I seem to have an odd obsession with the cinematic year of 2007, one that I can absolutely put into a shitload of words but will only do so briefly here. Simply put, it was a great year for film, and it was also the first great year in film that I was smart enough to realize how great it was as it was happening. It was a year where the Academy actually gave Best Picture to the best movie of the year, something that hadn’t previously happened in my lifetime. And even though I rarely trust the Academy’s opinions, 2007 was the year when their nominations were littered with movies I adored, movies that were as good as movies can get. Gone Baby Gone. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. No Country for Old Men. The Bourne Ultimatum. Michael Clayton.

The George Clooney legal thriller seems to be one of the more under appreciated films of that year, mostly because it looked like a movie for old people. Since people my age grew up when John Grisham courtroom novels were constantly being adapted into movies that never appealed to us (The Firm, The Client, The Rainmaker, etc.), we have always thought those movies were for people far older than we are. They looked boring as shit, except for that scene in a trailer where Tom Cruise full out sprints while wearing a long trench coat and carrying a gigantic briefcase. That just seemed funny. Each time I went to see Michael Clayton, I was the youngest person in the movie theatre by at least twenty years; it was like seeing Mystic River all over again, except this time I got to see a movie that didn’t suck.

Michael Clayton can be described as many things: it’s a legal thriller (whatever that means), it’s a character study (whatever that means), and it’s a really fucking good movie. The most interesting thing about the movie, however, is how simple it is. Everything is spelled out for the audience, but the script is so tightly written, and the themes so interesting, that one can’t help but get wrapped up in it. With pacing that is probably typically referred to as ‘deliberate’ (read: slow), Michael Clayton is all about building to its conclusion. We get interesting scene after interesting scene, and every five minute section of the movie is more interesting than the five minutes that came before it. I often wonder if this is the most perfect film I have ever seen, despite it probably not being something I would count in my twenty or so favourites. It just feels like this movie is the embodiment of the definition of what Hollywood cinema should look like. When the conclusion hits, everything that has been established will be solved, except for the one thing that can’t be.

The following description of the last shot of Michael Clayton doesn’t really spoil anything, and I have no moral issues writing about what seems like it should be called a spoiler, precisely because it isn’t really. (Although if you’re like me and considered somebody publicly blurting out a vaguely important mid-plot point of the terrible 2004 Julia Stiles vehicle The Prince and Me offensive, you may want to stop reading now, hopefully to add Michael Clayton to your torrent queue.) After the plot’s conclusion, the movie simply ends. The camera follows a character into a taxi, and we see them hand the cabbie some money before saying, “Just drive.” The credits then begin to roll next to our character as they sit silently, and a few minutes later the film cuts to black for a title card. And I guess a big part of why I will always love this movie is because now that character looks completely different to me. I go to a theatre, and I hand somebody my money, and then I’m sitting quietly with other people but always still more or less by myself for the next couple hours. I’m going somewhere, but I don’t particularly care where. And the reason 2007, and Michael Clayton in particular, will always mean something to me is because this was the first time I realized that I was finally able to see what was really going on around me.

There are a couple of teen movies I don’t think ever got a fair shot; they might still be mediocre, but they’re better than I Love You, Beth Cooper. I’m fine with mediocre teen movies being seen by (seemingly) only me and the friends I make watch them with me, but it bothers me a lot more when a good lead performance in a teen movie is wasted.

Justin Long seems to divide people pretty easily; the fallout of the Mac vs. PC war has had more of an impact on his perception than most people think. As far as a dramatic actor, he’s nothing special (and his performance in Dreamland is truly abysmal), but the guy is a generally funny and naturally charismatic guy. Basically, he’s the perfect lead for a teen movie.

Accepted is about a group of people who aren’t good enough to get into the colleges they want, so they make one up where everybody is accepted, and blah blah blah hopelessly optimistic bullshit. It’s basically a low-grade version of what Ferris Bueller Goes to College probably would have looked like; I would imagine that it was pitched to the studio as that as well. But Long makes for a pretty charming and funny faux Ferris, and he also gets to continue to use a bit of the physical comedy skills that he was so effective with in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

I’m not going to pretend that Acceptable is a great movie; it’s not. It’s just a funny teen movie, one that features talented people like Long, Jonah Hill, Maria Thayer, and Columbus Short. Also, Lewis Black plays the dean of the fake college Long creates, and Black demolishes every line he has (his discussion with Long’s parents is particularly hilarious). Every time the movie does something overly corny, like proclaiming that we all need to be accepted in our own special way, there’s a funny enough joke shortly after that you never get too bothered by it. And Long is charming enough that his speeches aren’t painful to sit through.

