Inside Out (2015)

“Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also."

-Brian Jacques

The team at Pixar have taken advantage of the medium of animation in the past to produce a plethora of colorful environments and imaginative dreamscapes, but perhaps not quite to the extent or scope of their latest film Inside Out, a brainy (no pun intended) deconstruction of a child's mind that is ostensibly for children to comprehend, if only on a basic level. The studio has been praised in the past for their innovative approach to storytelling and visual flights of fancy, which I have been admittedly prickly about. Yes, the team that has been producing computer-animated feature films for two decades have crafted some truly gorgeous parables, yet more often than not they have prohibited themselves from doing something truly unpredictable by attempting to cater to a young mainstream audience. At best, their finest concepts run out of steam and inevitably succumb to unneeded cliches, and at worst are fairly blatant forgeries of other tropes and outright films (I still have no idea how the creators of Doc Hollywood never took advantage of suing Disney for Cars). That being said, Inside Out is a wholly delightful surprise.

Its chief characters comprise of five emotions, all voiced by recognizable comedians. Joy (Amy Poehler) is the ebullient leader of the cerebral group that take it upon themselves to monitor the daily activities of 11-year old Riley. Her (it's odd designating genders to emotions) compatriots are Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black, reigning in his profane persona), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and they all operate in a form of equilibrium until Riley and her parents move from their home in Minneapolis to San Francisco. This startling development perturbs the team, but Joy remains stubbornly optimistic that they can persevere through this brief crisis. Needless to say that this fool-proof scheme is complicated by a series of mishaps that ultimately expel Joy and Sadness, as well as some of Riley's core memories, out of the control room and leave their colleagues scrambling to sustain Riley's emotional stability. You can guess how well that goes.

I will be careful to divulge in what follows less to spoil the machinations of the plot but more to spare revealing to you some of the surprises director Pete Doctor and his team have in store for you. I will mention that they concern the subconscious, a truly bizarre venture into abstract thought, a dream that becomes downright Lynchian, and an imaginary friend named Bing Bong (Richard Kind) who is a combination of comestible and companion. Several of these set pieces are truly inspired and yield a bevy of charm in witnessing what the animators can craft utilizing the set of guidelines dictated by the clever script. The actual outcome of the story as well as the dynamic between Joy and Sadness is neither unexpected nor unusual, particularly the latter as it recalls several mismatched duos from previous Pixar classics such as Toy Story or Finding Nemo. Even Riley's arc is simple, albeit by design, and it's immensely refreshing to finally see a Pixar film without an obligatory antagonist present.

It's this complex set of rules intermingled with a straightforward scenario that should spell disaster, yet Doctor, whose previous entries for the studio include Monsters, Inc. and the stupendous Up, manages to craft a film that includes jokes that cater to familiar tropes (the inner emotions of Riley's parents certainly don't dispel any gender stereotypes) whilst sneakily injecting enough verve into the proceedings that he can't be accused of laziness. For example, one may question why Riley's emotions are both male and female while every other character's emotions conform fully to their gender. It is never directly addressed, nor does it need to be. It is simply one small detail in a film rife with them that lends this micro-universe a degree of delight and wonder.

However, the overwhelming emotion that adults may take away from Inside Out is one of melancholia. Themes of loss have been prevalent in Pixar's output, and their latest is no exception to this. Yet not since Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are has a mainstream family film attempted to convey the emotional tumult of being a child in a state of flux so directly, and indeed that may leave some of the youngest audience members confused. But like Jonze's cult classic, it isn't intended for mass consumption from the toddler demographic. Rather, it seeks to instill a nugget of empathy within anybody who has experienced a seismic shift in their seemingly staid existence and the resulting confusion of such a transition. That it conveys this difficult truth while supplying a generous helping of compassion and invention makes it a cause of celebration for pop art in American Cinema. What's not there to be happy about?

The Best films of 2014

I'm going to be frank for a moment and just admit that I find top ten lists to be eternally frustrating. It's difficult compiling one for films I watch in a given year that were released in the past, and it's nearly impossible to draft a list honoring what was released in the current year. I can't see everything I would either like to see or have to watch due to limited release, financial means, and sometimes just bad luck. But as an annual tradition, I will go ahead and preemptively honor 2014 (in January of 2015) by listing ten films that I felt immensely satisfied with. At best, I absolutely loved these ten features and what they had to offer. Even the ones ranking lower on my list instilled a sensation, a thought, or an emotion that lingered long after I had finished watching them. Regardless of what I catch up on in the following weeks, I feel obligated to at least pay homage to these movies in the hopes that they either find a wider audience or are reinforced as truly great work. They're simultaneously silly, somber, and scintillating. In a word, unforgettable.

10. Inherent Vice

I thought I had fully prepared myself. As soon as I heard Paul Thomas Anderson was adapting Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice to the screen, I read the book to understand why the auteur behind Magnolia and There Will Be Blood wanted to film a farcical noir set in the dawn of the 1970s as much as I did purely to understand the plot itself. What I got was a byzantine and bonkers book, a parable that threw an assortment of characters, situations, and one-liners at me faster than a Zucker-Abrams-Zucker joint. So when I walked into the film, I expected a fairly light-hearted romp. Yet my expectations were once again confounded by a movie that, contrary to what the marketing would lead you to believe, is far sadder than it is whimsical. Yes, there are plenty of sight gags like Josh Brolin sensually sucking on a chocolate banana or a nuclear family conducting a heroin transaction, and there are plenty of spots of the film that made me laugh heartily. But what Inherent Vice the movie does successfully is adapt a tome by a mad raconteur and parses through the prose to pinpoint the melancholy and the tragic waste of potential the 1970s came to represent in American culture. This isn't nostalgic so much as it is mournful, like a feature-length elaboration of Hunter S. Thompson's words concerning the great wave that came to recede (indeed, that wave is embodied by the literal motif of water that courses throughout this film as well as Anderson's previous entry The Master). The film feels positively authentic, perhaps not in an objective sense but in its complete execution, from costumes to set decoration right down to the shooting style and mise-en-scene. It feels like a lost 1970s classic that could have played on a double-bill with Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. I need to revisit Inherent Vice again, less to comprehend the mechanics of its plot but to bask in its atmosphere, its elegiac tone that transports you to a tangible vision of a very real moment in our history when we blew it, gave up hope of upending the status quo, and just tried our best to go forward. Much like Chinatown, arguably the greatest noir film ever made, Anderson's film urges us to gaze toward the past as means of comprehending a troubled present.

