Our 10 Worst Films of 2011

Alex: Man, did I see a lot of shit this year. And, unlike Aaron, I don’t go see movies knowing I’m not going to like them (with the exception, this year, of Transformers). I only see movies I’m at least curious about, even if I suspect they’re going to fail. So I’m surprised every year when I have an easy time filling a Ten Worst list — though as I write that, I can hear many friends and loved ones snickering at the sentiment. (I rather have a reputation, you see, for hating everything.)

Anyway, here are ten movies I especially hated. A word about my #1 choice: There’s no satisfaction in putting it at the top of the list. That it’s the worst movie of 2011 is both obvious and beside the point. Super is a film that can only be described as the product of a non-functioning personality. At the Iras we do the Dramamine award (for the movie that makes you sick) and the Sominex award (for the movie that puts you to sleep). This one deserves an award all its own: Thorazine. I watched it thinking, “Well, this is incompetent and sadistic storytelling, and thoroughly boring filmmaking, but never mind about any of that stuff — the guy who made this movie needs help.”

1. Super
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
3. Le Havre
4. Bridesmaids
5. Melancholia
6. Beginners
7. The Iron Lady
8. The Help
9. The Human Centipede 2
10. 50-50
11. Albert Nobbs

Aaron: I happen to think Super is really good, so consider me a “non-functioning personality” (whatever the fuck that means… what the fuck does that mean, Alex? I feel like that’s some of that linguistic gymnastics that you like to do that really doesn’t mean anything but sounds really powerful. Congratulations, Alex. You’re good at insults that convey no meaning.).

Also – I enjoy going to movies whether they’re good or not and don’t seek out bad movies knowing I’m not going to like them. That would be sociopathic. You think bad movies are all bad (because of terrible reviewers?) and should be regarded as such without seeing them. I see all movies as having a chance of being good, so I see them.

Here’s my list (with some links to my own review blog):

1) The Help
2) Sarah’s Key
3) Rise of the Planet of the Apes
4) Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D
5) Miral
6) Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
7) Super 8
8) The Roommate
9) Margaret
10) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Alex: Oh come on. You saw Bad Teacher. You saw 30 Minutes or Less. You saw the Arthur remake. You can’t tell me you had any sort of hope for any of these movies. What characterizes your 10-worst list is disappointment — yes, I can see how any of those ten movies might have seemed interesting, or at least worth checking out, from the outside, only to reveal themselves as the disingenuous shit-shows they really are. (Although I liked Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — which is also my favorite porn title of the year.)

And I take it as a love bite that you accuse me of “linguistic gymnastics.” That you think I’m capable of composing nifty phrases that don’t actually mean anything is sort of flattering — I should get a job as a Republican speechwriter.

But Super is like Psycho if the entire movie was from Norman Bates’s point of view and if it had basically a happy ending. Have a look at the IMDB profile of James Gunn, the writer-director of Super. The profile, complete with its totally boring bits of trivia (“Choreographed the sex scenes for Tromeo and Juliet.” — Oh! Cool! I’ve always wondered who choreographed those sex scenes!), was almost certainly written by the man himself. (He was married to Jenna Fischer??) Truly, this person is a sociopath.

Aaron: Jesus, Alex, it must be really hard to live in a world filled with such liberals and their snarky senses of humor. I’m sorry you didn’t get the joke.

Yes – Gunn comes from Troma Studios – have you ever seen any of their films? The Toxic Avenger? Is that sociopathic? It’s called sarcasm, son, and you should know it when you see it.  (And what’s so bad about Psycho from Bates’ point of view? Maybe it’s a bit banal but it sounds like it could be good.) Super is a send-up of dumb superhero movies. It’s hilarious. I’m sorry it doesn’t have the sensibilities of a great film like Mission Impossible 15, but it didn’t have the budget for such luxury.

I see some movies that I expect will be stinkers, but I certainly don’t avoid movies because some asshole critic tells me it’s bad (knowing that most of those critics wouldn’t see or appreciate half the films I like). Rise of the Planet of the Apes got a bunch of positive reviews and was on a ton of Top Ten lists and I thought it was godawful, so what do you do with that one? Was I seeing it because I thought it would be terrible? Maybe you shouldn’t speak for me, dear.

