It’s that time of year where every major critic and blogger is busy working on their ‘best of the year’ lists. Personally, I love reading those lists but I get a little tired of reading about the same movies over and over again. You know what I mean. Every list is basically a variation of the same twenty movies or so. If I read one more sentence about how The Tree of Life is a ‘visionary experience unlike any other’ I think I might lose my mind. I like to read these lists to find movies that I haven’t heard of rather than reading about the same Oscar Bait that hits cinemas every fall. So, it is in that spirit that I present my annual list of my ten favorite obscure films of the year. These are the films that slipped through the cracks, the ones that were missed by critics and general audiences alike. This was a good year for obscure movies and I was hard pressed to keep my list to ten. Now, let’s take a look at the best movies of the year that Oscar will inevitably forget:
10. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Here is the perfect antidote to all of the nauseating ‘feel-good’ holiday films that you’ll be forced to watch with your family this year. A group of reindeer herders in Finland find their prey in short supply and look to the nearby Korvatunturi mountain for answers. They discover a massive excavation site where a bunch of greedy, evil Americans have unearthed…something. Only young Pietari knows what that something is: the frozen body of the actual Santa Claus. And this isn’t the jolly old fat guy who rewards nice children with presents and candy. Oh no. This is an ancient demon with eyes that glow in the dark whose only desire is to punish the naughty children. Despite the unbelievably silly and delightfully anti-Christmas premise, the film is played as a (relatively) straight supernatural thriller. Pietari makes for a terrific lead character. You’ll feel his frustration as he tries to convince the community of the evil that has been unearthed and you’ll cheer as he proves himself to be more resourceful than the entire young cast of Super 8. His troubled relationship with his father is poignant without being overly sentimental and his plans to beat Santa are as clever as they are hilarious. The evil Santa and his demented elves make for very effective, creepy villains and the Finnish landscape provides an effective backdrop to the macabre story. If this had been played for laughs entirely, it probably would have been an amusing if inconsequential watch, much like Santa’s Slay. By choosing to play it straight, writer-director Jalmari Hellander is able craft a film that is equally intelligent horror and wicked satire. He does just go for laughs with the insane epilogue but, by that point, we’re more than ready for them.
9. Black Death
Set in Medieval England during the Black Plague, this atmospheric thriller follows a crew of Knights (led by Sean Bean of course) sent by the Church to investigate a village hidden deep in the forest that is supposedly untouched by the disease. The theory is that a necromancer (Carice Van Houten) has taken up residence in the village and is bringing their dead back to life. Bean and his fiercely religious knights are accompanied by a young monk (Eddie Redmayne) who is dubious about whether or not the ‘witch’ has any actual power. Black Death raises serious questions about religion and the power of belief, namely the idea of killing in the name of the lord. Bean’s character is a staunch believer that he is on a mission from God and this makes many of his actions more than a little questionable. The witch is also a very complex character as she claims to have no real power other than an advanced understanding of medicine. She views the Church as an archaic institution that is afraid of science. And then there’s Redmayne’s monk who has fallen in love with a young girl and secretly hopes that this mission might provide an opportunity for him to abandon the Church and run away with her. All three characters face off during the last act in what is simultaneously a battle of clashing belief systems and a physical struggle for survival. Director Christopher Smith does a very nice job of pulling the rug out from under you so that you’re never quite sure of what is real and what isn’t. Smith understands that there are no easy answers to the questions the film raises but that does not stop him from presenting us with the frightening conclusions. There are also some terrific action sequences and Game of Thrones fans should note that Carice Van Houten will be playing the Red Witch, Melisandre in the show’s second season. From what she does in Black Death, I’d say she’s more than suited for the role.
MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: Those of you searching for a film in which Sean Bean does not die should…um…keep looking.
