The Screengrab : brad bird

Precursors: The Incredibles (2004)

Nick Schager — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:00:00 GMT

There are plenty of superhero comics (and cinematic translations of them) which would ably prepare moviegoers for this weekend’s immensely anticipated Watchmen. Yet those itching for an inkling of what director Zack Snyder’s adaptation holds in store would be well served to first check out Brad Bird’s 2004 Pixar gem The Incredibles, which borrows quite a few elements from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ landmark 1986-1987 graphic novel. While Bird’s film is less an elaborate, self-conscious deconstruction of superhero fiction than a high-flying celebration of family, it nonetheless grounds its tale in a contemporary world where – as in Watchmen – do-gooders (here with bona fide paranormal powers) have been forced by an ungrateful public into retirement, and where they now attempt to live mundane lives while suppressing their urges to don tights and fight crime. Furthermore, Bird’s story features ordinary citizens driven to copy their costumed idols and a villain created, in part, from the decisions made by the righteous Mr. Incredible – similarities which clearly reveal this superlative kids film’s debt to Moore and Gibbons’ work. Whether Watchmen will be as fully realized as The Incredibles is a question soon to be answered, but there’s little doubt that Bird’s first CG-animated effort (following 1999’s The Iron Giant), equal parts heart, humor and exhilarating action, puts most of its superhero-movie brethren to shame.

2008 Highlight Reel: The Top Twelve Screengrab Posts of the Year

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Compiling the weekly highlight reels here at the Screengrab is not such an arduous task, but putting together a year's worth of the finest in film bloggery was a considerably more formidable undertaking. Using a complicated points system akin to the BCS in college football, I have surveyed my fellow Screengrabbers, weighted the page views and reader comments, and come up with the following dirty dozen: the best of the year in Screengrab.

Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

Love it or hate, it's hard to deny The Dark Knight was the pop culture event of the year. Our man Osborne has some qualms.

Why So Serious? The Dark Knight in the Political World

Of course, as with any pop culture phenomenon in an election year, The Dark Knight was used to score political points, few of which made any sense to me.

Forgotten Films: The Oscar

Phil neatly dissects one of the all-time great so-bad-it’s-good movies, and apparently gets legendary author (and The Oscar screenwriter) Harlan Ellison to comment. (L.P.)

The Screengrab Presents: The Five Kinds of Twist Endings

Gwynne knows that, just as there are only seven kinds of stories, there are only five ways to make the endings of those stories totally blow your mind. (L.P.)

Classless Man in Voiceless Brawl

Leonard brings us the heartwarming tale of film critics engaging in a stimulating exchange of ideas.

When Good Directors Go Bad: The Dark Wind (1991, Errol Morris)

Paul focuses on the single fiction film made by one of the cinema’s all-time greatest documentarians – a movie so bad I wasn’t even aware that it existed. (L.P.)

The View through the View-Master: The Iron Giant

Hayden - or as we call him around Screengrab headquarters, "the breeder" - looks at the Brad Bird classic through the eyes of both child and Childs.

CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why

Andrew asks the musical question, "Why so much digital crap, Hollywood?"

Take Five: Crime and Pyunishment

Leonard evaluates the oeuvre of one of our most underrated schlockmeisters, Albert Pyun.

Five Reasons We Want Mad Max Back

Enough with Indy, Rocky and Rambo. It's time for our favorite road warrior to make a comeback.

Tom Cruise, at Midlife, with a Freaking Eyepatch

Phil prefers the later, loonier Cruise. Find out why.

Unwatchable: It's Pat

I had to include an Unwatchable on this list, and this one seemed to be a favorite.

(Special thanks to Leonard Pierce for an assist on the comments and to Phil Nugent for diligent research.)

The View through the View-Master: The Iron Giant

Hayden Childs — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I can see where some might consider The Iron Giant too sad or too scary for little kids. But my little kids have taken to it. After all, it does feature a boy's relationship with a giant robot from outer space, which a story that kids really want to hear. I find it inexpressibly tragic, but my kids do not, and I'm happy about that.

