By Michael Atkinson

IFC News

[Photo: Eric Rohmer's "Triple Agent," Koch Lorber]

There's no shortage of speculation and analysis among maddened cinephiles about what is wrong with the American film distribution industry and why it is that way, but what's certain is that every year scores of films that might have, and should have, gotten honest projector time instead get their first "release" in the U.S. on DVD. Once that happens, they just vanish in the fog — presently, a legal DVD disc cannot qualify for inclusion in critics' polls and award systems, despite the fact that often the receipts are higher than those a "specialty" theatrical run would garner, and the rentable/buyable indie or import in question is far more accessible and is seen by more people. How could the new Eric Rohmer film not be awardable, simply because distributors have lost their nerve and/or their ability to market to an increasingly dumbed-down populace? Born to kvetch, I offer up my favorite dozen-plus-three straight-to-disc U.S. debuts this year, the likes of which would fill up my year's top ten list if we were playing fair.

"The Power of Kangwon Province" (Tai Seng Video)
The second film from despairing Korean New Wave structuralist Hong Sang-soo, this 1998 ballade is surely the movement's most critic-revered work, a sly diptych with a wounded heart. Shot with Hong's symptomatic rigor, the film unfurls like a haunting memory, replaying itself but always failing to find an elusive truth. In the end, Hong's clinical interrogation of modern love and its discontents holds at the center, more heartbreaking in its way than any tale of passion crippled by fate or society.

"Triple Agent" (Koch Lorber)

In his 87th year, Eric Rohmer is finally sent straight to video — but this historical drama, which revisits the Miller-Skoblin affair, a mid-30s Euro-tangle of reckless espionage and collateral damage that had White Russian émigrés in Paris double-dealing the Nazis, the Soviets, French Reds and each other, is a gabby, lucid head trip, sometimes as boldly theatrical as a 1950s teleplay, sometimes volleying between visual homages to Rockwell and Vermeer.

"The Wildcat" (Kino)

In his Berlin days, Ernst Lubitsch was honing his comic rapiers with silent torpedoes like this 1921 farce, a masterful ditty set in a militaristically absurd frontier fort beset by a girl-magnet playboy lieutenant (the impossibly deft Victor Janson) and a marauding band of bandits led by a wild-haired Pola Negri.

"The Desert of the Tartars" (No Shame)

A fascinating whatsit never released here, Valerio Zurlini's 1976 adaptation of the revered 1938 Dino Buzzati novel of the same name is a massive post-Lean epic — a colonialist drama, shot in widescreen on location in Iran with an international cast including Jean-Louis Trintignant, Max Von Sydow, Fernando Rey and Philippe Noiret — that's actually about the absence of event and consequence. It may be the grandest and most lavish existentialist parable ever made — it was shot in the Bam Citadel, which has since been leveled by the 2003 earthquake.

"A Trick of the Light" (Anchor Bay)

Between episodes of American jukebox sentimentality, Wim Wenders returned to Germany in 1995 to film this utterly lovely and wise meta-semi-silent-docudrama about the brothers Skladanowsky, German inventors who ran neck and neck with Edison and the Lumières in the race to invent the movies. It stars, as herself, the younger's 91-year-old daughter Lucie Hürtgen-Skladanowsky, and her cache of memorabilia.

"The Secret Glory" (Subversive)

A fascinating, self-aggrandizing mythmaker and gadfly, South African-born Richard Stanley is famous for his boggled fiction film projects, but this is his best feature, a dizzying archival montage (freely using classic film footage) detailing the extraordinary rise and fall of SS officer Otto Rahn, the troubled Nazi in charge of searching for the Holy Grail. The film's included on the extra discs for Stanley's "Dust Devil" (1993).

"Fuse" (First Run)

Good old-fashioned anarchy, this 2003 Bosnian farce — the first feature by director Pjer Zalica — plops us down into a corrupt, rancor-poisoned village on the Serbian border just two years after the civil war, as it scrambles to create the illusion of law-abiding togetherness and democracy on the eve of a visit from President Clinton: smugglers, white slavery, land mines, martyr ghosts, relentless renditions of "House of the Rising Sun," guns everywhere.

"Phantom" (Flicker Alley)

An archival film-geek event, this long-neglected 1922 detour in German master F.W. Murnau's tragically brief career (it was one of three movies he made between 1922's "Nosferatu" and 1924's "The Last Laugh") is a reverent morality play and an object lesson in Murnau's subtle reinvention of visual expression.

"Damnation" (Facets)

This 1988 film by Hungarian dyspeptic Béla Tarr, one of the planet's great cinematic formalists, was the artist's long-take turning point, and first discovery of a classic cinemanic space: apocalyptically run-down, dead-or-dying villages on vast Mitteleuropan plains of mud, poverty, crushed will, delusionary behavior and charcoal skies, all observed by a point of view that stalks silently and patiently through the ruins like a ghost. It's a serotonin-depleted ordeal — catnip to Tarrians — with some of the most magnificent black-and-white images shot anywhere in the world.

"Zigeurenwiesen" (Kino)

However much it may have seemed so to us, genre berserker Seijun Suzuki didn't just kill time between his famous Nikkatsu Studio firing in 1966 and his comeback with "Pistol Opera" decades later. His most defiant resurgence came in 1980 with "Zigeurnerweisen," the first chapter in a loosely-knit trilogy all set during the affluent, decadent 1920s, and all intensely, drowsily tripped out on reflexive slippage, narrative Dada and gender-combat ambiguity.

"Johan van der Keuken: The Complete Collection Vol. 1" (Facets)

The late, great Dutch documentarian/freeform personal filmmaker is virtually cineaste non grata on these shores, but now he's DVD'd in this three-disc set, which five features and four shorts, all of them eloquent and moving expression of JVDK's aesthetic, which is fastidious only in its refusal to prioritize moviemaking over the spontaneous textures of ordinary existence.

"Farewell, Home Sweet Home" (Kino)

Otar Iosseliani, the Paris-stationed, Georgian-expat master of human ceremonies, has been building one of the world's most sublime filmographies largely out of American purview. Call him the heir to Renoir and Tati and a contemporary of Tarkovsky's, with a vision of contemporary life that is scathing and yet warm and wry. This hypnotic 1999 farce about French class envy observes its characters' folly and fate (and the masterful performance by a giant Marabou stork) like a patient boulevardier on his second glass of Pernod.

"The Seventh Continent" (Kino)

Austrian director Michael Haneke has had quite an autumn-years run lately, so finally we get access to his first feature, "The Seventh Continent" (1989), a droll, methodical, deeply discomfiting portrait of inexplicable nuclear-family auto-destruction. Based in some detail upon a real incident, and never exploitative.

"Culloden" (New Yorker)

The overdue DVDing of Peter Watkins's long-marginalized, cry-in-the-wilderness corpus continues with this long-unseen debut feature, made for the BBC in 1964 and structured in Watkins's trademarked mock-doc mode, with appalled cameramen witnessing the English suppression of Jacobite highlanders in 1746 (a parallel to the escalating "peace actions" then under way in Vietnam is clear as glass). On the same disc with Watkins' first brush with notoriety, 1966's "The War Game."

"Videograms of a Revolution" (Facets)

Czech-German doc pope Harun Farocki, working with Andrei Ujica, assembles video footage shot by scores of sources during the week of riots that culminated in the Ceausescu overthrow of 1989, and what results is not only an hour-by-hour history of the revolution but also an exploration of how it was conceived and seen as a televised event.

By Christopher Bonet

IFC News

[Photo: "The Tiger and the Snow," Strand Releasing, 2006]

A round-up of the best (or worst) $10 you'll spend this week.

"Arthur and the Invisibles"

So Luc Besson, director of "The Professional" and the cult fav "The Fifth Element," plans on retiring from directing following his latest film, which is a... children's animated feature? It features a mixture of CGI animation and live action as Arthur (Freddy Highmore) goes in search of his grandfather in a mystical land to save his house from eeeeeeeeevil real estate developers. The highlight? David Bowie as the voice of the antagonist Maltazard. Nice.

Opens in limited release (official site).

"Black Christmas"

For those who don't want to see a Christmas or potential Oscar film this week, check out this unnecessary remake of the classic 1974 cult film "Black Christmas." The gore factor's been upgraded since the original, but early reviews call the film lazy and uninspired. Courtesy of "Willard" director Glen Morgan.

Opens wide (official site).

"Children of Men"

Alfonso Cuarón's latest might go down as one of the best films of the year, but its bleak tone and near absence of ad campaign might turn the film into a box office failure. So see it. Please.

Opens in limited release (official site).

