Upstairs at Caroline
Savlov's Top Ten Redux Part One: The Good, the Badass, and the Weirder
To begin with, Marley is dead, and top ten lists are insane, or, at the very least, they can drive you insane. It's a sweet kind of madness, however, blood kin to that of Bram Stoker's insectivorous Renfield. Locked away in a small, dark room, sustaining himself on madhouse flies and in thrall to the black-light flickerings of his master, Renfield is the very model of a modern minor film critic at year's end. "He's coming," this pasty-faced fanatic gibbers to anyone within earshot. "The Master is coming!" Which, frankly, sounds way too close to what I and my fellow critical counterparts have been writing lately: "It's coming! The best movie of ... ever! For god's sake, man, you've simply got to see it!" Or, in the case of, say, Baz Luhrman's Australia, "Unclean! Unclean! Beware! Steer clear!" Frankly, I much prefer Brian Trenchard-Smith's Australia:
Still, we are similar in our derangements, Renfield and I. We inhabit the dark and we worship the shadows that play across the walls. True, he devours bugs while I prefer to snack on edamame, and my dreams-to-nightmares ratio benefits from a superior audio/video system and precious few rats to speak of, but the metaphor remains apt. Mad about the cinema is still mad. Call me crazy.
Like all art and most worthwhile experiences, writing about film is an innately subjective endeavor: one person's Death Race 2000 is another, lesser person's Death Race. And no critic's top ten list is ever truly complete. Ten is a fine figure with which to tally digits, dimes, and dames, but movies? Not so good. Even the worst year has twice that many overlooked, under-marketed, or unreleased gems that simply beg to be seen, and believed. Hence this addendum list. Ten extremely worthy films (in one case a book) that didn't make it onto my official Austin Chronicle year end canon.
Why not? Various reasons: some only screened at Fantastic Fest, a couple didn't play at all and went straight to DVD, or they simply haven't been released. Nevertheless, each and every one blew my eyes out the back of my head, or made me cheer, or had somebody cheering at the fact my eyes were exploding out the back of my head (David Cronenberg, I suspect). They're all cinematic triumphs in their own unique ways, and they deserve to be seen. Preferably in the dark, and nowhere near Carfax Abbey, unless, you know, you're mad too...