A quality of the light. The play of a shadow. The movement of a hand, a lip, an eye, a branch, a cloud, a field of grass. The tone of a word, a sigh, a groan. The organic geometry of a composition across time and space. These are things that distinguish the extraordinary from the mundane in life and movies. And for the umpteenth year (I've been counting) Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy have taken notice of them, curated and cataloged them, recapitulated them in haiku-like prose. They call it Moments Out of Time, and the 2010 montage is here, at MSN Movies.
Feel free to contribute your own in comments.
A few snippets:
- The wall that is, and isn't, there: "The Ghost Writer"...
- In the hills at night, car lights on a distant curve of road--"The American" and "Let Me In"...
- "You'd do that for me?"--a line spoken to, and later by, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in "The Social Network"; the addressee not getting it in either case...
- "I don't think of them as breasts--just tubes of potential danger"; Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), provider of mammograms in "Please Give"...
- "Monsters": Lovemaking all over the sky...
- "Winter's Bone": The ghastly blue twilight in which Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) and the weird sisters search for Jessup Dolly...
- "Black Swan": Nina, in a moment of especial distraction, freezes backstage as her monstrous dreamtime tormentor appears; he says "Hey...," and walks on by....
- Dad (Adrien Brody) teaching bird-legged Dren (Delphine Chanéac) to dance, "Splice"...
- In "The Kids Are All Right" Jules (Julianne Moore), penitent, nails it: "Bottom line, marriage is hard ... f**kin' hard ... just two people slogging through the s**t year after year ... getting older ... changing ... it's a f**kin' marathon."...
- "A Prophet": the moment when godfather César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) becomes just another schmuck...
- Sign of our times: huge decal of wannabe street artist Thierry Guetta's face plastered over the side of a building in the City of Angels, a nobody's "I exist!" writ large, signifying nothing. "Exit Through the Gift Shop"...
ADDENDUM:
Richard T. Jameson was the editor of Film Comment from 1990 to 2000, and Kathleen Murphy was a writer-in-residence, Film Society of Lincoln Center (and NYFF) programmer and contributing editor of the magazine. The current Film Comment features the magazine's annual critics' poll of the year's best films. Here's the top 50:
1. Carlos
2. The Social Network
3. White Material
4. The Ghost Writer
5. A Prophet
6. Winter's Bone
7. Inside Job
8. Wild Grass
9. Everyone Else
10. Greenberg
11. Mother
12. Toy Story 3
13. Eccentricities of a Blonde-Hair Girl
14. Another Year
15. The Strange Case of Angelica
16. The Kids Are All Right
17. Shutter Island
18. Around a Small Mountain
19. Our Beloved Month of August
20. Ne change rien
21. Dogtooth
22. I Am Love
23. Sweetgrass
24. Black Swan
25. The Father of My Children
26. Boxing Gym
27. Secret Sunshine
28. Bluebeard
29. Enter the Void
30. Inception
31. Alamar
32. The Oath
33. Exit Through the Gift Shop
34. World on a Wire
35. Animal Kingdom
36. Vincere
37. Daddy Longlegs
38. Lourdes
39. Life During Wartime
40. Fish Tank
41. Please Give
42. True Grit
43. Lebanon
44. The King's Speech
45. I Love You Phillip Morris
46. Last Train Home
47. Blue Valentine
48. Hadewijch
49. The Anchorage
50. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno
(tip: Hitfix)
