot of nice comedy cred to this film — almost all completely miscast for effect. David Cross as a black man? Dave Attell as a corporate stooge? I’d also like to thank CK for giving Kristen Bell her first screen role. You’ll have to wait till after the credits though. The man has devised a completely whacked out premise that would confound and anger most normal viewers. I can’t believe it took his wife this long to divorce him.

Honestly, just like the car jumping scene in Transporter 2, this movie has tons of “you’re with it or you’re not” moments. I can’t fault anyone for switching off when one of Chris Rock’s three characters gets killed in a freak gorilla mauling accident. I just don’t want to be friends with that person. This movie holds so much brilliance, that is worth sitting through some of the garbage it throws at you. Chris Rock is a highlight throughout. So is Jennifer Coolidge. It’s also slightly offputting to see two future The Wire actors cheesing it up in a movie like this. Especially when one of them is Reg. E. Cathy. Lance Crouthers has no career after playing Pootie. He doesn’t even have a wikipedia page. Seriously. That’s how deep this man went after whipping 100 men with a pimp belt.

This movie features some of the oddest structuring ever committed to film (You are not watching a movie called Pootie Tang. You are actually watching an 85 minute clip of a movie called Pootie Tang in Sine Your Pitty on the Runny Kine.), some of the smartest bits of stupid dialogue ever written (“Pootie Tang whip your ass so bad, you can write it off on your taxes!”), and the single best send up of the “drawing guns at noon” archetype I think I have ever seen.

There is no way that everyone would sort of love Pootie Tang the way I do. It’s got some shameful writing in it, but it is balanced out by a consumptive love for the insane and the unexplainable. It is a singular film, not tied to anything before it. Plus, it has a cow and a stalk of corn giving life advice. There is nothing else out there like Pootie Tang, and that is a mixed blessing.

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[201]0 004 // Daybreakers [2010] dir. The Speirig Brothers

Dammit. This movie was so close to being GOOD.

Daybreakers introduces us into a world run by vampires. And by run, I mean run. There are vampire governments, with elected officials. There are vampire companies, who cater to vampire needs. There are vampire agencies, that provide underground walkways so vampires can get to work in the daytime. Hell, even Chrysler is catering to the undead set. It’s this part of the movie that is genuinely good. The filmmakers have really, really created world with history. One that makes sense, and is actually interesting. Unfortunately, where all of this falls apart is in the details.

Ethan Hawke plays a hemotologist vampire. The company he works for harvests human blood for distribution to the vampires of America (the world?), and underpopulation and overhunting have caused a massive human blood shortage. Hawke is charged by deliciously evil Sam Neill to create a human blood substitute. You see, the vamps only have about one month of blood supply until it’s all out. And it turns out that a lack of human blood causes a rapid and violent de-evolution in vampires. The turn into mindless batlike creatures that will attack and eat anything, even corpses and other vampires. The vamps in charge have to deal with both the blood shortage and the ever-increasing population of these “underdwellers.”

Needless to say, humans aren’t an endangered species. They are food. Plain and simple. Humans caught out in the open will be harvested. There are some, like Ethan Hawke, who won’t drink human blood out of principle (for him, it was because he was born a human – most other vamps don’t have this ethical concern), and others who are out to help keep some fragments of humanity alive. But, after meeting a man who claims that he has found a way to reverse the vampire “disease” (Willem Dafoe), Ethan Hawke attempts to turn his blood substitute into a cure.

I said something about the details being the breaking point in Daybreakers. It’s half true. There are some brilliant touches put on this world of bloodsuckers. For one, virtually every vampire smokes. Constantly. Even better, not a single one mentions anything about the whole “can’t get cancer, can’t die, so fuck it” situation. It’s a smart addition to a pretty smart concept.

But all of this world building  comes to a retarded head in the third act, where blatantly obvious reveals are treated as if they were truly capable of pulling the rug out from under even the most remedial audience. Combined with a series of ridiculous action pieces (which generally revolve around a whole bunch of vampires killing lots of other things in waves), and the set up of a real world with real issues kind of gets ignored. It’s nice to bring up underdwellers, surround them with a sense of dread, and then use them effectively. Although that last part was apparently not apparent to the filmmakers.

There’s a lot to like here, and one of those things is not Willem Dafoe. His character, named Elvis, seems to be a redneck at heart but Willem Dafoe has no idea how to play that character. He plays him as an oddly spiritual gruff guy, with a really annoying speech-giving habit. His introduction is so mind numbingly stupid in context, that the character never fully recovers. He summons Ethan Hawke to meet about a cure to vampirism, and greets him with a completely ridiculous speech about how vampires are like trees. He does the same thing later in a badly presented third act reveal.

What follows next is a complete and utter ruination of the end of Daybreakers. If you care, please read on. If not, here’s a nice little sum-up: Daybreakers is an uncommonly smart straight up horror film that sort of sullies its well thought out and presented premise with a slightly silly third act, and characters that never quite seem to work. It’s certainly a lot better than a lot of movies in the same genre, but it just doesn’t quite summon the strength to be actually interesting or good.

SPOILERS: THIS WILL RUIN THE END OF DAYBREAKERS.

There is a cure. Actually, two. One is to expose the vampire to the sunlight for just the right amount of time. Apparently, right before it kills them it strips away the virus. It’s a little silly, but I chose to believe in it. The second cure is the blood of the “cured” vampires. Drinking it causes the virus to be fought off by the “cleansed” blood, and those vampires go back to being human. Ethan Hawke is cured the with the first method. The biggest problem in the movie is that the main conceit – there is a blood shortage, and a possible cure – comes to a perfectly tied-up conclusion in the third act. AND THE MOVIE COMPLETELY IGNORES IT.

