Politics make strange bedfellows and movies can make strange politics…

They might not necessarily further the political ideology of the filmmakers because, when good filmmakers do their jobs and serve their story, agendas you wouldn’t anticipate crop up. How else to explain The Dark Knight’s alleged defense of Bush II era terror fighting tactics or what appeared to be a subtle stay-the-course-in-Iraq-so-we-don’t-duplicate-our-past-mistake-in-Afghanistan epilogue in Charlie Wilson’s War?

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But no example (even the ol’ “The Yellow Brick Road” in The Wizard of Oz is a metaphor for the gold standard!) is more bizarre and unexpected than the politics of Rango, opening this weekend.

Yes, I’m talking about the computer animated flick from Paramount and Nickelodeon about a domesticated chameleon who gets lost in the wild wild west of the Mojave Desert, directed by Gore Verbinski (the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) and featuring the voice of Johnny Depp.

Much of the plot is unabashedly borrowed from Chinatown, from the pipe mysteriously dumping water in the middle of nowhere, to the character found dead from drowning out in the desert, to the seemingly innocuous old man in a wheelchair (in this case, a turtle voiced by Ned Beatty, channeling John Huston) who is clearly up to no good. If you want to know what he’s up to, well, just see Chinatown.

This is a wonderfully entertaining and spectacularly well-made movie. The sophistication of the animation, the character modeling, their textures, the cinematography, Hans Zimmer’s marvelous Morricone pastiche score (with lively contributions by Los Lobos), everything is first rate. It amuses children while dealing with mature themes that engage adults. In fact, remove the animals and produce this script as a live action feature and you’d have a badass western.

It also contains genuine laughs and some of the most thrilling and blissfully coherent action I’ve seen at the movies in years. It is well choreographed, flawlessly “shot” and edited, the stakes are high, characters are in legitimate danger, and every punch, bullet, and bat-mounted mole (you’ll have to see the movie) lands.

The story pays homage to classic films other than Chinatown, including It’s A Wonderful Life and countless westerns, while the politics at work are distinctly Eastwoodian. The film flagrantly flouts big government, corruption, and cronyism, while still championing law and order and heralding the power of one; celebrating an individual with the courage to stand up to corruption and evil, even in the face of societal cowardice.

It also overtly riffs on modern political and economic calamities, complete with a devastating recession, a foreclosure crisis, a credit freeze, a run on the bank, et al.

The film’s climax, in fact, features a hallucinatory vision of “The Spirit of the West,” who appears in the guise of Hollywood’s most famous libertarian, garbed in his iconic “Man with No Name” wardrobe (Timothy Olyphant, doing a flawless Clint Eastwood impression).

After falling out of his owners’ car and onto the highway, the eponymous character (energetically voiced by Depp) finds his way to the archetypal western movie town, where the people (actually insects, reptiles, amphibians, and rodents) live in Dirt — literally, as they’re suffering from a severe drought, and because that’s the name of the town. As a chameleon in constant search of his own identity and place in the world, Rango seizes the opportunity as the new “stranger in town,” to invent a back-story that casts himself as a hotshot gunslinger who once killed seven men with a single bullet. Immediately sensing Rango’s ruse, Dirt’s all-powerful Mayor (the aforementioned John Huston-inspired turtle) pins a star on Rango’s colorful Hunter S. Thompson shirt and declares him Sheriff.

This is the first appearance of another (familiar) recurring theme: Hope. More to the point, how the powerful exploit hope and faith. The Mayor growls: “They believe it’s going to get better, against all odds and all evidence that tomorrow will be better than today. They have to believe in something… And right now, Mr. Rango, they believe in you.” He can barely hide his disdain for his hopeful, praying flock.

Despite a scene in which a character tells Rango, “Many years ago, this entire valley was covered in agua [water],” the movie somehow avoids turning into a predictable Hollywood alarmist tale, warning of the imminent disappearance of our precious limited natural resources. You see, in Rango, there is plenty of water, but it is being diverted and hoarded in an effort to manipulate, oppress and ultimately control the proletariat.