8. Red State
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Kevin Smith’s latest is an unholy mess. It’s cluttered with too many characters, it tries to be three movies at once and it’s not quite sure of what its message is. But you know what else? It is unbelievably entertaining. So what if the movie doesn’t know what it’s trying to say or even how to say it? It’s a fucking blast to watch Smith go for broke and throw everything at the screen including the kitchen sink. And the story itself is actually pretty simple: three young boys looking for sex set up a date with a middle aged woman (Melissa Leo) they met over the internet. Turns out she’s a member of a hateful religious cult led by Michael Parks. The cult (very clearly based on the Westboro Babtist Church) protests funerals of gay teens and believes that ‘homosexuality’ is the root of all our problems in America. They’re getting ready to sacrifice our three heroes when the ATF is called in to bring the cult to its knees. The ATF leader (John Goodman) leads a charge on the church and what started as a horror thriller quickly becomes a bloody, action-packed extravaganza. Michael Parks gives the creepiest performance of the year as the cult leader. His sermon (which lasts over twenty minutes) is an eerily accurate depiction of what we’ve heard from so many psychotic religious folk in the media. Goodman makes for a great, conflicted hero and the rest of the cast is at the top of their game. Like I said, the movie is messy: the shootout goes on a little too long, the ending is not amazing (but not bad either) and Smith does not seem sure of what he’s trying to say other than ‘Fuck these crazy assholes’. I’m fine with that. Those people are deranged lunatics and it’s fun just to see them get what they deserve. So yeah Kevin Smith, I’m totally with you: Fuck those crazy assholes.
7. Win Win
Here is a movie with the plot of a sitcom, about a sport I find absurd, that is nevertheless the most affecting human comedy I saw all year. Paul Giamatti plays another one of his loveable losers and is there any actor who can do that better than him? Here he’s a lawyer on the verge of losing his practice who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach. His job sucks, his team sucks and he’s running out of money. So, he tricks a judge into granting him custody of an older client (Burt Young) in order to collect a monthly stipend from the old coot. A deplorable action yes, but Giamatti redeems himself when the old man’s wayward grandson shows up in town and turns out to be the ringer his wrestling team needs. Giamatti takes the kid into his home despite the worries of his frustrated wife (the always great Amy Ryan) and his whole life begins to turn around. If all of this sounds extremely predictable, that’s because it is. You’ll know how the movie is going to progress beat for beat and line for line. The joy comes from the very real characters that writer director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor) is so adept at creating. These are people we’d be happy to spend more than just two hours with. They’re real, relatable, ordinary folks capable of great humor, shocking anger and deep empathy. There is not a moment that rings false. Giamatti’s relationship with the kid is touching and heartfelt, Amy Ryan is quietly hilarious as the wife who has put up with her sad sack husband for years and Bobby Cannavale all but steals the movie as Giamatti’s best friend who decides that assistant coaching a wrestling team might be the best way to relive his glory days. You’ll even find yourself getting involved in the wrestling scenes because you’ve come to know these characters and thus understand how important a win is for them. Forget the millions of Judd Apatow flicks that come out every year. They’re all so cynical and transparent. Win Win is the real deal.
6. Rubber
If there has ever been a more insane, hilarious, infuriating movie than Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber please let me know what it is. I’d be surprised if you haven’t at least heard of this film in passing. It’s the kind of movie that people hear about from friends who say things like, ‘hey did you about that movie about a killer tire? What the fuck?’ What the fuck indeed. I really can’t explain much of the plot (cuz there isn’t much of one) or discuss a lot of the characters (cuz there aren’t many) or decipher the film’s message (cuz the very idea of even having a message seems to piss the movie off) but what I can tell you is that Rubber is absolutely fascinating from beginning to end. The story of Robert, a sentient tire who wakes up one day in the desert and starts blowing people’s heads up with his psychic powers, is told to us by a grumpy police Lieutenant (Stephen Spinella), who is fed up with movie conventions, and commented on by a Greek chorus (which inexplicably contains Wings Hauser) that wants to be entertained all day, every day. And that’s about it. Much of the film consists of Robert rolling around, watching TV, pining after a hot girl and blowing the shit out of people. The Greek chorus whines that there is no narrative progression and the dogged Lieutenant tries to please them and when he realizes they can’t be pleased, he tries to kill them. Rubber can almost be described as anti-cinema. It’s a movie that thinks traditional storylines (of any kind) are stupid, pointless and arbitrary. Dupieux clearly does not care whether or not you like his movie. He just wants to subvert your expectations and make you realize how much you, the viewer, bring to any entertainment experience you sit through. Pretty lofty goals for a movie about a killer tire wouldn’t you say? Be warned though: Rubber may drive you mad. When I first saw it I couldn’t decide whether I loved it or hated it. I came to realize I loved it because it elicited an extremely powerful reaction in me and that’s all we want movies to do at the end of the day isn’t it? To make us feel something, even if that something is pure blind rage.
