We are a little over 25% done with this decade! That’s a lot of movies! Oh lordy is that a lot of movies! If you were like me, narrowing down all the movies you saw into one list took more than a fair share of brain power when it came time to write up thine lists at the end of 2009. The following series will, at least for me, and maybe for you, help to alleviate that for when 2019 bows out. It’s good to do something like this! Every week, I’ll erase some of the red from that image up there, revealing the next in my list of the ten best films I’ve seen since 2010 began. These are not reviews! I’ve written those already. These are quick analyzations of why I think these films deserve to be on this list over the countless others that could have been on it! I fully expect you to denounce half the stuff I put up here! That’s what I want! Come with me! 

Also, cookies if you can guess what’s coming next. If you know me at all, it shouldn’t be too hard!

It goes without saying that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is my favorite working actor. Lately though, I’m starting to cool on him. It’s just been awhile since he really wowed me like in Mysterious Skin or (500) Days of Summer. I’m wondering if he’s just coasting on his stardom now, or if he’s just biding his time.

This is what I felt like before I saw Looper. And then I saw it. And… wait, you need me to spell this out for you?

Looper is an ingenious, twisting, witty, super violent slice of science fiction from the mind of Rian Johnson, who is the guy who basically put JoGo on the map to begin with. A labyrinthian time travel yarn to rival 12 Monkeys, Primer, and… why not, Back to the Future, Looper deals with heady themes about identity, fate, and whathaveyou, all wrapped in a bonecrunching action movie.

JoGo is surprisingly against type here. Sure he’s charming, handsome, and rocks a badass gun. But he’s also arrogant, sexist, and a total friggin’ jerk! It’s a great change of pace for him, and hopefully he continues to explore that side of him. Bruce Willis is just as hardened a badass as we expect a gun toting character played by Bruce Willis to be. But he’s also a tortured soul on a mission that tests him and drives him to despicable acts. Emily Blunt is a great warming presence as the women who quickly realizes that she has more to do with the chaos than she thought. And Jeff Daniels is just awesome!

The action is bloody and brutal, the dialogue stings, and it looks just sick for a micro budget like this. It is a wholly original, bold vision from guys who could have very easily done something soulless but guaranteed to be a hit. They didn’t. Thank God!

Iron Man 3 

After fighting an army of aliens, going toe-to-toe with nordic gods, and flying a nuke through a wormhole into space and almost dying in the process, Tony Stark is feeling a little out of sorts. He can’t sleep. He’s prone to panic attacks. He takes to spending countless hours in his basement, constantly building different types of Iron Man suits. His relationship with Pepper Potts is, understandably, on the rocks. All this would be enough to make a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist drop all his things, pop the cork off a bottle of Jameson, and call it a day. Were it not a for an emerging terrorist calling himself The Mandarin systematically blowing the hell out of America, that’s exactly what Stark would do. And, on top of this, an old associate with a grudge has begun experimenting with a biotechnology called Extremis that has some pretty crazy side effects. And since he’s an ego driven loon, Stark inadvertently makes himself a target of The Mandarin’s, leaving him, literally, out in the cold, cut off from all his gizmos and toys. But when Pepper is threatened, and the full extent of The Mandarin’s reach is revealed, Stark decides to do something he’s never done before. Go on the offensive!

The biggest hurdle that Iron Man 3 had to overcome was justifying a solo effort after The Avengers saw the big team-up. And while there was a moment right before the big finale where I was thinking, “You know who they should probably be calling right about now? Captain America.”, it does a fine job of capitalizing on the events of The Avengers and painting those events in a meaningful light. There were consequences and ramifications to the Battle of New York, and while the film dables in the global extent of those ramifications, it wisely focuses on how those ramifications shattered the world of one man. And, on top of this, it expands on the other worldly phenomenons that Stark’s world has been exposed to. As one character put it, “Ever since that guy with the hammer fell out of the sky, subtlety’s kinda had its day.”

That was one of the things that, in retrospect, bugged me about the first two Iron Man movies. Regardless of how good they were, they kind of ignored the crazy that the rest of Avengers ensemble was privy to. I mean, it makes sense. Marvel didn’t want to turn up the fantasy element too quickly (even though they went from 0 to 100 overnight with Thor), and, let’s be real, every superhero movie on the planet at that time was trying to be The Dark Knight. It’s a real pleasure to see that this one doesn’t eschew those wild elements. Why should it? Aliens just attacked New York. And in this one, the crazy is tantamount. Dude’s regrow limbs. A legion of Iron Man suits do epic battle with a legion of super powered mutants. A dude breathes fire! Yeah, you read that right! A dude breathes friggin’ fire! Out of his friggin’ mouth.

