If schlubs picked the Oscars...

Christopher Orr of the New Republic is grumpy over the crop of movies that got nominated for the Oscars this year. I don't exactly blame him. Some serious schlock rose to the top (Avatar? Precious? The Blind Side? Really? I mean, I haven't seen the last two, but I don't really think I need to.) Plus, I -- like many others -- think the whole idea of nominating ten movies is pretty ridiculous. But there were 10 movies that I think were worthy of accolades. And there was even some overlap between Max's list and Academy's.

But here's the top ten movies of 2009 if MPG was picking the Academy Awards.

1) The Hurt Locker
I've been raving about this one since it came out. Far and away the best movie made about the Iraq War, and one of the best movies I've seen about war in general. "It's not a war movie," my friend, the NY Post film critic Kyle Smith remarked to me. "It's a magazine article." Perhaps -- but when it's that detailed and absorbing, I really don't care. Far and away the best movie of the year.

2) Inglorious Basterds
Quentin is back, baby. And he's thirsty for blood!

3) Up in the Air
Possibly the best role George Clooney has ever had. Few actors can convey at the same time suave sophistication and unbearable loneliness. Moreover, it was the perfect movie for the moment. While I wasn't crazy about the interviews with the "real people" who got laid off in this bad economy, there was terrific ambiguity in how we, as a country, make a point of ignoring their pain.

4) Observe and Report
Taxi Driver in a shopping mall -- an inspired idea.

5) Bruno
Sure, Borat was funnier. But it was still a great romp with bits that left my jaw on the floor.

6) Funny People
More than any other year, 2009 might be the year of the half-good movie. The first half of Funny People was truly hilarious. I watched it again recently, and the first hour is a real delight. (If you look at the DVD, Aziz Ansari's cameo is enlarged to a half-hour mockumentary that is, itself, one of the year's triumphs.) Funny People might have edged into the top three or four if Sandler had stayed sick.

7) The Hangover
This was the movie I'd most like to get the DVD for. Like Todd Phillips' other movies (Old School and Road Trip) this is one that I think will most cheer me up when I'm feeling blue.

8) Fantastic Mr. Fox
There were three movies in 2009 that I admired but failed to mention on the blog -- Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of them. It was the best movie Anderson has done since Rushmore. Although, if I can offer a criticism it would be this: When I saw it on the weekend it opened (a late showing, with a theater-full of hipsters) the biggest laugh came not from the movie, but one of the coming attractions. The trailer was for Alvin and the Chipmunks -- the Squeakuel. As soon as the trailer ended someone in the silent theater shouted out, "Boo!" The theater broke into raucous laughter.

9) Julie and Julia
Another one in which one good half of a movie is (unfortunately) pitted against a bad half. The Julia Child section is a delight. The Julie Powell stuff leaves much to be desired. But this is still one of the best movies Nora Ephron has produced since Lucky Numbers (which I might be alone in admiring. But the hell with y'all; Lucky Numbers was funny. And proved that Michael Moore might be better suited for acting than documentary filmmaking.)

10) A Serious Man
Like Fantastic Mr. Fox I wish I had commented on this earlier, but I would be remiss in not including this Coen brothers comedy. Not their best work, but an extremely funny piece of Jewyness.

Honorable mention: The Informant!, The Messenger and The Road.o

The new face of Seth Rogen?

I have a confession to make --

I was starting to get slightly sick of Seth Rogen.

Of course, the man will always have a place in my heart. But regular readers of this blog will note that I did not care for Pineapple Express. Superbad was no Knocked Up. And Zack and Miri Make a Porno was a really feeble effort. Given the fact that Rogen has something like 19 more movies coming out in the next few months I was slightly worried that Rogen might have fallen victim to two unpleasant celebrity downfalls:

1) Overexposure.

2) One-character-shtick.

The first worry is still there: Rogen is way, way overexposed. But unlike somebody like, say, Quentin Tarantino (who pretty much stopped making good movies but would go on talk show after talk show, and come up with something ridiculous and cringeworthy to say nearly every time) it seems that Rogen has not fallen into the trap of becoming a jerk.

If you watched his delightful interview with Jon Stewart, he remains as charming and witty as ever. He wasn't recycling old shtick -- he was bantering with the best in a breezy, effortless way.

So, no, Seth Rogen is in no danger of becoming an asshole. (He's one of those rare famous people who takes his celebrity as more of a pleasant surprise than an entitlement.)

But the other worry was a lot more serious. "Ben" in Knocked Up is not exactly the same character as "Cal" in The 40-Year Old Virgin... but they're pretty close. And they're both an approximation of Rogen: Slob; hipster; wit; underachiever; stoner. Granted, that character is very lovable, but there's only so much of it you can take.

It turns out -- with the shockingly fascinating (and just plain shocking) movie, Observe & Report -- that there was nothing to worry about on the acting front, either. Seth Rogen is a much, much more talented actor than I had any idea.