This is not an environmental film, it is a political film.

In fact, the Mayor is actually using a trumped-up environmental crisis (the drought) to panic the populace and, while an aquatic “cap and trade” policy is never suggested, shades of global warming hysteria are inescapable.

As a result of the supposed drought, land values are plummeting and the Mayor is buying up property from despondent landowners — who are packing up and leaving for bluer pastures — for pennies on the dollar.

The scene in which the townspeople desperately engage in their Wednesday high noon ritual of a zombie-like choreographed line dance for The Mayor — which includes their slapping each other in the face — in exchange for access to a natural resource that should be freely available to all, is chill-inducing.

When the faucet yields nothing but a dollop of mud, the Mayor addresses the distressed townsfolk, who he refers to as his “acolytes”:

These are difficult times, he tells them. “Sacrifices will have to be made,” echoing President Obama’s familiar refrain, repeated most recently this week.

And then the Mayor eats cake (proverbially), as he and his cronies take to the golf course, enjoying an endless supply of water and chuckling at the naivete of his constituents.

Meanwhile, the town bank’s vault contains a plastic water jug and, when it is revealed that only a 5-day supply remains in “the reserves,” there is a (literal) run on the bank. The Mayor is able to avert the town’s fears, insisting, “As long as we’ve got this water, we’ve got hope.”

All that changes the next morning when it’s discovered that the bank has been robbed — the entire water bottle, snatched by a thieving gang of moles.

The Mayor and his cronies insist that a posse be formed to chase the evildoers, which is little more than sleight of hand on the part of the Mayor, who is sending them on wild goose (mole) chase as a pure distraction, while his diabolical scheme forges ahead unabated.

When Rango and the posse catch up to the culprits, they discover that the water bottle was already empty when the moles stole it.

One astute mole observes: “Someone done robbed that bank before we robbed it.”

It reminded me of the Warren Buffett line: “It is only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” And we learned that we were being robbed all along.

When Rango and his dejected crew return to town, this dialogue exchange occurs:

“Where’s the water?”

“There weren’t no water.”

Much like, after the real world financial meltdown, befuddled Americans asked our leaders, regulator and Wall Street: “Where’s our economy?”

The answer, of course: “There weren’t no economy.”

Unlike the actual financial crisis, however, in Rango there is accountability and justice is done. If only life were like a Clint Eastwood movie.

For the movie anthropologist, Lethal Weapon (1987) is the missing link.  It is the Big Bang of movies with big bangs.  It is the well-spring of a hundred lame imitations, a few good ones, and a lot of parodies.  It is where the most hackneyed of buddy-cop movie clichés were born.  At the time, they were awesome.

It is a movie about many things beyond the slam-bam action and witty banter, including about getting older and looking back, which is particularly apt here.  Looking back at the 1980’s, which I spent in high school, at UC San Diego (go whatever the hell your mascot is – I was too busy partying to care) and the Army, what is striking is how many definitive movies came along and how they led to Hollywood’s present – for better or for worse.  Lethal Weapon remains an archetypal specimen of the kind of movie only Hollywood can make well (despite how often it does it badly) – slick popcorn adventure/comedies with memorable action set-pieces paired with laugh-out-loud hilarity and featuring big stars and top shelf production values.

People natter about the late-60’s and early-70’s as a second Hollywood golden age, but the great films of those years – the Godfathers, the American Graffitis, the Chinatowns did not really change anything.  Sure, they made you look at movies differently, but you look at what flashes across today’s screens and there is no indication these movies ever existed.  Rather, it was in the later 1970’s, starting with Jaws (1975) through Star Wars (1977), that really began the trends we see today – the rollercoaster thriller.  

Following after in the 1980’s, you would go to the movies and constantly see something new.  The great 48 Hours (1982) blew minds with violence and profanity blended with Eddie Murphy’s boundary pushing racial humor.  In 1984, The Terminator set down an archetype of slick, no-flab Roger Corman-esque pulp matched to a real budget and a charismatic superstar wielding the latest high-powered weaponry.  Dirty Harry’s .44 magnum wheel gun went right out the window.  Lethal Weapon was the next logical step.