"The Dead Girl"

Actor/director Karen Moncrieff follows up her 2002 Sundance success "Blue Car" with an effort that's netted a few Spirit Award nominations. The talented cast includes Toni Collette, Marcia Gay Harden and Mary Beth Hurt. The film describes how a young woman's murder affects the lives of inhabitants of a small town; think "Twin Peaks" meets Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only Kevin Bacon's dead and being played by Brittany Murphy.

Opens in New York and Los Angeles (official site).

"Factory Girl"

Sienna Miller, tabloid star and on-off girlfriend of Jude Law, has become a major name despite having yet to have acted in a film anyone can remember. In a fabulous twist of casting, she managed to land the starring role in this biopic of counter-culture icon Edie Sedgwick, also famous for nothing in particular. The film may have both Lou Reed and Bob Dylan pissed off, but Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol? We're there.

Opens in New York and Los Angeles (official site).

"Fast Track"

One would think that a film starring TV comedy veterans Zach Braff and a wheelchair-bound Jason Bateman vying for the affections of a woman would have the possibility of being funny. Unfortunately, the film seems to be embarrassing to just about everyone involved. It makes a one-week limited run in major cities before being released wide in the middle of January, exactly where it belongs.

Opens in limited release (official site).

"Miss Potter"

The last time Renee Zellweger went British on us, we were treated to that awful "Bridget Jones" sequel. The 'wegs goes family (and awards) friendly in this romantic story about Beatrix Potter, the author of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," and her quest for love, happiness and success in early 20th century England. Ewan McGregor and Emily Watson provide supporting duties, and it's good to see Chris Noonan of "Babe" back directing.

Opens in Los Angeles (official site).

"Notes on a Scandal"

Dame Judi Dench reunites with her "Iris" director Richard Eyre in a film that's got Oscar written all over it. Cate Blanchett plays an art teacher who enters into an affair with one of her students, causing upheaval in both her personal and professional lives. Mmmmm...melodrama...

Opens in limited release (official site).

"Pan's Labyrinth"

Guillermo del Toro's latest is being proclaimed as his best work yet as a young girl falls into her own imagination to escape the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. The film has been hailed by critics and fans alike as one of the year's most imaginative and already has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

Opens in limited release (official site).

"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"

A tortured genius in 18th century France feels that in order to make the ultimate perfume, he needs to sacrifice many a young virgin. "Run Lola Run" director Tom Tykwer performs the unimaginable, as he somehow brings the world of smell to the big screen. We expect a lot of close-ups of noses...

Opens in limited release (official site).

"The Tiger and the Snow"

After delighting a few and annoying many more at the Oscars after winning Best Foreign Language Film, Roberto Benigni seriously creeped us out with his adult version of "Pinocchio." Now he tackles the latest conflict in Iraq through the prism of a sweet romance about a guy trying to woo his ex-girlfriend, who just so happens to be unconscious and in a coma. Somewhere, Pedro Almodóvar is weeping.

Opens in New York and Los Angeles (official site).

"Unconscious"

Speaking of — frequent Almodóvar collaborator Leonor Watling and Goya Award-winner Luis Tosar star in Joaquín Oristrell's period comedy about the sexual revolution in early 20th century Barcelona. Check out the witty trailer.

Opens in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York (official site).

By Aaron Hillis

IFC News

[Photo: "The Dead Girl," First Look Pictures Releasing, 2006]

Those of you still hungover from all that Jennifer Hudson buzz on Christmas might be too bleary-eyed to notice this week's real dreamgirls: Mary Beth Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden, Toni Collette, Kerry Washington, Rose Byrne, Piper Laurie and Brittany Murphy (stop snickering) all help breathe life into writer-director Karen Moncrieff's "The Dead Girl." In her follow-up to 2002's justly praised debut "Blue Car," Moncrieff's pitch-black ensemble drama about loss and isolation centers around the murder of a prostitute (Murphy). Structured into five vignettes, each part sketches a portrait of a troubled soul with some connection to the eponymous victim, including her mother (Harden) and the stranger who finds her body (Collette). As poignant a kick in the chest as any film about women discovering they're each a little dead inside should be, "The Dead Girl" was recently nominated for three Spirit Awards — including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Mary Beth Hurt), and Best Director — which only proves it's the most wonderful time of the year... to have a short chat with Moncrieff.

Congrats on all the Spirit Award nominations. Was there any sort of marketing push, or was this is a complete surprise?

There was a push insofar as getting screeners to the committee who makes the decisions, but that's as far as it goes. Honestly, I hoped that we would get a Best Supporting Actress nomination, so I wasn't surprised that they recognized Mary Beth Hurt. Of course, I wanted them to recognize more of our ladies, too, but I had no expectations that we would get a Best Picture or Best Director nod at all. That was a wonderful surprise. First Look is a small-ish company and can't compete with these huge studios that have tons of money to pour into campaigns. We're just not in that world. "The Dead Girl" is a four-million dollar, fiercely independent movie, and I feel they're doing a really great job with it so far.

You're up against "Little Miss Sunshine" for Best Picture, a film that probably has the backing for a potential Oscar campaign. Does "independent film" still mean what it should nowadays, or has it become a studio term for niche product?

I'm sure other people have definitions. For me, I see myself as an independent director because I'm not just examining the lives of supermodels, super-lawyers and athletes. I want to tell stories that are perhaps a little off of the beaten path, with people who maybe exist on the fringes of society, and I'm interested in examining their lives more deeply than a run-of-the-mill Hollywood film might. This movie consists of portraits of six women, most of whom by Hollywood standards aren't camera-ready, their lives aren't perfect enough, they don't wear enough make-up, or they're "not beautiful enough." They're not all searching for love, I don't know. [laughs] I expect independent films to illuminate a part of humanity that is often left out. I try to write from some personal place inside me; not autobiographical, but personal in terms of what's troubling or interesting me. That's usually where I get the stuff that's ripest for my exploration.

Do you typically find yourself taking from experience and figuring out themes later, or do you begin with personal ideas you'd like to explore and work outward?

The former. I really couldn't have imagined that I'd be writing a story that had serial killing and a drug-addict prostitute at its center. You might think that's the stuff of generic films, but I had this unique experience of being a juror on a murder trial. When it was over, I felt like I knew this young woman who was the victim. Over time, each of the witnesses had offered up a different little detail about who she was. I pieced together a portrait of her, and her life really sprang into bold relief for me. After we convicted the guy, I was still left with this weight that I couldn't shake, and the way I deal is to write about it. So I started taking notes, thinking about all these other people who were there, how none of us had known one another before we were pulled into this courtroom, and how murder creates this kind of community. In structuring the movie, I tried to do that. Each of the five sections is a portrait of a different woman, their lives each profoundly changed by the murder, and each offers a bit of the puzzle. By the end, the audience has to work to create this idea of who she once was.

There's obviously a connective thread, but it's almost like you're directing five standalone shorts in an omnibus. Were you ever concerned that some of these segments might not work as well as others?

Yeah, I still worry. [laughs] No, honestly, I fulfilled my intentions, but I know it requires a lot of flexibility from the viewer because you become invested in each of these characters. Each vignette is such an intimate view of a life that when I then say, "Okay, you're done looking at this person, now look over here," it can be jarring and upsetting to an audience member: "No, I want to stay with Toni Collette and Giovanni Ribisi and see how that works out. I don't want to move onto someone else!" I understand that it's a challenging format, but I hope by the end, it will be satisfying and open enough that you're left with some questions about what the connections and themes are. Ultimately, that's what I love in movies.

How do you approach dark subject matter so that it's not misconstrued as sensationalism?

I try to be careful about the images that I provide so that people are paying attention to the right things. For instance, if I lingered on a certain view of the dead body... I'm not interested in adding more images of women being beaten, sexually molested, abused or killed. Even though this is the arena in which these stories take place, I wasn't trying to be coy in terms of skirting the issue. This woman is killed brutally and it's bloody and nasty. I wouldn't feel any need to show that for purely pornographic interests. At the end of the day, I always trust my own barometer to know when something is too much because I'm a woman and very sensitive to this. If I'm watching a film and a woman is being raped so that her boyfriend can go off on a killing spree and get vengeance, I'm very aware of how sexual assault is used as a plot point. I try not to be gratuitous and use only those things needed to tell my story.

As a former actress, why do you think there's still a shortage of great women's roles today?

I think it's because there's still this assumption that men won't go to see women's stories, but women will go see men's stories. That, and the fact there aren't that many female writers and directors compared to how many men are out there telling their stories. Women are definitely an underserved audience. They want to see stories about themselves, portrayed in all the complexity that is inherent in women's lives. Kieslowski, he used to tell some beautiful women's stories. But he's dead now, so... [shrugs]

"The Dead Girl" opens in New York and L.A. on December 29th (official site).

