Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail.

The cast was right out of a Robert Altman film, there was a large number of well known actors including William Hurt (Paulson – Sec. Treasury), James Woods (Fuld – Lehman Bros), Paul Giamatti (Bernanke – Chair, Federal Reserve), Bill Pullman (Dimon – JPMorgan Chase), Ed Asner (Buffet – Berkshire Hathaway), Billy Crudup (Geithner – President, Federal Reserve), Matthew Modine (Thain – CIT Group), Tony Shalhoub (Mack – Morgan Stanley), Topher Grace (Wilkinson), Cynthia Nixon (Davis), and many others. They all looked and played their parts very well with the exception that there seemed to be no effort made toward sounding like the people they played. It was difficult to get past the notable voices of the actors. Paul Giamatti sounds like Paul Giamatti and nothing like Ben Bernanke. Hurt sounded nothing like Paulson. Crudup nothing like Geithner. Perfection wasn’t necessary, but it seemed as though there was little to no effort made at all by the actors to at least sound a little more like the real people they were portraying and less like themselves.

The story opens on a  shot of Ronald Reagan. It is news footage of a speech he gives on deregulation. Credits play as we see an image of Clinton signing a piece of legislation as the audio of newsmakers make mention that this is Congress’ bill being singed. Alan Greenspan is seen and states, “Don’t regulate for regulation’s sake,” which is followed by Bush proclaiming everyone should live out the American dream and own their own home. Miscellaneous clips talks of high profits and subprime loans, and then mortgage meltdown and government bailout.

At this point, I am thinking this film is going to be about blame… and that blame is going to be deregulation ushered in by Reagan, the Republican Congress during the Clinton years, Bush 43, and Reagan through Bush’s Federal Reserve appointee, Alan Greenspan.

This prompts me to check the cast and crew to see who they support and if they are bringing their agenda to this story in their hopes to rewrite history and put Republicans in a negative light and Democrats in a positive light before the election in 2012. And, of course, the Director and the Writer are both ardent Obama supporters. All those at HBO support Obama like Co-President Eric Kessler, Co-President Richard Plepler, President of HBO entertainment Sue Naegle, President of HBO Films Len Amato and Executive Producers Paula Weinstein, Carol Fenelon, and Ezra Swerdlow. Even the Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and Casting Director Alexa Fogel have contributed to Obama’s 2008 campaign. And the Obama supporting list of actors is long too: Topher Grace, William Hurt, Matthew Modine, Cynthia Nixon, and Amy Carlson. As if that’s not enough, there are many other ardent left-wingers like Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, and Ed Asner.

Then the story opens on James Woods playing Dick Fuld, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers… an ardent Democrat and Obama supporter. James Woods stands out as the political maverick in the cast. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Woods is quoted as saying, “I’ve always said that the next Obama slogan should be, ‘Barack Obama: Putting America Out of Business,’ because that’s what he’s doing.” So I decided to turn off my bias filter and give this story a chance.

As the story unfolded, I saw that the villains in this film weren’t the Republicans, rather it was a single villain… the total and complete financial collapse of our nation, or as Bernanke puts it, “[replaying] the depression of the 1930s. Only this time… far, far worse.” So, regardless of any one American’s political affiliation watching this film, total and complete financial collapse is an enemy we can all collectively desire to defeat.

The heroes, however, that’s a little more complicated. The actual heroes of the story are Republicans Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury), Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve), and Independent Timothy Geithner (President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). They artfully maneuver their way through the minefield of economic collapse. Bear Stearns has already collapsed, Lehman Brothers is on the brink, Merrill Lynch next, and with all this going on, AIG – the safety net for all these creditors – was in the process of imploding from its own lack of liquidity and inability to meet its obligations. If AIG falls, all the banks fall. People would pull their money out of their banks and there would be no George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) trying to stop the “run on the bank” by convincing his depositors to take only what they need from his honeymoon stash. America, as we know it, would be in ruins.

Every maneuver in their quest to stabilize the markets is met with unpredictable reactions. Once they believe they’ve averted disaster, the pundits, investors, and citizens react differently than expected. It’s a reminder of Nobel winning economist F.A. Hayek’s precept that, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

But in the end, as we all know, it was capital injections in the form of a Troubled Asset Relied Plan (TARP) that would “save the day.” In short, the plan would see the U.S. government purchase assets and equity from all financial institutions, even if they didn’t need it, in order to stabilize and strengthen the financial sector. As Bernanke put it, the upside would be stabilizing banks faster, the downside would be nationalizing a few banks. Their plan to soften the blow was that they would force private banks to participate in this plan under law, but that the government would not have a voting interest or the ability to tell the banks how they use the money injected into their coffers… leaving the question to the viewer, “They will lend it out, won’t they?”

