A Millennium Compendium

We are far from Siskel & Ebert, but for almost 40 years my friend David Jones and I have discussed movies.  He has been involved in film as a real film critic and filmmaker, while I'm just a movie fan who knows what he likes, and is rarely in the majority.
Recently, he sent me his top ten history, so I thought I would throw his and mine side by side and give you some movies to watch out for.
Now mine differs a little from my previously published year-end lists because
a.) my opinion has evolved on some movies,
b.) I moved movies into their actual year of release (I think), and
c.) I added some documentaries and TV movies.
I hope you'll keep these movies in mind when you stroll up to the redbox, or order from Netflix.
We love the movies.

	Rick Osswald			David Jones
2013			2013
1	The East		1	Gravity
2	The Wolf of Wall Street		2	Her
3	Stories We Tell		3	The Act of Killing
4	World War Z		4	Captain Phillips
5	Oblivion		5	12 Years a Slave
6	Gravity		6	American Hustle
7	Captain Phillips		7	The Wolf of Wall Street
8	12 Years a Slave		8	What Maisie Knew
9	The Call		9	All is Lost
10	American Hustle		10	Blackfish
HM	Mea Culpa Maximus,		HM	Mud, The East, World War Z, 42,
	Star Trek:  Into Darkness			Inside Llewyn Davis
2012			2012
1	The Dark Knight Rises		1	Life of Pi
2	Lincoln		2	A Separation
3	Looper		3	Argo
4	Zero Dark Thirty		4	Lincoln
5	Searching for Sugar Man		5	Beasts of the Southern Wild
6	Argo		6	Zero Dark Thirty
7	Parental Guidance		7	Silver Linings Playbook
8	Jack Reacher		8	Flight
9	The Grey		9	Django Unchained
10	Cloud Atlas		10	The Master
HM	Cabin in the Woods,		HM	Cloud Atlas, the Odd Life of Timothy Green,
	Beasts of the Southern Wild			Bernie, Looper, Amour, Butter, Rust & Bone
	Premium Rush
2011			2011
1	The Girl with The Dragon Tatoo		1	The Artist
2	My Week with Marilyn		2	The Descendents
3	Moneyball		3	Incendies
4	Hot Coffee		4	Buck
5	Too Big to Fail		5	The Trip
6	Source Code		6	Moneyball
7	Crazy, Stupid Love		7	Beginners
8	Midnight in Paris		8	Drive
9	Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol		9	Meek's Cutoff
10	Margin Call		10	Hugo
HM	Martha Marcy May Marlene		HM	Midnight in Paris, Kill List, Senna, 50/50
				Martha Marcy May Marlene, Ides of March
2010			2010
1	Inception		1	The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Europe)
2	The Social Network		2	The Secret in Their Eyes
3	Secretariat		3	Black Swan
4	Inside Job		4	Social Network
5	True Grit		5	Winter's Bone
6	Fair Game		6	The Most Dangerous Man in America:  Daniel Ellsberg
7	The Kids Are All Right		7	127 Hours
8	Black Swan		8	The Kids are Alright
9	The Fighter		9	The Ghost Writer
10	The Secret in Their Eyes		10	The King's Speech
HM	Salt, Shutter Island, Easy A		HM	Toy Story 3, Restrepo, True Grit
	Burlesque, Date Night
2009			2009
1	The Hurt Locker		1	Avatar
2	Avatar		2	The Hurt Locker
3	Food Inc		3	Let the Right One In
4	Capitalism:  A Love Story		4	Inglourious Bastards
5	Star Trek		5	District 9
6	Inglourious Basterds		6	The Cove
7	The Hangover		7	Paranormal Activity
8	Up in The Air		8	Sin Nombre
9	The Proposal		9	Up
10	State of Play		10	Crazy Heart
HM	The International
2008			2008
1	Slumdog Millionaire		1	Slumdog Millionaire
2	Forgetting Sarah Marshall		2	4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
3	Role Models		3	The Band's Visit
4	Get Smart		4	The Visitor
5	Cadillac Records		5	Wall-E
6	The Bank Job		6	Milk
7	Wanted		7	Son of Rambow
8	Religulous		8	Frost/Nixon
9	Curious Case of Benjamin Button		9	Doubt
10	Tropic Thunder		10	The Wrestler, Rachel Getting Married,
HM	Gran Torino, Frost/Nixon			River (tie)
2007			2007
1	Gone Baby Gone		1	There Will Be Blood
2	There Will Be Blood		2	No Country for Old Men
3	The Lives of Others		3	Juno
4	The Orphanage		4	Gone Baby Gone
5	No Country For Old Men		5	The Driving Bell and the Butterfly
6	Hairspray		6	Atonement
7	Grindhouse		7	Sweeney Todd
8	Once		8	The Host
9	Sicko		9	Michael Clayton
10	Across the Universe		10	Ratatouille
2006			2006
1	Little Miss Sunshine		1	Babel
2	United 93		2	Children of Men
3	Pan's Labyrinth		3	Pan's Labryinth
4	The Departed		4	United 93
5	V for Vendetta		5	Apocalypto
6	The Queen		6	Blood Diamond
7	The Dixie Chicks:  Shut Up & Sing		7	Notes on A Scandal
8	Casino Royale		8	Little Miss Sunshine
9	An Inconvenient Truth		9	Borat
10	The Devil Wears Prada		10	Cars
Rick Osswald			David Jones
20 Best Films of the Decade 2000 - 2009			10 Best Films of the Decade 2000 - 2009
1	Serenity		1	City of God
2	Gone Baby Gone		2	4 Monts, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
3	Pan's Labyrinth		3	There Will Be Blood
4	Minority Report		4	Pan's Labryinth
5	The Lives of Others		5	Children of Men
6	Memento		6	Amelie
7	Little Miss Sunshine		7	No Country for Old Men
8	Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2		8	Mulholland Drive
9	There Will Be Blood		9	Whale Rider
10	United 93		10	Man on Wire
11	Slumdog Millionaire
12	The Departed
13	The Hurt Locker
14	Avatar
15	Star Trek
16	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
17	No Country For Old men
18	Cinderella Man
19	A History of Violence
20	A Beautiful Mind
	Here's the critic's list:
	http://www.metacritic.com/feature/film-critics-pick-the-best-movies-of-the-decade
And Finally, Rick's favorite Films of the Millineum so far
after a lot of consideration, reconsideration and reseeding
1	Serenity
2	Gone Baby Gone
3	Inception
4	The Dark Knight Rises
5	Pan's Labyrinth
6	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
7	The East
8	Zero Dark Thirty
9	The Wolf of Wall Street
10	Minority Report

