Made 2001 / Astronaut's Daughter 1999 / The Ninth Gate 1999 / Waking Life 2001

Made is the first film directed by Jon Favreau, the longtime character actor who became an indie darling when he wrote and starred in Swingers. While it becomes obvious the directing of Swingers by Doug Liman was possibly the real reason Swingers worked, Favreau and his Swingers co-star Vince Vaughn recapture some of the old magic. Vaughn deserves most of the credit with his self-deprecating comedic improvising and Favreau gets credit for knowing how to support his star and humanize the rather plotless, pointless story. Its all saved with some smooth cinematography and a sincere working class sentimental gritty romanticism. Its a bit of a waste of some veteran & future acting stars, but its a very enjoyable directorial debut if still a disappointing sophomore script.

Astronaut's Daughter is a bad mega budget high concept ripoff of Rosemary's Baby and Hitchcock's Suspicion. Pre-fame Charlize Theron carries the evil baby of peak-fame Johnny Depp's alien-possessed astronaut. Its full of genre cliches, Depp's horrid fake Southern accent and stylized but braindead commercial directing. I still think its a high kitsch affair that is enjoyable. The DP and Production Designer are the true stars and the whole affair is a great mirror of moody Y2K shallowness and pop culture nostalgia. Also, given recent allegations of Depp's domestic abuse and his all-but-confirmed Luciferian status, this has a few moments of convincing menace. I actually think Depp should switch to playing villains now that his youth and sex appeal is long gone.

Released the same fucking year as Astronaut's Daughter, Ninth Gate is Roman Polanski's return to Hollywood filmmaking and another Johnny Depp vehicle based on Satanism. Thankfully its a much better film. Polanski paints a dark camp hybrid of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, his two biggest 70s successes. Its a brilliant way to tie the films together and reveal the shared subtexts. Its wonderfully directed, shot, plotted and Polanski pulls one of the best performances from the wooden Depp (who is doing a rather lazy impression of Jack Nicholson throughout). Whereas Astronaut's is a lukewarm Hollywood meditation on Freemason subversion, Gate is a fearless celebration of mythic Satan worship in cinema as well as a aggressively respectful examination of real world Luciferianism as a philosophy. It can't be as shocking or clever as Polanski's early horror films, but its anti-Christian themes are even more pronounced and playful.

Waking Life is a wonderful, overwhelming and life-affirming celebration of pop existentialism from Richard Linklater, Generation X's cinematic hippie philosopher extraordinaire. Feeling like a Brechtian documentary or simply a psychedelic dream, Linklater keeps it accessible, warm, fun and constantly enlightening. The film features a totally new form of storytelling with diverse influences with heavy subject matter but retains a quality of unpretentiousness. The best film on this short list.

Broken Dolls 1999

Broken Dolls is maybe my favorite Franco film. It's his most personal, following the family of an incestual father who has damaged his aging family members sexually (a lesbian sadist mother, a whore wannabe-Aryan daughter, a transgender simpleton daughter and the passive voyeur of abuse and sex in... Franco's viewer) creating in the film's form a dark meditative erotic film that is only erotic in that it's not real, thanks to Jess' Id-developed "dream" aestheticism. But the subtext is so personal that it never turns pornographic but flows as a harsh analysis of the psychosexual and Hegelian dialectic, thus being a true work of Marxist rebellion to the white patriarchal binaries of Romanticism, religion, modernism, structuralism and all of the ruling empire moralities of hate, inequality and evil. In desecrating his father, Franco finds late in life catharsis to his original issues with women and intimacy.

This film, while professing a Jungian study of family archetypes, is one of the most Freudian works of cinema with Jess casting his own girlfriend as his mother. In this way, he draws scary parallels to his own father to address his conflicted relationship to him. The final scene is one of the most moving I've ever seen.

Eyes Wide Shut 1999

Stanley Kubrick's Christmas movie. What makes it a Christmas movie? (besides the story's time frame) Its a deconstruction of the cliche "true meaning of Christmas". Kubrick delves into the clash of religious moralities that plays out unseen in the lives of the American family. The story opens with a young couple, new to money, invited to a holiday party thrown by bourgeois occultists. As a male Satanist tempts the wife, angelic and demonic females tempt the husband. Neither gives in, but the wife wants to. As the story progresses, this marriage faces consequences for these separate moral attitudes to marriage. And in the end, having experienced each other's dreams, they move on from their black and white views on fidelity to start a new life beyond outdated dogmas and bonded by traumatic memories.