But, was TARP the right solution? If one believes it was, then the heroes of this story are without a doubt Republicans Paulson and Bernanke. But, if one believes it wasn’t the right solution, then the Republicans are just kicking the can down the road. Regardless, the story is a quest for a private solution, according to Paulson.

As Republican public relations guru Jim Wilkson (Topher Grace) says at one point, “You just can’t hand the banks massive piles of cash. Nobody’s going to go for it. To the Republicans, it’s nationalization. To the Democrats, it’s a bailout. And the banks are going to go ballistic.”

The story is well crafted and builds suspense out of the unexciting topics of finance and economics. There were parts that bothered me, like making the Republican Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, look like an immature boob, or Republican presidential candidate Senator McCain look like he is clueless on economic matters contrasted by Senator Obama’s grip on the subject, or simplistically blaming deregulation while omitting the fault of Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, or that derivatives and subprime loans were born during Clinton’s presidency, or more importantly that in 2006 Republicans pleaded with the Democratically-controlled Congress to begin taking measures by pulling the reigns back on Fannie and Freddie to mitigate the impending economic disaster.

Those criticisms, however, were offset by so many of the lines delivered by Topher Grace’s character, Jim Wilkson, who best resembled the attitudes and feelings of most Americans during this time. At one point, it is suggested that the government purchases up the toxic assets of the banks, to which he responds, “Ohhh, call it cash for trash,” he also calls nationalization “the N-word” and that it is un-American, and he suggests that the government running the banks would be like the government running the Post Office, which they “run like a dream.” Another character addresses the issue that the government having the ability to dictate compensation would be the biggest “brain drain this country has ever seen.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is characterized as something like the head of the Mafia. Her character comes across as an elitist snob, which I particularly enjoyed.

The movie was a surprise. Although it wasn’t 100 percent balanced, it was enough for this right-winger to actually enjoy it. And the filmmakers did a pretty decent job packing in a lot of characters and a lot of story into a short amount of time. If Obama-loving HBO can pull off the upcoming Sarah Palin story, Game Change, and the Dick Cheney movie, Angler, with the same deftness and fairness, I will be pleasantly surprised.  Better yet… I will be astonished.

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That double murder was a real event known as The Walsh Street Police Shootings and it was done by the Petingill family, a vicious gang of armed bank robbers run by a woman named Kath Pettingill, in reprisal for the killing of one of their own by police. The men charged were acquitted in court, but after one of them was gunned down by rival criminals, his widow later told Melbourne reporters her late husband and the others charged did do the crime they escaped conviction for.

In his film treatment of this real story, writer – director David Michôd shows us this sordid crime family as one of brothers overseen by a sociopathic matriarch, Janine “Smurf” Cody (Jacki Weaver), America’s Ma Barker and her depression era bank robbing, murderous sons would have loved.

Like Ma, Smurf loves her sons.  In fact she loves them so much that the scent of incest wafts through the theater as she kisses each full on the mouth.

Eldest son and armed robber Andrew “Pope” Cody (Ben Mendelsohn) is hiding from a bunch of killer cops and not taking the pills that temper his considerable temper. Middle brother Craig (Sullivan Stapelton) has an unstable personality from taking the street drugs he sells. Youngest brother Darren (Luke Ford) is ambivalent but goes along with whatever his older brothers do.

Michôd reveals the pathology of these pathetic Melbourne animals in their blue collar kingdom through the eyes of their emotionally numbed 17 year old nephew, Joshua “J” Cody (James Frecheville). He’s living with his uncles and grandmother because his mother, who kept him shielded from her criminal brothers and mother, has overdosed on heroin and he has no place else to go. Soon after arriving, his uncle Craig welcomes him into the family way of doing things by having him point a gun at two street hoodlums.

