“In a region of desperate poverty, four men are hired by an oil company to drive trucks filled with nitroglycerin down treacherous mountain roads in the hot sun.”

This is likely the greatest setup for a film ever, and the first reading of it would send a chill down your spine. The tension is palpable before the film would even begin, as one bad jolt, one tank of nitroglycerin becomes overheated, a single rock slide at the wrong time, and the truck becomes one with the vapor. Moments in silence are no less removed from danger as the volatile fluid cooks in the sun. Hitchcock once noted that if a scene has a bomb in it, ‘show the audience the bomb’. And so this bomb is in full view, and you are left waiting for it to go off. In Wages of Fear, as he did with Diabolique, Henri-Georges Clouzot has made an unforgettable impact in the cinema of tension. A stunning work to be sure, but what makes it an indelible classic is the political statement contained within, one which remains timeless, unfortunately.

The small town in this story could be most anywhere – rural towns are nearly always starving for a source of income. Woe unto those that actually have a local industry, as the discovery of oil, diamonds, or any other lucrative resource only seems to deepen the poverty. Multinationals generally move in with a large investment, and with the promise of jobs and a payoff to the right people in government, the land is broken. Inevitably, the money goes only to the necessary government officials and to the company; the locals get nothing but irreversible disease and trauma. This town is no different. As Mario (a never-better Yves Montand) remarks dryly, “It is easy to get in, but you cannot get out.” People flocked in for work, but there was only work for skilled laborers, and there are no roads out, no trains, and a flight costs far more than anyone has in this decrepit hole. There is nothing to do but drink, subsist, and await the next bar fight. Malaria and leprosy are widespread, but the most common chronic illness is hunger. The entire population lives upon delirium, and works enough to stay in debt. The conscience of the town is within one wide-eyed kid who pleads to anyone in earshot about his work visa, and begs for money to flee to the United States. The greatest aspiration is to be elsewhere.

Clouzot maintains a tight grip upon the production, and even the wide open spaces of this desert town has a claustrophobic feel. In the opening shot, a child wallows in the mud, playing with cockroaches that have been tied together with string. They struggle against each other as they pull in mutually assured inertia – one of the truly great evocative images in populist cinema. Against this rabble is the monolithic SOC, an American oil company. “Where there is oil, Americans are not far behind.” Not much has changed in geopolitics since the 1950s, apart from China emerging as a major player in the petroleum market. Industrial practices are about the same – the work is dangerous, and unskilled locals are the preferred source since they do not have labor unions. Any effort by the proles to disrupt business is met with swift violence at the hands of the company’s private security. They run a tight ship, and brought the entire works and buildings prefabricated – even the cemetery for the workers came ready made.

There is an explosion at the oil drill, and the only way to extinguish the flaming oil gusher is with high explosives. Thus our story begins; still, the stakes would not be so high, nor the extraordinary pressure placed upon the laborers as resonant if Wages of Fear did not spend the first hour in languid character development. The tedium of nowhere in Venezuela is demonstrated in the daily pointless rhythms of boredom. Mario and his cohorts shoot the shit, pass the time, eat, drink, and threaten each other with regularity. There is a woman that Mario fancies, but she is hardly the object of his affection – there is no time or place for strong attachments in this unsentimental terminus. Some have accused Clouzot of misogyny for this indifferent attitude toward women, and the way the only significant female character is treated, but this is the way it is in the harsh places of the world. Women mean attachment, and such things are dangerous when there is little in the way of income. Soft women either become wily opportunists or broken romantics. There is only the work, and the catastrophe at the oil drill means a big payday for those able to survive – US$2000 is enough to escape to a new life. The odds against making a journey across the mountains in a rickety truck without a single jolt sending your nitroglycerin into orbit are astonishingly high, but in a true capitalist system, suicide is as profitable as it is necessary. There is little point withering away in the sun when you can gamble your life away for cash – and you either end up with the means to achieve your goals, or you are dead enough not to care. The Cato Institute would be proud of such a win-win situation.

Though this appears to be a film for the class warrior only, there is a more cynical edge at work here. The lower classes are at each others’ throats in the first act; with the introduction of Jo, a criminal from France who is fleeing the law, tempers flare. The workers are ready to brandish their weapons at a slight, even one so innocuous as turning off a radio in a bar. Several characters set upon each other at first, and these differences vanish once the deadly job appears. Perhaps if a page were borrowed from Upton Sinclair, then the unemployed masses would wreak vengeance upon the company for offering little more than death to its workers. This does not happen in the real world very often, mostly due to manipulation by the company owners, or internecine fighting amidst the workers, and so such a scene has little use in Wages of Fear. The largest character in the film utters nary a line, though it drives every single action – or inaction – that occurs. This character is Fear, that great motivator. It forms that magnificent pillar of supply and demand, and drives every living soul to work their waking moments. The job is offered, and the people line up around the block. There is no class struggle here, which is also strangely relevant to the present. The combination of fear and the drive to consume against a backdrop of globalization has left the world without a labor movement; consider Wages of Fear a harbinger of this world to come.

Apart from its relevance and its stunning depiction of the human spirit placed under impossible pressure, Wages of Fear is cracking entertainment. The scenes where a massive boulder is quietly removed from the road, or two trucks navigate a slippery platform hanging over a precipitous drop rank among the great moments of cinema. Given the leisurely introduction to the characters, the way they respond to their trial resonates with the viewer. Even the reserved quality of Mario fades after he bleeds every drop of his soul in service to SOC – by the time his jittery hands drive the truck into sight of the apocalyptic fire of the drill site, there is nothing left in him. This is one of those films that reaches into you, and leaves you utterly drained by the end. At least it does for those of us fortunate enough not to live under tests like this on a daily basis. For a significant portion of the world, these wages are paid with every morning light.

Though Saving Ryan’s Privates ushered in a new era of war porn, this cinematic wave of trash has given way to a more brooding type of war film; one less concerned with the gritty realism of how awesome it is when bullets perforate flesh, and more regarding how human nature is brought closer to the surface in times of conflict. Black Book was a stellar example, as a standard-looking WWII actioner where Nazis were the least of the protagonist’s problems. Flammen and Citronen (Flame and Citron) goes deeper, abandoning the clearly drawn lines of insane villains and virtuous heroes for a vast ocean of gray. This is a bold choice, considering that the Second World War is the most popular war, movie-wise, thanks to the cartoonishly diabolical philosophy of the National Socialist Party. That is the big selling point, giving the audience pure and brave fighting boys with big chins to root for as they gun down scores of evil, subhuman Nazis in strangely explodable cars. Call it the John Ford approach. The singular genius of Inglorious Basterds was the way in which it blurred the line between the good guys and bad when it comes to cinematic depictions of violence, and just how far skewed our perspective is when it comes to how wars go down. This film is more down to earth – in the trenches, so to speak.

Flame and Citron is not an experimental film; rather it dives into the murky world of Europe in 1944 prior to the Normandy invasion. The approach is subtle, and heavily influenced by Melville’s Army of Shadows. The sharp uniforms of the German army are in full display, but disappear into the fog when it comes to true allegiances. The Third Man captured this nebulous definition of what decency might be, albeit in the postwar period. In this film, the war may be in full swing, but citizens and soldiers alike have already begun to size up ways to turn the cataclysm to their advantage. The general view is that as long as the armies are wearing uniforms, a war can be straightforward enough. Director Ole Christian Madsen aims to dispel this assumption, and there is no better subject than an underground fighter.

Flame has the face of a child and a shock of red hair, and kills without hesitation, walking boldly amidst enemies that are well aware of the 20,000 kronor bounty for his distinctive head. Citron is more than hesitant to kill, consumed by guilt and dread for a future that seems more distant by the day. Both seem to understand that there is no way out of their situation – they are wanted by the Gestapo, feared by countrymen who are collaborators, and may be viewed with suspicion by the Allies. Perhaps a way through can be perceived – but only by way of fire. Flame does not care – he survives by the bravado borne of one who has no intention of surviving. Citron lives with the hope of reconciling with his wife and daughter, and ultimately with himself for the murders of which he has played a part. Living underground, they know only a handful of people, and all they know about the outside world comes from their handlers. They barely exist as people.