You see, one of Ethan Hawkes hemotologist vamp friends creates a viable substitute. Evil Sam Neill shows Hawke the vial containing the liquid. And then tells him that this vial is going into mass production the following week. You see where this would go? A newly cured Ethan Hawke with a body full of vampire-cure, could simply fill that vial with his blood and get it shipped off. Thereby curing most, if not all of the vampires in the world – which is what he has been trying to do the entire movie. Instead, he kills Sam Neill by allowing himself to be bitten. This turns Neill human, and Neill is then attacked by a vampire army. Turning them all human. And then they are attacked by more soldiers. Turning them all human. And then everyone gets gunned down (except the main characters, who go on a cross country trip to cure vampires).

Not only would that have totally tied up the story were there to be no sequel, it would have set up a second film where the remaining vampires are holding out against the previously persecuted humans. But, making a logical film within the rules established with the promise of a good second film (currently they’re planning a prequel which is rubbish) was not something on the Speirig Brothers to-do list.

There have been reviewers that have compared the vampires to Americans – people who have been on top for so long, that they don’t see the oncoming fall – and this isn’t an unfair comparison. Plus, the Speirigs have certainly created an interesting vampire mythology and universe. But I sure wish the whole movie would have explored that theme instead of ignoring good plotting in favor of a good ole U.S. of A machinegun bloodbath.

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First time I [finished watching Avatar] and got that strange depressed feeling. That forced me to go to the cinema the next day. Again I got that feeling, even got it after the 3rd time. Now i think I’m an addict of this depression, and i like it, it kinda makes me a better person, or something like that. That’s why I’m here, writing. – KalaKuival, posted on Avatar-Forums.com

I want to preface all this by telling you that I am not going to make fun of these people, or make fun of Avatar. If people are depressed, they need to find the best way out of that depression. If that happens to be writing about it on a message board, so be it. What is a little confusing to me is that cinema as a storytelling device has been around for over 100 years. I had assumed we all knew that movies were fake by now.

As much as it pains me, people typically pay to see movies for escapism. Nothing in their lives looks and sounds like it does in the cinemas, and they’ll pay some money to forget that they have a presentation in a couple of days, or that they just had a really irate customer. It’s a constructive way of memory loss, just like alcohol. But, once again, it’s not real. How many times have your parents or friends had to remind you “it’s only a movie,” when things get a little intense on-screen?

So why now? Certainly Avatar has the best special effects ever put to screen, but what about the movies that feature real people in real environments? I’ve never heard of a Star Wars related phenomenon. Nor even a Star Trek. Do people get depressed that there are no Evil Dead deadites running around for them to go all Ash on? Fans of those series seem to celebrate their fandom – collecting toys and memorabilia, making their own costumes and props. They take the experience they had in the theater and translate it into a positive, albeit possibly unhealthy, lifestyle. Movies, especially gigantic blockbusters, are supposed to have a positive effect on the audience. Apparently there is a subsection of Avatar fans that need genuine counseling because the imaginary world presented in the film remains that way upon their exit.

How do 75 pages of posts about the hardships of living life outside of that planet moon crop up in less than two weeks? Maybe it’s a little harder to dress up as a Na’vi than it is to rush out and buy a lightsaber, but the same principle applies. Unless Avatar is the first movie ever seen by this group of people, I am at a loss as to why its revelation as a fictional universe is so gutwrenching. Films can transport you. But, a film like Avatar, lush in its presentation, lousy in its characterization, seems an odd choice to get all wrapped up in. Having a breakdown because a movie is fake is like throwing a tantrum about how your kid doesn’t actually become an orange when he puts on the costume for the school play. Haven’t we progressed just a little in the century that movies have been around? It’s understandable that the first audience to see a moving train coming at them inside a cinematheque might be a little terrified. We live in an era of mass communication and content from cell phones, television, YouTube, and movies in the theater and the home. LARPing was supposed to be the cure for all of this.

I’m certainly not the biggest advocate of professional therapy. I can see how it’s helpful, and I can see how having an educated point of view can pinpoint the problems and make things a little easier to get a grip on.  At the same time, why pay for the things your friends give you for free? And why take the time to sit with someone and talk about changes instead of making the changes from your own desire? Yeah, yeah. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. Trust me, I know.

…It’s unfortunate that we live in a world where, just by pulling a trigger or making a corporate decision, one single greedy human being can wipe out the hard works of love of many people. But this is why we need to stop focusing on money and start focusing on our environment. Because we have the intelligence to kill ourselves, but not the wisdom to stop it. What will our money buy, when everything that is worth having is destroyed? The only way you can fill the emptiness you feel after this movie, is to jump on the leonopteryx. – Neytiri, posted on Avatar-Forums.com

But the thing that slaps me around the most is this post. Essentially, it’s every self-help mantra ever assembled, clothed in references to people, animals, and places that are set in that universe. It’s a good thought to tell people to get out and do stuff, but why the reliance on the movie’s characters? If you are feeling bad, the best way to overcome is to change something about either yourself or the situation. How is it possible that people can be affected by what is almost directly a Joel Osteen quote but with “Let Jesus In” replaced with “Jump on the leonopteryx.” I should also make it known that this specific task is one of the easiest things that Jake Sully does in the movie. He has a harder time shooting a bow, riding a horse, and bonding with one of the tiny dragons than mastering the most powerful being in the sky. It’d be nice if the people using the movie as a motivator actually watched it.

Overcoming depression and making a change is a lot more difficult than falling off one animal and onto another. It seems that these are people that truly need help, even if the cause for the depression is a little on the ridiculous side. There is a lot of work to be done on the Earth in general. If they were (and I don’t know how) clued into the environmental issues plaguing the planet solely by this movie, then part of that post-partem recovery could be spent volunteering at green charities. Who cares if you’re doing it because some fictional bink told you to? This is a measurable difference being made, and the filmmakers would be much more proud of their fans and their film for affecting a change.

