Nostalgia for the Light (2010)

Nostalgia de la luz, France / Germany / Chile / Spain, 90 minutes

Director/writer: Patricio Guzman

Photography: Katell Djian

Music: Miguel Miranda, Jose Miguel Tobar

Editors: Patricio Guzman, Emmanuelle Joly
With: Luis Henriquez, Gaspar Galaz, Lautaro Nunez, Miguel Lawner, Victor Gonzalez, Vicky Saaveda, Violeta Berrios

Nostalgia for the Light is a thoughtful documentary that teases us with wonders of the universe as seen from the sophisticated, internationally funded telescopes in Chile’s Atacama desert, conflating them with the atrocities of the Augusto Pinochet fascist regime. It attempts an elegiac exploration of the past on many levels, including explorations of exploration itself. Interviews with Chilean astronomers are included—perhaps because the conditions of the Atacama offer such opportunities, a fair number of Chileans take up the discipline. There’s a good deal of heady star-gaze cinematography too, suitable for dropping jaws. Then, later, there are also interviews with grieving relatives still looking for the remains of their disappeared loved ones. On the science side, archeologists and geologists are also heard from. A strong sense of the eerie, disquieting history of the desert grounds a sense of suspense.

But too often the two sides of this picture—the wonderful universe and the hideous humanity—struck me as strained, however sincere. The conceit is that everyone here, scientists and Pinochet victims alike, is looking into the past one way or another. Looking for the light, literal and metaphorical. And, indeed, the light from most of the stars we see at night is millions of years old by the time we see it. All those stars and galaxies might have burned out or got together and staged a musical before human beings even existed and we still wouldn’t know anything about it yet. One scientist here notes that, even between two people standing close the image they see of one another is in the past—millionths of a fraction of a second, but in the past. Moonlight takes a minute to reach us, sunlight eight minutes. So on so forth.

Me, the Mob, and the Music (2010)

I enjoyed this memoir by Tommy James, written with Martin Fitzpatrick. All the “Mob” portions were interesting, I suppose—a key reason James waited so long to write it was waiting for certain figures to die. Most notably that included his kinda sorta mentor Morris Levy, who died in 1990, operated the Birdland nightclub, ran the Roulette label, and never paid James a fraction of the royalties he owed him. I was more interested in Tommy James the teenybop star because he was an absolute favorite of mine in junior high days. He played his first gig (a high school talent show) at the age of 12 and was playing professionally a year later with his own band. For many years he had to worry about being underage in the venues he played. The amazing story of “Hanky Panky” is told here, one with many twists and turns that broke open his career. In retrospect, he was at his rock ‘n’ roll purest with “Hanky Panky” and, later, “Mony Mony”—raw blasts of infectious power. But as a kid I was more infatuated first with the hothouse teen drama of “I Think We’re Alone Now” and then with the faux mellow psychedelia of “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” which I had not thought of for years and then played six times in a row the other day. Beauty! I know it’s plastic, inauthentic, and all that, but I just love it. The stories of all James’s hits and more are covered here, along with his three marriages, drug adventures (mostly speed and booze, he may never have taken a hallucinogen), and eventual substance abuse recovery and turn to Christianity. I could have done with a little less of the latter, though he never goes overboard. For me he’s not that likable, more of a hypocritical hedonist and general opportunist. But there’s no question of his talent. He got his break in 1966 and rode it into the ‘70s and beyond. He wrote and/or recorded some great songs I will probably never stop liking. The organized crime angle of this memoir is interesting and no doubt part of his success. He indulges a little “I’m cool because I hung out with gangsters” attitude, but reading between the lines it’s apparent it caused him a good deal of pain. When he hired a lawyer at some point who used forensic accounting to uncover Levy (and/or the Roulette label) owing James $40 million in royalties, Levy threatened their lives and they backed off. Full of strange and harrowing anecdotes, James’s memoir is thoroughly enjoyable, informative, and compulsively readable.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Pavement’s Wowee Zowee (2010)

