My 25 Most Anticipated Films of 2014

Well, it's that time of the year again.  All the hoopla of the past year's top tens has finally died down, and even though we still have the Oscars coming up, it's time to turn our eyes toward the cinematic goings-on of 2014.  In other words, here's a list of the twenty-five (or so) films that I am most looking forward to this coming year.  So, without further ado, here we go.  Let's count 'em down.

25. Life Itself - A documentary based on the memoir of the late great Roger Ebert, directed by Steve James, the man who made Hoop Dreams, a documentary that Ebert was integral in making a success back in 1994.  Oh you tricky little circle of life you.  Whether James captures Ebert or not, just the chance to watch the life of the most influential critic on this critic, puts the film on the list.

24. 22 Jump Street - After the surprising success of the first film (before the film came out I was expecting it to be part of my worst of the year list, instead of a runner-up on my best list) Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill move across the street, and take their somewhat surprisingly hilarious high school act into the local college.  Second films tend to go downhill from the original (well, it would be the semi-original in this case) but since the first one surprised so well, why not again?  We'll see.

23. Godzilla - After the beyond disastrous 1998 version, many are holding their collective breath waiting for the May release of this monster.  At the helm is Gareth Edwards, who went straight from the extremely low budget monster movie, Monsters, to the extremely high budget monster movie, Godzilla, and I suppose many are wondering if he is up to the task.  But hey, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Bryan Cranston in the cast, how can ya not be excited over seeing Kick-Ass and Walter White battle the big G-Dogg?

22. Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Cap has always been one of my faves in the comics, stoic and Gary Cooper-esque (and especially brilliant when written by Ed Brubaker), and the first film was a much better film than many gave it credit for being.  Now we get the old guy in the modern world, assisted by Black Widow and having to fight the Winter Soldier.  As a comicbook nerd, this sounds like fun to me.

21. Boxtrolls - I've a secret to tell.  I love stop-motion animation.  No, really, I love love love it.  Can't get enough of it kinda love.  Give me stop-motion or give me death!  With all that out there, it is a safe bet that I am excited to see the latest stop-motion movie by the same animation studio that gave us Coraline and Paranorman (and in their early days, those dancing California Raisins of the 1980's).  Can't wait for September.

20. Assassin - From one of the most cerebral filmmakers of Asia, Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien, now gives us something that seems more in the Wong Kar-wai vein of things - a period piece about an assassin.  Granted, it could be delayed until 2015, but right now, it looks like it may make it to the states by year's end.  Of course, Hou being Hou (and Hou's will be Hou's - I crack myself up sometimes), this is probably not going to be the mainstreamiest of movies, so NYC and LA are it's only real potential hot spots.

19. How To Catch a Monster - Christina Hendricks and Saoirse Ronan star in this fantasy-thriller that also just so happens to be the directorial debut of one, Mr. Ryan Gosling.  Hopefully the actor, who has more than proven himself on this side of the camera, has learned a thing or two about directing while working with the likes of Derek Cianfrance and Nicolas Winding Refn.

18. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - The graphic noir gang is all back together again, including co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller (the writer of the original novels), and stars Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Rosario Dawson, and Mickey Rourke, now joined by new kids on the block, Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, Juno Temple, and even Lady Gaga.

17. Two Days, One Night - The Belgium-born Dardenne Brothers, the duo that gave us such brilliant cinema of endurance films as Rosetta, L'Enfant, and The Kid with a Bike, are back with a film that, thanks to lead Marion Cotillard (the biggest name the directors have ever had in one of their films), could be their most seen film here in the states.  Okay, maybe not that big of a hit, but I do love the Dardennes. Why the hell don't you!?

16. Birdman - From the man who gave the world the Mexican New Wave hit Amores Perros, as well as 21 Grams, this new film about a washed-up actor, starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, and Naomi Watts, will hopefully make us forget the disheveled and ultimately mediocre Babel, and bring us back to the director's earlier works.

15. X-Men: Days of Future Past - As an X-Men fan from waaay back, long before the movies, long before Wolverine was in every comic made by Marvel, an way before the Phoenix or The Days of Future Past, I quiver at the possibilities of this film, but I also shudder at the possibility of this film sucking the royal teat.  This one really could go either way, and it worries me.  Will it be as good as First Class or as band as Last Stand?  After seeing some of the costumes and such in Empire Magazine this week, my worries have risen.  Even with these worries, I still place this film rather high on my list.  I mean, it is the X-Men after all.

14. Boyhood - This Richard Linklater project, filmed intermittently between 2002 and 2013, takes a look at more than a decade in the life of a boy as he deals with his divorced parents, played by Patricia Arquette and Linklater buddy Ethan Hawke.  Sort of a fictional version of the Up series, or perhaps a bit akin to Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, the chameleonic auteur does it again - hopefully.

13. The Grand Budapest Hotel - I sort of have a love/hate relationship with Wes Anderson.  I think the guy is a talented filmmaker, and has a fun visual style to his work, but at the same time, the filmmaker hero to all the hipsters, seems to keep making the exact same movie over and over again, and this one, judging from the trailer, looks to be no different.  Alas poor Wes, let's change it up a bit next time, huh?

12. Guardians of the Galaxy - Forget Spidey, Cap, and all those Marvelous Mutants, this is the super hero movie to watch for. Why?  Because no one really knows what it is going to be.  Outside of the comic-reading world (a place where I reside) no one really knows who the hell these guys are, and unlike known properties such as the aforementioned Spidey, Cap, and The X-Men, there's no telling what director James Gunn (incidentally also the director of the fun genre pieces Super and Slither, as well as the writer of Zack Snyder's fantastic Dawn of the Dead remake) will do.  I am Groot!  We are all Groot!!  Those inside the comic-reading world will love that last joke, the rest of you will just have to wait until August.

11. Noah - Normally, I would not be all that interested in a big budget biblical epic, but the fact that Darren Aronofsky is directing this one, and Russell Crowe is starring, gives it a spot at number eleven.  We also get Jennifer Connelly as Noah's little missus, Emma Watson as his daughter, and Anthony Hopkins as good old Methuselah.  Judging from the trailer, the movie does look like a big fat CGI fest, but hopefully the guy who gave us Black Swan, can help it be more than just that.

10. Night Moves - After playing at both Venice and Toronto last year, as well as being on my most anticipated films of 2013 list (whoops), the latest film from Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek's Cutoff), will finally get it's long-awaited US debut later this year.  The film will also showcase the first major adult role for former child starlet Dakota Fanning.

9. Ex Machina - A psycho-tech-thriller, robot romance-esque sci-fi film written and directed by the guy who wrote the screenplays for 28 Days Later..., Sunshine, and Never Let Me Go, and starring Oscar Isaac, fresh off his brilliant turn in Inside Llewyn Davis?  How could we not be excited by this?  In fact, you'd have to be a machine to not be excited about this.  See what I did there?  Yup.

8. While We're Young - Granted, this is another one of those films that may not see the light of day (or the dark of the cinema, if you will) until 2015, but chances are still rather strong that it will be out in late Fal, in time for an Oscar run.  The film is written and directed by Noah Baumbach (Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha) and will star Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts, among many others.

