50 Days 50 Films - #37 "Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)

Goddamnit, how great was this film?

Remember how when we heard that Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger were going to be in a gay cowboy movie we all snickered?

Remember how when we heard Heath Ledger was gonna play The Joker we all groaned and rolled our eyes?

Who's laughing now?

I was at least a little bit prepared for the emotional gut punch this film was going to deliver because I managed to read Annie Proulx's original short story a couple months or so before the movie was released. Whatever giggle factor might have existed in the basic concept was completely undone by Proulx's coolly precise and yet absolutely tender prose. The emotional power comes from the story's pure and earnest simplicity. There's no irony there. No winking. This wasn't going to be a story about "gay cowboys," I realized. This was going to be a quiet tragedy about the limits we place on ourselves and how those limits can ultimately ruin our lives.

And then Ang Lee and screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Osanna got ahold of it and turned it into a bonafide friggin' epic. Once Ledger and Gyllenhaal arrived to breathe life into the characters, the stage was set for one of the best Hollywood films of the preceeding two decades or so.

I know it kind of became a joke with its plaintive, distinctive soundtrack, the "I wish I knew how to quit you" line, and all the "Brokeback to the Future" and "Brokeback of the Rings" parodies. But go back rewatch it and remind yourself how you felt the first time you saw it. If you don't cry by the end, then you're probably the type of person who kills and eats puppies in your spare time.

50 Days 50 Films - #38 "American Beauty" (Sam Mendes)

I sort of feel like it's become really popular to hate on this movie these days. When it came out in 1999, it felt like a total revelation and nobody could stop talking about how great it was. And then, just a few years later, it was all about how Hollywood was trying to cynically replicate the indie spirit and Mena Suvari is a shitty actress and Todd Haynes did the whole Suburban dystopia thing so much better in "Far From Heaven" and it's actually a really conservative movie and Alan Ball clearly hates women and someone somewhere was a sellout and blah blah blah blah blah...

Can't we just appreciate a good story?

I'm not going to bother trying to rebut all that invective, aside from saying I really don't see it as woman hating but I guess I can see how you could read it that way. I actually found Annette Benning's character fairly sympathetic. But whatever. Feel free to see in it what you want to see.

For me, I just really connected with the story. I don't know why. I was a 21-year-old death metal kid when I saw it, so I certainly was no 40+ nebbish having a midlife crisis. But there was something about Lester Burnham's (Kevin Spacey) pure sense of need in this film that I plugged into. Spacey found all his little psychological nooks and crannies, and managed to turn a character who (on the page at least) is pretty vile into a complex individual I found myself rooting for.

That holds true across the board for all the characters (except for maybe Wes Bentley's Ricky Fitts, who really does feel like a writer's construction). For the record, my crush on Thora Birch after seeing this movie was intense and complete, and was amplified the following year with her turn in "Ghost World." It was only after she popped up in that really shitty Limp Bizkit video that I kind of wrote her off.

I love Benning in this thing. Chris Cooper knocks it out of the park. Hell, I even like Mena Suvari.

Was this movie overrated at the time? I don't know. Probably. But it's a film I return to every few years or so, and I find it just as emotionally rich and psychologically compelling as I did the first time I saw it. For me, this one has a staying power that, frankly, a lot of those beloved 90s "indie movies" really don't.

50 Days 50 Films - #39 "Jacob's Ladder" (Adrian Lyne)

I love horror movies.

I mean, I've always loved horror movies. Even since I was a little kid — and consequently way too young for most of them — I just ate them up. Couldn't get enough.

By the time I was 10 or 11, I was a pretty savvy horror-film viewer. I knew all the tropes and conventions of the all different subgenres — the spooky castles and fog of the old Universal films, the first-person killer POV of the slasher movies, the brooding shadows and ominous sound design of the haunted house films. I wasn't even a teenager, but I already felt like I'd seen it all.

And then came Adrian Lyne's 1990 masterpiece "Jacob's Ladder."

I've already talked about the arthouse and transgressive qualities of Clive Barker's "Hellraiser." Lyne's film works in similar ways, but it's much more artful in its approach and WAY scarier because it depicted a world that seemed at least a little bit relatable to my own. Barker's vision was so far out there I just could never really wrap my brain around it.

There were images in this film that were unlike anything I'd ever seen in a movie before, and the crazy see-sawing linear structure was discomfiting in a way that, as a kid, I just had no context to grapple with. The movie got under my skin in ways that I didn't understand. It really felt like a trip down the rabbit hole into someone else's madness, with all the pain and desperation and hopelessness that such a journey would entail.

It would be hard, probably, to watch this movie now and really get a sense of how profoundly influential it was on the genre at the time. So much of the imagery has been cribbed and repackaged over and over and over again in the two decades since, so what seemed truly disturbing and completely original at the time now sort of feels like your average, second-rate Nine Inch Nails music video. But some of my favorite moments from this film aren't the batshit ones, but rather the small little touches. The scene where Tim Robbins gets lost in the subway is one of the quietest moments in the film, but it's utterly terrifying in that it successfully captures the slow degradation of reality and perception that characterizes the most vivid nightmares. And the close-up shot of Robbins lying, eyes wide, in the ice-filled bathtub is  heartbreaking in its sense of absolute futility. That's the moment where you realize this guy's not getting out of this thing with his body and soul intact.