I realized again as I was reading this semi-memoirish 33-1/3 volume by novelist Bryan Charles that I’m not exactly a natural Pavement (and/or Stephen Malkmus) fan. I saw Pavement live around the time Wowee Zowee came out, in the mid-‘90s, and they were excellent—a great show. I hoped that would clarify the albums, which I had never connected with, but alas no. In memory Wowee Zowee was the one I finally got, but whatever I heard then was no longer there on more recent listening. Though his path to Wowee Zowee is somewhat convoluted and weird, Charles was a fan of Pavement from approximately Slanted and Enchanted on. If anything, Brighten the Corners (from 1997) is the one he has had the most intense infatuation with. Charles just assumes you get it or don’t, which I appreciated in a way because he’s really never trying to sell anyone on the band. He addresses the “slacker” image that has dogged Pavement and Malkmus since 1992. The truth is they were/are very hard-working. Great live shows like I saw do not happen by accident. Yet, at the same time, there is definitely something unkempt and underachieving about the surface of Pavement. “Slacker” actually captures the aesthetic perfectly for me, but I’m on the outside looking in here. I liked Charles’s eccentric and novelistic approach to this. He relies on his memories and impressions of his experience with the music and also on interviews with a dozen band, label, and other principals involved with the album (including the cover artist). All these conversations involve natural fans of Pavement, including individual band members. They all understand Pavement, often declare the music life-changing, and discuss it in ways that make it clear how much they love it. I learned some things I didn’t know—David Berman went way back with Malkmus, for one. I liked Charles’s style enough I may want to check out his novel (Grab on to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way, 2006) or memoir (There’s a Road Everywhere Except Where You Came From, 2010), wordy titles and all. For all his subdued, dare I say slacker, tone here, Charles obviously loves a long title. This treatment of Wowee Zowee is basically for Pavement fans only.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Trollhunter (2010)

Fans and possibly even sworn enemies of found-footage pictures should not miss the mockumentary Trollhunter. It has a friendly sense of humor about what it’s doing, some pretty good special effects, and a minimum of shaky camera, though it’s there. It’s a Norwegian movie, set in the far northlands, where three college students have traveled for a story about bear poaching in the region. It’s going on, and suspicions have fixed on a strange man with no bear hunting license and no obvious reason to be there—Hans. Our intrepid documentary crew tracks Hans down, but he won’t talk to them, so they begin following him everywhere he goes. Come to find out, Hans is a “trolljegern,” a government agent responsible for controlling the troll population in a secret program. Hans is willing to blow the cover of the program because he is a disgruntled worker: “I'm tired of this shitty job. I have no rights whatsoever. I get no night bonus. No overtime. No nuisance compensation. Maybe it's time for a change in troll management.” The picture has a lot of fun with the legends of trolls from fairy tales, for example using billy goats as bait to lure one out from under a bridge. Hans scoffs at many of the filmmakers’ questions, but on the other hand he insists on knowing if any of them is a Christian, as trolls are specifically attracted to the blood of a Christian man (I don’t know my troll fairy tales that well, but it rang a bell, and so did the goats). The trolls in this movie are rogue beasts approximately as big as Godzilla or King Kong, rendered in stop-motion—this is where the special effects come in, and they do the job. Things to know: Trolls grow extra heads as they age. They aren’t really heads, more like appendages. They love to gnaw on old car tires. Daylight turns them to stone, or makes them explode if they are younger (Hans says trolls live to be 1,000 to 1,200 years old)—these occurrences come with a scientific explanation by someone in a lab coat. Hans or the Norwegian government agency has rigged up a way to hit them with powerful light. The machine, mounted on a jeep-like vehicle, uses a lot of power and it doesn’t always work, but when it does that’s it for the troll. Trollhunter is full of the details of its concept, and the found-footage enables it to proceed past gaps and keep the action moving. It also has one of those abrupt endings with title cards explaining that no one in the footage was ever found, etc. I’ve had a lot of fun with this one.

Slint’s Spiderland (2010)

With this title in the 33-1/3 series I was at something of a disadvantage because I didn’t know the album until about the time I read the book. In my little 33-1/3 project, I started with some of the most obvious titles and eventually settled into polling the internet at large with google searches on a periodic basis. This one by Scott Tennent has a reputation for being well-researched and written, which is true. Tennent has no Wikipedia article, but publisher Bloomsbury’s bio puts him at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as a senior writer who runs a blog on the side, now apparently defunct (Pretty Goes With Pretty). Lots of names associated with Slint and Spiderland were well familiar to me: Steve Albini, Gerard Cosloy, Homestead, Touch and Go. The ‘80s indie scene in Chicago reached out and interacted with Slint’s hometown Louisville as well as mine in Minneapolis. A lot of Tennent’s work is the story of how Slint came together, by luck and happenstance in the middle of a vibrant time for, uh, post-rock. All the members of Slint played with lots of different bands, and for that matter their two albums don’t entirely even sound like the same band. They were together more or less for no more than three years, made two albums, flew apart, attempted reunions, flew apart again, made more reunions. Slint has roots in punk-rock by way of altern-America at large but they’re far more musicianly than I’d ever been led to understand. In a lot of ways it’s hard for me to believe that Albini went for this so much. Tennent does a good job telling how the band and album came together, and makes a respectable turn when he goes through the album track by track. I’m less inclined to believe him when he gets to the importance and influence of Spiderland, but maybe he's right. He uses the word “scene” a lot like I do above for small groups of people interacting obscurely, but again, this could all be true. If you’re already inclined like me to accept Albini and Husker Du and many of the other figures here as key players, then you likely know Slint and this album and how you think it all rates. I’m still trying to figure it out and appreciate a lot of the information I picked up here.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Animal Kingdom (2010)

