2009 / Marc Webb > This started out well. I can understand the premise of a so-called serious story about how relationships are in the real world. Hollywood doesn’t produce real world stories because they don’t sell tickets. Though frankly, they don’t sell tickets because Hollywood isn’t particularly good at telling real world stories. In that regards, it was with great excitement that I approached 500 Days of Summer, which seemed to be slowly taking the world by storm (as it sits at #116 on the IMDb 250 right now). A small, independent romantic dramedy doing well is something to cheer for. But for me, it just doesn’t stack up.

The biggest epidemic in independent film continues to be quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness. Form fails to follow function, and we end up with a bunch of silly side-effects that don’t necessarily move the story or create a certain mood. The boardroom scene, for example: The speech was bad enough, but his friend’s reaction? Ten times worse. That’s a film groveling to its audience, saying, “I know this is what I’m about so far, but just in case you don’t like it, we also have some silly, stereotypical characters who will make you laugh by doing silly things!” That’s lazy, and honestly, disappointing. Throw in the whole expectations vs. reality sequence, and you’ve got it tailor-made for emotional manipulation.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is as exciting an actor there is in my generation. Walloping this into the group with Mysterious Skin, The Lookout and his work on Third Rock from the Sun exposes his obscene range. On the other end of the spectrum is Zooey Deschanel, who continues to waste her abilities by taking the most banal of roles. If you think she’s two-dimensional in this, you probably shouldn’t watch Gigantic either. The poster girl for the modern hipster female desperately needs to outgrow her peculiarities. Someone get her a role where she plays something other than the girl that every geek wants to get with.

All this being said, I do respect the film for trying to bring a certain feel to the masses. It slipped (quite a bit, in fact), but the direction is good. Hannah Takes the Stairs will never be mainstream, and sadly neither will Chungking Express, but if the story of heartbreaks is going to get bought on Blu-ray (and maybe even get an MTV Movie Award nomination), Webb may be one of the guys to lead the way. And while it doesn’t sound like it, such a feat would deserve accolades.

2009 / Jody Hill > Been a few months since I saw this, yet I still haven’t fully digested it. I know that I respect it for its guts without escaping into a sensationalist romp. It walked on the border of exploitation so many times but never crossed it, and regardless of how one feels about the violence and the probable yet peculiar plot devices, Hill’s got me interested in seeing whatever he may direct next. Observe and Report has the unusual achievement of leaving me with a gleeful smile for the future of the human race—not because of the typical melodramatic hope that pervades the movies but because of the sheer raw energy of Seth Rogen’s character and the way it makes him so damn human.

2009 / Zack Snyder > Respectably ambitious, Watchmen is an epic on a small scale: It has no big name movie stars, nor does it field superheroes of mainstream lore. There are two things it does very, very well: The cinematography is stunning with vibrant colors and imaginative awareness, and the violence is gruesome, righteously effective with exacting choreography. Then there are things that just don’t seem to fit: The music is a mess. No film should ever use Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence.” It reeks of empty ambition since it’s already been used nearly perfectly in The Graduate. A lot of the other, more well-known tracks also seem forced (“99 Luft Balloons?” Really?). This, ironically, actually detracts from the mood the film tries to set. But let’s talk adaptation: Faithfulness is good and all, but a comic is a different medium. Whatever you think of Alan Moore, he had it right in saying that the reader has time to reflect back on what he’s just read, maybe even doubleback to check facts and link a character to his speech bubbles. But a film of this supposed gravity almost becomes a joke in its obtuse seriousness without being given the time to digest. The awkward pacing and plot jumps that leave us filling in gaps with a considerable level of assumptions also don’t help. The graphic novel walked a very thin line between the pretentious and the cautionary, and unfortunately Snyder may have fallen on the wrong side of those tracks.

1953 / Billy Wilder > Though he’s not particularly known for layered works, Wilder definitely swings the bat hard when it comes to making the audience enjoy a movie. Together with William Holden in his Oscar-winning performance, he cooks up a rip-roaring adventure in what could be called the bachelor’s version of The Great Escape. The comedy easily surpasses the drama in Stalag 17, as the latter is often predictable if simple and honest. A German POW camp during World War II shouldn’t be something you laugh about, but give the writers of the original play some credit for giving us a reminder that laughter remains an alternative tool for vengeance.

