Saddle Up

From: Tara Ariano
To: Adam Sternbergh
Subject: The year in film

December is drawing to a close, and we all know what that means: ’tis the season for summing up the previous 12 months in list form.

What’s tough, in this case, about summing up the year in movies is that it is December, which means many of the movies that are supposed to be big Oscar contenders — King Kong, Munich, The Producers, Brokeback Mountain — have just opened on top of each other, making it hard to find time to see all of them while also finishing one’s holiday shopping in a reasonably timely manner. So, having acknowledged that we aren’t quite all-knowing in our assessments... Best Comedy.

To me, this is easy: The 40 Year-Old Virgin. It accomplished what so few comedies do — it was smart (and dirty) while also boasting a story that wasn’t outlandish or absurd but felt true to life and had a lot of heart. A lot of heart, and a lot of boner.

From: Adam Sternbergh
To: Tara Ariano
Re: The year in film

Ah, best comedy. I like that you started with a softball right down the pipe. I’m tempted to be contrarian and vote for Serenity as the year’s top rib-tickler – but does it even count as a comedy? It sure was nice to see an action film with a sense of humour — I kept feeling like its brand of well-timed wisecracks are exactly what the last three bone-dry Star Wars films were lacking, as though Serenity’s director, Joss Whedon, had kidnapped Han Solo and renamed him Capt. Mal Reynolds.

But it’s impossible to vote against The 40 Year-Old Virgin, which may be my favourite film of the year, period. (What can I say? It was a bleak season.) In hindsight, you have to remind yourself what a high degree of difficulty this film set for itself. A movie about a virgin? Who’s 40? And likeable? This all could have so easily collapsed in clichés about high pants and glasses with tape in the middle. (Imagine this film with Johnny Knoxville as the star. Yikes.)

But Steve Carell created a truly lovable, and very well-observed, character. You could tell both he and director Judd Apatow spent a lot of time thinking — really thinking — about what kind of guy might have abstained through four full decades. (Though as they say, the first decade’s the easiest.)

And Paul Rudd was absolutely priceless as his wing-man. In some alternate universe with a more finely honed sense of justice than our own, Paul Rudd is more famous than Tom Cruise. Of course, that’s because, in that universe, Tom Cruise is in a nuthouse. But I digress.

To top it off, The 40 Year-Old Virgin also had the biggest laughline of any movie this year: when Rudd and Seth Rogen (also great) try to convince Carell to stash away his extensive collection of action figures before his date arrives. When Carell resists, Rogan says, “Dude, is that the Six Million Dollar Man’s boss?” Cut to: a shot of an Oscar Goldman action figure.

Seriously, I’m still chuckling.

Of course, we haven’t mentioned the year’s big comedy money-maker: Wedding Crashers. I have to say I smiled through a lot of it, but it had the nutritive staying power of a bag of Pop Rocks. I know, I know — it wasn’t meant to be good for you. But was it really all that good? I can’t get that terrible scene out of my mind in which the girlfriend pleasures Vince Vaughn under the dining table, as the family watches. That scene was everything The 40 Year-Old Virgin wasn’t: clichéd, entirely unbelievable, and ultimately kind of repulsive.

Thoughts?

From: Tara Ariano
To: Adam Sternbergh
Re: The year in film

Oh, Virgin. So good. I’m hoping someone’s bought it for me for Christmas off my Amazon wish list, because I could watch it again right now. (And saw it three times in the cinema.)

I liked Wedding Crashers fine when I was watching it: I am easily seduced by Vince Vaughn, and found Isla Fisher’s weird energy appealingly bracing; she’ll be even better in whatever she does next, I’d wager. But after Virgin, Crashers started looking a lot worse by comparison (which was impossible to avoid, given all the zeitgeisty observational pieces that paired them as evidence for the revival of the R-rated comedy), for all the reasons you stated — too many surreal flights of fancy, too few real-feeling moments. In fact, my favourite part of the movie was probably the fizzy opening montage to Shout. But ultimately... well, if we’re going to give out a Most Overrated award, Wedding Crashers and Crash (coincidence?) would both be in contention, as far as I’m concerned.

How about Worst Comedy? This one might be harder, since most of us are less likely to go to the likely contenders, but there were a couple I was assigned to see, so now I can say from bitter experience that Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo wins this honour in a walk, for all the reasons that you wise people who skipped it can probably guess: it was puerile, homophobic, anti-feminist, anti-European, and anti-gigolo.

From: Adam Sternbergh
To: Tara Ariano
Re: The year in film

To your cogent analysis of Wedding Crashers, I’ll add only this, then keep things moving: Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson were, indeed, irresistible. But it’s slightly sad that the whole Frat Pack seems content to coast on their kibitzing charms, rather than find a movie with, you know, actual jokes in it. OK, and one more thing: we can all be heartened by the consistent charms of Canadian Rachel McAdams, who shines in everything, including Crashers.

As for Worst Comedy, I’ll take your word on European Gigolo. Like most everyone, I skipped it, having grudgingly seen the first one, which was more than enough man-whore to last me all my live-long days.

So how about Best Drama? Last year, my favorite film appeared early and was never unseated: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the greatest American film since, well, ever — or at least Fargo.