And a good deal of the credit has to go writer Shane Black who takes the story in wildly surprising directions. A lot of fanboys are, apparently, pissed with some of the directions that Black takes the characters. I’m not at all familiar with the arcs that these characters had gone through in the comics, but I’m pretty positive that it’s not like the arcs that they go through here. It’s pretty daring what Black does here, and unlike of a lot of risks that deviate from source material, it works like gang busters.

And the action. Hot damn, the action! Finally, we have an Iron Man movie that can stand with other superhero movies of its class in terms of sheer excitement. It goes without saying that the first two weren’t so hot in this regard. They never really had that many crowd pleasing moments and the finales were always abrupt, anticlimactic battles against bigger variations of an Iron Man suit. Here, the insane attack on Stark’s mansion that featured heavily in the trailers is only the tip of the iceberg. Shane Black, known for his inventive action in the likes of Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight, brings a lot of ingenuity to the action here, as in one particularly awesome scene where Stark has only one Iron Man gauntlet, one Iron Man boot, and an uzi. It’s nothing compared to the second-to-none airborne rescue scene, but it’s still something to behold.

No one writes dialogue like Shane Black, and no one speak’s Shane Black’s dialogue like Robert Downey Jr. The two of them just jive; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was no fluke. Downey is at his witty best here, displaying a side of Stark that we’ve never really seen before. He’s vulnerable here, susceptible to, well, human weakness for what seems like the first time. Downey is awesome, and his rapport with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper is at an all time best. Supporting him are Don Cheadle as Rhodes/Iron Patriot who actually has something to contribute to proceedings this time. Guy Pearce is pretty great as Aldrich Killian, the guy heading up Extremis, as is Rebecca Hall in a small role as the biotech’s creator. And Ben Kingsley is at his best as The Mandarin. If you’re gonna have Iron Man’s chief nemesis blowing shit up left and right, you might as well get one of the best actors alive to play him.

Iron Man 3, unlike so many other huge blockbusters, deserves every cent it has earned. It’s a bonafide crowd pleaser in addition to be a legitimately great movie. It is easily the best of the Iron Man films, probably better than all of the Phase 1 films, and is worthy of standing with The Avengers as Marvel Studio’s chief bragging chip. Never mind that it starts off Phase 2 with a palpable bang! If Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Guardians of the Galaxy can even come close to this level of quality, than the build up to Avengers 2 will be welcome and worth it!

ON A WHOLE NEW LEVEL!!!

Welcome Alfonso. We have missed you! We’ll get out of your way and let you do your thing now.

Ok, serious now. This looks great. It’s one of the best filmmakers working today being given the budget and star power he deserves. The only thing that worries me is that it looks very heavy on the CG. I mean, it’s not like he could actually shoot in space, but I’m hoping this trailer is not indicative of the movie as a whole and what we get is more of the piercing intimacy of Children of Men. Either way, I’m there on opening weekend.

Daniel Lugo is self-described doer. He has completely bought into the self help craze that you can be anything you want to be and the universe will give it to you if you believe hard enough. Unfortunately, despite his believing really hard, the universe hasn’t given shit to Lugo, who holds down the same deadbeat job at the Sun Gym, training those he deems to be his intellectual and motivational lessors in the ways of getting buff. Fed up with his lot in life and ready to grab the bull by the proverbial horns, he enlists the help of two fellow bodybuilders in a get rich quick scheme. These are Adrian Doorbal, a steroid abuser (which has rendered him impotent) with a taste for plus sized women, and Paul Doyle, a fresh out of jail meathead who has traded in an addiction to cocaine for an addiction to Christianity… and cocaine. The scheme? Kidnap and extort (read: torture) a douchebag millionaire out of his fortunes. Remarkably, they pull it off, but like all misguided dumbasses, once is just never enough. Soon, these three losers find themselves hopelessly in over their heads as their crimes escalate in severity and the authorities close in.

Based on a series of magazine articles by Pete Collins, which themselves depicted the true exploits of the “Sun Gym Gang”, that Pain & Gain is the best written Michael Bay movie should come as no shock. It boasts a “gotta see it to believe it” story, larger than life characters, and, above all, a grounding in reality that Bay has never even touched. And it’s funny. At times it’s really funny. I’m a sucker for yarns about dumb as bricks criminals, and this is a well made yarn about dumb as bricks criminals. The tone is consistent throughout, gleefully smiling along as these scumbags reap what they sew. It’s just that, the tone is so completely wrong for this story. I’ll talk about that later, but, in a nutshell, when the full escalation of the Sun Gym Gang’s crimes reaches its peak, the comedic tone ceases to be funny and just becomes flat out mean.