That inclusiveness reverses shortly after a family friend and fellow crime partner is murdered by the same killer cops gunning for Pope. The Cody boys retaliate by killing two policemen. At that point,  detective Leckie (Guy Pearce) does what all good police investigators do, he goes predator and isolates the weakest member from his criminal herd.  That’s “J” in this case, and Leckie starts applying the pressure for him to testify against his own blood.  Smurf being the cunning animal she is knows “J” knows too much, so she conspires with the corrupt cops hunting her sons to murder her own grandson.

All of this is pulled off by Michôd in a way that reflects reality,  and I believe that’s a good thing considering the crime, violence and resolution fantasies movies so often depict. The real criminal world is populated by malevolent, banal scum, not principled Godfather glorification princes in some alternate but equivalent moral realm.  Real violence is quick, nasty and often unexpected. Having been shot at several times and stabbed once myself, I can assure all reading this that real violence is nothing like the extended choreographed fight scenes of  a   James Bond,  Jason Bourne or Evelyn Salt.  Most of all, justice and goodness do not necessarily prevail in the real world and Animal Kingdom constantly smacks us in the face with that fact without anyone’s acting technique getting in the way.  Our mates down under seem to have a talent for that.

The only downside about Animal Kingdom for me is the Aussie accent. It’s allegedly English, but I find myself not immediately catching onto the slang, the pronunciation and the quick turn of indigenous phrase so that I’m often a few beats  behind what’s being said. In sum, I rather feel like the grievously wounded American GI in a WWII joke who was brought to an Australian hospital.

“Did they bring me here to die?”, the GI asks.

The Aussie nurses replies: “Wie now suh, thie brot ya ear yustuhdie.”

That aside, I highly recommend Animal Kingdom.

What follows is a list of the Top 10 performances of the last quarter century.  It focuses on lead roles, or at least substantial ones – no cameos, thank you.  Interestingly, there are no straight comic performances here, and many of the roles are villains.  And it is also focused on movies people have actually heard of. 

So, this is not an exhaustive list – it overlooks plenty of great performances.  But it is my list and based on my criteria alone – and I’m sure I’ll hear about my myriad defects of insight, taste, breeding and general mental competence in the comments.  For example, Daniel Day Lewis is missing because I decided not to invest three hours into There Will Be Blood (2007) since after seeing the “I drink your milkshake!” clip I just can’t take it seriously. 

Johnny Depp is missing for his Captain Jack Sparrow character from the Pirates of the Caribbean films because he’s mildly amusing for about the first hour or so of this seemingly endless series but eventually makes me long to walk the plank off into the blessedly Depp-free depths of the briny. 

Leonardo Di Caprio is missing because he’s always terrible. I’m sure my passing him over will make him cry all the way to the supermodel bank.

And you film snobs out there are out of luck. This list completely ignores foreign language films – if you’re outraged at my glaring omission of Migbor Ombungliani’s shattering portrayal of Yegiv the Goatherd in the Albanian Dogme 95 epic The Thousand Meaningless Agonies of My Existence, you need to find yourself a different list.  And probably a girlfriend. 

Speaking of girls, there are not many here.  It just worked out that way, and I’m not sure why.  But this is a pure meritocracy.  If you want a quota system, you probably need to hit the Huffington Post.  Of course, on the HP, half the Top Ten would be performances from Brokeback Mountain with the rest of the slots spread out among the various dreary, America-hating, soldier-sliming, anti-war movies that have zipped through the theaters since 9/11 on the way to their final reward in the Blockbuster remainder bins (“At number seven, we have Ryan Phillip as the emotionally shattered, psychotic vet in Stop-Loss , followed by number six, some actor you never heard of as the emotionally shattered, psychotic vet in Redacted ….”).

So here are the top ten performances of the last 25 years, in order:

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10.  Denzel Washington – Training Day (2001):  Denzel Washington is so good because crooked LAPD cop Alonzo Harris is so damn bad – he’s like the Antichrist with a badge.  There’s an incredible smoothness to his performance, as if all the goodness of his previous characters was seamlessly turned 180 degrees.  It’s his comfort in the role that is so mesmerizing – there is nothing “actory” about his performance, though of course (minor spoiler) the character himself is pretending to be something he is not throughout the movie.  The way he talks, the way he moves, his ease in that sordid world – it is all so different from the Denzel Washington we’ve known before.  The movie itself is watchable, but kind of dopey.  But Washington?  You can’t look away.