If you’re reading this on a PC, you might hate Justin Long and have no desire to see the movie. Or you’re a person who isn’t absurd, and you recognize that Long is pretty talented. Accepted is probably his best role (that I’ve seen), and even though he’s doing it within a teen movie that is occasionally a little too saccharine for my liking, it’s worth seeing.

When I’m Not There was released in 2007, it was generally well liked by critics, but the common person was confused by it. It was apparently a biopic of one of the most famous American musicians, but it wasn’t really. The movie begins with a pretentious but mostly accurate text blurb saying, “Inspired by the music and the many lives of Bob Dylan,” which is to say it features six different characters in different stories who are all Bob Dylan in some way. It’s tough to explain, but that’s also why the movie is great.

Directed by Todd Haynes, I’m Not There features Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Ben Whishaw, and Marcus Carl Franklin as the parts of Dylan’s life, be it more fact-based (Blanchett as a Don’t Look Back era Dylan) or a bit more adventurous (Gere as Billy the Kid). The cinematography is gorgeous, the acting is generally good, and the use of music is effective. But the Bob Dylan aspects of this movie aren’t what make it interesting, and are probably why the movie never found any sort of mass acceptance. Despite the fact that the following phrase will read like ‘I’m smarter than you,’ the movie was simply tough to understand.

I had no interest in Bob Dylan’s life and only a vague interest in his career when this movie was released, and that barely changed after seeing I’m Not There. I might have been more into listening to The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll because of the scene where the Christian Bale version of Dylan performs it, but I did not run out and buy The Times They Are a-Changin’ when I left the cinema. I’ll never read a page of Bob Dylan: Chronicles; all of Haynes’ set design, costume, and plot details inspired by Dylan’s life were completely lost on me. But I feel like Haynes would be alright with that, because he made a movie about a man that also happened to be a movie about every man (and woman).

The idea behind I’m Not There is that our lives change through different phases; you are more or less a different person as a child than you are as a forty year old. There will still be similar aspects, but important things that used to define you will change. And the more time passes since seeing this movie in 2007, the more incredible this movie becomes. Not only is it an interesting idea, but it’s almost indisputably true. I have no idea what I’ll be like in ten years, and I barely remember who I was ten years ago. Despite that being slightly depressing, it mostly reaffirms that life will continue to be interesting. If everything stayed constant, there would be no reason to do anything. I’m Not There is a movie about Bob Dylan, yeah, but it’s (almost) just as much about you.

Last fall, Let Me In was released. I didn’t see it, and chances are you haven’t either. Why would I see it? I liked the 2008 Swedish version, Let the Right One In (a movie that was generally loved by everybody who saw it), so the idea of seeing the American version a mere two years later seemed kind of redundant. Let the Right One In was a movie that was well-liked by both media and tech-savvy people, so the message boards and websites I visit were seemingly furious about the mere prospect of this Swedish horror film being adapted for American audiences. After a decade of remake after remake and reboot after reboot, we have become conditioned to believe that all remakes of things we like are going to be awful and personally offend us with their brash decisions to change what we originally loved. I don’t know why I bought into this idea as it pertained to Let Me In, and yet I did. But I shouldn’t have.

Remakes and adaptations are always a place for knee-jerk reactions. Hearing a favourite property of yours is being adapted will likely make your ears perk up, but that same news will just as likely furrow your brow with anger. This is most often seen in adaptations of extremely popular literature, like the Harry Potter series* or The Da Vinci Code** or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo***. People will be in an outrage of sorts, but will still go see the movie when it is released. And that’s why these movies will continue to be made: despite any lingering doubts or worries about an adaptation, studios trust their marketing department to make a compelling enough campaign to convince the naysayers to at least be curious about the movie. For remakes of other movies, however, things seem to be slightly different.

*Before the first film was released, parents and teachers were actually worried that seeing a definitive visual version of Hogwarts would kill the youth of the world’s collective imagination, proving once again that sometimes parents just don’t understand.