It doesn’t help that the performances are almost all consistent with their over the topness. That’s not to say that they are bad though. Indeed, some turn in career best work. Mark Wahlberg is pretty doofy as the “brains” of the gang, Lugo. Wahlberg is always at his best when he’s playing dumb and out of his depth. And just like in Boogie Nights and Ted, he’s deceptively charming here in his idiocy. Well, he would be, if his character weren’t, at the same time, so despicable. Wahlberg, at the very least, does a good job of balancing it all out so that we can, to a certain extent, root for him, and then smile in satisfaction as his world implodes on him.

Anthony Mackie is delightfully clueless as Doorbal. He’s the guy who’s just kind of there, and doesn’t really know why. He doesn’t necessarily agree with the crazy shit he and Lugo and Doyle are doing, but he figures he might as well go along with it since he’s already made it this far. Mackie hasn’t been pulling the “I was in The Hurt Locker too” card all that well since… he was in The Hurt Locker. But he does fine work here.

The real star here is Dwayne Johnson doing what is arguably his best work, uh, ever. He’s just as goofy as the rest of his cronies, displaying a healthy amount of his rock (hehe) solid comedic timing. See him coked out of his mind, and it’s only funnier. But he also is the subject of some heady moral and dramatic character beats. He’s the only one to ever voice any sort of doubt about what the gang is doing. And as the violence ramps up, he suddenly finds himself at odds with the rest of his “friends”. It’s great work from Johnson, who really internalizes this guy’s conflict as he realizes he’s gone against everything he promised himself he’d uphold, and I hope he capitalizes on it the best way he can.

Tony Shaloub is deliciously detestable as Victor Kershaw, the self-made millionaire that these guys rough up and Ed Harris does his best Steve McQueen as Ed Du Bois III, the private detective who takes the case when the Miami Police Department deem it too absurd to follow up on.

The biggest surprise, though, is Michael Bay, who shows an uncharacteristic restraint for most of the movie. Sure, his usual tropes are here. You still have the overblown slo-mo shots as dudes epically stand up. You still have the absurd levels of color saturation. Seriously, I don’t think Miami looks like that in real life. And you still have the almost offensive sexualization of pretty much every woman who graces the frame with her presence. But, Bay’s characters here are (in all likelihood) a bunch of misogynist pigs, so maybe his own misogyny here is just a way of showing how these guys see the world. That’s a stretch, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt in this case.

But he shows a level head and steady hand when it comes to the comedy. One of the more novel ideas of the picture is that every character is a narrator at various points. So, you’ll have Lugo’s inner monologue waxing poetic about one thing or another, and then you’ll have Doyle’s inner monologue completely contradicting what was just said. And Doorbal’s conscience takes over for a bit, and then Kershaw’s, and Du Bois, and so it goes. It’s a recipe for disaster, but Bay manages to make it all work together. Indeed, some of the best laughs of the movie come from these narrations.

And the first hour and 40 minutes of the movie are very funny. It’s just these guys misguidedly beating up on Kershaw, who is such a scumbag that it’s easy to root against him. And then, when Kershaw gets away and tries to hunt them down, it’s just wild antics as these delusional ”criminal geniuses” just keep acting stupid. And why is it so funny? Because it’s, largely, pretty innocent. Low stakes, low risk, high reward. It’s just bad people doing bad things to other bad people, but without any major harm done. OK, sure, you can say the extortion of millions of dollars is major harm, but it’s a harm that you as the movie audience can easily chortle at.

But then, suddenly, in the last 30 minutes, the movie remembers that it’s a true crime story, and not only that, but a true crime story where people died, and died badly. And the movie doesn’t shy away from showing the gory details. The tone takes a abrupt turn into hyper dark territory, which would be fine, except Bay is still giving off an air that it’s all still pretty funny. He still will have captions shooting into the frame making a joke about the proceedings and stop to laugh at certain character’s misfortune. And it’s here that the movie not only lost me, but ruined everything I had liked about it till then.

See, the fact that it’s a true story makes it very hard to laugh at this stuff. And when you are laughing hysterically for an hour and 40, only to have the rug pulled out from under your feet as you realize that you were laughing at the awful events that left people dead and ruined the lives of many others, it just makes you feel dirty. I felt guilty at the end of Pain & Gain, like I had partaken in some heinous school yard prank. All the goodwill the rest of the movie had built up prior to those 30 minutes had completely evaporated, and all I was left with was a foul taste in my mouth. I hated myself for laughing, and I hated Bay for crafting enough of a smokescreen to ensure that I did laugh.