By Michelle Orange, Matt Singer, R. Emmet Sweeney and Alison Willmore

IFC News

[Photo: "The Departed," Warner Bros. Pictures, 2006]

As the year-end wrap-ups and round-ups roll in, they all seem to groaningly agree that it's been a pretty mediocre year at the movies. Not that there weren't plenty of notable losses, highlights, events, performances and screenings — here, we look back at some of the personal bright spots and other memorable moments of the year in film we don't want overlooked.

The Alamo Drafthouse

For those of you who've heard about it but haven't been, I'm here to tell you: you haven't seen a movie until you've seen it Alamo Drafthouse-style. A small but growing Texas chain, the Alamo — which also created the ingenious Rolling Roadshow, where classic movies are shown in the locations that inspired them — shows movies the way God intended, assuming God is a very lazy film nerd who likes to eat and drink while watching his movies. The Alamo's presentation involves the most important innovation to moviegoing technology since the stadium seat: food and drink served to you via waiter throughout your movie. No having to miss parts of the movie to hit the concession stand and, more importantly, lots and lots of booze. Once you've seen "Talladega Nights" at the Alamo you'll never want to see it any other way. I'm waiting for a New York branch with bated breath. —Matt Singer

Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg in "The Departed"

Stealth move of the year: while Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon fretted and fumed and furrowed their smooth movie-star brows as a cop-turned-mob mole and a mob mole-turned-cop in Martin Scorsese's long-awaited return to the crime epic, two former leading men-turned-scene stealers walked off with their movie. Alec Baldwin, who's been so much fun to watch since he's been freed from Hollywood jawline roles, plays Captain Ellerby, the head of the Special Investigation Unit and the only character who seems to have not been informed that the weight of the world is resting on his shoulders — thrilled to have cell phone surveillance ability in their first big attempt to nab Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello, he seizes shoulders in glee: "Patriot Act, Patriot Act! I love it, I love it, I love it!" And I would happily watch a movie that simply followed around Mark Wahlberg's Sergeant Dignam, the foulest-mouthed Statie in New England with, deservedly, all the best lines. The two have one hilarious back-and-forth in front of Ellerby's squad ("Go fuck yourself." "I'm tired from fucking your wife."), while everyone watches and wonders why they aren't getting to have such a good time. —Alison Willmore

"United 93" opens the Tribeca Film Festival

When it was announced in March that "United 93" was not only going to have its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival but have a place of honor as the opening film, a queasy debate, fueled by emotion and anxiety, was sparked. That a film could provoke such a reaction is the hope of any festival programmer, but in the case of Paul Greengrass's attempt at a faithful recreation of the hijacking of United flight 93 on September 11, 2001, the circumstances were without precedent, and the heated anticipation was extremely conflicted. Tribeca, which celebrated its fifth anniversary this year, was created in the wake of 9/11 in an attempt to revitalize the devastated lower Manhattan neighborhood; almost all of the screenings take place within blocks of where the buildings fell, and as the opening drew closer, festival-goers had to ask themselves whether they were ready for the experience. The fear, of course, was that the movie would be badly handled, but even the best-case scenario was a wrenching one. Filled with trepidation, many attendees to the April 25th opening set up meeting places with their companions in advance, in the seemingly likely event that one of them would leave what is now being hailed as one of the best movies of the year before it ended. —Michelle Orange

Betty Comden, 1915-2006

On November 23 of this year, Betty Comden passed away. Along with her artistic partner Adolph Green (who died in 2002), she wrote "The Barkleys of Broadway" (1949), "On the Town" (1949), "Singin' In the Rain" (1952), "The Band Wagon" (1953), "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955) and "Bells Are Ringing" (1960). Read those titles again and try not to crack a smile at any number of Technicolor memories. Have any screenwriters/lyricists ever had a run like this? Comden-Green wrote "Moses Supposes" from "Singin' In the Rain" and the similarly cadenced "Saturation-Wise" for "It's Always Fair Weather," both tunes building up a rhythm by repeating the conversational patter of gasbag experts, a speech therapist in the former, an ad executive in the latter. They turned callow business-speak into joyous, destructive art. She and Adolph had the luck to be paired with Vincente Minnelli on many of their scripts, as his sharp and colorful compositions were a perfect fit for Comden-Green's cutting wit. The duo had a much longer and successful career as lyricists on Broadway, winning five Tony awards, but my memories of her will be forever tied to Astaire and Kelly getting' their shoes shined and acting the clown. —R. Emmet Sweeney

Mexico rules

There they were at the Gotham Awards, arms around each other on the red carpet. There they were on Charlie Rose, discussing which of them is the best looking. Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu are the casual filmmaking kings of the year, each arriving with a film that effortlessly combines genre sensibility with arthouse intelligence. Cuarón's "Children of Men" is a bleak and brilliant vision of a dystopic future; del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" weaves fantastical imagery with historical horrors; "Babel" spans the globe to paint its portrait of a humanity both splintered and united. Over a decade ago, when the 29-year-old del Toro's debut "Cronos" opened in scattered US theaters, the director told the Washington Post that there was no "New Mexican Cinema." One wonders if he'd say the same thing now. Cuarón, del Toro and González would doubtless rather present themselves as three good friends than as the forerunners of a national New Wave, but this is also a year in which Carlos Reygadas' controversial "Battle in Heaven" astonished and/or infuriated the few who saw it, and Fernando Eimbcke's delightful debut "Duck Season" combined a Jarmuschesque deadpan tone with fresh, and, yes, Mexican sensibilities. —AW

Coming round to HD

I've always been a hard-liner against digital video, bitterly muttering about the muddy ugliness of DV efforts like "Dancer in the Dark" and "Timecode." Film was still the future of the art, for could video ever produce the colors of "The Band Wagon" or "On the Town"? I thought not. But 2006 softened my stance. Dion Beebe's work on "Miami Vice" and Gokhan Tiryaki's on "Climates" is crisp and often stunning. Both utilize the extreme depth of field offered by the new HD cameras, allowing Beebe to frame Colin Farrell's oily locks flopping in a speedboat in the foreground while the dusky night sky appears with astonishing clarity in the background. Tiryaki's work is less showy but just as impressive, as director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's setups are stationary, choreographing action inside the frame: a break-up is revealed by a character leaning backwards, revealing his quizzical lover in sharp focus. The most extraordinary effect is achieved in photographing falling snowflakes, which are weighty, detailed, and tactile — and whose dissolve into the ground brilliantly foreshadows the heartbreaking final fade out. —RES

"Borat"'s Naked Wrestling Scene

From the sacred to the profane we plummet, and indeed it was disbelieving profanity that was muttered under the breath of many a "Borat" viewer when the buck-naked Sasha Baron-Cohen took a faceful of his traveling companion's balls. In one of the film's many, let's say, "echoes" of Cervantes' "Don Quixote," the tall, thin Borat and short, blubbery Azamat get into it after the former finds the latter "borrowing" an image of his Rushmore, his Dulcinea, his Pamela Anderson. Both are naked-not nude-as jaybirds, and the sight of their hairy asses (to start) flailing and floundering through their obscenely ridiculous tussle is a classic "are you in or are you out" moment in a comedy built on its audacity; if you were on the fence, this scene was almost definitely going to traumatize you into a free fall on one side or the other. Most of us, it seems, were in, though the scene itself indicated there was no way to know what we were signing on for: exhilaration is a tricky animal, as many dazed "Borat" viewers found; if there was any doubt, the naked wrestling scene made it clear that, along with clothing, and that last shred of dignity, all bets were off. —MO

"Inland Empire" opens in New York

It may seem like a minor thing (or full-on corporate whoring) but few movie moments this year filled me with as much excitement as the lines down the block outside New York City's IFC Center not one but two weekends in a row for late-night screenings of David Lynch's "Inland Empire." Back in the days of big movie houses and twins, lines for movies were commonplace in New York; in today's multiplex world, not so much. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing in some ways (i.e. the ones that mean you'll get a seat for the movie you want), it gave this cinephile a genuine rush to see people waiting, patiently, in the freezing cold, for the chance to see a three-hour art film that doesn't even make sense to its own lead actress. Take heart nerds: film culture isn't as dead as advertised. Last week, the IFC Center box office posted a sign: see "Inland Empire" nine times, they'll let you in a tenth time for free. To the poor soul who does it: kudos and time to reassess that life plan you wrote out in eighth grade. —MS

By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore

IFC News

[Photo: "Bad Santa," Dimension Films, 2003]

Sincerity is for suckers — at least when it comes to picking holiday flicks. It's been over two decades since someone's pulled off a Christmas movie expressing any remotely genuine warm emotion. But whatever holidays you may or may not celebrate, there's no way around the fact that it's never easier to spend time with your family than when you're all in front of a film. With that in mind, Matt Singer and Alison Willmore discuss some of their favorite holiday film picks — ones that are either blithely against all holiday spirit or just totally inappropriate to the season.