This would be Kubrick's farewell to our phenomenal world and his final say on the philosophical conflicts of modern man. I think this is his masterpiece. I rarely cover the plots of films because A. I don't want to spoil much B. its usually unnecessary in a review and C. most film's don't have plots worth discussing. But EWS has one of the most complex plots ever devised for a motion picture.
Kubrick's genius is in leaving us with so many questions. Profound ones. How much of Tom Cruise's absurdly coincidental story is truth? Did the group of Satanists kill the hooker? If so, does it really matter? Who put the mask on the couple's bed? Did the husband make up everything to get even with his wife or did he turn down 3 women in one night? Kubrick leaves all avenues open and leaves both husband and wife guilty of repressed desires and muted satisfaction. Neither religion can survive alone. Kubrick explains Christianity and Satanism are a binary, symbiotic and extreme wings of the same faith. And it is faith that is needed in any marriage and believing any story. Eyes Wide Shut is inspired by a novella called Dream Story and we never know whose dream we are watching. I assume it is a shared collective dream of reality. We all experience this fantasy of morals, truths and desires. We are trapped in this ideological version of history and it effects the spiritual journey of everyone through structuralism, even if you may be an atheist (as I assume Kubrick was).

Kubrick, I think, sides with Sydney Pollack's character, the Luciferian friend of the husband who is a decent man who rejects Christianity for the orgies, drugs and small crimes. The two readings of the film hinge on whether this character is lying to Tom Cruise or not. You must decide whether Kubrick condemns or upholds the codes of this elite group of masked celebrities and aristocrats. Some theorists claim the Illuminati killed Kubrick for revealing too much. On the other hand, I could see Kubrick going to Eyes Wide Shut parties in his youth. But maybe the film is a depiction of Kubrick's own fear of or rejection from the bourgeoisie. His own mistrust of their practices or a friendly envy of them. These questions remain.

The film is still a fascinating mystery and fans dream that it would've been made clear if he had handled the final cut. Some say that is part of the conspiracy. I know that the film as is is a beautiful experience. Sure, Kubrick would've selected better takes or improved the edit or sound design had he lived, but the final cut of any film could be better. Its a monumental work of art regardless.

Finally, it is a perfect Christmas allegory because its about which version we choose to believe. Kubrick doesn't lead us either way because it is the viewer's own subjectivity and moral prejudices that will choose the narrative. Can you believe? Do you still have faith?

Being John Malkovich 1999

BJM is considered one of the best films of 1999 and a game-changer in indie/comedy circles. It put director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman on the map and made John Malkovich a symbol of indie cinema humor.  Its a very important and fun movie that has inspired so much. Its the first absurdist romantic farce with existential themes and gorgeously moody cinematography, but not the last. I don't think we would have The Lobster or the over-the-top quirkiness of Anchorman 2 or Walk Hard without BJM. It showed that something supremely weird and stupid could still be smart and emotionally involving. That said, I don't think its a masterpiece.

The film starts very strong but loses track near the climax. The story's original ending was much more elaborate, surreal and followed the setup's themes more closely with a grander meditation on artistic ego and the metaphysical horror. The final ending focuses on those things but at the expense of something else.

BJM is about a puppeteer (played astutely by John Cusack) who eventually controls the body of actor John Malkovich. Why? To impress (Catherine Keener) the woman he leaves his wife for, even though she is a sociopathic manipulator who is in love with his wife (wonderfully realized by the underrated Cameron Diaz). There are lots of crazy plot twists and brilliant characters and dialogues along the way and thats the stuff that makes this film a cult-classic. But the disturbing ending left me numb, not from its defeatist poetry but from its cobbled-together kookiness. SPOILER: The puppeteer is trapped in the child his 2 wives have had and basically all of the villains win because our hero made the tragic decision to forfeit his artistic dreams for a cheap exploitation of another man's soul. Very poignant and yet it doesn't seem earned.