7. Interstellar - Starring soon-to-be Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey, along with Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Michael Caine, this sci-fi film from Christopher Nolan (you know, the guy who directed Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Insomnia, and the Dark Knight Trilogy), is on pretty much everyone's anticipatory lips these days.  I must admit to not being a huge fan of Inception (I think it lacked a solid third act, and tried too hard to explain what should have been left unexplained) nor the final Dark Knight film (lackluster compared to it's immediate predecessor), but the rest of the auteur's oeuvre intact, I am greatly looking forward to this one.

6. Magic in the Moonlight - Believe it or not, this is not being called the Untitled Woody Allen Project, as has been the case during filming of the director's past films.  Set in 1920's French Riviera, the film stars Emma Stone, Colin Firth, Hamish Linklater, Jacki Weaver, and Marcia Gay Harden.  Granted, the Woodman has been hit or miss the past two decades or so (and he is going through some tough times of late, with ugly allegations being tossed and tweeted his way), but I am hoping this is more in Midnight in Paris, Match Point, Blue Jasmine territory and less in the Scoop or Whatever Works realm.

5. Gone Girl - David Fincher, one of the best directors working today (I mean, c'mon - Panic Room, Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network, his American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo!!), is back, and tackling the best seller, Gone Girl, with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.  Dark and sinister, and both visually and psychologically harrowing, are things we should expect from this film.  Hell, with a filmography such as his, how could we not.  I know I can't wait.

4. Jane Got A Gun - This long-anticipated (in the works for three years now) Natalie Portman western was originally to be directed by Lynne Ramsey, but after she walked due to problems with the studio (Jude Law walked as well, having only signed on in order to work with Ramsey), Gavin O'Conner (Tumbleweeds) took over the helm, and finally, we may actually get to see the film later this year.  I know, I'm excited to see one of my favourite actresses starring in one of my favorite genres.  Hopefully all the pre-production problems did not hurt the final product.

3. The Terrence Malick Kerfuffle - Supposedly, Terrence Malick is working on three films right now, and no one is really sure which will come first, and when it will eventually come.  The auteur is known for taking long times between films (sometimes decades even), but after two films (The Tree of Life and last year's To the Wonder) in just three years, the old boy's pace is a-quickenin'.  Among the actors involved in these simultaneous films, are Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchet, Benicio del Toro, and Michael Fassbender, several of them starring in two of the three.  Who the hell knows what's going to become of this whole conglomerate, but one of them (most likely Knight of Cups) is bound to come out by year's end.  Right?

2. Nymphomaniac - This film was on my list last year as well (and in the same spot, if I'm not mistaken) but it took a bit longer to get here than we had all anticipated.  Now, in a two-part release schedule set for March and April (a la Soderbergh's Che, not Tarantino's Kill Bill), this ever so-controversial film from that ever so-controversial Lars von Trier, in all its penetration-happy glory, and featuring Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Uma Thurman, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Stacy Martin, Connie Nielson, Willem Dafoe, Udo Kier, Stellen Skarsgard, and mister breaking news Shia LaBeouf, is finally seeing the light of the American cinema.  I wonder how many people will be offended by this one?  I am almost anticipating the inevitably ridiculous puritan backlash more than the film(s) itself.

1. Inherent Vice - Paul Thomas Anderson is the best filmmaker working today.  There, I said it!  So, I suppose after such a proclamation, it should come as no surprise that his seventh film makes it to the top of the heap on my list.  The man who made the masterpieces Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, and The Master, now takes on the 2009 Thomas Pynchon crime novel.  Expected to be somewhere between The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin, Jena Malone, Martin Short (yeah, Martin Short), Maya Rudolph, Owen Wilson, and Benicio del Toro, this is my most anticipated film of 2014.

Looking even further ahead: There are a few films that will most likely not make the scene until early 2015 sometime.  Though any of these could end up getting a last hour release in time for Oscar consideration, they are more likely candidates for next year's list, but since there is the possibility (albeit it unlikely), and these are films that would definitely make the list if they had sure release dates, I should include them somewhere in here - so here they are.

Carol - Todd Haynes, the man who gave us such brilliant works as Safe, Far From Heaven, I'm Not There, and the HBO mini-series version of Mildred Pierce, as well as the marvelous must-see short film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (seriously, if you can find this creature, you must watch it!), is back again, once again, like Far From Heaven, set in the not-so-halcyon days of the 1950's, this time with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara heading the cast.  How could we not want to see such a film?  This could make its way into theatres by December (it is the most likely of these three to do so), but probably a Spring 2015 release is more likely, unless they decide to hold the film for an Oscar run next year.

Cyber - This is Michael Man doing what Michael Mann has always done best, the classic American crime film.  This one stars Chris ' The God of Thunder' Hemsworth.  They haven't actually started filming yet (hence the probable 2015 release date) but I'm already all a-twitter over the idea of a new Michael Mann film coming our way after a four+ year absence from the big screen.

Macbeth - Michael Fassbender as Macbeth, and Marion Cotillard as his hand-wringing Lady.  How can this not be one of my most anticipated films?  But alas, poor Macbeth (now I'm just mixing my Shakespeare metaphors), or should I say, poor us, because we will most likely have to wait until next year to finally see this film, unless filming goes quickly (they have not started yet) and we get a rush job for Oscar season.  Though, I am more than willing to wait some extra time just to not have a rush job on this film.

And let us not forget these intriguing but not quite list worthy anticipations (in no particular order): the sci-fi Transcendence w/ Johnny Depp, Aussie drama The Rover, Anton Corbijn's A Most Wanted Man, Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher, Mia Hanson-Love's Eden, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Cronenberg's Map to the Stars, The Wachowski's Jupiter Ascending, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Muppets Most Wanted, The Lego Movie, Ridley Scott's Exodus, Into the Woods, Low Down with Elle Fanning, the latest version of Madame Bovary, starring Mia Wasikowska, and about two or three dozen more.

That's it kids.  See ya 'round the web.

The Best of 2013

Hey everybody!  It's that time of the year again.  That time where we film critics (and others of a similar cinematic bent) dole out our annual best and worst of the year lists.  Well, that is just what I will be doing below (and over at my main site, All Things Kevyn).  But this ain't just some boring ole top ten list.  No sirree.  This will be my choices for the best that cinema had to offer this past year, from the best to the worst.  A top twenty or so offering (a top 21 to be exact), followed by some runners-up, followed by my choices for the best performances of the year, which then will be followed by my choices for the dregs of then past cinematic year.  But enough of this introductory nonsense.  Without further ado, I give you the cinematic year that was 2013, beginning with my choices for the best films of the year.  Oh yeah, and due to some scheduling conflicts, two films that would have likely made this list (and still might through the wonder of the retcon), Spike Jonze's Her and The Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, have yet to be seen by your not-so-humble narrator, and therefore are not included below. Anyway, on with the show...

