OSCAR NIGHT - running commentary

I love Oscar night, I really do. That doesn’t mean that this year is going to be a great show, though. To recap, they’ve decided to cut the live performances of the songs, which could be a masterstroke or a terrible decision. Also, the decision to go from five to ten Best Picture nominees is going to be under the microscope, and rightly so. Personally, I like it. My gut instinct is that if they had stuck with five, that would have meant no nominations for A SERIOUS MAN, AN EDUCATION, UP, DISTRICT 9 and THE BLIND SIDE in the Best Picture category. The first three of those are wonderful pictures, while DISTRICT 9 is a really interesting genre picture, and THE BLIND SIDE is cornball, admittedly, but a solid piece of mainstream, crowd-pleasing filmmaking.

Anyway, from here on in, this is a running commentary.

I love Claudia Winkleman. It’s not even a crush, it’s a genuine love thing. But, seriously, who the hell thought that David Baddiel and Ronni Ancona were acceptable?

Hmmm, not sure about the opening, with the lead acting nominees on stage, stood there being clapped. The lovely Carey Mulligan looks a little ill-at-ease.

Love Neil Patrick Harris, but surely they could have mixed it so we could hear the words.

Great opening spiel from co-hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, and we’re into the awards.

First-up is BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE, presented by Penelope Cruz, last year’s winner of the BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE Oscar™, for her performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

The winner is the utterly deserving CHRISTOPH WALTZ for his wonderful performance in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. His speech is unremarkable, yet mercifully brief.

Cameron Diaz and Steve Carell present the award for BEST ANIMATED FEATURE to UP! Hopefully not the last award for Pixar’s masterpiece.

Miley Cyrus and Amanda Seyfried to present the BEST ORIGINAL SONG Oscar. As mentioned, not performed on stage. The winner is “Weary Kind” from CRAZY HEART, winning the first of its two Oscars tonight.

Nice skit by Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. presenting the BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Oscar™. Fairly open category this, I think. The winner is THE HURT LOCKER, written by Mark Boal. Well deserved.

Now Matthew Broderick and Molly Ringwald on stage to pay tribute to the late, great John Hughes. Really nicely put together.

Interesting to note the people presenting the BEST PICTURE nominees. Samuel L Jackson (THE INCREDIBLES) shilling for UP, Chris Pine (STAR TREK) for DISTRICT 9 – I guess they’re both sci-fi, but surely Peter Jackson could have been persuaded? Ryan Reynolds for his THE PROPOSAL co-star Sandra Bullock’s THE BLIND SIDE.

Zoe Saldana (should have been nominated for AVATAR) and Carey Mulligan on stage now to present the Best Short Film Awards; Animated Short goes to LOGORAMA, Documentary Short goes to MUSIC BY PRUDENCE and Live Action Short goes to THE NEW TENANTS.

Ben Stiller to the stage, dressed as a Na’vi, to present the award for BEST MAKE-UP. Stiller as funny as ever. The award goes to STAR TREK.

Next Best Picture nominee is A SERIOUS MAN, presented by The Dude, of course.

The award for BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY, presented by Jake Gyllenhall, and the lovely Rachel McAdams. I had really expected the award to go to UP IN THE AIR, but the winner is PRECIOUS. The speech might have been great, but the winner had a weird voice, so who knows?

Next comes something different, the Governor’s Awards, which replace this year’s LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD. It would have been lovely to see the awards be presented in person, but it’s a nice segment. The winners were ROGER CORMAN, LAUREN BACALL, GORDON WILLIS and JOHN CALLEY.

Next comes BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE, presented by Robin Williams. No way this doesn’t go to Mo’nique. And it does, nice speech too.
Colin Firth, now to introduce AN EDUCATION.

RUNNING TOTAL:
THE HURT LOCKER 1
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS 1
PRECIOUS 2
UP 1
CRAZY HEART 1
STAR TREK 1

On to the stage comes the insanely elegant Sigourney Weaver. The award is for ART DIRECTION. I would expect AVATAR to come out victorious here. And it does. I’m awesome.

Next is COSTUME DESIGN, presented by Tom Ford and Sarah Jessica Parker. The winner is THE YOUNG VICTORIA.

Charlize Theron, now, to introduce PRECIOUS, still the only film to have won two awards thus far.

Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner to present a tribute to horror, after another funny Baldwin/Martin skit.

Zac Efron and Anna Kendrick to present the sound awards. With some help from Morgan Freeman. I’m tipping The Hurt Locker to win both Mixing and Editing here. BEST SOUND EDITING goes to THE HURT LOCKER, SOUND MIXING goes the same way, third award for THE HURT LOCKER.

John Travolta to present INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS as a Best Picture nominee. Great film.
3-1 THE HURT LOCKER now.

Razzie™ winner, Sandra Bullock to present the award for BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY. AVATAR wins the award.

Demi Moore with the lost, but not forgotten montage, with James Taylor singing THE BEATLES’ IN MY LIFE...

Patrick Swayze, Jean Simmons, Tullio Pinelli, Eric Rohmer, Ken Annakin, David Carradine, Gareth Wigan, Daniel Melnick, Howard Zieff, Dom DeLuise, Army Archerd, Ron Silver, Brittany Murphy, Lou Jacobi, Simon Channing-Williams, Betsy Blair, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Cardiff, Kathryn Grayson, Arthur Canton, Nat Boxer, Millard Kauffman, Roy E. Disney, Larry Gelbart, Horton Foote, Robert Woodruff Anderson, Budd Schulberg, Michael Jackson, Natasha Richardson, Jennifer Jones, David Brown, Karl Malden.

Sam Worthington and Jennifer Lopez now to present BEST ORIGINAL SCORE. Dance montages. Really? Oh. Dear. I blame Adam Shankman for this, he’s the artistic director, and the man who directed Bringing Down the House. Body-popping to illustrate the power of THE HURT LOCKER, for fuck’s sake. To be clear, UP should win here, or FANTASTIC MR FOX. My tip is for AVATAR, though. The dance for UP was also great. UP wins. Hooray!

