21st Century Essentials: 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days (2007)

All eras have works of art that are fundamental to our understanding of not only the craft itself, but the culture from which it was created. The 21st century is still nascent, but it isn't too early to start creating a canon that demonstrates the heights to which film as an artform has reached since the year 2000. These are the essential films:



Director: Cristian Mungiu
Starring: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov
Country: Romania

Of all the things that make Cristian Mungiu’s masterpiece 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days such an extraordinary piece of work, perhaps the most remarkable is that it manages to be an “issue movie” free of the shrill proselytizing that typically accompanies such works. It can be described as a film about abortion, yes, but it isn’t concerned with the supposed moral rightness or wrongness of the issue; rather, its concern is with how anti-abortion laws disenfranchise women, particularly those of lesser means. By focusing so precisely on that aspect of the issue – and unfolding the story with a stark, often cold simplicity – Mungiu keeps the film from becoming bogged down in sentimentality or righteousness. Instead he creates a brutal, razor sharp picture of life under oppression.

Friday's Top 5... Leonardo DiCaprio Performances

#5: Revolutionary Road
Despite reteaming DiCaprio with Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road came and went with little fanfare in 2008. This is a shame because not only is it a solid film, but it also contains great performances from both its leads (not to mention a thunderbolt of a supporting performance from Michael Shannon). Playing a man who believes himself to be a rebel, only to discover that he’s exactly as conventional as everyone around him, DiCaprio delivers one of his most mature performances.

Review: A Royal Affair (2012)

* * *
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Alicia Vikander, Mikkel Folsgaard

Forbidden love and political power can be a dangerous combination, particularly when that power is tenuous and when it is held in a socio-politically turbulent time. In 1770, at a time when the Enlightenment threatened the status quo of brutal aristocratic rule, an idealistic physician uses his friendship with the King of Denmark to institute changes to make the lives of ordinary people better, and then watches as his reforms – and his life – come undone as a result of his affair with the Queen. It’s a story rife with dramatic potential, which Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair exploits well, for the most part, except that he’s mistaken about which of the film’s relationships is the most interesting and compelling.

Hollywood Book Club: Lulu in Hollywood

Books about Hollywood rarely characterize it as a kind place, but it seems particularly cruel to women, who are generally treated as disposable commodities by the money-making machine. Silent star Louise Brooks was a woman who might have been said to have been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood, except that she never really appears to have cared much about being in Hollywood in the first place. Being a film star was something she did for a time, but not something she seems to have been particularly passionate about, at least that’s the impression given by her book, Lulu in Hollywood. This isn’t the story of an insider kicked out, but of an outsider who never wanted in in the first place.

21st Century Essentials: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

All eras have works of art that are fundamental to our understanding of not only the craft itself, but the culture from which it was created. The 21st century is still nascent, but it isn't too early to start creating a canon that demonstrates the heights to which film as an artform has reached since the year 2000. These are the essential films:

Director: Michel Gondry
Starring: Jim Carey, Kate Winslet
Country: USA

It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. At least that’s what Joel (Jim Carey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), the couple at the centre of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, discover after undergoing a procedure that systematically erases them from each other’s memories, only to find themselves drawn back together, as if by fate. The film, a collaboration between Charlie Kaufman, arguably one of the most important screenwriters of the last twenty years, and Michel Gondry, an innovative visual stylist who hasn’t really lived up to the promise set by this film, is the sort that transcends genre. It can be described as a romance, a science fiction film, a comedy, a drama, a thriller – and it is a brilliant example of each and every one. It’s not just a good movie, it’s a perfect one.

Submarine (2010)

* * * 1/2
Director: Richard Ayoade
Starring: Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige, Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor

In most films about teenagers, if the parents factor into the story at all, they appear as a force to be subverted, avoided, and manipulated, often as characters comically out-of-touch, rarely as characters with lives that exist beyond the periphery of those of their children. Richard Ayoade’s Submarine is a film about a teenager who is as invested in the lives of his parents as he is in his own, as concerned about the state of their marriage as he is about the state of his own romantic life. It’s an uncommonly intelligent film about what is, for many people, an uncommonly unintelligent and awkward period in life, and it’s a near-perfect feature film debut.