There were three films I was honestly disappointed with in 2011, McQueen’s Shame, Morris’ Tabloid and James’ The Interrupters. None of them are on my worst list because they’re not really terrible, merely beneath the level they should be based on the talent of their creators. My worst list is filled with terrible and offensive garbage with no redeeming qualities. All middlebrow, fake-smart and sentimental. Sure I was disappointed that I had to sit through them, but that’s about it.

Alex: And while I’m not speaking for you, baby doll, I’ll thank you not to speak for me. I didn’t say the critics help me pre-judge anything. I pre-judge things all on my own, thank you.

If you take the humans out of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, you have a great movie.

And I’m with you on Shame. What a stuuuuuuuuuupid movie.

Although Michael Fassbender is in heated competition with Thomas Dekker (of Kaboom fame) for Best Penis of 2011.

You know what it is, Aaron? You’ve spoiled me. I’ll never see as many movies as you do in a year, honey, and I lean on you to alert me when something that looks like total trash turns out to be worth seeing. (Even though you’re often wrong, as in the case of Super and Hesher, but that’s okay, we’re none of us perfect.)

A LOT would be wrong with Psycho if it were all from Norman’s point of view, and if the movie asked us to feel everything he felt, to desire everything he desired. Hell, The Iron Lady is entirely from dear old Maggie’s point of view, and therein lies its disingenuousness and political irresponsibility.

Yes, poopsie-kins, I’ve seen The Toxic Avenger, I know the Troma aesthetic, and Super ain’t it. Super is solipsistic male misogyny that fetishizes violence and hates the world and all people. (Actually, maybe that’s too much praise; I’m not sure other people register inside this guy’s psychosis.)

Our Top 10 Films of 2011

Alex: So these lists will be fully expanded and elaborated upon when we do our Ira ballots in about a month’s time. But until then, here’s my top ten of 2011:

1. The Tree of Life
2. Moneyball
3. A Separation
4. Hugo
5. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
6. Meek’s Cutoff
7. In Darkness
8. Certified Copy
9. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
10. Weekend

Mock away, Aaron…

Aaron:

Wow. I don’t really know if this is worth mocking, but I will say that Moneyball is a very strange second-best film of the year… strange because it’s so average (not really bad, but just average… more of a fart in the wind than any storm in its own right) – but hey, whatever.

Here’s my list (with several similarities) (hyperlinks to my own review blog):

1) The Tree of Life
2) The Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D
3) Aurora
4) Meeks Cutoff
5) The Future
6) Mysteries of Lisbon
7) The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu
8) A Separation
9) Certified Copy
10) The Sleeping Beauty and Tomboy

Alex: I love that Moneyball is the one you go after — I can’t believe I escaped your wrath on Mission Impossible! Your list is stubbornly arthouse, and even though our lists have four movies in common, you have at least two movies on your list that will get Sominex points from me (The Sleeping Beauty and Mysteries of Lisbon).

Aaron: Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Shalit, I didn’t know smart movies or movies that give a damn and don’t talk down to their audiences were bad. I guess that The Sleeping Beauty and Mysteries of Lisbon didn’t play in multiplexes across Mississippi and Arkansas means they’re snobbish and elite (in the bad way that Republicans use the word).

I would criticize Moneyball but I’ve already forgotten it. (Wait, I feel like it’s about a failure of a man pulls a rabbit out of a hat by stealing someone else’s ideas and making them sorta work… until they don’t really work … and he has a family with a daughter who plays guitar? Sounds dull.) Mission Impossible: Ghost Penis is such a banal action movie, again, it’s not really worth much criticism… except to say that exterior-building-scaling scene is way too short. If you’re going to pay supporters of slavery to shoot a movie in their country you might as well get your money’s worth.

Aaron & Alex Solve World Hunger! Uh…Hang On. Sorry. Check That. Aaron & Alex Bitch about the Oscars.

Alex: So I think Aaron and I were pleasantly surprised that our favorite movie of 2011, The Tree of Life, got some love from the Academy (noms for best picture, director, and cinematography). We’d heard some scuttlebutt that an Academy screening left its audience befuddled, so I’m glad at least some faction of the voters recognized greatness.

And I’m happy Moneyball got well deserved attention (six noms, including best picture and best adapted screenplay), though I know Aaron isn’t with me on this one.

I’m also a huge fan of Hugo, but even though it’s the most nominated film (12), it’s hard to see the Academy rallying around it. It’s almost too smart for them. They’re more likely to champion the movie that makes them feel smart (The Artist).