1. Stoker - This film, the first English-language offering from Korean enfant terribles, Park Chan-wook, came onto the screen quite early in the year, and ever since the March 21st screening I saw, the film has been the runaway winner for best of the year - no film was ever able to topple it from its high and mighty perch.  Loosely based on Hitchcock's 1943 classic thriller, Shadow of a Doubt, Park brings his unique, oft times batshitcrazy, style to Hollywood, and casts a pitch perfect Mia Wasikowska in the central role of lonely little girl lost-cum-potentially demented serial killer - all via a bubbling sexual cauldron of Lolita-esque desire.  A gorgeously harrowing near-masterpiece, indeed.

2. American Hustle - The only film that even came close to toppling Stoker from that top spot, came quite close to the year end deadline - as many big name Oscar potentials do.  Taking a riff on making a Martin Scorsese film ("the best damn Martin Scorsese film ever made by someone who is not Martin Scorsese"), David O. Russell has finally made the great film we all knew he had in him all along.  Granted, many thought his last film was that great work, but the obvious cliché of that film (really, how were so many fooled into thinkig it was anything better than typical Oscar-bait pabulum?), is wiped away completely with this new, great visceral work of art.  Bravo.

3. Spring Breakers - From its opening montage of a typical spring break setting that looks to be an auteuristic take on Girls Gone Wild, to its dangerously sexualized interior involving several actresses with usually (usually) squeaky clean images, all the way to its killer final scene that could have been lifted straight out of a Brian De Palma-fuelled wet dream, Harmony Korine's succulently filthy paean to the Godardian ideal of a girl and a gun, or in this case, several girls and lots of guns, may not be the film for everyone (what an understatement!) but that doesn't change the fact that this is indeed, cinema as it damn well should be.

4. Before Midnight - This acerbic love(esque) story is the culmination (unless Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke decide on making a fourth one down the road) of one of the smartest, most beautifully filmed trilogies around.  Beginning in 1995 with Before Sunrise, and continuing in 2004 with Before Sunset (my personal favourite of the bunch), the aforementioned director, Richard Linklater, and his stars and co-screenwriters, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, have given us a deft comedy-cum-potential tragedy in this continuing tale of the life and love of Celine and Jesse.  Simple, yet deceptively perceptive, this film (along with its predecessors), and its filmic couple, is just so so fun to watch.

5. Frances Ha - Noah Baumbach, the Brooklyn-born writer/director of such arthouse hits as Margot at the Wedding and The Squid and the Whale, is at it again.  This time around he is joined by muse/girlfriend Greta Gerwig as co-screenwriter and star - in fact Gerwig pretty much created the character, foibles and faults included, from the so-called ground up.  The film, done in crisp black and white and shot on a minimal budget in and around Brooklyn, is the story of a twentysomething New York dancer, all done in the most post-new wavy kinda manner one can imagine.  So much so that one can actually see, hear, and smell the ghosts of Francois Truffaut wandering around in the background somewhere.

6. Blue Jasmine - Once upon a time, a Woody Allen film meant something special.  Lately, the guy can be pretty hit and miss.  Luckily, his latest film, though panned by many this year, is one of those aforementioned hits.  But no matter how well written it is (and it is), and no matter how great a performance is given by supporting player Sally Hawkins (and it is indeed, a great performance), and no matter how glad this critic is to see the Woodman back in such fine form (and yes, he is back baby), it is Cate Blanchett's stellar take on one of the most complex characters Allen has ever drawn, that steals this movie away from anything and everything else.

7. The World's End - Judging from the genre-spanning satirical films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, the cinematic combination of director Edgar Wright, and stars Simon Pegg (also co-writer with Wright) and Nick Frost, pretty much guarantees a witty and wry comedy, and with the release of The World's End, their collective take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and probably the most acerbic of the trio's loosely-based trilogy, that guarantee has become even stronger.

8. Upstream Color - Finally, the long-awaited second film from Shane Carruth, director of the 2004 ground-breaking indie sci-fi film Primer, and this mother is just as mind-fucking trippy as his first film.  Taking on the idea of identity and self-awareness, this film slowly builds to a bizarre climax, all the while giving momentary hints, though barely revealing the truth as to what exactly is happening on screen.

9. The Act of Killing - A documentary about gangster squads and para-military assassins, told in various manners, from reenactments to talk show appearances to elaborate musical numbers, and all done with not only the complete cooperation of these very same gangster squads and para-military assassins, but also actually reenacted by these very same men.  Imagine something akin to a Taliban reality show, and you have this bizarre and intense film.

10. To the Wonder - Sure, when compared to Terrence Malick's previous film, The Tree of Life (the one and only true masterpiece of this decade so far), this much smaller-in-scope work is sure to look minor in such a comparison, but still, a film that can be considered (and is by the director himself) a companion piece to The Tree of Life, a footnote even, then To the Wonder is a marvelous miniature work of art.

11. The Grandmaster - How good a filmmaker is Hong Kong master Wong Kar-wai?  Good enough that even my least favourite film of the director's oeuvre, makes it to number eleven on my best of 2013 list.  Yeah, that's right, The Grandmaster is probably the auteur's least interesting film, and it is still better than most films made today.  Of course by least interesting, I mean that only when compared to the rest of the guy's filmography.  Standing on its own, The Grandmaster is a gorgeous and quite succulent work of art.

12. Blue is the Warmest Color - A three hour French lesbian drama, complete with a ten minute or so unsimulated sex scene smack dab in the middle, probably is not the most mainstream friendly movie out this year (many audiences, including those at official Academy Award screenings, either scoffed or even laughed during said sex scene), but once the gratuity is overlooked, this graphic novel adaptation ends up being a heart-wrenching and tragic love story.

13. Only God Forgives - Cool and strangely calming, this otherwise visceral work from Nicolas Winding Refn (the man who gave us both Bronson and Drive) is a psychologically brutal and visually haunting look at the underbelly of Thai society and familial dysfunction, all done with three bravura performances from Winding Refn muse Ryan Gosling, and Kristen Scott Thomas, and Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm.

14. Fruitvale Station - More often than not, when we are given a film about tragic real life events, the end result is either pandering schlock or trite mishandling.  In the case of the debut film from Ryan Coogler, the end result is a riveting look at tragic real life events, that almost never blinks away from its harrowing storyline.  A (would be) star-making performance from Michael B. Jordan helps out a lot too.

15. The Bling Ring - Sofia Coppola has made a directorial career out of portraying lost little girls in her films, be they suicidal sisters or legendary teen queens, and she keeps that going here, as she tells the story of a TMZ-addled youth culture, that, no longer able to differentiate between reality and reality TV, lives by their own (im)morality code.  A chilling film indeed.

16. The Lone Ranger - Yeah, that's right bitches!  This movie, an epic failure due more to its ridiculous (and completely excessive) epic budget than any sort of box office dilemma, can be found on more than quite a few worst of 2013 lists, but I say bah to them.  Bah indeed.  Sure, this may not be a great work of cinema that should be held high in the annals of film history, but it is a rather spectacular grand guignol of Hollywood spectacle, indeed.  Fun fun fun!

17. A Touch of Sin - This film, the latest from Chinese master of melancholy,  Jia Zhangke, slowly builds its intertwining plot threads into an eventual boiling pot of despair and destruction.  Allowing his camera, and some pretty damn spectacular work from his actors, to explain the otherwise unexplained, Jia's film resonates like an unending drum.  Thump, thump, thump, thump...