Why these films?
Well, Serenity because it's more than a great movie.  It's an incredible culmination of a TV show (watch it first) in a way that has never been done before.  It is a Josh Whedon masterpiece, but only because it magically resolves Firefly, a 14 episode cult TV show.
Gone Baby Gone has grown on me year after year and risen on the list.
Inception, Dark Knight Rises, and Pan's Labyrinth create stunning worlds, and The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo simply stuns.
The East was a movie that no one else might consider great - I just fell for it all the way.
Zero Dark Thirty is riveting from start to finish.
The Wolf of Wall Street is an epic that stretches main stream cinema to new highs, or lows - depending on your point of view.
Minority Report is Speilberg's take on law and order of the future.

Last Saints Report - January 11, 2014

The New Orleans Saints, for the third time in the Payton/Brees era, ended their season in the Pacific time zone.  For the second time, it was a Seattle nightmare, this one ending 23 – 15.  When the Saints lost to a bad Seattle time a few years it was embarrassing.  This time it was just normal misery.

Most games are won in the trenches.  This game was won in the defensive backfield of the Seahawks.  Early, both quarterbacks struggled with the horrible weather conditions, as wind and rain pelted the field.  The Saints were down 16 – 0 after the first half, having lost the field position battle, largely due to a critical Mark Ingram fumble that led to a Seahawk touchdown.

