2010: through the eyes of a child

I saw a metric shit ton of films in the theater this year. I've always felt a deep reverence for the theater going experience that was no doubt instilled in me by my father. He took me to films like Predator, Robocop, Dune, Legend, Return of the Jedi, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Clash of the Titans and Gremlins to name but a few. He took me to not just all the Arnold movies, but the Seagal and even the VanDamme ones as well. We walked out of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy together and laughed knowingly at the pure awesomeness of Brad Dourif's performance in Graveyard Shift. The point is, my formative years were filled with wonder for the spectacle of cinema and that blossomed into a full blown obsession with devouring all of it that I could and comprehending the craft that went into producing it.


My son turned 9 this year and I completed the cinematic circle of life by taking him to everything he was interested in (and some that he wasn't) and imparting some of my knowledge of film in our car ride home discussions. I rediscovered a large part of my wonder and naivete for the magic of film this last year by seeing so many movies through my sons eyes. I think a lot of Internet film nerds who write 4 page dissertations on why Tron:Legacy is such a piece of insulting shit should perhaps attempt to procreate so as to gain a window into what magnetically drew them to movies in the first place. I became painfully aware of what's wrong and what's right with the Internet in regards to the "online film community" this year. There's not much right really. It's great that you can order any film you want at the drop of a hat and there are some intelligent writers out there, but there were intelligent writers before the Internet (arguably a great deal more) and there's something to be said about putting in the effort to track down the film makers you're interested in through painstaking research as opposed to simply perusing online lists and clicking provided links.


I had a hell of a lot of fun at flicks like Percy Jackson, Clash of the Titans, Tangled, Megamind, Prince of Persia and Shrek Forever After. Admittedly the "through the eyes of a child" whimsy couldn't be called upon to salvage abominations like Alice in Wonderland or Gulliver's Travels, whimsy can only take you so far, folks. I think my favorite film going experience this year was actually Devil. I took my son to see it because I'm trying to find a way to get him interested in horror and this PG-13 flick piqued his curiosity somewhat through televised trailers he'd seen. The short story is it wholly terrified him. He had a remarkably visceral reaction that infected me to the point where the film began to really work on me. I wasn't holding my hands in front of my eyes during the tense parts, but the fact that my son was next to me made the horror much more palpable. The weekday screening we attended was sparsely populated and for the hour and a half it lasted, it felt like we were dislocated from our daily lives and set adrift in outer space with an omniscient vantage point into the events of another world. THAT is what I love about seeing films in the theater. That's why I enjoy seeing films by myself so much. It's far easier to leave thoughts of your dull and crushingly average existence at the door when alone in a darkened auditorium.

That was the highlight of my cinematic year. I saw a lot of great films though. Inception was brilliant of course, but I'm having a hell of a time sitting through it at home on bluray for some reason. I suppose the intellectual exercise of it having been completed robs it of most of its impact. Toy Story 3 was to my mind, the most well made and executed film with the most powerful emotional moments. Scott Pilgrim was kinetic perfection, solidifying Wright's position as a master of the sublimely entertaining and imminently watchable popcorn flick. The Social Network was eerily perfect film making and a prescient snapshot of the disconnected coldness that gave birth to this modern world of disingenuous online relationships and meaningless, unrelenting status updates. To round out the year, Black Swan was a familiar tale well told and True Grit gave us our yearly dose of rascally Coen Brothers goodness.

The Expendables and Piranha 3-D exemplified everything wrong with film and its relationship to online film culture. These films seemed not so much created by artists as brought into existence by an unholy confluence of cynical executives and crass, mouth breathing nerds who are fine with films being merely feature length trailers. Reading the litany of literally and figuratively masturbatory reviews for these lazy highlight reels masquerading as movies made me feel old. It was like in Idiocracy when Luke Wilson longed for a time when "we knew whose ass it was and why it was farting!". Hey kids, flip through your Maxim magazines, wish you grew up in the 80's a little more and take a cold shower. I want no part in this regressive, celebratory dance of self aware irrelevance. I'll hold my films to the standard of containing style, content and story thank you very much.

As for horror, we are entering into another 90's. The fear of external terror, revulsion at torture and paranoia toward the rest of the world that 9/11 and its resultant conflagrations engendered is largely wearing off in the American psyche and the lack of potent meaning and subtext in genre film is lamentably evident. Sure, there were a lot of remakes in the 2000's, but they bore the irrefutable stamp of the time from whence they came. If future generations want to know where the dark, unspoken part of our brains were at, they need but watch 28 Weeks Later, The Hills Have Eyes remake and The Mist. Daybreakers was fun I guess, but I'm not interested in revisiting it. The Crazies was solid, but excruciatingly generic. The Wolfman was beautiful, but flaccid. The Elm Street remake was about as boring, lifeless and pointless as it gets and that's all that needs to be said or written about that film ever again. Predators was a pleasant surprise and Machete flat out fucking ruled with its righteous anger, likable characters and inventive action (all of which Piranha lacked), so thanks for delivering the goods this year Rodriguez. The Last Exorcism could be lauded for its singular approach were it not for the camcorder conceit which I've loathed since Blair Witch. I wouldn't even deign to see Paranormal Activity 2 for this fact and how much I despised the first one. Resident Evil Afterlife was most impressive in Imax 3-D, but at home looks like a polished turd. My beloved Saw series ended with a grimly satisfying but ultimately lackluster entry and Let Me In? No thanks. So yeah, a dull year for horror at best and it doesn't look to be improving in the near future. Even the foreign stuff is drying up.

Oh well, it's all meaningless in any case I suppose. Here we are at the precipice of another year of celebrity deaths, shocking sex crimes, political bickering, ironic Internet memes, reality TV and economic instability. Until all our petrochemical resources run out and we begin a harrowing Mad Max existence, I'll keep on pointlessly expressing my "opinions" and "feelings" toward film and pop culture in this here blog. Happy New Year all!