The Whatever: Mid-2008 Movie/Music Summit

Hey, Gang,

It’s time for this week’s Whatever, and please feel free to go back and contribute to past installments.

I’m still working hard on my review of The Dark Knight, which has been delayed because I spent my weekend beating deadlines for real publications. (Not that my own little website here isn’t real, but you know what I mean.)

And I loved The Dark Knight so much, and I have so much to say about it, that I don’t want to sell it short with a review that isn’t worthy of it.

So, I’m working on it.

In the meantime, let’s do this:

What are the five best movies you’ve seen so far this year?

(Click here for a list of everything that’s been out this year if you need to jog your memory.)

1. The Dark Knight

I’ve been thrilled by movies. I’ve been moved by movies. I’ve never seen one that did both of those things to me as capably and as confidently as this modern-day masterpiece.

2. The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Given how badly the TV show ended, I was terrified about this one. But this beautiful, moving movie was exactly what I needed. “The truth is out there,” but this is more concerned with the truths within: conscience and faith, forgiveness, hope, and a whole lot of love in the face of paralyzing darkness and doubt. The investigation is gruesome and massively disturbing, but it’s secondary. This movie is all about Fox William Mulder and Dr. Dana Katherine Scully. Believe it.

3. Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Make no mistake. This is not Mike Mignola’s Hellboy from the comics. It’s Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy as lovingly endorsed by Mike Mignola, and that’s okay by me. It’s fun, it’s funny, and it has lots more action, monsters, and imagination than the first one. (And the scene where Hellboy and Abe drown their sorrows in beer and Barry Manilow is an instant classic.)

4. Iron Man

This movie is fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, thanks to Jon Favreau’s smart presentation and Robert Downey Jr.’s massively charismatic performance.

5. The Incredible Hulk

Though not as fun as Iron Man, it’s just as good in different ways. Respectful of the spirit of the television series (with crowd-pleasing cameos by Lou Ferrigno and even Bill Bixby) but action-packed in the spirit of the early comics, it’s a lean, mean movie that moves well and features stellar work by Ed Norton and Liv Tyler.

Honorable mentions: Despite how unapologetically vicious it is, Rambo is actually a very beautiful movie. I was bothered by some technical things about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but Harrison Ford was every bit as Indiana Jones as he’s ever been. Get Smart was a lot of fun, too, with a surprising amount of truly thrilling action. Well done, Steve Carell.

And since I didn’t do a Whatever on either of the weeks I was on vacation, here’s a bonus question:

What are the five best albums you’ve bought so far in 2008?

(And if you haven’t seen five movies or bought five records, just tell me about the ones you’ve liked. Just make sure they were released in 2008.)

1. Kay Hanley: Weaponize

Letters to Cleo graduates Kay Hanley (vocals and lyrics) and USA Mike (production and guitars) — partners in marriage, music, and massive amounts of amazing — are back and better than ever with a dazzling rock record that will blow your socks so far off that you’ll never find them again. Just go to Kay’s MySpace and listen to “Think Bad Thoughts” and try to tell me I’m wrong. What’s that? You can’t? I thought so. And when Nina Gordon drops by to lay down some sunny backing vocals on “Cellars by Starlight,” well, that’s about as sweet as it gets.

2. Glen Phillips: Secrets of the New Explorers

Toad the Wet Sprocket’s singer and songwriter blasts off into new orbits with this always beautiful, sometimes quirky, ever-brilliant space-themed exploration of self, life, and love in the great beyond.

3. Neil Diamond: Home Before Dark

This warm, weathered album really helped me put some bad times into perspective earlier this year, and it gets better with every listen. Natalie Maines shows up on the gorgeous duet “Another Day (That Time Forgot),” and the rollicking “Forgotten” should be required listening for anyone who’s been dumped. Brilliant stuff. A lot of this album sounds like it could be stripped-down acoustic versions of songs Neil would have written back at the absolute height of his talent and popularity, and I hope he’s got another one as good as this one in him. What am I saying? Of course he does. He’s Neil Diamond.

4. Old 97’s: Blame It on Gravity

Rhett Miller and the boys ride again, and they’re above and beyond the top of their game with this bold, boozy, brilliant collection that’ll leave you dancing and smiling and begging for more. I can’t get enough of it.