The Iron Giant was Brad Bird's first film, a few years before The Incredibles and Ratatouille. It's based on The Iron Man, a story that Ted Hughes wrote for his kids to comfort them after their mother's suicide. Their mother was, incidentally, Sylvia Plath, who was never too good at math, according to noted scholar Peter Laughner, who knew a thing or two about premature death. The Iron Man is different in some important ways from The Iron Giant. For instance, the titular metal character fights a space-dragon instead of vintage Cold War fear.

The movie was originally put into production as a version of the stage production of Pete Townshend's rock opera The Iron Man. Brad Bird apparently fought to remove Townshend's songs, and thank goodness for that. I say this with all love for the bulk of Mr. Townshend's ouevre: they're not very good. Bird's artwork is all autumnal, beautiful, two-dimensional pastels, and there's not much continuity between the way that these characters are drawn and, say, The Incredibles, with its blobby roundness.

The plot centers on the unlikely friendship between Hogarth, a latchkey child of the 50s in Maine, and the Iron Giant, who is both metal and huge. A self-centered government agent arrives in Maine looking for the robot, and Hogarth has to enlist the help of a local beatnik to hide the robot from the government agent and his single mother. Eventually, the military is called in, and things go all klaatu barada nikto. Excuse me! I mean, things go awry based on humanity's penchant for violence.

My kids love the message of the movie, which is that anyone can choose who they will be. The Iron Giant learns about superheroes from Hogarth, and in the climax, chooses to emulate Superman rather than follow his programming. Superman Returns, which ground our noses in the symbolism as if we were naughty puppies, could have used a similar take on the meaning of sacrifice.

The Iron Giant's sacrifice is where the waterworks come in. For me, I mean, not my kids, who are way tougher. Also, they've seen the movie, so they know that there's a fairly happy ending in the near future. Parts of the movie are certainly pitched over their heads, but the humor in it is gentle and broad enough that even the preschool set finds it funny (of course, they'd find it funnier with more poop jokes). And the tragic parts don't seem so tragic to them, so no harm/no foul. Do yourself a favor for the next family movie night! It beats the holy heck out of another talking animal movie.

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 20 Animated Feature Films (Part Five)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

FINDING NEMO (2003)

Among the animation directors whose names are on the Pixar Hall of Fame, Andrew Stanton's may not have quite the same degree of luster as that of John Lasseter (who made the Toy Story pictures and A Bug's Life and who is now, oh yeah, the fuckin' head of Disney animation) or Brad Bird (who even before directing The Incredibles and Ratatouille for Pixar had distinguished himself with The Iron Giant and the classic Amazing Stories episode "Family Dog"), but that can only be because his titles have been piling up slower. This year's Wall-E confirms that the wit and warmth of his little-lost-fish story were no fluke, and also that his plan seems to be to keep getting better. (Mention of his forthcoming Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation John Carter of Mars has been known to cause Screengrab writers to flap their front flippers together and lie down on the floor and spin around while going "Whoowhoowhoowhoowhoo" in merry anticipation. Is it any wonder that we don't get a lot of dates?) In director Eduardo Coutinho's remarkable documentary Playing, there's an amazing scene where an educated, middle-aged Brazlian woman tears up a bit while discussing the movie before cogently explaining that she sees it as a metaphor about her relationship with her own grown daughter.

CHICKEN RUN (2000)

This parody of The Great Escape and other military POW films (with gray, overcast English skies that serve as a memento mori) was the first feature from the mighty Aardman Animation studio, best known for Nick Park's films featuring Wallace and Gromit and other claymation shorts. (Park co-directed Chicken Run with Aardman co-founder Peter Lord. The project was reportedly seen as a test run for the more recent Wallace and Gromit feature The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: a way for Park and company to see whether their talents could sustain a full-length feature without taking a chance on tarnishing the W & G brand.) Not surprisingly, the jokes are stretched thinner here than in the shorts, which pop like firecrackers from beginning to end, but the project demonstrated that the sheer beauty of the visual craftsmanship of the claymation masters was enough to make up for that. The movie has a special historical interest now as the last recorded evidence of a time when Mel Gibson's brain cells were still happily alive and arranged in the desired order.