9. The Immigrant

Speaking of the past, The Immigrant is a period piece that, much like Inherent Vice, strove to capture a particular moment in our culture. What made James Gray's underrated gem such a pleasant surprise for me was its simultaneous use and undermining of melodramatic tropes to generate a compassionate and humane fable of equality and solidarity. While the three characters fulfill the archetypes established in Fellini's La Strada, they feel like anything but cliches. Ewa is the innocent Polish immigrant who fights to reunite with her sister, but she has untapped reservoirs of strength that enable her to maintain face in the most grim and demeaning of situations. Bruno, the man who employs Ewa as a prostitute, is a manipulative antagonist, but he is as much a victim of discrimination and the hierarchical class structure within the budding community of New York City as Ewa is, and he yearns more for love than he does for hate. As for Orlando the Magician, he is a naive idealist whose brash confidence makes him a charming yet dangerous presence for anyone within his periphery. None of these characters are purely good or bad, and they are all looking for something resembling The American Dream, or at the very least happiness and a decent life. The Immigrant is exceptional in the way it portrays the quest these characters undertake, all intensely personal yet imbued with glimmers of humanity. All of this is presented in a fashion that harkens to the silent era of cinema through its gorgeous cinematography yet feels remarkably modern in its characterizations and expertly controlled performances. The ending may not come as a surprise for some, but it does give us one of the great closing shots in recent film, and perhaps one of the greatest of all time. That may sound like hyperbole, but that's what makes The Immigrant a wonderful treat. It quietly sneaks up on you, draws you within its world, then leaves you with a breathtaking moment that reveals its greatness that, I certainly hope, will be rediscovered in years to come.

8. The Congress

 

It has been an exceptional last few years for unorthodox science-fiction films, and Ari Folman's The Congress ranks as one of the strangest to be released to theaters in quite some time. This loosely adapted take on Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress divided and alienated audiences and critics alike, but I found it to be a stunning experience in spite of its flaws. Yes, the first forty minutes could have been condensed for time (Harvey Keitel could have lost one of his three monologues), but the rewards reaped from this dystopian satire of celebrity culture are plentiful both in the intellectual heft it carries as well as the truly psychedelic visuals. While Folman begins his film as a critique of Hollywood and the public's incessant adulation of its stars, he branches off into more varied and thought-provoking thematic material once delving fully into animation. Our worship of the latest trends reflect a desperate yearning to attain youth, but it's symptomatic of something grander, The Congress seems to argue. Our indulgence in forms of escapism (movies, television, hallucinogens) enable us to sustain the illusion that we are able to overcome our fallibility. Like Inherent Vice, this film is concerned with the allure of dulling the mind when the flaws in our world are so deeply embedded they seem irremovable. What Folman exhibits, other than a virtuoso aesthetic that seems tailored for a cult audience, is an empathetic acknowledgment of this appeal. When we feel powerless to better the lives of the ones we cherish most, who wouldn't want to pretend that the rules of the physical universe don't inhibit us and we can transcend our mortal bonds? That is what makes The Congress a powerful exemplar of science-fiction; through the prism of fantasy, our troubles are fully eradicated at the expense of our grasp of reality as well as the maintenance of civilization, but does the destruction of all we have built really matter when we have dulled ourselves into a vision of bliss? What an ambivalent and, yes, human quandary.

7. The Lego Movie

 

If you told me a year ago that I would find a spot for The Lego Movie on my top ten list, I would have called you either insane or ignorant. But the biggest surprise of 2014 was this blockbuster smash that achieved the unthinkable; bearing its badge as a corporate film while simultaneously lambasting corporate mentality. In other words, Chris Miller and Phil Lord, the brilliant satirists behind Clone High and the Jump Street movies, got away with murder. They have stuffed their film with enough comic invention and visual panache to entertain the youngest target demographic, but they court the older members of the audience not purely by mining nostalgia (though they certainly do that) but also injecting a knowing attitude towards the synonymous association between conformity and complacency. Furthermore, the dichotomy between order and chaos that is personified by Lord Business and the residents of Cloud Cuckoo Land, respectively, is transmuted in the film's third-act twist as one between the old and the young. But it's here where The Lego Movie reveals its full brilliance in refusing to vilify or glorify any particular side, but rather expressing a mature perception of their limitations. Everything in moderation can be beneficial to all, and everything, as well as everyone, has a purpose. It's a humbling, thoughtful lesson for viewers of all ages, and an uncommonly intelligent message that is emblematic of the enduring fondness for the Lego brand. Both Miller and Lord were tasked with giving us a 100-minute commercial, and working within those parameters they delivered an exhilarating work of pop art that is more original, more meta-textual, and more poignant than it had any right to be. 

6. Snowpiercer

Stories can function on an allegorical level while narratives, particularly those of a cultural ilk, rely on familiarity and repetition. Every parable we tell ourselves through the ages is, in some way or another, inspired by what came before it and what will come long after. In several regards, this is exactly what Bong Joon-Ho's Snowpiercer is about. Never mind if there are several questions regarding the logistics behind a train that is in perpetual motion for years; the film's titular creation, one of the great trains of the movies, functions as a metaphor for social hierarchies. The very foundation of society is founded upon what we tell each other, what we dictate as "the rules" and who we revere for creating a sustainable model of living (for most of us, anyway). Furthermore, despite minute progressions, many of the struggles and strife of the commonwealth are repeated throughout history so long as an unjust ruling class maintains power. Bong's film purposely evokes a trove of science-fiction films, from Brazil to Star Wars, but not for the self-important reasons of associating itself with classics of the genre. Rather, the deeply political agency of Snowpiercer, a film set years into a bleak future, is concerned greatly with the pervasive nature of the past. It haunts many of the characters aboard the train, particularly Curtis the tortured leader of the tail-end travelers who fight for control of the engine. The transgressions committed throughout mankind's history don't paint a promising picture for our present, and these aspects of our lesser natures persist in the most dire of circumstances. Beneath the veneer of a crowd-pleasing thriller, Snowpiercer is really a troubling statement on the arrogance of the human race as well as the preference for blind acquiescence as a means of acquiring a semblance of security at the expense of moral fortitude. We seem doomed to repeat the same mistakes again and again, argues Bong, until finally we don't. Whether that ultimate outcome involves the end of our species or not he leaves for you to decide.

