I Thought Nought: The Essentials

The decade's finally over. Me talking about it? ...Not so much.

Moments and Thoughts on

the Best of the Noughts

-THE ESSENTIALS-

Mulholland Dr. (2001)

Directed by David Lynch

David Lynch's deliriously fascinating and addictive fever dream aloft the City of Angels boasts an epic breakthrough from a sexy/scorned Naomi Watts. One of Lynch's finest cinematic experiences and artistic expressions. Gorgeous, ominous and wholly original; it's an impossible puzzle with all its pieces perfectly in place.

In the Mood for Love (2001)

Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

Sensuous longing of such exquisite craft and resonance. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung spark one of the most haunting and passionate romances to grace the silver screen, without even allowing their romance to ignite. Wong Kar-Wai's enveloping aura looks back on a love in full bloom stifled in its time and place. Painful and majestic in its emotional and visual restraint, it's one of the greatest love stories ever told, and yet barely spoken.

Before Sunset (2004)

Directed by Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater's sequel-de-resistance picks up the love connection of Jesse and Celine with startling ease from its predecessor Before Sunrise, then adds to and extends it with a poignancy, maturity and immaculate sense of possibility. One flirtatious, funny and sobering stroll through Paris reveals characters that feel entirely real, with a spark that lingers even stronger nine years later. Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke bring immeasurable authenticity and charm to their romantic reunion, no cutaways to the Eiffel Tower necessary. Finally a romantic comedy that makes love and connection seem like more than a requisite ending.

Y tu Mamá También (2002)

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Bawdy sex comedy and coming-of-age drama gain a dose of maturity, melancholy and cultural perspective -- not to mention a deeper understanding of characters initially driven by getting their dicks wet. Alfonso Cuarón's film feels like a journey of the unexpected, taking one by surprise with a light, naturalistic, and pulsating energy underlined by heavy, unspoken emotions. By the time the film and its characters reach their climax, there's a whole new way of looking at things.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Directed by Ang Lee

Like Ang Lee's best films it's both sparing and superbly grand - if not in the majestic mountain vistas than in its thematic and emotional reach. Steeped in repression and yearning, it toys with its American West origins to reveal a love story that's both roped in tradition and completely free rein. Like the inner turmoil of its doomed lovers, the film has an ache at its center that remains long past its misty-eyed final frames, much due to the deeply felt performances of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. It's classic romance with a literal bent, with an elegant restraint matched only by its raw passion. "If you can't fix it, you've gotta stand it." Lucky for us, this one's pretty flawless.

Dogville (2004)

Directed by Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier bares his teeth, chains you to your seat and smashes your Hummel figurines. This audacious and inventive approach to stripped-down cinema is about as big-scale in its ideas as anything this decade -- another vicious think-piece to follow von Trier's equal parts stunning and savage Dancer in the Dark (another decade favorite). Dogville looks into a seemingly sweet small town and the sourest sides of human nature. It's not the anti-American tirade many have criticized, rather a worthwhile indictment of society as a whole. Its satire is scathing, funny and sensationally dark, told with remarkable innovation and yet another daring and devastating turn by Nicole Kidman. A bit like a cinematic Our Town, populated by Depression-era scum of the earth.

More I Thought Nought (Best of the Decade) entries here.

I Thought Nought: Hit Me, Baby, One More Time

The decade's almost over. Me talking about it? That's only just begun!

Moments and Thoughts on the Best of the Noughts...


Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky

Marion: Anybody wanna waste some time?

Addiction has never been this addictive. Darren Aronofsky's exquisite descent into human misery and despair is like shooting up and snorting some truly potent sort of powder; you're emotionally desecrated but everything is so sensory and sensational that you're content to take just one more hit... then another... and another.

Requiem for a Dream is an unparalleled and unrelenting look at the perils of addiction: from heroin, to caffeine, to television, even love. It's the harsh but healing story of four lives unraveled in the wake of achieving one's deepest passions. Ellen Burstyn's monumental performance as Sara Goldfarb is the stuff of cinematic legend: a mother and widow succumbing to her loneliness, seeking emotional and social connections while burrowing deeper and deeper into a hellish disconnect. "Purple in the morning, blue in the afternoon..." and complete mental breakdown in the evening. Harrowing, painful and ultimately unforgettable.

Sara: I'm somebody now, Harry. Everybody likes me. Soon, millions of people will see me and they'll all like me. I'll tell them about you and your father, how good he was to us. Remember? It's a reason to get up in the morning. It's a reason to lose weight, to fit in the red dress. It's a reason to smile. It makes tomorrow all right.

What have I got Harry? Why should I even make the bed or wash the dishes? I do them... but why should I? I'm alone. Your father's gone, you're gone. I got no one to care for. What have I got, Harry? I'm lonely. I'm old--

Harry: You got friends, Ma.

Sara: Ah, it's not the same. They don't need me. I like the way I feel. I like thinking about the red dress, and the television, and you and your father. Now when I get the sun, I smile!

Jennifer Connelly, also in one of her finest moments, similarly extracts every ounce of distraught decadence - allowing a fix to become the fixture that would replace the love of her life. Each of these characters use their addictions to temporarily disguise their true feelings, and the film, which is both devastating and wholly consuming, is just as raw as the emotions they're trying to subside.