**Langdon’s hair never looked like that!

***You can’t cast a cute girl to play Salander!

Adapting a book into a movie is a completely different thing from remaking a movie into another movie. I’m not an idiot; I realize switching mediums from print to screen adds a lot to the property, while also taking away some of the perks of the printed page. This tends to make film remakes tougher to sell. If an already good movie is being remade, some will see the remake as unnecessary, because it will be tough to make a film better than the original already was. And rarely are remakes that don’t make radical changes better. When Psycho was remade by Gus Van Sant in 1998, its goal was to be as close as possible to the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic. By that point, most people had even forgotten the Robert Bloch book ever existed, so nobody was upset about big changes in Gus Van Sant’s version. Mostly because there weren’t any, but also because nobody saw it. For a remake to really succeed and be taken seriously, there tends to need to be some drastic chances taken to improve upon the original. When the British version of Death at a Funeral was remade for American audiences, the filmmakers introduced a lot of improvisation into an incredibly tightly written script; while this was a fairly big change, the movie oscillated between the British script and free-flowing improv so much that there was no consistent tone. But another part of the reason that movie was so heavily disliked was that the original British film was beloved by both critics and film fans who saw it. The American version might have had some funny moments on its own*, but it could never be liked because it was constantly being compared to the significantly better movie that came before it.

This has nothing to do with anything: I just need people to see this picture.

*Specifically, when Tracy Morgan was onscreen. I remember something about the Incredible Hulk being exceptionally funny.

Let Me In was always fighting an uphill battle for acceptance: it was a horror film, a vampire film, and Let the Right One In was a favourite among dedicated film fans in general. These are all very passionate, protective groups of fans, and are fans that will rarely change their opinion. It’s like people who loved Chasing Amy when they were fourteen but refuse to admit that it is exceptionally offensive towards both women and the gay community. A horror/vampire/film fan generally does the same thing, only they turn that denial dial up to eleven. And since these groups are, like the Kevin Smith contingent, prone to spending a lot of time on message boards and social media, they were able to convince other horror, vampire, and film fans to ignore Matt Reeves’ take on a movie they liked.

There are a few unfortunate facts about Let Me In, only one of which actually reads as something that should be considered a negative: it was one of the best-reviewed movies of the year, it was better than the film it was remaking, and it was one of the lowest-grossing major studio releases of 2010. People that saw it accepted that it was pretty good, but the problem is that almost nobody saw it. I didn’t initially, mostly because I was dumb enough to trust what the internet was telling me. I saw the original and thought it was decent, so what could a fairly faithful American remake possibly add to that? A lot, it turns out.

First of all, the film is now in English. While this seems like a point that could coax a middle-aged Jeff Foxworthy fan into liking Let Me In more than the original, it simply makes it a more enjoyable film for any English speaker. I don’t speak Swedish so, while I have no problems with reading subtitles, having the movie remade in my native language without any real dip in quality allows me to focus on the other good elements of the film, which are considerable. Like the Swedish film, the kids are well cast, but in the American version, they are simply better actors. Kodi Smit-McPhee (also good in The Road) and Chloe Moretz (also good in everything else I have seen her in) have pretty great chemistry, and when neither of them have blood dripping off them, god damn are they cute together. Their depiction of a first crush is so enjoyable that even a scene where Moretz’ head is literally momentarily falling apart is somehow adorable. If for no other reason, Moretz and Smit-McPhee make Let Me In a better film than its predecessor. But, of course, there are other reasons.

The supporting actors in this movie are incredible; the pairing of Smit-McPhee and Moretz was intriguing, but then the opening credits rolled and I also saw the names of two of my favourite character actors, Elias ‘Casey Jones but also other legitimate films’ Koteas and Richard ‘Nathaniel Fisher and also pretty much every other movie made since 1998’ Jenkins. Unsurprisingly, Koteas, Jenkins and the rest of the supporting players (the bully at school was such a DICK) were more enjoyable to me than their Swedish counterparts, as were the actual visuals of the movie.

Matt Reeves’ previous film was Cloverfield – a movie that, despite relying on what was essentially a gimmick, was pretty interesting visually. Not only does Let Me In cement that he has visual flair, but it proves he’s infinitely better at creating a beautiful image when he doesn’t have to worry about maintaining a handheld aesthetic. This movie is gorgeous, and the gas station car accident is one of my favourite visual sequences in recent memory. All of this combines to make a movie I really enjoyed, and one that you probably will too, so long as you don’t listen to an angry message board community first.