Download now (MP3: 20:30 minutes, 18.8 MB)

By Matt Singer

IFC News

[Photo: "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer," Dreamworks, 2006]

Oh the horrible things we will do in order to smell good. Tom Tykwer's "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" reveals that the natural order of the world is nasty and stinky. Its main character, as the title suggests, is a homicidal perfumer who creates the world's most intoxicating scent by killing beautiful women, covering them in a viscous liquid, cocooning them, then placing them in a weird pickling device that distills them into "their essence." Think about that this holiday season when you're at the fragrance counter.

Based on the bestselling novel by Patrick Süskind and narrated by John Hurt, "Perfume" follows Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), born into the muck of a Parisian fish market, abandoned by his prostitute mother and saved only by his remarkably talented nose: the overpowering funk of the market causes baby Jean-Baptiste to cry out, alerting a passersby to his presence and implicating his mother in child abandonment (she's the first of many who will die as a result of an association with Jean-Baptiste). After a catalogue of the degradations offered by 18th-century poverty — from the orphanage to indentured servitude to an apprenticeship for a master perfumer (played with zest by a powdery Dustin Hoffman) — Jean-Baptiste sets about on his life's work: discovering a way to preserve scent, which he believes contains a person's soul, even at the expense of killing the owner of that aroma.

Art direction nuts will flip their lids over Tykwer and production designer Uli Hanisch's creation of 1700s France, but their world is so meticulously designed — even the filth looks pretty! — that they inadvertently generate an atmosphere of realism that clashes with "Perfume"'s second half, when Jean-Baptiste sleeps in a cave for months, and later creates an aroma with supernatural effects. The resultant fluctuations in tone might turn off viewers who aren't familiar with Süskind's source material.

Tykwer's camerawork is frequently witty: through the use of clever lighting, Jean-Baptiste is introduced nose-first, and a shot of a door with two keyholes suggests a nostril's eye view of the world. But there seems to be a fundamental flaw in the film version of "Perfume," in its focus on a sensory experience that is wholly absent from cinema: smell. A movie could captivatingly portray a person gifted with exception vision or hearing, but smelling is quite different. Without a "Polyester" Smell-O-Vision-style gimmick, Tykwer must somehow approximate Jean-Baptiste's olfactory prowess, which leads to a lot of close-ups of his nose, flash frames of objects (flowers, fruit, entrails, dung) and a lot of heavy breathing on the soundtrack. The result is not entirely satisfying.

After spending months sleeping in a cave (long story), Jean-Baptiste discovers that though he is acutely aware of every odor around him, he himself has none of his own and, in a way, neither does the movie, not least of all because it is incapable of having one, as all movies are. Where Süskind could call to mind a tang with flowery prose, Tykwer has to rely on visuals to suggest smells, an inherently distanced technique in spite of its often beautiful presentation. It stinks, but that's the way it is.

The world of Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" is just as bleak as "Perfume"'s and even more sumptuously adorned. Its frame is infused with equal parts beauty and death, and sometimes the two blend together in fantastic creatures that are amongst the most terrifying I've ever seen in a movie. The worst, the Pale Man, is an albino beast with droopy skin and eyeballs in his hands. Ick.

A young girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her mother (Ariadna Gil) travel to a new home with her cruel new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi López), a member of the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Ofelia moves between two worlds: the spooky landscape of her imagination (where characters like The Pale Man lurk) and the terrifying reality of the fascists, whose brutal assassinations and tortures suggest that the horrors of the real world far outweigh anything in a child's imagination.

Del Toro has a knack for truly original movie monsters — his "Blade II" provided one of the first innovations on celluloid vampires in decades — and all of the supernatural beings in "Pan's Labyrinth" brim with visual invention. Whatever his budget was (and it couldn't have been much) del Toro's technique seems totally uninhibited by monetary concerns. His effects are as seamless as his imagination is boundless. He takes classic kid fears like the monster under the bed or in the closet and invests them with a palpable sense of reality.

The film, which has the feel of a live-action "Spirited Away," does suffer from some tired story twists; I, for one, have had enough of movies with seemingly responsible child protagonists who are explicitly told not to do something they then immediately do. But "Pan's Labyrinth" graphic creativity outweighs any of its narrative hang-ups. It's as ornate as a child's fantasy and as dark as a nightmare.

"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" opens in limited release December 27th (official site); "Pan's Labyrinth" opens in limited release December 29th (official site).

By R. Emmet Sweeney

IFC News

[Photo: "Dreamgirls," DreamWorks, 2006]

The advent of sound in cinema made the movie musical possible, but also created a vexing question: how to have characters burst into song without causing the audience to burst into laughter? What was fine on stage became an unexpected problem on screen — some degree of realism was needed to keep the viewer focused on the plot instead of on the incongruity of an off-screen orchestral swell (audiences quickly tired of revue-style films which, like a vaudeville show, ran act after act with no connective narrative tissue). The simplest answer was to film the lives of Broadway performers, so that stage numbers could be folded in as an organic part of the story. The template for the backstage musical crystallized in "The Broadway Melody of 1929," which told the story of a sister vaudeville act that hits it big and then breaks up because of a love triangle. The film was a massive hit that spawned countless imitations. The backstage musical has gone through plenty of mutations since then, but it's really the only remnant of a once dominant genre to survive the demise of the studio system. The latest iteration is the early Oscar favorite "Dreamgirls," which follows a strikingly similar story arc to the "Broadway Melody" of 77 years earlier.

Instead of a vaudeville act, "Dreamgirls" is focused on a Motown girl group whose rupture also comes about because of a man and his fickle heart (and thirst for power) — the manager played by Jaime Foxx. It's not just the tried and true story formula that "Dreamgirls" has inherited from its forebears, but a whole history of technical and directorial innovation. According to Richard Barrios in his loving history of early musicals "A Song in the Dark," "Broadway Melody" was the first musical to use pre-recorded sound and playback. Producer Irving Thalberg demanded a re-take of the big musical number, "The Wedding of the Painted Doll," the only scene shot in Technicolor (the rest of the film is in black and white). Thalberg, wary of the costs in hiring the orchestra again, decided to re-use the recording of the first shoot and play it back over the re-take. Before this, orchestras played live into microphones right next to the stage. This created far more freedom for the director in terms of camera angles and movement, and saved a hunk on the budget.

By early 1930, theaters were saturated with backstagers, and audiences were tiring of the device. In March 1930, as Barrios notes, a headline at Billboard magazine proclaimed "Back-Stage Stories Bane to Exhibitors." Studios scrambled to cut out musical sequences from completed films in order to avoid the backlash. The cycle seemed to have run its course in a remarkably short amount of time.

The genre didn't bounce back until 1933, with the success of "42nd Street" and "Gold Diggers of 1933," a remake of "Gold Diggers of Broadway" (1929) made by Mervyn LeRoy and Busby Berkeley (who directed the numbers). The major difference in these films is the increasingly artificial (and spectacular) musical sequences that strained the realism of the stage setting to the breaking point. Berkeley's use of bird's eye views, for example, was a perspective impossible for the filmed audience to see. The injection of frank depictions of sexuality (until the Hays Code buttoned up everyone's brassieres) didn't hurt either.

That year the groundwork was also being laid to move the musical sequences off the stage and into the world of the performers, the baby steps of which were taken in "Flying Down to Rio," where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were first teamed up in a minor role. Their subsequent decade-long box office dominance altered the landscape, with films now gaining boldness about where to insert the spectacle. Musical numbers were still firmly integrated into the plot, usually spurred on by the flirtatious one-upsmanship of Astaire-Rogers, but no longer confined by the absolute verisimilitude to which "Broadway Melody" had clung, and at which Berkeley had slowly chipped away.

Enter MGM. The studio responsible for "Broadway Melody" in '29 went on to exemplify the genre through the 40s and 50s, with their vaunted "Freed Unit", manned by the producer (and former lyricist) Arthur Freed and a roll call of talented collaborators including directors Vincente Minneli and Stanley Donen, and the writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Their lavish productions attempted every kind of musical, from folk ("Meet Me In St. Louis," 1944) to historical pastiches ("The Pirate," 1948). Their biggest successes, though, were of the backstage variety with "Singin' In the Rain" (1952) and "The Band Wagon" (1953). The genre had evolved to the point of self-referentiality and self-parody, those early attempts at filmed song and dance now looked at with nostalgia and humor. No more needs to be said about the former, but "The Band Wagon," which takes Broadway as its setting, looks back even further than the advent of the sound film, pining for the days of unpretentious vaudeville performance, where star Fred Astaire got his start.

