I saw that everyone else was doing a top 10 for 2011 and wanted in on the fun, but then I realized I didn’t actually see all that many new movies in the theater last year. It turns out that I’ll see anything for a review, but when it comes to viewing for my own pleasure, I tend to stick to older movies or weird stuff. So, I’ve decided to create a top ten new-to-me list. These are movies that I saw during 2011 that I had never seen before that, for one reason or another, impressed the hell out of me. While I did have fun compiling this list, I need to keep better track of what I’m watching from now on. There was a lot of “What the hell did I watch last year?” going on. (I have started a spreadsheet for 2012.) What were your new-to-you favorites last year?

10. Another Woman (1988)

In a year where the current Woody Allen movie felt more like a pastiche of one of his films rather than the real thing (Midnight in Paris, I am looking at you), I went back to his older films and discovered a gem I had never seen before. Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) is a philosophy professor who rents a small apartment where she can work on her latest book undistracted. She is able to hear the conversations of the psychiatrist next door through a vent and ends up reevaluating her own life, realizing that she is actually a pretty unpleasant person. I feared this was going to be one of Allen’s emotional train wreck films like September (ick), but was drawn in pretty quickly. As I get older—I’m 43—I’ve started thinking about my own life and the mistakes I’ve made and the things I would still like to do. This is an engrossing film about a woman’s journey of self-discovery that is not mired in sex or despair. It’s not one of Allen’s best films, but it is a really good one.

9. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010)

I was not really looking forward to watching what looked to be a testosterone-fueled love letter to fascism. Turns out it was awesome. Captain Nascimiento must not only deal with the drug cartels that have taken over Rio, but with the corrupt cops that move in after the cartels have been pushed out. This film is so good because it mixes blood pressure-elevating action with the attempt to deal somewhat even-handedly with a complex issue. While Nascimiento would just like to kill everyone, he is tempered by his nemesis, human rights activist Fraga. I responded to this movie so much because it shows how complicated the cartel and police corruption issues in Rio are and that there is no easy answer of what needs to be done. It is hyper-violent, but I am an adult and can close my eyes when needed.

8. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)

This movie is awesome. Two rednecky-looking dudes (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) head to their “vacation” cabin in the West Virginia woods to rest, relax, and fix the place up a little. A group of college students is also camping in the same area. Due to a rather gory accidental death, the college students assume the rednecks are deep woods, Ed Gein-style serial killers. The rednecks want to know why the college students keep killing themselves out in the woods. Hilarity based on miscommunication abounds! This movie is funny, gory, and a little bit scary. There is also some romance thrown in for good measure. It’s a lot of fun and my vote for the best Canadian movie ever.

(Cont).

Another Top 5 segment from The MacGuffin. This time Allen and Brandi share their top 5 anti-heroes.

This segment is also available on Stitcher and iTunes. The audio version can be downloaded directly from here. After you’ve watched the video please vote in our poll and share which one you think is the best.

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In Name Only (1939)

Wealthy businessman Alec Walker (Cary Grant) is unhappily married to Maida (Kay Francis), a schemer who married him for money, not love. He learned of her deceit shortly after they were married, but she has his parents and society fooled into thinking she is the perfect, loving wife. Alec has long decided to stop pretending he is happy, so Maida is trying hard to get his family and friends to control his behavior. While he is out riding one day, he meets Julie Eden (Carole Lombard), a young widow who charms him with her forthright and humorous nature. He begins to court her, but she pulls back when she discovers that he is married. Alec asks Maida for a divorce, and she pretends to acquiesce, but in the end, she refuses him, and informs Julie that she will not let him go without a scandal. Julie cannot risk exposing her daughter to a trial, so she asks Alec to let her go. All three characters struggle to get what they want, but only two of them are willing to address the moral ramifications of those desires. Who does Grant end up with? Watch and find out!

This is a lovely melodrama with wonderful performances. Grant and Lombard have great chemistry, and both performers shine as a couple who want to be together, but aren’t willing to compromise their beliefs to do so. Both actors have impeccable comedic timing, and while this film is by no means a comedy, the beats of their dialogue are spot on. Kay Francis is also truly evil as one of the most manipulative movie ladies ever. She plays her dual roles as wounded wife and grasping climber equally well, and I found her wonderful to watch. I’ve been seeking out her movies lately, and this film confirmed for me that she is worth the effort.