5. Mr. Turner

Art has been said to serve as an extension of the artist, an attestation to the legacy they impart upon the Earth. The truth of the matter is that a work of art can say as much, if not more, about its audience than it does the person who created it, and it is the relation between the individual and their body of work that drives the momentum of Mike Leigh's fascinating Mr. Turner, a biopic that wisely studies its subject through an elliptical execution. By deliberately focusing on tangentially related events of the last twenty-five years of J.M.W. Turner's life, Leigh attempts to proverbially paint a portrait of a man through his actions, his words, and his demeanor. His Turner, embodied brilliantly by Timothy Spall, is a flawed miscreant who neither demands nor necessarily deserves our sympathy. Nevertheless, he stands out amongst the proud elite as a strange frog of a man, well-spoken though inclined to offer a grunt or facial twitch as means of concise reply. He occasionally spits on his canvas when painting and draws both admiration and repulsion from his aristocratic audience. He displays both tenderness towards his beloved father and cold callousness towards his long-suffering housekeeper. Ultimately, Leigh's Turner is neither a jester nor a monster, though it is natural to find him comical one moment, revile him the next, and soon after pity him. Mike Leigh's body of work is typified by a surplus of generosity he displays towards the people he focuses on, and Mr. Turner is no exception. While working with a markedly more vibrant color palette thanks to the extraordinary work of cinematographer Dick Pope (who has unfortunately become the recent butt of a gaffe), Leigh never loses sight of the intimacy that is synonymous with his very best films. If Mr. Turner has something to say about the protean artist, as well as what can be described as the value of art, it's that subjectivity remains malleable but the impact one has on others is absolute. Rather than extol the virtues of Turner himself, consider to whom Leigh gives the final shot of his masterpiece to. It is a sad, wise parting shot that acknowledges the ephemeral quality of human endeavors and the capacity for displaying compassion through art.

 

4. Whiplash

There's initiative, and then there's insanity, and the very careful distinction between the two is obliterated in Damien Chazelle's Whiplash, an extraordinary and frightening deconstruction of the ideal of hard work and dedication yielding signs of genius. The film's protagonist, Andrew, is committed to realizing his dream of becoming one of the great drummers while dispensing with frivolities like human interaction or relationships. When he preemptively breaks up with his girlfriend, he outlines a potential scenario that robs her of her own agency and makes him sound like a sociopath. Though he's nothing compared to his teacher, the tyrannical Terence Fletcher. Fletcher is played by J.K. Simmons, that renowned veteran actor who's always had memorable roles in a diverse filmography ranging from Burn After Reading to Spiderman, but he gets the role of a lifetime by playing one of the great movie monsters in recent memory. He's a man who screams at his students, throws chairs at them, and manipulates them into lowering their emotional guard so he can sink his barbs deeper into their psyche. He makes Lermontov, the ruthless impresario from Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes, look like a perfectly reasonable mentor. Like that great character, Fletcher believes wholesale in no half-measures when musical pursuits come into question, not if you claim to be serious about it, anyway. Andrew is indeed talented, and he has potential that is put to the test constantly until the dizzying climax, but it's a testament to Chazelle's direction and script that we remain unsure as to whether his sacrifice is ultimately a good thing. Whiplash utilizes American Jazz as a catalyst for the brutal relationship between two people who divorce themselves from their humanity. It is, in many ways, a horror film about an evil man who attempts to mold his protege into the ideal image that fits his warped ideology and that prodigy's willingness to be shaped and adapt to whatever is thrown at him. There's a moment near the end when the two share a glance that, in any other film, would be unabashedly triumphant. That it still is while bearing truly disturbing implications makes this one of the most excitingly original independent films in years.

 3. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

 

Some films are so effortlessly beautiful that it becomes perilously easy to overlook the amount of craftsmanship that is invested in the production of a motion picture, and Takahata Isao's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is easily one of the most stunning films I have ever seen. In an age where CGI has become the standard, Takahata's retelling of one of Japan's oldest folk tales opts for a defiantly hand-drawn aesthetic that is anything but sloppy. Takahata deliberately leaves white space within the frame in certain scenes, as if we're witnessing an illustration in motion, yet he also fills the screen with unforgettable imagery including the titular princess angrily bursting through a nighttime vista in a monochromatic blur or a cloud formation turning into a gargantuan dragon in the midst of a storm at sea. All accomplished with brushstrokes, and they are indeed impressive feats. But what makes The Tale of the Princess Kaguya a truly remarkable film is the princess herself. She becomes subjugated to rigid constraints of class and gender and tries desperately to maintain her integrity and vivacity, only to be pushed to the point that she makes a terrible mistake. She pays the price for it, but the film does not chide her for what she has done. Rather, we spend nearly the entire film entwined within the emotional state of the young girl found in a bamboo stalk, from the unadulterated joy she feels dancing in a shower of cherry blossoms to immense sadness as she blackens her teeth when prompted to court potential suitors. In spite of its flights of fancy, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is enamored with the natural world and quietly mournful of how little mankind appreciates all it has to offer until it is too late. Takahata has crafted a tour de force that is joyous, elegiac, and brimming with an avid love for life like few films, and it is an instant classic.

2. The Grand Budapest Hotel

 

Though by no means the most violent year on record, 2014 seemed to embody a disconcerting prevalence of barbarism and bloodshed throughout the globe. By the time the clock struck midnight on January 1st, it wasn't hard hoping that 2015 would be at least marginally less brutal than the year that came before. But to be realistic, mankind has always held a propensity for cruelty, and will doubtless continue to do so until its extinction. That's why we are taken aback by acts of good will from our compatriots that is inspired not by ulterior motives but out of the ironclad conviction that the simplest expressions of kindness matter a great deal. That's what makes M. Gustave one of the most fascinating characters of any film. He is alternately raucous and refined, foul and fastidious in equal measure. He treasures the fragrance of a specific French cologne and becomes flabbergasted when Zero, his confidant and apprentice, forgets to bring it to him in the aftermath of a prison break. But he has the grace to take accountability for his harsh words when he learns that Zero is a refugee and proffer his sincerest apologies. In other words, M. Gustave is a complicated man who, above all, strives to instill civility within his micro-universe but never forgets the people he works with and, ultimately, sacrifices himself for. Beneath the sumptuously mounted artifice of Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel lies a powerful belief in morality, not as a pretense meant to mask the essentially primitive nature of man but to emphasize our better selves. History is marred by violence and tragedy, even in the pastel-colored fantasia of Wes Anderson's vision of the past, and evil will always linger in the hearts and minds of men. But love and goodness endure as well, and they always will even in the smallest of things like a box of cakes or a pin of a secret society of concierges and, of course, a bottle of French cologne.

 

1. Boyhood

André Bazin, the famed film theorist and proponent of cinematic realism, once said that the primary function of photography, and by extension cinema, was to "embalm time". In that case, Richard Linklater's Boyhood is the realization of that philosophy. It fulfills one of the seemingly unattainable ideals of cinema, which is to capture that which is in flux. It is about not only the gradual growth and maturation of a boy into a young man but of his divorced parents, his sister, the world he lives in. It is a period piece made within the moment, a chronicle of a family that will seem very familiar to countless families yet cannot be called universal, because it's virtually impossible for all of us to be given the same experience. Not when our social environment is determined by race, gender, class, and personal upbringing. But Boyhood doesn't make the mistake of attempting to tell the story of everyone's coming of age, and it's all the better for that. It's the story of a boy growing up in Texas in the dawn of the 21st Century between two presidencies, a burgeoning love of art, and a cognizance of the growing prominence of technology within his, and our, world. He graduates high school, goes to college, and that's the end of the movie. Except what makes Boyhood so marvelous, so emotionally resonant, is the way it invites us into the lives of this family for nearly three hours. In observing the formation of Mason Jr.'s foundation as a person, as well as how his parents change over time, we remark upon what has led us to this current juncture in our lives. In doing so, I couldn't help but look upon the audience I first saw the film with as I exited the theater and wondered what events in the course of their lives influenced who they were and who they might become. Fundamentally, Boyhood provides a template for understanding others as much as ourselves. I'll quote another film critic, Roger Ebert, by saying that "the movies are like a machine that generates empathy." Whether by Bazin's or Ebert's standards, Boyhood would be an unquestionable triumph. By my standards, it's the best film of 2014.