I am aware that films are a cultural force. They truly move people, and in the best scenarios, they can change the world for the better. But, after 100 years of narrative storytelling, the last thing they should cause is a fit of depression over their fakeness. You are a lucky human if your saddest hour comes when you realize that you will never be able to ride a direhorse. Be depressed that the situations so hamfistedly portrayed in Avatar are actually happening, for real, on the planet. Be depressed that there are people starving because they were born the wrong color, and a couple thousand miles too far East. Be depressed that blatant corporate greed only leads to bailouts.

And then, fight against it. If Avatar could actually have a positive effect on the real, physical world through all of this sulking-cum-compassion, I may even like the film a little more.

The messageboard  in question can be found here.

Wonder why the image associated with this post has nothing to do with the content or message in the Comments Section.

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[201]0 // 003 Moon [2009] dir. Duncan Jones

Wow.

The worst part about Moon is how impossible it is to explain it without spoilers. I’m leaving the comments open for discussion about the movie for those who have seen it. So, if you want to see Moon unspoiled, DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS. Onward.

It is the future. Helium-3 pockets have been discovered on the moon, and a large company is mining these resources to provide cheap energy to 70% of the planet. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a mining supervisor of sorts who is ending his three-year contract on Moon Base Sarang. He’s been watching over the base and the mining robots for all that time all by himself. His only companion is a robot named GERTY who is pretty much there to run the higher functions of the base while providing Sam with anything he needs to get the job done. Despite this, Sam is a lonely guy. Direct communication with the Earth has been disabled by some solar flares, so all he has is a pseudo letter correspondence with his wife and young child via recorded video. But, it’s only two weeks until his contract ends and its nearing time that he leave the moon to rejoin his planet. But the effects of a thee year tour with nobody else around are starting to take their toll, and Sam starts seeing some weird shit.

And that’s all you get. To say any more would be to deprive you of all the impact of one of the best films of last year. There aren’t any twists, per se. It’s just that to dissect this film thematically would require me to talk about the plot past the setup, and the thrill of seeing that plot unfold is much more interesting than me talking about it.

It’s a wonderful, small movie. Sam Rockwell gives what is almost assuredly the best performance of his career as Sam. We get to see him play the man ready to begin his three year isolation on a foreign body, and play the tenured man who has dealt with that isolation for the past almost 1,000 days. It’s a remarkable performance, and its one that will be outright ignored at awards time because of both the size and performance of the film at the box office (small, and mediocre) and the fact that the role of Sam Bell has no “actorly” moments that remind you “this is a great performance, dear Academy.” What I’m trying to say is that Sam Rockwell doesn’t Sean Penn this performance.

What he does do is capture the spirit of humanity, both thematically and emotionally, while stranded alone on an orbiting rock. There is nuance to spare here, and the movie demands multiple viewings to sort out the subtleties after the story has been experienced once. Just as nuanced is first time director Duncan Jones’ view of the future. Besides an artificially intelligent robot and a fully formed lunar base, there’s not a lot of tech innovation here – just a world that works. Jones and his production design crew fill the Sarang interiors with tons of detail, none of which are flashy, and all of which make sense in context. The movie is beautiful in a hollowed out sort of way, and Clint Mansell proves without question that he is the best small movie composer working. His score is as sparse as the landscape, but exponentially more beautiful.

There is so much to love about Moon. It’s a wonderfully conceived, acted, designed, directed, and scored movie. And, just like the comparable District 9, the effects work is nigh upon seamless for such a tiny budget. I hope Duncan Jones and Neill Blomkamp (and Primer auteur Shane Carruth, for that matter) continue to work in sci-fi for a long time. They’re single-handedly restoring the faith that George Lucas, McG, and James Cameron have so delicately pissed away this decade. Leave it to the Spawn of Ziggy Stardust and a stupefyingly young South African to tell two of the best tales the genre has seen in years.

I would be exceeding my place to declare Moon a masterpiece. I’ve seen the movie one time, less than six hours ago. But it’s a film that I think I will find myself watching more than twice in this calendar year, and maybe at that time I will be able to give it the title that it may end up deserving. Regardless of that fact, Moon is a near perfect film, an assured debut of a hopefully prolific filmmaker, and one of the best films I have seen in the last 365 days.

Science Fiction is nothing more than the use of the fantastic to tell us about the things that are ultimately very personal and human, and Moon is one of the few movies that manages to transport us to another time and place to remind us why being a human is so unique and important. We are lucky to have Duncan Jones and Sam Rockwell. We are better for having movies like Moon.

UPDATE: According to this article at CHUD, Sony Pictures Classics is not even sending screener copies of the film to awards affiliated folks. I can’t say I’m shocked, but their attempt to pass off the dropping of the ball on internet piracy rather than “we just don’t wanna,” is a little dumb. Either way, this virtually guarantees that Sam Rockwell will be getting zero nominations outside of the useless Saturn awards.

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[201]0 // 002 Blood Car [2007] dir. Alex Orr

“Let me set this up for you… You know the phrase ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen?’ Well, people still say that. But they don’t drive cars.”

Those words, spoken by a potato chip chomping narrator, begin our journey into the futuristic world of Blood Car. Somehow these people made a movie about a car that runs on murdered human beings’ blood and didn’t make it into a horror movie. They filled it with ridiculous humor and on-the-nose satire. Given the immeasurably small budget (Reported be be less than $25,000) Alex Orr has made one hell of a flick. It manages to be an amalgamation of several films while being its own thing at the same time.