18. Side Effects - If we are to believe director Steven Soderbergh, this is to be the enigmatic auteur's final theatrical release.  If so, it's a damn fine way to go out.  If it isn't (and let's face it, it probably isn't), then it's yet another unique experiment in what is probably the strangest oeuvre of any director working today.  In other words, Side Effects is yet another reason why everyone should be in love with the films of Steven Soderbergh - and for that matter, the equally enigmatic acting of the often overlooked Miss. Rooney Mara.

19. Ain't Them Bodies Saints - My wife says that Casey Affleck may very well be the best actor of his generation, and, aside from Christian Bale and Affleck's own bro-in-law, Joaquin Phoenix, I am prone to agree, especially after seeing yet another seering performance from the guy in this little seen gem of a film.  As for the film itself, think Arthur Penn meets early Nicholas Ray, with a kinda stormy Terrence Malick feel.

20. Gravity - I have always been, and will always be a most loud proponent of, whenever possible, watching a film on the big screen, where it should be seen.  This is especially the case with Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity.  In fact, I would even go so far as to say the only proper way to watch Gravity is on the big screen in 3D.  That's right, this noted 3D-hater is proposing one see a film in 3D.  So be it.  Gravity is a stunning work of art that will probably end up being just average when it makes its way to smaller screens at home.  But up on that big silver screen?  Just gorgeous.

21. Much Ado About Nothing - A black & white Shakespearean adaptation, set in modern times and using the Bard's original Early-Modern English dialogue, and directed by the man responsible for the third top-grossing film of all-time, Joss Whedon's foray into classic lit may not have been the runaway box office success that The Avengers was in 2012, but it is certainly good enough to round out my best of 2013 list.

Some worthy runners-up (in no particular order): Warm Bodies (Jonathan Levine); Trance (Danny Boyle); The Last Stand (Kim Jee-woon); Mud (Jeff Nichols); Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J. Abrams); The Angel's Share (Ken Loach); Dallas Buyer's Club (Jean-Marc Vallee); Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro); Wrong (Quentin Dupieux); Lore (Cate Shorland); Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski); The Iceman (Ariel Vromen); You're Next (Adam Wingard); Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener); Passion (Brian De Palma).

Best Female Lead Performances of the Year:

Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine

Mia Wasikowska in Stoker

Adele Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Color

Julie Delpy in Before Midnight

Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha

Rooney Mara in Side Effects & Ain't Them Bodies Saints

Best Male Lead Performances of the Year:

Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club

Christian Bale in American Hustle

Simon Pegg in The World's End

Michael Shannon in The Iceman
Casey Affleck in Ain't Them Bodies Saints

Ethan Hawke in Before Midnight

Best Female Supporting Performances of the Year:

Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine

Nicole Kidman in Stoker

Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle

Kristen Scott Thomas in Only God Forgives

Tao Zhao in A Touch of Sin

Lea Seydoux in Blue is the Warmest Color

Best Male Supporting Performances of the Year:

James Franco in Spring Breakers

Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club

Matthew Goode in Stoker

James Gandolfini in Enough Said
Vithaya Pansringarm in Only God Forgives

Nathan Fillion in Much Ado About Nothing

And then, ever so briefly, come the worst of the year...

1. 47 Ronin

2. After Earth

3. A Good Day to Die Hard

4. The Counselor

5. Machete Kills

6. Oz the Great and Powerful

7. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III

8. Elysium

9. Bullet to the Head

10. Gangster Squad

One final note: Though it is not quite bad enough of a film to make the above Worst of the Year list, plus I would've broken my heart to have to include this filmmaker, one of my all-time favourites, on any sort of worst list, but nonetheless, the biggest 2013 cinematic disappointment for this critic has to be Martin Scorsese's surprisingly banal The Wolf of Wall Street.  Cool poster though.

Well, that's it kids.  See ya 'round the web.

Film Review: Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine

For approximately a quarter of century now, with the release of each new Woody Allen film (and there is usually one a year) critics invariably say one of two things.  Either it is a return to form for the director or it is a lament for the past, far superior filmmaker of the 1970's and 1980's.  In my wish to break such silly tradition, I propose that his latest, Blue Jasmine, is neither a return to form, nor is it something that makes us yearn for the days of Annie Hall or Manhattan.  Let's face it, the director would be quite hard-pressed to match such aforementioned films as these, and we shouldn't keep expecting him to get back to such greatness, nor should we feel so disappointed when he does not.   Sure, the writer-director's output is much more hit-and-miss these days than it was in the so-called olden days, but through the muck of such disasters as Scoop and/or Anything Else, the guy can still make one hell of a movie.

What Blue Jasmine is, is a Woody Allen film, better than some, worse than others, but still a strong and charming film, full of the wry sense of humour that we have come to expect from a Woody Allen film, as well as a deeper and darker undercurrent running through its belly, finally rearing its full form in that harrowing finale, that stands on its own, without need of comparison to the director's past oeuvre.  With that said, I would like to add that even though Allen's new film may not be able to compare to the likes of the filmmaker's golden streak of the past (in this critic's mind, from 1977 through 1995, a streak of nineteen films, Allen made not a single dud) it is easily one of the best he has made since those days, as well as one of the best films of 2013.  Oh well, I guess I kinda just did the very thing I claimed I did not want to do.  Oh well.  Let's move on anyway, for I must let you in on the greatness  that is Blue Jasmine - somewhat surprisingly so, considering the cool reception I had to Allen's last film, and my belief in the overpraising of the one before that.

What Woody Allen does best, other than writing a damn smart comedy (a few damn smart dramas as well), is elicit some damn fine performances out of his stars - something he does once again in Blue Jasmine.  Cate Blanchett, as atypically self-absorbed Allen leading lady, has been getting kudos upon kudos ever since the film first opened, and on top of all this, award accolades and chants of the actor's second Oscar have spewed from almost every Academy Award pundant out there.  Even many of those who dislike the film (and some do quite hate the thing) still praise Blanchett's work in said film.  Her ability to make her audience laugh and cry in one single scene, sometimes in one single take or shot, is quite astounding indeed.  Not many actors can pull off such a feat, and Blanchett does it time and time again in Blue Jasmine.  Of course, we should not, in our praise for Blanchett, forget the great supporting performance handed in by Sally Hawkins as Blanchett's sister in the film.  These two performances shine through and deserve the accolades they are receiving, but at the same time, we should not forget that Woody Allen (here we go) has seemed to returned to form in his latest film.  Well, yeah, I couldn't go the whole time without saying that, now could I?  Seriously though, Blue Jasmine, with its inherent wit and witticisms, is one of Allen's better works, and deserves to be included, if not in his golden first tier, then in his strong and charming second one for sure.

This review can also be read over at my main site, All Things Kevyn.

