Best films of 2009

A SERIOUS MAN (Joel Coen) — In this brilliant black comedy, the Coen Brothers pose philosophical questions as they drag their poor protagonist through one humiliation after another, ending it all with a beautifully enigmatic shot.

THE WHITE RIBBON (Michael Haneke) — A haunting portrait of a small town in Germany on the eve of World War I, where mysterious cruel acts go unexplained and unpunished.

LORNA'S SILENCE (Luc and Jean-Paul Dardenne) — Yet another compelling movie from the Dardenne brothers about people living on the margins of society in Belgium, filmed and acted so realistically it looks like a documentary. A horrifying story that builds to an oddly rapturous climax.

IN THE LOOP (Armando Ianucci) — The year's funniest movie, this sharp political satire from Britain features hilarious streams of bile flowing from the mouth of Peter Capaldi.

THE HURT LOCKER (Kathryn Bigelow) — Tense, realistic and sharply focused, this is what action movies should be.

POLICE, ADJECTIVE (Corneliu Porumboiu) — This Romanian film is a sort of deconstruction of cop movies: A stakeout where not much of anything happens. The climax, if you can call it that, is a cop looking up words in a dictionary. Slow-paced but absorbing, it's a thoughtful exploration of exactly what we mean by law and order.

REVANCHE (Götz Spielmann) — This Austrian film has some of the elements of a crime caper or thriller, but it's also a moral and philosophical drama, with superb acting and filmmaking.

SÉRAPHINE (Martin Provost) — Yolande Moreau gives one of the year's best performances in this lovely film, starring as the French naïve painter Séraphine de Senlis.

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL (Sacha Gervasi) — A great documentary about what it's like to be in a rock band year after year without making it big. Funny and surprisingly heartwarming.

ADVENTURELAND (Greg Mottola) — A cool coming-of-age story that captures all the frustrations and awkwardness of being a young person groping toward romance and adulthood. (Awesome soundtrack, too.)

11. The Baader-Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel)
12. Bright Star (Jane Campion)
13. The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh)
14. Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
15. Tulpan (Sergey Dvortsevoy)
16. Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodovar)
17. Eastern Plays (Kamen Kalev)
18. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Terry Gilliam)
19. The Beaches of Agnes (Agnes Varda)
20. Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani)
21. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
22. Julia (Erick Zoncka)
23. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
24. Sita Sings the Blues (Nina Paley)
25. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Nymph (Pen-ek Rantanarung)
Face (Tsai Ming-Liang)
Avatar (James Cameron)
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (Ruxandra Medrea Annonier and Serge Bromberg)
The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone)
An Education (Lone Scherfig)
Apres Lui (Gäel Morel)
Cropsey (Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates)
In Search of Beethoven (Phil Grabsky)
O'Horten (Bent Hamer)
Patti Smith: Dream of Life (Steven Sebring)
The Eclipse (Conor McPherson)
The Girl on the Train (Andre Techine)
Up (Pete Docter)

Best films of the decade

THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson, U.S.) — A masterpiece on many levels: Visceral cinematography that makes you feel like you're out standing there in the landscape by those oil wells. That amazing performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as a despicable, yet somehow charismatic man with just a few glints of humanity shining through. Brilliant use of archaic styles of speaking. An opening 20 minutes without any dialogue, a superb example of my favorite sort of filmmaking. Johnny Greenwood's striking, dramatic musical score. And the feeling that this movie plunges us straight into another time and place. There's surprisingly little exposition or explanation about what's happening, but Anderson tells his story through the drama of individual moments. This is one of cinema's definitive stories about American capitalism, religion, family and violence.

THE WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000, Bela Tarr, Hungary) — When Tarr took audience questions after a screening of this film at the Chicago International Film Festival, someone asked what all of the symbols in the film stood for. "There is no symbolism," Tarr responded, sounding characteristically cranky. "There is only what you see on the screen." It's hard to know whether Tarr really believes that, since this film is filled with surreal, seemingly symbolic sequences. Like other films by Tarr, Werckmeister moves very slowly at times, but the way his camera moves makes it all mesmerizing. One weird thing happens after another in a Hungarian town, when a circus shows up, hauling a big whale and a mysterious "Prince" with it. The exact meaning of those "symbols" doesn't matter so much as the events they spark — mob mentality springing out of paranoia and fear.

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001, David Lynch, U.S.) — One of Lynch's best films. Originally made as a TV pilot, then rejected, then expanded, Mulholland Drive feels stitched together at times, with lots of loose ends, but somehow, that all works for the better, making this movie feel genuinely strange and disturbing. There's a dazzling sense of dislocation and disorientation when that big plot twist comes in the middle of the film, and people are still debating what exactly it's all about.