Australia, 113 minutes

Director/writer: David Michod

Photography: Adam Arkapaw

Music: Antony Partos

Editor: Luke Doolan

Cast: James Frecheville, Jacki Weaver, Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Laura Wheelwright, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton, David Michod

I meant to write about this movie—not to be confused with an early Disney movie of similar name—long before there was even a TV series, which I understand is now entering its sixth season. That tells you how slow I can be about getting to these things but I should still probably issue a spoiler alert right about here. Full disclosure, I have still not seen any of the TNT series, which seems to be popular and well reviewed. Director and writer David Michod is involved, which probably accounts for it, because this movie is very good—a quiet, slow-burn thriller about a family of miscreants and the corrupt cops who chase them, with dire consequences all around.

Looking over synopses of the TV show I can see some changes have been made, as this 2010 movie version is a standalone and takes full advantage of that with plot points that can't be undone. Or, perhaps, can only be undone if you get a tempting TV show offer and are the original auteur. Lots of people seem to be still alive in the TV show who definitely die in this movie. Well, that's OK too. Jacki Weaver is good as Janine "Smurf" Cody, the crime family's mother or mother figure, but I can see where Ellen Barkin could knock that role out of the park too.

Life (2010)

Keith Richards's memoir is approximately what you expect—entertaining, full of itself, and about gossipy enough. He explores his relationship with Mick Jagger in some depth at various points but never comes up with much that's satisfying (we still can't get no). He addresses all kinds of areas where we appreciate learning more, or anything, such as the roles of Brian Jones, Anita Pallenberg, Andrew Loog Oldham, or the Beatles, verifying or debunking old rumors. Oldham did force Jagger and Richards to start writing songs. I don't know what's more amazing—that they turned out to be so good at it, or that it was never their idea and someone had to make them do it. Richards makes it clear he doesn't buy the idea that the Rolling Stones were "really" Brian Jones's band. It's convincing to the extent that the catalog of originals by itself makes a case for the Stones being what they appear to be—Mick's and Keith's band. Richards also goes into his legendary drug use, which is more generally the "OK boomer" portion of the book. I ended up being more interested in him as a craftsman and artist. He calls "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Street Fighting Man" the best of the Stones, which I agree with, noting they have an amazing amount of good material in different eras. As with most memoirs and bios we're pretty much there for the middle—the beginning (grade school) and end (post-1980, off all highs) tend to drag. The drug tales and all the exotic travel and homes grow tiresome too—maybe Robin Leach narrates these parts of the audio book? I appreciated learning that a legendary change of blood to escape addiction and/or drug tests was only a legend after all. Never happened. I did wonder—the rich, after all, are different from you and me. Which reminds me, another reason I like Richards is he's one of the minority of Brits who declined a knighthood when offered, unlike Sir Mick and Sir Rod and a good many other Sir rebel rockers. He shares that choice with David Bowie, who Richards otherwise makes fun of and reminds me why I have a hard time liking him. Richards is a strange mix of working-class and rich-most-of-his-life, with his deepest commitment to rock 'n' roll and the blues as a sound that is made on a guitar. I could do without the outlaw drug stories, but I loved his recipe for bangers and mash. He's just that kind of guy.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.

