“I feel this was made by a ghost, mine perhaps. I don’t see it as a film but as a piece of space that formed…that’s the best I can describe it, “a piece of space that formed.”
—Giuseppe Andrews

In the early part of 2009, avant-artist and auteur of the trailer park, Giuseppe Andrews, decided to retire from making movies. With The Fast, an eclectic look at one man’s surreal journey into self-help, he seemed to be suggesting a new approach to life. There were plans to focus solely on music, a newfound spirituality, an unusual mention of vegetarianism and an accompanying “raw” diet. And then recently, the man mostly known for his sunny SoCal explorations of the fringe, married and moved to Austin, Texas. Now, as part of his West Coast swansong, we get Diary, a 90 minute focus on how humans fetishize technology and our need to feel like part of each other’s media. Revolving around a family that becomes way too familiar with their daily camcorder journal, we get a more mature, more reactionary Andrews, and the results are amazing.

That sound you hear is Ayn Rand rolling over in her grave. As a matter of fact, the forced philosophical face of the so-called Tea Party Movement has been doing so much crypt spinning as of late that she’s probably burrowed halfway to China by now - and anyone who knows anything about the author turned academic realizes how horrid that prospect would be - especially for her. After growing up in and around the Russian Revolution, Rand moved to the US. There, she became a famous writer and a controversial thinker. She hated Communism with a passion (good) while equally despising the ‘virtue’ known as altruism. Instead, she argued for a man’s ability to maximize his own abilities, without impediment, which when filtered through the fervent call to Conservatism that seems to be swallowing the Middle Class, has become a wounded war cry for social upheaval. Or something like that. 

It only seems fair then that a flat, lifeless film (the first in a proposed trilogy) of Rand’s most ridiculous novel, Atlas Shrugged, is out and about this election season. A long term labor of love for its producer, it attempts to turn the tale of a failing railroad concern in a dystopia America into a rallying cry against - well, you name it: social security; welfare; entitlement programs for the poor; big government; corporate backstabbing; personal greed; familial distrust…the list goes on. What it doesn’t do is entertain. Or engage. Or even enrich. It would be one thing of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 offered something to think about. Instead, it’s a strident political diatribe that has neither its purpose nor its inferred intentions in the right Right place. As a matter of fact, the movie is so meaningless it almost argues against its preposterous polemics.

It was one of the first examples of epic entertainment as evil. Today, it joins the ranks of such (rightfully or wrongfully) reviled efforts as Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and Disney’s long lost Song of the South. At the time, it was greeted with cheers as well as controversy. Today, it is celebrated as a landmark while blasted for its depiction of a distorted antebellum South. The film in question is D. W. Griffith’s Civil War spectacle The Birth of a Nation. Long considered one of the first true works of cinematic greatness, it also represents one of the hardest movies to wholly appreciate. The first hour or so deals dramatically with the traditional Yankee/Confederate dynamic. Once Lincoln is assassinated, however, the film finds a reprehensible way to make its clearly racist points, and the problems just multiply from there.

The initial storyline centers around the Abolitionist Stoneman family and the gentile, slave-owning Camerons. They are friends, even if they do not share the same views on State’s rights. When the Civil War breaks out, both sides step up and represent their cause. Both also suffer heavy losses. Among the last standing are Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall), known as “the Little Colonel” and combat nurse Elise Stoneman (Lillian Gish). During Reconstruction, a mixed race friend of the Northern family named Silas Lynch (George Siegmann) becomes Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. Along with a wave of black support and election success, he begins the process of white disinvestment and disenfranchisement. This causes the populace to rise up. They create the Klu Klux Klan in order to preserve law and (majority) order in these troubled, anarchic times.

Let the prissy critics have those indie movies no one’s heard. After all, at the end of the year no one’s able to see them unless they live in New York or L.A. Let’s discuss the movies we all saw, or at least had the chance to see. These are the best films of 2011, by genre, that received a wide release in the U.S. of A.

There have always been two Peter Jacksons working behind the lens. The first is a confirmed geek, a genre junkie who turned blood splattered slapstick into horrifically hilarious efforts like Bad Taste and his infamous Dead Alive (aka Braindead). The other is a bit more refined, delving deep into the mechanics of moviemaking for such obscure works as Meet the Feebles (his foul-mouthed Muppets take-off), Forever Silver (a fake documentary), and his in-computer reinvention of a classic (King Kong). While he managed to parlay parts of both sides of his creative personality for the amazing Lord of the Rings trilogy, few remember - or in the case of The Lovely Bones, want to recall - his deeper, more dramatic side. One look back at 1994’s marvelous Heavenly Creatures should change all that.

Coming hot on the heels of his memorable zombie comedy, this fictionalized look at a real life New Zealand murder (known as the “Parker-Hulme Case”) was seen as a stretch for Jackson. It didn’t involve elaborate physical gags or make-up effects, and instead used the burgeoning technology of CGI to create an alternate fantasy world where he main characters escaped…and plotted. The basic storyline follows two troubled adolescents - the prim and proper Juliet Hulme (an astonished Kate Winslet) and her frumpy, working class friend Pauline Parker (the equally terrific Melanie Lynskey). Against the backdrop of a solemn ‘50s suburbia, the plot follows the girls as they fantasize about Hollywood icons and fairytale figures. As their inner universe becomes more complex and compelling, their home life suffers. When the parents determine to separate the far too ‘close’ friends, they kill Pauline’s mother out of revenge.