Our Idiot Bother (2011)

Paul Rudd is like catnip for a lot of ladies, and some of us will go see pretty much anything he is in. As such, I believe he has a responsibility not to be in super crappy movies because I can’t always refuse to watch, even when I know better. Our Idiot Brother is super crap, and not even the presence of the most amiable man in Hollywood can change that. Ned Rochlin (Rudd) chooses to always believe the best about people as a life philosophy, which doesn’t work so well for him when he gets arrested for selling pot to a uniformed police officer. (A move that makes many people think he is an idiot. And they would be right.) After his release from prison, he takes turns staying with each of his sisters: Liz (Emily Mortimer), Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), and Natalie (Zooey Deschanel). All of the sisters are unpleasant, each one in her own very special way. And each sister’s life starts to unravel after Ned comes to stay, so they blame him for all of their crap. When he goes back to jail, they all miss him and work hard to get him released, and then everyone gets an undeserved happy ending. And they learn important life lessons. I’ve decided this movie is misogynistic—not because every woman close to Ned is stupid or evil—but because every woman who goes to see it is going to lose IQ points.

Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)

Edward Bare (Dirk Bogarde) has married a much older woman, Molly (Mona Washbourne), and they both seem to know the score. Edward—or Teddy—will take care of her now by doting on her every whim, and Molly will take care of him after she dies. Teddy seems genuinely fond of Molly, but that won’t stop him from killing her when he thinks that she has put his inheritance in danger. Unfortunately, he makes his move without enough information, and it turns out he gets a wonderful house, but no money to maintain it or him. So, he heads off to find another widow and ends up with Freda Jeffries (Margaret Lockwood), who has plenty of money, but no manners or class. She is not nearly as easy to manipulate as Molly, and Teddy must figure out a way to get what he wants from of this new situation.

This dark little British film is based on a play, and it’s evident (especially in the screechy last scenes), but it is quite enjoyable nonetheless. Dirk Bogarde is great as Teddy. You can see that he cares for Molly, but just can’t let her stand in his way. He is a pretty likable guy, except for that whole murder thing; but psychopaths are often charming. Margaret Lockwood is wonderful as the coarse Freda. She sort of lives in my mind as the plucky ingénue from The Lady Vanishes, but here she plays so against type, it took me several viewings to realize it was her. The director, Lewis Gilbert, also directed Alfie, Moonraker, The Spy Who Loved Me, Educating Rita, and Shirley Valentine. I don’t think I would have ever guessed these movies were all directed by the same man, and this is another interesting entry into Gilbert’s filmography. Cast a Dark Shadow is a nice noirish thriller, but unfortunately has yet to be released on DVD in the U.S. TCM plays it every now and then, and I recommend keeping an eye out for it.

The Office (U.S.)

For the three people who have not seen the show, it is about the day-to-day operations of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, PA. The Office is helmed by regional manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell), a completely clueless good-hearted idiot man-child. (Now that Carell has left the show, the office head is Andy Bernard, another completely clueless good-hearted idiot man-child, but slightly different.) There are a lot of other characters on the show, but in the interest of time, I’m only going to address my two favorites: Creed and Dwight.

I’m not going to lie; if the name of The Office was changed to Creed Thoughts and it was all about Creed doing Creed things, I would be on board. Creed is like your creepy uncle, who might be on drugs and will certainly sell all of your stuff, but who can be counted on to bring on the crazy when needed. He smells like sprouted mung beans, and I am pretty sure that he is in charge of quality assurance for the branch, but I’m not sure he knows that. On second thought, a show all about Creed might be too much for some people. It can be overwhelming when things get that real. (For more fun, research the actor Creed Bratton.)

Ok, let’s talk about Dwight now. For those not in the know, Dwight K. Schrute (Rainn Wilson) is the Scranton branch’s top salesman and a beet farmer. (He also runs a B&B on the beet farm and is happy to host events such as weddings and office parties.) He is an annoying know-it-all, a suck-up, wears Birkenstocks, and cannot take a joke. He is also a loyal friend, good in an emergency, has an awesome car, and knows a lot about manure. But not anymore. Now he is just kind of mean with all of his complexity taken out. The Office has hit the point that a lot of long running shows do, where the characters turn into caricatures and a lot of the reasons to love the show go away. I want my Dwight back! It’s not too late! (I know it really is too late, but I’m gonna be in denial for a little longer.)