TWICE UPON A TIME (1982)

This experimental cut-out animation film, a sardonic sort of fairy tale with a cast that includes such improvisational comedians as Marshall Efron, Lorenzo Music, and Hamilton Camp, was executive produced by George Lucas in one of his periodic attempts to throw a lifeline to the independent filmmakers he'd known as an aspiring director and since moved past on the career ladder. It was directed by John Korty, whose '60s indies (The Crazy Quilt, Funnyman) once had a frisky reputation and are now very hard to find, with an assist from Charles Swenson, who credits as an animator include a section of Frank Zappa's 200 Motels and a movie version of Bobby London's scabrous underground comics character Dirty Duck. At its best, Twice Upon a Time is one of the rare movies that captures some of the termite-gnawing wisecracking feel of Jay Ward's TV cartoons, but it ran into problems getting seen at all: first the Ladd Company, which had the distribution rights, went bankrupt, and then Korty and producer Bill Couturié got into a pissing match over which dialogue tracks to use, which ended up costing it a steady life on cable TV and delayed its release to home video. It was finally issued on videocassette, but at this time no DVD release has planned. However, clips and audio tracks are all over the Internet, the movie's cult status having been greatly enhanced by both its unavailability and the fact that there are so many possible versions from which to choose, and to argue over. (The war over the dialogue tracks stems from the fact that the cast members were encouraged to make up their own lines, which resulted in some versions that are less family-friendly than others.)

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (2003)

Sylvain Chomet's wildly funny, outrageously cariactured farce about an old woman's efforts to rescue her grandson from the clutches of the villains who use his bicycle-hardened calves to power their gambling den is the most imaginative animated entertainment to emerge from Europe in recent years. Grand in scale, meticulously detailed, weirdly suggestive, and deranged in the friendliest way possible, it's that rare picture that makes you wish that people still went to midnight movies. Chomet's next film, The Illusionist, an animated feature inspired by an unproduced screenplay of Jacques Tati's, is eagerly anticipated: Tati is something of a presiding spirit here as well.

SPIRITED AWAY (2001)

Rumors that this would be Hiyao Miyazaki's final film before retiring have since turned out to have been premature, but that doesn't make it any less of a career apotheosis and a superb capstone to his career. This ever-expanding fantasy about a little girl's passage to maturity while serving time in an alternate spirit world and looking for the opportunity to be reunited with her lost parents brings together elements from his previous epics (Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke) and his smaller scale classics about the magic that co-exists with the beauty of regular life (Kiki's Delivery Service, Totoro). As a puny Westerner, there are nuances and touches here whose full meaning I suspect that I will never fully grasp, and God knows that's my loss, but Miyazaki delivers more to audiences that can only half-understand his work than most filmmakers who draw you a scorecard while sitting in your lap.

Click here for Part One, Part Two, Part Three, & Part Four

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 20 Animated Features Films (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

PERSEPOLIS (2007)

In the same way graphic novels like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis have expanded the thematic possibilities of pen and ink comics beyond run-of-the-mill superhero adventures and the romantic entanglements of the gang at Riverdale High, so too does this pristine cinematic adaptation demonstrate the ability of animation to lend a necessary artistic distance to depictions of events that would simply be too grim or painful to watch otherwise. Satrapi’s autobiographical tale (which she co-scripted and co-directed with her graphic novel collaborator Vincent Paronnaud) tackles big subjects like the Iranian Revolution, Islamic fundamentalism and the agony of adolescence with visual flair and heartfelt humanity, while the voice performances (by an effervescent Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve and her daughter, Chiara Mastroianni (as Satrapi) are far more three-dimensional than many of 2007’s live action female roles.

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? (1988)

On the one hand, the inclusion of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is a bit of a cheat, since parts of the movie are live action...on the other hand, there’s a long tradition of films that combine ‘toons with real people, from Gertie the Dinosaur and Mary Poppins to Paula Abdul’s timeless duet with MC Skat Cat in her video for “Opposites Attract.” More important, though, is the unique and historic worlds-colliding nature of the project, which brings together a veritable who’s who of animation's golden age gliterrati in a mainline pleasure shot of pop culture ecstasy equivalent to a Star Wars sequel (NOT written by George Lucas) where Han, Chewie, Luke, Leia, R2D2, C3P0 and Yoda somehow team up with Captain Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard and all the rest of the Star Trek gang on Babylon Five to help Ellen Ripley battle Aliens. Or, to put it in slightly less embarrassingly geeky terms: the scene where Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse appear together on screen for the first and only time kicks the historic Robert De Niro/Al Pacino summit in Michael Mann’s Heat right square in the keister. I remember watching Roger Rabbit for the first time in a theater and hearing an audible gasp from the audience at the moment in the film when a live-action studio exec pulls up the shade in his office, only to find Dumbo hovering just outside: just the kind of giddy, weightless moment of gleeful surprise that animation was made for...plus, the controversy surrounding the public’s laser-disc discovery of a single-frame image of Jessica Rabbit with no panties was a perfect farewell joke from animation’s salty past as it passed its torch to the gleaming digital age.