Sadly, there was no such knee-buckler this year. Munich? Brokeback Mountain? As you pointed out earlier, these films are all released in bulk in the last few weeks of the year, so seeing each one feels like checking off tasks on a to-do list. I suspect Brokeback Mountain will march bowlegged all the way to the Oscar for best picture, which I’m dreading, if only for all the lame-brained think pieces that will follow in its steps, lamenting once again the great red-state, blue-state divide. (Be thankful that in Canada you can watch all that head-scratching with detached amusement. Sure, no one watches the Geminis, but at least they don’t dissect them as though they were scriptures unearthed from a cave.)

I’m glad, too, we started off on a high note with Virgin, since my overall sense of the year in movies is despair. Everything goes in cycles, so maybe this was just a downturn. But even the good films, like Serenity, never found a half-decent audience.

But I’ll buck up: Batman Begins was a great popcorn movie, even if it seems torturously long on second viewing. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was another under-regarded gem. War of the Worlds imploded at the end — people in my theatre were actually laughing, and they weren’t supposed to be — but it had 10 great minutes in the middle that actually gave me goose bumps. And Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale was the kind of exacting, polished keeper that’s simultaneously entertaining and depressing. The film on its own was genuinely touching and funny. But in an ideal world, it should be at the top of the bell curve, not in the middle of your year-end top five.

From: Tara Ariano
To: Adam Sternbergh
Re: The year in film

Augh, Batman Begins would be one of my worst of the year. It was so dour and self-important and un-fun — and for an alleged action movie, I couldn’t see a lick of the action. It would have benefited from an injection of Kung Fu Hustle, which was much snappier and better edited for maximum fight-scene impact.

But I think I’m more bullish than you are on dramas. Granted, they all came out toward the end of the year, but I was moved by the empathy of The Constant Gardener, a heartbreaking portrait of a genuinely loving marriage ended too soon, wrapped in a political thriller; scared crapless by Syriana, tackling, as it did, my greatest fear — the exhaustion of the world’s oil supplies, and the economic instability and related horrors that will attend it; and intrigued by the meditation on art and responsibility represented in Capote, as restrained and elegant a biopic as I may have ever seen. If I had to pick one best, it would be the earnest muckraking of Good Night, and Good Luck, which benefited from understated, lived-in performances by everyone in its cast (particularly the breakthrough work by David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow). Special notice, too, to George Clooney, also great in Syriana; I think that fellow may just have a future in this business.

From: Adam Sternbergh
To: Tara Ariano
Re: The year in film

OK, enough happy talk. Can I gripe now about the year’s most over-praised mess? Yes, it’s another Canadian: David Cronenberg and A History of Violence. Given my affection for Fargo — a black comedy with blood all over its hands — I should have loved this film. Instead, I fell asleep. But not before I squirmed in my seat at its pretentious co-opting of genre clichés, trotted out like revelations. I’d even read reviews that prodded viewers to rush out and see it before someone revealed “the surprise.” I sat and waited, and waited, and waited — then figured out that what they called “a surprise” is what I’d call “a plot.” From the hokey, quasi-rape sex scene (a tired trope in which a fight turns into — guess what! — libidinous passion) to the hammy cameo by William Hurt, the whole movie creaked and groaned under its own importance, then ended far short of actual insight. Harrumph.

From: Tara Ariano
To: Adam Sternbergh
Re: The year in film

Well, as I already said, I would call Crash the most overrated movie of the year. The reviews I read informed me that I should find Paul Haggis’s look at race relations in America — in the microcosm that is Los Angeles — shocking and revelatory, as it ripped the veil off our politically correct hypocrisy, when in fact it was a tiresome, didactic mess without a single uncontrived scene. Me and You and Everyone We Know was another over-praised “small” film, following the intersecting lives of a bad performance artist, a beleaguered single father, a bunch of kids stumbling through sexual maturity, and a whole mess of clichés scavenged from previous “small” films — call it Indie By Numbers. Also… how is Sin City landing on so many “Best Of” lists? I thought we were all past thinking that it was noir and edgy to write roles for women only to either treat them as unattainable madonnas, or dismember them. Boo.

From: Adam Sternbergh
To: Tara Ariano
Re: The year in film

You’re right: I’m being too cynical, or at least too grumpy. (And you’re right, too, about Crash. And Sin City. I half-agree on Me and You and Everyone We Know, though the scene in which the little kid dictates the dirty online conversation made me laugh harder than anything in ages.) Most years I grumble that the awards season only recognizes big, empty, trophy-whoring films like A Beautiful Mind. Now, when it looks like small, noteworthy films like Capote will dominate year-end “Best Ofs,” I’m grousing because all the big films this year disappointed.

Which brings us to something way more fun to talk about (and end on): Prizes!

Will there be any sight more heartening than the brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman accepting an Oscar for his portrayal of Capote? I have no doubt he’ll make a Theron-like beeline to the podium, like Sherman through Atlanta. And well-deserved it will be. (And just his luck that Brokeback Mountain features two male stars, all the better to split the vote!)

As for Best Actress, I see Reese Witherspoon. Felicity Huffman deserves it for Transamerica, but Reese’s performance is worthy enough. It will be more of a coronation and a thank-you for all those Legally Blonde millions than an actual award for Walk the Line, which was just good enough to make you wish someone would make a really good Johnny Cash biopic.

Best movie: As I’ve said, I think it’s Brokeback Mountain all the way. Nominations for the Golden Globes love-fest confirmed it, and King Kong’s disappointing opening takes the wind out of its big-event momentum. 

And we can all rest better knowing that the year’s few great moments will linger long after its many disappointing ones have faded from our memories. For example, I saw a lot of bad movies in 2004, but now I can’t remember a single one. Except White Chicks. Man, that was bad.