There are some films that have become so familiar to us that watching them again feels a bit like coming home. We know the characters, we know the sequences, and sometimes we can even say the lines of dialogue before they come. They are so a part of who we are that we associate the film with our own upbringing. That’s how I feel every time I see Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future (1985). One of the essential films of the 1980s, I feel that it’s safe to say that just about everyone knows and has seen it, and for some of us, couldn’t fathom what growing up would be like without it. It does everything that you can expect out of pure entertainment—with names, places, and images that have lasted in contemporary popular culture. I’ve become so familiar with the film that I can’t remember the first time ever seeing it.

One of the elements that the film accomplishes so well is taking the idea of our parents’ youth and imaginatively running away with it. As kids, we never thought that are our fathers and mothers could have been like us: young, naïve, confused, and even foolish to a certain degree. They always seemed to be there, telling us to do our homework or clean up our rooms, and grounding us if we ever got into trouble. Could you honestly imagine what it would be like to see them as teenagers, having the same feelings that we had at that age? I wonder, if I had known my father at 18, would we have had similar interests, maybe even have become friends? That’s the beauty of the movie, to take this impossible premise and set it within an action comedy sci-fi adventure. And with that, Zemeckis—along with co-writer Bob Gale—crafted a story that feels a part of its time, and timeless, simultaneously. There’s a reason why the film is continuously shown on television throughout the years. If you were to say the term “flux capacitor,” chances are someone next to you will know what you’re talking about. That’s how big this movie’s influence has been.

We all know the story. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), the young and precocious kid, gets in way over his head through his friendship with the wacky scientist Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd). Not much is explained as to why this teenager would befriend such a borderline nut job, and perhaps it’s wise not to delve in to it too deeply. But the main story involves Marty, at the time helping Doc Brown record the very first successful use of his time traveling machine, accidentally being sent from his present time of 1985 back thirty years to 1955. His town of Hill Valley goes through a dramatic change with his teleportation. Buildings and roads he has known to be broken down and dirty are now new and fresh; people that he recognized as older adults are now younger kids. The future mayor of the town is a clean-up boy at the local café, and the clock tower he knew to be broken is fully working and maintained. Needless to say, this is not the world Marty is used to, and so he turns to the 1955 version of Doc Brown to help him repair the time machine and return back to the Hill Valley of 1985.

Oh, but before he can do that, Marty runs into a little snag. The great fun of this movie is seeing how Zemeckis and Gale play with the properly titled “space-time continuum.” With someone from a certain time traveling back to the past, any interference he has with that world will directly affect the future (his present). As Doc Brown so enthusiastically poses, any interaction he has with other people could lead to dire and dramatic consequences. Well, nothing is more dramatic than Marty accidentally running into and interacting with the 1955 versions of his parents, Lorraine (Lea Thompson) and George (Crispin Glover) McFly. Much is made of Lorraine and George meeting and ultimately falling in love. It is explained that Lorraine instantly developed an attraction to George when her father inadvertently hit him with his car. Marty completely forgets this, and when he saves his father and gets hit himself, Lorraine’s feelings get targeted towards him. On paper, the idea of a protagonist’s mother developing feelings toward him shouldn’t work at all, and thus became one of the biggest points of contention against the film being made. But luckily, the writing sidesteps becoming too disturbing, and rather focuses on Marty’s attempts to bring his parents back to each other. Because if they do not ended up falling in love, Marty (along with his two siblings) will be wiped away from existence.

So we have the complication involving Marty and Doc Brown fixing the time machine and sending Marty back to 1985, along with the issue of Marty trying to get his parents together, but really that only scratches the surface of how much fun this movie actually is. Of all the movies I’ve seen, very few have had such replay value as this, and that is because there are so many elements within the film that have become iconic. Let’s start off with the town itself. It’s no secret that much of the film was shot in the back lot of Universal Studios in Hollywood. The city center, which incorporates the town square, clock tower, café, and theater, has become one of the most remembered sets in all of the movies, and has played a center role in each of the following sequels. Those that have taken the tram tour at Universal Studios will instantly recognize it, as it is one of the main attractions of the tour. One of the highlights of the movie (and the trilogy over all) is seeing how the town changes throughout the different times—how things that are dramatically different still stay familiar to the viewer, thus creating an anchor for us to reference as the story takes its turns.

(Cont.)

