February 4, 2003

In a short time, Box Office Prophets will be unveiling The Calvins, our awards for the best of 2002. To that end, I've spent some time recently puzzling over the celluloid detritus of the past annum so as to consider its ultimate contribution to posterity. The verdict? It was a very good year.

Being the resident gadfly who has a tendency to skip paying nine dollars taking in the newest overblown sequel or Ashton Kutcher opus, this writer has a not-undeserved reputation of often sneering at what Hollywood puts on the table. While it's a sure bet that I do not consider the present time to be amongst the finer eras in the Dream Factory's history, this fact should not obscure that in the last few years there are undoubtedly some trends that might be found hopeful. Additionally, while I consider today's general American output to be slightly sub-par when measured against history, this should in no way imply that the well has run dry for domestically produced film. As always, there are interesting, committed artists there trying to produce work that walks the delicate line straddling art and commerce, and as Tinseltown remains a profit center for many a mega-corporation there should always at least be some money around to fund the fringe players from whom much of the best work comes.

But to be fair, in 2002 there were also plenty of pure entertainments that debuted that lend credence to the idea that the popcorn film is alive and well. High quality directors such as Sam Raimi, Guillermo de Toro and Peter Jackson brought to the screen movies well worthy of spending money on, even as the "critics versus fans" debate rages in the background (Can't we all just get along?). Additionally, though the commercial realities of Hollywood have resulted in a seemingly never-ending series of remakes and sequels being brought to the screen, some of these at least were done well enough to make the transition to an American milieu worthwhile. As examples I would offer up Christopher Nolan's take on the Norwegian thriller Insomnia and Gore Verbinski's redo of Hideo Nakata's Ring, both of which can stand as solid films in their own right. Lastly, though essentially a box office disaster, Stephen Soderbergh's version of the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris gave us what this writer considers the single most subversive screenplay to grace the multiplex all year.

But the late season debut of Solaris is also indicative of a phenomenon that has in recent years continued to become more and more prevalent. This is the tendency of the studios to hold many of their prestige pictures until the November/December time frame so that hopefully their persistence in the memories of Academy voters will remain at the highest level. The upshot of this is that of late I tend to consider that the year for American film is somewhat disappointing, until a late year onslaught of twenty must-see films brings this assessment into question. This year there were so many films let loose in this time frame--Adaptation, Chicago, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Pianist, et cetera, et cetera--that it became very hard to keep one's head above water. Yet another disappointing result of this trend is that even though this writer lives in a city that has plenty of art film outlets, there are many movies likely worthy of consideration for year-end awards that still have not graced our local movie houses. Thus, in voting for our site's awards I was unable to consider movies such as Morvern Callar, Spider or The Quiet American since they aren't even available for me to see as yet.

There are also quite a few foreign movies that I'd love to have been able to consider after seeing them at a theater but which still haven't shown up in my neighborhood. (Russian Ark, where are you?) Luckily, given the wide international availability of DVD's and VCD's a few of these gaps have managed to be plugged. Thanks to Artificial Eye in Britain I got the chance to take in Robert Guediguian's La Ville est Tranquile, and a steady stream of shipments from vendors in Hong Kong and Europe have allowed me to view films which might have otherwise remained utterly unseen. A demonstrative case in point here is the excellent Thai spaghetti western Tears of a Black Tiger, which actually came out during the year 2000 in its native country. After over two full years of waiting for the geniuses at Miramax to do something with the release rights they purchased for this film, this patron finally broke down and purchased the movie for home consumption. I'm really unsure as to what their strategy is here--it seems unlikely that the studio is making a lot of cash off the prints of this that they have moldering away in some godforsaken film vault, especially when there are patrons out here in the wide world who would happily fork over cash for the chance to see this gem on a real screen. In any case, through the wonders of technology and international distribution this film fan was at least able to finally see this during the past year.

