The Oughts brought us a couple more all round satisfying comedies but none that made me laugh harder than this. Written and directed by the boys who bring us South Park, Team America is puppet movie in the style of the mid-1960s TV series, The Thunderbirds, but with more explosions, profanity, fucking and puking. And puking. And puking. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about.
Like in South Park, politics gets in the way of a truly successful film by slowing it down to a crawl in the third act. I mean really. Do Parker and Stone truly believe that activist Hollywood players like Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin and Michael Moore pose as big a threat to world peace as Kim Jong-il or cowboy American foreign policy? The “useful idiot” stabbing the country in the back trope is weak-assed in the hands of rightwing ideologues. It’s absolutely unfunny in Team America.
Still, all is forgiven when I think back on the movie’s extended sex scene. I’m not sure there was a funnier sequence in movies this past decade than the puppet lovemaking that follows this puppet exchange: Lisa: Promise me you'll never die. Gary: You know I can't promise that. Lisa: If you did that, I would make love to you right now. Gary: I promise I'll never die.
#13) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Not being much of an action movie fan, I didn’t rush off to see the directorial debut of Shane Black. This is the guy who penned the first of one the most successful movie franchise’s, Lethal Weapon, as well as a handful of the 90s biggest duds including The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight. The spectacular flame-out of the last one seemed to have sent Black into exile for nearly a decade.
Only the presence of Robert Downey Jr. drew me out to see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and he did not disappoint nor did the movie. A partial send-up of the genre that made Black rich and once a big man in Hollywood (or as big as a screenwriter can possibly get), the movie is funnier, smarter and possesses a whole lot more heart than one usually sees in an action flick. Downey, of course, is great but has to be as Val Kilmer nearly steals the movie from him. Together they deliver the best buddy combo of the decade.
Even the happy, pat ending which, if you’re being charitable is merely a nod to the template Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was riffing on and not a tacked on, focus grouped, producer mandated, box office friendly letdown, could not rob the movie of its buoyant spirit. It’s unfortunate that such a stellar outing has only brought Shane Black back to what he was doing 10 years earlier: writing generic action movie scripts including Lethal Weapon 5. Coming in 2012 to a theatre near you!
#12) Lost in Translation (2003)
At 12 o’clock midnight on January 1st 2000 if you predicted that the Coppola to make a film which would ultimately appear on the decade’s countless Best Of lists was going to be Sofia, whatever establishment you were drinking in at the time probably laughed you out onto the street. The undeserving (and unwitting) symbol of the murder of The Godfather legacy, Francis Ford’s daughter had only just released her directorial feature film debut, The Virgin Suicides, to warm notices. Still, it was a leap of faith to think that she’d be playing with the big boys with her next movie.
Coppola -- Sofia that is -- made just that move with Lost in Translation. Poised, a subtle lightness of touch and a firm control of pacing and tone, it is masterful display both on the page and the screen. Multilayered discombobulation runs rampant through the movie, zigging when you thought it would be zagging, and Coppola never indulges in any visual tricks or showy director moves. The story is solid and its presentation is assured. It is the work of a much older artist.
Coppola -- and yes, I’m still talking about Sofia -- doesn’t hurt her cause by casting Bill Murray. Arguably the most creatively successful and interesting SNL alumnus (and I do mean that as a compliment), Murray magnificently embodies the disengagement that comes with both middle-aged disappointment or a long transcontinental flight into hyped up cultural that is not your own. It’s a fantastic performance in a great movie.
Even the missteps Sofia Coppola made in her next movie, Marie Antoinette, don’t dull my satisfaction with Lost in Translation or cause me to think it was simply a fluke. If directors take risks, sometimes they’ll fall flat. Probably a lesson she’s learned from the old man.
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This is the guy who penned the first of one the most successful movie franchise’s, Lethal Weapon, as well as a handful of the 90s biggest duds including The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight. The spectacular flame-out of the last one seemed to have sent Black into exile for nearly a decade.
It is the work of a much older artist.