One of the most curious and difficult things about growing up just may be the collision of reality and preconceived notions. Our worldview is shaped by our experiences as children, from the education we receive, to the friends we keep, to the way we are treated by others. These things form the way we see the world, or, more importantly, the way we want to see the world. As we grow older and enter the proverbial “real world,” these views we’ve shaped growing up clash with the views the rest of the world operates under. This is at the heart of writer and director Kenneth Lonergan’s latest film, Margaret.

Starring Anna Paquin as a young woman named Lisa Cohen, Margaret is about the collision of Lisa’s young ideology of the world and the world as it really is. Lisa is a college student who lives with her mother and younger brother in New York. Lisa goes to school downtown and is a normal part of the hustle and bustle of a city that never sleeps. She is at school partially because of a scholarship and partially because of her seemingly rich father, who is divorced from Lisa’s mom and lives in southern California. Lisa has friends and, like most people in their early twenties, is experiencing aspects of dating that are entirely new. Most importantly, Lisa has opinions, and a very firm idea of what she believes the world is about and exactly how it operates. One day while shopping for a hat, Lisa is drawn to that of a bus driver, and in an attempt to ask him about the hat, inadvertently causes an accident in which a woman is hit by the bus while crossing the street.

As the woman who is hit lies dying, Lisa consoles her. The moment is abrupt and brutal. The tone of the film suddenly shifts without changing direction—a feat the director and the film’s editors, including the likes of Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, are owed much credit for. Lisa is then left with the aftereffects of such an ordeal to process. As one life ends, Lisa’s life goes on, and in so doing becomes a search and a struggle for a notion of what life may or may not be all about. In an attempt to discern this newly-found uncertainty, Lisa searches for a way to take responsibility for the guilt she harbors over the accident, which manifests itself in an effort to bring consequences down upon the bus driver, Maretti (Mark Ruffalo).

Lisa is a complex character in many regards, and as such is a difficult character to ever fully like. Her opinions are arrogant and misconceived at times; she is very conceited about her view on life and her social station amongst her peers. At times, Lisa is an almost downright despicable person when it comes to her actions towards others. As the film begins, we simply follow Lisa from house to classroom to hanging out with friends, and along the way we learn about Lisa’s firm grasp on what she feels is reality. After the tragic accident, we play witness to the way her ideologies clash with the order of the society she lives in. This clash is harsh; Lisa does not have an easy go of things for herself, but what’s most interesting is the fact that these clashes are of Lisa’s doing. Her views and opinions are what cause her hardships as she ventures forth into an existence that’s more fragile and yet bureaucratic than what she believed.

Many scenes in the film take place in Lisa’s classes, where we see her concepts of the world in contrast to her classmates and even her teachers. Several of the film’s most telling scenes take place as one of her teachers, John (Matthew Broderick), is teaching Shakespeare’s King Lear. John reads a passage and the class then discusses how the things King Lear was saying were not in alignment with what it is believed that Shakespeare himself held truth to. It is a moment of acknowledgement that an author’s characters are not necessarily a mouthpiece for the author’s direct opinions. Lisa may be a character of lesser admirable qualities, but that’s the point; it is an interesting and daring thing for a storyteller to do. Most times, a main character is the conduit for the audience to experience the story through—a person whose place we can put ourselves in to share an experience that is not uniquely ours. When the main character is contradictory to empathy and no longer acts as a conduit, they become a portrait—something to observe, like a specimen, or study.

Anna Paquin is perhaps at her best in the role of Lisa, varying between sympathetic and despicable with such ease that while we may at times hate Lisa’s behavior, we are never pushed too far away from empathizing with a person growing up who believes they are doing their best. Lisa’s mom, Joan (J. Smith-Cameron), cross-cuts Lisa’s story and follows her as a stage actress in New York who meets a foreign man, Ramon (Jean Reno). By adding this parallel story of Joan, the movie becomes more of a cinematic novel, which is where the problems come into play. As beautiful of a film as Margaret is, it also feels like a film that’s unsure sometimes of exactly how it wants to get to the finishing point where it knows it needs to go. Originally filmed in 2005, the movie met difficulties in post-production when Kenneth Lonergan failed to turn in an edit for the film that was an appropriate length. It then went on to meet legal opposition for a few years until through some extra financing Lonergan was able to finish the edit of the film with the help of Scorsese and Schoonmaker. Unfortunately, this result is felt at times in the film’s latter half.