Aaron doesn’t like Hugo. He also doesn’t like ice cream, puppies, or joy.

Anyway, as ever, these are the bits of plant life sticking up through a sea of middlebrow and reactionary mud. Aaron and I haven’t planned a format for this particular post, but just to keep me from going on ad infinitum, I’m simply going to pull out the three nominations that annoy me most:

• Meryl Streep as best actress for The Iron Lady — or, as our dear friend Damien called it, The Vile Evil Tory Harridan. Meryl’s sure to win her third Oscar, and man is she workin’ hard to bag it, but I actually think it isn’t a great performance. Actually, I’m not even sure it’s a performance. Under a great makeup job, Meryl never gives us access to the soul of dear old Maggie (if there is one), and because so much of the movie is about Alzheimer’s-afflicted Maggie going steadily crazier, Meryl can relish looking befuddled and distant. Meanwhile, in her younger, saner patches we find Meryl’s Maggie stiff almost the point of caricature. I was more impressed with Alexandra Roach, who plays the young Maggie — in a more interesting stretch of the film, it’s worth adding. Roach, and that section of the movie, begin to show us how a personality like Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts) could come to exist in  working-class, post-war England. How iconoclasm and fascism could exist in the same character. (It really points up the missed opportunity that is The Iron Lady.) Meryl’s best scene is also, not coincidentally, the best-written and best-directed scene in the film: the scene with her doctor. The movie is otherwise directed without a style or point of view, and I couldn’t escape the sense that we were seeing the film of a screenplay that was only on its third draft. I’ve done enough theatre to know that usually everything goes wrong together, and when things go right they go right together, and here Meryl is exactly as uninteresting as the movie around her.
• Christopher Plummer’s supporting-actor nod for Beginners. Nothing against Plummer, who ought to have won a couple of Oscars already (namely for Inside Daisy Clover and/or The Insider). But he just doesn’t have much to do in this movie. Something feels obligatory about the nomination, and not just because Plummer is old and Oscar-less, but because he’s playing a gay character. It’s the kind of performance (well, casting, really) you often hear described as “brave.” Why is it brave? Because he risks people actually thinking he’s actually gay in actual real life? Did anyone start to think that Anthony Hopkins might actually enjoy eating people? Gimme a break. (Plummer’s cause isn’t helped by the fact that I hated Beginners.)
• But here’s the one that really makes me want to cut a mofo. Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo are nominated for “Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen” for the odious, nasty, unfunny, unstructured mess that is Bridesmaids. Let’s pretend, though, that it is funny, and that there is a basic humanity in its comedy. Let’s also pretend that its moments of sincerity are earned, are genuine. Even then the movie is a series of schticks. Who sees craft in this screenplay? How can such labored and implausible events be called “best writing”? So the bitch bridesmaid poisoned the lunches of the other bridesmaids so that when they all went dress shopping together, the other women would get the poops ahoy and the bitch would be the only one able to choose the dress? That was her plan? That’s the joke? It’s so fucking labored. The whole movie is like that. The screenplay is also up for a BAFTA and a Writers Guild Award. I’m totally baffled.
• Yes, I said I’d only do three, but in the time since I wrote all the words above, I’ve been infuriated anew. I’ll keep this short. The Ides of March, which I finally saw last night, is also a writing nominee. In a story replete with — indeed, characterized by — hackneyed events and lazy dialogue, one line stuck out as being unconscionable: “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna jump ship when the shit hits the fan.” It’s back-to-back-to-back cliches, and it’s also a mixed metaphor. Lines like that should never get past a first draft.

Aaron: So I fell and badly sprained my hand the other day, making typing at the computer (yeah – typing – totally) difficult, so I’ll keep this short.

Alex, your love for Hugo baffles me totally, especially considering you think The Artist is fake smart. I was so deeply bored by Hugo I fail to see its genius. The story has gigantic problems (like that dumb love story between the flower lady and the station agent… or the hackneyed agent himself) and feels at times wooden and at other times turgid (Oh! One of the first films by the Lumieres was a train coming at the camera and we get that same feeling! It’s like I understand it more now because Marty made it really clear for me to see!). I don’t really want to get into a post here about Hugo, because it’s such a minor movie I will never be interested in it (though I know you’ll have a smart answer for me).