Honorable Mentions and the Worst Film of 2014

Not everything I see in a given year can be given its proper due nor does everything I see merit any measure of praise or scorn. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to briefly mention ten films that, for some reason or another, did not quite crack my personal top ten yet I would recommend in a heartbeat.

Kaneda gets ready to ride in Otomo Katsuhiro's landmark anime Akira

Bess (Emily Watson) waits for a call from her beloved Jan (Stellan Skarsgård) in Lars von Trier's devastating melodrama Breaking the Waves

Maréchal (Jean Gabin) greets the dawn in Jean Renoir's revered war classic Grand Illusion

Unstable screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) harbors suspicions of his beloved Laurel (Gloria Grahme) in Nicholas Ray's reflexive tragedy In a Lonely Place

Several girls from Appleyard College disappear on a Valentine's Day field trip in Peter Weir's enigmatic and eerie Picnic at Hanging Rock

A group of aristocrats are at a loss for words when their favorite brothel has closed in Max Ophüls' enchanting anthology Le Plaisir

Joseph Cotten gives one of his best performances as the creepy Uncle Charlie in Alfred Hitchock's small-town satire Shadow of a Doubt

The Man (George O'Brien) stalks through a moonlit marsh in F.W. Murnau's transfixing Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

Benigno (Javier Cámara) and Marco (Darío Grandinetti) tend to their comatose love interests Alicia (Leonor Watling) and Lydia (Rosario Flores) in Pedro Almodóvar equally bizarre and poignant Talk to Her

Twin sisters Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac) are brimming with joy in Jacques Demy's ebullient musical romp The Young Girls of Rochefort

Of course for every great ten or twenty films I saw, there were thankfully only a handful of movies that were absolute garbage. I had my fair share of the predictably terrible (Titanic: The Legend Goes On) as well as the enjoyably campy (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band). However, as soon as I saw this film in the beginning of the year, I knew that it would be difficult to top for the worst film I would see in 2014. Sure enough, nothing quite came close to eclipsing this baffling train wreck of a comedy. I am of course referring to the one and only...

Where do I even begin to talk about Louis C.K.'s legendary Pootie Tang, a film so reviled that it became the butt of a recurring joke in the Scary Movie franchise. I think I laughed only twice during this film and spent the rest of it in sheer bafflement. What was I looking at? A blaxploitation spoof? A modern riff on Dadaism? Austin Powers as directed by Jean-Luc Godard? According to C.K., he lost control of the film during the editing process and has claimed the finished product is a far cry from his original vision. This answers a lot of questions concerning the film's awkward pacing and long stretches of unfunny shenanigans, but even still I'm not sure if there's a better film lost in the folds of this disaster. There are jokes and instances that bear the signature of its creator, including the surreal flights of fancy that would become a trademark on the masterful Louie. Even Pootie Tang's indecipherable diction would be elaborated upon to more brutally funny effect in an episode C.K.'s series. However, the voice of one of the most important comedians of his generation is heard rarely in this fiasco, and that's an enormous shame. The best thing I can say about Pootie Tang is that it is unlike any other bad movie I have ever seen. For connoisseurs in the fine art of trashy cinema, Pootie Tang is an essential choice to view with friends. Otherwise, it's not even worth sitting through for Chris Rock being mauled by a guy in a gorilla suit or David Cross in blackface. Pootie Tang may not have been the film to anger me the most this year (I bequeath that dubious honor onto D.W. Griffith's effective and, in turn, effectively despicable The Birth of a Nation), but I think I may have gained nothing from watching it save for a net loss of brain cells. Wada-tah.

That settles the score for 2014. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to what 2015 has to offer.

My Favorite Films of 2014 (not from 2014)

The past year found me viewing a smaller number of films in comparison to years past in an attempt to catch up on some of the most acclaimed works to be released in 2014 (and I still haven't completely caught up on everything yet). Nevertheless, looking back on what I had seen, I realized that everything had, for better or worse, left an indelible impression on me. It was the strange sort of year where I saw a Lars von Trier movie that I liked and absolutely detested something created by Louis C.K. Of all the exceptional movies I saw, the following ten were the ones that I adored above all others. Some were haunting, humorous, and heartbreaking, yet they were all exceptional in their subversion of cinematic tropes to create unforgettable masterworks that invigorated my imagination.

10. The King and the Mockingbird

I must confess that I had seen a good portion of The King and the Mockingbird (or better known in its native country as Le Roi et l'oiseau) years ago on the internet, primarily the first twenty minutes or so. Only now when the film was finally given a theatrical release in the United States did I have the opportunity to see the entirety of this legendary film, and in many respects I'm glad I waited. It's a gorgeous film whose painterly aesthetic enables it with a storybook atmosphere much in the same way Takahata Isao utilized Japanese brushwork in this year's excellent The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. By employing a retro design, The King and the Mockingbird becomes timeless. The story, very loosely based off of a fable by Hans Christian Anderson, tells of the strabismal sovereign of Tachycardia (cough, cough) who detests his subjects as much as they do him, though he reserves the strongest barb of loathing for himself. The only source of tenderness within the bitter King Charles III + V = VIII + VIII = XVI (yes, that's really his full title) is a portrait of a fey shepherdess in his secret apartment that he pines for. By night, while the king slumbers, the ornate artworks come to life and the shepherdess expresses her love for the chimney sweep in the adjacent portrait. The two escape and are aided by the titular and titillating mockingbird while His Majesty is disposed of by his painted and optically superior doppelgänger who promptly orders the palace guard to hunt down the eloping lovers. Any animation buff has doubtless heard of the protracted production history of The King and the Mockingbird which took place over the course of three decades and was surpassed for the longest production of a film by Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler. The ultimate result is a wholly strange yet beguiling masterpiece of French animation. It is simple enough for children to understand yet imbued with enough knowing subtext by animator Paul Grimault and co-writer Jacques Prévert (who is perhaps most famous for writing the French classic Children of Paradise) that adults may appreciate the sly social commentary on tyranny, freedom, and technology. But the greatest appeal of this fairy tale is its lyricism and earnest adoration for life. As opposed to so many animated films today, The King and the Mockingbird doesn't barrel from plot point to plot point but rather luxuriates in the world it creates as well as the small moments of beauty permeating it. What The King and the Mockingbird strives to convey is the glory of imagination, the vivacity of movement, and the joy of creation rather than destruction. In these regards, isn't that what animation, and by extension cinema, is for?