Lonergan is a gifted filmmaker, with a great sense of character and dialogue. He knows exactly what a scene needs to draw the most from all the film’s elements; giving the actors enough space with longer, steady cuts, he interweaves interesting and yet mundane shots of the environment the characters inhabit (in this case, New York City). The score is simple and beautiful, accentuating acoustic strings, and plays to an aspect of melodrama that is complimentary to Lisa’s view of her life—which, as another character points out, is that of an opera. Featuring a great supporting cast, which also includes Matt Damon as one of Lisa’s teachers, Margaret is an interesting, different, and special film to behold. It confronts emotions and ideas of life that most stories sugar coat and dance around. It’s unabashedly honest, which can be uncomfortable to some, but despite its extensive running time (150 minutes), it, like any great film, is a ride as well as a growing experience.

Margaret begins a one-week run at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown today.

Final Grade: A

When you have Tilda Swinton’s face available to you for use as a storytelling tool, you employ it for all that it’s worth. Lynne Ramsay, in her new film We Need to Talk About Kevin, finally opening in the U.S. today, understands this truth. Swinton is Eva Khatchadourian, a woman who has been through some type of terrible trauma that the film takes its time spelling out. She wakes up alone on the couch in her small, untidy house, seemingly hungover, with the definite aura of someone for whom this is not an uncommon occurrence. Something in the light in the room is off; it dawns that this is because the sunlight streams through windows that have been splattered with red paint. The marks of a community lashing out against a pariah. And in Swinton’s face, weariness.

When Eva visits her teenage son, Kevin (Ezra Miller), in prison, and we see how the people she runs into going about her daily business feel entitled to abuse her, we start to piece things together. It begins to become clear that Kevin did something horrible, and that his mother is perceived to shoulder the blame. This is what the film is about, really: the existence of a mother who has failed in the eyes of society, whose only emotions should now be guilt and shame. Through flashbacks of the life before this shattering act of Kevin’s, the viewer can form their own opinion of Eva’s culpability, if any. Once, she had a husband, Franklin (John C. Reilly). They loved each other. They had a son, and then they had a daughter. They had the big house with the big yard that everyone is supposed to want. What demons did that world hold that led to this? And could its loss have been prevented somehow?

In the present timeline, many scenes represent a kind of heightened reality. We are in Eva’s living nightmare, as kids banging at the door on Halloween seem like hostile forces ready to break in, or the corner of a rumpled travel poster blowing in the breeze from a fan brings back memories of her own, long-past travels—another lost reality. As the timeline of the flashbacks grows closer to meeting up with the present, dread and tension build. There’s no avoiding the day when everything changes; as much as we would like the characters to have the kind of prescience that the film’s structure gives to the audience, they cannot. And yet, after the fact—the guilt comes anyway.

I watched the film from the perspective of someone who is a great fan of Lionel Shriver’s novel, which is 400 pages of Eva re-telling the events of the story in chronological order via multiple letters to one person, as she tries to explain herself. The reader hears everything from her, is subject to only her thoughts—and extremely detailed ones—about her life with Franklin before and after Kevin came along. The film, obviously, cannot go into the amount of detail that the novel does about Kevin’s childhood, Eva’s relationship with him, and her conflicting feelings about being a mother even before she ever was one. Ramsay’s bold approach to the source material dismantles it and presents its core emotions with incredible succinctness. I was surprised, and a bit impressed, that the film does not use voiceover to include more of the main character’s thought process from the novel. Though at times I wanted to see more of certain interactions, to go a little deeper, the spare approach works. In Swinton, Ramsay has an actor who conveys depths of character without needing exposition to spell it out. Miller, too, needs little help in putting forth the image of the inscrutable Kevin. Both actors are adept at seeming just slightly incongruous with their surroundings, carrying a bit of tension or bristling against things in a way others don’t. Ramsay displays her actors well while embracing a tone that puts the viewer on edge, everything uneasy and with little guidance as to what the next scene will hold. Bright pop music on the soundtrack often helps to push things further to that edge. We are simply never comfortable during this film.