With the fading of the studio system in the 60s, the musical was doomed. Its lifeblood was in the trained hands of backstage artisans working with factory-like precision. With the breakup of vertically integrated studios, it was impossible to muster all the manpower needed and make it affordable. The days of the musical as a popular art form were numbered. Adaptations of big Broadway hits were trotted out once in a while to modest returns — but original material was hard to come by. Dramas with musical elements returned to prominence, with the success of films like "Saturday Night Fever" (1977) and "Flashdance" (1983). The full-fledged musical survived only in a variety of animated features.

With the success of "Moulin Rouge" (2001) and the film adaptations of "Chicago" (2002) and now "Dreamgirls" (2006), there's been a mini-resurgence of the backstage form financially, if not artistically. The hyper-stylized "Moulin Rouge" runs with the self-reflexive form of backstage musical initiated by "Singin' In the Rain." The latter two works are more aligned with the "Broadway Melody" school, stage-bound works content to ape their original Broadway productions. But with the massive success of Disney's TV movie and album "High School Musical," along with the musical-inflected spectacles of "Drumline," "You Got Served," "Stick It" and "Step Up," it's the teen dance genre that seems the place to look for a "42nd Street"-style resurgence.

By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore

IFC News

[Photo: "Old Joy," Kino, 2006]

Matt Singer and Alison Willmore discuss their lists of best films of the year, as well what their choices might mean (does Matt have daddy issues?).

Download now (MP3: 21:38 minutes, 19.8 MB)

By Christopher Bonet

IFC News

[Photo: "The Good Shepherd," Universal Pictures, 2006]

A round-up of the best (or worst) $10 you'll spend this week.

"The Case of the Grinning Cat"

Everyone's favorite French documentarian Chris Marker is still making films at the ripe old age of 85, and his latest is as politically concerned as any of his groundbreaking films from the New Wave years. Shortly following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, portraits of grinning yellow cats began popping up throughout Paris. In this exposé on the nature of art, politics and freedom of expression in this post-9/11 world, Marker remains as sharp and witty as ever as he hopes to find an answer to the mysterious grinning cat.

Opens in New York (official site).

"Curse of the Golden Flower"

Zhang Yimou follows up his earlier 2006 film "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles" with another wuxia film that is noted as being the most expensive production from mainland China to date. As with "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," Yimou's latest is visually stunning while suffering in the story department. Be warned: the film is a lot more interested in plot than action, so if you're expecting lots of fight scenes ala "Hero," you'll be disappointed.

Opens in limited release (official site).

"The Good Shepherd"

We can probably all agree that Robert De Niro is one of the greatest American film actors ever, though his roles over the past decade may have made us forget that ("Analyze This" franchise, anyone?), so we're excited that his latest film will also feature him directing for the first time since "A Bronx Tale," a film that we're fond of. Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie join the cast alongside De Niro in this story of the formation of the CIA, but we're most excited to see Joe Pesci's first screen appearance in eight years for. Joe, it's about damn time.

Opens wide (official site).

"Letters from Iwo Jima"

Clint Eastwood's companion piece to this fall's "Flags of Our Fathers" came out of nowhere to snag the National Board of Review's film of the year and has been praised by numerous critics' circles, putting it at the forefront of the awards season race. Simply put, we're excited to see this following the disappointing "Flags," and Eastwood's decision to film the characters completely in Japanese rather than the forced English of last year's "Memoirs of a Geisha."

Opens in limited release (official site).

"Night at the Museum"

Director Shawn Levy directs this family-friendly action adventure film based on Milan Trenc's popular children's book about a bored museum security guard who accidentally releases an ancient curse that causes the animals and insects to come back to life. Ben Stiller goes everyman in his role as the security guard and Robin Williams plays a president for a second time this year, this time diminishing the good name of our favorite rough rider Teddy Roosevelt.

Opens wide (official site).

"No Restraint"

Alison Chernick's documentary chronicles the latest project from performance artist Matthew Barney, the film "Drawing Restraint 9," which included the use of 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly, a factory whaling vessel and traditional Japanese rituals and which came out in theaters earlier this year. The weird gets a whole lot weirder when "Dancer in the Dark" actress, world-renowned Icelander and Barney-SO Björk enters the project.

Opens in New York (official site).

"The Painted Veil"

Naomi Watts reteams with her "We Don't Live Here Anymore" director John Curran in this 1920s period film that tells the story of an adulterous married woman whose life undergoes drastic changes when her husband moves them to a remote village in China undergoing a health epidemic. The film's already nabbed screenwriter Ron Nyswaner the Best Adapted Screenplay award from the National Board of Review and Edward Norton an Independent Spirit Award nomination. Early reviews say it's a spectacular production, but to us, it looks a bit like your average Merchant/Ivory film.

Opens in New York and Los Angeles (official site).

"Rocky Balboa"

Cinephiles everywhere muttered a resounding "What the fuck?!" when news broke last year that Sylvester Stallone was reviving his "Rocky' and "Rambo" franchises. We here at IFC News are in love with all things retro, and nothing spells "so bad it's good" better than a throwback 80s film for the VH1 generation. Repeat after us: "'Rocky V' plus 'Rocky II' equals 'Rocky VII: Adrian's Revenge!'"

Opens wide (official site).

"Venus"

Remember a couple of years ago when Peter O'Toole reluctantly accepted that honorary acting Oscar after saying he still had a chance at earning his first after eight nominations? Well, it seems like O'Toole may have another shot this year, as he's been getting heaps of praise for his latest film in which he plays an aging, forgotten actor who develops an obsessive friendship with a teenager. A bit creepy, maybe, but here's hoping that this will finally lead to an O'Toole Oscar win.

Opens in New York and Los Angeles (official site).

"We Are Marshall"

Personally, we've reached out limit on uplifting sports movies. We tolerated this summer's "Invincible," but "We Are Marshall" has a lot more adversity to overcome. First off, it's directed by McG, best-known for the painful-to-watch "Charlie's Angels" franchise, and here making his bid for Seriousness. Second, its tragic premise and inspirational story about fortitude and courage are marred by tired football movie clichés. Third, Matthew McConaughey. 'Nuff said.

Opens wide (official site).

By Christopher Bonet

IFC News

[Photo: "Curse of the Golden Flower," Sony Pictures Classics]

Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg. Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard. Carmen Maura and Pedro Almodóvar. Cinema history is filled with famous pairings of directors and their favorite actresses. From silent cinema's Griffith and Gish to Woody Allen and whoever is his latest muse, the cinema will always home to these working relationships — as Godard once said, "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun."

This week marks the release of Zhang Yimou's latest film, "Curse of the Golden Flower," notable not only for being the most expensive film to be shot in mainland China to date, but also for its reteaming of Zhang with one-time love Gong Li for the first time in over a decade. Gong, regal as she's ever been, plays a Tang-era empress for whom the intrigues of the court are a matter of life and death.

For years, Gong served not only as Zhang Yimou's favorite actress to film, but also as the central figure of the Fifth Generation filmmakers, working with award-winning directors like Chen Kaige and Wong Jing and establishing herself as the most prolific and best-known Chinese actress in the West, displaying a potent combination of explosive talent and exceptional beauty. In honor of her latest, long-in-coming collaboration with Zhang Yimou, here's an essential Gong Li film guide telling you pretty much everything you need to know about her film career, from her earliest works on mainland China to her latest foray into Hollywood.

"Ju Dou" (1990)

Gong Li plays the title character, a woman who's bought by and married to a brutal owner of a dye mill in rural China during the 1920s, and who enters into an affair with her husband's nephew. Her role as a strong female character rebelling against her abusive husband was the first in a string of similar characters Gong would play in her career. In an iconic scene, Ju Dou, knowing full well of her husband's nephew's voyeurism, strips as she begins to bathe, as a slight head turn towards the camera showcases the tears streaming down her face and the bruises against her body.

"Ju Dou" is one of the last films to be shot in original Technicolor, both in China and throughout the world, as increasing costs and decreasing popularity killed off the format. Zhang's beautiful cinematography and luscious colors don't translate on the film's current DVD release, as the lousy print used for the video transfer dilutes the film's beautiful technical achievements. Somebody start an internet petition for a new DVD transfer!

