A-List: Underrated Movies of the 2000s, Part Two
By Josh Spiegel
December 24, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Last week, I named five movies from 2000 to 2004, one for each year, that are still very underrated. As a quick refresher, here's the main information from last week's A-List. For 2000, I chose Unbreakable. For 2001, Ghost World was my pick. For 2002, I put the spotlight on Insomnia. For 2003, I beat the drum for Big Fish. For 2004, I probably went out furthest on the crazy ledge with Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I can't guarantee that none of this week's picks, which chronicle 2005 to 2009, won't make you roll your eyes to the skies and wonder what the hell is wrong with me; of course, you may completely agree with me, which is always encouraged. I'll keep a positive attitude, as we go into this week's A-List.
2005: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
There was a time, a long, long time, when Robert Downey Jr.'s name in a movie didn't automatically mean it would be a hit. Before May of 2008, in fact, Downey, Jr. was considered a unique character actor whose checkered past would probably hamper him if he ever wanted to be a star. And then the one-two punch of Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, the latter of which garnered the actor a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, came along and changed his life. This week, Downey is headlining the newest version of Sherlock Holmes; next May, he'll be donning the suit once again as Tony Stark in Iron Man 2. In 2005, though, he was content to be the unreliable yet completely self-aware and self-conscious narrator and protagonist of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, alongside Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan.
The film was something of a return for Shane Black, who wrote and directed. Black was a hotshot screenwriter in the late-1980s, having written Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon 2, and The Last Boy Scout, among others. Once Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a neo-noir/meta-buddy comedy, came out in late 2005, Black had all but gone AWOL. Though he's not yet returned to the big screen, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a sly and witty examination of Los Angeles culture and deconstruction of film noir. As the too-fast-for-his-own-good criminal Harry, Downey is unpredictable and at his jittery best. Kilmer plays a private investigator who ends up helping Harry in his first acting role and solving a murder mystery along the way. Monaghan, in one of her first big roles, plays the romantic lead, aptly keeping up with Downey's fast pace. Hopefully, now that Downey is a huge star, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang will get a new and more appreciative audience.
2006: V For Vendetta
For most audiences, it was just one fleeting, if monumental, moment in film history. The footprint left by the Wachowski Brothers is enormous, even if they've only made one truly successful film, 1999's The Matrix. In 2006, though, they helped bring another Alan Moore graphic novel to life, V For Vendetta. Though it was directed by James McTeigue, a Wachowski collaborator, the film was written and co-produced by the Wachowskis. Moreover, with Hugo Weaving as the film's title character, it's hard not to see the Matrix connection. Set in a dystopian future, V For Vendetta is about V, a masked freedom fighter trying to bring down the totalitarian government that dominates Great Britain and most of the world, symbolized by a heavily neo-Nazi leader (John Hurt) and a loud cable-TV host. V is somewhat inadvertently aided in his suicidal raids by Evey, a young woman who comes into contact with the mysterious masked man.
Evey was played by Natalie Portman and, perhaps no thanks to her popularity in the world, the film became known as "The Movie Where Natalie Portman Gets Her Head Shaved". Yes, this happens in the movie, and yes, it probably doesn't have to happen, but it got a lot of unwanted attention. There are certainly flaws in this movie, but it was slickly made, well-acted (Weaving does a great job, especially considering the fact that all he's got in his repertoire is his voice), and surprisingly moving in sections. One scene, just after Evey's head-shaving, dramatizes a lone journal entry the young woman stumbles upon while in a lonely prison. Suffice to say, the scene is a bit of a diversion, but a well-developed and tearful one at that. The Wachowskis went on to direct the huge flop known as Speed Racer, and are laying low. McTeigue just helmed Ninja Assassin, but V For Vendetta is still the high point of the decade for all three men.
2007: Zodiac
Who can say what would have been? And yet, wondering is so much fun. What if Zodiac, arguably David Fincher's best film (sorry, Tyler Durden), had been released at the end of 2006? Would it have been nominated for a slew of Oscars? What if Zodiac had been released at the end of 2007? It may not have been able to dethrone No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood, but Zodiac would have made the Oscar race a lot more complicated. This based-on-a-true-story crime drama, about the famed Zodiac killer who terrorized California during a stretch of time during the 1960s and 1970s, featured three phenomenal lead performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo. More than that, Zodiac was the least flashy film that Fincher's ever made, including his follow-up, the Forrest Gump lookalike The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Yes, there's plenty of CGI (as in various shots that are completely computer-generated), but none of it seems particularly noticeable and is blended in so smoothly.