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9.  R. Lee Ermey – Full Metal Jacket (1987):  Some may say that Ermey simply did in front of Stanley Kubrick’s camera what he had done for years as a real USMC drill instructor.  To some extent, that might be accurate, but remember that being a drill instructor is itself a kind of performance.  While the amazing barracks scene takes the Basic Training experience to the nth degree, there is a lot of truth to it, as I found out when I reported to Basic at Ft. Sill about a month after seeing this movie.  I vividly recall Drill Sergeant Whittlesey fulminating to our formation about our utter inability to meet even the lowest standards of competence when, in what was undoubtedly a flash of insanity, I turned my head slightly from the rigid position of attention and saw the other drill sergeants cracking up.  Ermey’s performance is dead-on and unforgettable, and not just to those of us who have experienced the delights of Basic Training firsthand.

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8.  Kevin Spacey – American Beauty (1999):  The Nineties were the Age of Spacey, with stunning showcases in Swimming with Sharks (1994), Seven (1995), The Usual Suspects (1995) and L.A. Confidential (1997).  However, his turn as suburban loser turned rebel Lester Burnham best captures the kind of calm, semi-smarmy, cynical detachment that Spacey does better than anyone else.  Through Spacey, you can feel Lester’s angst, understand his moral quandaries, and see him come out of the shell he retreated into rather than face the world.  It’s a great performance in a movie that is often frustrating in its treatment of military men as sexually-repressed sociopaths, such a hackneyed Hollywood cliché that the filmmakers should have been embarrassed to wheel it out again.  Spacey’s work actually makes it worth wading through that nonsense.     

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7.  Helen Mirren – The Queen (2006):  Mirren brought to life a living person, the Queen of England, a relic of an age when people actually considered the idea of “royalty” as something more than the joke it is.  The essential ridiculousness of the concept of a monarch aside, Mirren’s Elizabeth is a woman of values a half-century out of date, values that had allowed Britain to survive the Depression and the Blitz and to defeat the Axis.  But Mirren shows how the Queen had grown detached from her subjects, a people who have become vulgar, sentimental and maudlin in an age of celebrity and who choose to idolize a feel-good empty vessel like Lady Diana over a monarch who symbolizes a mature, strong and faithful nation.  Watching this pampered but smart, tough but cunning woman deal with the changes (mostly for the worse) in her country before the backdrop of the death of “the People’s Princess” is riveting.  The Queen is a great film about a formerly great people and their descent into juvenile mawkishness (their awesome warriors excepted), and its impact largely comes from Mirren’s staggering achievement in the lead role.

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6.  Val Kilmer – Tombstone (1993):  I have no idea what “I’m your huckleberry” is supposed to mean, but I do know that Val Kilmer was incredible as the tubercular sawbones Doc Holiday in this retelling of the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral tale. It’s no one note performance – you can see he’s sometimes scared even behind the smartass, ironic demeanor, but that dose of reality (compounded by the toll he shows his vices and his consumption taking upon him) only makes the character come more alive.  Mention Tombstone to anyone and the first thing you’ll hear is the name “Val Kilmer.”  That says it all.

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5.  Meryl Streep – The Devil Wears Prada (2006):  Yeah, I saw this movie about ladies in the fashion industry and, dammit, I liked it.  They’ll probably take back my Airborne wings and break my cavalry saber for admitting it.  But you gotta give credit where credit is due, and Streep deserves it.  Her Miranda Priestly is best known for overbearing arrogance, but that’s only a part of her character.  Streep actually lets us peer inside and see her humanity, to understand why she demands excellence, and to see the price she pays for holding herself to her own exacting standards.  The movie wimps out a bit by not forcing the heroine to really confront and deal with the choices the Miranda character faced – things just sort of work out for the heroine deus ex machina-style thanks to an unconvincing, off-screen intervention by Miranda herself.  But while the movie finds an easy way out, Streep’s performance takes the character down a hard road and turns a caricature into a character.

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4.  Steve Coogan – 24 Hour Party People (2002):  This is probably the “smallest” of the pictures on the list, but it’s one of the best.  Coogan plays the real-life British music impresario Tony Wilson, who discovered and championed bands like Joy Division in the late-70s and 80s.  Coogan takes the role and runs with it, totally inhabiting the character in an often surreal portrayal that captures all the excitement, excess and exhilaration of the times.  Beyond the fascinating story (especially the first half involving Joy Division) and the incredible music (buy the soundtrack now), Coogan’s performance sticks with you as a real, larger-than-life character made both human and more than human by an incredible actor.