9. Shoot the Piano Player

The film begins like this: a man runs through the streets at night as he is pursued by a sinister car. He cuts corners, lunges down alleys, rushes along a sidewalk, and then does the inexplicable; he stops to chat with a person walking their dog. They have an amiable, if innocuous, discussion, exchange pleasantries, and after bidding each other farewell the man resumes his run. This anarchic attitude immediately establishes the tone for Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste), one of the most playful deconstructions of genre to emerge out of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut once said that he strove to "make a film where all the scenes would please [him]", and this confident disposal off conventions and audience expectations led to a mixed response from critics and poor box office that ultimately frightened Truffaut off from experimenting as boldly ever again. It's a pity, because the story of Charlie the pianist is a dazzlingly gleeful journey that sashays from comedy to tragedy in the space of mere moments. Charlie has distanced himself from his prior persona as Edouard Saroyan the revered musician following a tragic incident. Now he occupies a nondescript existence as the titular employee of a seedy bar, yet he draws the attention of an attractive waitress named Lena as well as two gangsters who are looking for his brothers (one of whom is the chased man at the film's start). While inspired by B pictures by Samuel Fuller as well as crime movies, Shoot the Piano Player satirizes these genres as much as it pays homage to them. There is a scene where the film screeches to a halt to partake in a nonsense song about a raspberry. The antagonistic gangsters, more akin to their successors in Pulp Fiction in their lackadaisical demeanor than their predecessors, freely converse about the appeal of wearing women's clothing. As for Charlie Kohler himself, he is a far cry from the brooding masculine image of the American antihero. If anything, his passivity renders him an inept, as well as impotent, protagonist that takes little to no accountability for events either directly or indirectly influenced by his actions. What Truffaut explores with Shoot the Piano Player is a new world on the cusp of breaking away from the old one and the enervated entertainer who cannot accommodate it but is forced to accept it as an implacable and, for him, tragic reality.

8. After Life

If you could take one memory with you when you die that would act as your own personal heaven, what would it be? This tantalizing theoretical query forms the foundation of Koreeda Hirokazu's remarkable After Life, a 1998 drama that blurs the demarcation between fiction and veracity. Initially conceived as a documentary primarily consisting of interview subjects, the film chronicles a week for a team consigned with the task of welcoming newly departed souls into a state of purgatory and charging them with naming their most cherished memories in three days time. Once they have done so, the team will manifest these memories by committing them to celluloid. They screen the short films they create on the final day, and the souls disappear, now fully engulfed within their memories. On this particular week, one of the counselors, Takashi, meets a client who struggles so mightily to summon a happy memory that he must review his entire life through videotapes to scrounge up anything. Takashi is unhappy with him and requests a transfer, though his reasoning is revealed only gradually to be deeply personal. It's this patient narrative drive that characterizes the films of Koreeda, and the process of discovery through observation perfectly suits the thematic concerns and visual aesthetic of After Life. Several of the souls asked about their happiest moments are shot in straight-on medium close-up with the interviewees addressing the camera, and in fact many of these sequences where shot without a script. This verisimilitude lends an immediacy to the film even during the clearly structured sequences that, while not necessarily manipulating the audience into believing they're watching a documentary, convey an emotional truth. What constitutes the legacy we create for others as much as for ourselves? Is it wrong to craft one's time on this planet around a falsity for the sake of garnering absolution? After Life raises these questions, then leaves its audience to dwell upon them while reinforcing the significance of the cinematic apparatus for preservation and personal representation. It is reflexive, poignant, and ultimately inspiring.

7. In Bruges

 

Violence is so ingrained within the human psyche that the existing iconography of barbarism has become commonplace within visual representation, particularly in the Western world. What lingers longest in the mind, however, is not primarily how cruel the violent act is but what it's implications are, the consequences it bears for those it affects. Playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh is one of the living artists whose very best work understands this core tenet of humanity, and In Bruges is one of his finest accomplishments. A sort of cinematic elaboration of The Dumb Waiter, the film follows two hit men named Ray (the rookie) and Ken (the seasoned professional) as they hide out in the small town of Bruges ("It's in Belgium", Ray helpfully informs us) as they await instructions from their boss Harry Waters following a botched job. Ken is enamored with the rustic vista, but Ray's impertinence ends up getting them involved with a beautiful production assistant who peddles drugs in her spare time as well as a dwarf actor who harbors some seriously questionable ideas regarding race. But Ken is charged by Harry to kill Ray as punishment for the horrible mistake that exiled them to Bruges in the first place, and Ray himself is overcome with immense guilt over his unspeakable transgression. While the film bears many superficial similarities with the aforementioned Harold Pinter play, McDonagh's film reveals itself to be pulsating with sorrow and fear. In actuality, In Bruges is the comedic equivalent of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, a resemblance that is invoked by the film-within-a-film, yet this not simply a pastiche of the horror classic. Bruges is portrayed much in the same way as Venice is as a cold, barren cityscape whose streets paved with cobblestones are more foreboding than charming. The characters are trapped both by their environment and by a portent specter of doom that  is inescapable. All of this culminates in a final bloody act that... well, to say any further would be to spoil both films. Ultimately, McDonagh's great talent lies in pinpointing the humanity within the obscene and grotesque, and In Bruges is an uncommonly intelligent thriller with fantastic performances from the three leads that just happens to feature Colin Farrell karate-chopping a stoned dwarf.

