Movies from other years that I watched this year

500 Days of Summer – Like When Harry Met Sally, this was a very entertaining movie about a kind of relationship that’s very real, and I remember it often.

A Serious Man - A triumph of setting. Whether you like black comedy or not, 1960s Jewish America is fascinating.

Avatar - It was about as 3-star as a movie can get but a common cultural experience for the global bourgeois.

Crank: High Voltage - Bumped into this on a hotel TV. It was creative, hyperactive, and entertaining. Deliberately offensive, too, but a byproduct of its energy.

Don – I watched this 1978 Amitabh Bachchan action blockbuster on a Kingfisher flight. Here’s one of the song and dance numbers! It was cool, and I recommend everyone watch some of Bachchan’s acting.

The Goonies - Just classic. I’m amazed I never saw this on a school bus, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it as an adult on a plane.

The Hangover - Great writing! Those were the first words out of your mouth after this one, too, right? Plus we don’t have to make any more Vegas films…besides the sequel, I guess.

I Love You, Man - A festival of bad slang and another entertaining Judd Apatow film. It’s great to see Karen from The Office find a guy who really appreciates her.

In Bruges - Totally film-school. You can tell the people who made it loved The Third Man.

The Lost Boys - We watched this in memorial of Corey Haim. Vampire Jack Bauer and Vampire Hunter Corey Feldman made this movie fun. It also had the verve to save its best joke for the last line.

Nanny McPhee – It was interesting to watch this from a teacher’s perspective. Children need discipline, but they also need attention and encouragement.

Paper Heart – The top piece of Trivia on Michael Cera’s IMDB profile is that he broke up with girlfriend Charlyne Yi after three years of dating. Did you know the relationship of these two intentionally awkward people was memorialized in a movie?

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea – To be honest with you, I thought the love story between 5-year olds was a little weird, but the marine aesthetic was very original.

The Puppetmaster (戲夢人生) – There wasn’t as much traditional Chinese puppetry as I expected because the focus is on life under Japanese occupation for the ordinary people of Taiwan. The purpose of the movie is understanding more than entertainment, but if you’re interested, you’ll be satisfied.

Red Cliff (赤壁) – The biggest-budget movie in Chinese history, an international blockbuster, and an excellent introduction to Romance of the Three Kingdoms and classical Chinese culture. I watched this movie with my parents and used it to explain everything from the zither to tea ceremonies.

Slumdog Millionaire – I watched this on my flight to India. “Paper Planes” was stuck in my head the rest of the trip. My friend once said “giving Slumdog Millionare Best Picture is like giving P.F. Chang’s Best Chinese Restaurant,” but Holly/Bollywoodness aside, the greatest quality of this movie was capturing the pace and the color of India. We’re living in the drab half of the world.

Summer Palace (頤和園)- This film about young Chinese was banned in the PRC for showing two things: the Tiananmen Square protests and a lot of sex. It’s a long film about an unhappy woman that still has its own flawed beauty.

Twilight - I liked it much better than the book because there was so much less catty internal monologue, and the blue filter was all that was needed to set the mood. Too bad they couldn’t print the text for the books in navy blue, too.

Up - There are a million things to like about this wonderful movie, and you’ve heard them all before, so I’ll just praise the dogs’ dialogue once more. That is verisimilitude, my friends.

What I liked about this year’s movies

The Borrowers (借り暮らしのアリエッティ) - This year’s contribution from Studio Ghibli (the Japanese Spirited Away studio) had beautiful, soothing animation and music, and the protagonist’s family was a model for mottai nai (not letting anything go to waste). The heroine, 14-year old Arrietty, was a good role model.

Charlie St. Cloud - Not bad, particularly dubbed into Japanese so all the lines sounded fresh.

Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called My Bride! (クレヨンしんちゃん 超時空！嵐を呼ぶオラの花嫁) - The Simpsons of Japan once again dishes out Fun for the Whole Family!. Sadly, creator Yoshito Usui passed away in 2009. The funniest part was the vicious squadron of super-powered 30-something single women in bridal dresses that pesters Shin-chan the whole movie.

Death at a Funeral - African-American movies usually don’t get much attention, but this was the best comedy I saw this year. It was so much fun. The only downside is that it’s a remake of a 2007 British film.