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3.  Sharon Stone – Casino (1995):  Stone got a bad rap for Basic Instinct (1992), where her cervix seemed to overshadow what really was a great femme fatale turn in a really good, really pulpy film noir classic.  In her heyday in the ’90s, Stone was actually Hollywood’s only real movie star, in the way actresses used to be stars.  She was talented and beautiful, but distinctive too – she had that intangible something that put her on a plane above her peers.  In Casino, as De Niro’s harpy of a wife Ginger, she uses that glamour to show why De Niro’s character would fall for – and keep being drawn back to – a woman who redefines the term “bad news.”  It is a relentless, heartfelt, devastating performance that makes you care (a little bit) for her as she meets the fate she has earned even as you let out a sigh of relief knowing she won’t be back to wreak more havoc. 

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2.  Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight (2008):  Even the conventional wisdom gets it right once in a while.  Since just about everyone on Earth has seen it, there’s no real reason to talk about why it’s such an incredible performance.  Ledger got a lot of praise for Brokeback Mountain (2005), but his performance there was just a collection of scowls, tics and mumbles that constitute nothing more than what Hollywood thinks real gay cowboys are like.  As with the movie itself, most of the acclaim was simply wishful thinking – they loved the subject so they had to praise the portrayals.  There’s no wishful thinking here – this was acting far beyond what some comic book movie had any right to incorporate.  And it makes the loss of Ledger to the scourge of drugs that much more of a waste. 

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1.  Ralph Fiennes – Schindler’s List (1993):  This is the most terrifying portrait of pure evil ever put on the screen, made all the more horrifying by a performance that shows how a real-life normal man consciously chose to immerse himself in darkness and luxuriated in it, who willingly paid a terrible price in exchange for becoming, for a time, a dark god with the power of life and death.  Fiennes earned a Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the real war criminal Amon Goeth, but this was truly the lead role.  Goeth was the Nazi commander of a forced labor camp that he turned into a private kingdom subject only to his cruel and sick whims.  In scenes like where Goeth uses a high powered rifle to amuse himself by picking off victims from the porch of his mansion, Fiennes shows us a cultured, intelligent man who makes a deliberate decision to embrace evil.  He shows us that the potential for evil lurks inside all of us just as Oskar Schindler’s example teaches that the potential for good exists there too.  What is so powerful is how Fiennes shows that Goeth chose to experience the transitory joy of wickedness knowing it would lead to his death.  It is a performance that will leave you shaken.

And here are some honorable mentions:  Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (1987), Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (1993), and Tommy Lee Jones as Sam Gerard in The Fugitive (1993) were all memorable.  Robert De Niro was great as the taciturn criminal in Heat (1995) (Al Pacino also deserves a shout-out for his ferocious and highly entertaining scenery chewing, but I would not call it “good” acting).  As great as Anthony Hopkins was as Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs (1991), Brian Cox was even better in a smaller role as the cannibalistic convict in 1986’s Manhunter.  The less said about the sequel Hannibal (2001) the better, though it also featured Ray Liotta.  Liotta gets a nod for Goodfellas, as do Bobby De Niro and Joe Pesci (and for that matter, those last two should also be mentioned regarding the aforementioned Casino). 

And to further rile the members of Team Snooty, let’s not forget Alan Rickman in Die Hard (1988).  Yeah, artistes, I went there.

Here they go, in no particular order:

10. Die Hard (1988): You’ve seen Die Hard probably a hundred times.  See it again, preferably uncut and not sanitized for TV.  Bruce Willis is a cop trapped alone while the incredible Alan Rickman and his band of fashion plate terrorists grab Nakatomi Plaza during the annual Christmas party.  The plot is simple, but the execution is simply awesome.  This movie is the archetype, the template  for a hundred subsequent movies that were pitched as “Die Hard in a (fill in the blank).”  For more fun, try my Die Hard-themed drinking game – take a pull on a Dos Equis every time something happens that creates or reaffirms a classic action film cliché.  Wisenheimer renegade cop who play by his own rules – gulp!  Lots of MP-5s and other (then) hi-tech armaments that fire a ton of rounds but rarely hit anything – gulp!  Villain who rises from the dead to be killed one last time – gulp!  You may want a designate a driver – cue Argyle, the streetwise sidekick in the limo (gulp)!  