6. The Long Day Closes

The coming-of-age subgenre  is immensely tricky to pull off. The difference between nostalgia and sentimentality is a tenuous one, and when done wrong can result in insufferable indulgence. Then you have a film like Terence Davies' The Long Day Closes which can be categorized as a coming-of-age story yet is nearly indescribable in how it presents the crucial turning point from youth to adolescence. It's a movie where what happens isn't as important in the sense that it builds to a climactic moment (as in, say, Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill) but rather that it is meant to craft an impressionistic portrait of a very specific time in the development of a young man. That young man, named Bud, is living with his mother in Liverpool circa the 1950s. Bud's father is absent, and it is never clearly established what has happened to him, though any explanation would be perfunctory. Bud fosters his love of the cinema by constantly attending the smoke-filled movie theater, and his captive attention of moving pictures is compounded by his vivid dreams, whether they be of a grandiose mercantile ship in the middle of a class period or of an unseen man (perhaps the ghost of his father) grabbing his face in a horrid nightmare. In his waking state, Bud attends school and pals around with few friends, yet he is a quiet, introspective lad that doesn't mind having moments to himself. But as he reaches the early stages of puberty, Bud discovers his burgeoning homosexuality, which severely clashes with his catholic upbringing  and he ultimately experiences s a loneliness never felt before. What sounds like the makings of a treacly sermon on childhood and sexual discrimination within society couldn't be further from what we get here. Based loosely off of his own experiences growing up, Davies focuses on particular moments of sight and sound that not only constitute Bud's youth but signify the early indicators of his inevitable transition into manhood. Bud develops an awareness of sexual mores when his brother discreetly motions for him to leave while his girlfriend chats with the boy. A Christmas celebration is associated with not only caroling but narration from The Magnificent Ambersons. There is a famous shot of a carpet that lasts for nearly two minutes and made Gillian Anderson weep. We even open upon a rainy street while the 20th Century Fox theme and Nat King Cole's "Stardust" usher us into the world. It's nearly impossible to fully communicate what Davies achieves here through words, but if there's one demonstrative example of the poetry of The Long Day Closes, it is the montage set to the Debbie Reynolds standard "Tammy". Here, in full, Davies expresses his intent to capture a formative moment in his lifetime while expressing an innate understanding of the inexorable march of time as well as a tacit acknowledgment of the pervasive presence of social institutions within our daily routines. It is a snapshot in flux, a flash of beauty that lingers long after it has disappeared, and it's one of the most elegiac, sensitive, and unique films I have ever seen. Much like after seeing Richard Linklater's Boyhood, I felt a little older and wiser for having seen it.

5. A Woman Under the Influence

American Independent Cinema wouldn't be what it is today without John Cassavetes. In a career that spanned nearly three decades, Cassavetes was one of the most prolific filmmakers of the second half of the 20th Century while memorably appearing in front of the camera in classics like The Dirty Dozen and Rosemary's Baby. Cassavetes used his camera to focus on profoundly troubled people who, in spite of themselves as much as others, desperately sought happiness. A Woman Under the Influence may be his greatest achievement and forty years after it's release it hasn't lost one iota of its power. Mabel and Nick Longhetti are a married couple whose dynamic proves to be dysfunctional, to say the least. In the opening sequence, Nick calls home to report that he'll be late from his construction work and out of loneliness and anger Mabel ambles into the night and has a sexual encounter with a total stranger. The next morning, the man offers to make her some coffee, but Mabel is bewildered. "You're Nick, and I'm Mabel!", she exclaims, and if it wasn't clear before it becomes painfully so now that something is not quite right with Mabel. While her mental illness is relatively harmless to her children and her husband's co-workers, Mabel's ailment nevertheless creates uncomfortable situations for everyone within her periphery. After a catastrophic play date their kids have with a friend from school, Nick and his mother decide to have Mabel hospitalized for six months. During her tenure in an asylum, it is gradually revealed that not only is Nick less capable of caring for his children than his wife but that he may have a psychosis of his own. The film was originally conceived as a play for Cassavetes' wife Gena Rowlands but only turned into a movie when Rowlands felt it would have been both physically and emotionally exhausting performing the material every single night, and she's right. A Woman Under the Influence is one of the most uncomfortable films I've ever sat through, and I mean that as the highest praise. It's two and a half hours long, but Cassavetes takes advantage of the length to fully immerse you within the micro-universe of this troubled family. Mabel desperately tries to conform to what she believes is the ideal housewife, and Gena Rowlands makes her a tragic figure without sugarcoating her manic tendencies. Peter Falk has perhaps an even trickier role as Nick, for his madness is far less noticeable than Mabel's yet it becomes so clear by the end that it's baffling how we could have missed it in the first place. Both of these characters love each other, but they cannot sustain a calm equilibrium before another eruption occurs. We don't condone all of what they do, but we do empathize with and grieve for them. As a portrait of a family in crisis, A Woman Under the Influence is of the highest caliber. As a critique of gender relations and the treatment of mental illness within American society, it remains more relevant and troubling than ever.

4. Macbeth

The greatest film adaptations of William Shakespeare have all accomplished the feat of creating a singularly cinematic experience while maintaining fidelity towards the original words of the Bard. But for every Laurence Olivier or  Kenneth Branagh, auteurs who speak Shakespeare like a second language, there's a filmmaker like Roman Polanski who, while not a connoisseur of the material, offers a distinct reinvention of a once thought unassailable text. Case in point: his 1971 film of Macbeth, co-adapted with British playwright Kenneth Tynan. Along with Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, it is the supreme retelling of the rise and fall of the mad Thane of Cawdor crowned King of Scotland. What differentiates Polanski's version from what came before? For starters, the leads are played by young people rather than a traditionally older couple. While a controversial creative decision, I think it's a bold and rather ingenious gamble that pays off in dividends. By beginning as enterprising, youthful schemers, the story charts the moral disintegration of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (played brilliantly by Jon Finch and Francesca Annis, respectively) into weary, paranoid, and morose monarchs more effectively than ever before that they seem to waste away before our very eyes. The second noticeable difference is the depiction of graphic violence. While not necessarily more gruesome than anything seen on a typical episode of Game of Thrones, this is easily the most bloody version of Macbeth that's ever been presented. The murder of King Duncan and, particularly, the massacre of the Macduff family are appropriately clumsy and blunt, contrasting powerfully with the poetry of the written word. Speaking of which, most of the revered soliloquies from the play are spoken in voice-over. The resultant effect is one that preserves some of the most powerful monologues Shakespeare ever wrote while never impeding upon the cinematic illusion of realism Polanski sustains, and some of the most famous sequences from the play are strengthened by the expansive advantages of film (the moving forest of Birnam Wood in particular becomes a tremendous sight of awe and fear). With these primary ingredients, Macbeth is a shocking, nightmarish and wholly unique interpretation of the classic tale of greed and ambition that posits man not as inherently evil but as always possessing the capacity for evil deeds, a trait that the slightly altered and far darker ending suggests will endure through the ages, long after the tyrannical Macbeth has been beheaded.

3. The Innocents

When we think of the modern ghost story, we have to give our dues to Henry James' 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. As influential as it is open to scholarly interpretation, the story of a governess who tends to two very precocious children in a secluded mansion that may or may not be haunted has been adapted several times to theater, television, and film with varying degrees of success. The best, and a seminal horror work in its own right, is Jack Clayton's 1961 film The Innocents. In the opening minutes, you know you're watching a highly unusual supernatural tale, one that relies not on shocks or loud noises to frighten its audience but rather an eerie sense of dread and unease.