Gerard Butler and Bradley Cooper to present the award for BEST VISUAL EFFECTS. I’ll eat my hat if AVATAR doesn’t win, here, the visual effects are game-changing. And, of course, it does.

Jason Bateman, to present UP IN THE AIR as a Best Picture nominee.

Matt Damon presents the BEST DOCUMENTARY Oscar to THE COVE, which is an extraordinary, powerful film.

Tyler Perry to present BEST EDITING. Another win for THE HURT LOCKER.
Keanu Reeves, star of Kathryn Bigelow’s POINT BREAK, to introduce THE HURT LOCKER as a Best Picture nominee.

Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino together at last! To present BEST FILM IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. The winner is EL SECRETO DE SUS OJOS. It must be pretty good to beat THE WHITE RIBBON and A PROPHET, which are extraordinary.

Best Actor now, Michelle Pfeiffer, Vera Farmiga, Tim Robbins, Colin Farrell and Julianne Moore on stage. Pfeiffer to talk about JEFF BRIDGES, the obvious winner here, nice speech from Michelle, who looks great. Vera Farmiga to talk about GEORGE CLOONEY, her co-star in UP IN THE AIR. Nice speech again. Julianne Moore to talk about her A SINGLE MAN co-star, Colin Firth. Another nice speech. Tim Robbins for Morgan Freeman, his co-star in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Great speech. Colin Farrell to talk about Jeremy Renner, his co-star in S.W.A.T., another nice speech. This format doesn’t always work, but this was nicely done tonight. Kate Winslet, looking fine, to present the award. To Jeff Bridges, el Duderino himself. A great actor, and a much deserved standing ovation. He’s going to have fun with his speech. Terrific speech, without a hint of a tear. He just is The Dude. And I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that.

Best Actress, now. Interested to see who they get to speak about these five. Peter Sarsgaard, Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Stanley Tucci and Michael Sheen. Whitaker to talk about Sandra Bullock, his co-star in HOPE FLOATS. Nice. Michael Sheen to talk about Helen Mirren, his co-star in THE QUEEN. Well done Michael. Peter Sarsgaard to talk about Carey Mulligan, his co-star in AN EDUCATION. Oprah (star power!) to talk about Gabourey Sidibe, the star of PRECIOUS. Nicely done Oprah. Stanley Tucci (love him) to talk about Meryl Streep, his co-star in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and JULIE AND JULIA. Brilliantly done. Sean Penn to present the award. Sandra Bullock wins the Oscar, a day after winning the Razzie (for different films, obviously). She’ll cry, for sure. Best speech of the night, by far.

Barbara Streisand to present the Oscar™ for BEST DIRECTOR. Will this be the first African American winner (Lee Daniels), the first female winner (Kathryn Bigelow), or one of the other three, Reitman, Tarantino or James Cameron? My money, and hope, is on Bigelow. And, she wins. Not only does she deserve the award, it’s nice that there has now not never been a female winner of the BEST DIRECTOR Oscar™. Good speech.
Tom Hanks to present the award for BEST PICTURE. Love Hanks. Love him. THE HURT LOCKER wins. Rightly so. Jolly good.

THE HURT LOCKER wins 6 Oscars, including those for BEST SCREENPLAY, BEST DIRECTOR and BEST PICTURE.

Baldwin and Martin did great, but could have been used more perhaps?

Night night.

The Best Films of the Zeroes: 1

1. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. (2000)
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

So, after a lot of work, and a lot of words, I can reveal that the best film of the zeroes is Wong Kar-Wai’s romantic drama, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. It hasn’t been an easy list to create, but it’s been an absolute pleasure to revisit these movies, mostly just by writing about them. Tonight, though, I allowed myself a treat and rewatched IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, the fifth time I’ve seen it; and it proved itself, once more, to be a film of infinite class, great elegance and the best pair of leading performances of the decade.

Set, for the most part, in Hong Kong in 1962, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE focuses on two characters; Mrs Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr Chow (Tony Leung). Within days of each other, they respond to an advert for lodgers in the same flat, however, Mr Chow, arriving later than Mrs Chan, is directed to the apartment next door. Both move in, with their respective spouses. Throughout the entirety of the film, Wong never shows us who the spouses are; we hear their voices, and see the backs of their heads towards the start of the film, before they both disappear, or remain only as figurative shadows in the lives of our lead characters.

It becomes evident to us, relatively early on in the film, that Mrs Chow and Mr Chan are engaged in an affair with each other. While many directors would be interested in examining the tension between the characters when this is discovered, it is at this point that the spouses disappear from the screen. Instead, rather than drawing out the story, we discover pretty quickly that our two leads have, also, pretty much uncovered their spouses’ infidelities. Wong places this in a clever context; Mrs Chan works for a shipping company, and her boss is engaged in an affair behind his wife’s back, an affair that she is helping him to enjoy successfully. It’s an immediate point of conflict, but more than that, it’s an immediate point of context. This is a world in which marital infidelity is commonplace, yet one in which society still frowns upon friendship between married men and women.

Leung and Cheung are two of the world’s finest actors, and they have extraordinary chemistry together, which Wong utilises to haunting effect. Their characters form a friendship, after confirming with each other, beyond all doubt, that the affair is going on. At first it seems as if their friendship is only there to remind themselves of their pain, to torture themselves somewhat. Shot across restaurant booths, in the back of taxi cabs, in doorframes, Wong stages the couple in such a way that the chemistry throbs with massive intensity. Faced with that, and our sympathy for their situation, we desperately want for them to make the step beyond friendship.

In the aftermath of their first ‘date’, Leung asks Cheung “I wonder how it began”, and thus starts one of the film’s key narrative twists; the two characters improvise the seduction between their spouses, and then rehearse the confrontations they desire together. The film has such a dreamlike mood, and Wong usually frames these moments with only one face visible that in the first moments of these scenes we’re unsure how much time has passed, or even whose head it is that we can see the back of. It’s a gorgeous trick, and plays into one of the hallmarks of Wong’s work, the repetition. We see it here, in numerous forms. The film is carried along by its soundtrack, and two or three pieces of music are repeated throughout the film, including a pair of songs, in Spanish, by the great Nat King Cole.