BLOODY SUNDAY (2002, Paul Greengrass, U.K.) — This is one of two films by director Paul Greengrass that make my top 10. (See No. 7 for the other.) Greengrass is a master of making feature films that look and sound like documentaries of the actual events he's portraying. In this case, Greengrass took us to the tragic and appalling violence of the notorious "Bloody Sunday" incident in Northern Ireland. He dispenses with almost all back story behind the characters we're watching, simply showing them in the moments of that day as it happened. It feels shocking when the Northern Irish protestors realize the British soldiers are firing bullets, and the emotion of the final scenes is almost overwhelming. Bloody Sunday is also an important look at how confrontations between police or soldiers and protestors can go awry - and how violence confrontations have lasting consequences.

CACHE (HIDDEN) (2005, Michael Haneke, France) — Austrian director Michael Haneke makes movies about the dark side of humanity, presenting his stories in a matter-of-fact style that's very chilling. A haunting sense of guilt runs through Cache, and Daniel Auteuil is terrific as a man who keeps on denying his responsibility for something that happened long ago, during his childhood. It's a metaphor for the guilt that entire countries and societies carry for their past actions, but it also works as a story about this one man and his family. Cache is also a film about film, with surveillance videotapes taking a major role. It contains one of the decade's most shocking scenes, and the ending is an enigma. Make sure you pay close attention to the crowd scene that's on the screen as the credits roll — not that it will explain everything.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004, Michel Gondry, U.S.) — Filmmakers who mess around with our perceptions of chronology and memory often end up with a big mess. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman somehow succeeds at making movies that are challenging but coherent when he does it. (Also see No. 8 on my list.) Eternal Sunshine presents the heartbreaking spectacle of a man's memories of a romance being erased from his brain. It's a beautiful depiction of the sort of mental and emotional gymnastics most of us human beings go through when we're wracked with love and its aftermath.

UNITED 93 (2006, Paul Greengrass, U.S.) — As in Bloody Sunday, Greengrass uses a straightforward, documentary approach to an event from the news. In this case, it's the most catastrophic event of recent decades, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Seeing this film in a theater was such an overwhelming and emotional experience that I wasn't sure I could see it again. I did watch it one more time recently, just to make sure the film's quality stood up. And it certainly did. The world-shifting uncertainty of that day came rushing back. The scenes involving air-traffic controllers and military officials struggling to respond to the terrorism (starring some of the actual people as themselves) show just how unprepared the United States was, how bureaucracy and miscommunication got in the way of an effective response. The scenes on United Airlines flight 93 effectively dramatize the situation those passengers faced when they realized their plane was being used as a missile. It makes you think about what you would feel or do in such a dire situation.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2008, Charlie Kaufman, U.S.) — Screenwriter Kaufman made his directing debut with this film, a phantasmagoria whose story keeps on slipping out of our grasp. It all feels like a fever dream, or the hallucinations of a dying man. I've seen it twice so far, and the film seemed to grow richer and more complex on second viewing. It's a great film about the creative process, carrying on the tradition of Fellini's 8 1/2. It also ranks up there with movies about the slipperiness of human perception and memory, including the aforementioned Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the original British miniseries of The Singing Detective and Alain Resnais' Providence. (I haven't seen Providence in a long time, so I wonder now if it's as great as I remember. It's not easy to find on home video.)

TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (2003, Sylvain Chomet, France) — In a decade when computer-assisted animation made all sorts of breakthroughs, the best animated film was a somewhat old-fashioned cartoon. There's barely any dialogue at all in this delightful French film about bicycling, dogs and mysterious bad guys, but you don't need words to connect with these characters. Their repetitive quirks become charming personality traits as you immerse yourself in the peculiar world of Belleville.

MEMENTO (2001, Christopher Nolan, U.S.) — Another excellent film about memory. On one level, it's a clever mystery, but it's also an eloquent piece of existentialism. How much do you really remember about what's happened to you?

11. Russian Ark (2002, Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia)
12. Pan's Labyrinth (2006, Guillermo Del Toro, Spain)
13. A Serious Man (2009, Joel and Ethan Coen, U.S.)
14. Man on Wire (2008, Philippe Petit, France)
15. Le Fils (The Son) (2002, Luc and Jean-Paul Dardenne, Belgium)
16. All or Nothing (2002, Mike Leigh, U.K.)
17. Yi Yi (A One and a Two) (2000, Edward Yang, Taiwan)
18. Silent Light (2007, Carlos Reydagas, Mexico)
19. Almost Famous (2000, Cameron Crowe, U.S.)
20. Brand Upon the Brain! (2006, Guy Maddin, Canada)
21. Lights in the Dusk (2007, Aki Kaurismaki, Finland)
22. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000, Jim Jarmusch, U.S.)
23. Songs From the Second Floor (2000, Roy Andersson, Sweden)
24. Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan)
25. High Fidelity (2000, Stephen Frears, U.S.)

