After jostling through a metal detector, having my bag searched and my mobile confiscated by stern-faced blue meanies, I slump in my cinema seat, enduring head-exploding levels of volume from the coming attractions, and unwanted infrared scrutiny from guards patrolling for video-heads looking for their latest torrent site exclusive. The film finally flickers onto the screen, and I sit hoping, somehow, to be transported, seduced, taken far from all this madness.
People think we critics are cynics. But I walk into every film — yes, even Baz Luhrmann's "Australia" — hoping for a dream. That's why it hurts — it's a freaking betrayal, man! — when a filmmaker's moves are so obvious, his come-on so transparent and hollow. It's a depressing feeling when you sense the death-grip of the "three-act narrative" starting to squeeze all the life out of a movie while still in the first reel.
And yet, some days . . . I recall sitting between Donald Richie and Mark Schilling for "The Wrestler," and we were all close to tears during that scene on the boardwalk where Mickey Rourke's deadbeat dad pleads with his daughter, Evan Rachel Wood. Or chills running down my spine as Maggie Cheung's junkie shoots up in her car in "Clean" as Brian Eno's "Ascent" trembles on the soundtrack, a scene ripe with a sensation of premonition. If there's one thing in common with the films below, it's that they pull you in different directions, refuse to follow formula, and they will definitely make you feel something.