Ah, Ingram, or as he is called by the LSU-heavy Saints fan base, “that Alabama running back.”  Ingram ran hard and well for much of the game, continuing his late-season improvement, but his mistakes were costly.  He dropped one of Brees’ few good first half passes on the first series, then with the Saints still in the game trailing just 6-0, he fumbled as he tumbled.  Perhaps next year will be a year of redemption for Ingram, perhaps because he’s with another team.  That’s a scenario that appears more likely with the emergence of Khiry Robinson, who ran hard and well in this game, and was also fortunate enough to have the Saints recover his fumble.

Unlike the last two trips to Seattle, the Saints defense played very well this time.  The defensive front came out of nowhere this year to emerge as the strong part of the unit.  Broderick Bunkley, Akeem Nicks, & John Jenkins were solid, while Cameron Jordan became a star, and Junior Galette was nearly as good.  Although statistics will show that they gave up some yardage in this game, they really controlled things pretty well, as the Seahawks punted over and over and Russell Wilson was held to 103 yards passing.

It was the Saints offense that got manhandled in this game.  New kicker Shayne Graham showed that his history of struggling in the playoffs was well deserved as he missed 2 field goals, one of which he was forced to kick square on the laces.  Look for the Saints to search high and low for a kicker in the off-season.  The misses were costly.

The Seahawks superiority in their defensive backfield was the key to this game.  We’re used to seeing Graham and Moore and Colston sit down in open spots with a DB 5 yards away.  In this game they were closely covered, and didn’t seem to make the adjustment, so ball after ball got knocked down by a DB.  The receivers aren’t used to having to come back to the ball, but they needed to in this game.  Marques Colston was the only receiver who had a decent game with 144 yards on 11 catches.  Unfortunately, he has been made the goat for his decision on the last play of the game.  After the Saints recovered an on-side kick and seemed to have a remote chance of tying the score with 13 seconds left, Colston caught a side-line pass but instead of stepping out of bounds, which would have left about 5 seconds on the clock, time enough for a hail-mary, he choose an across the field lateral to Taveris Cadet.  It appeared to me this was a designed play, and Colston was doing his job.  Several things went wrong.  First, pressure on Brees messed up the timing of the play, and Cadet got too far down-field, ahead of Colston.  This turned the attempted lateral into a forward pass, ending the game.  The other thing that was wrong with the play, was it was going nowhere, because the Seahawk defense stayed home, and had Cadet covered anyway.  Unfortunately this wasn’t Cadet’s only mistake of the game, as he too dropped a screen pass. 

Which brings me to the player who wasn’t there, Pierre Thomas.  First, he doesn’t drop screen passes.  Second, he deserves to go into the Saints Hall of Fame for just the way he picks up the blitz.  I always believe the Saints would have won the playoff game against the 49’ers in 2012 had Thomas not been knocked cold on the first drive.  I’m going to go ahead and believe he would have made a difference here as well, had he not been inactive due to a rib injury.  The Saints have some running back decisions to make in the off-season and I’m hopeful their priority is Thomas and Robinson.  While Sproles is a terrific weapon, he was not as productive this season, largely because he is just too small to break arm tackles, and the holes aren't getting any bigger.   Ingram and Cadet are going to be the decisions, I hope. 

So, there is some blame to go around in this game.   We are so spoiled by Drew Brees that when he misfires on a pass we yell at our big-screens.  For much of the game, the passing game sputtered.  But, lead by Brees, the Saints bounced back and made a game of it, faring much better than the Monday night shellacking they took in December.  The truth of the matter is this:  In the previous two season ending trips to the Pacific, once they lost to an inferior team and once to a team they were equal to.  This time they lost to a team that was slightly better than them.  I don’t mean the Seahawks would have beaten the Saints in the Superdome.  What I mean is that the Seahawks won because they earned the home field advantage, something that was in the Saints grasp but they coughed up, particularly with losses to the Jets and Rams on the road.   Most teams are built to take advantage of their home field, and the Saints are more just more pronounced in that regard.  They will be trying to remedy that in the off-season at some positions, but guess what – so will every other team in the NFL. 

