Bad Santa
What’s Good: Billy Bob.
What's Not: Perhaps the film shouldn't have included the prologue. 
Directed by  Terry Zwigoff
Outline: "Bad Santa" is the story of two conmen who go on a road trip to malls dressed as Santa and his elf.

     To distil the essence of Bad Santa would is not as difficult as doing the same to the other best films of the year. I’ll let the film’s angry little person’s observation of the title character sum up the experience: “Your soul is shit. Every single fucking thing about is ugly.”

     Yup, that about sums it up. If Kill Bill is full of unrelentingly gruesome action then Bad Santa must be the comedy equivalent. It’s unrelentingly mean. A dark comedy --pitch black, in fact—that, in the process of offending everyone on God’s puke green earth, is easily the funniest film I saw all year. Call me demented but I’d choose this raucous comedy over the tame Elf any day. Watch in disgust/delight as Billy Bob plays a safe cracking, alcoholic, pants pissing thief that poses as a department store Santa (along with his bitter midget sidekick played by Tony Cox who dresses up as an elf with pointy white ears) to gain access to a different department store’s overflowing cash vault every Christmas Eve. Problem is that this vile and hateful man must endure the preciosity of young kids raised on a consumer culture that, as this film argues, is more grotesque than any bodily fluid Bad Santa can muster up. This guy hates kids. A lot! He calls them “fuckers,” he steals from them, he even dashes their dreams of Santa Claws (man, that scene where he assaults a reindeer is classic) and assures the little tikes that “life is shit.” Is it over the top? You bet. Each outré joke, each Billy Bob scowl, each bit of vomit humor hits the audience in the stomach with the furious comic force of a thousand Will Ferralls. Watch as Billy Bob shoots from all cylinders to deliver not only one of the finely tuned conic performances of the year but one of the best acting challenges of the year. The one note Billy Bob hits upon is more rewarding than the Oscar bound Jude Law who may have had more than one note but who cares if the other layers are as shallow as Bad Santa checking out a soccer mom’s ass.

     That the film doesn’t devolve into sappy and clichéd third act coda where the usual asshole™ turns all changed™ and suburban after meeting the girl and connecting with a cute little kid (as in The Kid, As Good as It Gets, Scrooged, About A Boy etc.) is refreshing; that the film, despite not compromising the main character’s inner asshole, still manages to deliver a hopeful and kinda charming ending is even more amazing. Director Terry Zwigoff stays true to his film’s nasty (yet quite moving) mission statement of meanness.

     Though the film is certainly not for everyone, watch it and tell me you didn’t laugh at the scene where Billy Bob tells a hopeful young boy: “Wish in one hand, shit in another see which one fills up first.” 

{A}

Songs From The Second Floor
What’s Good: You've never seen anything like it.
What's Not: You may never want to see anything like it.
Directed by Roy Andersson

     Let me tell you about a Swedish fever dream of a move that was never given a proper release here in the states. It’s called Songs From the Second Floor and that this film never got a big release is almost a given. If you see it, all I can say is: you’ll know why. Last summer, for the first time to my knowledge, the film was being screened for audiences in one west coast city, for only one showing and --get this-- only at 10 in the morning during a day when most healthy young ones are good and hanged over (I know, not a word… whatever). Folks, the fact that a film got me out of bed on a Sunday means I was itching to see it… like, bad. But there it is. There I was, dying to see a film I heard was like an elusive mix of Bergman meets Gilliam meets Dahli, knowing full well that this is not only a film that nobody will ever want to see, but it may be a film nobody here in the states can see.  

     Songs is one of the best films I’ve ever seen precisely because it’s the only film of it’s kind I’ve ever seen. To describe or deconstruct the “plot” is to miss the point. Songs is an absurdist end-of-days film that defies rational logic; one tableau after another played before me with a simultaneous effect of humor, ghastly anticipation and flat out wonder-- shot by the visionary Roy Andersson, the film shows us one vignette after another but the camera never moves, it just sits there and observers these strange begins and you will find yourself doing the same thing. The characters that inhabit this film have no earthly motivation but neither did Charlie’s three vacuous Angels so if you’re lucky enough to see the film, then sit back and don’t allow the word “why?” to enter your consciousness while watching.

