My Top Films of 2010

Since 2005, I have been keeping track of the films I watch each year. I also come up with a list of my ten favorite films (old or new) that I saw for the first time that year. Here's the list, with the full list of all 232 I saw this year after the break. Feel free to ask any questions about films on the big list, my freakish nerd memory will be able to answer you.

Top 10 Films of 2010
1. A Serious Man
2. Hunger
3. Mother
4. Un prophete
5. The White Ribbon
6. Black Swan
7. The Social Network
8. True Grit (2010)
9. The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
10. I Am Love

2010: The Year in Television

Looking back at 2010 there were a lot of highlights from television. Here's the ones that standout as the most memorable for me:

- The Lost Finale (ABC): After six years, Lost came to an end with a three hour finale that didn't seek to solve the myriad of mysteries built up during the show's run. Instead, the creators chose to focus on emotional closure. There are some valid criticism of the show's six season, but overall I felt very satisfied by the way things ended. It definitely evoked some of the same feelings I had years ago reading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. Despite my own personal views on religion, I found the "spiritual" ending to not come off as hackneyed. It was also the hardest I've ever cried while watching a single episode of television.

Film Review - True Grit (2010)

True Grit (2010, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
Starring Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper

I've never seen the original True Grit, mainly because I am not such a big fan of John Wayne. I've only seen two films of his (The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). I totally get Wayne as an icon, but as an actor he seemed a little weak. So I entered the remake of True Grit with no expectations and found it to be a great western and adventure story, with enough subtext to keep me thinking for a long time. Despite advertisements, this is Hailee Steinfeld's film. The other actors are there to support her and she does a magnificent job keeping up with the likes of Bridges and Damon.

Film Review - Black Swan

Black Swan (2010, dir. Darren Aronofsky)
Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

With Darren Aronofsky you know you will get something ambitious, whether its ambitious in its drama (Requiem for a Dream), its scope (The Fountain), or its simplicity (The Wrestler). Are they always winners? Nope, but they always bring forth a completely unique vision and experience. With Black Swan, Aronofsky is bringing together elements from all his previous work. You have the severe schizophrenic breakdown of a character, you have a hallucinatory transformations, and you have the destruction of the physical body for the sake of one's art. The film also breaks the boundaries of genre by being both one of the best dramas and one of the best horror films of the year.

Film Review - Catfish

Catfish (2010, dir. Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman)

Its strangely appropriate that at the same The Social Network is playing in theaters, this documentary about what Facebook hath wrought is making the rounds as well. It can be looked at a sequel in some ways: The Social Network are the origins and this is the results of its existence. Since the film premiered at Sundance earlier this year it has garnered mixed reviews. Some critics have seen it as a perfect slice of life in a society where identity has become malleable, while others question the very reality of the documentary, charging it as a meta piece that forces the audience to question if they are being fooled. Catfish was preceded by a mountain of hype and I approached the film with a tempered mind, thinking I would encounter something not quite as good as the trailer claimed.

Film Review - Four Lions

Four Lions (2010, dir. Christopher Morris)

For fifteen years British satirist and comedian Christopher Morris skewered media culture and politics through a variety of radio and television programs. Most notably Brass Eye, a mock news magazine show that focused on the exploitative nature of news, and Nathan Barley, a series that followed a fictional web media hipster and looked at the buffoonish nature of a lot of tech people. It comes as no surprise that now Morris has taken on the current war on terrorism and Islamic extremism in our culture's psyche. It sounds like an outlandish concept to make a slapstick comedy about Islamo-British terrorists, but Morris has the satiric chops to deliver it such a skilled way, and this kind of film demands a very subtle hand to make it work.

Game Review - Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain (2010, Quantic Dream, PS3 only)

In 1999, I was very excited about the release of Shenmue on the Dreamcast console. The conceit behind that game was you were in a completely open world where you could interact with everything. That had me very interested, while the game's action mechanic didn't seem as appealing. For instance, if you were in a footchase with someone, buttons would flash on screen and you would have a couple seconds to press the corresponding one on your controller. At the time, I found that style of play a little stressful and not very fun. Heavy Rain doesn't have the freedom and openness, but makes that initially frustrating game play riveting.