1975 / Steven Spielberg > There are a lot of stories behind production mishaps in Jaws, most of them dealing with issues with faulty animatronics of the shark. How right they were, and how sad. For 70% of the film, it’s really something swell, atmospheric even when bordering on the expected cliché. More often than not, Spielberg just couldn’t get the villain to look real, so he used clever methods of making sure the audience would feel its presence other ways (like filming from its point of view, below the water, with the menacing theme music signaling impending doom). But then you see it, and it’s over. Unlike The Thing, where the literal creativeness of the special effects made up for its outdated looks, here I had trouble digesting the climactic battle because it looked just downright silly. It’s really sad when special effects ruin the potential for a great film to age well, and this is no exception.

1982 / John Carpenter > It doesn’t matter how much the special effects in The Thing have aged, what stood out for me is the sheer ingenuity of its intentions. The creature from outer space is keenly unique, grotesque and memorable, but more importantly, the writing is taut, imaginative and the pacing fills every scene with tension. Color me absolutely surprised that I enjoyed this that much, as I was pretty much expecting some sort of kitsch fare that was good for a laugh more than a scare.

2008 / Charlie Kaufman > Here’s a thought: Twenty years from now when we look at 2008’s global filmography, Synecdoche, New York will be the year’s towering achievement. Kaufman’s directorial debut is an injection of a life into the bloodstream, and the way it shakes down our internal struggles and chaotic delusions is truly magnificent. It’s imperfect in ways it should be, in that pseudo-bullshit philosophical manner that nobody can really explain. And because it tries to explain things so minimally, it becomes the viewer’s movie. Everyone can live this, everyone is this, and as crazy as it sounds, sometimes I find myself thinking that it’s about me. The aging of man is a topic that has been touched upon with much success in the past (Ikiru, Wild Strawberries) but never like this. It’s something only Kaufman can do, and it will undoubtedly polarize, fascinate and confuse for years to come.

2009 / Jonas Åkerlund > You know how a well-written thriller is supposed to be one step ahead of the viewer, making sure that the tense atmosphere continues until the very end? This isn’t one of those. Too often, the genre conventions fell into place and I found myself one step ahead of Dennis Quaid’s detective in charge of discovering the Horsemen behind some grizzly murders. In and of itself, this could survive if the story is good, but even that fails because of lack of scope. It’s as if someone promised me a trip to Paris and then took me to Philadelphia—it simply doesn’t work. No matter how well intentioned the ending may be, disappointment remains. All this is quite sad in two respects: Akerlund was on my list of directors to watch after a risky yet satisfying effort in Spun. Also, it was nice to see Zhang Ziyi play something different (in this case, a creepy, slithering snake of a woman with devious intentions).

1943 / William A. Wellman > The Ox-Bow Incident is a simple story of conscience done very, very well. Often reminding me of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, the film’s crux is a lynch mob hellbent on punishing some rogue cattle rustlers for the crime of murder. How this unfolds isn’t particularly novel, but is undoubtedly daring for a film made in 1943. Henry Fonda is instantly watchable, as is Dana Andrews and Anthony Quinn as a couple of men that get held up at the stake. If only the resolution didn’t delve into a sort of preaching mode, this would have stood out as a better testament of mob mentality.

1955 / Charles Laughton > After Robert Mitchum’s turn as the dashing anti-hero in Out of the Past, I found it refreshing to see his portrayal of a so-called holy man with a batshit crazy mind. The man gives you the creeps in The Night of the Hunter, with his wild religious rhetoric and instantly suspicious demeanor. What tricks me is that I can’t figure out what Laughton was up to. The film’s hard to figure out because it’s not simply a good vs. bad story, as it has shades of a fable and a darkly Biblical undertone. But all that withstanding, everything simply falls apart at the end. Symbolically and fundamentally, it becomes a jumbled mess. Sure, it’s possible to justify everything that happens, but it just doesn’t feel acceptable to a rational mind. Either way, one thing is for sure: This has some of the finest cinematography I’ve ever seen in a black & white film. Stanley Cortez uses beautiful, stark angles and really captures the depth of what one can do without color.