Poetry (2010)

Shi, South Korea, 139 minutes

Director/writer: Chang-dong Lee

Photography: Hyun Seok Kim

Editor: Hyun Kim

Cast: Jeong-hie Yun, Lee Da-wit, Hee-ra Kim, Yong-taek Kim, Myung-shin Park, Jong-goo Kim

I have an impulse to call Poetry underrated because it's more of a film festival / arthouse show, a "foreign movie" with subtitles. They tend to live in their own ghetto, where the blurbs are overheated (e.g., "An extraordinary vision of human empathy" - Manohla Dargis, New York Times) and the awards generous (over 50 nominations and/or wins, including a shot at the Cannes Palme d'Or) but the theatrical runs and other afterlife are too often meager, playing to empty houses or not even making it into multiplexes at all (multi-what? oh PRE-pandemic). On the other hand partisans at that citadel of the middlebrow, IMDb, have awarded it a highly respectable rating of 7.8, with over 10,000 voting.

The popularity surprised me a little but the fact is Poetry is just a remarkable and undeniable film, which could probably win over anyone who looks at it. Manohla Dargis is right that it's extraordinary, pulling off a trick of using true-crime notes to make poetry, of all things, alarmingly moving. It's the next day and I'm still crying about the poem. Jeong-hie Yun—the notable secret ingredient in this picture—is Yang Mi-ja, a grandmother in her mid-60s living in Seoul and raising her grandson on her own. She is ingratiating and charming, working part-time as an in-home aide for an older man who has suffered a stroke and is disabled, but she is beginning to show signs of dementia herself, losing some of her nouns—she can't quite think of the word for things like electricity and wallet. Poetry is virtually a one-woman show. Before we even meet Mi-ja, however, the other thread of this picture is introduced.

People Who Eat Darkness (2010)

Richard Lloyd Parry's true-crime nonfiction novel has obscure ambitions in directions toward the best—certainly in the opinion of the blurbers lined up for it—namely, In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song. The story in summary has endless potential for the flatly lurid and sensational but Parry evades all that with his canny construction. In 2000, a 21-year-old British woman working in the shadowy hostess bar economy of Tokyo goes missing. Her family is frantic, flying in to Tokyo to press the search. Media coverage is all over it (in the UK, no doubt—I don't actually recall it). Speculation and high emotions are rampant. Nine months later her dismembered body is found buried in a cave. Eventually a man is charged with the crime. Parry is quite artful about the way he distributes information. In his tick-tock portions he discloses almost right away that the woman, Lucie Blackman, was dead within 24 hours of going missing. He unhooks us from the roller-coaster ride of the family, police, and public in real-time, but puts us on another one instead. He works the suspense by taking the space he needs for exposition, which may be somewhat dry but is necessary to understand this case, and is often so alien that more time is required to digest it: about the hostess bar economy in Tokyo, about how Western women are viewed there, about the surreptitious nature of the work in terms of their visas. Later, as Parry reveals more and the story deepens, he must describe the Japanese police culture and criminal legal system. The trial takes literally years. Parry never explains his title, but in a way he doesn't have to because it feels like eating darkness is what we're doing as we go. The variety of human monsters is probably infinite but it's somehow always surprising when you come across the next new one. Parry, a British national who serves as an Asia correspondent for the London Times is uniquely positioned to tell the story, with which it sounds like he was patiently, grindingly obsessed for more than 10 years (and could well still be following further developments). The result is a remarkable book that makes a good deal more of a routine missing person case (in this day and age!) than you or I or anyone else might have. Kind of like In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.

Cyrus (2010)

USA, 91 minutes

Directors/writers: Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass

Photography: Jas Shelton

Music: Michael Andrews

Editor: Jay Deuby

Cast: Jonah Hill, John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Catherine Keener, Matt Walsh

People who like to cringe should not miss this Sundance hit by codirectors and cowriters Jay and Mark Duplass. The ever-escalating intent of Cyrus is quite clearly to make us uncomfortable about the needs of human beings and laugh at their pathologies. The overall effect is so unclassifiable that I had to double-check IMDb's genre designations—"comedy, drama, romance," in that order (maybe it's alphabetical?)—to get my bearings and gauge whether it was more appropriate to horse-laugh or feel heartened by human resilience. To tell you the truth, I'm still not 100% sure on the point. But the cast and their performances are so good I'm willing to overlook any potential priority of the Duplass brothers solely to make us squirm.

The brilliant hangdog John C. Reilly is John, a freelance editor who has been divorced for seven years from Jamie (Catherine Keener). It's set in Los Angeles where everyone is rolling with the gig economy. John and Jamie are still close friends with bad boundaries and implicit privileges to call or drop in unexpectedly at any hour, even barging in on work settings. At the beginning of the picture Jamie announces to John that she is engaged, which is not entirely a surprise to him, though depressing. In an attempt to cheer John up and get him back out there on the dating scene, Jamie insists he come to a party with them that weekend. At the party John burns through a few painful attempts at picking up women before launching into a catastrophic party-up dance scene to the Human League's "Don't You Want Me"—so awkward you might be tempted to escape the movie then and there.