Archie is a vegan kindergarten teacher who is developing an engine that works on wheat grass. Maybe, in a normal world, this would be some damn hippie bullshit. But in the world presented in the film (a world that is “maybe two weeks from now,” according to the same narrator), gas has risen to $40 a gallon, and there are no more cars on the road. Only the obscenely wealthy drive – the rest of the cars on the planet have been abandoned in automobile graveyards, where horny teenagers still have sex in them. But, back to Archie.

He’s hit a dead end in the engine experiment when in a fit of drunkenness, he cuts his hand on a broken vodka bottle (complete with the hammer and sickle logo – the film, if nothing else, has class) and the engine roars to life with the bloodfuel. Tasked with finding new fuel supplies to maintain the ungodly amount of pussy he gets from being the only guy in town with a car, Archie begins by using his own emaciated frame for the gas. Then he moves on to squirrels, chained up dogs, dead neighbors before getting his hands dirty with actual manslaughter via lawnmower blades he has placed in the trunk.

But, beyond all of this, there is almost no horror involved in this film. Sure, people get hacked apart by axes, little kids get bullets in the brain, and shady government agents get shredded by the ultimate Honda Civic mod. But this is all part of the spot-on absurdist humor of the film. It does right what most fresh-out-of-college filmmakers do wrong. There are homages to other films, the end of the film is essentially the end of The Godfather, and there are kills directly out of Goodfellas and The Shining. But Blood Car is smart enough to use these references inside a framework all its own. They’re nice moments for the people in the audience who will recognize them, not blatant rip-offs for throwback value.

Add in Anna Chlumsky as a all-organic kiosk owner who sells Archie his wheat grass and Katie Howlett as the sexpot who owns the rival stand, simply called MEAT, and you’ve got a decent cast that understands the ridiculousness of the plot without overselling it. The script is tight, and above all, actually funny. This actually may be the funniest movie I have ever seen that includes gags about puppies and five-year-olds getting murdered.

Blood Car will never go down in history as anything other than a deceptively smart piece of absurd, violent filmmaking, but Alex Orr creates a world that is worth revisiting. While the government satire may be a little heavy-handed (and it’s understandable but off-putting that there is no one over thirty in this film), the final speech given by the government agent about the Blood Car in question is an exercise in brilliance. Not only does the logic not work, the phrasing and the delivery of these absurd declarations elevates the material to far above its no-budget DIY roots. I’d also be remiss to neglect the brilliant way the CIA spooks clean up after a clean hit.

I am glad that there are smart, resourceful, and talented people like Alex Orr and his crew that get to make movies that appeal to insane people. There is so much unmitigated garbage floating around in the independent scene, that it is a welcome bit of refreshment to see a film as well put together and executed as Blood Car. Its premise and delivery maximize the retardedness of every moment. And that’s what makes it so smart.

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[201]0 // 001: The Bank Job [2008] dir. Roger Donaldson

The first quarter of any given year brings a heavily mixed bag of film to us. Normally, January, February and March are the could-have-been-a-contender Oscar crowd’s consolation prize and the dumping ground for any assortment of terrible horror and sci-fi flicks that are meant to capitalize on people being sick of schmaltzy best picture flicks all month prior. But, often, that first quarter finds a few films that serve as the film industry’s misfit toys. They tend to be small films with a simple story that can tread the waters between action and drama. They tend to hav workingman directors and an ensemble cast of mostly nobodies. They also, if we’re fortunate, tend to be very well done flicks that simply aren’t heavy enough in scope to appeal to the fanboys of summer.

This is exactly where The Bank Job fits. It’s the kind of movie that people claim we don’t make anymore. It’s a tiny little heist flick set in the year 1970, that finds a small group of friends thrust into a theft that is way over their heads, both technically and politically. You see, they have to break into a bank’s vault to steal incriminating photos of a royal family member taken by a black power luminariy from a safe deposit box. Not that they know this – they just assume they’re there to grab as much cash and valuables as possible.

Roger Donaldson has made a ton of these kinds of movies, and he is indispensable at managing the three disparate arcs (the robbers, the politicians, and the black power camp) and combining them into is a well-paced, well-told simple story. Jason Statham gives what is possibly his best, and undoubtedly his most subdued performance as Terry, a husband and father in a working class home who is talked into the biggest score of his life by a seductive old flame (Saffron Burrows) who is working hand-in-hand with MI-5 to bring down Michael X, the black power magnate.

The other bit of genius in this movie is the casting and the set-slash-costume design. The flick is shot in very subdued tones, and all of the gang of friends look definitely like they walked out of the 70s. The supporting cast is not deep, but they are all performed with detail and precision by their actors. This flick is very much a working class picture. There is little fanfare or flair in the proceedings, but everyone from the focus puller to the Porn King of London are all paying their roles like honest to god human beings.

The Bank Job is a film that will certainly never gain a huge audience. It is a good story told well, but without any adornments or flashy actor and director moments. It is simply a movie about working class men told by working class filmmakers, and the synergy is completely wonderful. Watching Jason Statham play a dad is worth it. Watching a murderous old man with kidney stones get kicked in the guts often is worth it. Seeing Colin Salmon in a beard is worth it.

It’s an obvious Hollywood film, but the focus is entirely on the plot and the characters. And hey, it’s actually watchable and compelling throughout. There is no reason for the average person to go rush out to see this film, but if it’s on the television or you just need a nice little flick to pass the time one night, there’s no harm in checking out The Bank Job. I am happy that men like Roger Donaldson exist, and can make films like this with the support of the studios.

I really hope that this is the kind of film that we never stop making.