THE INCREDIBLES (2004)

Brad Bird has developed a reputation as nothing less than a one-man Coen Brothers of the animation world. Like the Coens, his movies are crammed full of homages and references to other films; like the Coens, he’s proven adept at handling films in a wide variety of genres; like the Coens, he loves camera pyrotechnics and visual tricks of all sorts; and like the Coens, his idiosyncratic personality comes through in every project he tackles. The ex-Simpsons staffer has grown into the most immediately recognizable directorial presence in American animation, and this stunning (and often hilarious) take on the mythology of superheroes is possibly his greatest achievement. It’s almost pointless to praise the astonishing visuals, which, even four years down the road, don’t seem to have been surpassed by the ever-changing technology curve; but the real treat here is the deft blend of a solid action story featuring plenty of physical humor and rock-‘em-sock-‘em fight scenes for the kids with a fantastically sophisticated storytelling style for the adults, including visual callback to everything from Saul Bass and James Bond to the Fantastic Four. It’s also a movie well worth owning on DVD, with a ton of bonuses including kid-pleasing animated shorts and a whole cornucopia of hidden jokes for the grown-ups. The Incredibles is that rare breed of movie that really does have something for everyone.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988)

1988 was a banner year for Japanese animation. While Akira was opening up new vistas for the possibilities of “Japanimation” to convey dark and heavy sci-fi/action themes, Isao Takahata was showing the world that the same medium was capable of telling small, quiet, emotional stories that had just as much power and impact. Based on a tragicomic memoir by Akiyuki Nosaka, Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of a young Japanese boy who, along with his sister, faces the massive changes and upheavals that came with the Second World War. Takahata had himself survived the bombing of Hiroshima, and the book struck a particularly personal chord with him; he decided he would make his animated adaptation – produced by Studio Ghibli at the same time as Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro – as realistic as possible, including the decision, unusual in animation involving children, to cast age-appropriate voice actors in all the roles. One of the most shocking things about the film is that it begins on a jarringly tragic note, with the death of the narrator: the rest of the film chronicles the inevitable events that lead up to it, devastatingly portraying how, in trying times, even those with the best of intentions can make irrevocably bad decisions. An incredibly moving, terrible sad, and beautifully made film, and an unsparing portrait of the eternal costs of war.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two, Part Four, & Part Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 20 Animated Features Films (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT (1999)

Oh, sure, The Simpsons Movie was funny...but it wasn't South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut funny. It wasn't even "Marge vs. the Monorail"-era Simpsons funny. After ten years of writing, The Simpsons Movie seemed no better or worse than an above-average episode of the show drawn out to feature length. (And, aside from the "Spider-Pig" theme, where were the musical numbers?!?!) By way of comparison, when Trey Parker and Matt Stone got a chance to bring their consistently hilarious and subversive Comedy Central cartoon to the big screen, they pulled out all the stops: a full, Broadway/Guitar Hero-quality, Oscar-nominated musical score by future Tony-winner Marc Shaiman and Metallica frontman James Hetfield (!!!), a typically topical, economy-size blockbuster of a plot, some unobtrusively awesome voice cameos, impressively stepped-up animation and, most importantly, the swearing...oh, the wonderful, wonderful swearing, some of the most (literally) musical cursing in cinema history...and “Uncle Fucker” wasn’t even the funniest part. Or the most shocking: that came later, when I actually felt a rare burst of affection for Robin Williams during his good-natured, who’d-a-thunk-it performance of “Blame Canada” at the 72 Annual Academy Awards ceremony.