The Social Network (2010)

USA, 120 minutes

Director: David Fincher

Writers: Aaron Sorkin, Ben Mezrich

Photography: Jeff Cronenweth

Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

Editors: Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Rashida Jones, Aaron Sorkin

Speaking of nerd macho, sometimes I think The Social Network might have something to do with creating the Mark Zuckerberg we have come to know and loathe, the wound-up libertarian incel hero seething with grievance and resentment and here turned unfairly (and wrong-headedly) into a small figure we can pity. He may be brilliant and rich, but he can't get the chicks. No wonder he's pissed off. At the beginning of the picture a woman tells Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), "You're gonna go through life thinking girls don't like you because you're a nerd. I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." At the end of it another woman, unrelated, tells him, "You're not an asshole, Mark. You're just trying to be." In between those two definitions, cowriter Aaron Sorkin seems to be suggesting, lies the truth. I'd feel a little hemmed in by popular perception too if I were Zuck.

What really had to hurt is that the movie is so darned good. Somehow I had forgotten that. You can't take your eyes off it. It's a dream collaboration between director David Fincher, Sorkin, and Eisenberg, powered by the fusillades of sparkling, cutting banter and confrontation that have made Sorkin famous. The Social Network is fast, barbed, hilarious, and utterly absorbing from its first minute. It lands punches over and over, not just on Zuckerberg. It has massive forward momentum, even though it's built out of biopic clichés, with a framing device of depositions in a law firm's tony conference room while pinballing flashbacks serve up the tech legendry raw in great meaty chunks. Bill Gates shows up at Harvard like Madonna french-kissing Britney Spears and all intentions are toward one goal: become a billionaire (because that's what's more "cool" than a millionaire).

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

UK, 87 minutes, documentary

Director: Banksy

Music: Geoff Barrow, Richard Hawley

Editors: Banksy, Tom Fulford, Chris King

With: Rhys Ifans, Thierry Guetta (aka Mr. Brainwash), Banksy, Invader, Shepard Fairey, Neckface, Swoon

It's not easy to pin down what this entertaining little picture is, exactly, though all the main problems are caught in the basic question, documentary or mockumentary? It's directed by the notorious street graffiti artist / vandal / political activist / prankster / what-have-you Banksy, still his only feature-length picture. Banksy appears in it sitting for interview with his face hidden and voice distorted. Street artist / etc. Shepard Fairey—most famous now for the iconic Barack Obama "Hope" poster from 2008—also has a role in it, and a very big one, according to the people who believe it is all an elaborate put-on. Exit Through the Gift Shop is working on the story of street art as it was inevitably coopted (if that's what you want to call it) by the privileged art world.

This object lesson is made in the person of Thierry Guetta, a French émigré to Los Angeles. Guetta's biography is that first he was the proprietor of a popular (and expensive) LA vintage clothing store, and then an obsessive with a video camera documenting street art around the world. Eventually, as we see practically real-time, he reinvents himself as an Andy Warhol knockoff pop artist, calling himself MBW, for Mr. Brainwash. He appears to be a genuine person as far as I can tell by internet sources, has seen financial windfalls from his work, and is still working. Madonna really commissioned him to do the cover of her album Celebration. As a pop artist he works in the industrial production style Warhol came to use, hiring graphic designers and other artists to execute his ideas. There is an obvious pop inspiration to Guetta's work but a nagging feeling he may be mediocre and we may be dupes. As a somewhat exasperated Banksy puts it, "His art looks quite a bit like everyone else's."

Blue Valentine (2010)

USA, 112 minutes

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Writers: Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis, Cami Delavigne

Photography: Andrij Parekh

Music: Grizzly Bear, Penny & the Quarters

Editors: Jim Helton, Ron Patane

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka, John Doman, Mike Vogel, Maryann Plunkett, Ben Shenkman

I remembered Blue Valentine earlier this year when I was looking at Marriage Story. They're both heartbreaking tales of 30something splits, with young kid, they're both set in New York City—I had forgotten that about Blue Valentine—and they're both honest to a fault on relationships breaking down. The biggest difference may be in the class positions of their principals. Marriage Story takes place in Manhattan (and Los Angeles) and features a MacArthur Fellowship recipient whereas Blue Valentine is set in Brooklyn, and not really the trendy gentrified Brooklyn of the past 15 years, but a deeper layer, where alcoholism and domestic violence are hardly uncommon and not everybody finishes high school but can always get by at day labor.