And, for those reasons, despite the fact that Pain & Gain is, on a purely objective level, Michael Bay’s best movie, it is, without a doubt, my least favorite of his. Say what you will about Transformers or The Island or Bad Boys. At least I didn’t feel like I was to blame for something after watching those. They are shitty, loud, busy, popcorn flicks, but I don’t feel guilty after paying to see them. I did feel guilty after watching Pain & Gain. I can’t figure out if Bay was trying to hold up a mirror in an effort to show us how desensitized we’ve become to this shit (or… something like that), or if we are the victims of the ultimate joke of the film. Either way, I don’t appreciate it.

On her 18th birthday, India Stoker’s father dies in a horrific car accident, leaving her alone with her unstable mother, Evelyn. Things take a turn for the worse (read: creepy) when, at her father’s wake, India’s uncle Charlie appears and immediately ingratiates himself in her life and the life of her mother. Evelyn is all for having a man in the house again, but India greets this new development with an ice cold chagrin. As he begins to make himself at home, India begins to suspect that something is amiss with her new father figure. And as past transgressions and fresh horrors manifest themselves, India begins to develop an intense infatuation with Charlie, and through that, awakens inhibitions within herself that sends everyone’s world into a tail spin.

Written by fledgling scribe Wentworth Miller, Stoker takes its basic premise in unique directions. Unfortunately, it’s all just a little undercooked. India is well developed and a great foil for the story to center around. The same cannot be said about the rest of the cast. Evelyn is just your typical crazed matriarch. India’s classmates are the usual horndog bullies, and there’s a great aunt who shows up that doesn’t really add anything substantial to the proceedings. But the biggest flaw in the characterization is the lack of it with Uncle Charlie. His character is all mysteries and foggy backstory, and yet his motivations for what he’s doing are never really given enough time to really come to light. He’s here because of (spoilers) India just… because. Not much more than that.

Luckily, the cast almost universally makes it work. Mia Wasikowska puts up a good show as India, grimacing almost throughout the whole movie. Her arc through the film is very convincingly portrayed as she goes from quiet anti-socialite to… something else far more sinister. Wasikowska has always excelled at playing very mature, very complex young people, and her work here isn’t about to break that tradition.

The script isn’t doing him any favors, but Matthew Goode is quite the intimidating presence as Charlie. He does such a good job at selling the mysteriousness and creepiness of his character that the writing flaws surrounding him aren’t all that noticeable until you really start to think about it. Through him, we really get a picture of a guy with very unclear motives and a carefully hidden violent streak.  We also get the sense that the movie could go, literally, anywhere. My friend who I saw this with theorized that he was a cyborg for a good portion of the film, and had that been the case, it would have made a good deal of sense. Goode is good (HA!) at playing ambiguous villains and he keeps the spirit alive here.

Jackie Weaver is pretty effective as the freaked out great aunt and Dermot Mulroney is a warming presence in brief flashbacks as India’s father. Lucas Till and Alden Ehrenreich are appropriately douchey as brutish classmates of India’s and Phyllis Somerville is memorable in small role as the Stoker’s housekeeper.

If there is one person to nitpick, it’s Nicole Kidman as Evelyn. It’s not that she’s bad. It’s just that we’ve seen Kidman do this crazed woman thing many times before. It was never that good to begin with, and, honestly, I’m getting a bit sick of it.

But it’s because of director Chan-Wook that the movie succeeds at all. Like Oldboy, Stoker lives and dies on its atmosphere. And the atmosphere here is top notch. Chan-Wook takes the familial drama story and stages it like a Hitchcock film. A ridiculously twisted Hitchcock film. The whole movie takes place in a relatively large mansion, complete with vast grounds perfect for burying secrets and cellars with swinging, single lightbulb lamps. The level of tension is kept at a fever pitch. At any point, I was on the edge of my seat ready for something to jump out and scream boo. But it never happened. The movie is far too good for that.

Chan-Wook is just a master at keeping you guessing. Although I sort of knew where the story was going to go, how it got there caught me completely off guard. Why isn’t Charlie eating anything? How did India’s father really die? What is really up with her mother? And for that matter… What time period does this movie take place in? That last one is worth mentioning, since it adds to the mystery of everything in a remarkable way. The Stoker home evokes that of a English manor in the country. India dresses like she lives in the 50s. Evelyn dances around to Nancy Sinatra while India plays chiefly classical music on the piano. And yet, her classmates are all 20th century fuck-ups and what-have-yous. I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading too much into this one aspect of the film that confused me, but I really liked that it confused me. What’s wrong with that?