"Farewell My Concubine" (1993)

Chen Kaige's Palme d'Or winner (it tied with "The Piano") is no less than an epic tale of friendship and Chinese opera spanning the Japanese occupation, the Communist takeover and the Cultural Revolution. It seems impossible that anyone could upstage stars Zhang Fengyi (as the hot-headed Xiaolou) and Leslie Cheung (as the bitchy Dieyi), yet Gong Li, as the manipulative prostitute Juxian, somehow manages to do it, scene by scene, until her final frames in the film. Her introduction remains sublimely sweet, with Xiaolou saving her from a group of raving drunks at a brothel, but as she insinuates herself into Xiaolou's life, Dieyi, who has long harbored a crush on his stage brother, becomes infuriated. Their love triangle continues as a push-and-pull between the three until the Cultural Revolution violently forces the them to betray each other and admit personal secrets to the public. After her husband betrays her and denounces their relationship, Juxian gives Dieyi a haunting half-smile during her last moments before her death, at once telling and subtle, a statement that she simply will not stand for any more bullshit.

Premiere recently included Gong Li's performance as Juxian as one of the Top 100 Greatest Performances in the history of cinema. The film also earned her the Best Supporting Actress award from the New York Film Critics Circle in 1993.

"To Live" (1994)

Zhang Yimou's "To Live" chronicles the experiences of a husband and wife (Ge You and Gong Li) who struggle to keep their family going through repeated hardships in the mid-20th century. The feisty, proto-feminist characters of Gong's past are put aside for a less melodramatic and more realistic turn that is powerful not for theatrical histrionics, but its subtle revelations about the burdens of the burgeoning Communist society. Gong's mother character undergoes physical aging as the poverty and tragedy of her family continues to burden her; her dewy beauty at the beginning of the film gives was to gray hairs and weariness; the ease with which she was able to work as a water carrier earlier becomes more difficult as her aging prevents her from being as productive as she used to be. Though bedridden and still suffering from the loss of her two children by the end of the film, Gong Li's sublime performance remains one of her most simplistic yet most powerful, showing that she can play realism as well as melodrama.

Though "To Live" won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, it was banned in mainland China for questionable depictions of the nation's history and its portrayal of the Communist regime. A total of seven Gong Li films were banned at one time or another in her native country, though she still remains one of China's most beloved actresses.

"Memoirs of a Geisha" (2005)

Though some controversy surrounded the pan-Asian casting of Rob Marshall's film, it does seem that the role of bitter and jealous head geisha Hatsumomo was custom built for the talents of Gong Li. Though she could've played the character as mere camp (Richard Corliss at Time compared her turn to Bette Davis), Gong manages to present Hatsumomo as yet another female who must struggle for her own way against the restrictions of society. Her inability to both marry her long-time lover and become the heir to the geisha house leads her to a jealous rage that causes the breakout of a fire. As Hatsumomo stares at burning flames and realizes that she will no longer be the star geisha, she proceeds to knock over lamps and pour gasoline, fueling the demise of both the geisha house and her own career. Her difficulties with the English language and a lousy screenplay be damned, Gong's performance is one of the few highlights to this otherwise misfire of a film.

Though "Memoirs of a Geisha" signals the start of Gong's Hollywood career, it is in fact her second English-speaking film following 1997's little-seen "Chinese Box," which co-starred Jeremy Irons and Maggie Cheung and was directed by Wayne Wang. Her recent English-language films include this past summer's "Miami Vice" and the upcoming "Silence of the Lambs" prequel "Hannibal Rising."

"2046" (2005)

Though Gong Li's role in Wong Kar-Wai's long-awaited "In the Mood for Love" follow-up "2046" is minor in comparison to those of fellow actresses Zhang Ziyi and Faye Wong, it stands out as one of the most mysterious and compelling performances in the film. Gong plays Su Li-Zhen, a professional gambler who reminds Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) of the woman he once loved, but who refuses to reveal anything about her past to him. The enigmatic allure of Gong's character not only piques the interest of Chow, but also this reviewer; she plays Su as distanced yet nurturing, helping Chow earn enough money to return to Hong Kong while not letting him get any closer emotionally. An intensely passionate kiss between the two, however, showcases Gong's brilliant talents; the two are framed in a tight close-up, and as Chow's head moves away from Su's, her lipstick appears smeared across her face as two tears fall and the previously icy Su melts as another love is lost.

"2046" is Gong's second collaboration with Wong Kar-Wai — she starred alongside Chang Chen in his short "The Hand," the best part of the 2004 anthology film "Eros" and a similar story of unrequited love between a beautiful high-end call girl and a young tailor in 1960's Hong Kong.

"Curse of the Golden Flower" opens December 21st in limited release (official site).

By Michelle Orange

IFC News

[Photo: "Volver," Sony Pictures Classics]

1. Volver

2. Shortbus

3. Fateless

4. Notes on a Scandal

5. Deliver Us From Evil

6. The Departed

7. Half Nelson

8. The Science of Sleep

9. The Queen

10. The Painted Veil

I don't have any themes to point out or grand sweeping statements to make about my list, and if I had to do it tomorrow the order, or even the films themselves, might be rearranged completely; for someone with list-making in her blood (hi mom), ranking my 2006 favorites was remarkably nerve-wracking. 2006 was a strange year, in which the movies I liked best snuck up on me, and the ones I expected to love perhaps suffered from the tyranny of high expectations. This list went through several iterations (Is it tough enough? Nerdy enough? Does its hair look right?) before I decided to start fresh and go with pure gut feeling. These are movies that had me walking out of the theatre elated, or heartbroken, or on a movie cloud that takes at least a few blocks to dissipate. Gut reactions are why I go to the movies; they are not necessarily why I always love or appreciate a film, but this year they seemed to carry the day. Special mention to "Inside Man" and "The Prestige," both excellent thrillers made with warmth and a wink.

By Michael Atkinson

IFC News

[Photo: "Battle in Heaven," Tartan Films]

1. Battle in Heaven

2. 4

3. United 93

4. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

5. Woman Is the Future of Man

6. The Departed

7. Cavite

8. La Moustache

9. My Country, My Country

10. The Wild Blue Yonder

A dire year, all tolled, appearing from where I'm sitting to have been dominated by the publicity surrounding a handful of tiresome studio films rather than the films themselves or anyone's genuine enjoyment of or satisfaction in them. The smaller and/or imported whirligigs on my list should've generated their own kind of cultural hoopla, but they couldn't afford to buy it; buzz, an increasingly rare resource, doesn't occur naturally anymore. Ah well: when the source-wells for a top ten list include the Philippines, Romania, Mexico and outer space, things can't be all bad. A breakdown: two debuts, three sophomore films, four American (including the Herzog, since he and NASA are both U.S. residents), one doc, three shot on digital video, and seven utilizing, in one form or another, unprofessional actors.

Runners-up (in order): "The Hidden Blade" (Yoji Yamada, Japan), "Lady Vengeance"
(Park Chanwook, South Korea), "The Science of Sleep" (Michel Gondry, France),
"Army of Shadows" (Jean-Pierre Melville, France), "Looking for Comedy in the
Muslim World" (Albert Brooks, US), "A Scanner Darkly" (Richard Linklater, US),
"Mongolian Ping Pong" (Hao Ning, China), "Overlord" (Stuart Cooper, UK), "49 Up"
(Michael Apted, UK), "Old Joy" (Kelly Reichardt, US), "Lemming" (Dominik Moll,
France), "Workingman's Death" (Michael Glawogger, Austria/Germany), "Kekexili:
Mountain Patrol" (Lu Chuan, China), "Brick" (Rian Johnson, US), "Letters from
Iwo Jima" (Clint Eastwood, US), "The Troubles We've Seen" (Marcel Ophuls,
France).

By Thom Bennett

IFC Programming Department

[Photo: "Marie Antoinette," Sony Pictures]

1. Marie Antoinette

2. United 93

3. 49 Up

4. Lady Vengeance

5. Dead Man's Shoes

6. The Proposition

7. The Road to Guantanamo

8. Old Joy

9. Little Miss Sunshine

10. Wassup Rockers

Another year draws to a close with the requisite share of surprises and disappointments, cinematically speaking. I would be hard-pressed to find a movie that was the recipient of more misguided criticism than "Marie Antionette," but Sofia Coppola once again proves that she's one hell of a filmmaker — a historian would have probably made a far less interesting film. The latest edition of Michael Apted's "Up" series continues to build upon what is one of the great documentary works of all time. While vastly different films, "United 93" and "The Road to Guantanamo" both provided the needed political punch. Also a great year for revenge, what with Park Chan-wook's stunning "Lady Vengeance" and Shane Meadow's little-seen but amazing "Dead Man's Shoes." And lest we declare once more that the western is dead, the Nick Cave-scripted outback parable "The Proposition" goes to show that there are still great ones to be made (just not in "the west"). Another musician making his cinematic contribution was Will Oldham, whose performance in the mesmerizing "Old Joy" is a thing of simple beauty. Outstanding performances by Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker in "The Queen" and "The Last King of Scotland" respectively gave weight to otherwise above-average films. Then there was the baffling praise heaped upon "The Departed". As a Scorsese fan, I too was hoping for the next "Goodfellas." This was not it. (Then again, would even "Goodfellas" have been so great with Jack Nicholson hamming it up?)