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Lethal Weapon came out around spring break in 1987.  I was taking finals in my second-to-last trimester of senior year, which for me meant not taking any finals at all because I chose only the lamest, easiest classes to run out the clock, like Introduction to Feminist Theater 101.  We thought the movie would be cool – the ads looked okay and back then Mel Gibson was a star instead of a cautionary example – so we beered up and made our way to the theater.

Holy crap – we had never seen anything like it.  But boy, would we ever see it again.  We had just seen the template for every action movie that would follow over the next two and a half decades.

Re-watch it sometime while playing my favorite drinking game, “Spot the Cliché!”  Start with the opening credits in that mod, slanted typeface, which looks like an italicized Franklin Gothic font.  When The Simpsons did its Biblical action movie parody, there they were again.  Chug, chug.

Then you have Danny Glover’s character Detective Murtaugh introduced with a comfortable but chaotic home life.  Chug.  He’s just about to retire.  Chug.  Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs is an ex-special forces guy.  Chug.  He has a wild shootout at a Christmas tree lot in which he single handedly dispatches a herd of thugs with his trusty Beretta 92F, aka the M9 pistol.  This demonstrates both his awesomeness as well as his craziness – and starts us on yet another beer!

Riggs and Murtaugh team up, hating each other at first.  Chug.  An old Army pal of Murtaugh asks him to investigate the death of his daughter.  Chug.  This uncovers a group of drug importers.  Chug.  Riggs and Murtaugh wisecrack and shoot their way across LA to uncover the conspiracy.  Chug.

Let’s just assume a cliché-fueled chug from here on in after every plot point, shall we?

During their escapades a house detonates in front of them – parodied in The Other Guys but back in 1986 unexpected and kind of cool.  A gunman with a machine gun in a helicopter materializes out of nowhere – apparently the chopper was that sneaky, silent kind that exists only in action movies – to kill a character in mid-exposition with a machine gun.  They also talk a jumper off a roof – another point parodied in Will Ferrell’s latest.  And Murtaugh announces – several times – that he’s too old for this . . . stuff.

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Eventually they get captured and abused – pretty graphically too.  The bad guys take Murtaugh’s daughter hostage and our heroes proceed to kill everyone in their way.  The final MMA fight between Gibson and the terrific Gary Busey as psycho villain Mr. Joshua is the climax – and yes, they do kill the guy when he comes back after you think it’s all over. 

If you’ve dared the Chug-Per-Cliché Challenge, just make sure you have someone to help you find your way to your bed to sleep it off.

Some interesting points:  One the prevalence of Vietnam as a theme.  Both Riggs and Murtaugh are veterans, as is the father of the dead girl and all of the bad guys.  Remember that America pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, so you could be a Vietnam vet and in your early thirties at the time this movie was made (I was surprised to realize that this week is the 20th anniversary of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, which led to Desert Storm, yet I recall it like yesterday).  It was one of the first non-artsy, non-message, pure entertainment movies to discuss Vietnam at all.

Richard Donner, the director, and Glover were no conservatives.  Today, Glover can’t wait to slobber all over scummy Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.  In Lethal Weapon, they were only too happy to have CIA mercenaries as villains.  In the unworthy sequels, the villains include South Africans and gun runners – hilariously, one of the most gun obsessed film series of all times rails against guns – at least guns for the rest of us.

And the guns….   All the villains carried the latest weapons – H&K MP5s or M16s.  Back in 1986, when we wore onions on our belts because it was the style of the day, cops carried .38 revolvers or maybe a M1911A1 .45.  Now, here was a cop carrying the most then-cutting edge of automatics, the Beretta – Riggs remarks about Murtaugh’s .38 that “A lot of old timers carry those.”  And the way Gibson used his automatic was remarkable too – he fired fast, accurately and casually, and he shoots a couple guys almost off-handedly.  There had never been anything like it on screen before.  I’ve owned and carried the M9 for well over a decade and I’ve never been nearly as comfortable with it as Gibson makes himself appear on screen.  Now that’s conservative acting.