This ability to scan the whole wide world of film via the international market was likely my greatest film discovery this year. While still able to see the foreign films that manage to survive the brutal trip to domestic theaters, the ease with which films can be procured globally has opened up entirely new vistas in cinema. Imports from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Iran, Thailand, India, France, Spain and elsewhere have improved how I feel about the present and future of film. And it won't stop there--I'm already on the lookout for Eliana, Eliana (from Indonesia), Springtime In a Small Town (China), Le Fils (Belgium), Japon (Mexico/Spain) and plenty more. Hell, I've even totally neglected worthwhile looking indigenous movements in places like Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere simply because I can't yet catch up to all the amazing offerings from Asia and Europe that showed up in the last twelve months. But what this smorgasbord indicates is that beyond Hollywood, far from the bright lights and the wringing hands decrying the imperialist content dominance of the megacorporations there still exist local film industries turning out interesting and creative films. While it's perhaps true that the American based studios are so active on a global scale that their influence may be stronger than ever, at least at the present time there seems to be just as much room for innovative indigenous film makers to leave their mark on the medium.

When you add into the above an active repertory cinema scene in my hometown, it seems obvious that the world of film today is in fact quite vibrant. While the VCR essentially killed that sort of scene in most places except for select big cities, there's still enough of a circuit here that gems like Pepe le Moko, Umberto D and a full set of new 35 mm prints of Mario Bava's best works were shown last year. Additionally, the local museum and film archive deigned to do revivals of the work of such greats as Len Lye, Kon Ichikawa, Aleksandr Ptushko and others. So luckily for this writer, when the mainstream movies being tendered at the mall make me cringe with fear there's generally some alternative venue showing an offbeat or historic slice of film. This is something that I realize not everyone has this opportunity to do, and I'm thankful for it on a nearly daily basis.

Phew. Twelve hundred words into describing my past year of film, and I haven't even touched on some of the more interesting trends extant in cinema today. For one there's the musical revival, which hopefully won't end with Chicago and The Happiness of the Katakuris, as this is a genre that represents almost limitless opportunities for aspiring filmmakers to rework. 2002 was also for some reason the Year of the Sirk, as Todd Hayne's excellent bit of neo-artificialism combined with Francois Ozon's 8 Femmes to betray the heavy influence of that great genius of the overblown melodrama. And there even seems to be some hope for one of the most Hollywood studio abused of categories, the romantic comedy. In America the most interesting work was Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love, a short bit of sweet strangeness that mines both classic screwball archetypes as well as modern neuroses. But the real winner here was perhaps one of my favorite films of the past year: Jae-young Kwak's South Korean jewel My Sassy Girl, an entertaining and touching romance that was as heartfelt and humorous as any movie made in recent years.

It seems, then, when picking over what has graced the celluloid world in 2002 that this century old art form appears to be in damned good shape. Even if American studios continue to direct their main efforts towards the teen profit factory, there remain plenty of solid films coming out of Hollywood to satisfy the discerning viewer. While the constant rollouts of remakes and sequels is a genuine concern, there appears to at least be some undercurrent of lower level work where artists are creating films that will be able to stand the test of time. A burgeoning international film market also swells the available ranks of worthwhile movies, and while this landscape is so fragmented that it's unlikely we'll see movements on a par with something like the French New Wave, there are so many good filmmakers working all over the globe that we seem to be in no danger of running out of either artistic or entertaining works anytime soon. While it might be nice if film distribution worked in a way that would bring more of these movies to local screens so that I might see them in their intended form, if it remains necessary for me to continue to simply watch them at home then that's a reality I'm prepared to live with. In any case, when you team a Tinseltown that is still capable of great things with an international market teeming with creativity and you throw in an active local repertory scene, looking back on the year that was is a pleasant undertaking for this viewer, notwithstanding the seeming garbage floating at the top. For all this reminiscing about what has unspooled in front of my eyes during the last year has resulted in one overarching conclusion that makes the possibilities of the cinematic future seem near infinite: over a hundred years into the history of this greatest of art forms the medium is as lively and full of potential as it has ever been. So bring on 2003.

View other columns by Chris Hyde