Film Review - The Social Network

The Social Network (2010, dir. David Fincher)
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Rashida Jones, Brenda Song

In the middle of David Fincher's latest film a character sums up the current technology driven economy by saying this current generation creates jobs for themselves. In the past supply-demand was the dominating force; the people wanted something, then someone provided it. Now, we have products that are given to us and we are conditioned to need and want them. Facebook as one example. No one ever needed Facebook, but by preying on some very primitive psychological compulsions, it has become an addictive force. The Social Network rewinds back before there was Farmville or Poking or Mafia Wars, and focuses on the collegiate roots of Facebook. Here we see at its core the entire idea came from the exclusivity of Harvard's Final Clubs.

In Theaters Now: Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010, dir. Edgar Wright)
Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Mark Webber, Alison Pill, Johnny Simmons, Anna Kendrick, Jason Schwartzmann, Brandon Routh, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Mae Whitman

EPIC!

This is the official film of the Nintendo Generation, from the opening Universal logo to the final battle, the film is painted with pixelated brush strokes of late 80s video game fandom. Its also the closest I've seen director Edgar Wright come to recreating the style of humor found in his wonderful British series Spaced. These are the same kinds of people that populated that television show, just born a couple decades later. They have the same idiosyncratic obsessions and quirks just colored in an 8-bit aesthetic. This also marks a major departure for Michael Cera who has made a career on playing the lovable loser. The Scott Pilgrim character is a real asshole, especially to the girls in his life, and Cera does a good job of shifting his style of acting to fit Pilgrim. Simply put, this is the best date movie/action flick of the year.

Tune-age: End of Summer Mix 2010

Here's a mix for your downloading pleasure. It features songs that I first heard this summer, or have some sort of connection to a mood or tone during this season for me. Enjoy.


1. Money - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
2. City With No Children - Arcade Fire
3. The Happy Goth - The Divine Comedy
4. Lady Luck - Richard Swift
5. Teenagers - Department of Eagles
6. God Help the Girl - God Help the Girl
7. Airplanes - Local Natives
8. Kim & Jessie - M83
9. Flash Delirium - MGMT
10. Crash Years - The New Pornographers
11. Melectric- Ramona Falls
12. Sleep All Day - The Rural Alberta Advantage
13. Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes

Click here to download

Tune-age: Arcade Fire - "Suburbs"

Arcade Fire - Suburbs (2010, Merge Records)

To try and define the Arcade Fire's sound is an impossible task. When I first heard "Wake Up" in Brent Hamric's car in the spring of 2004 I immediately thought of The Flaming Lips. One track later and that was changed. Three albums later and they are still too eclectic to pin down. A lot of music critics wait like vultures for the bands they love or others love to slip up, so that they can pounce and claim that the grandeur that once was is lost. Arcade Fire seems to dare them to try it, by dropping the dark gloom of Neon Bible and adopting a more pop-folk vibe. There's some familiar sounds to bring you back in, but then suddenly things change up and we hear some arrangements and instruments that show the band is still testing its limits.

In Theaters Now: Life During Wartime

Life During Wartime (2010, dir. Todd Solondz)
Starring Alison Janney, Shirley Henderson, Ciaran Hinds, Dylan Riley Snyder, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy, Charlotte Rampling

I can't see anyone who hasn't seen Solondz's 1998 film Happiness being able to get much from this movie. It is about a direct sequel as you can get, making references to plot points from the first film in ways that makes it un-enjoyable for someone unfamiliar with the older picture. It's not a bad film, I enjoyed it a lot, it just is not made for the uninitiated. What it does is revisit some familiar faces, some in a more interesting way than others, and offer different perspectives on their personalities. It's very sad and at times very funny, probably Solondz's most restrained film to date, but also has me worried about his lack of new characters or material. Life During Wartime also shares elements with Palindromes, as not a single one of the actors from Happiness reprise their roles here, which I suspect is a choice made by Solondz.

In Theaters Now: Inception

Inception (2010, dir. Christopher Nolan)
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Marion Cotillard, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Pete Postlethwaite, Lukas Haas

Don't think about elephants. What are you thinking about? Elephants, right? That is a very basic form of an inception, mentally influencing another person's thoughts. But for a more complex idea, an idea that will cause someone to make a life-altering decision you have to do something a little more elaborate. As Cobb (DiCaprio), an expert dream infiltrator tells us early on, its much easier to steal an idea than to insert one in a person's subconscious. With his seventh film, director Christopher Nolan takes the heist film formula and tosses it into an imaginative blender. The result is yet another highly complex and intelligent film that respects the intelligence of the audience, a rarity for a summer film.