It's pretty dated now and, like most Hollywood films, it felt obliged to deliver a nice, gift-wrapped little coda that suddenly "explains" everything to us in the most patronizing way possible (studio interference, I'm sure). It's a true flaw of the film and one I, to this day, have a hard time getting past. But, such flaws aside, this was the first "horror" movie I saw that really opened up my mind to the psychological and spiritual possibilities of the genre. It was an absolute mind-fuck of the highest order.

50 Days 50 Films - #40 "Michael Clayton" (Tony Gilroy)

Writer-director Tony Gilroy Famously conceived of the premise for his 2007 film "Michael Clayton" while working on the script for  the 1998 Al Pacino horror thriller "The Devil's Advocate." The story is that while doing background research, he encountered a "fixer" — the guy tasked to do all the shit jobs no one else wanted to do — at a tony New York law firm. The seed was thus planted.

Interestingly, you could interpret "Michael Clayton" as a more real-world companion to "The Devil's Advocate." But whereas the first movie is a cartoon (an intensely entertaining cartoon, but a cartoon nonetheless), "Michael Clayton" manages to be truly terrifying in that its depiction of corporate avarice is so unnervingly plausible.

At its core, "Michael Clayton" is a pretty standard paranoid legal thriller of the John Grisham/Scott Turrow variety — which is probably why it didn't get a lot of Oscar notice in the year of "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood." No new ground is paved here. But it's just so much better than the genre typically allows. Gilroy is one of the sharpest writers working in Hollywood today and has been hovering at or near the A-list for nearly two decades. Watching him play with words is sort of like being a teenage guitar student and hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time. Tom Wilkinson's manic opening monologue is just so jarringly excellent — the sort of writing that makes me want to pack it in and become a beet farmer because I just know I'll never be that good.

"Michael Clayton" was Gilroy's first time in the director's chair, but you would never guess it. The movie is slick and self-assured in a way that, by rights, should only come after decades of experience. The performances are note-perfect, and it manages to be visually stylish without every becoming gimmicky. 

At the center of this film are a group of four shockingly good performances. Sidney Pollack reminds us that he was always an actor first, and both Wilkinson (as a bipolar senior partner) and Tilda Swinton (as a conflicted but corrupt corporate executive) prove why they are two of the best actors working in Hollywood today. But Clooney is the revelation here. I've always sort of liked him, but I've always really thought of him more as a movie star than a true master of his craft. But he manages to invert his star charisma here and present us with the sort of jaded everyman we've become accustomed to seeing Paul Giamatti play. There's a harried, worn-in quality to his performance that rings completely true.

If you missed this one when it came out in favor of the splashier Oscar bait from that year, I'd say go back and give it a look.

50 Days 50 Films - #41 "The Neverending Story" (Wolfgang Petersen)

When I was a kid we didn't have cable, and I don't remember my parents taking me to see a lot of movies. I'm sure they did, at least sometimes. The ones I remember being drug to, though, weren't necessarily meant for kids. I saw "Amadeus" in the theater when I was like six years old, for example, and I distinctly remember having no idea what the fuck was going on with that guy.

This wasn't always the case, of course. Mom and Dad (somewhat grudgingly, I suspect) did take me to a few kid's movies. I'm pretty sure we went to see "Return of the Jedi," and I vividly remember seeing "E.T." at the DeVargas Mall theater in Santa Fe and crying more poor little eyes out. But these were more the exception than the rule, and so consequently there were a whole mess of 80s kid movies that dominated popular culture at the time but with which I was only vaguely familiar. "Star Wars" wasn't really my thing, and I would only really discover Indiana Jones when I was a little older. And, with the exception of "Robin Hood," Disney films played almost zero part in my burgeoning cinematic consciousness. 

What I did have, however, was my dad's friend Louis, who had one of those behemothic early 80s satellite dishes in his back yard. He didn't get HBO for whatever reason, but he did get The Movie Channel, which at that point (early-mid 80s) was already kind of an also-ran. And he used to record movies for me on his VCR.

So, by and large, my favorite kids films of the 80s tended not to be blockbusters but rather the slightly off-kilter, older, and foreign ones that I assume TMC could afford to pay the licensing fees for. I never saw Ralph Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings" adaptation or even Bass & Rankin's "The Hobbit" cartoon, but I just about wore out my copy of the B&R follow-up "The Return of the King" (the one where John Huston did the voice of Gandalf). The original "Planet of the Apes" was a mind blower to me, the Dabney Coleman-starring "Cloak & Dagger" was a perennial favorite, and the Australian cartoon/live-action mashup "Dot and the Kangaroo" pretty much never left my VCR.

The king of them all, however, was Wolfgang Petersen's 1984 classic "The Neverending Story."