Film Review: To Rome With Love

In recent years, after a decade-long spate of less than critically acclaimed works, Woody Allen decided to make a quick exodus from his native Manhattan island and travel abroad for a bit.  From London, where he made the neo-noirish Match Point, a comeback of sorts, the better-to-be-forgotten Scoop, and the totally forgotten Cassandra's Dream, to Spain, where his Vicky Cristina Barcelona was the toast of the continent, and after a quick return to the city of his past for a pair of mediocre meanderings, on to his Oscar-winning Midnight in Paris, which was closer to the director's classic form than anything else in recent years, the neurotic filmmaker has climbed his way back up the proverbial ladder of critical acclaim.  And now the writer/director (and for the first time since the ill-fated Scoop in 2006, actor as well) travels on to the Eternal City for a quartet of non-intermingling stories of love and woe and the ardor of Roma.

To Rome With Love, the 43rd film directed by Woody Allen, is certainly not the director's worst film (ahem, Anything Else, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Scoop for Christ's sake) but it still definitely belongs in the somewhat lower depths of his rather prolific oeuvre.  Probably one of the most banal screenplays ever scripted by Allen, the film does have the good fortune, on occasion, to have itself saved by the performances of its ensemble cast.  On occasion.  Overall, the film just sort of lays there like it is waiting for one of that aforementioned ensemble, be it Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Roberto Benigni, Alec Baldwin, Alison Pill, Judy Davis, Penélope Cruz, Greta Gerwig, or even Woody himself, to step up and do something interesting.  Trust me, this rarely happens.  That it happens at all is a godsend considering the lackluster, pedestrian plodding of the film from point A to point C to point B and so on and so on.

Now perhaps I am being a bit harder on the film than it, or Allen deserves.  There are parts of the film which are quite delightful.  Allen dissects his film into four even but quite unequal parts.  One of these parts works quite well.  A second has its ups and downs.  A third, mostly downs, and a fourth would fail dismally if not for the inclusion of one Mr. Alec Baldwin.  But more on him in a bit.  For now, let us dissect Allen's dissections - from top to bottom.  The quarter that works the best gives us a mild mannered bourgeois member of the title city's run-of-the-mill citizenry.  The fact that this average Joe, or should we say this average Giuseppe, is played by the typically quite manic Signor Benigni, makes it all that much funnier.  Benigni's benign business clerk awakes one day to find his usual drudgery turned upside down by throngs of paparazzi and a sudden absurdist type of celebrity.  Benigni is at his comic best here, playing less the clown and more something in the vein of Buster Keaton.  His bewildered average Giuseppe is the highlight of Allen's very hit-and-miss film.

Secondly, we get the story of young love and old curmudgeonry.   The young love is Alison Pill, an actress we should see more of than we do, and thanks to Aaron Sorkin's HBO series Newsroom, we will be, and Italian Flavio Parenti.  The curmudgeonly point-of-view comes of course from Allen himself as Pill's opera-loving, former avant-garde music promoter-cum-typically neurotic displaced New Yorker father.  The usually spectacular Judy Davis is along for the ride as Pill's psychiatrist mother as well, but in a thankless part that never allows her to even sharpen her acerbic claws, let alone use them.  This segment of the film works on occasion, like when Allen's pushy musicologist (think a failed John Cage-like show promoter) wrangles the mortician father of his soon-to-be son-in-law, played by real life tenor Fabio Armiliato, who sings like Caruso in the shower but hacks and coughs his way through the forced-upon audition he attends, into thinking he can become a star.  Unfortunately, even Allen himself, who does not seem like himself at all, rather doing a pale imitation of himself, seems to be waiting for someone to do something.

In our third segment (and since these stories are not in order, and go back and forth throughout the film, I am only numbering these in order to countdown from best to worst) we get a comically innocent newly married Italian couple from the country, traveling to the big city in order to help the new husband's budding corporate career.  Getting split up due to their unfamiliarity with the swerving streets of Rome, the young couple go on separate adventures into the possibilities of sexual awareness.  We see Penélope Cruz, who won an Oscar for her last Woody heroine in Vicky Cristina, as a red dressed harlot, but much like Davis, she really gets very little to do here.  But still, even though this segment drags way too often (there are some nice touches), it is the fourth, and I suppose the main segment that falters with the greatest of unease.  Featuring Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page and a very underused Greta Gerwig in a romantic triangle of sorts, it is only Alec Baldwin, as an intrusive Greek chorus-cum-group sub-conscious, who saves the day.  Well, almost saves the day.  This segment is by far the weakest part of a film that is already quite weak.

In the end we get perhaps not the worst Woody has ever done (I mean it's not Scoop bad after all) but surely a very lesser Woody indeed. Granted, I do not think the classic Woody Allen of Annie Hall through Crimes and Misdemeanors (a run of thirteen excellent films without exception) will ever truly reappear, but most of the director's more recent films have led one to believe that the possibility of such a new golden age may be on the horizon.  The release of the lackluster To Rome With Love kinda quells that idea.  But hey, like I said earlier, at least it isn't Scoop bad.

Who SHOULD Win the Oscar Poll Results

Almost a month ago, a few days after this year's Oscar nominations were announced, you my faithful and constant readers (thanx to Mrs. Parker for the borrowing of at least part of that phrase) were asked to choose which film you think should win this year's Oscar for Best Picture.  Not the film that will win (which incidentally seems to be more than a foregone conclusion at this point) but which film you would vote for if you were a member of the Academy.  Did you pick the swaying genius of The Tree of Life or the giddy nostalgia of The Artist or Hugo?   Did you cast your vote for Woody back in Woody form in the magically inclined Midnight in Paris?  What about the love of the game directness of Moneyball or the dramatic poignancy of The Descendants?  Did you vote for the succulent looking but emotionally manipulative War Horse?  What of the pandering mediocrity of The Help, which though wonderfully acted all around, saddled with the most inane screenplay imaginable?  Or perhaps your choice was for the insipid atrocity that was Incredibly Loud and Obnoxiously Close?  Perhaps you can see a bit of my own leanings from the above statements, but after all, I am one of those nasty critics everyone speaks so badly about.  Anyway, on with the results of the poll.

In no real surprise, and by a veritable landslide, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, easily the most acclaimed film of 2011 and my own personal favourite, wins the thing hands down as they say.  Garnering 31 votes (out of an overall total of 72 cast), which is another way of saying 43%, Malick's gorgeous film (hated and reviled by much of the mindless multiplex masses) is our big winner.  I would love to see it spoken when they open that final envelope of the night on Sunday, but that, as they are prone to say, ain't gonna happen brothah.

Coming in at a distant second and third are a pair of films that look back into the annals of cinema history.  With 12 votes (16%), just squeaking out the silver medal spot by one vote, is Martin Scorsese's Hugo.  This film, my second favourite of the year, is followed by the frontrunner to win the actual Oscar, The Artist, grabbing 11 votes (15%).  Pretty much from the beginning this was really a race between these two motion pictures for the honour of coming in second to The Tree of Life, and it was nearly a photo finish - but in the end, Hugo had all four feet off the ground.  In case you do not get that last reference, check out some, appropriately enough, very early, pre-film history here.  

That brings us to the rest of this nine horse pack.  With 6 votes (8%), coming in in fourth place is Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which in turn is followed by Moneyball and The Descendants in a tie for fifth with 4 votes (5%) each.  Then we have those lesser films - and not just in my not-so-humble opinion but apparently in the voter's eyes as well.  With 2 votes (2%) apiece are Steven Spielberg's visually stunning (see I can say good things too) War Horse and that 9/11 work of arrogant stupidity (okay, not everything can have good said about them) Incredibly Overblown and Ridiculously Annoying.  Then we have that last place finisher, The Help, in a sad state of affairs, grabbing exactly zero votes. 