One thing that deserves special mention is the music. Most of the score was written by Clint Mansell, and it’s just as atmospheric as anything he’s ever done. It even utilizes some electronic elements which sound just dope! And then Philip Glass contributed a song that comes up in a pivotal scene, and it’s fantastic. And then the song that’s played in the final moments of the film is simply incredible. Written by solo violinist Emily Wells, the song has been playing regularly on my iTunes since I heard it. We heard the first bit of lyrics come through the speakers, and then the screen went to black, and my friends and I were all like… “DAMN!”

Stoker is currently on my short list for Best of 2013. I realize that’s a friggin’ dumb thing to say at this point in the year, but I’d say it stands a good chance of making the grade. It’s a memorable, stripped down, seriously intense slice of Hitchcokian bravura. Underwritten supporting characters hold it back from achieving true greatness, but the strength of the performances, coupled with Park Chan-Wook’s aesthetic sensibilities make for a fantastic experience. This family is beyond messed up, and I certainly wouldn’t like to have dinner with them. But I sure did enjoy my time with them.

We are a little over 25% done with this decade! That’s a lot of movies! Oh lordy is that a lot of movies! If you were like me, narrowing down all the movies you saw into one list took more than a fair share of brain power when it came time to write up thine lists at the end of 2009. The following series will, at least for me, and maybe for you, help to alleviate that for when 2019 bows out. It’s good to do something like this! Every week, I’ll erase some of the red from that image up there, revealing the next in my list of the ten best films I’ve seen since 2010 began. These are not reviews! I’ve written those already. These are quick analyzations of why I think these films deserve to be on this list over the countless others that could have been on it! I fully expect you to denounce half the stuff I put up here! That’s what I want! Come with me! 

Also, cookies if you can guess what’s coming next. If you know me at all, it shouldn’t be too hard!

Drive came out of nowhere and floored me! Here was a director I had only heard about fleetingly and the guy from that dumb Nicolas Sparks movie that everyone loved for some reason. And it was an artsy fartsy take on a pretty standard crime story. It didn’t look all that. And then everyone who saw said it was basically sex, and I’m almost dangerously impressionable, so of course I went and saw it. And what I saw was not artsy fartsy. it was not a pretty standard crime story. That guy from that dumb Nicolas Sparks movie that everyone loves was really friggin’ awesome!

Drive is a so good because it doesn’t ever try to over complicate it’s deceptively simple story which provides more than enough avenues for Nicolas Winding Refn to allow his characters to breathe and exist. Ryan Gosling’s Driver seems to be the bleach blonde male version of Lisbeth Salander, but he is anything but a cyborg. He’s a super cool, seemingly detached wheelman, who is capable of mind boggling brutality when those he cares for are threatened. And let’s be real, when it’s Carey Mulligan who’s threatened, and a seriously intimidating Albert Brooks who’s doing the threatening, who would stomp on a dude’s head until it’s just a puddle of mush.

Oh yeah, the violence in this movie is almost obscene in how graphic it is. It comes in spurts and never lasts long, but it stays with you long after the movie is over. I haven’t looked a straight razor the same way since I saw this film. Blood. Oh, sweet jesus, the blood!

But it’s director Refn’s act of mashing up all kinds of different genres and aesthetics that makes the Drive the memorable piece of work that it is! It’s very old fashioned, evoking the crime thrillers of a bygone era like Bullit and Dirty Harry. It’s also exceedingly modern, with all its sheen and pizzaz. It’s very european, with its techno-pop soundtrack and eclectic color palette. And yet it’s also very american, with its cast of lowlifes and fleet of muscle cars. It’s a mutant of a movie, but it’s a wicked brew of all kinds of awesome that, through some otherworldly alchemy, becomes something unforgettable.

Well, I am back from London. Nothing I could write here could adequately express how incredible an experience it was. So many awesome people, so much theater, so much history and culture to take in. It was, without a doubt, the best time of my life.

So, let me tell you a bit about it!

The program I was at, The British American Drama Academy, specializes in conservatory training for Americans itching to get a taste of the British superiority when it comes to theater. There were 43 other people in the program with me, 14 of which had already been there for an entire semester before I got there. Here are a few of them.

Ignore the mustache. I’ll explain in a bit.

From left to right, that’s Jesse and Justy and Max and Sam. I lived with these guys. They made my experience. I could not have wished for a better group of guys to live with. Flat 45 forever!!