Rocking to Warhol films

Andy Warhol's films raise the question of what exactly you're supposed to do with them. Are they regular "films" meant to be seen in a movie theater? Or some other sort of art? In today's art world, they'd probably be seen more in line with the video art that you see in galleries or posted on the Web than anything you would sit down to watch with a bucket of popcorn.

It seemed especially apt when the "screen tests" Warhol filmed showing the members of the Velvet Underground staring at the camera were displayed in the 2007 exhibit "Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967," at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Walking through the galleries, you saw these faces looking out at you from the wall, not still enough to be paintings, not quite animated enough to be movies. They were the living equivalent of a two-dimensional photographic portrait.

More of those screen tests — a sample of the 300 four-minute films Warhol made of various people looking into the camera — were back at the MCA Saturday night (March 7). This time, they were on a big screen in the theater, a bit more like a trip to the cinema. But this was a concert, not a movie. Or maybe it was both. Dean & Britta were playing thirteen songs to accompany those black-and-white faces, in a project commissioned by the Andy Warhol Museum called 13 Most Beautiful ... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests. Warhol used to show some of these movies at performances by the Velvet Underground and Nico, so it seems like the late pop artist would probably approve of this latest use for his footage.

And Dean & Britta are a good choice to carry it out. It's been obvious ever since Dean Wareham was in Galaxie 500 — and all throughout his recordings with Luna and Dean & Britta — that the Velvet Underground are his major musical influence. At last night's show, Dean & Britta sounded more like the V.U. than ever. Other than a few loud moments, they stayed on the more delicate end of the V.U. groove, with that trademark sound of tamped-down urgency pulsing underneath the chords. While Wareham and Britta Phillips don't sound precisely like Lou Reed and Nico when they sing, their languid vocals were a close-enough approximation to set the right mood for the screen tests. Some of the songs (including originals as well as covers) were instrumental; in some, the vocals were almost incidental. Wareham's guitar was the musical star of the night.

But the real stars were those faces — Richard Rheem, Ann Buchanan, Paul America, Edie Sedgwick, Billy Name, Susan Bottomly, Dennis Hopper, Mary Woronow, Nico, Freddy Herko, Ingrid Superstar, Lou Reed and Jane Holzer. As the films flared in and out of view, the faces stared out at us, like people looking at themselves in the mirror. Some of them did little more than stare, and one's attention wandered away from the screen. Then the eyes would blink and you would remember that that wasn't just a still photo projected behind the band. Some of the subjects were more lively. Reed, wearing cool shades, slurped at a Coke bottle. (For that film, Dean & Britta played "Not a Young Man Anymore," an old V.U. song that surfaced in bootleg concert recordings.) Hopper kept glancing down and then back up, seemingly fighting off an urge to laugh or reveal some other emotion, his eyes fluttering.

Nico acted as if it wasn't a screen test at all, but rather a casual moment captured by a surreptitious camera. But then she made it clear that she really was playing for the camera when she rolled up a magazine and held it to her eye like a telescope. (For that film, Dean & Britta played "I'll Keep It With Mine," which Bob Dylan wrote with Nico in mind.) In the final film of the show, Jane Holzer brushed her teeth for all of us to see.

13 Most Beautiful... is coming out on DVD from Plexifilm, and Wareham suggested the video musical tracks would be perfect to watch on an iPod or cell phone. That does seem like the sort of art-dissemination system Warhol would have liked. You can watch the trailer here on youtube.

Photos of Dean & Britta performing at the MCA.

Patti Smith at the Block

A rock icon who hates being called a rock icon, Patti Smith, was at the Block Museum of Art in Evanston last night (Jan. 30), where director Steven Sebring's documentary about her, "Patti Smith: Dream of Life," was being shown. I was privileged to sit in on a press conference with her before the screening, where she played "In My Blakean Year" for this select audience of a dozen people or so. Toting her ever-present vintage Polaroid camera, Smith took photos of some audience members at the screening and handed the instant pictures to them.