     Patterns and visual themes do emerge, however. Miserable men in suits. Women sitting around waiting for these men that will never be available (they are physically, mentally and spiritually unavailable). Men trapped in metal or jagged contraptions. Haunting and mysterious sacrifices. Bursts of enigmatic violence. Endless traffic jams with rows of cars spiraling out into the cloudy heavens. Man... it's just impossible to describe this film (and it's even harder to find it in theaters). The world seems to be full of restless spirits that are transit yet have no destination. This is purgatory. And if not purgatory the film takes an artistically prescient view of this mortal realm by showing us  people who are deathly afraid. Of what, exactly, never needs to be explained

     “Jesus wasn’t the son of god but he was a good man” is a line spoken by an “insane” patient. Obscure? Yeah. Maddeningly illusive? Of course it is. But you know what? despite all that, the film made total sense to me as I watched it. And you know why? Because I didn’t ask “why?” Well, at least not until after I saw it.

     Calling Songs unforgettable would be an understatement. I can think of three scenes that are not only memorable but perhaps rank up there as the best and most meaningful visuals the cinema has ever shown me.

• An Edward Hopper-esq shot where we learn for the first time that there is an “endless” traffic jam out side and where we first meet the film’s central (if you can call it that) character, a portly man who has lost everything and ends up selling plastic Jesus icons (a nifty little comment on the commercialization and emptiness of Christianity).

• The last scene of the film that involves the loaded visual icon of thousands of those plastic Jesus icons as a man throws this “worthless product” into a dump heap. This is a sad final scene. 

• And my favorite: A long, deep focus tracking shot of people rushing with their heaps of weighty luggage to some sort of ticket station. The endless row of men all have their own material goods and all are trying with all their might and will to bring this garbage into the “next place.”

     With that unforgettable picture in my head, I thought it was as if the film was saying this “next place” --if there even is one—is a riddle that we may never know, while this place is all we have. The film’s partly about capitalism and communism –sure it is-- but more broad a theme than that could be: mankind’s need to hold on to earthly possessions (including memories of our past). You can’t take your Lexus to “heaven.” Your golf game and pressed suits are useless. And guess what, your bank account at Washington Mutual won’t help you after your dead—but even if it did, there’s going to be one huge transaction fee to be paid. That’s how the film spoke to me but others will see something entirely differently. And I suppose, if anything motivates the meandering and eerily hollow (yet strangely human) characters, it’s a fear of letting go and to further that thought: whatever’s wrong with the world depicted in this film, it is a basic form of greed and nihilism.

     This film taught me many invaluable lesions but it didn’t so much as teach me as it did allow my mind to wander through the director’s canvas and interoperate the wonderful visuals in my own way.

     So here’s my pledge. Whenever this gem comes out on DVD I’m going to acquire it at all costs—I’ll go to Sweden if I must. And if you (A) love visual inventive and artistic for the sake of artistic films and (B) if have the dubious honor of knowing me then I will let you borrow it. You won’t have to wake up early to see it and I won’t charge you. Do I do this because I’m a nice guy? Hell no, I’m a bastard. But, rather, I do this because I’ve seen the light. The word is not Jesus or Allah or MTV… its Songs from The Second Floor. 

{A}

Paycheck 1/09/2003
What’s Good: A lot of great ideas for a movie.
What's Not: None of which amounting to anything in this movie. Could somebody tell me why Paycheck isn’t straight to video? Also, Ben Affleck is the doush bag of the year. I hope he got paid a lot for this one.  
Directed by John Woo
Outline: Jennings (Affleck), an electrician who has had part of his memory erased, struggles to to find clues to his whereabouts for the past two years.

Dear John,

• Slow motion? It’s out. Give it up.

• Car chases? Stop doing em.

• Outrunning fireballs? Oh my god! Yeah that’s still cool.

• Mexican standoffs? From henceforth, they should only be done in films about Mexico (i.e. Once Upon a Time In...)  

• And Doves? Come on, do we really need to keep using doves? I’m now officially anti doves because of you. 

     PS… the nineties are over. Adapt to the times or die a slow-motion death while on a motorcycle as one of your own stupid fireballs consumes you.  