The Danish resistance committed acts of sabotage, smuggled arms, and killed Danish collaborators. This latter function is the task of our subjects, and it disturbs Flame and Citron that they are not to touch German officers, in particular the detestable Karl Hoffman, the head of the Gestapo in Copenhagen. So far this sounds pretty straightforward, but unlike most action films, the heroes must deal with the aftermath of their acts of heroism. When they strike three German officers at last, scores of civilians are killed in retaliation. If they exterminate an enemy of the homeland, it is inevitable that others will take their place, or the Nazis will extract information from another source. As time goes on, the price on their heads go up, and Hoffman brings down a dragnet on Flame and Citron. Their dependence upon their handler is critical – but can they trust him? Or does he have another agenda entirely? What happens to the mind of a patriot, killing in the name of freedom for the motherland, when they find their targets were just in the wrong place, or got on the wrong side of someone who had a ax to grind? True sacrifice requires absolute resolve and a willingness to jettison everything one values (including one’s values) for a cause, and the only payoff is a better future for those with whom you identify (the homeland). Flame and Citron want to save Denmark’s future, but the very people they wish to help would alternately offer them shelter and sell them out to the Nazis for reasons even the people do not understand.

So what is the point of sacrifice? There is no easy answer, as those who do so for an ideal are not understood by family, who are more than willing to compromise. The citizens will gladly sell to the invaders; as long as food hits the table, principles mean nothing. Eagles may soar, but weasels do not get sucked into jet engines. The strangest thing about Flame and Citron is that such betrayal of one’s principles is never presented as fundamentally wrong. Director Madsen is careful to avoid the dangerously naïve attitude carried by more prosaic war films – there is no simple way through such conflagrations in a world where choices are often far more limited than we are willing to admit. If Citron had simply stayed out of the war, and protected his family, would that make him a coward or a collaborator? He seemed to think so, and once such a decision is made, there is no going back. Others may feel the braver action would be to stay home and weather the storm.

Even if heroism were easy to define, such a concept would depend upon knowing the truth, about both one’s allies and adversaries. Truth is an elusive thing, much more so when accomplices have shifting motivations. Flame discovers his next target is to be eliminated for reasons irrelevant to the war; is his handler working with the Germans, or for himself? Is his target a double agent? Do the British and Americans plan to betray them to the Germans just to have them out of the way? In the end, there is no mystery to unearth – mysteries actually have solutions. This is an impenetrable cloud, and even if the resistance fighters knew the truth about any of their victims, truth is a moving target, and changes as continuously as molecular motion. Flame and Citron gets this aspect of war correct – it is not a collision of two armies, but of tens of millions of individuals with only the vaguest of notions as to why they occupy a given side, or any side. For this reason, underground resistance makes no sense to some, and is essential to others – a choice as individual as you are.

Flame and Citron explains very little about the characters and their true circumstances, makes plain none of the motivations of the people involved (especially Hoffman, who comes off as more than reasonable), and allows no easy answers for questions that will be asked as long as humans are willing to organize into large groups to kill each other. War is catastrophic for the soldier, robbing them of limbs and sanity for the benefit of those who avoid getting dirty. Nationalism is no less damaging to the citizen, as resistance fighters will find themselves without a country, and bereft of the support of their neighbors. Perhaps this sounds too cynical to be useful, but our species is a strange one, equal parts selfish and gregarious. By the end of this film, you may find yourself wondering what the legacy of these two fighters amounts to. Were their sacrifices worth the effort? The film raises more questions than it could ever answer, just the way essential film should.

At this point, he is really just fucking around, now that the Oscar business is behind him. And now, with his muse Dicaprio by his side, M. Night Scorsese is crafting shit that he once could do in his sleep. Maybe this is unfair criticism from someone rendered impossible to satisfy by masterpieces gone past. Still, when the big payoff is telegraphed early on (in the first act, if not the trailer), one is left with The Shining as filtered through Silent Hill without an unstoppable antagonist like Pyramid Head to inhabit our nightmares. The only truly frightening enemy is Leonardo Dicaprio with another Bawstin accent uncomfortably stapled to his mannered visage. Shutter Island is still a Scorsese film, and even at his worst, the guy can direct a decent movie. Even so, you are left wondering why he came up with a plotline so pedestrian, and a twist that is earned but way too familiar to be interesting.

Shutter Island starts off promisingly enough, with a far fetched (for good reason) setup that two federal marshals are sent to a craggy island in Boston Harbor to investigate the disappearance of a patient who appears to have melted through the walls. This is 1954, in the early days of psychiatry as a science, shortly after the development of chlorpromazine and lithium as treatments for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, respectively. Psychoanalysis and asylum-based treatment was in the process of being slowly marginalized in favor of biochemical methods and community-based treatment. Lest I mislead you, this film is not about science or anything resembling, but this becomes a part of the background (way the fuck back, mind you). Dicaprio plays Teddy Daniels, who has a history of violence and a drinking problem, a dead wife and kids, and who recently assisted in the liberation of Dachau and massacring the German soldiers stationed there. The flawed hero begins his story enroute to the island on the eve of a storm that will isolate him for the duration of the investigation. From the very beginning, the audience’s expectations are set on a slippery surface, as nobody acts like a normal human being or behaves in a rational fashion. The effect is disorienting, but this weirdness has good reason for being, which becomes evident as time goes on. The hero has fairly persistent migraines, nightmares, and what appears to be either hallucinations or he is the victim of directorial flourishes. Reality slips away as Teddy grows simultaneously closer and further from unearthing the secrets of Shutter Island.

If you are capable of reading between the lines, and you have seen a single thriller in the past decade, you know goddamn well what is going on, and so atmosphere becomes the sole source of entertainment. The brick buildings and well manicured lawns house most of the inmates of this institution for the criminally insane, while an old civil war fort houses the most dangerous of the criminals. The cells give way to dungeons filled with the sick and twisted, as though all schizophrenics were kept in dilapidated abattoirs of rusted iron and disintegrating concrete. But this is all symbolism at work, and none too subtle, as we descend into the tortured innards of Teddy’s mind. The parallels between the escaped patient’s life and crimes and Teddy’s are made clear early in the proceedings. Teddy the federal marshal is uniquely terrible at both interrogation and investigation with a manner infused equally by sarcasm and contempt. The director of the institution, the staff physicians, and wardens all exude duplicity and menace, but this is because of our protagonist’s perspective. So even though each character acts unnecessarily dickish from start to finish, this is intentional as filtered through that shopworn technique of the unreliable protagonist. Don’t give the inconsistencies and outright idiocies of the script a second thought; the film is entertaining enough with solid performances and some wonderfully unbalanced imagery. Forgettable, but one could find a worse distraction.

The point of view of the paranoid schizophrenic is presented in a somewhat effective way; the doctors, the drugs, and the psychiatric analysis are all viewed as fun and games set up by nefarious enemies as far as the mentally ill are concerned. Every word and gesture is seen as an attack upon an impervious exterior, making adherence to medication extraordinarily difficult for inpatients, let alone those treated in a community-based setting. Generally the paranoid schizophrenic is less of an adroit chess master than Dicaprio’s character and more resembles Sir Digby Chicken Caesar, but never mind. The overall payoff, if I may spoil the living shit out of Shutter Island, is that the entire hospital was involved in a role playing exercise to allow Dicaprio’s character one last chance to recognize the horrors of his past and the impact of his violent crimes, kind of like a massive treasure hunt with the occasional near-death experience and skull-fractured fellow patient to spice things up. The idea of letting a dangerous prisoner run riot over an island, traipse across rocky cliffs, and pummel other patients by way of therapy is intensely stupid. Still, I found this intriguing as a reflection of the decline of psychotherapy as medications became the vanguard of treatment for psychiatric illness. A second viewing will probably reveal even larger plot holes that would accommodate a jai alai field, but I do credit Shutter Island for two things. One, I found Leonardo Dicaprio less ridiculous than usual – a fine actor, but of limited range and whom should stay away from any role requiring an accent. Two, I appreciate a filmmaker even attempting to do something sensible with psychiatry, a field that has probably never been represented in a meaningful or earth-like way in film. Apart from Ordinary People, no movie has ever come close to portraying psychiatrists as anything other than Mengele interns looking to totally run some voltage through patients who don’t mop the floor correctly. Though it is true I have never met a single shrink who did not appear to have a few bolts loose, the same can be said of any physician. Or anyone, really. Mental illness and normality are all part of the same blurry spectrum. I leave you with a fun fact: frontal lobotomies were performed in the United States and Europe until the mid-1980’s.

Chop Shop – Any of Ramin Bahrani’s films would make this list, but this is his most tightly focused and genuinely moving, with one of the few child characters in the cinema that has the feel of reality. Each day is a dawn to dusk hustle, and sleep or entertainment can occur only if time allows. Alejandro Polanco turns in a punishing and raw performance as a young street hustler who persuades drivers to use his employer’s chop shop, and is willing to sell anything to build up his savings and realize his dream of owning his own food cart. It doesn’t sound like much, but for a child who has nothing, and no future prospect of anything beyond a daily grind of poverty, this dream is as vast as an empire. Bahrani deserves credit for creating a bleak film that resonates with the viewer regardless of their background, with a thin veneer of hope. This is above all about the survival instinct within us all, and the daily failures and tragedies offset by the occasional small victory that political philosophies and media soundbites fail to grasp. An involving film about those who live every day on the edge, with nobody there to catch them if they fall.

