Away We Go by Sam Mendes, 2009

I am a believer. Vendela Vida and Dave Eggers are my heroes. McSweeny’s* changed my life. Away We Go did not. The film had good intentions but I had high expectations. My heroes’ first screenplay directed by Sam Mendes! Admittedly, I have only a few Mendes moments, such as beautiful/sexy Alan Cumming’s in Cabaret (1994), American Beauty of course, and this year’s production of The Winter’s Tale at BAM with Ethan Hawke and Rebecca Hall (cool). That said, I had the same expectations as one gets when they read the book before the film, it’s the ol’ book/film argument. In this case, the experience was flat, neither prevailed but I am still a believer.

* I am packing my McSweeny’s issue #19 (2006) as I write. The issue is an actual cigar box filled with printed matter, burn marks and tears included, containing “old facts, new fiction”, a novella by T.C. Boyle and a copy of A Pocket Guide to the Middle East published by the US Government in 1957.

Moon by Duncan Jones, 2009

I was suspicious of seeing Sci-Fi at 5:00 in the afternoon, since the modern day genre usually includes too much horror and suspense for my taste. But this film was wonderful! It brought back all the pleasurable memories of why I read Philip Jose Farmer and Ray Bradbury in high school, for the poetics and moral mortality of a fictional science curving along the space-time continuum.

Seraphine by Martin Provost, 2009

Detailing the life of an outsider artist can be paradoxical as the self-taught oxymoron suggests. 8 years ago (2001), I worked a gallery booth in the NY Outsider Art Fair (Puck Building, SoHo) and witnessed artists who live “outside” the official culture conducting interviews with the press; creating a fine line between exploitation and community values, as usual. But this Neuve Invention feels right. Seraphine (1864-1942) the painter was as art brut, folk and circumstantial as the film is poignant.

Les Carabiniers by Jean-Luc Godard, 1963

Godard is brutal with this film. It is emotionally, physically, audibly comically tragic and aesthetically unpleasing. Godard's only war film. A war film critiquing war films. He re-processed the film numerous times until it became seamless with actual photojournalistic scenes of butchered bodies. I rarely, rarely, rarely see contemporary war films unless satirical (War, Inc., Tropic Thunder). Now I find, I am resisting any bounty toward Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker.

La fille de Monaco by Ann Fontaine, 2008

I hate sex thrillers. But something about Monaco is forgiving to the genre. It must be Grace Kelley in To Catch A Thief (1955), forever the Princess of Monaco, or is it that the film La fille de Monaco was, dare I say, smartly philosophically French with likable anti-heroes.

This is why I hate to love sex thrillers. La fille de Monaco's Plot Keywords on IMDb website: Femme Fatale;Gay Interest; Monaco; Trial;Prison;Beautiful Girl;Weather Girl; Principality;Lawyer; Hand Camera; Swimming Pool;Road Accident;City Name In Title;Scooter;Riviera; Love Triangle;Birthday;Bodyguard;Gay Club.

Public Enemies by Michael Mann, 2009

Still reckoning with the film as a success - Johnny Depp mumbling and Marion Cotillard scrupling. A depression era Robin Hood, Dillinger gave customers back their money during his bank robberies, never strays far from the crime scene (Chicago) and spends his evenings at the movies. The acting was overly conscientious. I was always aware of the actors not the Dillinger and Billie Frechette love story. It is indeed a love story. The most endearing (and enduring) portrayal in the film is the love story, a lasting intrigue. The cameo line up was exhausting.