20-18

20. Rachel Getting Married
Ooh, top 20. Getting exciting now, isn't it? A most underrated movie this one. A girl is let out of rehab for the weekend to attend her sister's wedding. Uh-oh! Sounds like trouble will ensue! An unpromising premise, but it's actually really well done. Most impressive is the way that it balances family strife and tragedy with the joyful celebrations of the wedding in a way that's really quite genuine and natural. It's sadness and happiness squeezed together into the same film, the same wedding, the same weekend. On the sadness side you've got Kim, played by Anne Hathaway, a recovering junkie, turning up to wreak havoc on her sister's big day. It's an extraordinary performance; even when she's doing nothing you can still see her plotting, a wee cauldron of rage bubbling away as she wonders what she can do to hog the limelight, shock people, or just generally fuck things up. This is most painful during a scene where many of the family are giving speeches. The camera keeps moving back to Kim, and all the while you're thinking "please don't make an evil speech Kim, please, oh no, she's getting up, no, Kim, noooo!" If you aren't aware of Anne Hathaway then don't worry because I don't think you've missed anything, she normally just plays pretty girls who are concerned with dresses or boyfriends or that kind of thing. In this film, however, she's great. She totally nails Kim's anger, selfishness, smart-aleckiness, and the sadness that stems from a family tragedy the details of which aren't fully described until quite late in the film. And what's more, she isn't even the best actor in the film - that award goes to Debra Winger for playing the semi-estranged mother with a eerie, untouchable emptiness.
On the happiness side, you've got a kick ass wedding. They appear to be a very musical bunch, this family, always slapping away on the old joanna or tooting away on a bugle. As a rule, I find musical interludes in films to be boring as anything but here they're unexpectedly great. It can't hurt having Robyn Hitchcock and TV on the Radio popping up, mind you. Also, you've got the groom giving the most lovely wee wedding vow that you can imagine. Aw shucks.
It's not perfect though. I thought that the family tragedy thing was overplayed a bit. You're expecting there to be something bad in the family history, but when you find out what it is, well, it really is very bad indeed. I just think that it was over-the-top. A more mid-sized family tragedy would have been sufficient to explain the friction. And another thing, it's really a bit cheap to keep the audience in the dark about the nature of this tragedy for so long. The film aims for a naturalistic feel, so it's not fitting to have this artificial suspense and mystery built in to the script. Apart from that it's good but.


19. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Aw. You knew that a big soppy bastard like me was going to have to fit this film in somewhere. There's two sides to this film I think. First, there's the pure love story between Joel and Clementine, and then there's the disappearing memory quandary. The stuff about memory is great, although I didn't find the scenes of Joel running about in his own head as affecting as others did. But, rather embarrassingly, it's all about the love story for me. Jim Carrey's really good as Joel, but it's Kate Winslet who makes the whole thing work. Her depiction of Clemetine is just perfect. That trying too hard to be kooky-ness, that mix of independence and vulnerability, that fucking annoying shrillness. Just perfect. I mean, I bet you can think of someone you know who is exactly like Clementine. And I bet that you secretly fancy her a little bit, making Joel's infatuation all the more plausible. I love the love story all the way down to its final conclusion: 'yeah, fuck it, we'll give it a go'.


18. There Will Be Blood
What a big film. Big ideas, big music, big scenery, big acting. It really calls for total immersion in its bigness. I've only seen it once, in a (big) cinema and it was quite an experience. I have been very reluctant to see it since because I don't think anything smaller or quieter than a cinema can come close to replicating the feelings I had when I saw it. Dread, fear, awe. It's a film with a lot to say, about America, religion, greed, the killing of one's own soul. But apart from all that, just feel it.