The other piece is called ‘Yujemi’s Theme’, composed and recorded by Shigeru Umebayashi. This is the piece of music that accompanies most of the film’s most effective scenes – wordless montages, usually long and languorous takes of the two characters, both separate and together. One in particular is utterly sublime. It allows you, and thus the two characters, to fantasise about how their relationship, and life together, could be. They look, for all the world, like a married couple. The montage disappears suddenly, replaced by a bright light and the screaming of their respective landladies as they accompany their drunken husbands home for a lengthy game of mah jong.

Wong deserves nothing but the finest plaudits for this, which is the equal, at the very least, of his best work (from the previous decade: CHUNGKING EXPRESS and DAYS OF BEING WILD). In the beginning of the film he evokes city life, and the loneliness that is inherent in it better than any film I’ve ever seen. There are countless shots of one of our characters dwarfed by their surroundings, frequently shot in doorways, or alone in a frame of film containing lots of space. Even in the crowded city, it’s possible to be alone, and Wong never allows us to forget this. In the opening scenes, we never see Cheung and Leung’s faces in the same frame of film for more than the most fleeting instant, repeatedly in these early scenes we see them cross paths on their way, either to or from, the noodle stall below their apartments. They pass wordlessly, almost without acknowledgement. Frequently, they pass on a narrow staircase, or while one is huddled under an awning away from the rain. Later on, they occupy the same spaces, together; the spaces that each expected to occupy with their spouse when they moved in, no doubt.

Those of you unfamiliar with the work of Wong Kar-Wai, just won’t believe how stylish a film this is. Those of you who know other works, but not this, won’t believe the manner of the style utilised. In his previous work, also collaborations with the Irish cinematographer Christopher Doyle, his films had been all about the kinesis of modern-life, hallucinogenically photographed, with lights and colour merging for some peculiar, yet resoundingly beautiful images. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, though, is something else. Here, Wong’s camera lingers on everything.

He’s said since the film’s release that what he was trying to capture was the sense of a moment just passed. He does that with alacrity, this is our generation’s best film about love, from each of the angles, aside from the glorious moment of reciprocation. There’s the obvious pain of one love coming to an end, or being tested to its very limit, and also the pain of a love that you can’t quite make work. Leung remarks to Cheung that he just wanted to know how it started, but now he understands “Feelings can creep up, just like that. I thought I was in control”. What Wong has always done superbly well is capture a moment, or the feel of a place. It works best (aside from here) in CHUNGKING EXPRESS, which conveys modern city life in effortlessly cool strokes. With IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, he bests even that, capturing not only the essence of what much of city living entails, but also the sucker punch that is unfulfilled love.

Part of the film’s appeal is that it is one of the most beautiful films of all time. It’s fairly clearly the most devastatingly gorgeous film of the decade. A great deal of the look of the film comes from the art-direction, and then down to the costuming and set design. Maggie Cheung, one of the most beautiful women on the planet is immutably sexy, bedecked throughout in some of the most staggeringly stylish dresses ever shot on screen. She must wear nearly 100 different designs, each of which makes her look almost impossibly appealing. Leung, himself, is a hugely attractive man, and is also immaculately costumed and styled throughout. They’re an enormously appealing couple, something that other directors (notably Zhang Yimou with HERO) noticed, and took advantage of.

It’s entirely possible that IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE is the middle part of an incredibly loose trilogy – Maggie Cheung’s character here, Su Li-Zhen, may well be the same character that she played in DAYS OF BEING WILD, while there are several echoes of this film in 2046 (the room number of Leung’s second apartment in the film). There are several obvious comparisons to the film, probably in Britain the one that sticks out is David Lean’s BRIEF ENCOUNTER. Now, Lean’s film is firmly ensconced in my all-time top ten, and this is a film absolutely worthy of comparison to it. BRIEF ENCOUNTER is one of those films whose classic status is inarguable. Like here, Lean uses pre-conceptions of an audience to stage something almost unbearably poignant about the cost of romantic love. Yet, in spite of (traditionally) unsatisfactory endings (to the love stories, if not the films), both films are ineffably romantic.

What makes IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE even more remarkable as an achievement is that the shoot was so chaotic. After the film’s UK premiere, Wong and Maggie Cheung revealed that the film had shot for fifteen months, in three different countries, and the story was only finished in the final month of shooting. Wong’s initial intention had been to create an intimate chamber piece. It’s testament to the skill of all involved that in spite of the chaos, what the film ended up as is a seemingly effortless love story, a paean to cinematic intimacy. The actors deserve extra credit for their performances on such an uncertain shoot, but Wong, a directorial magician, is the maestro who earns the most kudos here. It’s unlike anything he’d ever made before, or has gone on to make since. He branches out beyond his usual style, but makes a film that sums up his entire career. It’s a bold, brilliant, heart-breaking film, and I love every single, heart-breaking moment of it.

OSCAR PREVIEW: My Predictions

In the post below you can find out what I think should have been nominated for this year’s Academy Awards™.

Here, you can see my predictions. For each category, the predicted winner is first, and the person/film I would vote for is the second name, where there’s only one name, I would vote for my predicted winner.

BEST ACTOR:

JEFF BRIDGES: CRAZY HEART
Jeremy Renner: The Hurt Locker

BEST ACTRESS:

SANDRA BULLOCK: THE BLIND SIDE
Carey Mulligan: An Education

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

CHRISTOPH WALTZ: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

MO’NIQUE: PRECIOUS

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

UP

BEST ART DIRECTION

AVATAR

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

THE HURT LOCKER
The White Ribbon

BEST DIRECTOR

KATHRYN BIGELOW – THE HURT LOCKER

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

BURMA VJ
The Cove

BEST EDITING

THE HURT LOCKER
Inglourious Basterds

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

EL SECRETO DE SUS OJOS
The White Ribbon

BEST MAKE UP

STAR TREK
Il Divo

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

AVATAR
Up

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

DOWN IN NEW ORLEANS: THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG

BEST FILM

THE HURT LOCKER
Up

BEST SOUND EDITING

THE HURT LOCKER

BEST SOUND MIXING

THE HURT LOCKER

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

AVATAR

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

UP IN THE AIR
An Education

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Up

Check back on Monday morning to see if I was right!