This is actually a great performance by Mel Gibson.  When he sticks his gun to his head to try to kill himself, there was a level of convincing torment in the character evoked by Gibson’s performance that really is better than a flick like this deserves.  The character is definitely troubled, and whether Gibson is performing or – as his recent meltdowns indicate – merely behaving, you buy it lock, stock and smoking barrel.  Another aspect is the manifestation of the Mel Martyr Complex – the torture scene where they work him over is brutal.  But then, Mel’s characters always find themselves brutalized – look at how he is abused as Mad Max in The Road Warrior or in the climax of Braveheart.  If you are a shrink and Mel Gibson shows up at your office, ka-ching!  You can feel pretty safe about dropping a down payment on that new BMW 750i.

Lethal Weapon holds up remarkably well (and a big part of the credit goes to Shane Black’s script) – it’s still exciting, funny and its one of those movies you can come across half-way through and watch to the end.  A hundred other films bear its fingerprints – Die Hard (1988) and Kick-Ass (2010) both carry its DNA, as do many others.  For better or worse, The Godfather is a much better film but Lethal Weapon has influenced many more movies than it ever will.   

And it’s not likely any of us will ever be too old for this…stuff…anytime soon.

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Over at Paramount, which was owned by the oil company Gulf and Western, former actor turned producer Robert Evans was given the job of running the place. Evans cut costs dramatically and ran a tight ship with very few managers. He’d inherited some bloated films that lost the studio money. The Gulf and Western Board was meeting to decide if they were going to let Paramount keep the lights on. Evans knew he had to do something to convince them that his movies were going to save the studio. So he got with a friend and made a film for the board (see above), hoping it would turn his fortunes around.

Here’s how Evans Evans puts it:

I thought I was about to be fired. So I had Mike Nichols shoot this 40 minute film for me, which I presented to the unsmiling, 18 member board of Gulf and Western (Paramount’s then-owner) in New York, convincing them at Paramount would be the No. 1 studio in town after the release of Love Story and The Godfather. I signed resignation papers when I arrived in the office, saying they could keep the $300,000 it would cost them to buy out the rest of my contract if they’d just watch this 40 minute film. They agreed. After I screened it, Charlie Bluhdorn, my boss, called me into his office and told me to go back to work. I said “But Charlie, I resigned.” He said “Whaddya want, more money?”

Evans was given the chance to continue making films. And a year later, Love Story and The Godfather were huge hits. He was on a roll. Many more hits were to follow like Rosemary’s Baby, Harold and Maude, True Grit, Chinatown, Marathon Man, Godfather II, The Getaway. The key to his tenure was a lean company that invested in stories and was concerned about the quality of the end product. At a time when the business was floundering around trying to find its way, Paramount lived up to it’s name.

Evans once said that when he ran the studio it was just him and a handful of managers making over 70 films a year. Now it’s hundreds of managers making a few films a year.

Hollywood could learn a lot by looking at the back to basics approach that Robert Evans made and by focusing on quality scripts. In an era of shrinking returns on product, the industry is going to have to learn how to make quality movies again that get audiences personally invested in the stories.

For more info on Evans, make sure you check out his film “The Kid Stays In the Picture.”

Anyone who would sign a petition demanding release of a fugitive child rapist is actively hurting a business I love and DOES NOT speak for all of the entertainment industry. America needs to know that by viewing/buying our product, the public is not supporting these views.

Our industry is made up mostly of hard working, decent people who believe in this country and the justice system. I strongly feel that one of the bigger reasons for the decline in film and television is that the public, our customer base, has simply had enough of Hollywood.  And I don’t blame them.

I have a question for those supporting Roman Polanski: Is there no line?  Is there no line at which you won’t blindly support someone? He’s an artist? So what? Charles Manson was a decent guitar player.  Hitler could paint. Roman Polanski is a good director. So-the-hell what? This man drugged and anally raped a thirteen-year-old girl. The transcript of her testimony can be found online. Read it.  It should horrify you.