Newbie Wednesdays - Greenberg

Greenberg (2010, dir. Noah Baumbach)
Starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Mark Duplass, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Hey, you know what isn't an interesting topic for contemporary cinema right now? Angst ridden white people who live comfortably and don't have to worry about any necessities. Especially when they aren't in some sort of hyper-realistic universe (i.e. James Bond, comic book movies). When the films are meant to be set in reality and feature characters whose biggest problems are that their band when they were in their twenties didn't work out, yet are still rich through other endeavors, then I don't really have much empathy towards them. This is yet another hugely pretentious piece of cinema from the grating Noam Baumbach. If you're interested in navel gazing claptrap you've found your film.

Florence (Gerwig) is the personal assistant to the Greenberg family, a wealthy couple with two kids and a dog. The Greenbergs are off to Vietnam to open one of the husband's hotels and they let Florence know his brother, Roger will be visiting for a few weeks while they are gone. Roger had a nervous breakdown and is coming the mansion to relax and work a doghouse. Roger and Florence meet, and she inexplicably ends up liking him. She learns Roger was involved with a semi-successful band in the 80s and they would have made it big if Roger hadn't freaked out and left. Roger runs into some of his old bandmates (Ifans, Duplass) and while one of them has gotten over it, the other still holds a grudge.

The character of Greenberg is not necessarily a bad concept. I think everyone enjoys a good curmudgeon every once and awhile. But the curmudgeonly attributes of Roger Greenberg come across as cliche and totally dishonest. It doesn't help that Noah Baumbach is doing what he did in Margo at the Wedding, one of the least watchable films I've ever had the privilege of falling asleep during. This is film straining desperately to be so clever and erudite, yet maintain that angst white middle class tone I hate. While some people have the same things to say about Wes Anderson's films, I argue that Anderson works his damnedest to make his work feel intentionally separate from reality, in effect making contemporary fairy tales. Baumbach thinks he's making a movie grounded in realism, and I guess for self-absorbed upper middle class people it probably is. I just have zero sympathy who have these problems.

There are few moments of good in it. I think Greta Gerwig is a great actress, more so in more mumblecore type movies than this one. She has a very natural ease in front of the camera and is one of the few people in the movie who doesn't feel like she is acting. There's a sub plot involving her ex-boyfriend that I found to be good to see in a film, its something that never really happens even in movies, and if it does there seems to be some moral cultural obligation to make it a big deal. Here Gerwig simply does this thing and everyone moves on with their lives, the way in reality it would probably be. Many of the supporting players are quite good, with the exception of Jennifer Jason Leigh as Roger's ex from back in the band days. Leigh is also the co-screenwriter, producer, and the wife of Noah Baumbach. She's just not very good in this role. If you have the option to watch this film, I can't really say its one of those worth one view ones. It really isn't, it doesn't say anything of importance, it doesn't work to achieve any interesting artistic aesthetic, it is just simply nothing.

Newbie Wednesdays - The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender (2010, dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

M. Night and I have a long history together. The first film I saw my freshman year of college was The Sixth Sense. It terrified me. Now, with a decade of film obsession behind me, it takes a lot to creep me out that badly, and I look at The Sixth Sense as a very sad atmospheric film, still good though. His next film, Unbreakable, is still one of my favorite comic book films, in that is captures a certain idea of superheroes that I've never seen another film come close to. About there is where my love for the director ended. I've seen every film he's made in the theater, the only other director who I have done that with is Christopher Nolan, sort of the antithesis of Shyamalan. While Nolan produces better and better films, Shyamalan only gives diminishing returns. This latest, his first foray into adapting an already established property, is an utter disaster.