I guess we can now spend 5 minutes dreaming of how good the Saints would be if they had a defensive backfield like the Seahawks.  The season-ending injuries to Safety Kenny Vaccaro (he’s going to be great), and corners Jabari Greer (he used to be great), and Patrick Robinson (I just don’t know) really proved the undoing of the Saints.  You know you’re in trouble when you’re signing DB’s off the street for the playoffs.  Oh, well, it’s a war of attrition in the NFL, and the Saints aren’t deep enough or fast enough to get back to the Super Bowl just yet.  Maybe they can remedy those deficiencies in the off season.  Let’s hope so.  Linebackers, Defensive Backs, a Left tackle, and another speedy wide receiver would be helpful, and I swear I’ll start saving for a trip to Glendale, AZ.  A Darren Sharper-type acquisition would sure help.

In conclusion, I live in Mississippi for a reason.  I remember when I was a kid, my Dad declined a transfer to move to Seattle because he didn’t like the weather there. 
I still don’t like it.

2013 - The Year in Cinema

Here’s my year in review.

My favorite film of the year was The East, which I thought was terribly overlooked.  The Wolf of Wall Street was a close second.  I saw so many great documentaries this year I decided to make a separate category, and to be honest, in total, they were way better than the fiction.   I found Stories We Tell to be astounding, and ranked it as the top doc.  I’ve now watched it and The East again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, and I stand by my original impression.  I even upped my score on “Stories” from 9 to 10.  Enjoy.

The East – 10

The Wolf of Wall Street -10

World War Z - 9

Oblivion – 9

Gravity – 9

Captain Phillips – 9

12 Years a Slave – 9

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) – 9

The Call – 9

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) – 9

American Hustle - 8

Star Trek:  Into Darkness – 8

Elysium – 8

Saving Mr. Banks - 8

Mud – 8

White House Down – 8

Hunger Games:  Catching Fire - 8

Olympus Has Fallen – 8

Chasing Mavericks – 8

Dallas Buyer’s Club - 8

Side Effects – 8

Broken City – 8

Hitchcock (2012) - 8

In a World – 7

Fruitvale Station - 7

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) – 7

42 – 7

Lee Daniels’ The Butler - 7

Two Guns - 7

The Impossible – 7

Phil Spector (HBO) - 7

Dead Man Down - 7

Parker – 7

The Place Beyond the Pines – 7

The Girl (2012) - 7

Inside Llewyn Davis - 6

Out of the Furnace - 6

Blue Jasmine – 6

Killing Them Softly (2012) - 6

The Great Gatsby - 6

Man of Steel - 5

Now You See Me – 5

The Family - 4

This is the End - 2

A Good Day to Die Hard – 1

Documentaries

Stories We Tell - 10

Mea Maxima Culpa – Silence in the House of God - 10

Searching for Sugar Man - 10

A Football Life – Steve Gleason (NFL Network) - 9

Manhunt:  The Search for Bin Laden (HBO)- 9

Legendary Nights:  the tale of Gatti-Ward (HBO) - 9

Casting By (HBO) – 9

The World According to Dick Cheney (Showtime Doc) – 8

Muscle Shoals – 8

Sound City – 8

Sport in America – Our Defining Stories (HBO) 8

20 Feet From Stardom - 7

Seduced and Abandoned (HBO) - 7

The Ozzies

Best Picture – The East

Best Actor – Leonardo DeCaprio, the Wolf of Wall Street

Best Actress – Amy Adams, American Hustle

Best Supporting Actor – Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer’s Club

Best Supporting Actress – Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle

Best Director – Martin Scorcese, The Wolf of Wall Streep

Best Screenplay – Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij

At the Cinema - December 2013

The Wolf of Wall Street – 10

You’ll like this movie you like roller coasters.  This is a frenetic, wildly entertaining, deeply offensive look at conspicuous consumption and white collar crime.  It is the true story of a Wall Street broker named Jordan Belfort who founded a firm that specialized in touting hopeless penny stocks, committing numerous crimes in the process.  How they get their money will make you cringe.  How they spend it will probably shock you. 