Ignore the silly sequels, which follow the familiar genre flick sequel quality death spriral.  Die Hard is the real deal.  And as a bonus, it features the greatest holiday greeting in movie history:  “Now I have a machine gun.  Ho, ho, ho.”

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9. Lethal Weapon (1986): This is another  classic 80’s cop flick, and it made Mel Gibson a superstar.  Basically, he and Danny Glover go on a Christmas-time rampage across Los Angeles against a vicious drug gang.  It is exciting, violent, profane fun.  You have to try to ignore the politics and off-screen antics of the participants – Danny Glover is one of Chavez’s biggest Hollywood suck-ups and Mel, well, he’s completely lost it.  You also need to ignore the series’ politics – the villains are, of course, American soldiers, and one of the crummy sequels is a passionate plea for gun control shouted over the volleys of thunderous gunfire.

But if you get through all that baggage, Lethal Weaponis a solid, exciting, surprisingly tough action flick.  And, of course, it has Gary Busey as an insane, unstable villain.  My guess is that director Richard Donner just said to him, “Gary, I want you to be yourself.”

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8. Gremlins (1984): Nothing says Christmas like wild green monsters rampaging through a small town.  This black comedy/horror flick is not quite for kids, as a number of human beings end up deceased and the gremlins are dispatched in rather gruesome ways.  Plus, it features the lovely Phoebe Cates in a supporting role as a young woman with the absolutely worst family Christmas story all time.

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7. While You Were Sleeping (1995): Sandra Bullock, who has a huge hit in The Blind Side, was in top ingénue form for this rom-com involving amnesia and various misunderstandings all taking place during the holiday season.  Simple, light and harmless, Sleeping won’t change your life, but it does its job.  And getting it on Netflix beats spending $100 on tickets and snacks to take the family to see a politically correct lefty cartoon like Avatar.

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6. 1941 (1979): Let’s put this out there – 1941 is Steven Spielberg’s best movie that’s not either Schindler’s List or Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Tagged as over-long, over-priced and over-done, those attributes are exactly why this huge, sprawling comedy about Los Angeles in the weeks after Pearl Harbor is simply fabulous.  Every penny is up there on the screen.  Every cameo is gold.  John Belushi, as a lunatic fighter pilot, is completely out of control (He turns off radios with his .45).   And the John Williams score is perfect – rousing, exciting, and absolutely right for a comic story about a nation on the verge of what Robert Stack (as General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell) says, is “going to be a long war.”

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5. L.A. Confidential (1997): This incredible modern film noir starts off with a Christmas party at a police station that goes terribly wrong.  It takes a couple of viewings to follow and appreciate the convoluted plot (which was adapted from the sensational and even more convoluted novel by James Ellroy).  That’s a good thing.  Just when you wonder if Hollywood can make a movie that’s for adults, that makes you think, that doesn’t assume you’re a drooling borderline moron, along comes a movie like this to restore your faith.  Of course, that was a dozen years ago.  Until they do it again, though, at least we have L.A. Confidential.

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4. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982): Let’s throw another meaty bone into the tiger cage – Fast Times is the best teen sex comedy of all time.  Period.  In fact, it is much more that.  It is a hilarious, moving, grim, often unsentimental view of high school life in California in the early 80’s that resonates especially well with me because I was a kid in a California high school when it came out.  How does it relate to Christmas?  The film spans a year in the life of the characters and includes several scenes during the holiday season as they work their crummy jobs dealing with hordes of Christmas shoppers and angry customers (including a nasty Santa).  Like everything about the film, they got life during Christmas vacation for middle class kids dead right.  Oh, and there’s also Phoebe Cates….

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3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005): Yet another film about chaos at Christmas time in Los Angeles, and it was supposed also the comeback for writer Shane Black, who wrote Lethal Weapon then a lot of other loud, violent movies.  Robert Downey, Jr., reaffirms his appeal as a crook hiding out in Hollywood who experiences with all manner of film noir challenges.  A memorable scene has Michelle Monaghan as a sexy elf.  Not a great film, but an interesting one that never got the credit it was due.

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2. Sleepless In Seattle (1993): One of the archetypal “chick flicks,” Sleepless starts with widower Tom Hanks’ sorrowful Christmas Eve radio elegy to his wife.  Through a series of absolutely improbable events, the then-young Hanks and a still frisky Meg Ryan finally meet and, we assume, live happily ever after.  Sure, you gotta deal with Rosie O’Donnell, and Rob Reiner might be a lefty in real life but he’s pretty amusing here as Tom’s Dirty Dozen-loving pal.  Overall, you could do a lot worse when your wife states unequivocally, “We are not watching Die Hard again!”