If you haven't seen the Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender (I've only seen the first five episodes) here's the premise. In a fantasy world, the planet is ruled by the four elemental nations: Fire Nation, Air Nation, Earth Nation, and Water Nation. A hundred years before the start, the Air Nation was wiped out and the Fire Nation began its quest to spread its empire across the globe. Two Water Nation children, Katara and Sokka, discover a little boy frozen in ice. Once thawed, they learn he is Aang, the last of the airbenders and the one destined be the Avatar, meaning control over all four elements. Searching for the Avatar is Prince Zuko, the exiled son of the Fire Nation king. He sails the world, hoping to prove his might to his father by bringing him the Avatar. Zuko's forces become aware of Aang and epic battles ensue.

The concept here is ready made for a film franchise, and it has the potential to be as popular and well loved as Harry Potter. It's a rich, complex universe that doesn't pander to kids. It treats them like intelligent beings who can handle more than stand alone episodes. The film however, creates a narrative mess. One of the elements of screenwriting that you'll find is seen as a no-no is voice over exposition. Its passable at the beginning of the film, just to set up the story, but when large chunks of the movie are rushed over and explained with voice over you have a major problem. The sort of things being summed up in a sentence by Katara, the narrator, are romantic relationships, something that you have to earn from your audience, make us care that these two people get together. Not so, and Shyamalan has never been too good with romantic relationships.

This is an incredibly faithful adaptation in terms of story elements, hence the rushed exposition as Shymalan tried to condense 20 episodes of the first season into 90 minutes. Motivations are cast out the window for the sake of hitting plot points. The most glaring omission from the the series though, is the sense of humor. In the cartoon Aang is a mischievous klutz who is both the hero and the comic relief. Katara and Sokka are also not great warriors and don't master their abilities in the series near as quickly as their movie counterparts did. To delete the humor and sense of growing into these powers sort of turns the film into something that an unfamiliar audience member won't enjoy and neither will a die hard fan of the cartoon. There really is no audience for this type of film, and its sad because the failure of this picture probably dooms the chances of a different director coming onboard and correcting things. And once again, we have to wonder how many chances does Shyamalan get before they revoke that DGA card?

State of the Blog - First Half of 2010

So I have been running the blog since November 2009, longer than I have kept any of these things going before, so that's impressive for me. The blog has garnered over 600 visits since the start of the year ranging from all over the U.S. to Europe and Asia. There's some interesting things I have coming up on the blog, that I think you'll enjoy.

- Dropping Jolly Good Thursdays and going to alternate between Hypothetical Film Festivals and It Should Be A Movie. ISBAM will focus mostly on comics at first, and present a property which I have read or encountered that would make a good film.

- I will be coming to the end of my focus on Brian De Palma in July, so be on the lookout for the next poll on my next director. Right now, I am pretty sure Samuel Fuller and Werner Herzog will be two of the choices, so if you wanted to find out a little bit about them before the poll is put up, go ahead.

- I have been researching some incredible looking films for Wild Card Tuesdays, mostly independent or overlooked pictures from the last decade, with some older films thrown in along the way. In July, I'll be looking at The Dinner Game (which has been remade into the upcoming Dinner for Schmucks) as well as the Peter Sellers' picture The World of Henry Orient.

- DocuMondays are also kicking into high gear with some very dynamic films. Monday I'll be reviewing Prodigal Sons, a film that got a lot of attention a few months ago. Will be focusing my attention a lot more personality driven docus as well (Zizek!, Beaches of Agnes, Stevie) so keep a look out for those.

- As you've probably noticed, in June Fridays became focused on films from the Criterion library. That is definitely going to provide a lot of material for years to come, and is finally getting me to sit down and watch those films on my list. This Friday, I'll be reviewing Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's 1990 film Close Up, just released on DVD last week. In addition to that I will be looking at some films by Sidney Lumet, Powell and Pressburger, as well as sampling some directors I have never experienced before.

- In upcoming months I'll be presenting some themes: For July it is Character Actor month, August will look at my favorite Director/Actor pairings, September will be Hispanic Cinema Month, October will be a month full of just horror films, and in November I'll be looking at my favorite films based on books.

Hope you stay with the blog for the next half of 2010. I encourage you to leave your comments and feedback. I'm always interested to know what the readers think.

