Millennium Mambo 4: The Onion A.V. Club's 20 Performances of the Decade

Few will dispute that Daniel Day-Lewis' turn in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is the performance of the decade; even if you can think of a better one, could you really be upset to find him at the top of such a poll? The Onion A.V. Club polled their staff and came up with 19 more:

01. Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, There Will Be Blood, 2007
02. Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar, Brokeback Mountain, 2005
03. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Neil McCormick, Mysterious Skin, 2004
04. Samantha Morton as Morvern Callar, Morvern Callar, 2002
05. Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane, The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001
06. Peter Sarsgaard as Charles Lane, Shattered Glass, 2003
07. Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, American Psycho, 2000
08. Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar, American Splendor, 2003
09. Julianne Moore as Cathy Whitaker, Far from Heaven, 2002
10. Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men, 2007
11. Mickey Rourke as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, The Wrestler, 2008
12. Jeff Daniels as Bernard Berkman, The Squid and the Whale, 2005
13. Naomi Watts as Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn, Mulholland Drive, 2001
14. Anamaria Marinca as Otilia, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile], 2007
15. Björk as Selma Jezkova, Dancer in the Dark, 2000
16. Laura Linney as Samantha “Sammy” Prescott, You Can Count on Me, 2000
17. Edward Norton as Monty Brogan, 25th Hour, 2002
18. Denzel Washington as Alonzo, Training Day, 2001
19. Mark Ruffalo as Terry Prescott, You Can Count On Me, 2000
20. Anne Hathaway as Kym, Rachel Getting Married, 2008

Of the 20, 3 won Oscars for their performances, 5 were nominated but didn't win, 7 are female, 1 is in a non-English language role, 12 are Americans and, as is the case for most decade lists so far, 0 are from the year 2009.

Noé, Solondz, Almodóvar, Audiard, Others at Toronto '09

Another round of titles were announced for the Toronto International Film Festival, including Todd Solondz's sequel to Happiness, Life During Wartime, and a bunch of Cannes leftovers like Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void, Ye Lou's Spring Fever, Almodóvar's Broken Embraces, Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, as well as Samantha Morton's directorial debut The Unloved. Previously announced titles can be found here and here.

Vanguard

- Accident - d. Cheang Pou-Soi (Dog Bite Dog) - Hong Kong/China
- The Ape [Apan] - d. Jesper Ganslandt (Farväl Falkenberg) - Sweden
- Bunny and the Bull - d. Paul King - UK
- The Dirty Saints [Los santos sucios] - d. Luis Ortega - Argentina
- Enter the Void [Soudain le vide] - d. Gaspar Noé - France/Germany/Italy
- Hipsters - d. Valery Todorovsky - Russia
- The Misfortunates [De helaasheid der dingen] - d. Felix Van Groeningen (Steve + Sky) - Belgium
- My Queen Karo - d. Dorothée Van Den Berghe - w. Deborah Franoçois - Belgium/Netherlands
- Spring Fever - d. Ye Lou - China/Hong Kong/France


Discovery

- The Angel [Enkeli] - d. Margreth Olin - w. Maria Bonnevie, Lena Endre, Börje Ahlstedt - Norway/Sweden/Finland
- Applause - d. Pieter Zandvliet - w. Paprika Steen - Denmark
- Bare Essence of Life - d. Satoko Yokohama - Japan
- Beautiful Kate - d. Rachel Ward - w. Rachel Griffiths, Bryan Brown, Ben Mendelsohn - Australia
- A Brand New Life - d. Ounie Lecomte - South Korea/France
- The Disappearance of Alice Creed - d. J Blakeson - w. Eddie Marsan, Martin Compston - UK
- Eamon - d. Margaret Corkery - Ireland
- Every Day Is a Holiday [Chaque jour est une fête] - d. Dima El-Horr - w. Hiam Abbass - Lebanon/France/Germany
- Five Hours from Paris - d. Leon Prudovsky - Israel
- Heliopolis - d. Ahmad Abdalla - w. Khaled Abol Naga - Egypt
- The Day Will Come [Es kommt der Tag] - d. Susanne Schneider - Germany/France
- Le jour où Dieu est parti en voyage - d. Philippe van Leeuw - Belgium
- Last Ride - d. Glendyn Ivin - Australia
- My Dog Tulip - d. Paul Fierlinger, Sandra Fierlinger - w. Christopher Plummer, Isabella Rossellini, Lynn Redgrave (voices) - USA
- My Tehran for Sale - d. Granaz Moussavi - Australia/Iran
- Northless [Norteado] - d. Rigoberto Pérezcano - Mexico/Spain
- Shirley Adams - d. Oliver Hermanus - South Africa/USA/UK
- La soga - d. Josh Crook - Dominican Republic/USA
- Toad's Oil - d. Kôji Yakusho - w. Yakusho - Japan
- Together [Sammen] - d. Matias Armand Jordal - Norway
- The Unloved - d. Samantha Morton - w. Robert Carlyle, Susan Lynch - UK