And this was the group of kids I had class with. This picture was taken when we decided to punk our stage combat teacher, Philip (the guy with the beard and no smile) by all wearing stripes. He was… not amused.

Ok, let’s see if I can do this. Top row, from left to right: Adrienne, Amanda, Sam, Ali, Margarita, Karisa, Amos, Kristen, moi, and Jabree. Bottom row, from left to right: Alyssa, Chantel, Samantha, Emily, and Joanna. I learned sooooooo much from these people! It was great!

And this was the group of people I worked with on my end of term production. We did a production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding, which was done in conjunction with two other shows, put on by the rest of the group. Those were The Eumenides and a show no one’s ever heard of called Hamlet.

Ok, here we go again. From left to right: Adrienne, Amos, Jacky, Max, Kate, Katie, Hayley, Liz, Emily, Tsebiyah, Ali, Rob, Tana, and Gabrielle. We had a great director, a great designer, a terrible movement director (you can’t win em’ all), and a great starting concept which we built on through out the whole rehearsal process. It was incredibly fulfilling.

And that’s what the mustache was for. We are all a bunch of American 20-something year olds. One of us, at least, had to look spanish.

And now that you’ve met a couple of the people… meet the rest!

I’m not giving you all the names. That’s just crazy!

Now, since I was studying theater in London, I was able to see a crap ton of things. Some of the things I saw had famous faces in them. Others had nobody that anyone had ever heard of. Some were in huge, proscenium arch stages. Some were in tiny little black boxes that could barely sit fifty people. And it was all worth seeing. I had my problems with a lot of the shows I saw, but never did I regret making the trip to the theater afterwards.

I saw far too much to go in depth on everything, so here are some choice tidbits.

I don’t know what the best play I saw was. I know that it’s between two.

The Effect is a new play by Lucy Prebble, who wrote Enron and created Secret Diary of a Call Girl. I was super excited to see this because Billie Piper had a big role in it, and I’m a huge Doctor Who fanboy, so I basically love her. Anyway, The Effect is brilliant. It centers around a drug trial for anti-depressants, and how two of the patients start to fall in love with each other during it. The thing is, they don’t know if it’s real or if it’s a side effect of the drug. It’s a remarkable piece of work that not only offers up poignant and well developed characters with interesting and heartfelt relationships, but delves pretty heavily into the science of psychiatry, brain chemistry and drug therapy. What’s impressive is that the science is completely accesible to someone who knows literally nothing about it. Someone like me. I don’t know if my favorite production. It’s definitely my favorite script, but my favorite production might have to go to something else.

At first, I was dubious about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. It was a theatrical adaptation of a book that seemed completely ill suited for any sort of adaptation, let alone one for theater. Never mind that the book was pretty scarring for me when I first saw it. But, a lot of people who had been in London longer than me said that it was a big hit when it played at The National Theater and for good reason, because it apparently was incredible. And a lot of my friends were going to go see it, and I didn’t want to be the guy who was anti-social so I tagged along. And, yeah. It was stunning! The lead, and bear in mind that I saw the understudy when I went, was sensational. The role of Christopher demands soooooo much and the guy I saw delivered the fucking goods! The production design was easily the coolest I saw there, turning the Apollo Theater into a vibrant, dynamic, high tech mindscrew complete with crazy projections, lights and sounds, and some confetti at the very end for good effect. GAHD! I loved it!

After that, I don’t even know where to go; there was so much. I saw both Helen Mirren and Judi Dench light up the stage in two different plays. Mirren teamed up with Peter Morgan again and reprised Queen Elizabeth in The Audience. It was a series of vignettes that concern the Queen’s weekly meetings with the Prime Minister. It spans the decades, showcasing pretty much every PM that she has dealt with, with the exception of Tony Blair. And yes, that means Maggie Thatcher is a character here. They, apparently, changed the script in the wake of her death. I didn’t get to see that, but it’s still cool to think about. It was a fantastic show and Mirren was sensational. Dench teamed up with Ben Whishaw and writer John Logan (aka, a Skyfall reunion) in the new play Peter and Alice. It concerns a real life meeting between Alice Hargreves and Peter Davies, aka the original Alice and Wonderland and the original Peter Pan. Dench and Whishaw were great and there is fleeting beauty in Logan’s script, but the whole thing is woefully overcooked, coming off as cheap and melodramatic as opposed to realizing the subtlety and nuanced characters that defined Logan’s Red.

And the rest was still pretty good. Since it’s London, I saw a bunch of Billy’s work. That’s Shakespeare, for all the five year olds who read this site. Mark Rylance headlined a production of Richard III and Twelfth Night, which also had Stephen Fry in it. James McAvoy led an absurdly violent take on Macbeth, and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance of The Winter’s Tale was memorable as well.