Let’s talk about Marty.

Martin Scorcese looked at those last 30 frenetic minutes in Goodfellas and asked himself if he could do 3 hours at that pace.  The answer?  Yes.  Holding my attention for 3 hours is usually only accomplished in a stadium, but here every scene blisters you with crazy dialogue and riveting excess.  This is Scorcese at the height of his powers.  I almost didn't want to see this because of the length. I really thought it would be impossible for him to hold my attention this long.  I was wrong.

Let’s talk about Thelma

Thelma Schoonmaker is Scorcese’s long time film editor.  Her crowning achievement has always been Raging Bull.  Clear the mantel Thelma.  One senses that in lesser hands this footage could have been a mess. But when you talk about construction of a film, this is a master class.  From dialogue, to music, to locales, it’s all weaved together beautifully.

Let’s talk about Leo. 

Leonardo DiCaprio has always been one of those functional actors who seems to get all the great parts.  He must be a nice guy, easy to work with, and dependable.  He won’t elevate your movie, but he won’t mess it up either.  He’s safe.  Forget all that.  This is the best performance of his career, as he cuts loose with everything he’s got.  I’m sure it will be overlooked at awards time, with names like Redford, McConaghey (who is terrific as Belfort’s first mentor in this movie), and Chiwetel Ejiofor, but it shouldn’t be.  His portrayal of penny stock swindler Jordan Belfort captures all the charisma that a guy had to have to pull off this wretched excess.  He’s all in, and nothing he’s ever done before would have predicted the magnitude of this performance.

Let’s talk about the future. 
I suspect this film will get overlooked during awards season.  It’s not the type of movie that older Academy Award voters will cotton to. People will rail about the glorification of drugs, sex, obscenity, and the criminal behavior, and they will be right.  Let’s face it, your reaction to this movie will probably be in direction proportion to your age.  The box office will be modest, as the faint of heart will stay away.  But as the years go by, and it runs over and over on cable, and we get desensitized to the images, the snap, crackle, and pop of the dialogue and the turbulent characters will make this a movie, like Goodfellas, that will be watched over and over.  You won’t be able to resist.

American Hustle – 8

You’ll like this movie if you like crazy Feds.  Here’s the white collar crime book end to Wall Street.  This is the alleged maybe fictionalization of the ABSCAM scandal of the 80’s.  If you don’t remember ABSCAM you won’t remember the bad clothes either, and this movie is here to remind you.  The feds got the bright idea, exemplified by Bradley Cooper and his bad hair in this movie, that they should just try to bribe a bunch of congressman and see who would take a briefcase of cash.  Surprise, influence peddling was alive and well, and a bunch went to jail. 

There are some great attributes to this movie, starting with Amy Adams’ attributes who are prominently displayed throughout.  If you are able to lift your eyes you’ll notice she’s also a terrific actress.  It’s Amy and Jennifer Lawrence who provide the spark in this movie.  Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper are also excellent, if a little preoccupied with their hair.  Were we this bad? 

Sometimes the movie rambles, getting lost in its own craziness, but it’s generally entertaining and reemphasizes the corrupting influence of money.  I’m thinking these two movies will always be linked together, bookends forever, telling us nothing changes but how we spend the money.

Saving Mr. Banks – 8

You’ll like this movie if you liked Mary Poppins.  Some of the songs from that 1964 movie are stuck in my ear canal forever, and I can still sing the choruses.  However I don’t remember but a few images.  Guess I’ll have to watch it again.

This is the story of how the movie got made.  Emma Thompson plays the author of the beloved set of children’s books, that Walt Disney was determined to make into a movie.  Walt is played by Tom hanks here, and he was so determined that he negotiated with author Mrs. P L Travers for over 20 years, and this is the story of the conclusion of their wrestling over how to make it all come to life.

Emma is brilliant and conveys that bite and determination that only the British seem to have.  It’s just a pleasure to watch her in action.  This is nicely done Disney entertainment.