Shadows in the Cave Digest #06 - June 2010

Features
My Top 40 Favorite Film Moments: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma
Casualties of War
Bonfire of the Vanities
Carlito's Way (Movie of the Month)
Snake Eyes

Reviews


DocuMondays
We Live in Public
Objectified
Dogtown and the Z Boys
Art and Copy

Wild Card Tuesdays
Someone's Knocking at the Door
Bad Lieutenant 2
Three Days of the Condor
Afterschool
True Stories

Newbie Wednesdays
Mystery Team
Get Him to the Greek
I Love You Phillip Morris
MacGruber
Toy Story 3

Jolly Good Thursdays
Five Minutes of Heaven


Criterion Fridays
Knife on the Water
The Loves of a Blonde
Amarcord

Next Month:
Jolly Good Thursdays alternates between Hypothetical Film Festivals and It Should Be A Movie!
Character Actor Month!
We come to the end of Brian DePalma's films!
Vote for the next Director in Focus!

Newbie Wednesdays - Toy Story 3

Toy Story (2010, dir. Lee Unkrich)
Starring Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Ned Beatty, Michael Keaton, Jodi Benson, Estelle Harris

In 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term "The Uncanny Valley". Basically, it refers to the point when a robot or human facsimile (CG animated character) resemble real humans so closely it evokes a sense of revulsion in the viewer. CG animation walks that very fine line, and in the case of Robert Zemeckis' animated works (The Polar Express, Beowulf) it reaches the revolting atmosphere. This is where Pixar gets it right, in that it never tries to make its humans look like exact copies of humans. Instead, the real humanity in the film is infused in the inanimate who have a larger ability to express emotion than ever before. For me, Toy Story 3 marks a clear point in history where, in the right hands, CG animation is a clear challenger to live action cinema.

Andy is eighteen and about to head off to college. The time to cast out his toys, which have been long ignored anyway, has come. All but Woody end up in a trash bag destined for the attic, while the cowboy ends up in Andy college-bound boxes. With the fear of being separated from his pals, Woody makes a daring escape and goes to save Buzz and company who have accidentally been put out for the trash. They all avoid the landfill but end up in Sunnyside Daycare, which is ruled over by Losto Hugs Bear, a 80s relic. They also meet a host of other toys, more generic than specific products and engage in what is essential a prison break movie, with some very strong themes about aging and obsolescence threaded throughout.

The situation the toys are placed in is one that speaks across generations. The children, whom most assume the film is squarely marketed at, will see their own feelings of powerlessness reflected in the plight of the toys. When faced with the circumstances of simply moving to a new town all the way to dealing with the divorce of parents, children are without any say in where they go. The same theme is applied to children transitioning into adulthood, like Andy, who are pressured by society to abandon toys and play. The issues Andy is grappling with reflect a lot of those who were children when the first Toy Story came out. Bumping up another generation, the themes of a child leaving home are very palpable and those wistful feelings as days when your child was little and playful. Laurie Metcalf and the animators behind her character deliver a very short, but beautiful performance in the moment where she enters Andy's now empty bedroom. Finally, through Lotso we have the resentment of elderly and those who are left behind. Lotso has taken the moment he realized he was no longer wanted by his owner, and has allowed those feelings to become anger and rage, which is merely a form of hurt.

Pixar is a company that makes perfect films (I refuse to acknowledge Cars). They are writing scripts that are light years (no pun intended) richer and more complex than the majority of those shopped around Hollywood. The production staff also has a strong sense of creating rich worlds, they fill their universes with so many details that we want to inhabit them just a little bit longer. The Toy Story trilogy now stands a perfect trilogy, with themes that develop and mature just like Andy. The technical side of the animation has also evolved in a similar fashion. While buzz of Toy Story 4 has recently hit after the current release's box office success, but I hope the Pixar crew treads carefully in adding on to an already complete masterpiece.

Newbie Wednesdays - MacGruber

MacGruber (2010, dir. Jorma Taccone)
Starring Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Val Kilmer, Powers Boothe, Maya Rudolph

It began with The Blues Brothers and it was a long time before another one was made. Then with Wayne's World, followed by The Coneheads, Night at the Roxbury, Superstar, and The Ladies' Man. The idea of adapting a skit from Saturday Night Live series is not new, but never has the source material been so brief. MacGruber is originally a thirty second bumper to commercials, so the idea of making a feature film around the character is a bit of an oddity. It's also a very simply parody of the MacGyver television series, which itself is almost twenty years past. So how does this longshot stack up as a full length movie?