I’m still kind of pissed I ignored this movie when it was in theatres. I’m not a fan of the idea that I let people I’ve never met talk me out of seeing a movie, and I hate the fact that I had seemingly written off all remakes simply because other remakes were bad. I know their success rate isn’t particularly high, but when a remake can still produce something as good as Let Me In, we need to make sure we let the right one win.

Each week we here are The MacGuffin Men try to recommend something that we feel may have been underappreciated. Sometimes it’s a movie from a major studio that may have been marketed poorly, or maybe negative reviews at the time scared away moviegoers who would actually like the movie. This week I’m going to recommend a movie that wasn’t even lucky enough for either of those scenarios. The movie is called Mystery Team, it opened on one screen and made less than $100,000.

Mystery Team stars and is written by the Internet sketch comedy group Derrick Comedy. If you aren’t familiar with the group, you may be familiar with one if its member, Donald Glover. He currently playsTroyon NBC’s Community, and despite popular rumour, is not related to Danny Glover. While the movie is a cohesive narrative, it does have something of a sketch comedy feel. Glover, who is clearly and deservedly the star of the film, plays a character who is forced to disguise himself as several different, non-existent people. This gives the movie many set-pieces and allows Glover to his use trademark overconfidence followed by absolute terror and devastation. I know I’ve mentioned it before but there is no way Glover doesn’t make it inHollywoodand this movie might end up being the first substantial piece that showed this was inevitable.

The plot of the film involves Glover and his 2 friends acting as their own detective agency in their town. Their agency is more like Encyclopedia Brown, Nate the Great and other children’s detective agencies than realistic private investigators. They did it as kids and now that they’re in their last year of high school, people don’t find the act cute anymore. When there is a murder in the town, they are approached to solve it and see this as a chance to bet taken more seriously. However, their experience solving hopscotch disputes and sack lunch fraud doesn’t help them out much as they come across drug addicts, hitmen, strippers and drug dealers. While their journey to grow up as people parallels their desire to move onto more serious crimes, they don’t lean on these metaphors too much and are much more concerned with comedy than the emotion. There is one surprisingly well-written and shot emotional scene (at the baseball diamond), the movie doesn’t try to be more than it is and knows it their to make you laugh

Donald Glover wrote for 30 Rock and Derrick Comedy was doing its thing on the Internet for a long time, so they use this bring some other comic actors you’d recognize from NBC and YouTube into the picture. We getAubreyPlazaand Ben Schwartz (Parks and Rec.), Kevin Brown and John Lutz (Dotcom and constant loser Lutz from 30 Rock), Kay Cannon (30 Rock writer and producer/ex-wife of Jason Sudeikis), Bobby Moynahan (SNL), Ellie Kemper (The Office) and Gregory Burke from Internet sketch group Greg and Lou. They are not short of acting talent in this movie, and the writing keeps up. It is not a brilliant, ground-breaking comedy in any way, but is an unpretentious, silly, raunchy and hilarious movie that you should see if you’re looking a mindless but supremely entertaining movie.

I have a list of five movies that I would consider my five favourite movies of all time; whenever somebody asks what my favourite movie is I say, “I’ll give you five.” Now, I came up with this list when I was 18, which basically means that I was definitely more passionate about those choices seven years ago. Basically, if you told me right now that I had time to watch five movies before I died, I likely wouldn’t pick this exact list of films (unless of course I crumbled under the pressure). But that doesn’t mean they’re not really, really good movies.

Out of Sight is one of the movies from the list that I would probably not be compelled to watch just before I died; I imagine I would pick The Godfather Part II if only to extend my life by an extra hour. However, Out of Sight is a damn good movie. Directed by Steven Soderbergh in the middle of his shockingly impressive late 1990s run, the film stars George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, with great supporting turns from Ving Rhames, DON CHEADLE, Albert Brooks, Dennis Farina, Michael Keaton, Luis Guzman and Steve Zahn. The plot is a fairly run of the mill crime story, but its mixture of comedy, some action, romance, and stylistic Soderberghisms (time shifting, freeze frames that are somehow not annoying, etc.) elevate it to a level that is maybe better than the script. It’s not a perfect movie, and there’s no brilliant allegory running through it, but I’ll still want to watch this movie any time I have two hours to kill with nothing better to do.