     I’m wondering who likes Woo’s movies anymore. I’m speaking about a director who’s on par with that creepy, joke cracking uncle that everybody pretends is funny and laughs but only out of sheer pity. Sadly, Woo is now irrelevant and his films mean as much to a modern audience as a Tango and Cash sequel to critics. This is too bad because I once respected the auteur’s two gun action surrealism. I admit it, I have fond memories of watching films like Hard Target or The Killer as a teenager but in realizing that the director is just rehashing (more like pimping out) old product and attempting to sell it as new, I find myself embittered with a self-indulgent iconography that I once celebrated. And with this tired adaptation of a Phillip K Dick tale, Woo has proved that since he is unable to take the action movie genre out of the nineties he should remain a relic of better times.

       Here is a film full of stale ideas that posse no visual flair. The energy is absent. Which means that not only are the action scenes dreary but the story, while possessing an intriguing sci-fi notion of looking into the future and changing what happens, has been done many times over and all with better results than this clueless thriller. Paycheck is the kind of briskly empty jaunt that the short term memory-less character from Memento would have really liked.

     I figure since I’m in this contentious mood I might as well through out there the fact that I’m also wondering who still likes Ben Affleck. Not to be hard on the guy but I simply can’t stomach his presence anymore. What happened, Ben? Hey, I forgave him for Reindeer Games. I gave toaster head a chance after the worst film of the decade, Pearl Harbor, offended my senses. Even up till last year I maintained that he still had it in him because Changing Lanes was one of the best films of the year (not to mention the actor's best performance to date), but after this year’s treacherous hat trick (Daredevil, then Gigli and now this film… too much suck to ask a single sentence to hold.) I’m beginning to wonder if this fallen star has given up. This film indicates he has. In Paycheck, Ben plays a guy with some generic action movie name (do I really need to look it up?) who hires his expertise out to shady businesses, does their dirty work, then allows his memory to be erased. The idea of time vs. money is well worth exploring... in a better movie. After a high risk job in which this computer engineer lost three years of his life to be paid eighty million and the end, he finds himself running from the very people he once worked for as he attempts to uncover what his old self did and… Jeszie Crizzie, I’m not going to relive the memory of the plot! I’d rather relive the experience of being anally rape… uh, never mind. I will say, however, that themes of fate vs. free will are alluded to and these ideas (as with their place in the slightly better but still rank Minority Report) could have found a filmmaker that really liked them instead of one who wanted to exploit these ripe science fiction ideas and use them as a backdrop for action scenes that go nowhere.

     The “science” of this film is so murky that all we are left with is a frighteningly tan actor (the bloke looks like an Oscar) running around like a chicken with his head cut off. Seriously, since Ben’s character can (or could) foresee the future, the items he sent to himself before his brain was wiped clean (a paper clip, a crossword puzzle, matches, a bullet... don’t ask) allow the character to evade all kinds of danger. Luckily, he has the exact gadget necessary to overcome each foreseen obstacle. This is a cool idea except --woops--  there’s no threat of danger for the protagonist! Everything he does in the film we are watching are things the character’s past self saw happening and thus, since he saw it happening he was able to avoid it. Meaning: there's no way the protagonist would have allowed himself to die. Meaning: I was totally fucking bored.

     Paycheck should get some award for containing the most cumbersome line of the year. I shit you not, the antagonist (Aaron Eckert) actually speaks this line of dialogue with a straight face—“Everyday things when combined with the power of foresight transformed this accountant into an… ESCAPE ARTIST!!!” I laughed so hard at that one that the whole audience, in turn, laughed about the fact that I was laughing—I don’t know who I was more embarrassed for, myself or the actors being forced to utter lines like that. But considering the whole film sounds like that and considering that looking at this ungainly production didn’t do anything for me, I decided to listen to the supremely awkward dialogue. I was surprised to learn that the dialogue not only makes decent actors sound like stilted theater flunkies, but everybody, oddly enough, ended up sounding like John Woo. Meaning: After listening to the flow and syntax of the one dimensional dialogue, one might assume (provided he or she has no idea who the actors are) that none of the actors are actually American—the script sounds like Swedish porn outtakes spoken by actors who are phonetically sounding out all the words.    

     So as a failed concept about erasing memory and tempting fate by seeing it’s outcome, the only thought provoking thing about the film is the hypothetical notion that one day we’ll be able to delete the memory of seeing Gigli. Now that’s a good idea for a thriller.

{D} 25 Affleck loving dopes recommend Paycheck, 88 +me didn't.

