Company New Year’s Resolution
by Jake Teresi
Looking through our top films of 2009, I’m a little disappointed with the range of films.
Admittedly, in recent years, many big-studio films have become more sophisticated (“The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man,” “Star Trek,” and anything Pixar–”Up” is the unanimous 2009 Company choice), and there’s plenty of eager filmgoers looking for escapism. In fact, despite the recession, Hollywood just had it’s biggest year ever (10 billion+). These are good things.
Let me explain myself: I just tried to going to an evening showing of The Blind Side with my mother. Neither of us really wanted to see it. Neither of us like football, Sandra Bullock especially, or “based on a true story” shit. We just felt like seeing something. But when we got to the front of the line, this crowd-pleaser, that had been out for 44 days, was sold out. Everything was. Everything out right now–Sherlock Holmes, Avatar, Alvin 2, It’s Complicated–is a hit. People just want to see something.
But there’s excellent stuff out there, as always, that nobody sees. Some only come to New York City for a week or two and then vanish. If it comes to Chicago, Roger Ebert sees it and raves or maybe he doesn’t see it at all. He does better than me, as I live 2 hours from any major city. I try to go out of my way to see films, but there’s an excruciating long list of top-reviewed fare that never came my way but which I was dying to see in 2009:
Summer Hours, Tulpan, Il Divo, Lorna’s Silence, Seraphine, Revanche, Forbidden Lie$, Still Walking, The Beaches of Agnes, 35 Shots of Rhum, The Damned United, The Sun, Crazy Heart, Broken Embraces, Police, Adjective.
Giampaolo saw a few of these. None of us saw the best-reviewed film of the year, 35 Shots of Rhum, superb French director Claire Denis’ latest.
And we should have.
Like I was saying, it’s not entirely our fault. Independent movie theaters are quite often hardly that. Around Amherst, MA, where I live, we have two, Amherst Cinema and Pleasant Street Theatre, with 5 screens in total. These are non-profit theaters that are owned by the same people. Starting next week, however, three of the five screens will be taken up by Invictus, Up in the Air, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. These films are fine, maybe great (?), and helmed by some of the most talented directors in the game. So what’s the problem? They’re already playing at the multiplex down the street! One time they even played Shrek 3.
Still, we owe it to ourselves and you to seek out and promote the films not getting screened anywhere. In the same spirit that the Blind Side couple adopted that black kid and gave him footballs for Christmas, etc., we need to do something about these orphaned films.
This is our resolution for 2010.
Naturally I agree–but what we can see supercedes what we want to see, or perhaps even “should” see. I everyone should see “Greed,” but I have no illusions about how feasible that is. Sometimes you just have to wait.