Well, there you have it true believers (now I must thank Stan Lee for usurping his tagline) - the results of how you would vote if you were a member of the "illustrious" Academy.  And speaking of the "illustrious" Academy, I will be back on Saturday to announce my final predictions for these so talked about Oscars.  Until then.....

Woody & Me: Through the Years

The following is my contribution to The LAMBs in the Director's Chair #22: Woody Allen.

The first Woody Allen film I remember seeing was 1973's Sleeper.  It would have been around 1978 or 79 that I saw it on TV.  I would have been just eleven or twelve at the time, so needless to say I did not get many of the sexual or political jokes.  The Orgasmatron went right over my head (kids were more naive in those days) but I do remember liking the giant chicken.  I have of course gone back and rewatched the film, on several occasions, and now consider it to be one of Woody's best and funniest films.  

My real attraction to the films of Allen Stewart Konigsberg (the name with which he was born back in 1935 Brooklyn) came around 1984 with the purchase of my very first VCR. (remember those?)  I was seventeen and this VCR was the first major purchase I ever made with my own hard-earned money.  I also got myself a membership at a local video store called Movie Merchants and began renting movies as if I were a young man with a great obsession.  Of course this was very true, as this was the time I began to evolve into the obsessive cinephile I am today.  This was to be the birth of my lifelong desire for everything cinema.  The beginning of my obsession.  But I digress.

Among the multitudes of titles (on video cassette long before the advent of DVD and Bluray!) that I rented those first few months of membership, were several Woody Allen films.   The first among these, which should come as no surprise, was Annie Hall.  Considered the director's finest work (it makes my top twenty favourite films of all-time), and a departure from his earlier slapstick comedies, Annie Hall is what a romantic comedy should be.  Both edgy and wry, the film stars Woody as Alvy Singer, a typically neurotic writer, and Diane Keaton as his love interest, the titled gal herself, Annie Hall.  The couple had been a couple offscreen as well (they had split up several years before Annie Hall was made, and remain friends to this day) and the character is actually named after Keaton, who had been born Diane "Annie" Hall.

The greatness behind the film, other than the adorable-as-hell performance from Ms. Keaton, is the direction of Mr. Allen himself.  Influenced by Ingmar Bergman as much as Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin, Allen made his film as both comedy and drama.  Tossing in multiple styles, including inner monologue subtitles, breaking the fourth wall, introducing insane asides, flashbacks, split-screens and even an animated segment, Allen's Annie Hall, winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1977 (and Best Director, Screenplay and Actress for Keaton), is what one could and should call a true masterpiece of cinema.  This was also the time period where I first saw Love and Death (influenced by Russian literature), A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (Shakesperean comedy as Bergman remake), Zelig (an early mockumentary), Broadway Danny Rose (showing Allen's comedic upbringing) and Bananas (an early Chaplinesque slapstick).

The three Woody Allen films I saw in this initial flurry of filmwatching that most thrilled me though (aside from the aforementioned Annie Hall) were his ode to Bergman, the serious-minded drama Interiors, his take on Fellini's 8 1/2, Stardust Memories (a film that often gets forgotten when talking of Allen's quite prolific oeuvre) and the Woodman's homage to the city he loves so much, Manhattan.  Using the music of Gershwin (how can you not love a Woody Allen soundtrack!?) and the most stunning of black and white cinematography by Gordon Willis, Allen's Manhattan makes the city itself the main character of his movie.  A city that would play the most important part in many a Woody Allen motion picture, becomes the most important aspect of Manhattan.  The following year I would rent and watch 1985's Purple Rose of Cairo.  One of Allen's most enjoyable films, and one that has grown on me more and more with each successive viewing. 

It was 1986 that Woody and I took our cinematic relationship to a whole other level.  Up until then, I had only seen Woody on the small screen, but that year, my first year out of high school, we went big.  Big screen that is.  Hannah and Her Sisters (my third favourite Woody) would be my first Allen film seen in an actual cinema.  Seen with my mom, aunt and uncle, at an AMC theater in town, the film was a blast, as they say.  The rest of the fam wasn't all that thrilled by it (they never have been big fans of the Woodman), but I quite enjoyed my first theatrical Woody Allen experience.  My cherry popping if you want to keep going with the cine-sexual relationship angle.

The following year would bring my second theatrical rendezvous with the Woodman (how's that for innuendo?).  It would be Radio Days, and unlike the majority of Allen's films, the director would not appear on camera in this one, instead acting as narrator.   Probably the most nostalgic of Allen's films, Radio Days is an ode to that romantic era of the director's childhood.   A pair of dramatic works, September in 1987 and Another Woman in 1988, would follow Radio Days.  These too would be sans Woody the actor.  These would also be two films I would not see till much later (September in the late 1990's and Another Woman for the first time just earlier this year).  Cut now to early 1989.  It has been three years since Woody starred in one of his films.  But this would soon end - in spades. 

First would come the omnibus film New York Stories.  A three part venture directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Allen.  Scorsese's section, starring Nick Nolte as a crazed artist, is my favourite part of the film, and Coppola's part is a sentimental look at childhood in the limelight (obviously based on his daughter Sofia), but Woody's is of course the funniest.  An absurdist look at the Oedipal complex, sprightly called Oedipus Wrecks, it is the story of a man with an overbearing mother.  One day, during a magic act (Woody does love his magic), the mother vanishes, and Woody's smothered son feels free at last.  Alas, the mother comes back as a giant floating head who continues to lovingly torment her son.  Great Woody, but still just a short film.  Later that same year would bring his real (semi)comeback.

Crimes and Misdemeanors is an intriguing blend of the dramatic and the comedic.  Loosely based  on  Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Allen takes the idea of morality in murder and puts it into a very Allenesque realm.  The director would come back to these themes fifteen years later in Match Point.  After making the mostly forgotten Alice in 1990 (one of the few Allen films I have not seen), playing actor only opposite Bette Midler in Paul Mazursky's Scenes From a Mall, and directing the German Expressionist homage, Shadows and Fog (a film I would not catch on video until a few years later), the shit sort of hit the fan.  Not to play into the whole tabloid aspect of the Woody/Mia/Soon Yi relationship, it was in 1992 that the story hit the newsstands, and would taint Allen's career to this day.  I personally do not think Allen did anything illegal (immoral is a different story, but since Woody and Soon-Yi are still together today, nineteen years later...) but whether he did or not, the scandal still hangs heavy, though to a lesser degree now than then.

The film that came out in the midst of all this he said/she said nonsense was Husbands and Wives.  It would be Mia Farrow's final film with her long time lover.  It would also be Woody Allen's last truly great film for nearly two decades.  After Husbands and Wives Allen would make Manhattan Murder Mystery.  The film would star his former paramour Diane Keaton.   After this would come a succession of enjoyable but not great films.  Bullets Over Broadway in 1994, Mighty Aphrodite in 1995, Everyone Says I Love You (a musical!) in 1996, Deconstructing Harry in 1997, Celebrity in 1998 and Sweet and Lowdown in 1999.  Granted, these may not be Allen's golden age films, but they are still all quite good.  At the turn of the millennium, this would no longer be true.