The premise borrows its plot from films like Rambo, with MacGruber (Forte) as a former Pentagon agent who has been living in a monastery for the last decade after the tragic death of his bride. When the villainous Dieter Von Cunth (Kilmer) steals a Russian nuclear missile, MacGruber is called back into action alongside straight arrow Lt. Dixon Piper (Phillippe) and his former sidekick Vicki St. Elmo (Wiig). The trio engage in a series of episodic attempts to either get in contact with Von Cunth and foil his plans. These typically involve Piper suggesting a reasonable military tactic, while MacGruber does something outlandish (i.e. hopping naked with a piece of celery sticking out of his butt). The plot hits all the expected points, and delivers a very hard R-rated comedy.

The sources being parodied here are done by people who know those sources well. Director Taccone, part of The Lonely Island and a writer for SNL, most definitely grew up watching the awful Golan-Globus military action films of the 1980s (Death Wish, Cobra, American Ninja). From that perspective, its an amusing film but nothing terribly special. I believe I chuckled once or twice, but for the most part I felt myself slogging through the picture, simply trying to make it to the end. Of all the current cast of SNL, Will Forte is far and away my favorite, but when he is constrained by SNL material he's never as funny as he could be. Such is the case here, the jokes feel very lazy and the payoffs are never clever or surprising. In the end, its a case of a flimsy premise being stretched beyond its abilities to hold together, resulting in an incredibly disappointing and forgettable film.

Newbie Wednesdays Bonus! - Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek (2010, dir. Nicholas Stoller)
Starring Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean Combs, Elizabeth Moss, Rose Byrne, Colm Meany

There is the way Apatow films are perceived by those that haven't seen them, and then the what the films actually are. Most people who don't see these movies discount them as gross out frat boy movies, and that's sad because they will be missing a rather poignant film about relationships. That's what the Apatow circle has done an amazing job of, making movies about very real relationships. The women in this film are not harpies or shrews, they are not holding these men back. Instead, they are equal partners in the mistakes and travails of our main characters.

Aaron (Hill) is a young music executive tasked with the job of getting washed up rocker Aldous Snow (Brand) from London to L.A. for an anniversary concert at the Greek. Aaron is also dealing with his live-in girlfriend Daphne (Moss) who is in the midst of med school and has just got a transfer to Seattle. Aaron leaves LA on a sour note with her, but quickly gets involved in the insanity that surrounds the hard drinking, drugged out Snow. Aaron is constantly impeded by Snow in getting the man first to an appearance on the Today, and then to the Greek theater. They are sidetracked by Snow's proclivities for sex and drugs and Aaron usually ends up on the losing end of this. He drinks absinthe unaware of what it is and ends up a buffoon in a nightclub. He is forced to store Aldous' heroin on his person in a rather uncomfortable place. He is injected with a needle full of adrenaline and goes on a rampage in a strip club.

The character of Aldous Snow first appeared in 2007's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, there he was  put together, Zen-like sage. Here his career has seen a downturn, he's lost the woman he loves, and his career seems to be over. This version of Snow has much more in common with Brand's own life. If you have read his autobiography Booky Wook, then you know that Brand suffered from a drug and sex addiction. He also has some major emotional issues when it comes to his father. Snow's father also plays a significant role in the film, as a figure responsible for much of his son's current state. Snow also has a more successful ex (Byrne) who is at first presented as an absurd character, but when we meet her later, comes across as someone who has moved past the gutter Snow seems to be stuck in.

Every performance here feels very unforced and natural, and I think that's why Apatow's productions are so enjoyable. Every one feels like they are these characters, the lines roll effortlessly from them and never feel like actors acting. The friendship between Aaron and Snow feels genuine, and this comes from the fact that in real life Brand is a very open and friendly person, as glimpsed in his many British television series. Director Stoller is also not afraid to end Snow in a place that doesn't wrap everything up perfectly. Snow doesn't get the girl, he ends up going on stage right after receiving a horribly painful injury, and tells Aaron in a heartbreaking scene that this is the only thing he has left that makes him feel like a good person. In an odd sort of way Snow is a comedic version of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. They are both playing characters based more on themselves than any fictional creation.