5. Kill the Irishman
Mob movies are a dime a dozen and let’s face facts: most of them are shit. They all live in the shadow of The Godfather, Goodfellas and Casino and hardly ever live up to those films. Kill the Irishman doesn’t either but what it does have going for it is a terrific cast and an engaging, true life, underdog story of sorts. Ray Stevenson (Rome) stars as Danny Greene, the Irishman of the title, who starts off as a low level union rep and quickly rises to the top of Cleveland’s mob scene. He’s helped along the way by a friendly local cop he went to school with (Val Kilmer) and a friendlier Italian gangster who doesn’t care that Danny is Irish (Vincent D’Onofrio). Christopher Walken has a small but effective role as a Jewish loan shark who angers Danny and Paul Sorvino shows up late in the film as a mob boss who wants Danny to go away. He’s not the only one. The mob tried to kill this guy for years and failed miserably time and time again. I found this almost too good to be true, but after doing some research I discovered that the film is pretty true to what really happened. It romanticizes Danny Greene a bit but what mob film doesn’t romanticize its hero? Director Jonathan Hensleigh does a great job of conveying the passage of time and he is excellent at blowing up cars. A lot of cars blow up in this movie and if you want to blame someone for lack of ingenuity, don’t make it the screenwriters, make it the mob. All the actors have a blast chewing the scenery and sucking on the savory dialogue. But this is Stevenson’s show and he is nothing short of exceptional. I’ve been a fan of Stevenson’s since Rome and have been sad to see that he has been unable to find a lead role that shows off how good he is (Punisher: War Zone didn’t do the trick) but with Kill the Irishman, he has found the perfect character.
4. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
If you don’t love every second of this movie, I think I may have to hurt you. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is the story of two very nice hillbillies (Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk) who head off to a ramshackle cabin in the woods for some much need R and R. Right next door is a gaggle of college kids who are all too aware of horror movie conventions. When one of their own (Katrina Bowden) falls unconscious into the lake and is rescued by Tucker and Dale, the kids’ leader (Jesse Moss) assumes that the two hillbillies are deranged madmen ala Deliverance and calls upon the rest of his friends to put a stop to the monstrous mountain men. Needless to say, the kids are utterly incompetent and wind up killing themselves rather than Tucker and Dale. Our two heroes are too good-natured and naive to understand what is going on so they naturally come to the conclusion that the college kids are involved in some sort of ‘suicide pact’. What follows is a bloody comedy of errors as Tucker and Dale try to protect the girl from her crazy friends and convince the local police that they are not bloodthirsty murderers. All of this is as hilarious as it sounds. However, there’s more at work here than just gory hilarity. The film has a lot of heart and writer/director Eli Craig really does seem to think it’s completely unfair of Hollywood to use hillbillies as horrible villains year after year. There’s a scene late in the film when Bowden explains to Labine what her friends must think of him and he becomes so genuinely hurt it almost made me want to cry. He delivers a speech defending himself and his buddy that is very funny but, more importantly, shockingly touching. I felt for these two men more than I did for any other characters this year. They’re great guys and it’s a shame that Hollywood always insists they be nothing more than deranged monsters.
3. I Saw the Devil
South Korea consistently churns out dark, mesmerizing thrillers that Hollywood would be way too terrified to make and I Saw the Devil might be the granddaddy of them all. Lee Byung-hun stars as a secret agent whose fiancée is murdered by a vicious serial killer (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik). The agent vows revenge and tracks the serial killer to his lair. He then begins to torture the murderer in every horrific way possible: he breaks his bones, captures and recaptures him, degrades him emotionally and even buries a tracker under the monster’s skin so he can know where he is at any given moment. It’s not long before we realize that our ‘hero’ might be as insane as the killer he is tracking. This is a terrifying, incredibly suspenseful game of cat and mouse where you watch every scene in anticipation of the next dreadful action by either of the lead characters. The film is violent to the extreme and features many a scene where you will not want to look at the screen. I said that the serial killer is vicious but that’s a gross understatement and the exact same thing can be said of the hero. What makes the movie great is that understands how pointless and unfulfilling the idea of revenge is. We love to romanticize it in the movies and I’m all for that but I am much more in favor of a movie that shows how revenge can eat away at a character’s soul until there is nothing left. The hero claims he is only trying to balance the scales but we know how foolish that is. The scales can never be balanced and if you try to make them so, you’re only going to lead yourself down a dark descent into hell.