By Alison Willmore

IFC News

[Photo: "Inside Man," Universal]

1. Inside Man

2. Children of Men

3. Brick

4. 4

5. Pan's Labyrinth

6. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

7. Old Joy

8. Three Times

9. The Proposition

10. Don't Come Knocking

The top two films on my list are supposedly mainstream releases that knocked me flat. If you told me last year that a Spike Lee joint, even an underplayed one, would by my favorite film of the year, I would have laughed in your face (that's the kind of obnoxious person I am). But darling Spike, who even at his best can be overwhelmingly abrasive, has had a hell of a year, with his four-hour Katrina requiem breaking hearts on TV whilst in theaters, unbelievably, he landed a mainstream hit. "Inside Man" is technically a heist film, but really it's a love letter to post-9/11 New York, the warmest and wisest I've ever seen. As the film's leisurely rhythms play out, it recalls "Dog Day Afternoon," but also that even the grandest genre feats can be submerged in the irrepressible bustle of humanity. "Children of Men" is thrilling, a brilliantly envisioned near-future that's the most believable dystopia ever brought to screen. Other films were boldly imperfect, worming their way back into my head months later — Ilya Khrjanovsky's indescribable "4"; John Hillcoat's "The Proposition," which, unlikely as it seems, actually manages to make the western seem like something new; Wim Wender's "Don't Come Knocking," minor but strangely and stubbornly moving. "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," "Old Joy" and "Three Times" were all films that needed to be seen in the theater to be appreciated — all operate in cadences best relished in a darkened cinema where they could command your senses. And Rian Johnson's brilliant debut "Brick" is possibly the most purely enjoyable film of the bunch — at the very least, I'm sure it's the one I'll most remember a few years down the road.

By Alison Willmore

IFC News

[Photos: "Rocky Balboa" (left) and others, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)]

Variety ain't always the spice of life. Just look to the "Rocky" films, which for three decades now have been a testament to the fact that you can build a franchise on the exact same formula. Rocky's down and out. He struggles. He finds encouragement from Adrian. He trains. He fights.

Oh, he trains. The "Rocky" films have defined the training montage — from the first tootings of Bill Conti's horn-heavy theme to the inevitable moment when a grey-sweatsuited Sylvester Stallone climbs something and lifts his arms in triumph, the endlessly parodied and beyond-iconic training segments have defied irony, sneering and accusations of intense cheesiness. Arriving with unnerving accuracy an hour into almost every "Rocky" installment, the montages get the job done like some form of celluloid freebase — one whiff and you're on your feet, cheering. As a boxer, Rocky has never met an bizarre training method he didn't like — he punches meat! He does lunges with a log! "Rocky Balboa," the latest and last (and I can't imagine otherwise) film in the series finds Stallone comfortably slipping back into the character the way one would toe on a favorite pair of shoes — sure, he looks worse for the wear, but who doesn't? As he chugs raw eggs, does one-armed pushups and takes a (canine-accompanied!) run up the stairs of Philadelphia Museum of Art, questions like "Why did this movie get made again?" fade from the mind. The world could always use another training montage. Here's a look at the ones in "Rocky"s through the ages.

Rocky (1976)

Song: Bill Conti - "Gonna Fly Now"

Trainer: Mickey Goldmill

Definitive moment: Rocky beats up a side of beef.

Shots of opponent training? No — Apollo Creed is mostly shown schmoozing.

Company on the climatic stair-run: No one — the first time, he goes it alone.

A good portion of original recipe "Rocky" is spent setting up the elements that will make up the definitive training montage. In a series of pre-montage moments, Rocky pulls himself out of bed in the pre-dawn, tosses back five raw eggs and take a jog through the quiet streets of Philly, gasping his way up the museum stairs. He visits Paulie, who in a fit of rage ("It is cold in here!") pummels a nearby meat slab, inspiring him to do the same and prompting the eternal question from a visiting reporter: "Do other fighters pound raw meat?" "Nah, I think I invented it," he replies.

The montage itself, set to Conti's Rocky theme, starts with Rocky running through the streets of his run-down neighborhood (a trashcan is on fire; someone throws him an apple) and down towards the water — cuts show him at the speed bag, doing one-armed and clapping pushups, getting mysteriously but, one presumes, therapeutically punched in the stomach, pounding more lumps of meat, and finally, back to the run, accelerating to take the stairs at dawn, one of the first uses of a Steadicam. Rocky raises his arms and jumps up and down, and...freeze frame.

Rocky II (1979)

Songs: Bill Conti - "Going the Distance"/"Gonna Fly Now"

Trainer: Mickey Goldmill

Definitive moment: Rocky catches the chicken.

Shots of opponent training? Yes — Apollo Creed, newly serious, punches bags, skips rope, and beats up a flunky.

Company on the climatic stair-run: Masses of children and grown fans.

In the pre-montage portion of the movie, we see a droopy Rocky half-heartedly training without Adrian's approval — Mickey employs the dubious 1920s technique of having Rocky chase a chicken around ("I feel like a Kentucky-fried idiot"). Later, empowered by Adrian's command to "Win!", Rocky embarks on not one but two training montages — the first finds him doing one-armed pushups in silhouette at dawn, using a sledgehammer in a scrap yard, doing squats and lunges with nothing less than a log on his shoulders, lifting weights, skipping rope and finally catching that chicken ("Speed Speed! Speeeeed!" Mickey screeches). And...freeze frame. Then unfreeze frame, and after a quick interlude with his newborn son, Rocky sets off down the train tracks to Conti's familiar theme. As he runs through the streets of his neighborhood, people are considerably friendlier (though the trashcan is still on fire). Rocky starts gathering a crowd of kids and others who run along with him — one imagines just to show they could, as there was trouble wrangling extras in the first "Rocky" — going faster and faster until he takes the stairs and the masses, catching up to him, cheer "Rocky! Rocky!" And...freeze!

Rocky III (1982)

Song: "Gonna Fly Now"

Trainer: Apollo Creed

Definitive moment: Rocky outruns Creed.

Shots of opponent training? Yes — we see Clubber Lang training furiously by himself.

Company on the climatic stair-run: No stairs! Instead, Creed runs with him on the beach.

In the most unintentionally romantic of the training montages, Rocky, in LA with once-opponent, now-friend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) labors to get his groove back. The two jog on the beach and dance in the ring and in front of a mirror together ("practicing footwork" — hah!) in a series of 80s-victim outfits that include short-shorts and cut-off shirts. One of the biggest pleasures of this montage is that we get to see Rocky taking a playful swing at the awful Paulie and pulling him into the pool. At the climax, Creed and Rocky gallop across the sand while the camera pulls in for a double crotch-shot (you think I'm joking, but no). Rocky pulls ahead — finally, the two jump up and down in the water and hug — and...freeze.

Rocky IV (1985)

Songs: Vince DiCola - "Training Montage"/John Cafferty - "Heart's On Fire"

Trainer: Duke, Paulie

Definitive moment: A crawling Rocky pulls Paulie on a sled.

Shots of opponent training? Yes — the Aryan cyborg force that is Dolph Lundgren grimaces through exercises in state-of-the-art facilities under the observation of a cluster of scientists and computers, and also submits to steroid injections.

Company on the climatic stair-run: Once again, no stairs. Instead, Rocky eludes his Soviet minders and climbs a snowy mountain ridge.

In what many would consider the finest of the montages, Rocky undergoes a makeshift training regimen in Siberia that includes running in the snow past peasants and horse-drawn sleighs (when one overturns, he, never one to harbor Cold War resentment, stops to help). He also saws logs, lifts rocks, crawls through the tundra pulling Paulie in a sleigh, stalks through the drifts with a log over his shoulder and chops wood. Then, to John Cafferty classic "Heart's On Fire," a now bearded- and Adrianed-Rocky does sit-ups off a barn-rafter, works a speed bag next to someone milking a cow, lifts rocks in a pulley, hoists a cattle yoke and, eventually, a wagon loaded with Adrian and company. Out on his run, he evades the Soviet agents assigned to keep an eye on him and climbs an inexplicable mountain range where, at the top, he raises his arms in triumph (naturally).

Rocky V (1990)

Song: Joey B. Ellis - "Go For It! (Heart And Fire)

Trainer: Rocky Balboa

Definitive moment: Rocky and Tommy take the stairs together.

Shots of opponent training? Tough one — if you consider Tommy the opponent, then yes.

Company on the climatic stair-run: Tommy, and, eventually, Rocky Jr.