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Although Ryan may have already claimed 2009 as a tragedy (and this seems to be a fairly widespread opinion across the social networks), 2010 has started no better. Think. This is the first year in a decade that novelty eyewear manufacturers can’t make a pair of gaudy baubles using the year as the frames. What will these fine people turn to in the wake of the ‘tens? Hopefully by the end of this year, someone will have come up with a nice name for this bizarre grouping of years. The ‘tens just doesn’t seem to capture it. This, more than ever, is the future.

I digress.

It’s a new year. The Red Circle is looking forward to its first stage of metamorphosis. The previous three months have been a modest success. We have readers, we have discussions, and people visit the site, even if we don’t have an article posted. Hell, sometimes they show up even if we don’t link to the site directly every day. This is a good thing, and I want to sincerely thank Ryan, Cory, and Jamie for making The Red Circle at least a tiny little pinprick of a destination for some folks.

This year, everything gets complicated. The Red Circle is expanding. The previous three months were a practice run; something to test ourselves and make sure we’d still want to do this in 90 days time. Well, apparently we do. This year will see a few things start, and a few others end. Goodbyes are due to the “theme” months. We will be focusing on our columns, the new and the old, as well as diving into some more in-depth feature articles. The site will start taking a much more intensive view on the medium of comic books and graphic novels, and, god willing, we’ll actually start talking about things that are on the television.

Look forward to a roundtable on the Passing of the Tenth Doctor, and a weekly capsule of the new series starting in April. 2010 will also see the inaugural class of The Red Circle’s Hall of Fame.  We have and will continue to champion the best of film here at TRC, and the people who have made this possible will have our highest honour bestowed upon their deceased skulls.

It’s a rumor that the people who run and write for this site are a bunch of stodgy, angry, bitter, scalliwags who hate everything they see. This is, of course, absolutely true. And in an attempt to prove it, I will be watching and reviewing 201 movies I have never seen before in this calendar year. I do honestly hope that most of them are good, or else my fate is sealed.

But, as for the evolution of this site, you will just have to wait and see. There are many things in the works to increase the diameter of The Red Circle out as far as it can go. We hope to encompass as many new ideas and people as possible. One day, we will all stop talking about what we have been watching, and begin talking about what we are creating.

And we hope you’ll talk about it, too.

Tom Nix, Co-Founder of The Red Circle

01.03.10

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Like the intro said: These are my favorite movies. I don’t consider them to be the “best” films ever made in a quantitative sense (although some are). They are the movies that shaped me cinematically and personally. They’re the movies I can turn to when nothing else feels right. They’re the movies that made me fall in love with the movies.

So, here they are, in ascending order:

10. Shaun of the Dead

Shaun of the Dead is a curiosity. Part romantic comedy, part honest to god zombie movie, it is the template for post-2000 filmmaking. Aside from a couple unnecessary quick cut collages, there is nothing wrong with this film. As will happen for some of the movies on this list, it was made by an obscenely young man (Edgar Wright, only 29 at the time he directed one of the best films ever made) and features the best script of the decade, co-written by star Simon Pegg.

It is genuinely touching, hilarious, gory, and honest. If this movie were made in the 80’s and I had more time to spend with it, I have no doubt it would rank much higher on this list. That being said, this movie will never, ever, get old, or tiring, or passé’. How many other films convey the heartbreak and triumphs of a relationship by having people get ripped apart by the living dead? Yeah. Just this one. It is the definition of lightning in a bottle, and while it is certainly not the best film to be released this decade, it is far and away my favorite.

9. Die Hard

Despite the generally decreasing quality of the sequels, the original Die Hard is a singularity in action films. It sent the Schwarzeneggers and Stallones packing, and made way for the everyman to win the day while getting the complete shit kicked out of him.

Just as McGoohan will always be Number 6, and Brando will always be Don Corleone, Bruce Willis will ALWAYS be John McClane. A New York cop stranded in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, forced into dealing with a bunch of party-crashing German terrorists, John McClane lives through gunfire, glass, explosions, punches, hostage situations, and a helicopter with a rail gun ALL WITHOUT WEARING SHOES.

No other action film has ever come close to being this good on so many levels, and director John McTiernan has never been this good ever again (Even with Predator and the 1999 Thomas Crown Affair under his belt). I watched this film for the first time with my dad in a Washington DC hotel room when I was about eight years old. It scared the life out of me, and I was hooked for good. Both then and now, I was convinced that there is only one bad guy in the history of movies, and his name is Hans Gruber.

8. The Iron Giant

It is the best animated film of all time. It is the only movie that almost makes me cry. Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant is a complete masterpiece and a paean to the power of storytelling. Yes, yes, I know I’ve just included a movie toplined by Vin Diesel and Jennifer Aniston on my top ten list. I’m completely at ease with this. Bird’s story, set in the 1950’s involves a gigantic robot from space who gets adopted by a science fiction obsessed nine-year old. The problem – it’s the beginning of the cold war, and once a sleazy government agent gets wind of a giant robot running around, it can only be the Russians, and it can only be bad.

The theme of overcoming your “programming” to be the person you want to be is something that still strikes home to me. But the most powerful part of the movie is the characters, and the story they act out. Agent Mansley is one my favorite villains of all time simply because he is portrayed as a non-villain. It’s obvious he’s the bad guy – he’s out to destroy the main character! – but his arc is defined more by a man living by a completely backwards moral code than someone who seeks to cause destruction.

But the real reason this movie is on the list is one word. The last line of dialogue spoken by the Giant shatters me in every positive way. It is an undying testament that there is true goodness in this world, and only the bravest among us will ever achieve it.

7. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I was a band nerd in high school. It is a ritual for everyone who is in High School Band to love and watch and quote this movie incessantly. It’s an integral part of my humor and my existence. Monty Python are my comedic heroes, and the funniest five (six?) people to walk the earth. It’s not even that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is their best work, or their most cutting, or their most subversive. It is, however, this specific movie, and its complete lack of any thematic structure that makes it (until the almost equally brilliant Anchorman in 2004) a unique comedy in film history.

The jokes don’t form a framework to build a movie on. They are more than likely improvised for a majority of the scenes, but they grow organically from the characters adventures in the ridiculous reality of the film. It is the epitome of making the absurd the ingenious.

The movie makes you do a double take at the screen as often as it makes you laugh out loud, and it should be lauded for such an accomplishment. I have a very few comedies on DVD; they lose their luster on multiple viewings. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of the exceptions. I have watched it more than any other movie ever made, and it is as funny on its fiftieth runthrough as it is on its tenth.

6. The Third Man

The Third Man is my arthouse guilty pleasure. Sure, it happens to be one of the best movies ever made, but director Carol Reed treats this milestone like a first independent feature. Shot in skewed angles and scored entirely by zither (!!!), The Third Man sounds on the surface like a failed college experiment. That is, until you realize it has a brilliant script, fully realized characters, and has an exquisite cinematic palette for being a monochromatic film.

The movie also features the most famous “star” role in history from Orson Welles as Harry Lime. He is the impetus for the plot, the motivation for the characters, and the ending of the film – and the character is on screen for less than twenty minutes. If Welles has never done War of the Worlds, had never made Citizen Kane, had never done Touch of Evil, he would still be renowned and idolized for THIS. His rapid fire delivery, glaringly stepping over his co-star’s lines, is legendary. It’s shocking that this film was shot in 1949 because aside from a few stylistic fashion inconsistencies on the part of Alida Valli’s Anna, this movie feels like it could be made today. If you can ignore the setting of post WWII Vienna, that is. This movie is in the process of being remade, and it is a futile endeavor.

The film is near perfect, and its place as one of the only “positive” noir films (I say this knowing full well that the main character loses his best friend and doesn’t get the girl) gives it a special place in my heart. Plus, if it’s good enough for Jack White, it’s good enough for me.

5. Charade

Splitting genres is a tricky thing. Stanley Donen manages to combine a spy thriller, a romantic comedy, a slapstick comedy, and an action movie into two hours. It also helps that Peter Stone wrote one of my favorite scripts of all time. The banter between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn is legendary, and the rogues gallery (and there actually is one!) sent to terrorize them is filled with real characters, even though they may on the surface be defined by a characteristic or quirk. Bonus: Walter Matthau.

There is no sense talking about the plot here. If you’ve seen it, you know. If you haven’t, you should. It’s a gripping, hilarious film that hits all the right notes and never ceases to amaze. The central mystery is so well written and twisted, that no audience I’ve seen it with yet has figure out the secret until that pivotal scene where it becomes blatantly obvious.

Charade is a blast, and one that is guilt-free. There may not be a whole lot of subtext involved in this film, but it provides a roller coaster of a ride led by legends. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn ooze chemistry despite their age differences, and Matthau and James Coburn turn in memorable work as would be protagonist and antagonist.

They simply don’t make movies like this anymore. There’s no irony, no winking at the audience, no pop culture references. It’s an intelligent, deeply constructed thriller/comedy/action/romance/brilliant film that allows us to relax and enjoy while still engaging us on levels far beyond the modern movie’s ability.

4. Heat

There is a divide here. Most would fall on the side of Goodfellas. I can’t. Something about Michael Mann’s Los Angeles crime epic talks to me deeper than Scorcese’s deconstruction of a gangster ever could. Maybe it’s the workaholic nature of Vincent Hannah. Someone whose family falls just a little bit south of repair due to his full time commitment to keeping the bad guys behind bars. Maybe it’s the philosophy of Neil MacCauley and his strict adherence to never allow anything into his life that he cannot drop in 30 seconds if the heat turns up. I’m a lot more like that than I’d freely admit.

Maybe it’s the fact that there is no better supporting cast assembled in the nineties than Danny Trejo, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman, Ted Levine, William Fichtner, and Dennis Haysbert. Just read those names. Maybe it’s the fact that Michael Mann makes movies like nobody else makes movies, and Heat is without a doubt his crowning achievement. Maybe it’s the fact the movie features last names like Waingroh, Cheritto, Shiherlis, and Breeden.

Maybe it’s that famous coffee scene – the first time in history that Pacino and DeNiro looked each other in the eye on film. Maybe it’s Kevin Gage twisting a hooker’s neck off. Maybe it’s the dead man on the other end of this line. Maybe it’s because she’s got a great ass, and you’ve got your head all the way up it.

Or maybe it’s because this is an ode to crime. An ode to order. And ode to work. An ode to failure. And ode to ethics. An ode to life. An ode to Los Angeles. An ode to humanity. It’s the last epic masterpiece dedicated to dedication, and all of the spoils and shame it can bring.

3. Star Wars

If you ever get a chance, thank George Lucas for making me who I am. His film not only introduced me to cinema outside of cartoons, but also made me into the roaring nerd I am today. The story of Star Wars is nothing spectacular. The characters work, but are mostly archetypes from other, older films. The reason Star Wars is so highly regarded is the world building that Lucas did in his films. It wasn’t that he just populated the cantina scene with as many odd looking creatures as he could find – it was that he GAVE THEM ALL NAMES AND OCCUPATIONS. It wasn’t that he invented the lightsaber, the coolest weapon in history, it was that HE ACTUALLY HAD A RITUAL ON HOW TO MAKE ONE. All of this, I knew. I knew it because it enhanced my understanding of the film. Yeah, these characters never showed up again. We never got to see Luke Skywalker build his green lightsaber. But I knew how he did it, and that made all the difference.