The film is a kaleidoscopic, poetic portrait of Smith, and after the screening, Smith and Sebring answered questions from Jim DeRogatis and the audience. Smith played "In My Blakean Year" again for the full crowd, adding an extended introduction about being born in Chicago, living on Kedzie near Logan Square. She closed by reciting the lyrics of "People Have the Power" as a poem for President Obama. "President Obama," she said in closing, "be a good man, and we will be a good people."

I'll post a link to the article I'm writing for Pioneer Press about Smith's appearance later.

Photos of Patti Smith.

Best Films of 2008

1. MAN ON WIRE (Philippe Petit) – The act of walking on a tightrope suspended between the towers of the World Trade Center might seem like a pointless stunt, but in this documentary, it comes to feel like an amazing achievement, a strange testament to what people can accomplish when they put their hearts and minds into a task. It's thrilling and oddly moving to watch this story unfold through archival film, photos and interviews.

2. HUNGER (Steve McQueen) – A brutal and painful viewing experience, this is the true story of Irish political prisoners refusing to give in to the rules set by their British captors – a contest of wills that resembles an unstoppable force colliding an unmovable object. The film, which showed at the Chicago International Film Festival, is unflinching and powerful, a masterpiece of editing and minimalist storytelling.

3. IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA (Jose Luis Guerin) – A profound Spanish film about the sort of voyeurism that happens in plain sight: strangers watching and studying one another's faces in streets and cafés. Sylvia captures the mindset of watching strangers with a natural sense of realism and some subtle humor reminiscent of Jacques Tati's sight gags. In the City of Syliva showed at the European Union Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

4. WALL-E (Andrew Stanton) – The first half is a terrific silent movie of sorts, without any dialogue to guide us, just the pictures and sounds of a robot on a deserted junk heap of a planet. And the second half is a biting satire on the fat, lazy habits of the human race.

5. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman) – A big, confusing riddle of a movie that will baffle anyone who gets too hung up on trying to figure out every detail of what's happening. Don't get too hung up on all that. This is a self-reflexive work of art about the creation of itself, reminiscent of 8½, the original Singing Detective, Alain Resnais' neglected Providence and, of course, all those other films with Charlie Kaufman scripts. There's some wonderful humor and pathos in this fantastic phantasmagoria.

6. PARANOID PARK (Gus Van Sant) – Along with his galvanizing biopic Milk, Van Sant directed this superb film in 2008, working in a more experimental and personal style. At times, the sounds and images wash over you in a stream of consciousness. The protagonist is something of a blank, but that's the way he's supposed to be. It all culminates with a shocking scene that I can't get out of my head.

7. THE EDGE OF HEAVEN/Auf der Anderen Seite (Fateh Akin) - As this film's interconnected stories crisscross Germany and Turkey, we see the ties that bind the subplots together – but the characters themselves just miss making the connections. After showing two tragedies, the film ends with a slight sense of hope that good people of different cultures might connect after all.

8. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (David Fincher) – It looks like a storybook come to life. The concept of this parable is simple, but it has depths beyond the story of a man who ages in reverse; it's a meditation on the many ways people feel out of place in the world around them.

9. STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (Errol Morris) – A riveting inquiry into the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Morris' documentary does not arrive at definitive conclusions about who was responsible for these reprehensible deeds but it asks all the right questions.

10. THE SKY, THE EARTH AND THE RAIN/El Cielo, la Tierra y la Lluvia (Jose Luis Torres Leiva) – This enigmatic drama from Chile, which played at the Chicago International Film Festival, moves at the languorous pace of a Bela Tarr or Andrei Tarkovksy film. Most people will probably find it too slow, in other words, but it has a beautiful sense of tranquility. The mysterious and mostly unspoken relationships among the various characters eventually emerge out of the mist.

11. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle)
12. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
13. Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov)
14. Milk (Gus Van Sant)
15. Rain of the Children (Vincent Ward)
16. Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs)
17. Terribly Happy/Frygtelig Lykkelig (Henrik Ruben Genz)
18. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
19. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hsiao-hsien Hou)
20. Nights and Weekends (Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig)
21. The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy)
22. Wellness (Jake Mahaffy)
23. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky)
24. At the Death House Door (Peter Gilbert and Steve James)
25. Ballast (Lance Hammer)
26. Everlasting Moments/Maria Larssons Eviga Ögonblick (Jan Troell)
27. Tell No One (Guilliame Canet)
28. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen)
29. Cadillac Records (Daniel Martin)
30. Doubt (John Patrick Shanley)

Interview with Guy Maddin

My interview with director Guy Maddin, whose film Brand Upon the Brain! just came out on DVD from Criterion, is up today at the PopMatters web site. It has to rank up there with the strangest interviews I've ever done.

