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Worthwhile films still found at multiplex
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Published: December 27, 2007
This is the time of year when most people are greeted with, "Happy Holidays," "Merry Christmas" or "Happy New Year." Not me. I'm often approached with the comment, "Why aren't there any good movies any more?"
When you've run a film school and produced a dozen or so movies, and you belong to such organizations as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the folks who hand out the Oscars), you're supposed to be an expert in these matters, even if deep inside your tastes and values aren't that different from anyone else's.
And yes, looking at claptrap like Underdog, Are We There Yet? or Fred Claus can indeed get depressing. Multiplexes may be filled with family members home for the holidays who cannot stand to be together within the four walls of their home for another single minute, but are they really having a good time at the movies?
It's easy to wax rhapsodic for the days when the likes of It's a Wonderful Life, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and a little gem like The Christmas Story filled the silver screen, but we conveniently forget that these films bombed when they were first released.
Box-office success and nostalgia are two different and separate realms, and it is certainly understandable, when seeing many contemporary films, to fondly recall the profanity-free, blood-and-gore-less and morally superior cinematic offerings of bygone years.
Yet we often doom a new generation of movies to a similar fate by staying away from the good films and flocking to the puerile, violent and stupid offerings that head up the list of top ticket-sellers each week.
Yes, Virginia, Hollywood does make some really fine films, and this is the perfect time to see them, even if you have to drive to Greensboro to do so. (The recently announced retirement of Films on Fourth and Cinema SECCA attests to our local unwillingness to support worthwhile moviemaking.)
The five or six big companies that now control pretty much all we hear and read and see in terms of packaged entertainment are obsessed with the bottom line, but there's one annual trade-off they're willing to make: prestige in place of filthy lucre.
So classy, intelligent and provocative films get made and then released just before the end of the year so that they can attract the attention of Oscar voters like me, and win one of those sexless golden statues that will result in, well, more filthy lucre.
But forget all that and just try to see some of the excellent movies that are out right now. No Country for Old Men may be too violent for some; Charlie Wilson's War could be considered too political; The Golden Compass may try too hard to lay out its complex plot (although it seems no more anti-church than anti-Cossack), but having seen them all, and dozens more of the year-end releases, I say they are all great movies.
I hope some of the smaller films will come here, too, including Persepolis, a fascinating black-and-white, animated film about a girl growing up in revolutionary Iran; Lars and the Real Girl, a Capra-esque tale about an entire town buying into the pretense that a local man's new girlfriend is real and not just an anatomically correct sex doll; and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a morally inspiring film about a man who loses all ability to move or speak, and discovers who he really is.
You may end up having to watch these and other quality films on video at home, or on your computer screen, or even (God forbid) on your cell phone, to which some of my daughter's friends unfortunately descend, but you do need to see them.
Because if these movies don't win any Academy Awards, and don't get seen in movie theaters or rented very often, they won't send much of that lucre back to the home office, and next year, there will be fewer of them.
So the next person who greets me with "Why aren't there any good movies any more?" is going to get, in response, "It's your fault. And by the way, Happy New Year."
■ Dale Pollock, a former dean of the School of Filmmaking at the N.C. School of the Arts, teaches film there now.
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