It wasn’t “rape-rape”? What the hell does that even mean, Ms. Goldberg? Are you suggesting that the little girl was at fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? For not more forcefully resisting an adult her mother placed her with?  A famous man?

Or maybe you meant that “statutory rape” isn’t “rape-rape.”  Even if you accept the insane notion that a drugged and drunk thirteen-year-old COULD consent to sex with a forty-year-old man, THAT ISN’T WHAT HAPPENED!  Read her testimony.  Polanski forcibly raped her.  She told him “no” repeatedly.  When asked why she didn’t fight more, the girl testified, “I was afraid of him.”  That sure as hell seems like “rape-rape’” to me.

Is it something else in the view of a self-proclaimed “feminist”?

Another popular justification seems to be, “The victim forgives him.”  As a former police officer I can tell you unequivocally that the victim of a crime is often the person least capable of making that decision. They are frightened and humiliated. They just want it all to go away.

Twenty-years or so ago, the Domestic Violence laws were changed in most states requiring police officers to sign complaints instead of asking the abused spouse to do so. Why? Because a lot of them wouldn’t. They were so afraid or so used to the abuse, they didn’t think they could stop it. Jaycee Lee Dugard, the little girl kidnapped by Phillip Garrido, held and raped for eighteen years and forced to give birth to two children in a tent in a backyard (one when she was fourteen), APOLOGIZED to her family.  After enduring half a lifetime of abuse, she is the one who feels guilty.  Does that mean we let him go?

No. It is a just society’s DUTY to seek justice for them, ESPECIALLY when that victim is a child.

I gratefully added my name to BigHollywood’s petition. Grateful for the chance to tell my customers, the public, that we in Hollywood are not all immoral. We are not all valueless. We are not all possessed by the kind of moral relativism that would excuse raping a child because “Chinatown” was a good film.

Enough.

Edward Allen Bernero, Writer/Director/Executive Producer

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

#1 – JAWS
I saw this all-time classic as a 9-year-old on opening day, and saw it a second time at the Saturday matinee. To this day, I am afraid to swim in the ocean. That shark is always there in my imagination. The poster is literal, but haunting.

#2 – CHINATOWN
This is truly a work of art. The smoke shrouding the ultimate mystery of Evelyn Mulwray, and the stylized version of Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson), the hard-boiled detective who unravels it all.

#3 – THE DARK KNIGHT
Impossible to separate Heath Ledger’s death from his remarkable interpretation of The Joker. This is an amazing image. In 30 years, I will look at this poster and immediately feel the impact of Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece.

#4 – BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
You can almost hear Audrey Hepburn warbling “Moon River” at the sight of this iconic poster. Every woman wanted to be her and every man wanted to be with her.

#5 – SECRETARY
The 2002 cult classic about a sadomasochistic relationship between a demanding lawyer (James Spader) and a submissive secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The movie is an under-appreciated gem. The poster may be even better.

#6 – UNFORGIVEN
This is my favorite poster made for Clint Eastwood’s masterful revisionist Western. Simple. Classic. Tells you everything you need to know about Clint’s Bill Munny character.

#7 – AMERICAN BEAUTY
A beautiful image that suggests the perversity that lies just beneath the surface of the suburban neighborhood created by screenwriter Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes.

#8 – SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
“You will let me know when those lambs stop screaming, won’t you?” You can almost hear Dr. Hannibal Lecter say it. The Death’s-head moth “lodged” in Clarice Starling’s throat. Brilliant image.

#9 – VERTIGO
An ode to acrophobia as Detective Scottie Ferguson (as played by Jimmy Stewart) battles his fear of heights while becoming obsessed with Madeleine Elster (the stunning Kim Novak). This kaleidoscopic design immediately brings the strains of Bernard Hermann’s amazing score into my head.

#10 – PULP FICTION
Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in all her swagger. Yes, she does wind up with a sharpie circle on her chest and a shot of adrenaline, but the whole gritty movie is captured with this image.