I suppose Out of Sight is a movie that a lot of people would call a rainy day movie. But since I watch movies no matter what the weather is, I might not be the right person to make that assessment. You will definitely laugh at some points, probably at Rhames’ introduction or when Cheadle and Clooney get excited about “all this reading and shit,” and you might even realize that Lopez can kind of act sometimes. Clooney and Lopez are legitimately interesting together, and their self-reflexive ride in the trunk of a car, not to mention a later meeting in a bar, are pretty great as far as romantic scenes go. And this is also maybe Clooney’s most charming performance, which is saying something.

I might not pick Out of Sight as one of my five last movies to watch anymore, but I will always love it. A friend of mine recently purchased a mounted poster of the film from Value Village for me, and I’m so excited to pick it up from her house and just stare at it for hours. Part of the excitement is because it is simply a great poster, but mostly I’m just excited to get another piece of one of my favourite movies. I might go another five years before I watch Out of Sight again, but it’s unlikely I’ll go more than a month without thinking about it. And now that I’ll have a large reminder of the movie, I’m excited to say I might get to think about it even more.

I don’t watch as many documentaries as one might think; I tend to watch about one a month, to go along with the (approximately) 387 narrative films I watch. I used to watch more docs, but as time has passed the number has slowly gone down to where it is now. This isn’t a conscious choice, it’s just the way things go in my life. I read non-fiction almost exclusively, so I tend to want to get into more of a story when I decide to watch a movie. I read non-fiction, I watch fiction. This is probably ridiculous, but it’s how I do things.

The thing I always find about documentaries, when I do watch them, is that they tend to be extremely fast-paced. I find that since documentaries usually cover a long period of time, they tend to feel like they are moving quickly just because of how much time is passing throughout the course of the film. And then there are some that are so entertaining that – in conjunction with how quickly the film moves – they feel like they’re over about 5 minutes after you press play.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a competition documentary, which is primarily what leads to how quickly it moves, but it is also because every person in the movie is such an interesting character. And these aren’t characters like you see in movies, but characters like you would refer to people in real life.

“How do you feel about Billy Mitchell?”

“That guy with the long straight hair and the Chuck Norris beard? Oh, he’s a real character.”

He’s also a shit head.

The movie is about the quest to obtain the world high score on the arcade game Donkey Kong, a record that is held by the aforementioned chicken wing sauce enthusiast Billy Mitchell at the beginning of the film. Steve Wiebe, a suburban father who might be the nicest human being of all time, gets laid off from his job and fills the time by attempting to become the greatest Donkey Kong player in the world. The film is mostly about these two, but along the way you will also meet plenty of other characters from the world of professional arcade gaming.

Pictured (Left to Right): A shit head and the nicest person you've never met.

What makes the film work as well as it does is the simple dichotomy between Mitchell and Wiebe: everybody who watches the film loves Wiebe, but nobody can stand Mitchell. This is primarily because Mitchell stands in for every overconfident, asshole nerd you’ve ever met, but mostly just because he’s a terrible person. The movie follows the quest for excellence, and along the way will make you laugh, laugh some more, and then throw your Pepsi can at the TV because you simply hate Billy Mitchell that much. You might not even finish your drink before you throw it. Have the Windex ready.

This film was a miniature sensation when it was released in 2007, so you might already know the ending before you start watching. But what you may not know is the current state of the world record, something that you should look up after you watch the movie. Until then, however, you should track down a copy of The King of Kong. I have probably seen this movie 15 times, and could go for watching it another 15. (NOTE: I ended up watching it again 2 days later.) Like Donkey Kong is to the movie’s competitors, watching The King of Kong is an entertaining, frustrating, and ultimately fulfilling pursuit. When I worked at a video store, I recommended it to as many people as I could, and nobody was ever disappointed by it. And if you watch this movie and actually don’t like it, you’re probably not human. I’m sure Mitchell’s entourage could use an extra member.

Earlier this year, after Bridesmaids was a critical and financial success, many people felt the desire to examine the role of females inHollywood and comedy. Some said Bridesmaids was empowering because it was about a uniquely female experience of being a bridesmaid, written by and starring women, yet still brought in and pleased a significantly-sized male (and female) crowd. Some said it wasn’t empowering or groundbreaking at all and the reason a major studio made it at all was that it was simply a formulaic gross-out male comedy that just happened to have women in it, women who found the most important thing in life was to get a man. I decided to do my recommendation this week about a good female-centric comedy that appeals to both genders, but isn’t about trying to get a man.