And let’s see… The Magistrate with John Lithgow, Once which is the musical based on the movie and not as good, Gruesome Playground Injuries with terrible American accents, One Man, Two Guvnors which had me gagging from laughter, Les Misérables which was exactly what I expected, Port which was exceptionally British, The Master and the Margarita which was… I don’t even know, Feast which felt like a big ol’ party, Our Country’s Good which made me think I was back in high school, Monkey Bars where adults spoke children’s words verbatim, and Quartermaine’s Terms with Rowan Atkinson. And that’s not at all everything I saw. I confess, I forget everything I saw. It was a lot!

Like I said, this isn’t enough. You’re probably sitting there, reading this, all “Oh, this kid had a great time acting all refined and British, but I bet he’s glad to be back in America where things are fat.” and “Oh, theater. How dignified. No butler. We’ll take our brandy and cigars on the veranda this evening; the weather’s lovely.” First off, nobody talks like that. And secondly, you’re wrong. It’s been a week, so I can safely say I’ve acclimated back to these Yankee shores (shut up Dad, I’m not complaining), but I want nothing more than to go back to the shitty showers and washing machines at the Landward, to mess up some old people’s night at trivia every Monday, to get up at 5 in the morning on a Saturday and wait in the front of a theater in the bitter cold for 4 hours to get tickets for that night, to hop on the bus and hit up the Lexington, and then hit up Helens for 4 am shawarma afterwards, to hop on a train to Paris for a random weekend because I could, to sit in a masterclass with Fiona Shaw and learn more from her in an hour and a half than I have from most other teachers, to pop into The National Portrait Gallery or The National Gallery or the Tate Modern or The V&A and not spend a pence, to lounge in Flat 45 talking bullshit with my flatmates, to dress to the nines and act incredibly self-righteous with the rest of the guys because, unlike BADA School for Girls, the BADA School for MEN is a dignified order, to waste away the hours reading scripts, to waste away the hours at The Earl of Camden after a day of class, to fret about lines and Prospero and The Chairs and stage falls and Chris Cook’s papers and being earnest and duende, to joke around with any of the other 43 people I was with, to… well, you get the idea.

We are a little over 25% done with this decade! That’s a lot of movies! Oh lordy is that a lot of movies! If you were like me, narrowing down all the movies you saw into one list took more than a fair share of brain power when it came time to write up thine lists at the end of 2009. The following series will, at least for me, and maybe for you, help to alleviate that for when 2019 bows out. It’s good to do something like this! Every week, I’ll erase some of the red from that image up there, revealing the next in my list of the ten best films I’ve seen since 2010 began. These are not reviews! I’ve written those already. These are quick analyzations of why I think these films deserve to be on this list over the countless others that could have been on it! I fully expect you to denounce half the stuff I put up here! That’s what I want! Come with me! 

Also, cookies if you can guess what’s coming next. If you know me at all, it shouldn’t be too hard! 

There are probably better movies than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 on this list. Certainly, there are movies more worthy of being on this list than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. But, there is not a single film on this list, or so far this decade, that meant more to me than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. 

As an ending, it hits all the notes that a finale must hit. It’s rousing, epic, intimate, touching, funny, and looks great. Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint all turn in their best work of the series, bolstered by brilliant supporting work from the likes of Ralph Finnes, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, and Matthew Lewis. Alan Rickman brought the house DOWN as he dealt beautifully with Snape’s big moment.

But in terms of what I felt, where my mind was, and all that, the impact of Harry Potter 7.2 cannot be adequately expressed. Harry Potter, as a story, and as a person, were probably one of, if not the, biggest pop culture element of my childhood had bowed out of the picture with this final installment. And I know I’m not alone in the world when I say that. It was a devastating, yet uplifting moment, seeing the Hogwarts express pulling away for the last time. It was a bitter but sweet final page in a huge chapter of my life. I mean, when was the last time you waited by the door for a new book from Amazon to arrive and then locked yourself in your room and didn’t leave until it was finished. When was the last time that a movie came out that caused you and all your friends to drop everything, dress up, and wait in line for midnight screenings, after which they took to facebook bemoaning the death of their childhood. Being the kid who grew up with Harry Potter, let me tell you that being wrapped up in all the mania was really cool.

So, yeah. That’s why Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is on this list. Forget that it is impeccably made, superbly acted, and exciting beyond belief. It marked an important part in my life, and I will always hold it in the highest regard because of that.