4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days – Though set in Romania in 1987, this story could take place anywhere that reproductive rights are not guaranteed. Avoiding political statements was a wise move for any film about abortion. Those involved – the protagonist, her pregnant friend, and the abortionist – are risking their lives to serve this need. Regardless of your stance on the issue, there will always be women who will require termination of their unborn child, and going to back-alley specialists need not be the price for society’s lack of understanding. 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days eschews grandstanding in favor of going through those excruciating moments necessary to have an abortion in a nation that has made them illegal, pure and simple. The people present are not lionized or damned in the process. At the end, they are just people forced by circumstances to what they must.

Burma VJ / Control Room – A splendid double feature of documentaries that present a scathing indictment of modern commercial news, though neither really intend to. Burma VJ presents the work of reckless citizens who desire a free media so badly that they risk (and subsequently lose) their lives to create one in the hopelessly backward and closed nation of Burma. While spineless news readers in democratic societies collect fat paychecks for telling viewers what they already know and avoid news snippets that could upset their corporate owners, the journalists of Burma VJ truly understand what freedom means, and its cost. Control Room tells the story of the widely reviled reporters of Al-Jazeera, all of whom are a smidge baffled about the attention they have received. Former Defense Secretery Donald Rumsfeld sneered that these people were the voice of Al-Qaeda, despite that most of them were former BBC employees, and often were still British citizens. Ironically, they made just as many enemies in the Arab world for speaking truth to power on both sides of the ocean, and for utterly failing to edit out the footage that would piss people off. While journalists from the west embedded themselves in the rectum of the military and passed on whatever they were told as sterling fact, these guys brought raw video of the fighting in Iraq, and the atrocities committed by both sides. One Al-Jazeera reporter was killed by an American pilot in an event contemptuously dismissed by the Bush cabinet as ‘unavoidable’; no less hateful an act than the murder of Daniel Pearl. Celebrate these people while you can, for their days of operation outside the bounds of corporate media are numbered.
http://english.aljazeera.net/

An Inconvenient Truth – Al Gore became the target of a smear campaign involving his extracurricular consulting activities and the size of his house, among other irrelevant points after this documentary became a hit. The data is there, and it has become quite clear to those who still maintain a measure of respect for information that the climate is changing to a warmer and less stable one on average. Though the Earth has had profound swings in temperature before, these changes occurred over hundreds of millions of years, enabling the flora and fauna to adapt. Humankind has created a true mess on slow boil since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and the planet is not prepared for such a change over only a couple hundred years. Even if you hate polar bears, bear in mind that nearly every major city on the planet has an ocean port, and if these are underwater, it could be disruptive to business. We take for granted that the economy will remain stable forever, but if we change the planet so it sustains a significantly smaller population, exactly why are we being so cavalier about it?

Kinsey – another period piece that remains strikingly relevant, this biopic about the revolutionary researcher who removed the veil of shame from human sexual behavior takes a close look at this flawed but essential man. It is easy to take for granted our current understanding about sex, but before Alfred Kinsey, our laws were shockingly regressive and our knowledge of sex based entirely upon the whims of the clergy. And Kinsey was no genius, nor did he unravel any impossible puzzles; he simply collected data about what people did or felt sexually, and published it. Period. Consider Alfred Kinsey our patron saint on the unassailable value of data, and how it can cause a seismic shift in how we view ourselves. So why is this still relevant? Even today, conservatives consider his work among the most dangerous ever, and would so dearly desire to bury it forever and return to those halcyon dark ages of religion-based views about sex. Before Kinsey published his masterworks Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Female, people actually believed that masturbation was psychologically devastating, homosexuality was a psychiatric disease, and that there was only one sexual act that could be termed normal. He did not just add to human knowledge, he made life more tolerable.

Munich – In the age of the superpowers, between the decline of the American empire and the rise of the Chinese one, global wars are a thing of the past. Not that we are in an era of peace – our conflicts are now smoldering, dominated by geographic disputes and low-tech attacks that have left entire regions in chaos. Though economic issues drive the majority of these contentions, the self-renewing fuel that provides a steady burn is that of retribution. Regardless of your take on Israeli-Palestinian relations, if you were to find an actual reason for the most recent rocket attack or reactionary return salvo, it would rest with revenge for the last attack. Under the guise of a thriller, Spielberg has crafted an immaculate film that quickly becomes lost in the fog of reprisals. War justifies itself under such circumstances, and arguing right or wrong simply does not apply anymore. Most crucial to this masterpiece is the intuitive sense that ultimately the direction of vengeance cannot be predicted as the cycle of retribution removes itself from any party’s control.

Taxi to the Dark Side – On the surface, this is one of those hated liberal screeds against the policies of the Bush administration, but this is taking an exceedingly narrow view. Taxi To The Dark Side is about the compromise of the United States Constitution by those charged with defending it. Beginning with profiled kidnappings of suspects of terror attacks in the Middle East and moving to operations on United States territory, legality was forever shed as anyone vaguely suspected of doing… something… could be put in a hole forever and tortured until they confessed to the predetermined script placed before them. No oversight, no legal precedent, no structure to the metastasis of the power of the executive branch except that which ambition provides. And if you think about it, it did not take a great deal to spur this abandonment of law and order. Three thousand Americans dead is a blip on any graph, and pales next to the importance and uniqueness of the document that formed the cornerstone of our system. Even the ramifications of this has been lost on most Americans, who have the attitude that as long as they are not the ones in the naked pyramid, then such actions just don’t matter. 9/11 was a turning point in more ways than we have realized.

The Class – The teacher who wrote this winner of the Palm D’Or was also cast as the teacher in this essential film about the state of our education system. Though based in Paris, it could have been filmed anywhere. As the quality of education for the lower classes continues to decline as it does all over the world, and the cultural melange of the world’s largest cities becomes increasingly complex, it will be the classrooms where the fuse is allowed to continue burning. Rooms of education represent the place of greatest potential for understanding, teaching, and most of all learning about one another. But since they are really just holding pens for disaffected youth who are only learning their relative irrelevance to a system that does not want them, the classroom becomes a cauldron. Overtly, The Class deals with France’s identity crisis as immigrants from the Middle East and Africa floods the shores of Europe. The children are rude and ignorant, and the teacher utterly fails to reach them, whether due to their insolence or his inability to understand them does not matter. The Class, as with all universal films, deals in a simple way with innumerable subjects regarding discontinuities. Generational, ethnic, informational, gender-based, and economic gaps abound; in The Class you see a microcosm of our society, and the direction it is heading will not be easy to predict.

The Corporation – One of the most depressing films ever crafted, The Corporation takes an exhaustive look at the birth of the modern corporation, and the insidious way it rules every aspect of our lives. Starting with an obscure law that allows an organization to classify itself as an individual, we see how such arcane definitions allow corporations to take on an identity of their own and thus deflect responsibility from those who run the business and make the money. When executives are caught fudging numbers or breaking the law, they can always hide behind the opaque wall of the corporate structure and proclaim ignorance. The corporation itself can be to blame, and so culpability is passed on to shareholders, and from there blame is diluted until it no longer exists. This is how Union Carbide, Chevron, and Halliburton manage to continue chugging along despite being the cause of untold amounts of suffering the world over. When the Supreme Court redefined a corporation as a person, elevating property rights to the same level as human rights, the battle was over before a single shot was fired. Nobody is to blame, you see, unless you cannot afford the shield of incorporation. Then you are just an individual who goes to prison. The Corporation leaves you feeling utterly helpless by its end, detailing the creation of a system from which there is no escape.

Traffic – equal to the classic miniseries Traffik, this film concerns the drug trade and the sheer magnitude of the odds the Drug Enforcement Administration is fighting against. While agents patrol the borders, risk their lives to intercept less than 5% of the drugs imported into the United States, and send hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and weaponry to Columbia to combat drug lords, the people of this country pay handsomely to keep the supply coming. You will find few subjects better to demonstrate the cognitive dissonance between a nation’s elected officials and citizens. Equal parts entertainment and cautionary tale, Traffic dramatizes the schizophrenic approach to the drug trade and the impossibility of continuing to fight it.

IOUSA – The end of American exceptionalism is about to strike us full in the face not due to a conflict, but from the overwhelming size of the national debt. As it mushrooms, the United States approaches the point where tax revenues will be less than the interest payments on the American debt amassed since George W. Bush entered the White House. Reagan-era conservatives argued that this did not matter, and they may have been right before other nations aspired to superpower status. The policy of deficit spending while cutting taxes is a sure winner for incumbents, and poison to pragmatists who understand the danger of allowing other nations to own the debt of your country. If you are in the mood for a horror story, look no further than this adroit and straightforward documentary that will detail just how much time the United States has left before it will simply be owned outright by foreign interests.