What I really don’t understand is your adoration for Moneyball, a film about a boring gimmick with no sports or emotional charm. I went grocery shopping today and decided to buy a bulk-sized jar of peanut butter. I should make a movie about that and have Brad Pitt play me (obviously) and people will think it’s interesting. This is such an artless procedural it boggles the mind how people like it so much. The Pitt daughter story is absolutely secondary and pointless and gives a veneer or “family film” that really has nothing to do with anything here. On top of this, Pitt’s performance here is fine, but, Alex, as a lover of the superior The Tree of Life, you should be upset that Pitt wasn’t nominated for that – a role with much more variation and interest.

I generally agree with your comments on Meryl, but I’m a bad judge because she’s never done anything for me other than a bunch of accents. I actually think her old Maggie is much better than her middle-aged Maggie, though the subject is disgusting and not very interesting.

I totally agree with you about Bridesmaids, which I also found totally dumb and safe. It’s a preposterous story and fails to be funny at all. I think it’s the best effort of Academy to seem hip (“I LOVED that movie! I saw it with my girlfriends! My wedding was just like that!”), but it comes off as tonedeaf and painful. (And really just has to do with box-office, rather than work… which is exactly what the Oscars always do.)

In terms of nominations I don’t like, there’s a long list… though I am surprised by very few of them. (OK – and can we all stop talking about ‘snubs’?! I think Trent Reznor will be fine with not getting another nomination this year for the same score he won for last year. Stop feeling bad for him.) I’m sick that John Williams got TWO nominations for his two (fucking) Spielberg movies. They both were dumb and recycled. I’m annoyed that Jessica Chastain got a nomination for The Help and not The Tree of Life (but, whatever, bigger studio push, I’m sure… and special pie). I’m shocked that Janet McTeer got a nomination for Albert Nobbs, where she plays the least male-looking drag king ever in a sub-average film (again, something about the Academy feeling good about itself for liking the gays). Her performance is a’ight, but nothing wonderful (come to think of it, Chastain singlehandedly had most of the best supporting actress performances in 2011).

Now I’m going to go watch something long and Romanian.

Our All-Time Top 100 Lists: A Brief (Skippable) Introduction

Alex: Why are we choosing the 100 greatest movies ever made?

This is the first step in a special event at this year’s Iras. (If you’re wondering what an Ira is, see here.) Each Ira voter was required to submit his own list of 100 favorite movies by midnight, January 1, 2012.

From here, the lists will be combined into an aggregate list, and we’ll all have a few months to catch up on whatever titles we haven’t seen. The Iras this year are happening over the last weekend in March. One night will be devoted to the 2011 awards, but the second night will be devoted to our ranking the 100 greatest. (How this is going to work, exactly, is a matter currently under discussion.)

We’ll keep our readers informed, of course, of the outcome, but until then, Aaron and and I are sharing our individual lists. This is the result of a lot of movie-watching over the last 12 months. I’ve watched 153 movies (not counting 2011 releases) and Aaron has seen at least 100 more than that. Filling in the gaps in our knowledge, you see. Or finally getting around to films we’ve known are important.

I can’t quite get a bead on whether the Ira voters do this once per decade (modeling it on the Sight & Sound critics’ and filmmakers’ poll, which is done each year ending in the digit 2) or whether this is the first time the Iroids have ever done this. Either way, no records seem to exist for a previous all-time best-of vote. So this is a rare and special occasion indeed.

On to our lists…

Aaron’s All-Time Top 100

Here is my list, starting with my Top 11 and then alphabetized… because I want to be different, damnit!

I don’t know if we’re commenting here or later, but I think it’s remarkable how many films we have in common, Alex. I also think it’s interesting how there seems to be a list of maybe 150-200 films from which most people (in the Ira world) have pulled their lists, with another list of about 200 or so films that are outside choices that a few people have listed and then several hundred that seem to be special to individuals (that are probably wonderful that most people have not seen).

I also want to say how sorry I am that I don’t have a Tashlin or a Nicholas Ray film on my list. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, The Girl’s Gotta Have It, On Dangrous Ground and In a Lonely Place just missed the cut for me. I probably should have looked at that a bit more and taken off a duplicated director picture and replaced it with two of these, but I didn’t. (Sorry, Frank and Nick.) I also regret cutting What Ever Happen to Baby Jane?, because I find myself very drawn to Aldrich’s weird and dark sense of humor (I’m convinced The Scarlet Empress could have been directed by Aldrich if it had been made 20 years later… though then who would he have Svengali’d? I dunno).