The governess, named Miss Giddens here and portrayed expertly by Deborah Kerr, is charged by an insouciant aristocrat to look after his niece and nephew in his country estate of Bly. Giddens takes immediately to the children, but begins to question the housekeeper Mrs. Grose about her predecessor and the mysterious and ghoulish man she sees stalking the grounds. It is here she begins to doubt the presumed purity of her charges, particularly of the young boy Miles. The genius of James' original story is the ambiguity of whether there really are ghosts terrorizing the governess or if they are an extension of her own psychosis, and it's a testament to the direction and script (adapted primarily by none other than Truman Capote) that this uncertainty is preserved. What Clayton and especially Capote elaborate upon is the sexual subtext of the novella. There's a distinct possibility that the children were exposed to the sexual escapades of Giddens' predecessor, Miss Jessel, and of the sinister man Quint while they were still alive, if not worse. In a particularly famous and still unnerving scene, Miss Giddens is kissed on the lips by Miles, and she recoils... but with the faintest expression of pleasure in her eyes. Later, as Miss Giddens walks the halls in the night, the sound of laughter and intercourse pound in her ears. Have the ghosts soiled the innocence of these children, or are they an extension of Miss Giddens' own repressed sexuality? We never fully know, but what we are given is a riveting work that is as beautiful as it is disturbing, thanks in large part to the deep focus cinematography by Freddie Francis, and the remarkably modern score by Georges Auric that opts for quiet terror where a lesser score would succumb to bombast. What makes The Innocents so powerful and lasting is not solely the imagery of gothic decay that adumbrated the cliches of ghost movies, but the very palpable ideas involving human frailty and evil. Think upon the final shot of the film and ponder if, perhaps, whether in her head or real, Miss Giddens ultimately becomes the thing she fears most?

2. A Hard Day's Night

Fifty years have passed since they landed on North American shores and we still talk about The Beatles in the present tense. Their music is eternal, their place within the cultural lexicon assured. But does the same apply to their films? When you talk about A Hard Day's Night, the answer is "absolutely". One of the most inventive and liberating movie musicals ever made, Richard Lester's chronicle of a day in the life of the Fab Four disposes of the rules for what a musical should look and sound like, and seen half a century after its release seems surprisingly fresher and more anarchic than ever. Yes, the lads sing songs from the album of the same name, but they're not shoehorned in like the songs in an Elvis picture. There's a visual dynamism that accompanies songs like "I Should Have Known Better" or "And I Love Her". While consistently blithe and boisterous, A Hard Day's Night has something substantial to say about entrapment and repression. John, Paul, George, and Ringo are constantly hounded by fans kept at bay by only a train or the limo that drives the band around. They have to show up for rehearsal for a show, do their homework, and follow a barrage of orders from their flustered manager. When they sneak off from the studio into the fresh air, Ringo cries, "We're free!", and the lads barrel into "Can't Buy Me Love", speeding across a field and bouncing over each other like gravity itself can't hold them down. If there's an antagonist, it would be Paul's grandfather who instigates trouble through manipulation and mischief. But even that "little old man" feels cooped up, and his desires aren't that dissimilar from our four heroes. He's a very clean man, he and others reinforce throughout the film. "Well, are ya?", John pointedly asks near the end, and the generational gap between the Baby Boomers and the forebears seems less pronounced than previously thought. Fundamentally, it isn't the music that makes a Hard Day's Night a terrific film, though it certainly helps, and it isn't because the film is giddily hilarious, though it certainly is that. What cements A Hard Day's Night as a canonical work is the way it inadvertently captured the moment before the counterculture took off in the second half of the decade. When the group sings "She Loves You" at the end, the audience is shrieking, ready to break the roofs off the stadium, and with it societal constraints. Those taboos would collapse within a scant few years, and there were The Beatles to embody the hopes and dreams of a generation. That we still can find something to relate to in a film from a bygone era is a testament to their greatness as artists. Their music belongs to all of us, young and old, generation to generation. So does this film.

1. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

 

Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most brilliant tricks in cinematic history. It's a brightly hued technicolor French romance that features every line of dialogue sung and whose most famous song was featured in an episode of Futurama. It's also one of the most devastating tragedies ever put to the screen with an uncommonly wise awareness of human fallibility. It sets the stage for an overblown tearjerker and closes the curtain on a brief yet earned moment of melancholy acknowledgment. Allow me to explain; Geneviève and Guy are a young couple passionately in love. Guy works as a mechanic, but he intends to marry Geneviève and provide a stable household for their future family. Her mother is doubtful of the young man's ability to act as breadwinner, but their idyll is shattered when Guy is conscripted into the military to fight in the Algerian War. The two promise to stay true to one another, but matters only become more dire when Geneviève realizes that she's pregnant with Guy's child and despairs of Guy returning to her when his correspondence becomes more infrequent. With her mother's help, the young woman marries a kind and wealthy jeweler. But Guy does indeed return, and... you're doubtless expecting this to turn into an operatic version of The Notebook, which sounds absolutely dreadful. But a keen understanding of human nature belies the artifice and grandiose expressions of emotion, and that makes all the difference. Demy doesn't portray any of his characters as ones we should be clearly rooting for or against, but rather as people we empathize with in spite of their shortcomings. Geneviève's mother is not supportive of the relationship her daughter has with Guy, but because she doesn't believe he'd be stable enough as a patriarch if he ever comes back and not because the script demands her to be antagonistic. When Guy does saunter back into the town of Cherbourg, he's clearly been shaken by his experience and his emotional stability is shrouded in uncertainty. Would he be a good spouse to Geneviève? I doubt it since he needs someone to help care for him and seems rendered incapable, at the moment, to provide for others. And what of the sweet girl Madeleine who cares for Guy's aunt but harbors feelings for Guy himself? When he proposes to her, the woman has the wherewithal to question whether he's using her as a rebound from his last love. Each of these characters have an agenda, something at stake, and all of them yearn for their own happiness. Do they achieve that by the end? The answer is complicated, far more open-ended than one is accustomed to in a cinematic fantasia, and that's what makes The Umbrellas of Cherbourg a singular triumph. It is a torrent of pure feeling that earns every single one of its emotional beats, a kaleidoscopic burst of sound and color that somehow remains strikingly intimate, and an epic that never once loses sight of its achingly human core. All of this culminates in a wise and heartbreaking denouement that recognizes how ephemeral the encounters in our lives are without passing judgment on anyone. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is unlike any other film ever made, and it's stylistic flourishes and pathos expand the parameters that constitute a motion picture. For that, among other reasons, it is my favorite film I saw in 2014.

Be sure to check out the honorable mentions as well as what made my pick as the worst film I saw in 2014.