Does the punishment fit the crime? Probably. But what bothers me is that the agent for Cusack's corruption is always Keener. His love for her damns him and her only punishment is some sadness after rejecting Diaz for money and power. Cusack's character is unlikable and corrupted, but he's never worse than Keener's. Kaufman must have wanted this unsatisfying effect in his ending but its unsatisfying dramatically and logically, not just emotionally. The villains win and our tragic hero loses but it doesn't work as a great tragedy because the least villainous characters are the only ones who suffer. It can be argued that Diaz is the most virtuous because she does the least harm, but she is the one who keeps Lector's Malkovich room a secret from Cusack, she tries to kill Keener when rejected and she shows no other virtuous beliefs besides loyalty.

Kaufman is a great writer but I think many decisions were made just to tie together a great plot at the expense of fully-blossumed character motivations and a grander thematic statement. Since BJM, his films have grown more absurdist and existential but less comic and neat narratively. Maybe he is trying to perfect what he almost had in BJM, though he's had a hard time topping the popularity of BJM (Eternal Sunshine could be his most popular script is it as universally lauded or as good a movie???). Kaufman seemed to have more personal voice in his next collaboration with director Spike Jonze, the superior Adaptation.

Why the BJM is as likeable as it is and as imperfect as it is, in my opinion, is Spike Jonze's interpretation of the work. What was supposed to be a story about artistic madness and the exploitation of human beings becomes a metaphor for Jonze's own troubled marriage then to Sophia Coppola. The heavy focus on adultery, lust, betrayal and guilt run through his and Coppola's work from then to now and it probably starts with BJM. This film works best in context with her Lost in Translation and then his Her. They confess their sides of their divorce through their art and form a joint body of film work in the process. Talk about Freudian. This is what happens when two very brilliant but damaged directors fall in love. At least the films are good. The melodramatic ending and sulking obsession with bad relationships is why BJM was such a populist film and its original script might have made for a better film, but not much of a commercial launching pad.

So "Being John Malkovich" is not as good as it should be but it works for what it is. That can be said for most popular movies.

Mulholland Drive 1999

My first experience with Mulholland Drive was seminal. It so totally confused and moved me that I was haunted for years and it remained in my head like a dream and a movie I shouldn't weaken with too many views. Over a decade later and I'm so well-read on David Lynch's career that revisiting Mullholland was just a smooth and easy joy.

The film has attained a kind of mythic stature even in the realm of other Lynch projects, as the first great film of the modern era and having an almost universal love from critics, casual moviegoers and Lynch fans. Its pretty straightforward Lynch, with surrealism and code dialed way back, but it still resonates so much. I think its because MD is the film where Lynch's aesthetic clicked for most fans. "Oh, he's talking about loss, madness, delusion, coming-of-age, heartache, idealism and metaphysics in ALL of his work". Its funny to think there was a time where this film was considered impossible to decipher and wildly obtuse. More than Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Eraserhead, Mulholland has influenced its generation and kind of capped off the era that came before it.

Needless to say, the film has aged nicely. The flat and bright look of the film came from a small budget, but now it gives it this wonderful fairytale, TV world vibe contrasted with our uber-gritty, super stylized HD modernism. The film is loaded with totally unrealistic sound effects which have to be intentional on Lynch's part, giving it a surreal cartoon quality. These little details escaped me when the film was new. Its so thoroughly modern in its tricks and moods, but this is doesn't seem as personal to Lynch as any other film. This and works like Blue Velvet are more love letters to the fans and America than any dark confession from Lynch, while still being quite brutally honest and even frightening.

Maybe the thing that elevates this one to immortality is the performance by Naomi Watts. She is the quintessential Lynch actress. The duality. The irony. The tragedy. The incredible beauty. The unmistakable reality of herself within the character. And she is supported by a role that really says it all about every Lynch protagonist and Lynch himself. The tragic fall that she takes from happy go lucky, smalltown bewilderment to crushing, horrified, demoralized self-reflective defeat is the major arc in Lynch's life, as he has hinted and played out in his professional life. Watts and Lynch are perfect collaborators with her knowing every tearful detail of his life and him nurturing all of the power and potential within her. This film made an A-lister out of her and cemented Lynch as the greatest director not officially on the A-list. He deserves an Oscar for this film, as does she.

Now its a great intro to Lynch's world as it has all the major themes and stylistic touches, coated in a very basic and easy veneer. In that way, it best captures his overarching obsession with surfaces and what they contain. Its his always amazing view on life wrapped in its prettiest bow.