I'm a little wary about overpraising Observe & Report -- I'm not sure it's quite as great as I did when I left the theater. But I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that it's one of the two or three best movie I've seen in the past year. (I don't think one could objectively say that it was a better movie than The Wrestler or Slumdog Millionaire, but I think it's fair to say that I probably enjoyed it more than Slumdog.)

The movie is also incredibly twisted. (Dana Stevens coined this immortal piece of praise, "The feel-weird comedy of the season!")

The schlubette, for instance, refuses to see it because she caught wind of the movie's controversial quasi-date-rape scene. (The schlubette redubbed the movie "Mall Rapist" -- which might be a better, if unmarketable, title.)

And, it's true, there is a scene in which Rogen beds a semi-conscious Anna Faris in a situation that nearly anybody would find creepy if it happened in real life and not in a movie. But (and I say this as a man who does not find date rape amusing) the scene was also really funny.

The basic premise of O&R is that Rogen is a rent-a-cop in a suburban mall who is trying to (among other things) catch a flasher who has been terrorizing the female shoppers. Rogen (as well as others) has said that his character has a sort of demented, Travis Bickle quality -- the movie is Taxi Driver set in a shopping mall. And once I heard Rogen say that, I found it was almost impossible to think of anything else.

I would have never quite believed this two weeks ago, but Rogen gives a remarkable comic approximation of Robert DeNiro. Rogen's character is aggressively stupid. He leads a completely dysfunctional existence, living in his mother's house (his mother is a drunk) and spending his free time blowing off rounds at the local shooting range. He's a petty tyrant, lording over his domain (the mall), hassling those he dislikes (like the hilarious Aziz Ansari who only has a two minute cameo, but it's comic gold). He lusts after Faris -- the blonde who works a cosmetics counter at the mall -- in the same way that DeNiro pined for Cybill Shepherd. But while there was a small physical spark between DeNiro and Shepherd in Taxi Driver, there is absolutely nothing between Rogen and Faris. He is simply the weird guard who hangs around her counter, making painful small talk.

But despite the fact that Rogen is unapologetically creepy, there is something sort of endearing about him.

It's one of those perverse things -- the fact that Rogen has bravely decided to make his mall cop so unattractive, he becomes somewhat attractive.

The mall cop has such a lack of self awareness, that you almost worry about him. How is such a fool going to make it through life? (But, then, he's of a type that everybody has seen before. The world has plenty of dullards and gun nuts drifting through it. Rogen is merely a bigger, louder, funnier one.) And he's surprisingly resourceful. When Rogen is duped into standing on a empty corner in a bad neighborhood, he beats the living stuffing out of four or five would-be attackers. When he goes up against a battalion of cops, he holds his own (for a few minutes, anyway).

You almost want to stand up and cheer. (Maybe this is because our expectations are so low for this guy.)

None of this negates the fact that Rogen is also an extremely dangerous person. Throughout the movie you never quite know whether to laugh or run screaming out of the theater. (Which almost makes the movie more in line with Todd Solondz's uber-uncomfortable movie Happiness than with Taxi Driver.) The date-rape sequence is only one of a package of things that Rogen does that are downright horrific. He beats; he tasers; he smashes; he even shoots one unfortunate soul in the chest.

O&R's director, Jody Hill, made the decision, however, that most of Rogen's more gruesome actions don't have a tremendous amount of backlash. Halfway through the coital act with Faris, Rogen realizes that Faris looks liked she passed out and he slows, mid-thrust. "Did I tell you to stop, motherfucker?" Faris says -- without opening her eyes.

One could, I suppose, view this as a tremendous copout. But I'm not sure the movie could have worked as a comedy if it was quite that dark. It dances the line between the comedy of uncomfortable and just plain uncomfortable well enough, in my view.

While O&R primarily rests on Rogen's fleshy shoulders, the rest of the cast is also pretty great. There are the portly twin brothers (who are also gun nuts); there's Faris (who's great); there's the Jody Foster-character (a fragile girl who gives Rogen free coffee); there's the lispy Michael Pena; there's the police detective, Ray Liotta, the man Rogen essentially aspires to be. And I haven't even mentioned the soundtrack, which is filled with some real delights. (The Band's version of When I Paint My Masterpiece, and the Pixie's immortal Where is My Mind, which is used to even better effect than it was in Fight Club in possibly the single greatest chase sequence ever filmed.)

By all means, go see this crazed, nutty movie. But I would warn against taking a date.

Rogen & Stewart

Your humble blogger, has a guest item on the Jewy/foodie blog, The Jew and the Carrot, about Seth Rogen's hilarious appearance last week on the Daily Show.

Expect another blog this week on our schlubby leader (Rogen -- I'm just your schlubby narrator) and his new (remarkable) movie, Observe & Report (I probably won't have time to put anything up today).

Other upcoming blog items this week:

Where this schlub went for Brooklyn restaurant week.

Reviews of Adventureland and Sunshine Cleaning.