Michelle Williams as Cindy and Ryan Gosling as Dean are the real strength of Blue Valentine—it's literally their vehicle as they've even got skin in among the phalanx of executive producers. They're much more accomplished and simply better than Scarlett Johansson (who is nonetheless very good in Marriage Story) and Adam Driver. Blue Valentine director and cowriter Derek Gianfrance may not have the resume or filmmaking skills of Marriage Story director Noah Baumbach but he can stay out of the way of his formidable stars. Baumbach may have made a better film, as such, but Gianfrance has made the more memorable one, taking pages out of the John Cassavettes style, with actors so deeply committed to their roles that therapy seems a likely result of the trauma of making the picture. Blue Valentine has little nudity or violence but is so intensely bleak it earned an NC-17 rating the first time around.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

[Original 2010 Movie of the Year ballot here.]

USA / UK / Canada / Japan, 112 minutes
Director: Edgar Wright
Writers: Michael Bacall, Edgar Wright, Bryan Lee O'Malley
Photography: Bill Pope
Music: Sex Bob-Omb, Beck, Nigel Godrich, Broken Social Scene, etc.
Editors: Jonathan Amos, Paul Machliss
Cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Alison Pill, Kieran Culkin, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman, Brandon Routh, Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Anna Kendrick, Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons

Set in hipster precincts of wintertime Toronto, based on a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a movie that obviously feels free to dress up any old way it likes, cycling through its modes like wardrobe changes: romantic comedy, teen sex farce, indie rock band bio, quest or journey tale, superhero comic book fare, and, perhaps most oddly of all, video game set piece. Director and cowriter Edgar Wright is the kind of filmmaker in love with making movies for the pure fun of it and it's almost always infectious. His shameless genre slumming, which reminds me of Joe Dante in its pure glee, has already produced a number of great pictures and maybe one or two interesting failures: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver, The World's End. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World may be the best thing he's done yet (I know I might get some argument on that) but Wright is still young and not close yet to being finished, whatever it is exactly he's doing.

A frequent complaint about Scott Pilgrim is Michael Cera in the lead role—with Jesse Eisenberg, Cera was the quintessential millennial pincushion target of 2010. Born on TV's Arrested Development, Cera established himself in the movies in such exercises as Superbad and Juno. He's starting to age out now, basically always playing the same guy, a gentle, daffy, ineffectual mumbling model of sensitive male youth—Woody Allen as undriven by sexual compulsion. Or, put it this way, Cera may be possessed of toxic masculinity (it shows up in Pilgrim a couple of times unexpectedly) but he has the sense to feel actual remorse about it. Scott Pilgrim's task here is to dump his rebound "fake high-school girlfriend," Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), in pursuit of dream girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)—and defeat Flowers's seven evil exes in battle. Presumably the reason Pilgrim is up for it at all is because he has spent his life playing video games.

The Possessed (2010)

Elif Batuman, raised in New Jersey as a second-generation US daughter of Turkish parents, makes a lot of things sound like fun in her book you wouldn't necessarily think are fun, like learning Russian as an adult in order to study Russian literature. Actually, she doesn't pull any punches there—it sounds really hard. She details her adventures and travels making her way through graduate school. Yes, that's right, graduate school. Her passions are so infectious they transcend the more typically unpleasant hothouse cloisters of academe. She has her eye on the prize always. She loves Don Quixote and Sherlock Holmes—they are critical markers into her fascination with Russian lit. She's skeptical of postmodern literary theory and today's MFA story writers, but she'll use theory in a pinch and her fondest desire is to write a novel, which actually came to fruition—The Idiot, published last year. One interesting and perhaps obvious point she raises is about the camps of division between those who prefer Leo Tolstoy or Fyodor Dostoevsky, which I don't think I had thought of as such before but makes perfect sense in a Beatles / Stones sort of way. She declares herself Tolstoyan and has no hesitation. I might be more Dostoevskian—the four sick men of Europe and all that—but I'm less certain. Still, Dostoevsky gets at least as much attention in this story plus the title reference to boot (and then again in her novel, which I don't know). Chekhov gets his too, and Pushkin, Turgenev, practically the whole gang. The subtitle has it about right: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. It's lively and chatty, veering off into memoir territory with a good deal of charm, though it always snaps back to Russian literature again. Batuman is full of provocative ideas, explicating streams of literature, such as the heirs of Don Quixote, conscious and otherwise, and she's read so much it overwhelms me even to think about. It's a great big fun time.