Mona Lisa Smile and Monster 1/09/2003
What’s Good: The blessing Monster got after Roger Ebert inexplicably selected it as the best film of the year. His glowing review of Mona Lisa Smile was a nice bonus for that film too.
What's Not: Both films are over the top when they should be moving. 
Mona Lisa Smile Outline: Set in 1953, Katherine Watson (Roberts) is a free-spirited graduate of UCLA who accepts a teaching post at Wellesley College.
Monster Outline: A biopic on Aileen Carol Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was executed for killing seven men in the state of Florida during the 1980s.

     I’ve been sitting down and writing about the best and worst films of the year. Through jotting down my notes, I've learn things that weren’t clear to me as a whole until now. For instance, I have rediscovered films that I love more now that the year is over, I have learned which ones haven’t held up well at all City of God), and I have seen a pattern in many of what I consider to be the worst films of the year. The most unbearable films I saw last year were the ones with feminist themes. From Gigli to Uptown Girls, seven out of the ten worst films of last year were feeble excuses for feminism that sought to empower but only end up embarrassing themselves with insincere discourses. Tthe list is growing. I’ll try to cover this more in my end-of-the-year column but for now I give you two more of the worst films of the year to add to the steaming pile. Both of these current films are biopics. Both have high aspirations. Both unreasonably despise men. Both try to say a lot. And both fail.

     Directed by a dude, written by two dudes and staring four women (well, for now we'll just pretend Julia Styles is a woman), Mona Lisa Smile may be the worst Hollywood-does-feminism offering yet; oh yes, possibly more shallow than the high gloss/low brain wave functions of Charlie’s Angels 2. Also, compare if you will this winter date flick to last winter’s Far From Heaven… a film which deftly used feminist ideology to further its statement on the artifice of an era (both past and present). Heaven was deeply moving because it was intellectually stimulating, but more than that the film included characters I liked; a trait that goes a long way. Far From Heaven also included many layers that ranged from interesting observations on the classic Hollywood film style to postmodern filmmaking to a women's role in society to questions of basic human needs in a "free" society  that I find myself still thinking about. This film by comparison has one layer: the emotionally overwrought --and paper thin-- plot about a teacher that comes to Wellesley college circa 1950s and, wouldn't ya know it, changes everyone's lives while teaching all girls that it's okay to be independent in a man's world. That's all we get. Far from heaven let us decide the moral ambiguity of how women, blacks and gays were treated in the fifties (it tells a story first, a message second) while this film, which benefits from retroactively sanctimonious morals, tells you what is and would rather talk at it’s audience than invite them to explore what it's saying. So, then, rather than attempting to do so, I’ll just bash.

     Why should we care about the girls in the school? Because starlets (Julia Styles, Kirsten Dunst and Maggie Gillenhal) are playing the brainy wall flowers; watch how they photographed with a stark white glow that makes them look like angels. Why should we care about the teacher? Because she's Julia Roberts... um, seriously folks, that's the only reason the film gives us. The film, unlike the charming (and structurally similar) School of Rock, contains no students we care about; Kirsten Dunst as the bad girl has zero believability and even less sincerity going for her. Worst than that, the film offers no students I really believed in. Just stock characters-- the mean one, the sincere one, the brainy one, the ugly but kind one, the promiscuous one etc. I suppose this lack of distinct personality makes it easier for Roberts, the "bohemian" and liberal art history teacher, to shape their minds by throwing out trite sayings like “Look beyond the paint. Let…us…try…to…open…our… minds!” as the students gaze at her in amazement. But the film fails to open our minds. Mona Lisa Smile is all affected 50’s accents. It’s all pointed dialogue. There is no subtlety or nuance, just content.  A constructed time capsule of a movie with robotic characters spouting the profound and profoundly forced dialogue. I mean, you got to listen to how characters draw out emotions to excruciating excess, to a point where they sound more like British femmbots than real students: “Is… that… my… file… let… me… look… at… that” Styles blurts with zero emotion. 

     Early on, when Roberts asks a bedazzled class “what is art?” they had no answer but mine was "not this film.” And later, when the teacher pleads: “a few years from now your soul responsibility will be taking care of your husband and children” my answer was: “god damn right,” because after this film I'm starting to rethink the woman's right movement. But hold up for a sec, on second thought, considering the fact that there probably wasn't one bright woman allowed anywhere near this production, and considering too many dim, playing-it-safe men were, maybe it would be better to just chock this whole deal up to Hollywood incompetence.    

