The MacGuffin

A year before he directed All About Eve, Joseph L. Mankiewicz made , which landed him the Oscar for best director and best screenplay. It unabashedly falls within the category of Woman’s Picture, as it deals with the nature of female rivalries and how they can affect marriage. Three women—Deborah Bishop, Lora Mae Hollingsway, and Rita Phipps—constantly compare themselves to Addie Ross, a longtime friend and rival. By doing so, the women cause the weaknesses in their marriages to grow until the possibility of failure seems likely.

I saw that everyone else was doing a top 10 for 2011 and wanted in on the fun, but then I realized I didn’t actually see all that many new movies in the theater last year. It turns out that I’ll see anything for a review, but when it comes to viewing for my own pleasure, I tend to stick to older movies or weird stuff. So, I’ve decided to create a top ten new-to-me list. These are movies that I saw during 2011 that I had never seen before that, for one reason or another, impressed the hell out of me. While I did have fun compiling this list, I need to keep better track of what I’m watching from now on. There was a lot of “What the hell did I watch last year?” going on. (I have started a spreadsheet for 2012.) What were your new-to-you favorites last year?

In Name Only (1939)

Wealthy businessman Alec Walker (Cary Grant) is unhappily married to Maida (Kay Francis), a schemer who married him for money, not love. He learned of her deceit shortly after they were married, but she has his parents and society fooled into thinking she is the perfect, loving wife. Alec has long decided to stop pretending he is happy, so Maida is trying hard to get his family and friends to control his behavior. While he is out riding one day, he meets Julie Eden (Carole Lombard), a young widow who charms him with her forthright and humorous nature. He begins to court her, but she pulls back when she discovers that he is married. Alec asks Maida for a divorce, and she pretends to acquiesce, but in the end, she refuses him, and informs Julie that she will not let him go without a scandal. Julie cannot risk exposing her daughter to a trial, so she asks Alec to let her go. All three characters struggle to get what they want, but only two of them are willing to address the moral ramifications of those desires. Who does Grant end up with? Watch and find out!

I watched (1932) for the first time at the Grand Illusion Cinema the other night, and now I can’t stop thinking about it or the director Ernst Lubitsch. He’s beloved around my house; my husband loves The Shop Around the Corner and my favorite is To Be or Not To Be. (I have a life-long obsession with Jack Benny. At age five I could do two impressions: Mae West and Jack Benny. Yes, I was bullied.) A lot gets bandied about regarding “The Lubitsch Touch” and what that is. For me, it’s where what you don’t see is just as important as what you do.

I’ve been a big fan of women’s pictures of the thirties, forties, and fifties since the first moment I saw The Women (1939) by George Cukor when I was a kid. Films about the lives of women appealed to me, not just because I would be one someday, but because their stories revolved around different subject matter than movies targeted to men. Family, romance, social rules, scandal, and drama were all open for analysis. I love the heroic gestures of a good western, but I also love the more down-to-earth subject matter of a good weepy drama. Not only do these films give us great stories, but they provide glimpses into what it means to be a woman, the rules we are supposed follow, and the punishments life metes out if we don’t.

Considering the pedigree of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo—a fiercely successful novel and well-regarded Swedish film already exist—director David Fincher would have had to try really hard to mess this movie up. Since he is not a moron, this movie is well made, interesting, and slick; beautiful people in a dark and brutal world ponder a complicated mystery and exciting things happen. I don’t really think this movie was necessary, what with there being a pretty good film made of this book already, but I can understand why it was made: Hollywood would have been leaving money on the table by not making an English language remake.

The Muppets: So, there’s a new Muppet movie. You may have heard of it; it’s called The Muppets. I LOVE The Muppet Show, but the only Muppet movie I have every really cared for is Muppets From Space. (I am fully aware that this is an unpopular choice for favorite Muppet movie. There are some who would like to forget this film was ever made. Pshaw, I say to them. It’s lovely.) My husband nagged me and nagged me to go to this, and since I force him to watch an unusually large number of Bob Hope movies, I graciously complied.

I’m so liberal I think the Democrats are fascists. Therefore, one might be led to believe that I would not like a movie that would even suggest that the right thing to do with out-of-control drug dealers would be to torture them for information and then shoot them in the head. You could not be more wrong. While that is not the whole plotline of Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, it surely does happen once or twice, and I could not be happier about it. This film is Brazil’s entry into the 2012 Academy Awards and it is an amazing movie. It’s brutal, it poses a lot of questions that it can’t answer, and it proceeds at a breakneck speed to a conclusion that is somewhat anti-climactic, but it kicks butt all the way.

I think most Alexander Payne movies are good, but I have a hard time talking myself into liking them. In fact, the better they are, the less I enjoy them. I can see that Sideways is a good movie, but I find everyone in it repellant, and there is no emotional resonance for me. Election is the same way; it’s a really well made film, and I don’t care about the characters at all. I appreciate that Payne is a real director who makes films for adults who like to think about things, but appreciation and enjoyment are not the same thing. His new film, The Descendants, is pretty flawed, but I was able to connect to this film in a way that I never have with any of his others.

There is one movie in my life that has messed me up beyond all others, and it is , a 1986 two-part television miniseries about serial killer Ted Bundy. At the time it first aired, I was just about to graduate high school—about the same age as many of Ted Bundy’s victims—and lived in the Pacific Northwest, which meant hearing about serial killers all the time because we seem to breed them here. Everybody I knew watched this miniseries, and we were all totally creeped out by it. (Nobody seems to make very many good miniseries anymore. Which is unfortunate; it’s a good way to tell a longer story. The last one I really enjoyed was Storm of the Century, and I am looking forward to Bag of Bones coming out in December.)