In the City of Sylvia

The Gene Siskel Film Center's annual European Union festival is ending, and, alas, I managed to see only a few of this year's films. One of them was the remarkable In the City of Sylvia (En la Ciudad de Sylvia) by Spanish director José Luis Guerín. This profound film is about voyeurism, but not the Peeping Tom variety of voyeurism that drove the plots of films such as Rear Window and A Short Film About Love. Rather, this is the sort of voyeurism that happens in plain sight, strangers watching and studying one another's faces in streets and cafés. Is that a universal game? I know it's one I play all the time – looking over at people in a bar or restaurant and wondering what their stories are, wondering what sort of relationships they have with each other. Sylvia captures the mindset of watching strangers with a natural sense of realism and some subtle humor.

The entire film is little more than a depiction of a nameless young man with a sketchpad (Xavier Lafitte) looking around Strasbourg for a woman named Sylvia whom he met once in a bar six years earlier. After spending a long time watching the various "elles" at a café, surreptitiously sketching their faces, he fixates on one particular woman (Pilar López de Ayala), believing she is Sylvia. As she gets up to leave the café, the man follows. A long chase unfolds, with the man awkwardly hesitating about approaching the woman but persistently walking behind her. In a very understated way, the chase becomes dramatic and suspenseful. Finally, almost an hour into the film, comes the first scene with any real dialogue lasting more than a few lines.

Although the humor in Sylvia is never as brash as anything Jacques Tati did, the film did remind me of Tati's films occasionally, especially Tati's Playtime. In addition to its visual gags and a wonderful sense of the camera as a subjective viewpoint, Sylvia features subtle layers of sound. Overhead conversations, mostly in French, drift by, almost always on the periphery of the main character's hearing.

In the City of Sylvia is one of those rare films in which little seems to be happening, and yet so much is happening under the surface. It's a provocative exploration of the way people view the world around them.

The Siskel Center's EU fest also included a companion film by Guerín, Some Photos in the City of Sylvia, but classifying it as a film may be too generous. It's a collection of still photos Guerín took in Strasbourg and other cities, when he was apparently going through a real-life situation similar to the one depicted in his movie, searching for a woman he'd met long ago – in this case, 22 years ago. Guerín sure seems to enjoy photographing women from behind as he follows them down European streets (assuming that the protagonist, if you can call it that in this minimalist piece of work, is actually Guerín). Some Photos is completely silent, with Guerín's words occasionally flashing on the screen, and so it seems more like a slide show than a movie – more like an extra feature that would belong on the eventual DVD of In the City of Sylvia. Even as a DVD extra, it would benefit from some sound or actual narration. It may be worth seeing as a sort of sketch for the actual movie that Guerín made, but the way it has been assembled is simply too plain.

Best films of 2007

1. THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson) - I waited until this movie opened in Chicago Jan. 4 before I finished my 2007 list, and I'm glad I did. (Arguably, if you go by Chicago release dates, this one should be saved for the 2008 list, but I'm sticking it under 2007 since it qualifies for the Oscars.) As historical epics go, this film is remarkably spare and focused. It could have been one of those sweeping sagas - how the oil industry changed the country - but instead it's chamber drama about one greedy, self-centered and driven man. Daniel-Day Lewis' performance is simply amazing (as so many of his performances have been). Much of the time, his character is putting on a show for the people around him, and the film makes wonderful use of this oil man's speeches, finding a peculiar kind of poetry in these sales pitches. Lewis does allow us some glimpses behind his mask, but he never reveals that much about why he became the way he is. Too much of that sort of psychoanalysis might have lessened this film. It's quite a while before the first line of dialogue is spoken, and those opening scenes are a masterful example of what is essentially silent cinema. I've liked all of Anderson's previous films to one extent or another (I need to see them again to arrive at a more thoughtful analysis), but this is his strongest work yet. It bears little resemblance to Anderson's earlier movies until the final scenes fall into a slow, building intensity that reminded me of the unusual pacing in Punch Drunk Love. The new film is more than a little reminiscent of Erich Von Streheim's classic Greed, and the sharp orchestral score by Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead kept putting me in the mind of Stanley Kubrick - a feeling that was reinforced by the devastating final shot.

2. LIGHTS IN THE DUSK (Aki Kaurismaki) - This film barely received any distribution or critical notice, but I found it to be one of the best yet from one of my favorite directors, Finland's Aki Kaurismaki, a master of minimalism. Kaurismaki tells this sad little story with brilliant cinematography, smart editing and a wicked sense of black humor. It's another new film that reminds me of the great silent films - in this case, the work of Charlie Chaplin. (See my earlier review of Lights in the Dusk.)

3. BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (Guy Maddin) - Winnipeg's Maddin continues to be one of the weirdest filmmakers in the world with his latest fever dream, which came to Chicago this year with a full orchestra, sound-effects crew and narration by Crispin Glover. I also saw the film without the spectacle, in a print featuring narration by Isabella Rosselini. It works in either version, though like all of Maddin's films, this one will baffle a lot of people. The rapid editing style succeeds in simulating the way memories and visions flick in and out of the brain (in an interview, Maddin told me this was his intention). Strangely enough, the movie shares some common elements with The Orphanage, though their cinematic styles are completely different. Both films are about characters returning to haunted orphanages where they grew up, with a mystical lighthouse located nearby. Brand Upon the Brain! comes much closer to presenting the cinematic equivalent of dementia.

4. SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reydagas) - Set in a Mennonite community in Mexico (where a German dialect is spoken rather than Spanish), this film is breathtakingly beautiful and heart-rending. The plot takes an odd, seemingly mystical turn that I'm still grappling with. Silent Light played at the Chicago International Film Festival.

5. ZODIAC (David Fincher) - With his earlier film Seven, Fincher was part of the somewhat sickening movement I call serial-killer chic. I liked that film and some of the other movies about serial killers, including Silence of the Lambs, but after a while it started to feel like the genre was fetishizing some aspects of these disturbing murderers. Fincher subverted the genre with Zodiac, which might have seemed anti-climatic for people expecting another Seven. It does something that few films based on real crime stories have ever done: Rather than boiling down a complicate true story to a few stock elements, it shows the story of the Zodiac Killer as an unknowable mystery that obsesses various people, especially a newspaper cartoonist, over a long stretch of time. Zodiac feels real and authentic, and in spite of the lack of a dramatic conclusion, it also manages to be quite absorbing.

6. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Joel and Ethan Coen) - I haven't read Cormac McCarthy's novel (yet), so I can't say how it compares, but this is a terrific thriller with a creepy, almost nihilistic attitude. The ending threw some people, but I found it fitting.

7. THE DARJEELING LIMITED (Wes Anderson) - Anderson's quirkiness makes him an easy target for some critics, but I thought he was in top form this time. The panning camera shots, editing and colorful shots of India are fabulous filmmaking, and the characters are pretty compelling beneath all those quirks. Anderson's movies are a bit like kabuki, and you have to accept that the surface won't seem completely real. Darjeeling teeters between being a spiritual journey and a satire making fun of spiritual journeys, but that teetering makes for an entertaining and eloquent film.


8. ONCE (John Carney) - Simplicity is one of this film's winning qualities. It often feels like a documentary, and Carney wisely lets some of the musical scenes unfold in real time. Few other movies have so vividly captured that connection people find by making music together.

9. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS (Christian Munigu) - Another film that seems real enough to be a documentary. This Romanian movie about a woman arranging an abortion for a friend is not easy viewing, but it is compelling and moving. Its realism reminded me of the earlier Romanian film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu as well as the films of Belgium's Dardennes Brothers. It showed at the Chicago International Film Festival.

10. THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (Julian Schnabel) - The opening scenes - shot from the point of view of a paralyzed man waking up in a hospital - are marvelous filmmaking using handheld camera, blurry and shallow-focus shots. It's the sort of movie that might come off as experimental except for the fact that Schnabel keeps the narrative clear. After that opening, the movie broadens out to include shots from other perspectives, but it always feels like a uniquely cinematic experience. And without resorting to cheap inspirational fare, the story makes you think about what it means to be alive.

SPECIAL ASTERISK LISTING - There's one 2006 movie that did not come to Chicago until 2007, and would place high on this list if I counted it as a 2007 film:
THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

MY NEXT TEN
11. Two Days in Paris (Julie Delpy)
12. The Savages (Tamara Jenkins)
13. Abel Raises Cain (Jenny Abel and Jeff Hockett)
14. Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy)
15. No End in Sight (Charles Ferguson)
16. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon)
17. All the Invisible Things (Jakob W. Erwa)
18. Away From Her (Sarah Polley)
19. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
20. Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach)

RUNNERS-UP:
Inland Empire (David Lynch)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
You, the Living (Roy Anderson)
Offside (Jafar Panahi)
Control (Anton Corbijn)
Juno (Jason Reitman)
Sicko (Michael Moore)
The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton)
I'm Not There (Todd Haynes)
Half Moon (Bahman Ghobadi)
This is England (Shane Meadows)
The Man From London (Bela Tarr)
Opium: Diary of a Madwoman (Janos Szasz)
Ploy (Pen-Ek Ratanarung)