Jesus Camp / The Education of Shelby Knox – No matter how many exposes, lost elections, or awareness of their insinuation into the political power structure, religious fanatics are here to stay in democratic society. And they have no interest in democracy, equality, or egalitarian ideals – they want an irreversible slide into theocratic institutions. There will be no bargaining, no reasoning with these people, as per the definition of ‘fanatic’. They want power, and their foot soldiers are the next generation. Easily led and indoctrinated, the children of fanatics are being born and bred to become political organizers, and best you believe they will be working overtime. The children of Jesus Camp are sad cases in victims of child abuse, taught to be deathly afraid of every waking moment in their worship of a just and loving God who hates their fucking guts. Consider it fair warning. The Education of Shelby Knox makes a interesting, though similarly heartbreaking companion piece in the extraordinary struggle of one Texas girl to bring sex education to her school. Read that sentence again, because their school actually teaches that abstinence is all there is, and sex simply isn’t an option. That her town has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation is ignored completely by the town leaders. Just a nice example of the social conservatives’ penchant for inventing whatever reality works for their insane beliefs. That Shelby Knox made it out of that town with her sanity intact is a testament to the strength of the human spirit, but woe to those children left behind, breeding copiously to provide additional fodder for the bible warriors and the army recruiters.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room – No list of films about the most disposable decade ever would be complete without this cross section of conservative economic theory crossbred with American entitlement. These assholes not only perpetrated a massive scam – Ken Lay and the rest of his cronies truly believed that they had unearned wealth coming to them. Though the cries for their heads were sang around the world, don’t believe for a second that the board of directors of this fake Fortune 500 company was anything but a hero to the populace… until they got caught. Nobody gets this rich without ripping people off. From doctoring books to lend the appearance of vague but opulent success to manufacturing an energy crisis in California for profit, this is the true manifestation of the free market when unfettered by pesky regulators. Naturally, once the perpetrators were caught and prosecuted, everyone learned their lesson that when the books look too good to be true, they probably are. Well, until the next hot trend of housing subprime loans and fake financial products hit the streets.

Dirty Pretty Things – an instant classic the year it was released, Dirty Pretty Things took an unflinching look at the difficult, compromised lives of illegal immigrants living invisibly in the shadows of their adopted nation. Performing tasks that natural citizens thought beneath them, they live dangerously, having nobody to turn to if exploited. The most extreme example of what an illegal immigrant will sell to get a green card is in the field of organ donation – give up one kidney and you have your freedom (if you survive the procedure), and someone lucky enough to have been born in the right place gets a working organ. And yes, this all happens in real life. The perfect blend of suspense, drama, and social commentary, Dirty Pretty Things is a snapshot in time. Extraordinary risks are taken to remain surviving each day, and there is no safety net beneath them.

Flow – A crushing and obliviously hopeful documentary about the drive to privatize the world’s fresh water supply, Flow addresses a subject that would once be thought ridiculous. Privatize the supply of water, that which fills the rivers and has always existed as a public trust? As it turns out, if you appoint the right judges and amass enough wealth, you can claim ownership and sell or lease rights to anything you want. In Bolivia, the grip of multinational water companies was so tight that peasants in rural areas would be threatened with prison if they put a bucket out in the rain. Even in the United States, companies that sell bottled water can simply purchase publicly owned lakes and rivers and suck them dry before a single legal claim is filed. And as one state Supreme Court judge ruled, a multinational corporation is immune to prosecution for these transgressions. As the population rises and the efforts to legally take water and other public assets gains ground, people will discover just how strong the sense of entitlement of the upper classes can be.

District 9

For sheer entertainment value, nothing touches this gritty and cynical sci-fi  masterpiece with a grim outlook on human nature. Based in the violent and  compromised urban slums of Johannesburg, it provides the perfect crucible in  which racial and economic issues create a melange of subtext  that provides food for thought. Despite the alien characters, it is a  consideration of what makes us human, as well as questioning whether humanity  has any value in itself. This allegory about apartheid also regards the devastating impact of losing an intellectual class and the cannibalistic nature of populations under pressure. Most of all, it was dead entertaining, with action to spare. In the coda, there is suggestion of either hope amidst the  decayed setting, or perhaps that we are most human when we betray our nature. Neill Blomkamp is a talent to watch, crafting a film for our times. In a year with homogenized films and lifeless CGI, a gory B-movie that runs roughshod over racial stereotypes in an unphotogenic city while playing with complex themes gave life to an utterly dead year. It would be hard to imagine a less marketable film. Perhaps there is hope for the medium after all.

Goodbye, Solo

A meditative work by one of America’s finest filmmakers, featuring flawless  acting by amateurs in a masterfully made character study. Ignoring any larger  point to be made, watching the two leads play off each other is endlessly  entertaining. Bahrani came into his own with the truly magnificent Chop Shop;  here the perfectionist director considers larger questions of humanity and  identity. Red West and Souleymane Sy Savane turn in natural performances in  one of the best films of the year. Any further attempt at description only seems to diminish its impact, so I will not even try.

Burma VJ

The future of journalism will not be the newsmodels who hide behind desks and monitors – it will be in the hands of impoverished and powerless guerilla  reporters armed with digital cameras capturing world events. Burma VJ tells  the story of one cell of journalists who managed to film the uprising in Burma in 2007 as the monks led the charge against the military junta that has maintained an iron grip since a coup in 1962 removed the elected leader. Many of these men  and women joined those monks in prison and shallow graves after the rebellion was crushed by the military. You will not see a more electrifying film this year, starring nameless people who have a far more profound understanding of the importance of democracy than we do.

Beaches of Agnes

This sublime documentary by and about the most unique and iconoclastic of the  French New Wave auteurs is a true work of art in its exploration of a  compulsive artist. The director of such diverse works as Vagabond and The Gleaners and I makes for a fascinating figure even when talking about herself. As she considers people and places important to her life, you get a feeling for who Agnes Varda is, without really knowing her at all; this is a recurrent theme in her work. This is a reflective film of a life fully lived while reviewing some of her better known films as signposts along the way. Beaches of Agnes is a free flowing essay about the life of Agnes Varda, a poem without rhyme or meter, nor underlying purpose, other than an expression of life. At least the way she sees life. As she gets older, she expresses the regret that memory begins to fade, and our recollections fall to dust as do our bodies. “Our memory ultimately fails. But it is still ours, and nobody knows us.” The director and numerous actors spend time walking backward in an expression of reflection without nostalgia. Varda is 80 going on 18, and has a great deal to say, even if we could only brush the surface of understanding her, or anyone else in our lives. “While I live… I remember.”

Summer Hours

This film makes subtlety its medium in an exploration of the meaning of the  things in our life when time and context change. Olivier Assayas evokes the  immortal Jean Renoir with his delicate touch and an intuitive sense of human  nature. As such, there is no real plot apart from how three siblings who have  drifted apart handle the estate of their departed mother; this description  hardly does justice to the depth of characterization that makes this an  absorbing film. As the destructive power of time works on our frail vessels,  the meaning of our lives and the objects we own (which in turn help define us)  changes dramatically. This becomes clearer in a final, seemingly irrelevant  scene in which the next generation appears to take a beautiful but worn  country house for granted, while one youth regards it with greater value than perhaps her predecessors did.

Sugar

The traditional sporting film dies a deserved death in this sublime tribute to  the sheer effort required to simply endure in the face of mounting pressure to  perform. The grand question is, if talent and hard work is not enough to  succeed, what then? Sugar goes toward this dark corner of the American psyche,  as we have become accustomed to ignoring the possibility of failure. Finding a  way to succeed despite failure shows greater character than winning. Sugar interweaves threads of cultural disconnect, the plight of the immigrant, and  establishing a sense of home. These threads intersect in the understated  ending in which a mere gesture speaks with greater resonance than any  dialogue.

In The Loop

Probably one of the most dense and economical films in recent memory, In The  Loop packages the political machinations at work during the run-up to the war  in Iraq. As a fictionalized account, it is just chaotic and stupid enough to nail how politicians act under pressure and how what appears to  be government business is the sum total of an army of individual bureaucratic  drones feeding their own ambitions. It answers a great many questions as to how war can be declared under such dubious circumstances, why the public was fooled, and why nobody seemed capable of stopping the monster that had been set in motion. The acting is flawless, the dialogue  demonically funny, and the intuitive screenplay is sharp as a laser. Peter Capaldi has a nomination (at minimum) coming for his part, as few have fashioned a more  magnetic and hateful cunt.