I was a lonely, bullied kid who read too much and spent way too much time inside my own imagination. In other words, I was Bastian. I don't think I can overstate the degree to which I identified with that character. And that (the movie seemed to be saying) was okay. Imagination is good. It made me special. It might even help me save the universe.

Lack of imagination (such as I perceived I saw in all the football, skateboarding and country music obsessed douchebags I spent elementary school with) was... well, The Nothing.

I wanted to be Atreyu. I wanted to fly around on my own luck dragon and — in some fundamental way — I believed that was possible.

I wanted to be the hero.

You can be the hero, the movie seemed to say.

Just keep reading those books, keep dreaming, and keep your head in the clouds and your feet off the ground.

 Say my name, Bastian.

I rewatched the movie on a nice, brand new Blu Ray disc a few years ago, and the impact it had on me as an adult was immediate and visceral. It transformed me right back into that same little kid watching the same worn-out VHS copy over and over and over again. This is a movie that lodged hooks in me and never let go.

Objectively, I would say it still holds up pretty well. The special effects are better than you might imagine, and the story is more coherent than I suspected it would be to a 30-something year old man.

But some of those images — Artax sinking into the Swamps of Sadness, the red-eyed Gmork exploding from the depths of his cave, the wise but ominous Morla (seen above), the Ivory Tower floating in space amongst the asteroids — are as haunting to me today as they were back then.

I simply love this movie. There's nothing much more to be said about it.

50 Days 50 Films - #42 "The Exorcist III" (William Peter Blatty)

I like William Friedkin's 1973 classic "The Exorcist" well enough. It's a great movie, and for a few years there Friedkin was one of Hollywood's best directors (he'll pop up again on this list).

The problem: it's not all that scary.

The first sequel, 1977's "The Exorcist II: Heretic" is universally reviled as one of the worst movies ever made. So I wouldn't blame you if you've never given "The Exorcist III" much thought.

Give it some thought.

First, it's barely a sequel. Based on Blatty's tangentially related novel "Legion," the story veers in a wildly different direction from the original source material. Very little pre-knowledge of the first novel/film is required.

Second, it's directed by the original writer. Now, I'm the world's biggest Stephen King fan so I know that novelists becoming film directors is, at best, a dicey proposition. But Blatty is in complete control of the material here. He's got an actual cinematic eye that most writers lack.

Third, it's essentially an arthouse horror movie. It's the only modern(ish) American horror film I can think of that revolves around a number of extended, poetic monologues (by Brad Dourif, no less). Some people may find this pretentious, but I eat it up every time I see it. This is a WRITER's movie in a way few horror films are.

Fourth — and most important — it's frickin scary. The long wide shot in the hallway with the nurse is almost Hitchcockian in the way it slowly and deliberately ratchets up the tension until it explodes in a sudden, heart-stopping shock. The shot of the old woman climbing the walls like a spider tips right into the Uncanny Valley. And Blatty manages to build a mood of atmospheric oppressiveness throughout that can become nearly unbearable.

Fifth, George C. Scott. 'Nuff said.

Sure, it's a little silly and dated in spots. But I love the ambition and uncompromising nature of this movie. It barely even nods at the commercial horror marketplace of the early 1990s. It's a movie for grownups, and it works hard to separate itself from its predecessors and be its own thing. Blatty was in fine form here, and it's worth a re-evaluation.

50 Days 50 Films - #43 "Election" (Alexander Payne)

Okay, I'm back. Sorry for the long delay in continuing this countdown. Now that I'm in LA and basically settled, I'm diving right back in. I can't promise I'll post one of these every day. But I'm going to try.

I had a hell of time deciding between this and Payne's 2004 film "Sideways." They're both black comic masterpieces of the highest order (something I don't think you can really say about any of his other films, good as they are). But "Election" is much more vicious in its humor, and it doesn't really have any of the genuine heart that you find in "Sideways" and his later films. So I guess that's why I like it better.

There are only a few movies I can remember seeing where I laughed so hard I hurt myself. "The Big Lebowski." "Shaun of the Dead." Even "Borat" (which, unfortunately, doesn't really hold up on repeated viewings). But "Election," for me, blows them all away. There were moments in this movie that had me laughing so hard I thought I would pass out. I know it's a cliché to say that, but I don't mean it figuratively. I vividly remember actually seeing spots.

The fact that I found this movie THAT funny probably says as much about me as it does about the film. This is a strikingly mean-spirited movie, and the contempt Payne shows for his characters borders on sociopathic. Apparently, that's the comedic wavelength I most appreciate ("Fargo" brought a similar reaction from me a couple years earlier, and I still chuckle at the thought of Marvin getting his head blown off in "Pulp Fiction").

I don't think Payne's wit has been this brutally sharp since. "Sideways" is a brilliant film in a much more nuanced way than this one is, but the overall melancholic tone tamps down the belly laughs in favor of a more ruminative experience. Payne has moved more and more in that direction over the ensuing years — so much so that I can only think of three or four genuine laughs in his most recent film, "Nebraska."  He's become a kinder, gentler social satirist than "Election" would have ever suggested.

I appreciate this middle-period, more reflective Payne. But I have to admit — I kind of miss the cruelty.