Nothing else to say
“Our next movie is quite simply a masterpiece…”
So said Roger Ebert on one episode of Ebert & Roeper back in 2002. The movie in question was Spirited Away, and up until that point, my knowledge of anime did not extend beyond the Pokémon TV show.
Of all the 25 films I have on my list, none has me more at a loss for words than 2011’s The Tree of Life.
I recently tried watching it (my Blu-ray got busted up halfway through, so it looks as though I will need to get the Criterion Collection version after all), but it was enough to remember two things: This is one of the most visually stunning films in my lifetime, and I am still not entirely sure what to make of it.
Looking back, most would agree that no other year this century had a more top-notch lineup of films than 2007 (although 2019 would come to mind).
That said, it is somewhat forgotten that the year was also solid in its output of musicals. You had originals like Enchanted (which showed the world how alluring Amy Adams can be) and High School Musical 2 (though not as adaquate as the original in my book, the music to that trilogy had popularity like you would not believe). Then there were stage-to-screen adaptations, such as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (one of Tim Burton’s very best films) and Hairspray, which took delight to a whole new level. Still, no musical (of any year) had me rushing to iTunes to buy the whole album quicker than Once.
In High School, my english class always seemed to be one of the first of the day, and that was no exception back in my sophomore year.
Yet one day in January of 2004, I can safely say I don’t at all remember what we were supposed to be doing, because I was not paying any attention. We were in one of the computer labs (do those even exist anymore? I don’t know), working on research of some kind, but my mind was elsewhere: the Oscar nominations.
“You know what freedom is Bob? No fear. Like Tom ****ing Cruise!”
When this is said by the character Sergio (Benecio Del Toro) in the recent One Battle After Another, you get a sense of content agreement. Growing up, I always saw Cruise as the guy who was able to sleep with the girl in some way shape or form, whether he was risking his life or not. That was not the case when I saw him in Minority Report.
Months ago, my friends and I had a night where we had fun making power point presentations on anything we wanted.
I generated positive feedback for my presentation as I managed to dream cast our cohorts into Disney characters. While I did not do a slide for myself, I was asked at the end which character I would best associate with myself. As someone who does not do well socially all the time but is also a hopeless romantic who yearns for romance, I easily identified with the titular character of my favorite Disney/Pixar film to date, WALL-E.
If you were asked to come up with the most prominent film director of the 21st century and the name was not Christopher Nolan, you would be climbing a rather slippery slope.
After his breakout second feature Memento, Nolan began a steady rise as the most revered of directors of the last century. When coming up with this list, I knew sticking to the “one film per director” rule would prove most difficult with him, because even his lesser movies are still worth watching. That said, when you make a film that is possibly the most popular of all films this century, one of the best sequels ever made, the best of its genre (superhero/comic books), and, after not getting a Best Picture nomination, even (allegedly) made the Academy start having more than five Best Picture nominees,…yeah, I had to go with The Dark Knight.
There are a few variables as to why it took me longer than I would have hoped to get to see a Quentin Tarantino film.
For starters, my mom had only two movies I was not allowed to see growing up, and one was Pulp Fiction because she thought it too weird (the other was The Exorcist, which one cannot blame her for in the long run). My older brother’s last bit of cinematic knowledge I remember him passing on to me (before he lost interest) was on QT, and I eventually got to Pulp as well as other films of his, the first being Kill Bill Vol. 1 in 2003. Yet my mind was truly opened a year later, with Kill Bill, Vol. 2.
Like most of my fellow millennials, I became consciously aware of great child performances beginning with Haley Joel Osment in 1999’s The Sixth Sense.
This would pave the way for child actors of the 21st century such as Nicholas Hoult (2002’s About a Boy), Miranda Cosgrove (who broke through in 2003’s The School of Rock), Abigail Breslin (Oscar nominated for 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine), Hailee Steinfeld (also nominated for 2010’s True Grit), Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (yet another nomination), Tye Sheridan in 2013’s Mud, Woody Norman in 2021’s C’mon C’mon, and the more recent discovery of Alfie Williams in 28 Years Later.
Then, there is Jacob Tremblay. Within ten years, he was in the likes of 2017’s Wonder (my little sister’s first date movie), Luca, and The Little Mermaid remake, just to name a few. Yet all that started with his enormous impact in 2015’s Room.
His role was no easy task. He plays the role of Jack, who has spent the first five years of his life inside of a single room. This is sadly due to his mom, Joy (Brie Larson), being kept as a sex slave in the shed of “Old Nick”. The film details Jack’s soon discovery of the situation, and eventual escape into the real world.
There have been some haters of sorts over the years of Brie Larson. I’m not sure if it has to do with anything in her personal life or her role as Captain Marvel in the MCU (regardless of how you feel about those films, she still does a solid job in the role). It’s when people say she can’t act that I laugh. Even before this, she was in the likes of Scott Pilgrim vs the World and the vastly underrated Short Term 12.
She didn’t win the Oscar for Best Actress for nothing here, and the scene where she runs to Jack in the car is as tearjerking as anything I have seen in fiction.
Obviously, this is not an easy watch of a film, so parents, keep the kids away from this one.
Even with the subject matter and the totally mood shift midway through, the film is still spell binding. I will go to my grave thinking Jacob Tremblay was robbed of a Best Actor Oscar nomination (even though he would have been passed over by the inevitable win of Leo in The Revenant). He is the glue that holds the film together, making that rare case for film to be both hard to watch yet hard to keep your eyes off of.
(As of this writing, Room is available to rent on Amazon and VOD).
I can’t recall why I was asked to go to a certain YMCA week long camp back in 2003 (probably so my little brother was not alone, even though I hardly saw him the whole week), but the last night was indeed eventful.
We had a canoe ride that was to be followed by a dance, in which a girl I developed a summer crush on said she would dance with me. The canoe ride when over by an hour or so (we got lost in the rain), but I got that last bit of time to dance with her (to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t help falling in love”, for that matter).
Nothing else to say