Throughout this process I’ve been amazing at how great movies really stand out as great. When a person says, “you should see The Crowd or The General – those are great movies,” it’s easy to dismiss it and forget about them. But when you watch them and you see how amazing they are, it can take your breath away. (I’m not using my words good here, sorry.)

All of this is to say that it’s been a pleasure watching these films and discovering amazing work from actors and filmmakers who have been somehow forgotten. Like John Garfield. I have no idea why he’s not mentioned in the same category as Bogart, Stewart, Grant and Wayne. Because he was blacklisted? Because he died young? Because he wasn’t in Casablanca? And why are Max Ophuls and Josef von Sternberg not as well known to common people as Hawks or Welles? Their movies are just as interesting as any of theirs (better than many).

Here’s the list:

1)  Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975)
2) Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)
3) All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)
4) Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966)
5) Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
6) Danton (Wajda, 1983)
7) In a Year with 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978)
8) Scarlet Empress (von Sternberg, 1934)
9) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)
10) The Palm Beach Story (Sturgess, 1942)
11) Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 1955)

2001: A Space Oddysey (Kubrick, 1968)

The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)

Advise & Consent (Preminger, 1962)

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (Fassbinder, 1972)

Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959)

The Asphalt Jungle (Huston, 1950)

The Bad and the Beautiful (Minnelli, 1952)

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)

The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966)

La Belle et La Bete (Cocteau, 1946)

Bicycle Thieves (de Sica, 1948)

The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)

Black Girl (Sembene, 1966)

Breathless (Godard, 1960)

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)

Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

Contempt (Godard, 1963)

The Cranes are Flying (Kalatozov, 1957)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)

The Crowd (Vidor, 1928)

Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)

Dekalog (Kieslowski, 1989)

Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951)

The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeousie (Bunuel, 1972)

Dodsworth (Wyler, 1936)

Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)

The Earrings of Madame de… (Max Ophuls, 1953)

Fanny & Alexander (Bergman,1982)

Faster Pussy Cat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer, 1966)

Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948)

The General (Keaton, 1926)

Goldfinger (Hamilton, 1964)

High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)

His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)

In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)

Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)

Jules et Jim (Truffaut, 1962)

Koyaanisquatsi (Reggio, 1982)

Laura (Preminger, 1944)

Lola Montes (Max Ophuls, 1955)

Lone Star (Sayles, 1996)

The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, 1942)

A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1956)

The Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)

Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (Tati, 1953)

Murder, My Sweet (Dmytryk, 1944)

Naked Spur (Mann, 1953)

Night and the City (Dassin, 1950)

Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)

North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)

Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)

Ordet (Dreyer, 1955)

Pandora’s Box (Pabst, 1929)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)

Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)

Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett, 1946)

Rashomon (Kurssawa, 1950)

The Reckless Moment (Ophuls, 1949)

Red River (Hawks, 1948)

The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)

Salo: Or, 120 Days of Sade (Pasolini, 1975)

Le Samourai (Melville, 1967)

Sans Soleil (Marker, 1983)

Secret Honor (Altman, 1984)

Shanghai Express (von Sternberg, 1932)

Shoah (Lanzmann, 1985)

The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940)

Singin’ In the Rain (Donen, Kelly, 1952)

The Son (Dardenne, Dardenne, 2002)

The Sorrow and the Pitty (Marcel Ophuls)

Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001)

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Riesner, Keaton 1928)

Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)

Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997)

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (Pollack, 1969)

The Thin Blue Line (Morris, 1988)

The Thin Red Line (Malick, 1998)

The Third Man (Reed, 1949)

Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)

Winter Light (Bergman, 1963)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar, 1988)

WR: The Mysteries of the Organism (Makavejev, 1971)

Yi Yi (Yang, 2000)

The Young Girls of Rochefort (Demy, Varda, 1967)

Alex’s All-Time Top 100

Alex: Here are my 100 favorite movies, starting with my list of the top ten, then followed by 90 titles arranged in chronological order:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

2. Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi, 1954)

3. The Reckless Moment (Ophuls, 1949)

4. The Crowd (Vidor, 1928)

5. I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur, 1943)

6. Chimes at Midnight, a.k.a. Falstaff (Welles, 1965)

7. Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)

8. Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)

9. L’avventura (Antonioni, 1960)

10. All the President’s Men (Pakula, 1976)

Hearts of the World (Griffith, 1918)

Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924)

The General (Keaton, 1926)

Faust (Murnau, 1926)

Metropolis (Lang, 1927)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)

Shanghai Express (von Sternberg, 1932)

King Kong (Schoedsack & Cooper, 1933)

Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935)

Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Renoir, 1936)

The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1938)

Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)

The Long Voyage Home (Ford, 1940)

Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)

Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942)

Passage to Marseille (Curtiz, 1944)

Laura (Preminger, 1944)

The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)

A Matter of Life and Death (Powell & Pressburger, 1946)

Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, 1948)

The Bicycle Thief (de Sica, 1948)

Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948)

Germany Year Zero (Rossellini, 1948)

They Live By Night (N. Ray, 1949)

Late Spring (Ozu, 1949)

The Third Man (Reed, 1949)

The Asphalt Jungle (Huston, 1950)

Orpheus (Cocteau, 1950)

Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)

All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)

Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950)

The River (Renoir, 1951)

Limelight (Chaplin, 1952)

I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953)

Pickup on South Street (Fuller, 1953)

Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953)

Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

The Man from Laramie (A. Mann, 1955)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956)

A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1956)

There’s Always Tomorrow (Sirk, 1956)

Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)

Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)

Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! (McCarey, 1958)

The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)

Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)

Floating Weeds (Ozu, 1959)

North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)

The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1960)

Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1961)

Viridiana (Bunuel, 1961)

Lonely are the Brave (Miller, 1962)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)

Psycho (Hitchcock, 1962)

High & Low (Kurosawa, 1963)

Mahanagar, a.k.a. The Big City (S. Ray, 1963)

Band of Outsiders (Godard, 1964)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 1965)

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Pollack, 1969)

The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)

The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974)

Night Moves (Penn, 1975)

The Passenger (Antonioni, 1975)

Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975)

The Tenant (Polanski, 1976)

Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)

Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)

Camera Buff (Kieslowski, 1979)

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979)

Heaven’s Gate (Cimino, 1980)

Victor Victoria (Edwards, 1982)

Danton (Vajda, 1983)

The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983)

Shoah (Lanzmann, 1985)

Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

Parting Glances (Sherwood, 1986)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)

Bullets over Broadway (Allen, 1994)

Vanya on 42^nd Street (Malle, 1994)

Lone Star (Sayles, 1996)

L.A. Confidential (Hanson, 1997)

The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan, 1997)

Bus 174 (Padilha & Lacerda, 2002)

Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)

A Movie about Therapy?!?! We’re So There!

Alex: I loved David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. Adapted from two sources — Christopher Hampton’s play “The Talking Cure” and John Kerr’s nonfiction book “A Most Dangerous Method” — the movie is both a juicy melodrama full of sex and (emotional) violence and also a highly intelligent, and intellectual, dramatization of the friendship and ultimate rift between Freud and Jung. One of the qualities I really appreciate about it is that it gets the audience invested in the ongoing debate between the two men about modes of psychoanalysis. I can’t imagine pitching that to studio execs, but it’s a riveting element of this story.

At the heart of the drama is Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). The film opens with her, in hysterics, arriving at Jung’s clinic, and it ends with her leaving his clinic after having been his patient, student, mistress, spurned lover, and colleague. The journey this person must have taken boggles the mind — in the end she was killed by the Nazis — and Knightley’s performance is a journey of its own. At the start she’s physically and vocally contorted, having been driven mad by years of abuse. Later in the film, when Sabina has become a formidable therapist in her own right, Knightley gives us hints of the unhinged physicality of her character’s opening scenes whenever Jung (Michael Fassbender) says or does something hurtful. It’s a marvel to watch.

Fassbender and Viggo Mortenson, as Freud, are also terrific. The movie is a smorgasbord of great acting — I also really liked Sarah Gadon as Emma Jung — which I hope (fear?) means it’ll be embraced by the actor-heavy Academy. (Vincent Cassel also pops into the movie for about ten minutes, just long enough to carry the whole thing off with him when he departs.) They might otherwise be put off by the Cronenberg aesthetic. For me this movie is as merciless as any of the sci-fi/horror freakshows for which he’s famous (Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, eXistenZ). That he should make a movie that is overtly about psychotherapy feels right on the money to me; there’s always been an element of psychological curiosity and melancholy to his work. (Especially in my favorite movie of his, The Dead Zone.)