OSCAR PREVIEW: My (sadly) hypothetical Ballot

As part of my Oscar™ preview (those of you wanting to know what came first in my FILMS OF THE DECADE list will have to wait until tomorrow), I thought one way to go would be to give you what my nominations ballot would look like, were I an Academy™ member. So that’s the way I went, I tried not to go too far away from ‘awardsy’ titles.

BEST ACTOR

JEFF BRIDGES – CRAZY HEART
GEORGE CLOONEY – UP IN THE AIR
COLIN FIRTH – A SINGLE MAN
JEREMY RENNER – THE HURT LOCKER
MICHAEL STUHLBARG – A SERIOUS MAN

BEST ACTRESS

SANDRA BULLOCK – THE BLIND SIDE
ABBIE CORNISH – BRIGHT STAR
CAREY MULLIGAN – AN EDUCATION
ZOE SALDANA – AVATAR
GABOUREY SIDIBE – PRECIOUS

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

ZACK GALIFANIAKIS – THE HANGOVER
ANTHONY MACKIE – THE HURT LOCKER
ALFRED MOLINA – AN EDUCATION
PAUL SCHNEIDER – BRIGHT STAR
CHRISTOPH WALTZ – INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

MARION COTILLARD – NINE
VERA FARMIGA – UP IN THE AIR
MELANIE LAURENT – INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
MO’NIQUE – PRECIOUS
SUSAN SARANDON – THE LOVELY BONES

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BRIGHT STAR
THE HURT LOCKER
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
A SERIOUS MAN
UP

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

AN EDUCATION
FANTASTIC MR FOX
IN THE LOOP
PRECIOUS...
A PROPHET

BEST DIRECTOR

JACQUES AUDIARD – A PROPHET
KATHRYN BIGELOW – THE HURT LOCKER
JAMES CAMERON – AVATAR
JANE CAMPION – BRIGHT STAR
MICHAEL HANEKE – THE WHITE RIBBON

BEST FILM

AVATAR
BRIGHT STAR
AN EDUCATION
THE HURT LOCKER
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
PRECIOUS
A PROPHET
A SERIOUS MAN
UP
THE WHITE RIBBON

The Best Films of the Zeroes: 2

2. THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. (2002)
Directed by Wes Anderson

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is the highest ranked English-language film on this list. Wes Anderson’s third film as writer/director doesn’t deviate too far from his normal style, and is the equal of his previous film, RUSHMORE, one of the previous decade’s very best films (if there’s interest, I might look at doing a smaller Best of the 90s list soon). With a glittering cast, almost all of whom match or surpass their previous career best performances, this is a heart-warming, slightly odd, emotionally draining comedy-drama, with all the hallmarks that the writer/director has made his own over his six film career. In the aftermath of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, Anderson has made three more films, none of which could quite live up to the achievement here; although each is excellent. Even if this is to be his peak, there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that, for this is as perfect a film as American cinema has produced in years.

As I’ve mentioned, Anderson is a director with many trademarks. While his namesake, Paul Thomas Anderson seems to have shed the early style he became famous for, Wes has become tied to it. A film like THE DARJEELING LIMITED suffers slightly not because of its quality as such, but because it’s under the shadow of Anderson’s earlier work. For many directors, a lack of progression in their style, or in the sort of films that they’re interested in making can become a hindrance, but I would always enjoy watching Anderson make the same film every three years, or so, even in the understanding that, that way, he would struggle to equal his best work. As it is, he is now probably the most distinctive filmmaker in Hollywood today, even if what seems like a hundred different pale imitations have attempted to ape his work.

The Tenenbaums, and their patriarch Royal, are the quintessential rich, dysfunctional American family. Watching the film, it’s hard not to be reminded of the writings of Salinger or Fitzgerald. Anderson even frames the film as a book, courtesy of a lugubrious voiceover by Alec Baldwin. At the start of the film, the Tenenbaums are a clan divided. Royal (Gene Hackman) lives in a hotel with his friend, and one-time manservant Pagoda (Kumar Pallana), his children are in crisis, Chas (Ben Stiller) is obsessed with the safety of him and his children following his wife’s death in a plane crash, adopted daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a depressive, and has fallen out of love with her husband Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) while Richie (Luke Wilson), passionately in love with his adopted sister is falling apart in front of a live audience on the ATP tennis tour. All the while, Etheline (Anjelica Huston), Royal’s estranged wife, is a serene presence in the family’s home; a home that each of her children are gravitating back towards.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is the last film that Anderson co-wrote with Owen Wilson (so far), and it may be that Wilson is the missing ingredient from Anderson’s later films. He co-wrote THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU with Noah Baumbach, THE DARJEELING LIMITED with Jason Schwartzman and FANTASTIC MR FOX with Baumbach again. There’s something in the chemistry between Anderson and Wilson that makes their collaborations fly. While the director’s subsequent films have attempted to similarly meld the director’s trademark visual style with the kind of simplistic emotional bluntness that was so breathtaking in RUSHMORE and here.

Anderson’s films have always been built on a basis of arch, designed artifice, and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is not just no exception, it’s also the perfect example of Anderson’s craft. The design of the Tenenbaum house on Archer Avenue is beautiful, and a precursor to the cut-away of the boat in THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, or the tracking shot of the train in THE DARJEELING LIMITED. It’s also another film in Anderson’s oeuvre where the characters are clothed in one distinctive costume throughout, whether that’s Margot’s furcoat, Chas’s Adidas tracksuit, Richie’s tennis gear or Henry Sherman’s (Danny Glover) blue suit and bow tie. It’s another level of distance from reality in Anderson’s film, something similar to what Paul Thomas Anderson does in the brilliant PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE.