Tortoise does Nosferatu

Dissonant, atonal and avant-garde music shows up occasionally in one cramped corner of mainstream pop culture: horror and science-fiction film soundtracks. It sounds like scary stuff to most ears, making it the perfect accompaniment to looming vampires or psychosis. And so it seems fitting that the instrumental group Tortoise attracted a large audience Oct. 12 by performing a live soundtrack to silent horror classic Nosferatu at Chicago’s Orchestral Hall. Tortoise’s music – once famously called “post-rock” before everyone gave up on figuring out what that label meant – has never been that abrasive, but it hasn’t exactly been mainstream, either. Under normal circumstances, Tortoise wouldn’t be expected to fill thousands of seats at a venerated temple of classical music (home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), but the lure of free admission and a spooky movie pulled in a diverse crowd.

The 90-minute suite that Tortoise’s members composed for the German vampire movie had a true symphonic sweep, with subtly overlapping movements and recurring themes. Like the best silent-film music, it enhanced the experience of watching the film without overwhelming it. Although Nosferatu, directed by F.W. Murnau in 1922, is not all that suspenseful, it is still a genuinely creepy film, thanks in large part to the spectral appearance of Max Schreck as the vampire. Tortoise’s churning, subterranean sounds were a perfect match for the film’s undead title character. Some of the musical motifs came straight out of the horror-movie composer’s manual – foghorn-like blasts and skittering violin shrieks (simulated violins, that is) – but most of it was quite original.

The less frightening scenes were dominated by a bright and somewhat stately melody on the marimba and synthesizer, while Tortoise kept the audience’s pulse racing with insistent guitar chords during the more dramatic action sequences. Sampled bits of human voice and animal sounds surfaced in the mix, sometimes synching up with the action on the screen. But in one of the most striking moments, Tortoise used sounds resembling the chirping and fluttering of birds in an indoor scene that had nothing to do with birds. It may not have made any logical sense, but it created an appropriately surreal mood. Most impressive of all was Tortoise’s ability to fade out one theme while another one emerged. The members of Tortoise have said they may reuse the music they developed for the Nosferatu performance. It should lay a strong foundation for future recordings.

Chicago Film Fest

Some thoughts on movies I saw at the recent Chicago International Film Festival:

All the Invisible Things (Heile Welt) – This Austrian film was a real find, a total surprise for me. I hadn’t read any reviews of it. The only reason I went was my interest in Austria and the fact that it was playing at a time when I didn’t have anything else to do. Filmed in Graz (a city I have visited a couple of times, and where I have some cousins), All the Invisible Things is a low-budget, documentary-like drama with overlapping plots and chronologies. It starts off some young nihilist thugs on the run (and at this point in the film, I was thinking it was well-made but almost too depressing to stomach), and then shifts to other stories involving other characters, including some parents of the teens in the first part of the movie. Like Pulp Fiction, The Killing, Exotica, Memento or Amores Perros, it doesn’t reveal how all of the plots connect until the end, but it avoids feeling gimmicky. There’s no resolution at the end, just a deep sense of tragedy. The director, Jakob W. Erwa, was present for the screening, which was, unfortunately, sparsely attended. He’s only 26, I think, and he came across as a modest and creative young man. He talked about starting out with a short film, largely improvised by the young actors, and then developing it into a feature film by wondering about the other stories behind the story. I hope Erwa gets U.S. distribution for this film and continues directing; he shows a ton of promise.

Control – The photography in this Ian Curtis biopic is absolutely beautiful. That’s not surprising, given that the director is an acclaimed rock-music photographer, Anton Corbijn. Many of the shots in this black-and-white movie have a shallow depth of field, creating a three-dimensional feeling. I also liked the way the film is edited, with a spare, poetic sense of storytelling. I’m no expert on Joy Division or the Manchester music scene, so I’ll leave it up to others to say how authentic Control is, but it felt real to me. The acting performances are strong, the music sounds excellent, and the movie doesn’t stoop to using any cheap psychobabble explanations for why Curtis killed himself.