Eat Pray Love - I liked only one thing about it: the food.

Flipped - I don’t know how it ends because our flight landed right before the climax, but it’s a great portrayal of junior high school. It’s so easy to be a bad person then without having any bad intentions just because you’re so wrapped up in yourself. You don’t realize yet that the things you’re so worried about are trifles and happiness comes from reaching out. As easy as it is for a school setting to become “PAYBACK TIME” for a writer, this is bright and forgiving and moves along at a slice-of-life pace. It was great to see the mentally handicapped get some attention, too.

Harry Potter 7-1 - Twilight tried but failed to make Washington state as depressing as England. This film was beautifully made and rescued most of the important details from the sprawling book, about which I have complaints I’ve detailed here. I don’t like the later Potters because they didn’t adequately replace the charm and creativity that marked the earlier, lighter stuff. If Rowling wanted to be dark, she should have let me write it. Anyway, the Harry Potter releases are always nice cultural moments.

Housefull - My driver and I ducked into this movie in Agra, India, and it was a nice escape from the dust and heat. It was a blockbuster with average reviews, but I enjoyed it. By the way, just in case you think India is conservative in every way, check out this clip. Families are traditional as a whole, but the pop culture is edging closer to the United States. I noticed it in both this film and the Mumbai playbills.

Inception - Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the most successful actors in the world, but this was his first movie that I really liked. Original, original, original. I hope its success inspires more creative scriptwriting.

Knight and Day - 2.5000 stars and flustered me by putting the Running of the Bulls in Sevilla, but Tom Cruise does some of the most fun action movie god-moding I’ve ever seen.

The Other Guys - Even when his movies aren’t home runs, I can count on Will Ferrell to tell jokes I’ve never heard before. By the way, this is the second time he’s done the accountant character: check him out as a tax collector in Stranger Than Fiction, an underrated work inspired (it seems to me) by Miguel de Unamuno’s Niebla.

The Social Network - You’ve heard plenty about this already, and I’m guessing it’ll win the Oscar this year. (Isn’t it interesting that you can have separate arguments about which film is the “best picture” and which is the “Best Picture©”?) I, too, thought it was excellent. It was fascinating that an expressionless person was the emotional focal point: something crazy would happen, and I’d look forward to Mark Zuckerberg not reacting. That said, the Winklevoss twins stole the show. I was impressed by 49-year old writer Aaron Sorkin’s acute portrayal of 2004 Harvard and its students. The buzz-saw fast and sharp dialogue was mind candy for me but too much of a good thing for some of my foreign friends, who had to sweat to understand what was said or follow all the subtitles. The closing shot was inspired, too.

Temple Grandin - The TV Movie of the Year improves upon A Beautiful Mind in portraying a genius with mental issues. I could especially relate to it because my own brother is autistic. Great acting by Claire Danes.

Toy Story 3 – I usually dislike sequels because I don’t like seeing artists put so much time into rehashing concepts, but every Toy Story, while thematically similar in stressing the importance of love and loyalty, had fresh sight gags and creative scenarios that seriously impressed me.

Movies I Would’ve Liked If I’d Seen Them
127 Hours - Not only is the main character bold; the creators and viewers of this film are, as well. I’ll get to it sooner or later.

Enter The Void - Wow, just…what? It doesn’t look like the kind of picture a National Review staffer would recommend, which, besides the epileptic visuals, is precisely what intrigues me.

The King’s Speech – Guess what? 1960 was fifty years ago. It may seem like that decade just happened because it’s constantly referenced by journalists and its music is still so popular, but it was A Long Time Ago. We need to work overtime to keep the (good) values and culture that existed before that in our cultural memory. That’s one reason I’m partial to Western remakes like True Grit and 3:10 to Yuma. I’d like boys to grow up associating “cowboys” with more than just the football team. So I’m glad this movie about the British aristocracy of 1940 and its -positive- values is a success.

Last Train Home - Because loneliness is a serious problem in China…

Breathless - …domestic violence is in South Korea…

Waiting for ‘Superman’ - …and education is in the United States.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - Because I’ve always wanted to see video game aesthetics in a theater. The more references, the merrier, and if you thought this movie was weird, just wait for the next generation, when my peers are writing everything.