That’s Anderson’s best trick. There’s so much artifice in his films, deliberately, that moments of genuine emotion are so disarming that they have a massive impact. You can think of the moment in THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU when Murray’s epidemic hero asks his son ‘Are you having a good time, out here on the ocean, with me?’, that also showcases the other ace up Anderson’s sleeve, the gauche vulnerability of his leading characters, who despite their frequently confident exteriors are obviously a mass of insecurities and vulnerability. For Herman Blume in RUSHMORE and Mr. Fox in FANTASTIC MR FOX, here we have Royal Tenenbaum, Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), the three children; Margot, Chas and Richie and Murray’s Raleigh St. Clair.

With so many massive characters, it’s hugely to Anderson’s credit that he manages to pitch the film, successfully, as an ensemble comedy. It would have been easy to focus solely on Royal, or on the doomed love between Richie and Margot, or even on novelist, and family friend, Eli, and his descent into addiction hell. The film is beautifully played by all of the cast. Murray, Hackman and Huston all approach their career best performances, while both Wilson brothers have never even got near to the perfection of their performances here. This was a lot of people’s first exposure to Stiller as a (more) serious actor, and he’s a revelation. The vulnerability that has always been present in his best comic creations overloads the character so that you’re completely unsure of how he’s going to react to any situation. The best performance in the film, though, comes from Gwyneth Paltrow, who as Margot, is sublime. It’s so much better than any other performance in her career that in Anderson’s next film, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, Cate Blanchett does a Paltrow impression.

There are a number of superb scenes in the film, most of which are heavily linked to the superb soundtrack, which is a given in Anderson’s films. Here, there’s haunting use of music by Nico, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones and, most memorably, Elliott Smith. The chemistry between the actors leads to some delightful moments, such as the scene in which Royal verbally spars with Henry, not to mention a stand-out rooftop scene between Luke Wilson and Paltrow, which is nearly heartbreaking. Given the problems that would later derail Owen Wilson’s career, the scenes in which his real-life brother and on-screen best friend tries to get him to quit drugs sticks in the throat, somewhat. The most powerful scene is the one soundtracked by Elliott Smith, a shaving scene with a hell of a kick. The film is funny throughout, yet it’s the moments of devastating sadness that endure. The mixture of the two help to make THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS the most rewatchable film of the decade, the best American film of the decade, and an incontrovertible, masterpiece that gets better and better with every viewing.

The Best Films of the Zeroes: 3

3. MEMORIES OF MURDER. (2003)
Directed by Bong Joon-Ho

I’m not sure if there’s another director whose next film I’m so eagerly anticipating as Bong Joon-Ho. His four films so far have demonstrated a breathtaking range of talent. MEMORIES OF MURDER was the first film of his to make an impression on a Western audience, his debut BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE has only been shown in festivals in the UK. I’ve already written about THE HOST, while his next film MOTHER should be released later in the year. As good as both of those films are, and BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE is a terrific debut too, though a tick beneath his later work, MEMORIES OF MURDER is, indisputably, his masterpiece.

The film is about a murder investigation, which soon becomes a hunt for South Korea’s first ever serial killer, the film is based on a real crime spree, although it’s more of a character study than a slavish recreation of the facts of the case. Set in the mid-1980s, it’s quite shocking to see a crime film paint the police in such unflattering colours. The investigation gets off to several false starts, wasting time in which you get the sense that the killer could have been identified on wild goose chases and convenient scapegoats. Bong doesn’t regurgitate the tropes of what has become a tired genre, particularly in Hollywood, when you can pretty much make a serial killer movie with the same amount of attention to detail that it takes to colour-by-numbers.

For example, none of the detectives fit into the ‘maverick’ stereotype. Our lead investigator is Park, played by Bong’s regular leading man Song Kang-Ho. He and his partner Cho (Kim Rwe-Ha) frequently beat suspects, brutally forcing their prisoners into confessions. These two country cops are joined in the investigation by Detective Seo (Kim Sang-kyung), who helps them to piece the murders together, giving them their best opportunity to crack the case. Of course, there are plenty of disagreements between Park and Seo, who clash constantly, but the film doesn’t use anything other than the expediency of their situation to thaw out their relationship – neither has an epiphany moment, but their shared desire to stop the murders lead to the seemingly very well-defined lines between them becoming blurred.

Bong pulls no punches in his excoriation of the Korean police. When arriving at the scene of the film’s second murder, Park is greeted by children running past the murder site. He’s then witness to two detectives falling into the crime scene. It’s the sort of scene that you imagine would detract from the film, but in Bong’s hands, it does anything but. This is an angry film, as indeed, it should be. By seeming to sideline the victims and their families he leaves their memories intact – their memories won’t be impinged by their association with these murders at the director’s hands, instead his anger is at the ineffectualness of the investigation and the tools the detectives have at their disposal; they have to send DNA samples to the USA for analysis, for example, which takes all of the momentum out of the investigation.

Both Song and Kim give wonderful performances, inhabiting their characters completely, to the extent that you forget that you’re watching somebody playing a part, but they’re allowed to flourish by Bong’s stylistic decisions, which are flawless. The film is packed with mordant black humour, a kind of macabre coping mechanism that you can imagine having to employ if you were investigating such terrible crimes. In fact, the neatest trick in the performances is that they manage to survive their scabrous unveiling as being so drastically unfit for purpose, and end the film as sympathetic victims on a similar scale to the murdered girls whom they haven’t been able to find justice for. The weight of their failure to catch the killer is tangible, and explicitly shown in the film’s heartbreaking final scenes.

Amongst the film’s best scenes is a thrilling chase scene where the detectives are certain that they’ve come across the perpetrator, following observing a man committing an act of onanism in a secluded wood. An intensely physical sequence, it’s a stunningly action-centric scene in the middle of a film otherwise dominated by dialogue. Bong later utilised his skill with a set piece to terrific effect in THE HOST. There’s also a tremendous bar-fight late on, which begins humorously, and ends with a moment of gut-wrenching heartbreak.

