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If the success of multiple lousy “franchises” is any indication, moviegoers can be conditioned to salivate on cue—and nothing made us drool like the James Bond theme of John Barry, who died yesterday at age 77. Official credit went, of course, to Monty Norman, the contracted Dr. No composer, but over the years it trickled out that the suspenseful, thrumming dum-da-da-da-DA-dum-dum-dum, dum-da-da-da-DA-dum-dum-dum and the ejaculatory horns had Barry’s superlative stamp.
Given the nonstop Oscar odds-making and chatter, it feels, minutes after the 2010 nominations have been announced, as if they’re old news. But that’s not entirely the case: Now it has all been certified. Now when I tell people I think that Winter’s Bone was the best movie of 2010 and they say, “What the hell is that? You pretentious critics pick movies we’ve never heard of. What about Inception?” I can reply, “Well, I might be pretentious but you’re an ignoramus, since Winter’s Bone was nominated for Best Picture, just like motherfucking Inception, the dumb person’s idea of a smart movie that you had to see three times.” (Some chucklehead on NBC’s Today seemed quite taken aback that Winter's Bone made it over The Town. The Town!) John Hawkes as Uncle “Teardrop” in Winter’s Bone was nominated: I think I wanted that one more than any other. Hawkes, a gifted, unsung actor, is now on the map. Dale Dickey in the same film was a long shot: She lost out to Hailee Steinfeld for her lead performance in True Grit (she’s in virtually every scene before the epilogue) and another psycho matriarch, Animal Kingdom’s Jacki Weaver, who has been making the rounds in L.A. and has a lovely Aussie accent.
I’d planned to accentuate the positive this year and refrain from making a ten-worst list, but the folks at Vulture asked for my input on a poll of critics’ ten-worst films, and it’s hard to resist a final jab at my most painful experiences of 2010. Alas, in hastily pulling it together I repressed the memory of an especially appalling film—The Nutcracker in 3-D—so I’ve swapped it in here for the well-intentioned How Do You Know? (NB: As I was out of town and writing about other films that week, I did not rush to M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. Then, on the day I was set to go, I came down with a bad intestinal virus. The next week I went to the Pavilion in Park Slope but there was a bedbug scare... All right, I'm lying like mad. I just didn't go. I think the trees must be to blame.)
[This often happens: Pieces I like get shortened for space in the print mag and go online in their cut form. So here's my Best New York Movie Ever piece as originally written. (Apologies for omitting the perennial holiday capitalist heartwarmer Miracle on 34th Street from the discussion.)]
Close your eyes and the images leap out at you like those too-effusive sailors off the gangplank in On the Town: New York, New York, a hell of a film set. But in the city with the most subcultures, what could possibly be christened the New York movie, the one that inspires millions to cry, “That’s my town!”?