A Dangerous Method seems to find him in a calmer mode, but it’s no less relentless. There is only one act of physical violence in the movie (well…two if you count the sadomasochistic nature of Jung and Spielrein’s sexual relationship), but at all times these people are either deliberately hurting each other or trying to figure out how to hurt each other least.

I had never heard of Christopher Hampton’s play but I can imagine how all this material makes for an especially juicy stage melodrama. That said, the movie doesn’t feel at all “stage-y” (though I’m rarely bothered by movies that do have that quality). Hampton wrote the screenplay and one of the remarkable qualities about his and Cronenberg’s construction is that there is nary a dissolve or a montage. I kept expecting to see a melodically scored series of brief scenes, or shots, of Sabina undergoing therapy before finally being “cured.” But the movie refuses to speak that language. We aren’t told that time passes, we are simply placed in a scene that takes place, say, three months after the previous scene and are left to discover it for ourselves.

In other words, this movie doesn’t deal in visual metaphor, but rather metonym: what we see of Sabina’s therapy doesn’t represent the thing, it is the thing. We see a fully realized scene of a therapy session and that, then, tells us all we need to know about the entire therapy process, however many months it may last.

I saw it several hours before you, Aaron, and thought this quality of the movie would especially appeal to you — it’s highly Bazin-ian. (There are several other elements and images I thought would excite you too, but we’ll leave those to you and your shrink.) I was surprised when you texted me later to tell me you weren’t as enamored of the movie as I was. Would you like to tell our readers why…?

Aaron: Sure – I’d love to tell why I didn’t love it as much as you did. Very simply, you say, and I think Cronenberg asserts, that this is a film about “modes of psychoanalysis,” however I really don’t see it that way. I think it’s about Freud and his method and Jung is struggling to work within those rules (ultimately failing). The problem is that this really isn’t about a Freudian method versus a Jungian method, as Jung didn’t really have a method by the point the film takes place (he would create it later).

It’s presented as an “either/or” equation, but it’s really a “take it or leave it” about Freudian theories. Jung clearly has a rich history with Freud, but in the end, he could be any doctor trying to work within the structure that Freud laid out. I think our understanding of Jung’s later theories help to inform our view of him as a doctor practicing at this point, but the character that’s presented is very different. He clearly struggles with being “Swiss” (rigid, humorless, severe), but his conflict is totally self-created. Freud seems to be shown as a domineering father (particularly in an Oedipal view of the world), but he’s really correct and Jung is really just a brat.

When I break down the film, I come up only with very Freudian ideas of relationships between Jung and Freud (son and father, son’s revenge against the father, the father’s joy in beating his son). This is interesting to me, but really serves to emphasize how right Freud was and how Jung was mistaken. The ideas that Jung begins to develop (suggestions of supernatural stuff) seems underdeveloped (because it was at this point) and sorta silly.

The technical elements you mention actually didn’t strike me when I watched the film, though your analysis of them is very interesting and probably correct. Cronenberg is a brilliant filmmaker (I think we’ve discussed between us that he’s never made a bad movie and most of his films are good or great) and you point to a great example of his subtle virtuosity. You know how I hate uneven jumps in time as a story goes along, but those didn’t upset me so much here.

Mostly, I found the film sorta uninteresting. I like that it’s a mini-Freudian tale about a father and a son (the mother is psychoanalysis, more than any woman who they both want to sleep with), but that trail doesn’t lead very far. I think it’s a bit cold and easy, which might have a lot to do with the emotionally cold world where Jung lives (which is certainly another compelling motif).

Lastly, I found Knightley’s performance overdone. I know there’s a lot to be said about actors playing crazy people, and Knightley’s performance is more physical than we’ve seen recently. It’s such a physical display (withe her contorting herself and sticking her chin out) that it comes across to me more as affectation than elegant performance. I like the juxtaposition between her and Jung (he’s so stiff he barely moves… and he seems the opposite of a person who would like sadism… which is why it works, in many ways), but I see the performance more as a Cronenbergian gross-out fare than any inspired interpretation.

I should say again, that I like the film – I just didn’t love it. I think it is beautifully made and contains some interesting stuff… I just don’t think it’s more than good. This is when my shrink tells me I’m hard to please. He’s right.