There’s been some warranted anger that Lynne Ramsay was never seriously considered as a contender for a nomination for Best Director in the run-up to Oscar season. Some of that may be due to the, in my opinion, bizarrely stupid release schedule that kept the film from being available to audiences (except for a brief New York/LA Oscar-qualifying run) until after the nominees were announced. Granted, this film was not going to be a box office sensation no matter what, but offering no chance for it to enter the bigger conversation outside of those who got to it in their pile of awards season screeners makes no sense. In the UK, where the film opened in late October, it received BAFTA nominations for best director, lead actress, and British film; Ramsay also won the award for best director at the British Independent Film Awards, where the film had multiple other nominations. It received no Oscar nominations at all.

This is a challenging film, far more so than most of those whose directors were nominated for Oscars (with the exception of The Tree of Life). The controlled but heightened tone, with just a twinge of derangement, is unfortunately not the type of work the Academy seemed interested in rewarding, especially for 2011, The Year of Grandiose Nostalgia. It is, however, at the very least more impressive than Woody Allen shooting his actors playing dress-up. (Oh, he also had to valiantly strive to make Paris look beautiful. That’s right. Yeah, he deserves a nomination for that.) Though I personally wanted to see a bit more of the story play out on screen, that is my fan-of-book bias talking and an issue solely with the screenplay (co-written by Ramsay and Rory Kinnear). The direction of said screenplay is impeccable. Ramsay’s ability to invoke emotion visually represents exactly the type of film direction I firmly believe we should be rewarding, not ignoring. Here’s hoping her next project finds a more open-minded Academy.

Final Grade: A-

The common misconception about our society is that now we have iPods and antibiotics we are a more progressive, forward-thinking culture. But if we only look back into our inconveniently well-recorded history, we can see that might not have always been the case. When Americans think of Germany in the early-to-mid 20^th century, we tend to only remember Hitler, goose stepping, and The Rocketeer fighting that guy with the weird face on top of a giant red swastika blimp. The truth is, before the Nazi regime, Germany was one of the most important homes for forward-thinking Jewish filmmakers of the silent era. What they gave us was the Expressionist movement; dark, thematic, adult fantasies with a visual interest in jarring lighting contrasts and a kind of disorienting angular production design. Of these filmmakers, the name Fritz Lang has become iconic, as he made many emblematic Expressionist films, most famously the dystopian science fiction film Metropolis (1927). But before fleeing Nazi-occupied Germany in the ’30s to make genre movies in Hollywood, he made one of the most prescient and fascinating thriller precursors with M (1931), his moody indictment of the mob mentality. Living in a post-Psycho (1960) world of exploitation serial killer entertainment, we can only look at M and take it for granted, but even with this water being so thoroughly tread-upon, one can still recognize the complicated themes and characterizations as being anything but stock pulp archetypes.

Peter Lorre plays Hans Beckart, a child murderer who has been stalking the streets, luring young girls to their doom with the promise of candy and balloons. Even as the German townspeople have no idea who is committing the murders, Hans has left a lasting impression upon the community, stirring the parents and politicians into a maniacal frenzied manhunt, leaving no judicial stone unturned in their search. Though the story introduces our central character through the implied violence of his child-hunting, Lang is much more concerned with the public’s reaction in a time of paranoia and how society can begin to crave blood and murder just as equally as the ones they are passing judgment on. Not unlike Metropolis, M is a projection of a dystopia—a cautionary tale in which the law becomes lawless and the line between those who are being protected and those who are being oppressed blurs.

To say that M is ahead of its time is an understatement. Obviously one can draw fair comparisons from M to basically every genre thriller after it. In the realms of American film noir, a sub-genre Lang would later contribute to, many directors would borrow a lot of its production design and high-contrast chiaroscuro lighting to emphasize the cold and dangerous tones of the cities in which their stories took place. The “homme fatal,” another noir trope, could easily be traced back to Lorre’s portrayal of the almost-sympathetic but ultimately psychopathic murderer. Even decades later in schlocky horror movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), we can see elements of Lorre’s child predator character, complete with a fedora and song of warning sung in unison by the children as they play their games outside.

But perhaps more interesting is the sociopolitical implications of the film. Where the serial killer character of TV’s Dexter has become for some an almost anti-hero or surrogate executioner of the wrongdoers of society, M does not ask its audience so politely to root for the killer. Beckert is a compulsive childkiller, but the film still bravely asks if it is right for a man who has no control over his actions to be condemned to death. Unlike the vigilant revenge seeking of Dexter or Jigsaw of the Saw franchise, who seem to tap into a borderline conservative blood-lust for their enemies (the 2009 Gerard Butler film Law Abiding Citizen comes to mind as well), M points the finger back and condemns that very convention. Unlike these modern killers who may as well be the symbolic mascots for the pro-death penalty lobbyists, Lang  is more interested in showing us how society will scramble to find the big scary “other” and use it as a go-ahead for witch hunting and the unjustified stretching of due process. Obviously we can see how this exact mentality would later turn Germany from a progressive art-friendly environment to a militant industry of persecution.