2. Super
The best superhero flick of the year did not contain a drunken Norse God, an earnest World War II captain, a smirking asshole with a stupid green ring or a gaggle of troubled mutants. Instead, it starred Rainn Wilson as a troubled sociopath who takes up the crime fighting life after his wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for a local drug kingpin (Kevin Bacon). He’s assisted by a comic book store clerk (Ellen Page) who turns out to be even more of a sociopath than he is. Super is a comedy so dark, disturbing and violent, it makes Kick-Ass look like The Incredibles. There’s been an undercurrent in superhero films for years that any person who decides to put on a costume and fight crime has to be at least a little disturbed but none have followed this idea more so than Super. That the movie is also hilarious, suspenseful and touching is a testament to writer/director James Gunn (the genius who gave us Slither). Rainn Wilson is a revelation as the hero who adopts the catchy name ‘The Crimson Bolt’ after having a vision of God’s finger reaching into his brain (you read that right). He proves that he’s a real actor and not just the nerd from The Office. The Crimson Bolt is not a hero you should identify with but Wilson makes him into a human monster whose actions you can (somewhat) understand. He’s also funny as hell. His first few nights as a crime fighter find him hiding behind a dumpster and just waiting for crimes to happen. The movie contains lots of scenes of sharp humor like that and then surprises the hell out of you by immediately following them with a scene of incredible violence (such as the one where The Crimson Bolt beats a man’s head in with a wrench for the terrible crime of cutting in line). Ellen Page, an actress I normally despise, is actually really good here as well. Her sidekick, Boltie, helps us relate to Wilson’s more because she is just so jaw dropingly insane she makes the Crimson Bolt look like the poster child for mental health (watch out for the scene where she tries to seduce him). And Kevin Bacon all but steals the movie as the vile drug dealer. There’s also a great cameo by Nathan Fillion as ‘Bible-Man’, a Christian TV hero that Wilson idolizes. What I loved most about Super is the way it never pussies out or settles for a tidy conclusion where everyone lives happily ever after. It has a refreshing irreverent attitude that makes us question just why we relate to these guys in tights to begin with. If you’re tired of seeing the same mundane superhero flick week after week, seek out Super. You’ll never look at a masked vigilante the same way again.
1. Drive
I’m sure you’ve heard of this masterpiece and have probably even seen it on several critics’ ‘best of the year’ lists but how many of you actually saw it? Yeah, not too many and that’s a damn shame because Drive is the most exciting film I’ve seen on the big screen in years. Ryan Gosling completely sheds his pretty boy persona as the enigmatic Driver, a near mythical figure who works as a Hollywood stuntman and moonlights as a getaway driver for petty criminals. When he forms a close bond with his neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and her young son, he finds himself trying to protect them from some very nasty gangsters (Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks). Drive is minimalist in the sense that there is not a lot of dialogue and very little exploration of the driver’s origins. He owes more to characters like The Man With No Name than to anyone from The Fast and Furious franchise. The movie is also not terribly concerned with plot. Director Nicholas Winding-Refn (Bronson) uses extremely tense chase scenes, quiet looks between the characters, and stunning, violent action to propel the story forward. This winds up making the movie more detailed than any other film I saw this year. It doesn’t need to rely on labored exposition for us to understand the characters: Driver need only shift his eyes and we know exactly what he is thinking. The same can be said of Albert Brooks’ monstrous villain, Bernie Rose. Bernie need only make a passive gesture with his hand for us to understand the malice lurking behind those cool eyes. But what I loved most about Drive was that it has no desire to make a point or deliver a message other than to tell you an utterly absorbing story. You ever hear the phrase ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’? Well sometimes a movie is just a movie and when every other supposedly ‘great’ movie that came out this year wore a social message on its sleeve, it was so refreshing to watch a flick that is simply pure kinetic cinema.