We are a little over 25% done with this decade! That’s a lot of movies! Oh lordy is that a lot of movies! If you were like me, narrowing down all the movies you saw into one list took more than a fair share of brain power when it came time to write up thine lists at the end of 2009. The following series will, at least for me, and maybe for you, help to alleviate that for when 2019 bows out. It’s good to do something like this! Every week, I’ll erase some of the red from that image up there, revealing the next in my list of the ten best films I’ve seen since 2010 began. These are not reviews! I’ve written those already. These are quick analyzations of why I think these films deserve to be on this list over the countless others that could have been on it! I fully expect you to denounce half the stuff I put up here! That’s what I want! Come with me! 

Also, cookies if you can guess what’s coming next. If you know me at all, it shouldn’t be too hard!

So, about that…

By now, it’s been quite a few weeks since that last post in this series. Here’s what happened. The first week I missed, I was preparing for auditions for end of term productions. Well, those went well, and now I’m working on a production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding with a great director and a company of fantastic peers. And then the second week… well, would you write a post when you spent the first part in Florence hanging with your brother and gorging yourself on amazing food, and then spending the rest in Amsterdam doing… well, yeah. And then rehearsals got crazy, and now I think I might have the flu…

Anyway, let’s go.

Black Swan blew my mind when I first saw it. I was on break and watching it in a NYC theater. Dear God, I have never been the same! Of course, I sort of knew what I was getting into, but man, I wasn’t prepared for that.

First off, Natalie Portman. I mean, I’d liked her in some things. I thought she was pretty good in V For Vendetta and even managed to maintain some dignity in the swamp of bad acting that was the Star Wars prequels. But holy shit, did she bring it here! As Nina, she deftly and brilliantly presents an image of an artist slowly descending into insanity in pursuit of perfection. So good she was, that she still weighs heavy on the mind a good two years after I first saw the film. I don’t think I’ve seen a performance on screen as engrossing and invigorating since.

And what director Darren Aronofsky does with lighting, camera angles, and a clever use of mirrors is astounding, expertly creating an atmosphere of pure dread. You are going mad with Nina as the things she sees become more and more messed up. Throw in superb supporting performances from Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, and Barbara Hershey, and a hot as hell lesbian sex scene, and it’s a small wonder why this thing ends up where it does!

We are a little over 25% done with this decade! That’s a lot of movies! Oh lordy is that a lot of movies! If you were like me, narrowing down all the movies you saw into one list took more than a fair share of brain power when it came time to write up thine lists at the end of 2009. The following series will, at least for me, and maybe for you, help to alleviate that for when 2019 bows out. It’s good to do something like this! Every week, I’ll erase some of the red from that image up there, revealing the next in my list of the ten best films I’ve seen since 2010 began. These are not reviews! I’ve written those already. These are quick analyzations of why I think these films deserve to be on this list over the countless others that could have been on it! I fully expect you to denounce half the stuff I put up here! That’s what I want! Come with me! 

Also, cookies if you can guess what’s coming next. If you know me at all, it shouldn’t be too hard!

This is proving a very hard series to keep up consistently. BADA is proving to be quite the workload…

Anyway. Superheroes!

The Avengers rocks! There is no better way to put it. Five films of build up led to this, the biggest, most badass, most insane superhero movie ever made. The key to its success (apart from the brilliant production design by Marvel Studios, the incredibly talented cast, the awesome action and effects) can be boiled down into three words. Joss! Bossman! Whedon!

Marvel and Disney took a big gamble picking Whedon to helm the flagship of their new franchise. Up until this point, Whedon was beloved by fanboys for such things as Buffy, Angel and, above all, Firefly and Serenity. Outside of his dedicated legion of followers, he wasn’t all that well known. Well, if 200 million dollars in one weekend is any indication, those days are far behind him.

Whedon understands better than anyone working in the industry how to balance an eclectic cast of characters so that there is no one person that overpowers everyone else. He continuously frustrates your expectations when it comes to women, always creating strong, confident, independent women. And he fully respects, like Nolan, the importance of character interactions and dialogue over sheer balls to the wall action.

Not to say that their isn’t action to be had. Oh no no no no. The finale in New York is probably the most epic battle ever set in the big apple. High praise when you consider the other options. So many elements get thrown into the melting pot to deliver a rousing, chaotic, titanic spectacle of war.

But it’s the script and the dynamics between Tony Stark, Steve Rodgers, Bruce Banner, Thor, Natasha Romanoff, Nick Fury and Loki are what sends it far over the top. The Avengers has a script worthy of any awards contendor, and here it is, in a big, tentpole blockbuster. Such is the paradox of life.

Can Phase 2 start already?