rant: THANK YOU ROGER EBERT!!

Kathryn Bigelow is my favorite modern director.
Not only does she have a unique visual style all
of her own, but her movies are all but soft-core man
porn.  Ralph and Keanu and that other guy, mmm...

I was trying to dig up this link to all these new French films which I'd been meaning to see.  Instead I came upon Roger Ebert's blog post on the best films of the last decade.

He puts Synechdoche, New York at the top of the list, which is a film I admit I didn't understand.  It might have been too conceptual for me.  To quote,

Those who felt the film was disorganized or incoherent might benefit from seeing it again.

Yeah, pretty much.

But the thing is, with Kaufman, at least, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  He's conceptual, but it's honest.  It comes from the heart.  He's not trying to awe us with his brilliance or 'author-ness'; rather, it stems organically from who he is.

He's probably too far ahead of our time. Years later we'll all look back and say, "ah, I get it now".

And thank you, Roger Ebert, for putting The Hurt Locker at its rightful place at the top of the list.  Hurt Locker was a very, very good movie.  Bigelow has a done a lot of very, very good movies, only a couple of which I have seen.  She is a very good director.  Years later we will look at her work and finally realize her brilliance.

Juno and Me and You and Everyone We Know were also very good, right on Mr Ebert.

But, ugh, Minority Report?  And you forgot There Will Be Blood and La Vie en Rose!  But, as once quipped Joe E Brown... nobody's perfect. :)

Reading this list does indeed make me feel very good.  Of course, it's nothing to equal the great number of films which I love from the 30's and the 40's and the 70's, but all these movies are very good; I have good memories of watching them in the theater with good friends.  Or with myself, in some happy, quiet hour.