WAKING LIFE (2001)

In some ways, Richard Linklater's sixth feature played like a sequel to his first, Slacker. Like that seminal low-budget indie, Waking Life is largely plotless as it prowls the streets of Austin, Texas, encountering one talkative oddball or dime-store philosopher after another. It sure doesn't look anything like Slacker, though; while the former film aimed for street-level realism, Waking Life takes place in a dream state realized through an animation process developed by Bob Sabiston (and ripped off many times since). Using computer software, animators were able to draw on top of edited video footage. With each new scene, a different artist takes the reigns, resulting in a fluid, continually evolving picture. The images ebb and flow like ocean waves, which may be problematic for viewers susceptible to sea sickness, but will prove entrancing to those on Linklater's wavelength. (Honorable mention goes to Linklater's second foray into animation, A Scanner Darkly, which uses a similar process to very different effect in its depiction of a paranoid world just on the edge of our own reality.)

THE IRON GIANT (1999)

For a film that seems so completely seamless on screen, The Iron Giant has one of the most Frankensteinian origin stories of any of the movies on this list. It’s based on a children’s story by Ted Hughes, the widower of Sylvia Plath, former poet laureate of England, and author of some of the most bloody, visceral poems of the 20th century. When it was first optioned as a film, it was meant to be a live-action musical, with music by no less than the Who’s Pete Townshend; although that never worked out, Townshend did produce a soundtrack for a stage show based on the story. Disney Studios engaged Warner Bros. in a bidding war, with Warner, on the winning side, finally handing the project off to Brad Bird – who, just a few years later, would be working with Disney anyway, on Pixar’s The Incredibles. On top of all that, it was originally envisioned as a completely traditional cel animation project, then reconceived as a film done in 3D computer animation – only to eventually arrive on screen as an amalgam of both, with the bulk of the film done in standard animation and the main character – a colossal alien machine who befriends a young boy while being sought by a paranoid government – done in CGI. The Iron Giant took years to make, and went through innumerable reconceptions, personnel changes, and battles between the filmmakers and the studio – which makes it all the more remarkable that it’s such a terrific piece of work. Charming, funny, and moving by turns, and featuring all of what would become known as director Brad Bird’s hallmarks, it’s a movie that couldn’t have been any better if it had come out of Pixar – which we mean as the highest possible compliment.
FANTASIA (1940)

With all the praise that’s been heaped on it over the last six decades, it’s easy to forget that Disney’s Fantasia could have been a disaster. Indeed, many critics predicted such a fate for it, and a few (including the notorious Irish author Flann O’Brien) held that opinion even after it was released and began piling up the accolades. Animation, then as now, was taken less than seriously as a film medium, and when Walt Disney announced that he would be releasing a film combining his studio’s unique, whimsical style of animation with some of the greatest works in the Western classical music canon, trepidation was widespread: those who loved the music feared it would be bastardized by the presence of cartoon characters, and those who loved the cartoons feared that Disney was overreaching by putting his work in the service of such highbrow affairs. And, to be truthful, the movie isn’t pure perfection; at times, it does come across as pretentious, and at other times, hopelessly middlebrow. But when it works – and the great wonder of Fantasia is that it works more than it doesn’t – it’s because the music is so perfectly matched with the material. The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment is simply the finest Mickey Mouse cartoon ever made, and Leopold Stokowski’s interpretation of the musical accompaniment does it its proper service. The “Rite of Spring” passage is simply an inspiration, a clever conceit carried off without a single hitch, and the “Night on Bald Mountain” segment, which could have become an overblown gasbag of a passage, instead plays perfectly well. Coming down to earth with playful humor whenever it threatens to become too self-impressed, Fantasia overcomes the culture clash at its heart to become one of the finest animated features of all time.