George Lucas involved me in his filmmaking, and I was forever changed by it. While I can’t say the same about the Prequels, they did for kids today what the originals did for me. That’s all that’s necessary. Star Wars deserves a place in history. Hell, it deserves a Nobel Prize for continually inspiring otherwise normal kids into becoming professional nerds.

Despite the fact that it’s been a long while since I’ve revisited the original trilogy’s universe, its effect on my life, loves, and understanding is immeasurable, and this list would be woefully incomplete and incorrect without it.

2. Jaws

Maybe it’s the countless hours of Shark Week I watched on the Discovery Channel, but JAWS has long been the movie that I turn to as old reliable. It’s a movie I could watch any time of any day. It is probably the only movie I would shell out ANY amount of money for on a blu-ray release. Limited edition with an Orca replica for $80? Sold. A mechanical Bruce (the shark, natch) case for $120? Sold. Very few movies speak to me like JAWS does. It’s a monster movie that focuses away from the monster and on the people whose unenviable task it is to deal with it.

Steven Spielberg was TWENTY-EIGHT when he made the best movie of his career. And he did it all by accident. Without a working mechanical shark, Spielberg was forced into Plan B (which was miles better than Plan A). He made a nightmare of suspense – showing the carnage the shark wreaked instead of the shark. And he populated it with three of the best characters in modern cinema with Hooper, Brody, and Quint. Plus, John Williams outdid himself on what is one of my favorite scores. It was a stroke of genius to substitute the “buh bum” music cue for the shark, but the true masterstroke was the integration of Quint’s “Spanish Ladies” shanty into the Orca’s chase music. As a tradition, the first song I ever play in a new car is Rush’s Dreamline. The first song I will play in any boat I buy will be that track from this soundtrack.

JAWS is ostensibly a movie about a killer shark, but it is everyone other than Bruce that makes this movie so brilliant. Think about it. The last half of this movie focuses around three people in one location and it NEVER GETS BORING. That damn shark breaking is the best thing that ever happened to Steven Spielberg, and the best thing to ever happen to adventure movies.

1. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

If you don’t like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, you don’t like cinema. Maybe you enjoy going to watch movies in a theater, or grabbing some friends for a night in with a good flick. But you don’t LIKE movies. You don’t LOVE movies. You ENJOY movies. Sergio Leone’s masterpiece (one of three) IS cinema. It is the essence of what makes movies such a powerful art form, and the culmination of every aspect of filmmaking holding hands and kicking ass. There has never been a better director of movies than Sergio Leone. Some people knew how to get a truly evocative performance out of an actor. Some knew how to weave a brilliant story through the subtleties of editing. Some knew how to capture your heart and mind, but no one – NO ONE – could fill a frame like Leone.

The first footage of the film switches from a landscape vista wideshot into a closeup in ONE SHOT. The fact that Clint Eastwood informed a generation of boys on how to become men is bonus. The character of Tucco Ramirez is bonus. The Ecstasy of Gold – the single greatest piece of music ever recorded for a motion picture – is bonus. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is a documentary of a master painting a masterpiece. It is three hours of distilled CINEMA. If I had three hours left to live, I would fill it with Family, Friends, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

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Those are the ten films that made me the incorrigible bastard (Editor’s Note: This is an understatement, more like henious scornful…) I am today. I’d put my runners up, but that’s just a weak excuse for not having the balls to only pick ten films. Sometimes sacrifices must be made, and it’s the better of us that can make them.

That’s the end. I hope you will share your favorite films with us this Christmas. We’d love to know about the people that pop into our site occasionally. We wish you a fantastically cinematic holiday, and we hope to see you in 2010.

What are your favorite movies of all time? Leave ‘em below!

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Saying James Cameron’s Avatar is a game changer is like saying a $200 million broadway performance of Romeo and Juliet done through live mo-cap render is a game changer. It may be a real looker of a performance, but you already know how the story will end.

And that’s the crux of this movie. Given twelve years to develop his next movie after Titanic, James Cameron immersed himself in an alien culture of his own creation. He thought out their rituals, their ceremonies, their philosophies. He dreamed up their planet, their ecology, their wildlife, and their religion. All of them deeply involved and highly detailed. He hired arguably the best FX team in the business in Weta Digital to bring this world to life. And they did. It’s the most convincing all-CG world yet seen on film. He took over a decade of planning, achievement, work, and dedication and hung it all on the most contrived, trite, cliche, and uninvolving story he has ever written.

It’s understandable that this epic film would need a somewhat “classic” story archetype to get the point across. But this isn’t a variation on any classic tale. This is an amalgamation of scenes directly lifted from other stories. Many folks have already compared Avatar to a video game, so here’s another one: James Cameron has reskinned your favorite story and sold it back to you as a groundbreaking achievement.

Here’s the story so far: Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a disabled vet who is thrust into the AVATAR project after his identical twin brother who was working on it was killed. The AVATAR program is essentially the diplomatic wing of a military mission on Pandora to mine the extremely valuable Unobtainium (Yes, I know this is a real-world term, but Jesus.) that is sitting under the central living location of a race of aliens called the Na’vi. Jake, through a whole bunch of future tech, is able to control a genetically crated human/Na’vi hybrid called an avatar so that he can try to convince the native people to move out of the way because we want our minerals, OK? Of course after spending time with the Na’vi and slowly being indoctrinated to their ways (not to mention falling in love with the Na’vi princess Neytiri), Sully starts to like this reality much more than his real reality. This causes some problems for the military part of the mission lead by Stephen Lang’s Colonel Quarich. Since all this peaceful mumbo jumbo isn’t working, Quarich decides its time for a good ole ‘Merican shitkicking. I’ll leave the rest of the story up to you. I guarantee that what you think happens is exactly what happens.