Crude

Texaco-Chevron spent the last two decades pumping oil out and pumping toxic  waste into a remote section of the Ecuadorian rain forest, causing billions of  dollars in damage and precipitating an epidemic of skin diseases, cancers, and  gastrointestinal hemorrhages amongst the indigenous people who live in that  forest. Sounds like a clear cut case that should result in a judgment against  the company, but in Crude you get a front row seat to the power of  multinational corporations to evade responsibility. Via payoffs, coercion, and  massive spending upon attorney fees, Chevron’s strategy has been to simply  stall until all of the plaintiffs living in that part of the forest have died.  And it is working. You will seldom see a more powerful and frustrating film  about the legal arena and how it can represent the potential to both redeem and destroy people’s lives.

The Informant!

The standard parable of corporate corruption is inverted in this deceptively  simple story of a whistleblower who is as corrupt as his bosses, and has a  great hunger for fame. Matt Damon disappears into a role that is scrupulously  effective, yet not flashy enough to garner much attention. The constant goofy  and relentlessly irrelevant narraration becomes one of the few useful windows  into the rather opaque Mark Whitacre. As a liar he is peerless, if for no  reason other than that he is utterly convinced of his own bullshit. It is left  to the viewer to decide what the ultimate motive is, since money hardly seems  to adequately explain the lengths to which he risked his family and fortune.  Even if one stands to lose everything, it seems to be worth the risk just to  be seen as a star.

OSS 117 -Lost in Rio

James Bond has been interpreted by many actors and directors, but only Roger  Moore seemed to come close to the essence of Bond as a smug know-it-all  dipshit who coasts on charisma and bumbles into terror plots. In OSS 117, Jean  Dujardin gets it right: he is an obtuse dumbass. This is how people around  Bond see him, ignorant of history and culture, disinterested in any subject  unrelated to poon. Beneath the comedy is a thug who ‘enjoys fighting’ and  pushes a colonial agenda, among the more clever jokes amidst the insane  mugging and underwear sparring. Compulsively watchable, goofy without being  distracted, OSS 117 is that rare comedy that will grow in your estimation with  repeat viewings.

And number eleven: Star Trek

This film deserves to be on a year-end list not despite its flaws, but because  of them. The wildly uneven theatrical franchise gets a reboot in the best way  possible with a pseudoscience mess of a time warp that by itself redefines the entire canon. The drill, the black hole weapon, the whatever science used to explain each improbable way that the story is set back on track; these things are logically indefensible, and along with awkward fistfights and aliens with variant forehead wrinkles make Star Trek what it is. So this film has it all in spades with solid action, surprisingly good acting (Zachary Quinto deserves a medal for his interpretation of Spock while standing next to the legend), and a playful feel  for science that keeps the geeks happy. After all, playing with science and the strange laws on its margins is what sci-fi is all about.

Near Misses:
Inglorious Basterds should be on the list above, but since Cale will do greater justice to its synopsis, I have deliberately left it off. Other strong films from 2009 include Outrage, Revanche, Munyurangabo, Katyn, Food Inc., Jerichow, 35 Shots of Rum, and Somers Town.

Lest I forget:
There have been many films unavailable for viewing due to our increasingly retarded film distribution system. Surely, some of these would have made the list if they ever crossed the fucking ocean or played in more than one theatre nationwide. Skin, Disgrace, Seraphine, Red Cliff (the full film, not the oddly butchered version), Bronson, Waterlife, Afghan Star, and the list goes on. And these assholes wonder why people download movies illegally.

This cluttered tale has reaped the benefit of low expectations; it was passable as far as entertainment goes, leagues ahead of what I was expecting given Guy Ritchie’s last two projects and a busily retarded trailer. A clusterfuck of biblical proportions averted, I relaxed into what was an agreeably mediocre farce, and superior to shoveling the driveway or suffering through the eightieth viewing of Elmo’s Potty Training Time. That being said, your time would be better spent leafing through Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories regarding Holmes and enjoying them for what they were: an excuse to wow the reader with rather clever deductive exercises and ingenious little tricks and traps. The character of Sherlock Holmes was never particularly deep; though an emotional mess and inclined to obsessive behaviors when not occupied by puzzles, he was a blank wall off which such puzzles bounced in ways reflecting the author’s wit. Watson was always more developed due to his flaws and relative normalcy which put his friend in sharp relief. Really, though, one could give a toss about the characters unless they were relating the way in which seemingly insignificant clues could be used to tease apart any number of mental enigmas. In this respect, the film adaptation of the adventures of the detective gets it wrong entirely, as the puzzles themselves are merely mortar to help smooth together the action setpieces. Rather than clever, the tricks are contrived enough to make Wile E. Coyote cock an eyebrow in bewilderment. Sherlock Holmes is here to fuck shit up… and maybe solve a mystery if time permits.

At the beginning of the story, Sherlock Holmes and his gay pal Watson are in pursuit of a Satanic serial killer, and they seem to be a complete work. By this, I mean they are at the peak of their powers; Watson is fussy and worried (in addition to being a former soldier) and Holmes knows everything about everything. There is no arc to speak of for these guys, apart from their self-denial. Watson is engaged to be married, which irks Holmes to no end. Now, this could be the basis of a homoerotic subtext, except they spend so much time bickering like jilted lovers that it is self-conscious and way out of any theoretical closet. Homoeroticism is only fun in the cinema when it is not intentional. But that is Ritchie for you – subtle as a meteorite. So they apprehend their quarry, one Lord Blackwood, who conceals his mastery of chemistry and engineering with black magic rituals to inspire fear in his subjects and adversaries. He is caught, hung, and rises from the dead to continue his aspirations to… well, rule the world I think. I doubt even the director knows what the master plan is, but it has something to do with having power and crushing his enemies mwahahaha. There are many improbable traps and red herrings, and a femme fatale in Rachel McAdams, who is stunning in the way she reads lines like a recovering stroke victim. There is a secondary villain whose importance only becomes clear at the end as Sherlock Holmes is set up for a quickie sequel. Overall, it is an attempt at a smart action film with some working knowledge of the gentleman from 221B Baker Street (all reviews are legally required to contain this address). The movie is not as clever as it would suppose, with any loose ends tied together with random technobabble used as clues that are elementary, dear reader. Or would be if they made any sense. Hero and villain must anticipate the moves of their enemies to a ridiculous extent – one such target walks through a fountain of flammable liquid, Holmes deducing its existence and the victim’s assumption that it was raining. Yes, an isolated rain of chemicals on an otherwise dry evening. Damned London weather. You sort of learn to stop rolling your eyes and just take it all in, though a flask of Bowmore was of considerable aid.

It is not a bad film if you think very little and pay minimal attention to detail, a ethos that would do Sherlock proud. The action is not bad, but repetitive since Victorian London had only so many possible locations for fistfights and very few options for melee weapons. Still, the actors do manage to lose themselves in some clouds of CGI and one (admittedly) impressive view of London Bridge that is still under construction. Guy Ritchie’s overly busy direction keeps things moving, but more importantly keeps the audience perpetually distracted. Robert Downey Jr. is perfect – not as Holmes, but as a star in a Guy Ritchie movie. He grows more twitchy each film, and here is so self-consciously mannered that he ceases to exist as a film character and becomes the Annoying Thinking Man’s Action Star. Hopefully the producer of Iron Man 2 had some Thorazine on hand. Jude Law acquits himself as Dr. Watson, and it is in the dialogue that Sherlock Holmes is most tolerable. It was to no end of annoyance that this was given short shrift, not to mention the way deduction occurred almost grudgingly before the next action scene commenced. The legendary detective spent more time as a pit fighter than poring over books, but perhaps this is nitpicking. I was really expecting to hate this movie considering the ads, but I found myself lulled into apathetic contentment with the occasional witty remark or interesting moment to break the fog.

Which brings me to the one point that I could glean from a blah movie that has generated the necessarily blah review: Sherlock Holmes, not Avatar, is the future of filmmaking. Avatar was too obnoxious with its self-importance and too expensive with its technology. Maybe the animation will become cheaper, but filming people will always be the economical choice. Holmes is the perfect blend of real people and sets and what is evidently a CGI-laden backdrop that plants you in 1880s London by way of Narnia. Fake looking, but agreeably so. Self-aware and never too astute to alienate a potentially dim audience, while bringing the smashy-smashy and goofy plot twists. Keep it bubbly and busy, and you will never be accused of insulting the audience. Eventually Michael Bay and Stephen Sommers will suffer considerable backlash, while relatively adequate fare like this will continue sailing with full audiences and pleased critics. Maybe not now, but someday this will be seen as the equinox; the idea of a smart film will have changed. I do not know if this is for the better, but with a relentlessly bleak horizon, I am willing to look for any sort of silver lining I can.

