CINEMANIA:

Code 46 (2004, UK, Michael Winterbottom) Big Brother’s Brave New World

Complex and cold, intelligent and aloof, fascinating and off-putting: Code 46 is one of the year’s most interesting films, with images and ideas that will stick with you for days, even if the movie lacks the sort of emotional resonance we might hope for in our masterpieces. Code 46 offers us such a grim glimpse of the future that any sentient audience member will exit shouting: Go Back!

Director Michael Winterbottom, whose 24 Hour Party People was such a blast, steps lightly in the footsteps of great dystopians like Orwell and Huxley, and gives us his vision of the future, which he shows us to be insulated, pasteurized and rigidly-controlled.

Shaun of the Dead (2004, UK, Edgar Winter) AKA Harold and Kumar go to the Winchester Pub

In 1978 I saw THE zombie movie. For me, that viewing experience of George A. Romero’s brilliantly bloody Dawn of the Dead did such a stellar job of combining bitingly incisive and hilarious social satire with imagery of near-unrivaled gruesomeness that this film raised the bar for zombie flicks so high that most filmmakers in that genre have been content to limbo beneath it ever since.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004, USA, Kerry Conlan) AKA Retro Chick

The audience’s response to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is going to serve as a litmus test of sorts. The kind of people who complain about how many of the Coen Bros. films are defined by their stultifying movie artifice, set in a hermetically-sealed world with stereotypes in place of characters, are going to be the same folks who will be sure to hate Sky Captain.

Le Cercle Rouge (1970, France, Jean-Pierre Melville) AKA le Zen du Noir

Even before the lads of La Nouvelle Vague, fellas like Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffault, made it hip to reinvent American genre films, Jean-Pierre Melville was crafting intelligent variations on films noir while plying his trade outside of the French studio system.

The History of Rock ‘n Roll (1995, USA, numerous directors) AKA I Like It

Rock and roll is more than a specific and immediately identifiable sound, it is a sensibility. It is the soundtrack of our youthfulness (as opposed to youth), the rousing voice of our disaffection, anger and angst, as well as a celebration of peace, love and understanding. Rock ‘n roll is about challenging the established order, refusing to accept without question that this is the way it will and must be.

Cellular (2004, USA, David R. Ellis) AKA Call Me Anytime

The cell phone is a piece of technology whose charm completely eludes me. I am admittedly somewhat phone-phobic, in that I will only answer the thing when placed under extreme duress (“I’m in the bathroom! Pick up the damn phone!”), so you may dismiss my concerns as those of a neurotic Luddite, but I’m not sure if it is the machine’s potential for insincerity of its intrusiveness that bothers me most.