It’s that rote predictability that causes Avatar so much grief. The movie spends its almost entire running time engaging you in a world full of detail. From the opening scenes of the transport ship full of cryo-sleep chambers that go backwards into infinity, to the completely realistic tech of the Earth base on Pandora, to the floating  mountains of the planet itself, James Cameron has given us every reason to fall into this universe he’s concocted. It’s obvious that he spent those twelve years on these exact things. He had a linguist create a language for the Na’vi. He probably had engineers draw up blueprints for the Mecha suits that Quaritch and his soldiers use for battle. He planned every fern, tree, bug, and creature seen on Pandora. It’s astounding that in the decade plus he was planning all of this history and presentation of a world, that he neglected to fill it with any characters.

I mean, there a people that inhabit the world. This is true. Actors showed up on set and performed. This is true. But there isn’t a single character, not one, in the whole movie that couldn’t be summed up in one sentence. And not just a summary of their character. Their whole character. Wes Studi plays the noble leader of a Na’vi tribe. Giovanni Ribisi plays a corporate, government scumbag. Sigourney Weaver plays the environmental scientist who runs the AVATAR program. Stephen Lang plays an evil, hardass military man. It truly seems like that if an actor ever struggled for motivation, all they have to do is read their sentence out loud. They would then be able to perform the scene to their character’s personality. Only the environments are in 3D. The characters are as flat as they come.

Perhaps the lone exception is the most important. Zoe Saldaña plays Neytiri, the princess of the Na’vi. It’s not even that her character is anything above average. She is mostly reduced to teaching Jake how to become a Na’vi warrior and falling in love with him (and the fact that she is a princess is entirely unnecessary – but it’s straight out of Pocahontas, so Cameron is more than willing to rip it off) . But, she is more integral to the story than most because she is the gateway to the Na’vi for the audience. Her character allows us to understand their culture. And despite the flatline of a character she is given, Saldaña achieves this. If there is anything else I want to make a point of, this is it, so I might as well make it bold. If it were not for Zoe Saldaña, this movie would be an utter failure. Without this one performance, no one in the audience could make any kind of connection to this alien race, and the entire film would be an exercise in paying special effects crews. It may be silly to claim it as the best motion capture performance ever because of how little the character actually does in the story, but Neytiri is able to express emotion more realistically than any other completely CG character I have seen on screen. It shows that with enough money, mo-cap is just the new makeup.

Watching Avatar was a divisive experience. On one hand, the world crafted by Cameron and the extraordinary artists at Weta Digital (Hi Ryan!) is so immersive, that its easy to want to get lost in it all. But on the other, there is nothing beyond those exquisite visual veneers to keep that immersion intact.

I don’t want this review to come off as supremely negative. I enjoyed the film as spectacle, but purely on a superficial “hey, that looks cool” level. It’s a frustrating film above anything else. At the expense of being nitpicky, I will skip out on the pacing (a guy next to me walked out after the second act. The movie, so intent on filling you in on EVERYTHING in Pandoran culture, takes forever to get to its conclusion), the politics (America = Evil), the hypocisy (Technology = Bad) and the racism (The Na’vi are blue Native Americans. They even make throaty war cries and wear paint into battle. And they’re led by Wes Studi). There’s no point. It’s all been covered before. I am sure that Cameron meant no harm by his terrible script, even if it does come across as the most expensive Edward Zwick movie ever made.

It is an odd thing to hear soundbytes like “Shock and Awe” and “Fight Terror With Terror,” in 2009. Especially since the film so glaringly is using it to demonstrate how the Earthlings (almost completely played by white Americans) are the ones that are using the terror tactics. The “terror” line especially makes no contextual sense as the Na’vi never once launch any kind of attack on the humans that wasn’t blatantly unprovoked. You rip up their forest with a 200 foot bulldozer, they throw a rock at a camera. Tit for tat?

James Cameron still remains one of our best visual storytellers, and despite the waste of a plot, the film never, ever encroaches on being a “bad.” It’s thoroughly watchable, just like an HD nature documentary. Even though the film drags a bit, what happens on screen is still told with a visual intensity that rivals almost anything this decade. It’s like looking at a Frank Frazetta drawing. It’s cool to see half naked women swinging swords at each other on a volcano, but that’s all there is.

Regardless. Avatar is a truly remarkable achievement in 3D cinema. The world feels real, and feels right. The effect simply deepens the cinematic frame, rarely using it for any kind of “stunt” effect. This feels less like a radical idea than someone just doing it right. I hope to see more of this style of filmmaking, but am aware that no one is going to spend a reported $450 million on a film to achieve this immersion after the financial disaster Avatar will be. The film is tracking for an $80 million opening weekend, and a possible sub-$200 million overall take. When you can;t make back half of the money a studio gives you, this kind of film typically doesnt’ get made again

And that kind of disappoints me. Avatar‘s closest cinematic cousin is the first Hellboy movie. You can tell while watching the film that everyone involved loved that world and these characters, but they filled it with a story that didn’t do those characters justice. It’s sad that Avatar will never come close to recouping the budget, because I would love to see the sequel. If James Cameron could sculpt a Hellboy II out of this world (and it is possible – there are so many great parts of Pandora that a truly original story could take this world to the next level), I would be of a changed mind. As it stands, it’s disheartening to see so much time, love, and effort into building a world completely populated by vacuous characters and a predictable plot.

Avatar could be mistaken for a masterpiece; It has a totality of vision that is incredibly rare in filmmaking. The flaw lies in that fact that, past the details, the vision is crushingly dull.

6.9 out of 10

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