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1. Battleground (1949): With so many of our troops spending another Christmas overseas, this powerful story of the legendary 101st Airborne’s courageous stand against the Nazis at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge at Christmastime 1944 is more appropriate than ever.  The chaplain’s speech in the snow, to American soldiers of all races, about why they are there won’t pass muster with the Howard Zinns of the world.  (Yeah, I know Zinn was in WWII.  So?  All your DD214 proves is that you served, not that you aren’t a half-wit).  To me, the chaplain’s service is one of the most powerful scenes Hollywood has ever put on film.  But I’m biased.  Forty-six years after Bastogne, a few weeks from the start of a different war, I was listening to a chaplain saying similar things on a different battlefield.  These truths – that we must fight against the tyrants, thugs and ideologies that crush the individual in the name of their twisted doctrines – were true in 1944, true in 1990, and are still true today.

That’s the list.  If I missed some, or if I’m off-base, I know I’ll hear about it.  And to those who really, really hate this list, let me quote the 101^st’s commander at Bastogne, Brigadier General McAuliffe, when the Nazis demanded he surrender the Division:  “Nuts!”

That is one outstanding trailer and the first footage I’ve seen.

This era’s always proved difficult for present-day filmmakers to credibly recreate.  One major exception is “L.A. Confidential” (1997), but the rest, most notably Scorsese’s ridiculously over-praised “The Aviator“ (2004), overtax your suspension of disbelief with a sense that everyone’s play-acting with clothes found in grandma’s attic. Director Michael Mann appears to have figured out that stylizing the hell out of it is the way to go. The music and atmosphere make you want to dive right in.

My one worry is the presence of J. Edgar Hoover. Can anyone think of a movie made in the last 20 years involving Hoover where the story didn’t screech to screaming halt to make a political point about the man’s rumored sexuality or commie hunting? That’s not to say he’s some saint above criticism, but he’s always stripped of his humanity and turned into a caricature which can only result in bad filmmaking. But as we’ve seen so many times before, the agenda too often comes before telling a good story.

Here’s hoping Mann’s the exception.

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

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) is the odds-on Best Picture winner, and it expanded to about 600 additional playdates this weekend for a total screen count of 2,224. The other four contenders for Hollywood’s biggest prize, however, are on a combined 2,508 screens. That means that they are essentially done with their theatrical engagements in the US (barring a truly shocking upset). Even if you wanted to see the other four nominees, you might have trouble finding them at your local multiplex – especially if you live outside a major city.

The United States has approximately 40,000 individual movie screens. Only 11% of them are showing a Best Picture nominee this weekend. That speaks to how decidedly unpopular these movies are. For comparison in 1998, there were about 34,000 screens in the US, and on Oscar weekend 7,586 of them had a Best Picture nominee showing. That’s 22% of all American screens showing a Best Picture contender.

Here is how the Oscar weekend screen counts for 1998 and this year stack up.

1998
Titanic – 3,169 screens
Good Will Hunting – 1,805 screens
As Good As It Gets – 1,604 screens
L.A. Confidential – 723 screens
The Full Monty – 285 screens

2009
Slumdog Millionaire – 2,244 screens
The Reader – 962 screens
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 754 screens
Milk – 411 screens
Frost/Nixon – 381 screens

Slumdog Millionaire has moved from quirky underdog to beloved box office juggernaut. This weekend, Danny Boyle’s Mumbai masterpiece will close in on the magical $100M barrier.

OSCAR WEEKEND PERFORMANCE FOR BEST PICTURE NOMINEES

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
2,224 screens
$2.1M Friday
$7.5M 3-Day
$97.46M cume
$118M Projected Cume

THE READER
962 screens
$705,000 Friday
$2.53M 3-Day
$22.9M cume
$29M Projected Cume

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
754 screens
$320,000 Friday
$1.12M 3-Day
$124.1M cume
$129M Projected Cume

MILK
411 screens
$265,000 Friday
$928,000 3-Day
$28M cume
$34M Projected Cume

FROST/NIXON
381 screens
$494,000 Friday
$17.22M 3-Day
$21M Projected Cume

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.