Special Presentations

- Broken Embraces [Los abrazos rotos] - d. Pedro Almodóvar - Spain
- An Education - d. Lone Scherfig - UK
- The Front Line [La prima linea] - d. Renato De Maria - w. Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Riccardo Scamarcio - Italy
- Glorious 39 - d. Stephen Poliakoff (Close My Eyes, The Tribe) - w. Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, Christopher Lee, Hugh Bonneville, David Tennant, Eddie Redmayne, Charlie Cox, Jenny Agutter, Jeremy Northam - UK
- Kamui - d. Yoichi Sai (Blood and Bones, Soo) - Japan
- Life During Wartime - d. Todd Solondz - d. Allison Janney, Ally Sheedy, Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Michael K. Williams, Charlotte Rampling, Paul Reubens, Renée Taylor - USA
- A Prophet [Un prophète] - d. Jacques Audiard - France
- The Secret of Their Eyes [El secreto de sus ojos] - d. Juan José Campanella - Argentina/Spain

The Decade List: Morvern Callar (2002)

Morvern Callar - dir. Lynne Ramsay

Approaching a novel deemed "unfilmable" by both the literary and cinematic community can be the greatest challenge for a filmmaker, a make-or-break endeavor that's worked for some (Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange) and failed for twice as many (Alan Rudolph's Breakfast of Champions, Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer). Alan Warner's 1995 novel Morvern Callar, a first-person narrative about a young woman who finds the body of her boyfriend, who committed suicide, in their apartment around Christmas time, was one of those novels, and how Lynne Ramsay, successfully living up to her promise after Ratcatcher, visualized such a difficult work into a film as dazzling as this amazes me to this day.

In expert fashion, Ramsay operates with a complex narrative voice, a different breed of the novel's "first person." The film is entirely singular and dependent on the titular Morvern, played perfectly by Samantha Morton. While the film relies solely on her, it's not a window to her interior consciousness. Before killing himself, Morvern's boyfriend leaves her with an array of Christmas gifts, the most significant one a cassette player and accompanying mixtape which provides the auditory clue to the film's relationship to its protagonist. Shifting seamlessly from the diegetic sounds from her headphones to the encompassing swirl of music which takes over the film, Ramsay utilizes a tactic that feels either prudent or thoughtless when used by lesser filmmakers. And yet, it provides the film's rhythm, one of visual and phonic poetry, as well as defining the film's placement to its character.

Ramsay never feels the inclination to explain or defend Morvern's actions throughout the course of the film. With ethically questionable decisions like disposing of her boyfriend's body and sending his novel to a publisher's office with her name on it, Morvern views her world the same way Ramsay views her, seeking an unjudgmental beauty in humble surroundings. Ramsay's search is altogether more successful than Morvern's, as the money in her boyfriend's bank account allows her to escape to Spain with her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), who reveals before the trip that she fucked her boyfriend behind Morvern's back. It's never clear whether Morvern is in a state of emotional paralysis, akin to Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, or if this it her ticket out.

Though plot is significantly less important that mood, Ramsay raises a number of questions about interpretation and gender. When the novel Morvern's boyfriend wrote is met with enthusiasm from the publishers, the term "distinctive female voice" (possibly) suggests a covert motive from the representatives. Is that the book's selling point, and to what level does that change what her boyfriend has written? Warner's novel is written from the point of view of a woman by a man. Ramsay's film is a woman's interpretation of a man writing as the voice of a woman. Does our perception of the film, or the novel, hang on these perspectives? Answering (or trying to) these questions would certainly disrupt the film, so Ramsay simply acknowledges their hovering presence and continues on the journey.

Shot by Alwin H. Kuchler, who also shot Ratcatcher and Ramsay's short Gasman, I can think of few films I'd want continuously projected on my wall more than Morvern Callar. The images are consistently breathtaking, something that could never be truly conveyed through the stills I've chosen as its beauty is only enhanced by the movement of both the camera and the subjects. Like the audio track, Kuchler's camera weaves the interior and exterior together meticulously. The cinematography, sound design, performances and narrative voice all assemble marvelously, making Morvern Callar a bold, enigmatic and seminal work of one of the most promising voices in contemporary cinema.

With: Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Raife Patrick Burchell, Ruby Milton, James Wilson, Dolly Wells
Screenplay: Liana Dognini, Lynne Ramsay, based on the novel by Alan Warner
Cinematography: Alwin H. Kuchler
Country of Origin: UK
US Distributor: Palm Pictures

Premiere: May 2002 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 16 October 2002 (Chicago International Film Festival)

Awards: Prix de la jeunesse (Cannes Film Festival); Best Actress - Kathleen McDermott (Scottish BAFTAs); Best Actress - Samantha Morton, Best Technical Achievement - Alwin H. Kuchler (British Independent Film Awards)

She's lost...

Much to my surprise, I read that the Ian Curtis biopic, Control, will also be premiering at Cannes this year. It opened the Director's Fortnight to positive reviews and appears to not be the disaster it was initially conceived as (starring Jude Law (boo!) as the tragic singer of Joy Division). The film stars Sam Riley, a newcomer, as Curtis and Samantha Morton as his wife. I was also initially upset that Sean Harris, who played Curtis to an amazing likeness in 24 Hour Party People, was not cast, but based on the stills and the press, Control might not be as frightening as we, Joy Division fans, had once thought.