Before Bridesmaids, I think the best female-centric comedy that men and women really liked was Mean Girls. That movie is great, was received very well, boosted Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey’s careers, is on the IMDB top 500 and made $130 million on a $17 million budget. It was written by women and while it was about the high school experience in general, it focuses much more on females. There are 2 reasons I’m not going to recommend Mean Girls:

1) Almost everybody knows about this movie and knows that it’s great. Many males that I have met, who sometimes may have a hard time admitting that a female-oriented movie can be any good, have no problem admitting it’s a funny movie, so good for you guys, you go Glenn Cocos.

2) Cady, the lead character, quickly develops a crush on a fellow student named Aaron and while this isn’t the sole focal point of the movie, it does take up a lot of screentime and plot. I wanted to suggest a movie where the actions of the women are driven by something other than a guy.

This is why I am recommending 1999’s Drop Dead Gorgeous, a film about a teen beauty pageant in small town Minnesota. I know. A beauty pageant? Feminists may not like this goal for a progressive protagonist much more than the affections of a man but don’t worry. I think beauty pageants are silly too but so does this movie. The main character, the sweet, hard-working Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst), seems to only want to win in order to gain just enough fame to start a career as a news reporter to move out of her small town and make her mom proud. However, her fierce opponent, the spoiled and rude Rebecca Leeman (Denise Richards), attempts to fix the pageant so that she can win and reap the popularity and status that comes along with it.

It made $10 million in theatres and has a 6.3 rating on IMDB. Do not be fooled by this. It has developed a cult following because of its great script and all around great performances. Yes, even from Kirsten Dunst. Trust me, I never thought I’d say it but somehow she moves up from her normal position of painfully intolerable, skips right over mediocre and achieves a performance that is actually good. Denise Richards, who also has never impressed me before, plays the nauseatingly fake-sweet and the unforgivably evil sides of her 2-faced character perfectly, who at one point dances with a statue of a crucified Jesus on wheels. Allison Janney keeps up her apparently life-long streak of being perfect in everything and hilarious whenever she chooses to be with this film, which she says gets approached about more often then her Emmy-winning West Wing performance. Amy Adams makes her film debut as an over-sexed, over-perky cheerleader and walks the fine line between funny and sexy with no trouble. And similar to Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls, this movie brings us a pre-drug problem/eating disorder cutie in Brittany Murphy, who plays the loveable misfit who seems completely uncomfortable with the whole pageant.

The movie seems slightly ahead of its time in 2 small ways. The film is made in the mockumentary style and while that concept has been around a while, Drop Dead Gorgeous has a lot of fun with that fact. I am a fan of mockumentaries in general and I enjoy when people play around with what is already a postmodern genre. This format alone provides many good jokes, one of the best being when the camera crew following the pageant contestants runs into a separate camera filming another show. Perhaps I just don’t watch enough TV and missed it but isn’t the day going to come when there are so many reality shows that they start running into each other on street by accident? Especially in LA where it seems 65% of the population is on a reality show, this has to happen eventually.

The other way this movie seems ahead of its time was more of a happy accident than brilliant filmmaking. The film takes place in the small, conservative town of Mount Rose, Minnesota where everyone sounds like the characters from Fargo. The evil Rebecca’s possibly even more evil mother Gladys is played by Kirstie Alley, a former pageant winner herself. She is obsessed with her former glory, her perceived elevated social status in town, in staying famous and using her daughter to help keep her that way. This 1999 film somehow made one of the best Sarah Palinesque characters ever committed to film. Gladys’ accent is weirdly similar to Palin’s, as is her pageant history, undue confidence, and fake moral outrage/conservativism. Early on in the film she defends the idea of a beauty pageant and says that she is aware of but will ignore the opinions of “big city, no bra-wearing, hairy-legged, women-libber’s” who find them demeaning. I would bet good money Sarah Palin has said that at one point in her life without seeing this movie.

What I’m trying to say is Drop Dead Gorgeous is really funny, no matter what gender you are. It flew in under the radar, perhaps because of its small budget and the plot sounds like it will be a boring, catty drama about stuck-up teenagers. In reality, shockingly good performances and a wide variety of great characters really drive home this sometimes dark but ceaselessly funny underrated comedy.

We started this podcast and blog on December 10th, 2010. I’m pretty sure by December 13th, we knew it wasn’t just going to be about movies. This has only been further proven by our seemingly monthly podcasts about sports and my apparent desire to write about music way more than makes sense. Which, by the way, I’m about to do again.