In case it's not at the library.

Super (2010)

USA, 96 minutes
Director/writer: James Gunn
Photography: Steve Gainer
Music: Tyler Bates
Editor: Cara Silverman
Cast: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker, Andre Royo, Nathan Fillion, Rob Zombie, James Gunn

If superhero movies have turned into something of a cliché—or perhaps more accurately into a thriving industry with a full spectrum of manifold overbred clichés—the psychologically realistic treatments of them are not far behind. Indeed, they probably belong on that spectrum of clichés themselves now. Alan Moore and Frank Miller impressed when they worked out the approach 30 years ago in Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns (respectively). Batman is the natural here, as the basic idea is always that these figures don't have superpowers but they do have perverse personal motivations to "fight crime." They often work at night, and well outside the law. They aren't exactly role models with utility belt gimmicks the way they were in the '50s and '60s.

Super starts from this point, with another foot planted firmly in a certain quirky indie comedy ethos, signaled by casting Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, and Kevin Bacon in the principal roles, by the use of a kind of low-budget naturalism in the action scenes, and by Tyler Bates's wincingly twee score, which is at once cloyingly sweet and archly i - r - o - n - i - c (sample here, I dare you to listen to more than 20 seconds). Director and writer James Gunn has, of course, gone on to be captain of his own Marvel franchise, Guardians of the Galaxy, and it's not really hard to see how he got from here to there. Equally telling credits for Gunn include screenplays for the 2002 remake of Scooby-Doo and the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. Yet somehow Super is greater than the sum of its puny parts, offering that rarest of things, a transcendent superhero movie.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

Loong Boonmee raleuk chat, Thailand / UK / France / Germany / Spain / Netherlands, 114 minutes
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Writers: Phra Sripariyattiweti, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Photography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Music: Penguin Villa
Editor: Lee Chatametikool
Cast: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Natthakarn Aphaiwonk, Geerasak Kulhong

It's official. According to the rankings of 21st-century films at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, the critics (generic plural) are kookoo for the baffling Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. They just can't agree on which of his movies they like best. Tropical Malady remains the perennial and/or aggregated consensus favorite, presently at #9, its highest position ever. Blissfully Yours, an earlier picture, has followed a more erratic path, entering the list some years ago in the mid-200s, falling off it entirely for a year, and then spiking to the top 20 for a few years before drifting down. Last year it went from #23 to #71.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives not only has the best title but was also the first movie I happened to see by Weerasethakul, and maybe for that reason it's my favorite. As much as I can say I have a favorite. Certainly the first thing you see from such a strange sensibility is often the one that sticks with you hardest (looking at you, Eraserhead). The best parts of Uncle Boonmee are funny, spooky, beautiful, and startlingly matter-of-fact about the loopy spirituality (recalling that "loopy," like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder). Its nighttime jungle scenes are gorgeous, shadowy, confounding, pad-footed, eerie—for many scenes, even sitting in a theater, you have to let your eyes adjust to the day for night filter to make out the cryptic images, shapes, and movements. The critics have kept it solidly in the top 40 on the list since shortly after its release, and last year it moved from #38 to #18. I like it, so I'm happy for its good fortunes this way, but these movies by Weerasethakul are not easy.

Just Kids (2010)

(requested by reader B.R.)