    I could go on --probably should-- but since this review sucks I should close my ideas up with a final thought on why the film wasn’t a total loss: at least Reece Witherspoon wasn't in it.

***

      A night after I endured Mona Lisa Smile later I stumbled into Monster, a film which views men in an even worse light if that’s possible. But worst then this film's treatment of males is it's treatment of the audience. While Monster is not as inarticulate and down right dopey as the film above, and while it is sincere in its message of men abusing women, causing them to do brave things (like kill innocent people to reclaim one's identity), it nonetheless affirms its status as a sub par serial killer biopic that bears a painfully standard direction (Patty Jenkins), lacks romantic chemistry, character motivation, and has no sense of narrative flow. Oh yeah, and the film is ugly. No, worse... it's fugly! I'm talking, two hours of staring at fake wood wallpaper!!!! If the director's intent was to assault our aesthetic sensibilities then mission accomplished.

       I’m tempted to say that the simplistic feminist ideology of Mona Lisa Smile was more interesting that this film if only because Monster mucks up and (in my opinion) fails to back up it's message while the Roberts film --contrived as it may be-- at least didn't contradict itself.

       I guess I'll start with the unsettling fact that there is no chemistry between the troubled killer (Charlize Theron) and her girlfriend (Christina Ricci). I know, I know you're going to tell me that no lesbian flick is bad by virtue of the fact that... well, the whole lesbian part, but in this film we're asked to believe that a troubled woman who has been driven (yes driven) to kill men is loved by a cute preacher’s daughter. I kept wondering "why?"  and never got a proper answer. She loves Aileen the killer because that's what this film is about and that's what happened in real life... to which I say: so what! I never believed this character would stay with Theron’s psychotic. And considering the whole film hinges upon the fact that Aileen  keeps killing out of a need to keep the only person in the world who loves her (Ricci) close, I’d say the film misses it’s target entirely. Christian Ricci as the timid moocher is miscast but perhaps the performer did all that script and director asked her to do. Perhaps her emotions are supposed to be muted. On the opposite side of muted emotions is Theron's fiery portrayal of Aileen. If Theron gets her first Oscar nomination it will be for a performance in which great acting has been mistaken for a cute starlet who uglies herself up, opens her eyes really, really wide so as to look really, really troubled, never blinks, and overacts in lethal dosages while hyperbolizing her sordid hick accident as she barks things like "I'm done hooking!!!" I’m not saying Theron gives a bad performance –she does quite a lot with the material-- but I am saying that this misguided Indy pic made it impossible for me to tell how good this performance would have been if it was in a better film.

      My main problem with this Monster, though, is not it in the performances but in the motivation that fuels the performances. What the film is saying, in a nutshell, is that Aileen the serial killer is justified in doing what she does (shooting men who try to pay her for sex that she is offering on Florida roadsides) because she had a troubled past. “Circumstance, that’s exactly it, that’s exactly it. It’s not my fault.” This line is spoken  by the unhinged Theron and though the film is saying her mind is clouded by murderous rage that stems from long term male (and only male) abuse and childhood trauma, it is in the same breath justifying her actions. And you know, I’m fine with a film that needs to say that, but I need a convincing reason. Something to go on, but more importantly some aspect that sustains the serial killer's actions and makes them compelling people to watch-- In Cold Blood had it, so did Killer: A Journal of Murder (that underrated James Woods film, quite similar to Monster now that I think about it), as did Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, even something like Trier's  Dancer In The Dark, a musical where a blind woman is on trial for killing a man, hooked me in an unforgettable way. But Since Monster's selling point --the relationship-- was not compelling for me... nothing this character did, was.

      Director Patty Jenkins makes excuses for this “monster” in her jagged attempt to galvanize Aileen's murderous killing spree, declaring it a brave act in a cruel world. My girlfriend (who, if you can believe it, is not as big a feminist as myself) disagrees with my interpretations of the film’s intentions --she must have believed in the central relationship-- and indeed many more who see the film and read this will also disagree.  Fine, but there'll be no convincing me.

Mona Lisa Smile: D
Monster: D

44  critics recommend Mona Lisa Smile, 83 +me didn't
59  critics recommend Monster, 16 +me give it the death penalty