“When men, even unknowingly are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever their diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.”

When a great filmmaker reinvents cinema, perfects his technique, and begins to coast, what happens to his creative output? Does he crash into a heap or simply fade into history and irrelevance? Godard veered left and became involved in increasingly disconnected projects, Eastwood has been comfortably chasing mediocrity in the Oscar ghetto, and Coppola is still searching for the better part of his brain matter after Apocalypse Now fired a definitive slug through his magnificent dome. Then there are others who still find ways to reinvent themselves. Werner Herzog remains unpredictable and was never better while crafting Grizzly Man or Encounters at the End of the World; Robert Altman made one his best at the bitter end by using the creative process of A Prairie Home Companion to consider mortality. Jean-Pierre Melville, after playing an integral role in the French New Wave, created an entire mythos of the criminal underworld. The landmark Bob Le Flambeur through the cool perfection of Le Deuxiemme Souffle recast noir and established a stylistic world of men in trenchcoats following a code to a seemingly predetermined end. As his filmography came to a close, Melville stayed in this world (apart from his masterpiece, L’Armee Des Ombres), but appeared to become more philosophical about it. Like many of his contemporaries in French cinema, Melville was a fatalist, and the characters in his films reflected this belief. They have parts to play in a grand tragic comedy, and though there are individual decisions to be made, one cannot escape fate. The dancers take their steps in what appears to be a predestined choreography. The gray wolves of Melville’s shadows would seem to be able to evade such an end with lives lived outside of the norm and established rules, but such outsiders adhere to the least forgiving ideology of all. Cops have their duty, hoods have their code, and all have their destiny. What began in Le Samourai came to a resolute end in Le Cercle Rouge.

Corey is a veteran thief who has just been released from prison; before he exits the gates he is offered a diamond heist job by a guard. Vogel is another thief and killer who is on his way to prison, escorted by detective Mattei on board a train. He evades the detective and makes a desperate escape into the forest as winter descends upon the countryside. Both are aberrations from the natural order that will soon be corrected. There is a daring theft, a disturbance in the smooth ocean of daily life, but once the waves break, they return to their previous level. You probably know where the story is going already, but as with any great story, it is in how it is told that our attention is seized. The players are among the best in the business, and watching skilled individuals doing a job well is the best entertainment possible. Corey and Vogel are played by Alain Delon and Gian Maria Volonte, adept men who work in silence, preferring to speak with their eyes when at all possible. Their paths cross and it is as if both were expecting to find the other; when Vogel crawls into the boot of his parked car, Corey registers no surprise. After all, he is on the run as well, after robbing his former employer for giving his ex a reason to betray him. Women do not have much of a place in this world apart from entertainment or disappointment. Masculine figures are all that matter in a world of sharp edges and fatal wounds.

So the hoods are on the run, and the accomplished Mattei is on their trail. Even when he knows full well they have escaped, a good cop knows a criminal will reveal themselves eventually. As his chief is careful to remind him, “All men are guilty. They are born innocent, but it doesn’t last.” He would know; the best policemen think like criminals, move in their circles, embrace their vices. There will be one more intersection for them all. Before we get there, there is a burglary, and it requires the services of a crack shot. In steps ex-cop Jansen, played with steely quiet by Yves Montand. He is an alcoholic, introduced in an unsettling scene that is one of the most vivid episodes of delirium ever filmed. His sure hand may provide him with a moment of redemption; just as performing their tasks skillfully may redeem Corey and Vogel; just as capturing his quarry shall redeem Mattei. Risk and redemption, and the void beyond is a recurrent theme in Melville’s work. He understood that success does not justify itself – victory only lives in the moment, but there is always the failure of tomorrow waiting for you. This can be seen in the resigned look of Vogel and Corey; they regard one another with no fear, just caution. When Vogel meets Corey, he holds a gun on him until intentions are made clear. Corey tosses him a pack of cigarettes, followed by a lighter, requiring Vogel to put away the gun. Mattei clearly shows no gusto for capturing his prey. No self-righteous speeches about right and wrong, since those terms are interchangeable depending on your perspective. He does not do the right thing, just his thing. This can be seen in the costuming for the characters, which are identical – cops and criminals look alike, act alike, speak alike; and if times are tough, they exchange their roles as outlaws turn informer and cops skim off the top.

The centerpiece of Le Cercle Rouge, as with all heist films, is the job itself. Strangely enough, it occurs with little fanfare, no expository dialogue about the setup, and little tension during the job. It would seem lazy, but Melville always has another agenda in play. Almost before the theft is completed, it seems clear that this will make no difference in the outcome, and any sense of triumph should remain fleeting. This is especially true for Montand’s character – an alcoholic ex-cop fresh off his DT’s would be ripe for tragedy. It is up to him to place a shot perfectly or they would all be trapped. After he readies his rifle, bolted into a tripod, he makes a snap decision that sucks the oxygen out of the room. He reclaims his soul – in the practical world this means validation of his craft and nothing more – in a temporary fashion, but that is good enough.

As with all of Melville’s work, the shots are crisp, the details immaculate, every word, gesture and motion efficient almost to a fault. If not for the extraordinary craft, one could accuse the director of egregious exercises in style. Even if so, this is a philosophical work in the guise of a genre film. Melville was no Buddhist, and the opening quote does not reflect a sense of destiny as a vague spiritual force, but rather the inevitability borne of human nature. These are the ants to which Harry Lime referred in the ferris wheel, and they would not begrudge the indifference of a distant audience. There is indulgence in the form of entertainment, whiskey, perhaps an errant rose or time with a woman, but none of these players are under any illusion that such things are granted. These things, joy and pain, all pass and so we meet our end.

Planet Earth – Nature filmmaking was redefined by this blockbuster, the result of naturalists and zoologists being given unprecedented funding and time to capture film of the world’s last remaining wild places. As a supreme ode to the beauty of this lonely planet, it is unparalleled. As a vehicle for dramatic stories about what animals must do to survive in the unforgiving natural world, it is genuinely moving. And as the largest canvas for the most beautiful cinematography ever filmed, it is flawless. Though the hype surrounding the project was deafening, and the merchandising inescapable, it pays to return to Planet Earth with fresh eyes to consider just how much work went into the shots that made it onscreen. David Attenborough performs the narration and unifies the work with the larger view that our planet is very much taken for granted. A much-overused phrase to be sure, but at a time when human capacity to change the world is unsurpassed, we scarcely understand the long-term effects of our current policies and activities. That industry places all of the visually stunning vistas on display here in jeopardy is beyond question. What the series forces the viewer to ask is, what else is placed at risk? Society has difficulty weathering a relatively small stock market crash; what would occur if the natural resources we depend upon are pushed beyond their ability to withstand us? There has been no better series for considering our place in the world, and the crossroads that we have reached.

Atom - Another bit of brilliant storytelling as Professor Jim Al Khalili approaches the baffling subject of the atomic and subatomic world from a historical perspective. As he reviews the development of atomic theory from traditionalists like Einstein to the mind-boggling theories of Heisenberg and Bohr, the documentary is peppered with choice anecdotes. For example, Boltzman conceived of atoms to develop equations to explain the behavior of steam, an experimental afterthought resulted in the proof that atoms are almost entirely empty space, and that Erwin Schroedinger was inspired to theorize that a particle was a wave after he spent a week wearing out some Austrian whore. Khalili has a gift for expressing atomic and subatomic theory in a way that is accessible to those unused to thinking in terms of mathematical equations. This task is nothing to sniff at since Heisenberg noted that it is impossible and intellectually dishonest to even attempt to form a visual picture of an atom or its fundamental particles. In fact, it was Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that conceptualized the view that pure math is the only way to understand the subatomic world. And so this would hold true for the intergalactic world as well. Sit back and enjoy as you learn about how solid objects do not actually exist as we think of them, and that we are a cloud of particles defined not by position or speed, but by probability and equations.

Blue Planet: Seas of Life – There will be a lot of David Attenborough on this list, it would seem. For good reason, since his efforts have yielded the best shot and most thoughtful considerations of the natural world. In Blue Planet, the vast ecosystems of the ocean are examined by system; the sterile open ocean, the largely unknown deep, the rich coral seas, the variable and adaptive tidal seas. Though individual species take center stage, the systematic approach avoids the pitfall so common to nature films: having too narrow a view. All exist within a system, and one that is carefully balanced. The Deep chapter in particular is edifying in its look at a habitat that has been explored less than the moon, with new species discovered on each dive. Deep ocean vents shooting water as hot as molten lead (but still liquid due to the pressure) are encrusted by a riot of organisms, all living in total independence of the energy of the sun. A glimpse of early Earth, perhaps. There is so much content in this series that its rewatchability is absurdly high.