I don’t get as excited about media as I used to. Now I just tend to want to sit around and talk about something I really liked, as opposed to just grabbing a person’s arm and yelling, “HOW FUCKING GOOD WAS THAT?!!?” I also don’t care as much about hip-hop as I used to. Maybe this is because there is less good hip-hop out there, which is a likely reason that also seems like a pretty big cop out. More likely, I just don’t look as hard for new hip-hop music anymore, or I simply care less about hip-hop. My music interests have widened, and while I never listened to hip-hop exclusively, the percentage is far lower than it once was. Whereas high school seemed to involve a lot of tracking down what hip-hop I should know, classic and otherwise, I am now content to wait and see what pops up on message boards I follow*. All of that being said, nothing excites me more than hearing a really good hip-hop record for the first time. This past fall, I listened to a J. Cole mixtape for the first time, and got so excited that I ended up staying up much later than made sense to listen to the whole thing. And while I don’t feel as passionately about Cole now as I did on first listen, I still feel like everything is in its right place when I listen to Blu & Exile’s Below the Heavens.

*Of course, that I have now heard every hip-hop record that is generally recognized as a classic doesn’t help. Once you can’t go back anymore, you basically have to wait for new stuff.

It is unlikely that you have heard Blu rap, except for perhaps his verses on The Roots’ last record, How I Got Over*. With producer/DJ partner Exile, the pair put together an album that sounds cohesive (a hip-hop rarity), with consistently great beats, and interesting rhymes. Using beats composed mostly of samples and cuts, Exile provides a perfect backdrop for what Blu is saying. And what Blu says is pretty incredible.

*Blu’s verses on Radio Daze and The Day are spectacular, even for him.

I love the beats on this album, but to say that the lyrics aren’t the best part of Below the Heavens is objectively false. Blu is clearly technically talented: his flows are often extremely precise while still feeling casual, and he puts as many rhymes as possible in his lines. There are few rappers that I feel like I can identify with, and while I can’t identify with everything Blu says (I don’t have a kid, I’m not black, etc), there is plenty in here that I just haven’t heard a lot of rappers talking about. Blu is interested in aging, his past, and being happy without needing a whole lot of materialism in his life*. He doesn’t feel like a rapper as much as he feels like a person who happens to rap, which is shockingly rare. Blu isn’t moving through life with the goal of being popular or making money**, he’s moving through life while thinking about what is passing by him. Pretty much everything I love about him can be picked out from a line on Show Me the Good Life: “Fuck whips, I learn more when I ride the bus.” He doesn’t necessarily subscribe to what rappers, or people in general, feel is the proper way to think; Blu is just sort of interested in what works for him. And while the album isn’t perfect (Juicen’ Dranks is the obligatory not-great track that seems to appear on every great album), it’s as close to perfect as music can get.

*Tellingly, Blu apparently turned shrugged off Interscope’s interest in order to sign with independent Sound in Color.

**Although he is clearly trying to make a living as a rapper.

Rarely do I get as passionate about a record as I do about Below the Heavens; you don’t have to worry about me recommending many more hip-hop records on coming Wednesdays. There was a time where I tried to get people to listen to ATLiens or Labcabincalifornia or whatever record I couldn’t stop playing in my headphones at the time, but that time is mostly past. However, every time I listen to Below the Heavens while I’m running errands, I feel like grabbing a passerby’s arm and yelling, “HOW FUCKING GOOD IS THIS?!!?” My excitement over J. Cole faded relatively quickly last winter when I realized how repetitive he is; that Below the Heavens still makes me legitimately excited, four years later, while I’m walking to the grocery store means it’s probably worth a listen.

2007 was a pretty great year for movies, with No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, I’m Not There, Gone Baby Gone, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Bourne Ultimatum… do you see where I’m going with this? It was a good year. The problem is that with so many great, deservedly recognized movies, there were bound to be a couple that don’t get the full credit they should. The Savages isn’t the best movie of that year (it might not even be in the top 5 of that list I just rattled off), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t absolutely great.

As I mentioned when I recommended Sugar, I find it rare that a movie focuses more on character than plot or theme; this is one of those rare films. Siblings Wendy and Jon Savage (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman respectively) have to find a nursing home for their father (Philip Bosco) as he struggles with dementia. This all sounds like something overly dramatic, but I assure you that, somehow, it isn’t. It’s actually remarkably funny, and I would probably consider The Savages a comedy more than I would a drama.