5. She & Him: Volume I

Blue-eyed beauty Zooey Deschanel sings the songs with earnest charm, and M. Ward makes sure the music sounds like a love-letter to old-school California AM radio pop. My favorite song is the string-laden bopper “Sweet “Darlin’,” co-written by Deschanel and Jason Schwartzman.

The album I’m most looking forward to in the second half of 2008 is Jonatha Brooke’s The Works, featuring a duet with Glen Phillips (and they’re also touring together, so please go see that if you can) called “Sweetest Angel” that I can’t wait to hear.

And … your turn!

Movie Review: The X-Files: I Want to Believe

They should change the name of this movie from The X-Files: I Want to Believe to …

THE X-FILES: BELIEVE IT!

Whammy!

First, some background:

“And so The X-Files ends as it began, the story of two people who have nothing but each other in the fight against the future. Was it worth it? The truth is still out there. And until they make another movie, so is the verdict.”

I wrote those words (and more) about the show’s final episode six years ago, and the review that preceded them was anything but glowing.

I’d loved the series for years, and it broke my heart to see it finish with such an awkward, ill-plotted gasp. William given up for adoption? The Lone Gunmen dead? Character threads left wide open with no resolution? What about Skinner and Gibson Praise? Doggett and Reyes?

But even though the ending FBI outcasts Mulder and Scully got was anything but happy, at least we had those last words that Mulder spoke to his lovely, beloved redhead: “Maybe there’s hope.”

That hope has finally sprung eternal, with writer/director Chris Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz skillfully crafting an intimate, redemptive story I’ll be cherishing for a long, long time.

Scully’s a doctor at a Catholic infirmary, tussling with hospital (and religious) bureaucracy over a radical, painful medical procedure she wants to try on a young patient named Christian who’s dying from a rare disease. (Marco Niccoli will break your heart in half as Christian; this kid is good.)

To give you an idea of what Dr. Scully is like, think back to that scene in the classic “Home” episode where Mulder told Scully he’d never thought of her as a mother before, and it was actually her idea to raid the Peacock family’s house full of freaks and traps without waiting for backup. That’s the best way I can describe Dr. Scully — Gillian Anderson is beautifully inspiring (and more beautiful than ever) as a motherly protector fighting her way through a soul-shattering crisis of faith.

Our favorite fugitive, meanwhile, is having a crisis of being Mulder, sitting alone in their house all day while Scully brings home the bacon. He lines the walls with newspaper clippings about paranormal activity and longs for the days when his crazy hunches saved lives and made a difference.

When I interviewed Duchovny for in December 2004, he told me that Mulder’s sense of humor was a sign of intelligence:

My interview with David Duchovny

If that’s true, then Duchovny’s performance in this film makes him the smartest man alive. Still quick with the quips, Mulder also shows plenty of heart and knows he’s at his best with his partner by his side.

But things between the two get strained when the FBI approaches Scully with the proposition that they’ll drop all the obviously trumped-up charges against Mulder if he’ll help them find a kidnapped agent. Mulder’s initial agreement is reluctant, but the case quickly pulls him so far in that Scully fears it will consume them both.

Scottish actor Billy Connolly is nothing short of amazing as a disgraced priest whose visions of the crimes are suspected by Scully as fabrications to clear his name for the considerable sins of his past. Mulder desperately wants to believe him, but at what cost? Blue-eyed beauty Amanda Peet and Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner are really good, too, as the FBI agents in charge of the investigation.

Oh, and there’s a cameo by a classic X-Files character that will leave you cheering and smiling.

It brought a tear to my eye. I won’t lie.

Don’t expect any aliens or conspiracies; I Want to Believe is more in line with the show’s spectacularly scary stand-alone episodes but far more emotionally ambitious. Casual audiences might not get it because the X-File itself — as gruesome and as astoundingly disturbing as it is — isn’t what the film is really about.

It’s about Mulder and Scully, and Duchovny and Anderson deliver the best work they’ve ever done as these characters with a chemistry that had me in happy tears on more than one occasion.

The truth is out there, but The X-Files: I Want to Believe examines the truths within: conscience, faith, forgiveness, and hope in the face of paralyzing darkness and doubt.

Believe it.