Bong also makes great use of the rural Korean countryside, which looks so peaceful by day, but becomes terrifyingly isolated and forbidding by night. As his move into the bigger-budget world of THE HOST would attest to, he is incredibly comfortable with the film’s set pieces, occasionally ratcheting up the tension to near-unbearable levels, a tension increased by the fact that we don’t know if they’re pursuing the right suspect. The lack of predictability in the film comes from Bong’s decision to eschew the genre conventions, the biggest of which is the aforementioned lightness of tone. It’s remarkable for such an inexperienced director to so masterfully control such changes in the tone of such an emotionally charged film. The film floats between comedy and grisly horror in the same scenes.

In the early scenes, we see Cho use a slipper over the top of his shoe in order to not leave a mark on the faces of the suspects he routinely beats during interrogations. Over the rest of the film, this becomes comedic shorthand. As soon as we see Cho reach for this slipper, it’s a moment of levity in the midst of some particularly hard-going. Yet in one scene towards the end, its impact has changed completely, and is a sign of something else, something completely and utterly depressing. The film’s effect is phenomenal. It’s a thrilling black comedy, a hilarious drama and an incredibly downbeat and devastating thriller. That’s no mean trick, and it should come as little surprise to anyone that he’s gone on to straddle several genres with his next two movies, and do so with great grace and style.

The Best Films of the Zeroes: 4

4. NOBODY KNOWS. (2004)
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

NOBODY KNOWS was my first exposure to Hirokazu Kore-eda. Somehow, I missed the screening at the 2004 London Film Festival, and finally caught up with it on DVD a year later. It’s a simply extraordinary film, one of the most compelling, frightening and devastating films I’ve ever seen. I’ve since seen two more of his films, STILL WALKING, released earlier this year; and AIRDOLL, which doesn’t have a release date set. I now think he’s one of the very best directors currently working, anywhere in the world. As a first exposure to him, NOBODY KNOWS is a revelation. If you’ve never seen it, I would recommend stopping reading this now, opening a new tab in your browser, going to play.com and buying the DVD.

Ok, trusting that you’ve now done that, time to explain why it’s such a great purchase, there be spoilers from here on in, but I don’t think they’ll ruin the film. NOBODY KNOWS starts by watching a single mother, Keiko, and her two children moving into a new flat in Tokyo. The most memorable shot is of them lugging a heavy suitcase up several flights of stairs. Once they’re safely ensconced, and alone, in their new home, they open the suitcase to let the two youngest children in the family out of the suitcase. It soon becomes clear that these are two children that the mother has had to hide the existence of, from her new landlord.

It’s immediately clear to us that this is a family with several problems. The mother, played by You, a Japanese pop-star, is the root of the family’s problems. She bans the children from leaving the flat, aside from Kyoko, the eldest daughter, who is permitted on the veranda to do the family’s laundry. Kyoto, just ten years old, and played by Ayu Kitaura, is close to her elder brother Akira, twelve years old, played by Yuya Yagira. In a film filled with exceptional performances, Yagira’s is the best. He won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, and deservedly so. It’s one of the most remarkable pieces of acting that I’ve ever seen. Of course, credit should go to Kore-eda for this. Not only has he managed to elicit superb performances from all of his young cast, but the manner in which he shot the film is directly responsible.

He spent eighteen months working with Yagira, and the other three young actors. He decided not to script most of their scenes together, merely telling the actors what the situation was and choosing to film them, almost documentary-style, dealing with the problems that their characters are facing. These problems mount up, as Keiko becomes an ever-more irregular presence in the household, leaving the kids for hours, and eventually days at a time. It’s hard not to identify most with Akira, of the four kids, as his burden is the greatest. The film’s best moments feature Akira’s plight as he attempts to provide for his brother and sisters.

Akira becomes friends with a girl of the same age, who prefers to live on the street rather than her home, the implication is obvious. They spend time together, and their friendship is a clear reminder to the audience, how much the life the kids are living is starved of. When she goes off with a much older man, she returns with money, which Akira refuses. She tells him that ‘she only sung karaoke with him’, but we know that her future is going to be as bleak as can be.

In fact, we know, from the beginning, that these children are all going to be severely damaged by this experience. So even their moments of happiness are tainted by an overwhelming sadness, which builds and builds until there’s nowhere for it to go. The most innocent moments in the script, which is sweetly funny quite regularly, are given a huge amount of pathos by our understanding of their situation. The biggest kicker, though comes when we realise that Akira and Kyoto are aware that they have little or no hope either that their lives are going to get back to normal. Akira is the only one of the children who appears to have ever been schooled, and even with the responsibility of looking after his siblings he tries to study, until the only subject that he can accommodate is maths, trying desperately to stretch the family’s budget even further.

In the most memorable scene, Akira, with his mother’s money having run out, heads into the town to try and contact her. He finds a payphone, and dials a number at which he thinks he might be able to find her. He dials the number, and when it is answered, he asks for Keiko; placed on hold, Akira feeds coin after coin into the phone until his money has run out. After his last coin’s credit is gone, he gently brings his head down onto the phone, and his despair, away from his younger siblings, is plain to see. It’s a scene that tells us a lot, while doing very little, typical of the director’s minimalist style.

Kore-eda is such a quiet director, someone who has so much confidence in the story he’s telling that the direction is as subtle as can be. In this regard, he’s reminiscent of the great Yasujiro Ozu (particularly with STILL WALKING which is a neat inversion of TOKYO STORY), but also of Chinese director Tsai Ming-Liang. The film is inspired by a true story, where four young children were abandoned by their mother in a Tokyo apartment. Kore-eda has changed the story significantly, still crafting a perfect film.

The Best Films of the Zeroes: 5

5. FUCKING AMAL. (2000)
Directed by Lukas Moodysson

First things first, FUCKING AMAL, also known as SHOW ME LOVE, was actually made in 1998, but by virtue of its release date in March 2000, it’s eligible for this list. This was the first that the world saw of Lukas Moodysson, and it remains his best film; in fact, given his recent output, it certainly seems likely that we’ll never see him back on this sort of form again. In recent years, the balance of pain and pleasure in his films has become completely out of whack, to the extent that you get A HOLE IN MY HEART, a film so skewed towards the pain axis that it’s almost unwatchably pretentious, or CONTAINER, a film completely and utterly inaccessible.