And here’s the most difficult part about trying to convince somebody to watch this movie: it sounds like every other boring family drama, making it borderline impossible to successfully recommend. It’s a smaller scale of when I yell “BUT IT’S BARELY ABOUT FOOTBALL!” at you while trying to convince you to watch Friday Night Lights, except this way I have to interject with italics to further this point as opposed to actually getting frustrated and yelling. One way communication is trickier that way, but that probably also helps me to keep more friends.

Wendy and Jon’s relationship with their father has never been a particularly good one, and at the beginning of the movie they haven’t seen each other for years. Wendy and Jon are not particularly close with each other either, and the movie follows them as they get to know each other again. The acting is flawless on each of their parts, but let’s be serious, if you get Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney in the same scene, acting will not be your problem. And with The Savages, Tamara Jenkins’ writing certainly isn’t a problem either.

The movie begins with a hilariously surreal musical sequence before moving onto some fairly dramatic plot exposition. The first 45 minutes aren’t particularly funny, as the majority of that time is spent setting up the main characters’ relationships, albeit in a generally entertaining fashion. This set-up is absolutely essential to the second half of the movie, however, for once the audience knows the characters, the film gets the opportunity to focus on the laughs. And that is the biggest strength of this movie: the writing. I enjoy movies that set up their world and then just sort of live in it for a while, and in The Savages you get about an hour of that. Wendy and Jon’s relationship is enjoyable to just watch, and I wish more movies would give you something like that.

Because of the setup in the first half of the movie, we know these characters and have an idea as to how they will react. We know that when Jon hurts himself, Wendy will tap into her maternal urges to take care of him while Jon will downplay everything about the injury. Their scene in Jon’s hallway is absolutely hilarious, and it can only be that funny because of the large amount of setup we’re given before we get there.

This movie, as a whole, is hilarious. It’s not just this scene, but also the scene where Jon gets hurt, the cookies scene, the pillow scene, etc.

The Savages is close in tone to Six Feet Under, but without the occasional feeling of self-importance and pretension (that being said, I loved Six Feet Under). The Savages is a mixture of comedy and drama, and the comedy is made much funnier because the drama is so effective. Not only do you laugh at the joke, but you also laugh as a release from the fairly heavy subject matter you’ve been paying attention to. Which, you know, is how people use humour in these situations.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are two of my favourite actors, and they are both perfect in this movie. Yes, they are playing variations of the same character they normally play, but they do it really well. And how many actors out there consistently play drastically different characters anyway? I know Philip Seymour Hoffman does it more often than many, but he still plays the intelligent middle-aged writer type in about half of his movies… he just so happens to excel at it. And you could change a few words in those last couple of sentences and it would apply to Linney as well.

This is also the always-classy Laura Linney’s best performance by a mile, and The Savages is absolutely a Linney movie that also features Hoffman. Linney may almost always play the same type of intelligent, upper-middle class woman, but she is unbelievably good at it. And this might be the only movie where we see her character having no real idea about what to do with herself, which leads to some interesting moments that contrast the lost male character that we see in so many movies.

I saw this movie once when it was first released, and I absolutely loved it to the point that I was kind of afraid to watch it again in case it wasn’t as good as I remembered it. Well, it’s four years later and The Savages hasn’t gotten any worse. The way the movie builds on its characters is still beautiful, and the jokes haven’t gotten any less funny as time has passed. And while the last scene does sort of bow to a bit of a Hollywood cliché, the movie still works well enough for me.

All things considered, there are few really significant events that happen over the course of our lives, and what the Savage family is dealing with is something that can conceivably happen to most of us. What the movie The Savages tells us, however, is that you don’t need a high-concept movie to be thoroughly entertained. If you start with something that is well written, you’ve got a good chance to make a great, entertaining movie… the problem is that nobody will promote it other than bloggers who beg their friends to watch it.

Even then, some of these bloggers (read: me) may not do a convincing job of recommending the movie to you, and we then have to resort to some all-caps form of blog-yelling: WATCH THE SAVAGES, DAMMIT. Okay, so maybe it’s almost exactly like when I try to convince people to watch Friday Night Lights. Except Wendy and Jon don’t even mention football. They’re tennis players.