In Memoriam: Robin Williams

The first film I ever saw in a movie theater was Aladdin. I couldn't honestly tell you that I remember the experience, but it doesn't surprise me that I would be just old enough to see the smash hit Disney movie once it hit the dollar theater in the Spring of 1993. In many ways, I can't really remember a time before I had even seen Aladdin. I had grown up with an array of Disney films as a child in the '90s, and it had remained a fixture of my childhood for so long. I watched it again and again countless times, reveling in what I then perceived to be the film's trove of treasures. One of these was the scene-stealing, larger than life genie who always made me giggle (My favorite part? When he transforms that poor monkey into a "brand new camel"). I had a vague idea of actors performing as characters in films, but I can clearly recall the first one I could identify just by seeing and even hearing him. That actor was Robin Williams.

Robin Williams, who died suddenly Monday, was one of the most distinct faces of American Popular Culture. Over the course of a career that spanned forty years, he had planted himself firmly in the collective consciousness of old and young, through television and film, as a wildly manic and original personality that didn't just leave an impression; he could change the very atmosphere around him through seemingly sheer force of will. He was born to be a star, and this became apparent even early on in his career when he got his first break as the character of Mork the alien on an episode of Happy Days. Mork proved so popular a character that Williams became the star of his own sitcom Mork and Mindy from 1978 to 1982. But it was through stand-up comedy that Williams garnered a reputation as one of the most exciting comedians of his generation. Here, in a 1977 show, you can already see Williams perfecting his comedic chops, with his innate gift of improvisation (notice how he constantly interacts with the audience) and creating absurd characters with rapid-fire delivery, almost as if he's unleashing a bevy of material that's bursting to escape from his comic id.

It was only a matter of time before Williams made his way into film, and though he participated in Can I Do It 'Till I Need Glasses?, a 1977 comedy film comprised of vignettes, it wasn't until 1980 that he would nab his first starring role in Robert Altman's Popeye as the iconic, spinach-guzzling sailor man. The film itself was a flop, and still remains something of a divisive cult classic. But Williams persevered through the 1980s, and by the end of the decade had become a bankable lead and had been nominated for an Oscar twice for both Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society. Both films featured terrific performances from Williams while also marking the beginning of a trend in his dramatic work that became more and more heavily criticized: the sentimental role model who sermonizes against the establishment. This aspect became insufferable in dreck like Patch Adams and Bicentennial Man, but both Vietnam and Society remain beloved entries in Williams' filmography. In the case of the latter, Williams doesn't overstay his welcome by becoming the chief focus of the film. He gives invaluable advice to his students, yes, but it is ultimately their story, and Mr. Keating has the good sense not to meddle too deeply in it. His goal is to inspire, not to interfere.

By the end of the millennium, Robin Williams had become a household name in America. He had starred in several hit comedies, including Mrs. Doubtfire and the American remake of The Birdcage, and had become a stalwart in several movies aimed for children, including Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest as a mentally unhinged bat and in Steven Spielberg's Hook as an adult Peter Pan who must return to Neverland after his children are kidnapped by the dastardly Captain Hook. And then there was Aladdin. Though debatable as to whether it is his greatest performance as an actor, there's little doubt that the Genie remains the most influential role of Williams' career. His performance not only turned Aladdin from a routine animated musical into a first-rate entertainment, but it set the standard for A-list actors cast in animated family films. While famed actors like Dom Deluise or Burt Reynolds had been featured in prominent roles in animated movies in the past, notably in Don Bluth's films, Robin Williams' genie was an altogether different animal. Without him, there would be no Donkey in Shrek, no model for studios to follow in the hopes of creating a bona fide hit that would cater to both kids and their parents. Williams broke the mold, and over two decades later it's inconceivable what the modern animated film from Hollywood would look like without his contribution.

While a master of slapstick, goofiness, and tomfoolery, it's very easy to forget that Williams was more than a competent dramatic actor. His choice in roles was not always wise, leading to well-intentioned but ultimately abysmal results like Jakob the Liar and House of D. That being said, when Williams did choose the right project, he was nothing less than extraordinary. He could play kind, empathetic people, but also surprised in roles that required him to tap into dark recesses of the human soul. In films like One Hour Photo and Christopher Nolan's remake of Insomnia, he plays disturbed men who are either struggling to latch onto a semblance of normalcy (in the case of the former) or rejecting their humanity altogether (in the case of the latter). Even in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King, Williams' Terry is a frazzled but goodhearted man haunted by literal and metaphorical demons and who often finds himself in the midst of a violent confrontation as he attempts to rid himself of the one that drove him insane. And in Good Will Hunting, the film that earned him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Williams sheds his onscreen persona by becoming a man who does help a brilliant kid turn his life around but is himself hounded by inhibitions that prevent him from living his life. I remember seeing this scene for the first time and gradually forgetting that I was watching Robin Williams. It's still a revelatory performance in a great film.

The last decade of Williams' life may have been marred by a string of unexceptional comedies, from License to Wed to Old Dogs, but there was the occasional foray into uncharted territory like the black comedy World's Greatest Dad that served as a reminder that Williams, when faced with a challenging script, was more than up for the task. In his private life he was considered a warm, genuine friend to many, perhaps most famously to Christopher Reeve. Both Reeve and Williams met while attending Juliard in the 1970s, and they maintained a close friendship that lasted until Reeve's death in 2004. In his autobiography, Reeve recounts how, following the riding accident that left him a quadriplegic, it was Williams visiting him in the hospital under the guise of a Russian proctologist that lifted his spirits and turned his thoughts away from suicide. Which is ultimately what makes Williams' apparent death at his own hands all the sadder. It's difficult watching this scene from the underrated What Dreams May Come and not realizing in hindsight what drew Williams to a story about a man who, in the afterlife, must save his wife's immortal soul after she has committed suicide. The film's preoccupation with the struggle between love and despair must have been a personal one for the actor, and it makes an already powerful scene like this even more devastating.

Robin Williams meant a great deal to me when I was growing up. When I was a small boy, I wanted to be involved in the movies, whether making them or starring in them, because I wanted to make people happy. I aspired to be like Steven Spielberg (in many ways my hero at four years old) as a filmmaker, but the first person I ever really wanted to channel was Robin Williams. Not just because he was so funny, and not just because he was in many films I've cherished in my life, but because he was a person who seemed genuinely alive in whatever he did. He was a vibrant soul who positively affected the lives of countless people, and he made it seem so easy. And it breaks my heart knowing that this man succumbed to his demons after what was no doubt a long struggle. Yet I refuse to remember Williams by his tragic death, but rather by the joy he brought to so many in his life. I'll remember the actor who was in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Hamlet, Jumanji, and the many other movies that I've listed here. Above all, I'll remember the man who inspired me by laying the foundation for my sense of humor and for imbuing his comedy with sensitivity and vivacity. He helped teach me that being funny and being genuine were not mutually exclusive, but on the contrary complemented each other perfectly more often than not. For that, I will always be grateful.