So even as we pat our own backs and talk about how far we have come, the political questions that Fritz Lang brings forward are still yet to be resolved. Instead, it would seem in our post 9/11 terror-phobia—an environment in which we can find relief in a weekly show about a conscientious morally self-righteous killer—M is still a challenging film. I can’t deny the entertainment value of films like Saw and TV shows like Dexter, but I can be somewhat disappointed in their bashful approach to their dark material. Both go to great lengths to justify the acts of their killers to make them more sympathetic, turning them into vigilantes on a Charles Bronson-like crusade. I find this to not only betray the point of the genre, but be morally reprehensible as well. So when I look back at the brilliance and craft of M, I am always much more interested in its central question: should we kill someone we find evil just because we think it will make us feel better?

Another Top 5 segment from The MacGuffin. This time Allen and Brandi share their top 5 death scenes.

This segment is also available on Stitcher and iTunes. The audio version can be downloaded directly from here. After you’ve watched the video please vote in our poll and share which one you think is the best.

View This Poll

Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997) is a film about a family enjoying their vacation lake home. They get set up in their home for a short stay and some friends of the neighbor’s come to visit. Things go south quickly.

The film starts out with a German family driving through the country pulling a sailboat. Anna, Georg (Ulrich Mühe from The Lives of Others), little Georg, and Rolfi the dog. They’re playing a game where you guess which song the other is playing on the CD player in the car. It’s mainly classical music, but when they roll the opening credits, there’s this insane screamy metal playing. Very weird opening to a movie.

The family drives past their uncle’s house and yells for help with the sailboat in a few minutes. Their vacation home is right next door to their uncle’s house, so it isn’t a huge deal. Uncle Fred is acting a bit strange when he arrives to help put the sailboat in the water. Uncle Fred is acting REALLY weird when he shows up at the family’s house with an equally weird boy to help with the boat. The weird boy is wearing white gloves that don’t get explained. Even the son asks why uncle Fred is acting so weird. And Rolfi keeps barking at all of them—the dog is clearly feeling something’s off.

Then, out of the blue, another creepy weird boy shows up from Uncle Fred’s house to ask for eggs; this is Peter. He’s super creepy and also wearing white gloves. The kid drops the eggs he is borrowing and the mom cleans up the mess while he looks around the house all shifty-like. Then the kid “accidentally” knocks the house phone into the sink of water, knocking it out of commission. Paul shows up and asks if he can try out the Georg’s golf club. Paul disappears with the golf club and the dog is going crazy, then suddenly, the dog isn’t barking. Paul tells Anna to give the eggs to Tom—the wrong name. Paul then smacks Georg with the golf club. Oh buddy, it is ON. The two creepy boys are playing a game with the family and it isn’t a fun one (well, it isn’t fun for the family, anyway).

The shifty boys decide to bet with the family. Peter and Paul are betting the family will be dead in 12 hours—Anna and Georg are betting they’ll be alive in 12 hours. Peter and Paul grab the little boy and put a pillowcase over his head and get the mom to strip. This game is going poorly for the family, if you hadn’t noticed. The kid tries to escape but Paul captures him again, along with a shotgun. Things get really messy here. A lot of the action appears off camera, so you’re only hearing crashing and screams and such. But you can tell things are not going well for the family.

The whole time, Pater and Paul remain extremely calm and matter of fact. They’re having fun, but it’s a very subdued kind of fun, since they apparently excel at head games and terrorism. The whole movie is really dark—both lighting and plot. Nothing good is coming from these two painfully prim and proper boys visiitng the neighbor’s house. It’s a nightmare. The movie is generally pretty intense; however, when Paul looks at the camera and actually talks to the audience—asking them if they’ve had enough and then winking—it ruins the whole feel of the scene.