This, though, his debut, is a phenomenal piece of filmmaking, as, to a lesser extent were his two follow up pictures, TOGETHER and LILYA 4-EVER. He seemingly had the world at his mercy; here was a director perfectly able to balance the sweet and sour of life, to beautiful effect. In FUCKING AMAL, in particular, he captures what it’s like to be young, confused and in love. It’s more impressive because he totally conveys the feelings of adolescent despair that precede any new love affair.

Of course, one reason for FUCKING AMAL’s notoriety, aside from its untranslated title, is that the lovers at the centre of its story are two teenage girls. One of them, Elin (Alexandra Dahlstrom), is popular, beautiful and occasionally cruel, while the other, Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg), is awkward, an outsider, castigated by the popular clique as a lesbian, even though she feels like she’s kept it a secret. She is, of course, in love with Elin. Every day she writes a love letter to her, on her computer. At her birthday party, Elin is bet that she won’t dare kiss Agnes. She accepts, and so starts one of the decade’s most enduring love stories.

The relationship between the two girls is exquisitely observed. Moodysson’s skill with actors would do him proud on his next two pictures, but was never as revelatory as it is here. Hollywood made some good teen movies in the zeroes, films like MEAN GIRLS. There were also several brilliant films about being teenagers, such as MEAN CREEK, but I can’t remember a mainstream American teen movie that deals with characters that are believable as real people, rather than empty stereotypes. FUCKING AMAL is one such movie. It treats its characters, and thus its audience, with respect. These girls are as vulnerable, funny and smart as the kids you and I went to school with, it’s immediately an open movie, rather than something closed off my having to adhere to generic conventions at the expense of realism.

Being a coming of age film, and one about sexual awakening, not to mention the fact that it’s a Swedish film about teenaged lesbians, you might reasonably expect to find a film that pushes boundaries, but not here, Moodysson’s affection for his characters makes that refreshingly absent. The film is about the characters, rather than any word that could be attributed to them. Their lesbianism, if that’s what it is, rather than a teenage crush, doesn’t define them. It’s a film about how boring it can be to be a teenager in a small town – their ennui is recognisable to anyone who grew up in such an environment. We grow to like both Elin and Agnes, not only because they seem like real people, but also because most of us can remember what it feels like to be a teenager, and feel so far away from freedom, that the overwhelming sense that you’re missing out on something better, somewhere else, that is happening to someone else is almost unbearable.

The highest European film on this list, FUCKING AMAL works on so many levels, it’s a brilliantly observed love story, but also a superb film about alienation, both from where you live, and what you perceive as society’s norms. In Agnes and Elin, we have two heroines of our time. It’s not just that they’re a gay couple, although what’s more wish-fulfilment than the most popular and beautiful girl in school coming out? It shows a bravery and singularity of purpose that can’t help but inspire audiences, particularly those at the same age, or with doubts about their sexuality. It’s also a superb teenage rallying cry, Amal is the name of the town in which the two girls live, and the sense of disdain that they have for it is infectious; one of the film’s funniest scenes comes right at the start when Elin learns that raves are no longer cool – they haven’t yet come to Amal, so it’s uncool before she’s even had the chance to try it.

That’s just one of the film’s great scenes. There are at least another three that stick in the mind, at Agnes’ birthday party, when she insults her only friend, a girl in a wheelchair, who is socially, even lower down the food chain than she is. It’s refreshingly honest that the film shows it’s heroic outsider in a negative light, but incredibly perceptive that it doesn’t have the insulted bear a grudge, such insults and tantrums are part of teenage life, and Moodysson, and we, understand this. It’s a subtlety that would not be afforded to an American teen movie. The second scene is a glorious kiss, stolen, and set to the sounds of ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ by Foreigner, which shouldn’t work, but totally does. The defining moment of the film, though, comes at the end. After locking themselves in a closet at school, the two girls burst out, hand-in-hand, as Elin shouts “We’re going to fuck”. And if that mixture of bravado and hidden vulnerability doesn’t sum teenagerdom as you understand it, then I despair.

The Best Films of the Zeroes: 6

6. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. (2006)
Directed by Ang Lee

Ang Lee is a brilliant filmmaker. There are some sentences that need no embellishment whatsoever, because they simply contain the truth, and any elaboration beyond that distracts from the simplicity of the notion. There is no other modern director like Lee. For nearly twenty years, he has moved from genre to genre, language to language, style to style, and the only thing that has remained consistent since is the highest quality of his work, regardless of the assumed generic constraints. (This paragraph is written with the acceptance of the fact that his latest film, TAKING WOODSTOCK was considered something of a disappointment by many, and is his least inspiring work to date).

Still, you can trace his career from masterpiece to masterpiece, and acknowledge that even his failures come from the ‘inspired’ category (HULK, I’m looking at you, here). You could look at RIDE WITH THE DEVIL or EAT, DRINK, MAN, WOMAN. You could happily watch a double bill of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and THE ICE STORM (his second best film) and acknowledge that both films are scarily perceptive examinations of their society’s mores. Alternatively, you could find your enjoyment in THE WEDDING BANQUET or CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, or his follow up to BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, the phenomenal LUST, CAUTION.

It is BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN that I’m here to write about, though, not his previous work, but it is so difficult to appreciate the work of a director as fascinating as Lee without context. That the film works isn’t solely down to the director though. There’s the writing, for example. It’s an adaptation of a short story by the Pulitzer Prize™ winning author E. Annie Proulx, which was adapted by Diana Ossana and Pulitzer Prize™ winning author Larry McMurtry. There’s also the acting, which is of an incredibly high standard. Each of the four leads give what were, at the time, career best performances.

The plaudits went mostly to Heath Ledger, whose performance here is every bit as good as, if not better than, his Oscar™ winning turn in THE DARK KNIGHT. He was Oscar™ nominated here, too, but lost out to Philip Seymour Hoffman in CAPOTE, a poor decision, which was overshadowed by the inexplicable victory of CRASH over BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN in the Best Picture category. In all honesty, Ledger’s is the best performance here, although Michelle Williams as his wife, and Jake Gyllenhall as his lover are tremendous. The fourth member of the quartet, and the only one of the four not to be Oscar™ nominated for their work is Anne Hathaway, who plays the wife of Gyllenhall’s character.