I came to it late, but really loved Patti Smith's memoir. I learned about a lot of things I hadn't known before: her mysterious first child, a soul-bonding friendship with the great photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and all her fascinating adventures in New York in the late '60s and early '70s. It's an homage to her friend Robert more than anything, and often very tender. Smith remains a unique figure, a hippie chick with a punk attack, forever in love with poetry and words and art, and a Jersey girl under all of it. These themes are fleshed out more than ever here. She revered Rimbaud and Baudelaire, yet she also had shrewd instincts that served her well. She worked at Scribner's and later the Strand as a bookstore clerk for many years, and learned how to suss out good buys in collectors' editions. A move out of the Chelsea Hotel, where she and Robert lived for a year or two, and into a large studio space nearby, was financed by a 26-volume Henry James edition she found for cheap somewhere. Speaking of the Chelsea Hotel, that's the longest section in the book, with lots of interesting characters and obviously the period she remembers with the most fondness. She met Janis Joplin and William Burroughs there. She met Allen Ginsberg in an automat restaurant, where she was a dime short for what she wanted and he thought she was a boy he might be able to pick up. She had a kind of charmed existence for all its tribulations and difficulties then. Just Kids is perhaps most interesting of all for its story of the parallel developments of Smith and Mapplethorpe as artists. When they first met, thrown together two times by chance, he never intended to be a photographer and she never intended to be a rock star. They came to their places through one another, and not without their pains, because honestly, look how unlikely on the face of it that those two would end up together, given how far apart they went. Yet the bond was always there and always honored—that's the only thing to come away from this book with, and really it's a lot. It's the reason the book was written. It's very generous and in all the familiar ways Patti Smith is generous: acting the Earth Mother and the Holy Fool in the name of rock 'n' roll and art and poetry. It's a beautiful thing truly, and so is this book.

In case it's not at the library.

Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture (2010)

Alice Echols's history of disco is a useful academic assessment of the state of disco and the many conventional wisdoms, often contradictory, that have clung to it since the '70s. She charts the basic rise and fall through the nightclubs, and the embrace of disco by marginalized American social groups such as African-Americans, women, and gays, finally arriving at the commercial debacles that followed the grimly persistent "Disco Sucks" campaigns of the late '70s and then the usual arguments that disco never went away, which I happen to subscribe to also. Echols is well suited to the task, as an academic with interests in American studies and history, and also as a long-time DJ in and around Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan. She devotes chapters to each of the social groups, with two for gays and another one on the movie Saturday Night Fever, which in many ways represents the watershed commercial milestone moment for the music—or, really, for the word "disco." The general shape of this history was well known to me, but there were many interesting revelations along the way. I hadn't known, for example, how much Chic looked to Roxy Music for a kind of formal inspiration. In many ways disco is a prototypical story of American social norming, with underclass groups providing cultural vitality as a means to mainstream acceptance. One refraction is that disco did not succeed until John Travolta made it safe for straight white men. Another is that these same straight white men simply could not handle such intimate acquaintance with dangerous subversive minorities, rising up to reject it with uncontrolled, unconscious violence. Hmm, something about this feels so familiar. Echols has no particular axe to grind. She just likes the music and here tries to solve the mystery of how it could rise so high, yet fall so low, enduring a cultural exile that still seems remarkable, not least for the way the music itself simply continued on, under new names: dance music, DOR, techno, electronica, etc., etc. Chockful of notes, sources, and recommended songs (some new to me and nice finds), it's a terrific summary of one key strand of pop music that continues to play on and affect everything.

In case it's not at the library.

Certified Copy (2010)

Copie conforme, France / Italy / Belgium / Iran, 106 minutes
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Writers: Caroline Eliacheff, Abbas Kiarostami
Photography: Luca Bigazzi
Editor: Bahman Kiarostami
Cast: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

Maybe it's the European art film gloss that director and co-writer Abbas Kiarostami has wrapped around this puzzle-box picture, but it's always been easy for me to like it the way you fall in love, swooning with delight and surprise. The main players are handsome and well appointed, the setting is the gorgeous Tuscany, and the in-the-know references to movies like Journey to Italy and Richard Linklater's Before... series are clonking yet not oppressive, with a brazen charm of their own. It is a pleasure to sit and look at this weird thing, full of familiar cues yet baffling. Forget about trying to solve the distracting mystery at its center, which is the relationship between James Miller (William Shimell) and Elle (Juliette Binoche). It's beside the point, except insofar as it's suggestion of a simulacrum of marriage and/or relationships. The more germane preoccupation here is with artifice and authenticity. I think.

Miller is an art critic who has just published a book called Copie conforme—or Certified Copy, if you will. It has been "awarded best foreign essay of the year." For some editions, his publisher has insisted on the title Forget the Original, Just Get a Good Copy. The first scene shows Miller at a stop on a book promotion tour he is obviously tired of, giving a presentation, to a small group of book club types. He has clearly given it many times before. In fact, he arrives late, saying the day is so nice and it's such a shame to come inside for this. One senses how many times he has said the things he dutifully begins to drone: "The copy itself has worth in that it leads us to the original and, in this way, certifies its value." He says, by way of declaring his place: "I'm not a member of the artistic establishment." Let's stop here a second. The movie is full of sly moments such as this, packed full of conflicting meaning.