In 2000 came Small Time Crooks.  A somewhat fun comedy but definitely lesser Woody Allen.  But still, the worst was yet to come.  The following year would bring the world The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.  This is possibly the director's creative low point.  Though, with followups such as Hollywood Ending, Anything Else and Melinda and Melinda, perhaps it is not.  Still though, this five year period is not an era that will be remembered fondly in future studies of the filmmaker's career.  I personally would place Anything Else at the bottom of any Woody Allen list.   But this lull would not last forever.  In 2005, Woody would change in his usual New York skyline for one of Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus.  Setting his new film in London, Match Point played as not only a departure for the Manhattan-loving auteur, but also a comeback of sorts.  Critically acclaimed for the first time this millennium, Allen's new film was a welcome return to form for the director - even if it was a strange new form.  It was also the film that garnered Woody his sixteenth Screenplay Oscar nomination, untying him with Billy Wilder and giving him the record for the most nominations in the category.

Sadly though, this comeback would hit a glitch the following year when the rather horrendous Scoop was released.  Giving Anything Else a run for its money as the worst Woody Allen, Scoop was Allen's second film with his young new muse, Scarlett Johansson.  At least now the 71 year old old would be  playing the father figure instead of the romantic lead.  But luckily this glitch was as short-lived as the comeback before it, for, after the almost completely forgotten Cassandra's Dream (the other Woody I have never seen), 2008 would bring Allen's best film in over a decade, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  Again starring the vapid Ms. Johansson, VCM would now take the traveling Allen from France to Spain.  The film would win Penelope Cruz a Best Supporting Actress Oscar - a thing that has happened to several of Allen's ladies-in-waiting.  

Next would bring another departure for Allen.  Filming a screenplay that he had written back in 1976, and originally slated to star Zero Mostel, Whatever Works, now starring Larry David, was perhaps a failure in many people's eyes, but I am one of those select few who rather enjoyed this toss-off throwback to Woody's earlier days.   Next came You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, but it is rather a mediocre work and I really have nothing much to say about it, for better or for worse.  But Woody's next film would not be so mediocre.  2011 has brought us the director's finest work since the 1990's - Midnight in Paris.  Back to the City of Lights, this is easily one of the best films of the year - it could even give Woody his second Best Director Oscar.  2012 will bring us a new film, tentatively titled Nero Fiddled, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Penelope Cruz, Ellen Page, Alec Baldwin, Greta Gerwig, Roberto Begnini and Allen himself.  But that is another story for another day.

So here ends the story of my life and love affair with Woody Allen.  Well, at least here it ends until the aforementioned Nero Fiddled hits theaters next year.  I hope you had a good time reminiscing about my torrid cinematic affair with the Woodman.    

25 Most Influential Directors

The following is my official entry in The Most Influential Directors Poll over at Michaël Parent's great movie blog Le Mot du Cinephiliaque.  We are asked to name the 10 directors we believe to be the most influential throughout film history but since I can never stop at just 10 (or at the very least have a really difficult time doing so) my list is the 25 most influential directors of all-time.  Take that conformity!

1) Alfred Hitchcock

From Spielberg to Scorsese to De Palma to Tarantino to Godard and Truffaut to Cronenberg to Fincher to Aronofsky to P.T. Anderson to Joe Dante, David Lynch and J.J. Abrams - all these filmmakers (and many many more) owe at least part of their styles and their careers to the Master of Suspense.  His use of colour and the way he moved (or did not move) his camera were highly influential on just about every director that came after him.

2) Jean-Luc Godard

Without Godard, there would not be modern cinema.  Nor for that matter would their be auteurs like Quentin Tarantino or Wong Kar-wai or  Lars von Trier.  More than mere hyperbole, Godard did actually change the way movies were made.  He wasn't alone in doing so (his fellow New Wavers, Truffaut, Rivette, Chabrol and Rohmer were part of this paradigm shift as well) but it was he who was first and foremost when the change in cinematic thinking came about.

3) D.W. Griffith

The originator of feature narrative filmmaking, Griffith set the way for many of the early cinema techniques that are now standard filmmaking fundamentals.  Chaplin called him "The teacher of us all" and Welles said of him "No town, no industry, no profession, no art form owes so much to a single man."  He may not have invented many of the techniques and film grammer he is credited for but he most certainly was the first one to perfect them.

4) John Ford

Perhaps not the creator of the American western but most certainly its perfectionist.  Working with a steadfast attitude and the eye of a poet (though he would never say anything of the sort, choosing instead to describe himself as such, "I'm John Ford.  I make westerns.") Ford gave us what the western was to become, until the revisionists came around, and even then Ford showed them how that was done as well.  Sure, he made other types of movies (and made them extremely well), but it is the western he will be remembered for.

5) Akira Kurosawa

One of those filmmakers highly influenced by early John Ford is that most western of Japanese directors, Akira Kurosawa.    He in turn would influence everyone under the sun.  Several of this master's films were remade in Hollywood and the Spaghetti Western was pretty much created from the ashes of his jidai-geki samurai films.  Even George Lucas took one of his films and turned it into one of the biggest blockbusters of all-time.  His Seven Samurai is still considered, by critics and directors alike, as one of the greatest films ever made.

6) Howard Hawks

The man who could make any movie in any genre.  Hawks made comedies, dramas, westerns, musicals, biblical epics, film noirs, action movies, war films, and made them all with that same determined steady hand that would make him one of the greatest and most revered Hollywood filmmakers of all-time - and probably the most eclectic as well.  Credited with creating the screwball comedy and with making both noir and westerns his own, Hawks is the spiritual grandfather of such directors as diverse as Robert Altman, Richard Linklater, John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino.

7) Charles Chaplin

With an innate ability to make us both laugh and cry within a single scene, Chaplin gave comedy its heart.  While Keaton and Lloyd and others were the better gag writers of the time, it was Chaplin who would create characters and situations that could dig into a viewers subconscious better than anyone.  Highly influential on directors such as Woody Allen and Jacques Tati, Chaplin gave comedy both a new born modernism and a much needed humanism.

8) Jean Renoir

Upon the great directors death in 1979, Orson Welles wrote an article for the L.A. Times called "Jean Renoir: The Greatest of all Directors" - this should say it all.  Renoir, son of the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, is one of those filmmakers one can call Earth-shattering.  Changing the views of how cinema should be made, Renoir was a master of Poetic Realism in film and had a huge impact on every generation that came after him.

9) Ernst Lubitsch

A director not often cited in such lists as this but a director that damn well should be.  Bringing a European flair to the early sound comedies of Hollywood (the Lubitsch Touch it was called) Lubitsch had a certain way of making innuendo sound so classy.  The implementation of the production killed may have killed this style of elegant comedy but its influence is long-lasting.  If Chaplin gave comedy its heart, Lubitsch gave it its sophistication.