People like to pretend "Rocky V" doesn't exist for many reasons — the lousy training montage is but one. Rocky, now a manager, instills in mulleted boy wonder Tommy Gunn the lessons he's been taught by his various mentors. The song, from the artist formerly known as M.C. Breeze, could have also used some work. Kicking off with Tommy fighting, as Rocky once did, in a church, the montage includes shots of Rocky and Tommy doing one-armed pushups in tandem and playfully wrestling together while Rocky Jr. (played by Stallone's real son, Sage) sulks, neglected, and then takes up his own training with Paulie. But before you can yell "What you were looking for was right in front of you all along, you punch-drunk moron!", Rocky and Tommy take the museum stairs together. Tommy pulls ahead and performs a show-offy flip in the air next to Rocky's statue, which you think Rocky would realize is a bad sign. Conti's theme does eventually make an appearance, but not until the climactic street fight scene.

"Rocky Balboa" opens wide on December 20th (official site).

By Aaron Hillis

IFC News

[Photo: "Perfume," DreamWorks, 2006]

Since exploding onto the international film scene with 1998's beloved techno-beat thriller "Run, Lola, Run," German writer-composer-director Tom Tykwer has demonstrated a natural flair for the hyperkinetic in such titles as "The Princess and the Warrior" and "Heaven." Many years in the making, Tykwer's new hotness is "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer," an adaptation of the monstrously popular novel by Patrick Süskind. Set in 18th-century Paris (but surprisingly without the anachronistic flash in which Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" bathed), the film stars Ben Whishaw as a peculiar orphan named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the anti-hero who discovers from an early age that he possesses the most powerful nose in, perhaps, all the world. Bought out of slavery by Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), a fading perfumer who recognizes his gift for scent-making, Grenouille's raw talent is honed to that of a genius craftsman, yet it still can't satisfy the gaping hole blackening his very soul. Without proper parenting, Grenouille grows up to develop a skewed sense of ethics and morality, and soon begins to leave behind him a trail of destruction as he attempts to capture the greatest smelling perfume... derived from the flesh of freshly killed virgins. Nothing says Christmas like the murder of innocent girls, but even if you think that premise stinks, the film continues to prove Tykwer is one of the most intriguing visualists working in film today.

You've said before that you feel a proximity to Grenouille, but I'm guessing you're not the first to admit that. How does one relate to a serial killer?

I think it must be one of the big secrets of the novel's success. You feel close to this guy and connected with his problems, desires, and needs because he's very lonely and not skilled in social terms. He tries to overcome that by putting something on him, which is what we all do; we all choose our shoes, trousers, haircut, anything in order to say something about us. I could completely connect with that, that the more inexperienced you feel in how to behave to other people, the more difficult it gets for you. The only problem is that if you create something that people are really attracted to, they don't meet you. They just meet the curtain, the disguise, and that's the ironic tragedy of this entire story. I love that contradiction, that it's both scary and heartwarming. Very understandable and totally amoral. [laughs]

The film is such a balancing act between the vibrant modernity of your filmmaking and the classicism of the era it takes place. How did you approach this?

We had a very specific idea about how to show and shoot this movie in a way that doesn't have an attitude of presenting. It's through our rich art direction, using decorations as backdrops and having a throwaway attitude to make it feel like it has a deep connection to its reality; a film that really tries to recreate a world the way it was, and not the way we imagine or idealize it when we think of paintings. We were influenced most by our research, reading everything by people from the 18th century that actually wrote down street life. We didn't want to end up with one of those films where you are forced to admire a set decorator's achievements, totally overproduced. You need to be a master of proportion, and I wanted it to be completely driven by the narration and protagonist.

To me, so much of this adaptation is hinged on conveying the sense of smell in a medium with only sight and sound. How did you approach this task?

My first thoughts were simply, you know, the book doesn't smell. The book was very successful in describing the olfactory world through the means and potential of literature, so it's now the challenge for cinematic language to do so with its potential. I thought the solution was lying in many multi-faceted phenomena because you had to approach this problem through the character, experiencing everything the way he experiences it. He's a compulsive collector, okay, so let's try to imitate and find a way of representing this physical activity, his greedy picking of singular smells, and see how he adds them up. All these notes become smelling chords, then those chords become a composition, and suddenly you end up with your wide shot after you've started with a detail. We wanted to show progressions of intensities of smells by changing the degrees of colors and saturations. And I think my major way in was by writing the music at a very early stage, which helped enormously to understand what the atmosphere would be like. We connect the music to this guy's emotional reference system, basically triggered by the way he smells the world. If books can do it, films can do it. You still have to translate colors, movements, and images. It's more concrete in a way, but at the same time, it offers so many more possibilities to become abstract on another level. Kubrick said that if it can be thought of, it can be filmed. I thought it was a wonderful challenge for me to go somewhere not many have been yet.

And you didn't even have to hand out Smell-O-Vision or Odorama cards to the audience. This may sound strange, but smell is an undervalued sense because it's so intangible.

Smells are very profound stimulation for connecting us with our past. You enter a room, and there are smells that come from the carpet, the furniture, the wallpaper, and maybe somebody cooking something. All these elements mixed together, and suddenly you're brought back to standing next to your grandmother cooking, you're six years old, and you have a three-dimensional memory of that.

What could you sniff right now and instantly be transported to the past?

Not particular smells, but the whole combination of wet asphalt from rain, industrial smells from chemical factories, lots of cars, lots of simple foods, more meat than vegetables... you get a combination of that together and I'm back in childhood, on my way to school, and wandering around the city of Wuppertal, where I come from. My favorite smells are these kinds of compositions of normal daily life that still capture this very secret world that's deeply rooted in our emotional memory.

When I visited Berlin recently, I noticed the city has a very distinct composition of scents. Having lived there for 20 years, can you identify what that is?

It's deep, I don't know myself. I love the smell of Berlin, it's one of the major reasons why I moved there. I think it's difficult about cities in general. You could also blindfold me, send me to New York, and I would know immediately I was in New York. It's a combination of the food, the way cars are built here, and I think the subway has a very particular smell.

You mean body odor and stale urine?

I don't really judge smells myself. It's the same in Berlin, which people always forget is the greenest capital in all of Europe. There's no city that has more vegetation, so you obviously get a lot of photosynthesis, beautiful forests that the winds come through, and there's a lot of water that people never think about; the Spree river is like the nerve system that the city is laid upon. It moves in little canals, and there are a lot of smells coming from that. And then again, it's a city with a lot of tiny industrial things, with a subway and a very eccentric kitchen. I can't identify it, but if you blindfolded me in Berlin, it would take me less than a second to know where I was.

If you were forced to give up one of your senses, which would it be?

That's a fascist question. I have absolutely no idea, I need them all. That's why I'm a filmmaker, because I can use them all in film... No, you're not getting any of them, you'll have to find someone else to take them from.

"Perfume" opens in limited release December 27th (official site).

By Aaron Hillis

IFC News

[Photo: "Inland Empire," 518 Media Inc/Absurda]

1. Inland Empire

2. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

3. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

4. Children of Men

5. Old Joy

6. Battle in Heaven

7. 49 Up

8. The Fountain

9. The Case of the Grinning Cat

10. Edmond

Compiling year-end lists is meant to be for kicks, a fun way to let film journalists unwind, take temperature readings on their tastes, help consumers make informed decisions about what's worth their hard-earned dough and in the process — hopefully — enlighten readers to overlooked works that deserve love. By no means do these lists substantiate quality, much like all those boring-ass award shows, so everyone needs to chill out and stop taking them so seriously. As the number of reviewers grows exponentially (which is not meant to fuel the inane "print vs. online critics" rift I involuntarily straddle), a scary new trend has emerged: the film critic as rock star (mind you, more They Might Be Giants dorky than LCD Soundsystem hip), calculated showboaters who flex their subjective worth as more important than cinema itself. There's no point naming egos, nor is it hard to spot the poseurs, but it surely does a disservice to include arcane or contrarian choices simply for the sake of having an "original" outlook. This, in part, is my defense of "The Fountain," the most ambitious film to reach multiplexes this year, a sobering romance that probably seems ridiculous to so many because it offers no emotional cushion of humor or irony as yoga master Hugh Jackman zooms around inside a cosmic soap bubble in the name of passion. Maybe it's because I got married this year that I was so sensitive to its themes (which was also thrown in my face for why I was largely disappointed with "Climates"), but at least I'm willing to own an unpopular opinion without trying to play politics. Regardless of how incomprehensible or ugly so many people have pondered David Lynch's consumer-grade DV opus to be, no other film in 2006 has twisted up in my brain and refused to leave like "Inland Empire," which I've deemed the most artful, uncompromised, challenging film of the year.