41. Trick ‘r Treat (Michael Dougherty, 2009)

I was lucky enough to see this on the big screen at the Fantasia Film Festival. Much like Drag Me to Hell, this is a horror film that is best enjoyed with an audience. It is exciting, funny and scary, and though it never truly gets under your skin, it is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. An anthology film, all four stories take place in a small American town, and are appropriately “horror-ific.” My favourite is probably the play on the virginal college girl, which is perhaps the most familiar storyline in horror lore and yet the film puts an interesting though perhaps not completely unconventional twist on it. The film’s appeal is largely on how well made it is, how it cuts at just the right moments, how it plays with our expectations and how it thrills us with its effects. The most notable is perhaps the showdown between a grumpy old man who lacks the Halloween spirit, and cute little bag boy who adorns the posters.

42. Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005)

A film that is not only beautifully rendered in familiar and yet abstracted black and white, Good Night and Good Luck seems to be an artful and respectful appeal for intelligence in popular cultural. It avoids the trappings of condescension, only suggesting the ramifications of a closed off and restrictive social system that shoots first and asks questions later. Edward R. Murrow becomes the symbol of this appeal, as Good Night and Good Luck explores his attack on Senator McCarthy’s fear mongering and the personal effect it has on himself and his co-workers. It is a film that appeals to individual integrity, but never skirts from the consequences, nor does it suggest that the inability to stand up or hold to your values is a sign of supreme weakness; it is only human to want to save yourself. This is a plea for justice, a demand for equality and fairness, and it supports a belief that an intellectual discourse is never removed totally from emotional appeals, and that isn’t a bad thing. David Strathairn gives one of my favourite performances of the decade.

43. The Last House on the Left (Dennis Iliadis, 2009)

I had no right to like this film. It is not only a remake, it’s a remake of a remake and It’s dirty and it’s dark and it’s violent. Like its predecessor, the film’s signature moment is a rape sequence, and though perhaps exploitive, there is nothing titillating about the sequence whatsoever. It is appropriately torturous, incredibly difficult to watch, and becomes an interesting catalyst for some morally ambiguous revenge. This is not a fun horror film to watch, it is far from satisfying, and even the the revenge taken on the aggressors is so morally ambiguous that you can’t revel in the demise of the invaders. Yet, I personally found the film fascinating for this very reason. It reminds me, though not with nearly the intellectually charge, of Haneke’s Funny Games (at the very least, it lacks Haneke’s condescension). There is an artfulness in the direction and a condemnation of violence that is extremely involving and yet confusing. Unfortunately, the strange final scene makes a mockery of what precedes it. I suppose one could argue that it is the signifier of the complete moral decay of the father but there isn’t too much in the text to support that claim.

Geneviève (Michel Brault, 1964)

The Time of the Wolf (Michael Haneke, 2003)

Are the fundamentals of humanity founded in an evolved sense of ethics, or a biological imperative to survive? Is the death of a child so painful because they represent all that is innocent, a being that cannot care for itself, and has yet to achieve its potential? ?Or is it because we are wired to breed and to evolve, and the loss of a child is the loss of the future of our species? Is biology and psychology so far removed, or are they linked as surely as the tide is regulated by the moon?

And then, at what point is our apparent self-destructive nature motivated by misplaced animalistic instincts… is its effect as strong as the apparent virtues and development of social mores and values? When we face our mortality, we are always presented with a choice, even if we cannot resist giving into one option. We believe we have freedom, we believe that what we fight is ourselves, and our own weaknesses. Perhaps it is the weakness of our species, but that is a dangerous thought, one that serves to justify our greater injustices and violations of each other.

Do I cry because I’ve been wronged, or because I haven’t got what I want? Is there a difference? I want to lead my life free of responsibilities, but there is an aching in my heart that draws me to others, that inspires a belief that we are good and that we can overcome. Is this a biological imperative, a tool for survival… we are all too weak in body and spirit to survive alone, so we must band together, even if togetherness and ugliness.

The Time of the Wolf turns the lens inwards, asking us what most other so-called post-apocalyptic films do, how far would we go to survive? This is an over-simplification of a very complex drive and idea, and one that is explored with both appropriate bleakness and humanity in Haneke’s film. Even those that would stop at nothing to survive, probably behave with the same callousness in our own reality, even if it is on the simplest scales. A man who controls his family, his work, his pencils will take the opportunity to control more and more, and desperation breeds these chances.

The daughter is compelled to write and is drawn to music, and apparently even moved by love, even when she has nothing left. She has her family, but she cannot connect to them… perhaps because it is too painful to empathise with those you understand best, even if you realize you may have never understood them. How can you believe in love when it is no longer real, and is either a commodity or a tragedy? Is this quest for ideals and beauty just another means of survival?