HONORABLE MENTION
- in no particular order -
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
SWEENEY TODD
MEAN STREETS
AMADEUS
GONE WITH THE WIND
METROPOLIS
KING KONG (1939 Fay Wray version)
CLOVERFIELD
THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

I am an unabashed lover of the acting craft. I see virtually every movie, large and small, that passes through the US marketplace, and, taking nothing away from Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Penelope Cruz and Heath Ledger, not all of 2008’s best performances have been recognized. I’m not going to be obvious here. Clint Eastwood was snubbed for Gran Torino, but he received lots of acclaim for the role including being named Best Actor by the National Board of Review. My goal is to highlight 10 performances from last year that have received virtually no acclaim in the US. Many of these roles can be found in hardly-seen, under-appreciated movies that came and went without much notice. Each and every one of these movies deserve a spot in your Netflix (or Blockbuster) cue.

My list is by no means definitive. If you have a favorite performance from 2008 that sticks with you, this is a great place to tell the world. There were 20 actors nominated on Oscar night, but there is a lot of great work that hasn’t been recognized with a walk down the red carpet.

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1. JEAN DUJARDIN, 0SS 117: CAIRO NEST OF SPIES
This was the funniest movie of the year for me. OSS 117, a reboot of a previously successful franchise, was a hit in France, but generated only about $300,000 in very limited engagements in the US. Dujardin is a James Bond-style secret agent who bumbles his way across the middle east with the panache of Sean Connery and the comic physicality of Peter Sellers. He was nominated for Best Actor at the Cesar Awards (French Oscars), but almost nobody saw Nest of Spies here. The sequel OSS 117: Rio Ne Repond Plus is due later this year. Steve Martin, who badly resurrected the Pink Panther franchise, should watch this movie with a deep sense of shame.

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2. PATRICIA CLARKSON, ELEGY
Sold about $3.5M in tickets at American box offices. In many ways, Penelope Cruz’s performance here is more courageous and luminous than her winning turn in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but I am choosing to focus on Patricia Clarkson who brings a heartfelt honest to her small role. I am always impressed when a woman is unafraid to appear nude in a film, especially if it gives us a window into that character’s soul. Clarkson is close to 50 and her character is maintaining a purely sexual relationship with Ben Kingsley’s David Kepesh. She has no illusions about being young or being in love. She is settling for the occasional comfort of a tumble with this man, and sadly, her constant career demands make a permanent loving relationship a faraway idea.

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3. BILL IRWIN, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
Loading a dishwasher has never been so dramatic. Primarily a theatre actor (he played George alongside Kathleen Turner in the 2005 Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf), he does something very different in Jonathan Demme’s documentary-style Rachel Getting Married. He is the buttoned-down, peacemaker who is hiding a shattered emotional interior that comes forward in a remarkable scene in which he demonstrates how to correctly load a dishwasher. Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway and Golden Globe nominee Rosemarie DeWitt were both excellent, but Irwin’s performance has stayed with me in a meaningful way.

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4. ELSA ZYLBERSTEIN, I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG
This extraordinary French film from the masterful Phillippe Claudel features the luminescent-but-prickly Kristin Scott Thomas, who was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Drama and many other awards. Elsa Zylberstein portrays the fully accepting sister who loves without any strings attached. She unwinds the mystery about why her sister committed a horrible act, and simultaneously remains patient and receptive. She allows for as happy an ending as this film can possible allow. Her soulful beauty softens the rough edges of Kristin Scott Thomas’ Juliette.

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5. CHIWETEL EJIOFOR, REDBELT
David Mamet does a movie about Mixed Martial Arts. Go figure. The master of dialogue practices jujitsu in real-life, and now he has found a way to incorporate it into one of his films. Chiwetel Ejiofer portrays Mike Terry whose mantra is that “There is always an escape.” Some Hollywood types, played with the appropriate dollops of sleaze and smarminess by Tim Allen and Joe Mantegna, put him in an impossible situation, and he must find the escape. A buff Ejiofor delivers physically (easy to buy him as a badass), and he has a rigid sense of honor. His scene with Emily Mortimer in which she exorcises a past demon in worth the price of admission.