The movie is really long and probably even feels longer than it is. Parts of it are good, but the flow is off. About halfway through the movie, I thought it was all over with, but realized it was less than an hour in, so it wasn’t going to be over anytime soon. The intensity and peaks and valleys seemed a bit off, even for a German film. Right at the end of the movie, it becomes a stupid Adam Sandler movie. I’d love to ruin the ending of this movie for you, but the movie sort of ruins itself. If you are brave enough to watch this movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s asinine. Don’t waste your time (like I did).

Final Grade: D

Here’s what I’ve been watching recently:

The Prestige (2006)

I decided to return to Christopher Nolan’s directorial effort between Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008) the other day, and was pleased to see that it still holds up as well as when I had first seen it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this film is one of the Nolan’s best outings as a filmmaker. There’s something about the story of two rival magicians, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, and the intense bitterness they have for one another that I found to be completely engrossing. Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) at one time were partners in crime, but, after a tragic accident, became hated enemies, each trying to outdo the other in their shows with an increasingly impressive magical stunt. So intense is their hatred for one another that they each begin to interfere with the other’s performances—stealing each other’s tricks and revealing the secrets they so desperately try to hide from the world. To be a great magician is to accept sacrifices at any cost, and this leads both Angier and Borden to sadness and heartbreak.

One of Nolan’s continuing themes throughout his career is that of obsession, the kind of extreme passion one has and the dangerous possibilities if that were to be misguided. This film is a clear representation of that idea, as we see Angier and Borden go to any means—whether it is traveling the world, putting the ones they love in danger, or even causing their own physical selves harm—to be the very best in their profession. Christian Bale has always been good in his roles, and here he plays a man who isn’t very entertaining of a performer, but is a master magician whose best trick infuriates his competitor with its mystery. Hugh Jackman, for me, really stands out here, showcasing a much more serious, darker tone than he had in the X-Men films. He starts out as sympathetic, motivated by the tragic loss of someone nearest to his heart, but slowly moves to begin more diabolical in his actions. So convincing is his tragedy that I found myself really caring for him, even though he ends up doing some pretty despicable things.

I think The Prestige is a film that needs to be revisited. It’s shot incredibly well, with outstanding performances all around, including Michael Caine, Rebecca Hall, and Scarlett Johansson. Christopher Nolan’s fingerprint is all over this with its style, and deserves to be mentioned along with his other great works.

Head (1968)

Now here’s a movie that I could only describe to you as “interesting.” I jumped into my Criterion box set of America Lost and Found: The BBS Story and watched its first entry, Bob Rafelson’s Head. Rafelson was familiar to me for being the director who made one of my favorite Jack Nicholson films, Five Easy Pieces (1970). For others, they may recognize him as being the man who helped create and bring the popular band The Monkees to television. They were a massive hit for their time, even though they were created by outside means and did not have complete creative control of their musical output. Things started to change by the time this film came to be. After being inspired by the success of The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Rafelson, along with his co-writers (including an up-and-coming Jack Nicholson), crafted a film that took the band members (Peter Tork, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Michael Nesmith) on numerous skits and psychedelic escapades, told in a circular fashion with no discernible narrative throughline. At one point we see them running along an expansive desert being chased by Native Americans, the next entering a boxing match, and then the next scene after that dancing in a Fred-and-Ginger like interlude, all set with their music as a backdrop.

To be honest with you, I’m not really sure what to make of this movie. I certainly know what they were going for. For The Monkees, their beginning was dominated by people telling them what to do, how to dress, and how to play their music. With the making of this film, they wanted to break out of that bubble gum pop identity that they were initially forced into. There are a number of scenes in which we see them playing with and satirizing their own image, and a sequence where we find them jumping off a bridge to escape the paparazzi is more than just a “subtle” metaphor. For Bob Rafelson, he shot and directed this film with all of the style that the New Hollywood movement encompassed. A sense of “counter culture” and “going against the system” is clearly in play, with a story that does not exist and a meta aspect that frequently reminds us that we’re watching a movie. There is a humorous part of the film where Rafelson stops filming midstream to step in front of the camera to interact with the actors. Even Jack Nicholson has a cameo as himself discussing with Rafelson what should be shot next.

While there is a definite lightness and sense of fun throughout the movie, I ended up not completely enjoying it. As a time capsule seeing the way things were at the time, it works. As an attempt for The Monkees to do something their own way and as an experiment to test the possibilities of film technique, it’s worth mentioning. But for being a film in which we become interested in what happens and caring for actual characters, it falls a bit flat. Although I’m glad I saw it, it’ll be a long time before I watch this one again.