A Gilded Planet

Wolfen 1981. 115 minutes. USA. Directed by Michael Wadleigh. Watchdate: 11/7/2010. Tom Noonan is my new favorite supporting player. After seeing his haunting guest turn as a soothsaying doctor on an episode of Louie and his performance as the looming, suicidal anti-ego of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York , I encountered him as a lonerish animal expert in Wolfen . I will now proceed to start to compulsively watch everything he has been in. Probably. What an awesome guy. Other than Noonan, this movie was pretty uneven. Though it did include one of the more sublimely ridiculous things I've seen in a while: a scene where Edward James Olmos strips naked, runs around like a wolf on a beach at night and then screams "It's all in your mind"at a bewildered Albert Finney. Actually, the movie reminded me a lot of Caroll Ballard's 1983 adaptation of Never Cry Wolf  by Farley Mowat. That's another wolf movie that I have mixed feelings about that features ...

I watched these movies on my 21st birthday. Marwencol 2010. 83 minutes. USA. Directed by Jeff Malmberg. Watchdate: 12/9/2010 Happily, this was a exceedingly superb movie. I anticipate it will easily make my best of movies released in 2010 list, probably in the top 3. I suppose that it helps that I saw it at a matinee on my birthday, and drank bottles of my first legal beers as I watched. But anyway, obsessive world builders like the man in this movie always entrance me probably because I am something of one myself. But as compelling as the subject is, the Malmberg tells the story more cleverly than I would have imagined. He builds tension and unveils revelations in the same way that many great narrative directors do. A story about a man with brain damage from a bar fight learning how to live in the world by building his own world, the titular war torn Belgian town crafted out of wood and GI Joe and Barbie dolls world could make a great movie. That would have been enough. The man gai...