Earth: The Biography – Watching Professor Iain Stewart wax poetic about the forces that shaped the Earth is akin to a Euro discussing the greatest sport in the world – you would have to lack a pulse to avoid being caught up in his joy for the subject. Covering topics as vast and complex as air (atmosphere), water (oceans), fire (volcanism), and ice is no mean feat, but Dr. Stewart burns through these with great speed in a way that ties the systems together. The visuals are remarkable, and more than justify investing in a hi-definition player. Most of all, this is a pure educational experience, and one that bears rewatching. The deft explanation for how the ocean currents and the deep ocean conveyor work together to cycle oxygen to the deep and nutrients to the surface to make those oceans highly productive is not to be missed. Indeed, the chapter on water connects solidly with climate change literature to suggest that the deep ocean conveyor can be shut off rather easily, and once this happens the oceans will become incapable of sustaining life in large amounts. Considering this is where the human species gets much of its food and half of its oxygen, that is an arresting conclusion.

Ocean Odyssey – Using both actual footage and computer animation, the life cycle of the elusive Sperm Whale is examined in this well-executed work by the team from Walking With Dinosaurs. The incorporation of CGI is seamless, and essential for never-photographed details like a battle with a giant squid, or the whale’s use of a sonar unit powerful enough to knock a diver unconscious. The documentary covers the birth and development of the young whale, how it learns to hunt, the way they breed and communicate, their transglobal migration, and eventual death. There are details provided about how humans have impacted their habitat with overfishing and whaling, but fortunately these are not terminal tangents that would rob the feature of its focus. It suggests an optimistic future for this and the other great whales for their adaptability, perhaps in a way that will take advantage of global warming in ways other animals cannot.

Life in Cold Blood – Unlike his series about the oceans or Mammals, Attenborough’s Life in Cold Blood has a difficult task to be accomplished without the help of photogenic animals. The cold-blooded animal groups of amphibians, snakes, toads, and crocodiles are viewed with a distinct lack of romance by our species. That we reserve the term ‘reptilian’ for the most detestable among us says it all. Nonetheless, the film crew manages to capture moments that are nothing less than spectacular, and dispels the many general myths people hold about cold-blooded animals. Mammals and birds consume more than 90% of their intake to maintain their body temperature, so reptiles and amphibians are far more efficient. Their behavior is complex, their adaptability surprising, and their ability to survive may be far greater than their warm-blooded cousins.  Snakes that fly, crocodiles that carefully nurture their young, and a lizard that mourns its fallen mate will change the way you think about these animal groups. They are in no way primitive; indeed their very existence suggests their equality with us on the evolutionary scale.

The Story of Maths – Though a ponderous subject, if you are not of a mathematical bent, the theory behind maths can be fascinating when explained by a master of the form. This series looks at the history of mathematical systems and how they evolved through history, driven by practical need and intellectual curiosity. Professor Marcus du Sautoy covers the history of how systems of math are developed, and his passion for the subject is infectious. The ancient Egyptians needed to come up with a way to predict the Nile floods for farming purposes, as well as to measure land and calculate taxation. The number system borne of this need was used to create fractions, a binary system that predated computers by 3000 years, geometric series, and the use of pi. The Babylonians developed a number system based on 60, as it was easy to divide, and recognized the use of place values. Pythagoras developed a theorem (the name of which escapes me) and was a part of developing the system of mathematical and geometric proofs that is still used today. Most importantly, he proposed (inspired by the work of blacksmiths striking anvils) the harmonic series to understand music, and that the universe itself was subject to mathematical laws. This was a stepping stone to theoretical physics whereby math has been used to predict the existence of exoplanets, the existence of certain fundamental particles, and the presence of supermassive black holes. And so forth. Never has math been presented in such a clear and relevant way.

Nature’s Most Amazing Events – The focus here is not on a particular animal or ecosystem, but on a remarkable event that occurs at the intersection between opportune weather, available resources, and the massive migrations of animals that move to take advantage of same. Though there is some educational value in how these tremendous events occur, really this is an excuse to show off your hi-definition player. The sound is powerful, the visuals are unmatched by anything outside of the Planet Earth documentary, and the drama is worthy of a master storyteller. The two most impressive chapters focus upon the unique world where the desert becomes a swamp teeming with life in the Okavango Delta, and the rare but intense Sardine Run off the coast of South Africa. The Okavango Delta becomes a haven for animals that will cross miles of inhospitable desert to take advantage of the brief bonanza that gathers; for a herd of elephants, their survival depends upon it during this dramatic passage. The Sardine Run culminates in a cloud of sardines visible from a mile in the air, attacked from every quarter by the largest army of predators on the planet. More accomplished visual poetry that this does not exist.

Besieged Fortress – Disaster movies get this resounding answer from the nature film genre as a seemingly unstoppable phalanx of driver ants descend upon a termite mound in Burkina Faso. Though the termite mound has a defense, they are hopelessly outmatched and their queen is helplessly immobile. Though one is not predisposed to caring about the survival of an insect, the drama that is set up by this efficiently paced and cleverly plotted tour de force will grab hold of you nonetheless. It is possible that some of the shots were tampered with by the filmmaker, but considering how well this story is told, who gives a shit?

Life After People – One of the more engaging thought experiments of the decade; if people disappeared, what would happen to the Earth and to the things we have left behind? How quickly would entropy claim our tremendous successes? Quite quickly, as it turns out. This well done and exhaustively researched work (based in part on Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us) speaks volumes toward our species-centric view of our world, and our relative insignificance. Though humankind wreaks havoc upon the biosphere and the future of virtually any species living in the wild, the Earth itself and any flora or fauna that manage to survive our last throes would get along swimmingly without our presence, and scrupulously remove any trace of our existence within 100,000 years. A cough in the history of our planet. Try to guess what actually might survive. This was presented both as a single film and a series.

Meerkat Manor – This became a cultural phenomenon in 2005, much to everyone’s surprise. It turns out that suricates have a family dynamic as involving as a soap opera, and for the Whiskers clan, the danger afforded by the Kalahari provided a tense atmosphere in which the tale unfolded. Unlike in fiction, none of these characters are protected by an author, and the predators that watch carefully from the scrub are indifferent to the narrative. This brought an unnerving unpredictability to what would otherwise be saturated by anthropomorphizing bullshit. There is some educational value to this, but its strongest asset is its ability to suck you in to the daily bustle of a group of animals with remarkably complex behavior. What is most shocking is how emotionally involving it can be – and if you watched this all the way through and did not shed a tear or two along the way, you are made of stone.

The Universe – There is no larger subject that could be tackled, but the impressive array of planetary scientists, astronomers, and physicists are game enough. The Universe makes it cool to be a geek again with an overpowering series that injects immense amounts of Whoa into every single episode. Detailed and intricate, yet accessible to a layman, this series addresses subjects of more than a purely intellectual interest. The first season dealt largely with the solar system, bristling with fun facts like how Earth’s magnetic field is the only reason we still have an atmosphere (unlike Mars), Jupiter has a core of solid Hydrogen metal, and that Neptune’s distance from the sun is what allows it to have 1,000 mph winds. The subsequent seasons leapt even further off the map, considering Dark Energy, the ways in which the Earth can be destroyed, the life cycle of a star and the odd phenomenon of the neutron star. Even if you feel the subject matter is alien to you, the elation of the scientists who provide intuitive models for understanding rather strange concepts will rub off on you. Another fun fact: if you fell on a neutron star, you would be converted to a pure lump of neutrons. Awesome.

Winged Migration – One of the most visually arresting films ever made, Winged Migration departs from the standard model of nature films by having relatively little narration, and providing information with images when possible. This is to its credit, as this is a feature to be appreciated in silence. The vast clouds of birds swooping with the wind currents, the storm of gannets dive bombing into the water, and the impossibly distant migrations of geese create unforgettable images. Another fascinating aspect that made Winged Migration unique was the filmmaker’s direct involvement in the film and resulting manipulation of the action. In order to capture some of the images, the crew filmed a group of geese that were being trained to locate their nesting grounds with an ultralight aircraft. The birds were shot from a distance of mere feet, allowing shots that will likely never be made again. This has been a source of criticism, but again the goal was not perfect realism, but achievement of ideal cinema. Once a subject is photographed, one cannot claim it was untouched in the process.