Inside Llewyn Davis – 6

You’ll like this movie if you’re a Dylanesque troubadour at heart.  This is the story of a guitar-playing folk singer in the early 60’s navigating his way around the Greenwich Village club scene.  When I say navigating, I mean searching for a couch to sleep on for just a few nights, till he wears out his welcome and gets booted on to the next couch.   He used to be part of a folk duo, but his partner jumped off a bridge, and it’s easy to imagine that Llewyn drove him to it.  He’s that irritating. But he’s also pretty talented in that he appears to have a few songs that work ok for him, and so he stumbles along hopeful that his records will sell.  But, it’s apparent pretty quickly that we’re not talking Pete Seeger here.

Oscar Davis is excellent in the title role.  You have to hand it to directors Joel and Ethan Coen for capturing a very specific time and place and a vagabond in action.  There are a handful of pretty good songs, and Carey Mulligan (who knew she could sing?) and Justin Timberlake are perfect as fellow folk singers with very different opinions of Llewyn.  The movie has been widely acclaimed as one of the year’s best and I don’t want to dissuade anyone from seeing it.  You will probably know going in whether this interests you or not, and as a character study of an unlikeable guy, it works perfectly.  The problem?  It just never engaged me.  Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, and I found it dull, boring, melancholy, and rather meandering.  I was disappointed.  Maybe you will like it.  I appreciated the effort, but I guess I’m missing something.

Scanning the Satellite

Hitchock (2012) - 8

Finally caught this movie on HBO.  One of my top 10 movies of all time is Psycho, and this is the story of the making of the movie, which the studio didn’t want to make, but Alfred Hitchcock insisted on.  The star power of Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock and Helen Mirren as his wife Alma, as great as they are, probably doesn’t serve the movie that well, but it’s all very entertaining.  There are no great revelations, but it’s an interesting homage to one of the great directors and his classic movie.

The Girl (HBO – 2012) – 7

Not quite so flattering is this HBO docudrama that tells the story of Hitchock’s obsessions with his blond leading ladies, particularly Tippi Hedren, wonderfully portrayed by Sienna Miller here.  A little creepy, a little mean, but certainly enlightening.  The scenes featuring "the birds" will scare you all over again, but for a different reason.

Saints Report #17 - January 4,2014

The Saints travelled to Philadelphia on Saturday and beat the Eagles 26 – 24 for their first franchise road playoff win.  It wasn’t easy.  It’s how they did it that surprised the Who Dat nation.

There's a tried and true road formula in the NFL.  It’s also a pretty good playoff formula.  Pound the ball and play good defense.  Some teams take the approach that they can outscore anybody.  See the 09 Saints, and any team quarterbacked by Peyton Manning.  Sometimes it works, but you’ve got to be flawless.  The Saints offense isn’t of that caliber anymore. 

Nevertheless there is one true believer that had to wake up and realize what every other Saints fan could see, that the Saints offense, particularly the passing game is good, but not great.  A running game could help protect the quarterback, control the clock, and help the defense.  Plus, the Saints had the running backs.  What’s not to like?  The true believer was Sean Payton, and suddenly on a Saturday, he constructed a straight ahead running game perfect for the elements.   

Sure, it took one final drive to kick the winning field goal as time expired.  I said when the game began if we saw another 400 yard playoff passing game by Drew Brees, the Saints would be in serious trouble.  Instead he balanced his 250 yards passing with 200 running, which was perfect.  With Pierre Thomas sidelined, Mark Ingram had his most meaningful game as a pro, almost proving he could play in the NFL.  Rookie free agent Khiry Robinson stepped up, and Darren Sproles provided shifty change up.  It was encouraging, and it is exactly what the Saints will need as they embark on that longest of long shots – 3 straight road games to reach the Super Bowl.

Next up is Seattle which trounced them not too long ago.  If the Saints go to Seattle intending to fling it all over the field, the results will be the same.  If they pound and control, maybe there’s a chance.  The Saints secondary is depleted, but the playoffs is a war of attrition.  Shutting up that crowd with long grinding drives sure would be nice.  See you in Seattle.