Requiem for a Dream pulses and pounds like the best buzz you've ever had, pure visual and auditory bliss.... Before that moment of brutal clarity and consciousness of course - which taps into a truly dark place, yet somehow still draws us back - just one more time, I swear.

Sara: In the end it's all nice.

-- More I Thought Nought (Best of the Decade) entries here.

I Thought Nought: Te Adoro Pedro

The decade's almost over. Me talking about it? That's only just begun!

Moments and Thoughts on the Best of the Noughts...

Bad Education (2004)
Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar

"Forgive me Father for you have sinned,
and I've sold it as a screenplay."

Dark material such as child sexual abuse, murder, drug addiction, suicide, the rape of the unconscious... it's all somehow loftier and luxurious in the hands of Pedro Almodóvar. He deepens his characters and situations to the point of moral suspect but finds in each a poignancy and fresh, provocative angle. His themes are often circular, his fascinations a constant, and somehow his work still evolves effortlessly and unexpectedly. Sexy, soulful, eye-searing cinema with a hefty dose of Spanish seasoning.


Three of the decade's finest films from one of our finest auteurs. With Talk to Her (2002) Almodóvar breathed life and cinematic language into the story of two comatose women and the men who cling to them. With Bad Education he found all the buried guilt and bubbling homoeroticism in both the cinema and the Catholic church. In Volver (2006) he unraveled the ties that bind women as they seek to reconnect even after death, and clear out their deep freeze to make room for the corpses of dastardly men. Each of these show new levels of maturity and technical marvel, remarkable nuance and filmmaking at its most passionate. For vivid emotions and visual splendor, Viva Pedro!


--more I Thought Nought (Best of the Decade) entries here

I Thought Nought: Social Progress and Secret Pudding

The decade's almost over. Me talking about it? That's only just begun!

Moments and Thoughts on the Best of the Noughts...

Far From Heaven (2002)

Directed by: Todd Haynes

All That Heaven Allows are stifled suburban housewives. Written on the Wind are racial epithets and gay slurs. For Cathy Whitaker it's all but an Imitation of Life.

Raymond: I've learned my lesson about mixing in other worlds. I've seen the sparks fly. All kinds.

Amidst Todd Haynes sumptuous Technicolor tragedy lies a melancholy truth about the limits and lies of progress. Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore), a homemaker and the Mrs. to Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech, strives to greet her surroundings with a quiet wisdom and sympathy for her fellow man. Praised for her "kindness to negroes" and homosexuals, Cathy's caught amidst a slow changing tide -- one that has her longing for her gardener and mourning her husband's late night walks. Her lovely and manicured life lays waste to untapped passions and an unsettling silence to underpin all of those stirring orchestral melodies.


Melodrama, a mostly dead genre in its classic form, is given soulful new life through Haynes, who manages to invite truth and heartache into the accepted artifice in which the genre so often soars. As much as it works as a lost Sirkian melodrama, it's also an ornately constructed ode to said films in all their cinematic purity. Key to this is Julianne Moore's exquisitely balanced performance -- one of hers and the decade's absolute finest. Masterfully and vividly she breathes life into a a character that could so easily be another stylistic element. Hayne's collaborations with Moore have yielded some of her most haunting and beautiful performances. Her careful construction of the fragile but forward thinking Cathy shows each ache and crumble behind her brilliant facade.


Matched with Edward Lachman's eye-poppingly lush visual palette and Elmer Bernstein's pitch-perfect score, Far From Heaven is about as close to cinematic heights as it gets.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson

Barry: I didn't ask for a shrink -- that must've been somebody else. Also, that pudding isn't mine. Also, I'm wearing this suit today because I had a very important meeting this morning and I don't have a crying problem.

Punch-Drunk Love is PT Anderson's "secret pudding," if you will. Bizarre ingredients underplayed and overshadowed by Anderson's more grand and far-reaching masterworks like Boogie Nights, Magnolia and There Will Be Blood (another of the decade's best concoctions). Its eccentricities and technical innovation swirl about the lonely existence of the enraged Barry, whose life is spent selling toilet plungers and stumbling through phone sex lines looking for a love connection. Once he finds that connection with the lovely Lena, their romance plays to the offbeat tune of a harmonium dropped from the heavens.


Anderson finds in Adam Sandler an oddball splendor unexpected in his days of Happy Gilmore, and a perfect muse in the tender sweetness of Emily Watson. While Jon Brion's score plunks and symphonies with each manic moment of Barry's morose existence, Anderson's visuals take on an otherworldly quality -- blinding light gives way to streams of color, echoing Barry's newfound passion and a reason for collecting all those Healthy Choice Frequent Flier Miles. Modern love stories rarely feel so unique and so genuine. Punch-Drunk Love leaves one dizzy, seeing stars -- overcome with a strange sensation to quell those years of silent rage. Anderson continues to be a director I'll follow just about anywhere.

Barry: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I left you at the hospital. I called a phone sex line -- I called a phone sex line before I met you, and four blonde brothers came after me. And they hurt you and I'm sorry. And then I had to leave again because I wanted to make sure you never got hurt again. And I have a lot of pudding. And in six to eight weeks it can be redeemed -- so if you could just give me that much time, I think I can get enough mileage to go with you wherever you have to go -- if you have to travel, for your work. Because I don't want to be anywhere without you. So could you just let me redeem the mileage? If you just give me six to eight weeks I can redeem the mileage and I can go with you wherever you have to travel.

"Here we go..."