Charles Darwin and The Tree of Life – In a way, this is reflective of not only the life and impact of Charles Darwin and his unifying theories of biology and evolution, but also reflective of the presenter, whose name is synonymous with the nature film. David Attenborough reviews the history of how Darwin came to realize the connection between all living things going back to one remote ancestor. Visuals are interspersed with footage of Attenborough discussing some zoological item of interest from thirty years prior. Subtly, this gives shading to the importance of the theory over the last 200 years. After all, without this quantum leap, there would have been no understanding of the relationship between animals, plants, bacteria, and whatever the current planetary population may yet evolve into. Nature films tend to be static despite themselves, as a snapshot in time. The Tree of Life makes clear that we are on a continuously moving arrow through time, and our actions have powerful impacts upon this tree’s branches. It is a fitting tribute to one of the most extraordinary minds in science, and the difficulty he faced amidst ignorance and superstition in bringing this knowledge to humankind.

March of the Penguins – Its popularity resulted in some backlash, thanks in no small part to a contempt for the opinions of the herd, for Oscar, and for that stupid anthropomorphizing voice over by Morgan Freeman. Like any nature film or documentary not presented by someone who is an expert in the field, it is best to turn the volume off and play something else in the background. For the visuals alone this film deserves to be considered with the best of the decade. The extraordinary difficulty of shooting footage during winter in Antarctica (where gasoline itself becomes a jelly and exposed human flesh freezes in seconds) by itself brushes aside any objections to this masterful examination of the survival instinct. Luc Jacquet edits the footage to create a story about what a species must do to simply exist from one year to the next, the meager rewards, and the impossible risks that are taken. Anyone who felt this movie was about cute penguins and their cuddly offspring read way too much Nietzsche.

If We Had No Moon – An intriguing intellectual exercise whereby eminent astronomers consider what would happen if Earth had no moon; indeed, the foremost question is why such an unusual event occurred. It is suspected that Earth evolved simple life even before the Cambrian period, with a deep global ocean that drowned the land as the early solar system began to settle. Earth’s smaller cousin Orpheus also evolved life, but their orbits were too close, and they smashed into one another, eradicating life and creating a molten ball of fractured mantle and gas. The Earth settled, and the debris around it coalesced into the Moon, and so the only planet in the solar system with a relatively large moon came to be. As it turns out humans owe their existence to the moon. If not for Orpheus, the Earth would still be a vast ocean devoid of terrestrial life. The Moon itself stabilizes Earth’s orbit, seasons, and temperature. The chaotic orbit and tilt that Earth would have without its moon would make the development of intelligent life difficult to impossible as we imagine it. Overall an engaging documentary that brings into sharp relief just how precarious our existence truly is.

Hate nature?  Check out Matt’s best docs of the decade.

Hate everything?  Check out Matt’s worst docs of the decade.

Avatar is a great technology in search of a halfway decent movie. Just to get the slight praise out of the way, the computer animation used to create Pandora is more than beautiful, it usually looks fairly natural. The surfaces are textured enough to appear sort of flawed, as if they are skin/bark/rock rather than a plastic shell. During many of the ‘exploration’ sequences, one feels content to simply watch and ignore any story in progress, awaiting David Attenborough’s input into how there is one animal here that doesn’t glow in the dark. There was a supreme imagination at work in this aspect of the film, though there was little thought put into why the flora and fauna ended up the way they did due to, for example, the low gravity, atmospheric makeup and density, and that Pandora appears to be a moon in orbit around a very nearby gas giant. Irrelevant to the story, I suppose, but the story itself held a dim candle to the visual design, the seamless motion capture of the actors, and the unique appearances of the species. That out of the way, Cameron could have spent another decade actually writing a decent script to apply to this. Avatar is welded together from spare parts of other, better films. The pacing is spastic, with scant attention paid to crucial plot points while others are used as filler in an already overlong film. It is predictable, awkwardly written, centered upon a dull cipher of a protagonist who you wish would just get killed off already so the camera could continue to explore the jungles. This is not a good way to start an epic.

I won’t spend a lot of time rehashing the plot since you know it quite well; Jake is there to infiltrate the natives in a project designed to rape the frontier of a dangerous planet, and he ends up going native, and leads the charge against the invaders. Giant machines mine the surface of the planet for a Whatever Metal that is worth the long trip to Pandora, itself an investment. A corporate hack who could not be a dumber mustache-twirling villain explains the mission to people who have been there for some time already while a scarred military dickbeard drawls about how the only way to deal with the savages are to kill them. So you know the humans are the bad guys, and this point is hammered home so often that you want to grab Cameron by the lapels and scream YES I GET IT YOU TWAT. And the story grows progressively oafish as the laborious colonialism parallel is laid out. The humans are there for the metal (Unobtainium? Really?), and they try to win the Hearts and Minds by Building Schools and Giving Them Roads while killing them indiscriminately and tearing up large sections of their home. The humans fight with a shock and awe campaign while justifying their occupation of an alien land with token gestures and are oblivious to the religion of the natives. And of course the armed forces are used for corporate interests. The American involvement in Vietnam and Iraq are not undercurrents – they are plastered all across the screenplay repeatedly, just in case you are missing some chromosomes and don’t get the message. The natives in question, the absurd-looking Na’vi, are nine foot tall blue cats, which speaks volumes about Cameron’s fetish profile. They are not only Native American stand-ins, they speak Sioux with Papyrus-font subtitles (the ones businesses use when advertising something vaguely ethnic), use bows, and commune with nature and the ancestors. And this theme is used to bludgeon the audience in preparation for the conflict, so you arrive with some pathos borrowed from historical genocide. I will belabor this point, because Cameron does well beyond the point of annoyance. Giant machines return to Fort Apache with arrows stuck in the tires, the Na’vi conduct ceremonies (reenacting a scene from Baraka) communing directly with the earth, and warriors must go through rites of passage to ‘become a man’. And do these guys ever commune with nature.

Not one to accept metaphor as inapplicable in a literal sense, Cameron actually has the Blue Sioux directly connecting with nature through touch and squid-digital interface cables, so there is a literal oneness with the natural world. The ancestors actually can talk to whomever as long as they plug into the right tree. Things are ‘positive spirits’, and this is a literal statement; a scientist refers to the biological connections and the entire planet as a living entity. The new agey bullshit piles up thick and fast in a world where positive thinking is a quantifiable force capable of spurring the world to action. There is value in seeing yourself as a part of a complicated whole in the vast ecosystem in that this perspective pushes you to responsible action; i.e. not shitting where you eat. But this is just silly, and anyone who hasn’t blown an inordinate amount of time and $20 on The Secret will roll their eyes out their sockets, up the aisles, and into a better movie. Though I admire the work of Wangari Maathai, the creator of Titanic will not lecture me about the value of humming in the forest and talking to trees. There are other themes shoehorned into an overstuffed script about civilians versus military, science for understanding versus business interests, and the evils of capitalism, but all are given cursory high-school level rumination before moving onto the next setpiece. As a result, much of the story feels like a forced afterthought. For example, Jake first encounters the Na’vi tribe and they all want to kill him for being an avatar spy. And just as quickly, they decide to adopt him and train him to be a trusted warrior for some vague reason involving tree seeds and a sign from the ancestors. The most common theme, as a result, is “Let’s just keep moving along”.

The worst aspect of Avatar is its Frankenstein’s abortion of a storyline borrowed from Dances With Wolves, so every single plot move was telegraphed in 1990. Jake is an outsider, then an insider, mates with a native, learns their ways, and then at a way way way fucking late date decides to inform them that they will likely be wiped out in a minute. There is a false antagonist in the tribe who becomes a friend, a sign that the interloper will help them, and retaliation. This leaves every scene blissfully free of tension, and the blank spaces are simply filled with the requisite motions. If an object or procedure is mentioned, you can guarantee it will come in handy for plot purposes within the hour, in just the way you imagined it. Cameron even borrows his metal suit and the drop ship from Aliens, the love story from the Pocahontas legend, the remote control gimmick from The Matrix, the imposing stature of the Na’vi from Jar Jar Binks, and the plant designs are cobbled from basic tropical leaves and the forest of The Dark Crystal. Avatar comes off as oddly incidental, a $250 million side effect, and the last great hangover of what writer Chris Bucholz is calling the Dorkade. As a popcorn film, it is bloated and headache-inducing; as entertainment it is too self-serious to endure; as a drama it is too goofy to take seriously. Three fucking hours to arrive at a predetermined destination is a sign the editor was murdered early in the process, and nearly justifies the use of a bladder catheter by the audience.

I suspect that as The Phantom Menace introduced the use of digital characters that was better utilized in The Lord of the Rings, the technology of Avatar will eventually be used for something infinitely more satisfying when someone applies novel ideas to it. Not every breakthrough is a work of perfection, or even inspiration; a montage of early airplane designs hilariously crashing springs to mind. Have patience, however – a new decade will bring new ideas, and most likely a new film that explores delicate themes of the organized chaos of nature. Or the recycled corpse of Avatar will itself be recycled like a meta theme regarding how Hollywood tends to dine heartily on its own stool.