Ledger plays Ennis Del Mar, who, along with Jack Twist (Gyllenhall), is given the responsibility of shepherding a local farmer’s flock on the titular mountain. Stuck together for a winter, their relationship becomes physical, and later romantic. The scenes on that mountain are beautiful to look at, and exquisitely handled by Lee. The performances of Ledger and Gyllenhall take root here. Everything that happens in later scenes (and the film spans thirty years) can be traced back to this beginning. Lee’s film remains honest to its characters throughout, and the result is a tragic love story, but one touched with beautiful moments of true happiness. Outside of their relationship with each other, both men get married, and try and establish home lives as satisfying and fulfilling as their relationship, which is crystallised in two or three meetings each year, usually spent back on Brokeback Mountain.

It would be easy to underestimate the importance or power of the actresses’ performances here. Unfortunately, we still live in a time when to play a gay man, while a young and attractive leading man with aspirations of career longevity is a sign of bravery in an actor. As such, it was inevitable that Ledger and Gyllenhall would dominate much of the film’s press. Williams and Hathaway, though, are superb; saddled with characters that could easily have been unlikable – they’re standing in the way of our heroes’ happiness, for one thing, each makes their character completely believable, and every bit as much of a victim as their husbands in the tragedy of a love deemed unacceptable by society.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a timeless love story. It’s a film as much about the sanctity of romantic love as any other Hollywood classic. It’s exquisitely played, with great chemistry existing in all three relationships that the film explores, beautifully written – the 22 page long script more than adequately filling a two-hour plus running time, with no sign of sag, and directed with a huge amount of skill and heart. There are a number of outstanding scenes, none of which can quite match the pure exhilaration of the blossoming of Jack and Ennis’ love, but give us deeper understanding of the characters involved. The fight scene at the fireworks display is perfectly framed and staged, while if you can survive the ending without crying, there’s potentially something wrong with you. It’s this scene, as Ledger mutters the words ‘Jack, I swear...’, that best illustrates the talent and potential of an actor, of a leading man, taken away much too young. There’s no doubt that he’ll always be best remembered for his thrilling portrayal of The Joker, but it is Ennis Del Mar who will always be his best screen creation, and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN that will, surely, always be the crowning achievement of Ang Lee’s glittering career.

The Best Films of the Zeroes: 7

7. THERE WILL BE BLOOD. (2008)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

At the beginning of the zeroes, Paul Thomas Anderson was a promising filmmaker, on the back of a superb second feature, BOOGIE NIGHTS. At the end of the decade, three movies later (of which this is the third to make this list), he had a real claim to being the most important American filmmaker of his generation. I’ve spoken briefly about MAGNOLIA already, and a little more about PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, but it is THERE WILL BE BLOOD that is his true masterpiece, and one of the standard bearers of modern American cinema.

A stunning character portrait, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is an incredible film. It hums with a purpose from the very first shot to the last, and that purpose is to show the indefatigability and venality of man. It does so by focusing (albeit to different extents) on two men, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Without exemplary performances from either of the two leads, this wouldn’t be anything like the film it is. Dano is a revelation. Before this, he was best known as the support in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, but his is the performance of a skilled veteran, never stealing the attention from Day Lewis, who is the headline act, just as his character is to everyone he meets.

It’s an incredible performance by Day Lewis, an actor whose tendency for hamminess could have derailed Anderson’s film, but who, instead, dominates it with an enormous amount of power. Plainview is a monstrous man, egotistical, psychotic and selfish. At the start of the film we see him overcome huge personal and physical obstacles in order to secure oil from a mined well, and that level of dogged assurance remains in his character throughout. The shading, added by Anderson and Day Lewis throughout, is what elevates the film, though, to a similar level as the best Hollywood classic character portraits of the 1930s and 40s. Anderson’s obvious inspiration throughout his first three movies was Robert Altman, but here, his work is closer in style to that of John Huston, or Orson Welles. Plainview is as much a cinematic icon as Welles’ Charles Foster Kane.

The film is ostensibly inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘Oil’, but aside from the central relationship between Plainview and his son, HW, and the interest in oil, there’s little here that can’t be directly attributed to Anderson. It was his decision to lose the politics from the original story, to focus on Plainview (the characters names have been changed) rather than HW and to introduce Eli, and as such religion to the story, twinning it with money as the two key ingredients to the only true currency in this world – power.

The battle for power between Eli, an evangelical preacher, reputed to have healing powers, whose family’s land Plainview buys as part of his latest prospecting, and Daniel is the film’s driving conflict. Throughout, Eli is painted as less than Plainview’s equal; he is physically bested by Plainview in front of most of his congregation, and even Plainview’s subjugation to him is a pyrrhic victory. In the end, the film comes down to the conflict generated between two men, whose egos can’t allow them to accept that they may not be all-powerful.

This is the third highest American film on this list, but Day Lewis’ turn might be the best of the decade. In anyone else’s hands it’s impossible to imagine how THERE WILL BE BLOOD could have been as successful as it is. Anderson’s work behind the camera is similarly superb. Together they have crafted a film for the ages, one as perceptive about American culture today as any on this list; a film which questions our attraction to people of power as much as it does the fact that power corrupts those who seek it above all else. It’s a staggering achievement, and as well as being the seventh best film of the past decade, it’s also one of the very best films of all time.

There are a number of striking, outstanding scenes. The scene in which Eli baptises Daniel is haunting, while the finale is blackly funny, providing one of the quotes of the decade (I drink your milkshake!). The wordless opening is a marvel, an incredible piece of direction as Anderson ratchets up the tension even before we know Plainview’s character. The true stand-out moment, though, is the oil-fire, which claims HW’s hearing, and we can later identify as the beginning of Plainview’s eventual decline. Visually beautiful, and as exciting as all hell, this, like the rest of the film is technically stupendous. Special word should go to Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead fame, whose soundtrack is haunting.