Essanay shorts – Earlier this year, I wrote a feature story for Chicago magazine about the history of the Essanay studio, which operated in Chicago between 1907 and 1917. It’s hard to see the films that Essanay made here during those years – the few surviving films are mostly in archives, not readily available for viewing – so it was exciting to get a chance to watch some at this year’s festival. The program included An Awful Skate, A Case of Seltzer, The Misjudged Mr. Hartley, When Soul Meets Soul, Dreamy Dud Resolves Not to Smoke (an odd little animated film), From the Submerged and His New Job (the only film Charlie Chaplin made in Chicago, and the only one you can find on DVD). They’re not great films, but they are of great historical interest, and they made for fascinating viewing.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (4 Luni, 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile) – This Romanian film about an abortion feels almost like a documentary. Directed by Cristian Munigu, it reminded me of the movies by Belgium’s Dardennes brothers – a drama about marginal people that’s so painfully realistic it seems like voyeurism to watch. The film uses a lot of long, unbroken takes, including one remarkable and uncomfortable scene at a crowded dinner table.

Hard-Hearted (Kremen) – I did not plan to see this film. I went to see The Banishment, but the print of that movie had not yet arrived, so the festival showed Hard-Hearted instead, saying, “It’s another film from Russia.” While Hard-Hearted has its moments, I found the film’s central character too annoying to spend even 82 minutes with. At the halfway point, I thought that the movie seemed to be headed toward a violent Taxi Driver-like conclusion. Man, how right I was. Hard-Hearted ends with a climax almost exactly like the one in Taxi Driver, but it’s a pale imitation.

The Man From London (A Londini Férfi) – For me, the most dispiriting part of this year’s film festival was waiting 45 minutes for a CTA el to get me to the theater for the new film by Bela Tarr. Even though I’d left home earlier than usual, I showed up at the theater 15 minutes late, walked into a packed theater and ended up sitting in the front row, craning my neck up at a huge screen. From what I hear, I did not miss much plot exposition, but I still feel like I have to give this film an incomplete grade because of the way I experienced it. Like Tarr’s other films (Werckmeister Harmonies is one of my favorites of the last decade), this one is filled with glacially slow tracking shots and an occasionally opaque plot. It’s also deeply beautiful and mysterious, with a surprising performance by the always great Tilda Swinton – in Hungarian! Based on a Georges Simenon novel, it feels like a film noir as seen by a whale swimming just offshore. Tarr’s films are not easily digested, but I will definitely see this again as soon as I get a chance.

Opium: Diary of a Madwoman (Ópium: Egy Elmebeteg Naplója) – This Hungarian film by János Szász includes some difficult viewing. I wouldn’t readily watch it again, but it was an intense and memorable experience. The provocative sex scenes are troubling and discomforting, but also very sensuous.

Ploy – The few films I’ve seen from Thailand have an odd combination of the mundane and the fantastic. In this movie by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, the setting – a hotel – is downright generic. The drama that unfolds in this place has some ominous undertones, and Ploy gradually takes surreal turns, with disturbing dreams and a whole subplot that may or may not have happened. In the end, I found it to be an effective exploration of that eternal theme, the difficulty of human connections.

Silent Light (Stellet Licht) – I didn’t know much about this film before walking into it, other than the fact that it was made in Mexico. And so, when the characters on the screen starting talking in a language other than Spanish – it sounded to me like German and I could understand bits and pieces, and it turned out to be the north German dialect Plattdeutsch – I was disoriented. Carlos Reygadas’ film is set within the isolated modern-day community of German Mennonites in the Chihuahua area of northern Mexico. The film begins with one of the most beautiful shots I’ve seen in a long time, a starry night sky that becomes the silhouette of trees and then a sunrise, with the camera slowly tracking into a field. It feels like time-lapse photography. The story is filled with a similar sense of stillness and slow motion, feeling at times like a Terrence Malick film. The plot is about as basic as they come: A married man is having an affair. Given the fact that these characters are religiously devout Mennonites, the adultery becomes a deep struggle over faith and morality. Without spoiling the ending, I’ll say that something unexpected happens. A miracle? A deus ex machina? It’s peculiar but it feels honest because of the poetic and deliberate way it happens. And then the film ends with a shot mirroring that opening sequence. Silent Light is quite simply magnificent.

You, the Living (Du Levande) – Roy Andersson is the director of a wonderfully surreal film from a few years back, Songs From the Second Floor, and now he’s back with You, the Living, which feels like a continuation of the previous film. One of the recurring visual gigs (or existentialist black-humor bits) from the first film was this unending traffic jam on a Swedish street, with the motorists trapped in an eternal hell of congestion. Well, in You, the Living, there’s yet another traffic jam. Or is it the same one from the first movie, still going on? There’s also a bit in the new movie in which a musician annoys his downstairs neighbor by practicing on the tuba. Could that be a reference to the title of the earlier film – a song from the second floor? The vignettes in You, the Living are only vaguely connected. They do not all tie together in the end in a nice, neat package, but that was just fine with me.