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6. KARINA FERNANDEZ, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
I love Happy-Go-Lucky. Writer/Director Mike Leigh takes a full year rehearsing and improving with his actors in order to finalize the script. He hit solid gold with Poppy, played by Sally Hawkins, who won the Golden Globe and, I assume, narrowly missed an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. The same can be said for Eddie Marsan as the anal retentive driving instructor Scott. But my shout-out here goes British stage actress Karina Fernandez who, in two short scenes, demonstrates her rigid and unbending love for the flamenco and that those very steps may be the only thing keeping her from becoming emotionally unhinged.

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7. HAAZ SLEIMAN, THE VISITOR
So much of the lightness in Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins’ turn in The Visitor is his reaction to the joyful drumming of Haaz Sleiman’s Tarek Khalil character. His co-star Danai Jekesai Gurira is also wonderful, but something tells me that the Lebanese-born Sleiman will be heard from again. After drumming with reckless abandon at one point, Tarek realizes that he is going to be late and says his girlfriend will kill him because he’s on Arab time, “It means I’m late by an hour. All Arabs are late by an hour, It’s genetic. We can’t help it.”

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8. CANTINCA UNTARU, THE FALL
The weirdest, most fantastical movie of 2008 was directed by Tarsem Singh, whose best-known previous film was the strikingly visual horror pic The Cell, starring Jennifer Lopez. This is a fable told by an injured, drug-addicted stuntman in the early 20th century who befriends a little girl. Lee Pace (brilliant in the 2003 film Soldier’s Girl and also seen in ABC’s short-lived Pushing Daisies) weaves a spectacular fantasy that plays out in the imagination of a little girl played by novice actor Cantinca Untaru. I love this movie, and I’m not alone. Roger Ebert wrote, “You might want to see this for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it.” Part Wizard of Oz. Part Lord of the Rings. 100% original. And it all works because of the innocence and spontaneity of a chIld actress before the camera for the first time.

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9. KATE DEL CASTILLO, UNDER THE SAME MOON
She is absolutely beautiful and has a number of popular telenovelas to her credit including El Derecho De Nacer, Ramona, La Mentira and Imperio De Crystal before mading the jump to American television with the 2002 PBS series American Family from creator Gregory Nava (Selena, Mi Familia). This heartbreaking story of a little Mexican boy who decides to try to make it over the border to find his mother, working as a nanny and sending money home, is sweet and pulls at the heartstrings, and this Patricia Riggen movie also features a strong performance from Mexican comic actor Eugenio Derbez.

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10. JASON BUTLER HARNER, CHANGELING
I did not like Changeling. I am a huge fan of Eastwood the director, and, for me, Angelina Jolie’s performance was one-note, Jeffrey Donovan from TV’s Burn Notice was doing a 1930’s rat-ta-ta-tat dialect while Oscar nominee Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) seemed to be playing it present day. As for the art direction, it’s been done so much better in classics like Chinatown and more recent noir like L.A. Confidential. But, the reason to see the movie is Jason Butler Harner as serial killer Gordon Stewart Northcott. He conveys a certain cavalier smarminess when confronted with his evil deeds. He enjoys the infamy he has achieved and uses it to manipulate and torture Jolie’s Christine Collins. Unsettling and unforgettable.

HONORARY MENTION
-in no particular order-

MILA KUNIS, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

MISTY UPHAM, FROZEN RIVER

DON CHEADLE, TRAITOR

DAVID KROSS, THE READER

REBECCA HALL, VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

JEFFREY WRIGHT, CADILLAC RECORDS

EVAN RACHEL WOOD, THE WRESTLER

DANNY MCBRIDE, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

DOMINIQUE PINON, ROMAN DE GARE

TILDA SWINTON, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

PAUL RUDD, ROLE MODELS

RICKY GERVAIS, GHOST TOWN

ALAN RICKMAN, BOTTLE SHOCK

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