What makes Zodiac stand out so much is the screenplay by James Vanderbilt, which so accurately defines what obsession is. The Zodiac murderer was never caught, even though the film makes it clear who the madman really was. That didn't stop the three lead characters - Gyllenhaal as a fresh-faced crossword-puzzle creator, Downey as a rumpled reporter, and Ruffalo as a famed cop - from spending most of their adult lives trying to figure out who he is. Though they only ever come into contact with the presumed killer once, in a chilling interrogation set in a break room, these men never gave up, even if it meant that they would ruin their personal lives. Some things go beyond being married, having a job, or wanting to feel remotely human. We are, all of us, obsessed about something. Most of us, sure, aren't obsessed with finding murderers, but for these men, it's all they can think about. Fincher, a notoriously nitpicky director, is the perfect person to have made Zodiac, easily the most underrated film of its year.
2008: Let The Right One In
Vampires. Apparently, they're popular again. Vampires in love. Again, popular. What if I told you that last year, sometime around November, a movie about a young vampire in love with a human came out, and almost nobody saw it? In my wildest dreams, that movie is called Twilight, and it would never show up on this list. Of course, reality is much harsher, as is evidenced by the complete lack of awareness of one of 2008's best films, the Swedish vampire movie Let The Right One In. Swedish vampire movie. How could this one miss? On the one hand, this movie made over $10 million, which isn't that great; it's even worse when you realize that 80% of the film's gross was accrued everywhere except for North America. Still, the film won over enough people in Hollywood for a remake to be coming down the pipe, to be released in 2010.
For now, let me tell you about how undeniably awesome in such unexpected ways is Let The Right One In. The film is set near Stockholm in 1982; the main character is Oskar, a chubby little boy who's constantly bullied at school. One night, at a jungle gym, he meets a new neighbor girl, Eli. She's quiet, pale, but somehow attractive and interested in him. Of course, as he soon finds out, Eli is a vampire, which makes the appearance of her non-vampire companion, Hakan, a lot creepier than he seems at the beginning. And Hakan seems creepy to begin with. In some ways, so is Eli, who likes Oskar enough to not want to turn him into a vampire. Instead, as it seems will happen in the future, she's fine with using him as a kind of lure for her victims. To ruin its surprises would be horrendous; suffice to say, Let The Right One In is the best horror movie of the past few years, truly chilling and unforgettable.
2009: In the Loop
I've just told you that, in my wildest dreams, Twilight flopped and no one ever thought of making a sequel. Another of my wildest dreams involves more people being aware of and in love with the funniest film of 2009. No, it's not The Hangover. In The Loop, a scathing satire of the political spectrum of America and Britain, courtesy of some sharp wits across the pond, is easily one of the smartest, funniest, and crudest films I've seen in a long time. The plot is needlessly and appropriately complicated, but it all starts when a low-level Cabinet Minister (Tom Hollander) says, in a radio interview, that a war (with an unnamed country, but obviously a parallel to Iraq) is "unforeseeable". This single word sets off a chain of events that sets him off to Washington, D.C. to make amends with his American counterparts, and throws him directly in the path of the one man he wants to avoid.
That man is Malcolm Tucker, and in a perfect world, Peter Capaldi, who plays Tucker, would have to cage-fight Christoph Waltz for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. And, for those of us who've seen both In The Loop and Inglourious Basterds, that fight would be surprisingly even. Tucker is one of the most gloriously profane characters in recent memory, a character who, along with a few others from In The Loop, was originally seen on the British TV comedy The Thick Of It. It's a rare actor who can stand up to James Gandolfini (one of the few American actors in the film) and make Tony Soprano quake in his boots for only a second. Though Tucker is not the main character, he's the most memorable, never pausing to insult his peers and superiors, even if it means that he's essentially denying himself any shred of humanity. In The Loop, if it's lucky, will be acknowledged for its screenplay at the Oscars. Lucky, though, doesn't get much for you at the Oscars. When this movie comes out on January 12th, put it on Netflix, along with The Hurt Locker and Moon, if I can throw out a few other great, underrated 2009 flicks. Seriously.