Will you hold me in the dark of the night…? I can’t seem to find warmth in your arms anymore, there is nothing left but tears, and yet, I’m still alive. I’m no longer clean, and yet I have something to give, I have the will to refuse and you rip me apart, I’m still alive, but I kill myself because you’ve robbed me of my only gift, of the only thing I owned, the only beautiful thing I had left. Was it even beautiful? Well, it doesn’t matter, it was mine and I’m taking it back by destroying it. We are always spiralling towards destruction, towards chaos, towards cold… but why haven’t we fallen into it already? We forget sometimes we are all brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons… we end with a fire in the dark, so we know how to find each other in case we are lost.

20 Shots from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (William Dieterle & Max Reinhardt, 1935)

Inspired by Surface Noise, which does it far better than I ever could.

44. O’ Brother Where Art Thou? (Coens, 2000)

Is there a filmmaker (or set of filmmakers) who have had a better decade than the Coens? I feel truly fortunate to be living in this decade, just so that I can see the newest Coen film every year, because this might be their best decade yet in a career that has consistently ushered at least two “classics” a decade since their career began in the early 1980s. O’ Brother Where Art Thou’? Is in many ways a film I would have loved to have made. Its title is a tribute to the fictional film being pitched in Sullivan’s Travels, a favourite of mine, its narrative lifted from Homer’s Odyssey, one of my other passions is Greek history and mythology, and the film is brimming with the traditional style folk songs that currently fill my MP3 player. I hold little resentment though, because this film is just so colourful and filled with life. It is mannered and exaggerated, much like the Hollywood genre it’s channeling, and yet it’s humour is so dead-on Coens that you could never mistake it for the work of anyone else. The epic “O’ Death” sequence may be my favourite, as it seems to be lifted from the Wizard of Oz, and is both darkly humorous and hauntingly disturbing, matching a set of contradicting feelings with a sense of ambiguity that the best of Coens’ work seems to be infused with.

45. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006)

Though Bond is still some ways off from being a film I would find truly appealing, as both a character drama and a political thriller/intrigue, Casino Royale is probably the best I’m going to get for some time to come. That seems like a rather lukewarm response, but as far as mainstream action thrillers, there is only one film of the type I rank higher in this decade, and I like both dearly. The film begins with a bang, and sustains that energy throughout, and what I especially like about the pacing and tone is that the energy is maintained mostly through a fluctuating range of emotions. Beyond perhaps OHMSS, which I like for Rigg, this Bond story has the most “heart” and Craig has the acting chops to channel a complex set of aggression, bravura, candor and heartbreak with a great deal of nuance and believability. Eva Green matches him in every way, and together they seem to shift gears in the franchise, making the set pieces and action scenes well executed afterthoughts, while the strength and complexity of their relationship takes priority as the film’s narrative interest. In many ways, this film exceeds what we have come to expect from a franchise that has recently been floundering, but also succeeds at accomplishing the classic Bond-isms with a great deal of skill and surprise.

46. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 2007)

Flight of the Red Balloon is like a love song to cinema, it’s meditative, and joyous… about family, love and life. The warm yellows of interiors are homey, and yet the camera often remains at a distance. It’s never cloying; we are warmed by the atmosphere rather than cheap emotion and action. The film, obviously, works at being an homage to the short film The Red Balloon, which covers a wide range of emotions felt during childhood all guided by an escaped red balloon. Hsiao-hsien Hou expands on these feelings and ideas, acknowledging how globalization and technology in particular has changed our relationships with each other, even within the family unit. The alienation is still present, but there is also that child-like wonder and beautifully passionate moments.

47. The Duchess (Saul Dibb, 2008)

The Duchess strikes me as the anti-thesis to the historical drama. Inevitably focused on the male perspective of history, women are objectified and marginalized for the sake of the male story. I don’t want more female action stars, like Lara Croft, which is rarely anything more than male wish fulfillment, but rather an appreciation for both the struggles and lives of women. The Duchess is a beautiful example of a film that subverts the norm, creating in Duchess of Devonshire a character who is admired and held up for her behaviour as an equal human being.

Through the trials of her character, we are given a very sincere image of a time of great inequality and hypocrisy. Women are allowed even less freedom than slaves, as one politician attempts to stop the trade slaving, without even considering that a woman should even be allowed to vote. That particular comparison seems harsh, as slavery is a “worse” crime than the inability to vote, but the servitude a wife must undergo for her husband is no different than that of a slave for a master. Even the logic remains the same, as once racist slave owners would insist that it was for the better of these people because they were not as bright and unable to fend for themselves, to have someone to take care of them, do the husbands and men justify their treatment of women. In a very early scene, the Duke of Devonshire observes that women’s clothing is far too complex, and with a surprising answer the Duchess replies it’s their sole means of expression.

The film embraces what many would criticize as shallow endeavours and passions, exploring and revealing the true nuance and meaning they held in the lives of women in particular. It is a film that never for a moment undermines the ambitions or condemns its characters for some morally ambiguous actions. The film perhaps lacks in technical artistry, but certainly makes up for it in its strong script and powerful characterizations.