Click Here for Part One, Part Three, Part Four & Part Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

Animated Film Awards Announced: "Ratatouille" Takes the Cheese

Phil Nugent — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The 35th annual "Annies" awards, held in Los Angeles by the International Animated Film Society, has given a slew of prizes, including the top award of Best Animated Feature, to Pixar's Ratatouille, thus making it the No Country for Old Men of films about gifted culinary-minded vermin. The film's writer-director, Brad Bird won for Best Director and Best Screenplay; the film also took home prizes for Best Music, Best Character Design, Best Character Design, Best Storyboarding, and Best Voice Actor: Ian Holm, who played the villainous French chef Skinner, and whose thorough deservingness of this award can perhaps be measured by the fact that I myself saw the movie twice and didn't realize until I saw this announcement that I was listening to Ian freakin' Holm! Awards also went to a couple of Ratatouille spin-offs: the movie's animated video game and the short film Your Friend the Rat, which features characters from Ratatouille and is included in the movie's DVD editions. The awards for Best Animated Effects and Production Artist went to the penguin-hits-the-waves movie Surf's Up, possibly because whoever labels the awards just got really sick of writing "Ratatouille." The Best Animated Feature award is seen as a strong indicator of which film is liable to take the Academy Award in that category, though this year it may not be as strong an indicator of Ratatouille's chances as the fact that if Bee Movie wins instead, we're gonna burn Los Angeles to the ground! The society also celebrates excellence in the field of television animation; notable winners this year included Seth Green for directing the Star Wars episode of Robot Chicken and Ian Maxtone-Graham and Billy Kimball for writing the episode of The Simpsons that lampooned 24, choices designed to set an army of geeks somersaulting past Forbidden Planet at noon with Roman candles held between their teeth. The society also its Winsor McKay career achievement awards on independent animated filmmaker and animation historian John Canemaker, Disney filmmaking veteran Glen Keane, and Ren and Stimpy's dad, John Kricfalusi.

The Movie Moment(s): Notable Moments of 2007, Part 2

Paul Clark — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Seth's secret shame, Superbad

2007 was a great year for dark and despairing cinema, but less so for really good comedy. But if nothing else, it can lay claim to at least one comedy sequence for the ages, even while it's so raunchy it would've made Curly Howard blush. In the scene, Seth (Jonah Hill) confesses to his best friend Evan (Michael Cera) his longstanding compulsion to draw penises. Of course, Evan has a hard time believing it (2007's funniest line in a walk: "Dicks? Like a man dick?") but the wonder of the scene is that Hill plays it completely straight. Seth is clearly ashamed of himself, angered by the trouble it's brought him, and annoyed that no one seems to understand his plight. In addition, screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (note the first names) make the details in the scene so specific that I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't drawn from real life. Which, of course, only makes it that much funnier.

Chase in the rain, We Own the Night

A lot of people would claim that the chase sequence at the end of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is the year's best action scene, but I'd go to the mat instead for James Gray's We Own the Night. Tarantino's was well-choreographed and nicely sustained to be sure, but it couldn't match the pure visceral impact of Gray's. For one thing, there's real urgency in the scene- Joaquin Phoenix's Bobby has just learned that his former Russian mob associates have not only figured out where he's hiding but are planning to kill his police chief dad, and he's racing through the rain to stop this from happening. In addition, the direction is almost unbearably tense, as Gray shoots the scene entirely from inside Phoenix's car, with brutal violence glimpsed through his windshield as the wiper blades whoosh back and forth. Gray has never been known as an action director, but he shows a gift for it here, which makes me all the more grateful that he's refused to sell his talents short by making a string of mediocre thrillers. Instead, he's done his own thing so far, and although his three films haven't won him a mass audience like Tarantino, he's remained an interesting filmmaker in his own right, and We Own the Night is his best film to date.

Little Anton Ego, Ratatouille

By now most of us expect greatness from Pixar, especially when Brad Bird is directing, but like any truly great filmmaker, Bird is still capable of surprising us with his talent. Nowhere in Ratatouille is this more true than a scene near the end of the film where the dreaded food critic Anton Ego (the inimitable Peter O'Toole) drops in at Gusteau's to review the food prepared by its celebrated new chef, Remy, a rat voiced by Patton Oswalt. Counter to popular logic, Remy serves him the relatively low-class dish ratatouille, the quality of which blindsides Ego so much that he briefly flashes back to the meals of his childhood. The beauty of the moment owes largely to its brevity, as Bird executes the flashback so suddenly and in so few brush strokes that it blindsided me with its simple perfection. Rather than coming off like a cheap Freudian reading of Ego's character, this scene speaks to something more universal, and it's Ratatouille's most vivid illustration of the idea that great food truly belongs to us all.