10) Sergei M. Eisenstein

The greatest of the Soviet auteurs, Eisenstein chopped cinema up and turned it on its proverbial head.  A master at montage filmmaking and Eisenstein not only influenced many a future director (especially when it would come to editing) but also made it easier for many of the more experimental filmmakers to make their collective marks on cinematic history.  The careers of such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, Nicholas Roeg, Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone (to name just a few) owe much thanks to Eisenstein.

11) Orson Welles

Many may be tempted to put Welles higher on the list than this (and I was too) but here he is at number eleven.  Making Citizen Kane, considered by many to be the greatest film ever made, Welles had a great influence on many younger filmmakers.  Unfortunately for Welles (and for us) Hollywood was not kind to this obvious master director and many of his later films were rarely seen until the cinephile boom of the 1960's.  Still though, he had a great influence on directors such as Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich, and more recently P.T. Anderson and (of course) Quentin Tarantino.

12) Fritz Lang

From his use of German Expressionism and dark themes, Lang was the perfect director to take up the mantle of Hollywood film noir master.  His unique style (partially based on his younger days in Germany's Weimar Cinema and partly on 19th century art) had a strong influence on many a director, including Godard, Rivette, Friedkin and Spielberg.

13) Stanley Kubrick

One of the most visually expressive directors ever, Kubrick is one of those filmmakers responsible for what modern cinema has become (the good parts!) and at the same time, showing what cinema could be in the future.  A cult director of sorts (but not the kind that conjures up memories of B-movie delights) Kubrick's films are fascinating works of ultra-modernist art and therefore has been a huge influence on many of today's younger directors - most notably Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes and P.T. Anderson.

14) Anthony Mann

If Ford invented the western, or at least perfected it, then Mann's psychological revisionaries of the genre re-invented the western and thus made room for the likes of Peckinpah, Leone and later Tarantino (and perhaps even Takashi Miike) when they would revolutionize the genre.  Blurring that line between good and evil in the iconography of the western, Mann made a series of these (mostly starring James Stewart) that would lead to the aforementioned revolution in the genre.

15) Ingmar Bergman

As diverse an influence on such diverse of filmmakers as Lars von Trier, Woody Allen and Terry Gilliam, Bergman was the epitome of what we now call arthouse cinema.  Giving his cinema a sense of austere surreality, Bergman could also be considered the epitome of acquired taste.   Whatever the case, the fact that Bergman is essentially the spiritual father of art cinema is what puts him on this list.

16) Martin Scorsese

So many directors today - Linklater, Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Fincher - owe a great debt to Scorsese just as he himself owes a great debt to past directors such as Kurosawa, Powell & Pressburger, Hitchcock, Nick Ray and Lang.  Being a sort of father to modern American cinema, Scorsese plays as not only an influence as a director but with his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, as a historian as well.

17) Federico Fellini

A mad man maestro of world cinema, Fellini's cinema was a mindfuck of storytelling.  His greatest masterpiece, 8 1/2, laid the groundwork for so many younger directors to follow.  From Gilliam to Greenaway to Nanni Moretti and Woody Allen, Fellini was a precursor to all the giddy oddities that these directors could come up with.

18) John Cassavetes

From younger contemporary Robert Altman to spiritual godson Jim Jarmusch to all those actor-turned-directors around today, Cassavetes is the true grandaddy of indie cinema - the real indie stuff.  With low budgets and a set team of recurring actors (including his wife Gena Rowlands), Cassavetes made the little look gigantic.

19) Billy Wilder

Chaplin created comedy, Lubitsch made it sing and Wilder gave it the chutzpah. What comic director, from Woody Allen to Whit Stillman, doesn't owe some sort of debt of gratitude to the man who is probably the best writer of comedy to ever work in Hollywood.  In my opinion, Some Like it Hot still stands as the best comedy of all-time.

20) David Lean

Personally I find David Lean to be one of the dullest filmmakers of all-time (and his masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia to be highly overrated) but this doesn't blind me from seeing his influence on everyone from James Ivory to Steven Spielberg (of course I am not a big fan of either of these directors either).  Nonetheless, the vast spaces of Lean's cinema (he did know how to shoot a scene though) make for a great influence on many.

21) Woody Allen

I suppose the same argument that one makes for Billy Wilder, one can surely make for Allen.  A great writer of comedy (though perhaps no longer in his hey day) Allen is an obvious influence on filmmakers such as Albert Brooks, Whit Stillman and Edward Burns.  Just his long streak of great films (w/o exception, from 1973 through 1989 the man directed sixteen well-made, important films in a row) should be enough to insure inclusion on this list.

22) Yasujiro Ozu

Much more Japanese in his approach to cinema than his higher ranked younger contemporary Kurosawa, Ozu made quiet, delicate films that splashed around with the love and collectiveness of family and duty and honour.  Influencing not only his fellow countrymen like Takeshi Kitano and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and neighbour Hou Hsiao-hsien from Taiwan, but also Americans like Jarmusch and Finns like Kaurismaki.

23) Elia Kazan

The man who gave us acting - method acting.  Kazan and his New York School which in turn gave us Brando, Steiger, Dean, Monroe and others, is responsible for the maturation of acting in American cinema.  This quite outspoken director (he named names!) is a major influence on the likes of Scorsese and Coppola as well as many of his contemporaries such as Cassavetes and Fuller.

24) Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

This pair, known collectively as The Archers, are way up there on my list of great filmmakers.  In a six year period they made six of the greatest films ever made.  Their influence probably isn't quite as high as my personal admiration of their talents, but Scorsese say he has gotten everything from these two men, so who am I to argue.  Coppola is a big fan as well.

25) Steven Spielberg

By a few years, Spielberg is the youngest director on this list (and the only bona fide baby boomer) so his influence doesn't reach quite as far as others, but the influence is definitely there.  I cannot say I am much of a fan (though I do greatly respect him as a filmmaker) but others - such as Dante, Zemeckis and Stephen Sommers (yeah I know, not the greatest of the pantheon) - do love the man's work.  And I suppose pretty much inventing the blockbuster (for better or for worse) gets him this last spot on the list.  And I do really like Jaws.

There are others I probably should have included on the list, but even I have to stop somewhere.  These sad exclusions are Francois Truffaut, Buster Keaton, Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roman Polanski, George A. Romero, William Castle, Mario Bava, Nick Ray, Satyajit Ray, Ida Lupino, Luchino Visconti (one of my personal all-time favouruites!), John Huston, Frank Capra, Andrei Tarkovsky, F.W. Murnau, Vincente Minnelli, Francis Ford Coppola, Alice Guy Blache, William A. Welmman, Kenji Mizoguchi, Shohei Imamura, Peter Bogdanovich, Walt Disney, Carl Dreyer, Robert Altman, Cecil B. DeMille and Rene Clair (those latter three being my most regretted omissions).  Of course there are younger directors such as David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson, Wong Kar-wai, Chris Nolan, Richard Linklater, Lars von Trier, The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino that one day will be on a list such as this.

Well that is my list.  Perhaps I would change much of it tomorrow, switching certain directors around on a critical whim (in fact I did make several changes as I was finalizing my draft) but for right now, on this date, these are my choices for the Most Influential Directors of All-Time.