Images, lines, gestures, moods from the films of the year
By Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy
• Flags of Our Fathers: how the whole movie is suspended between the desperate “Where is he?” and finding out who “he” is…
• The calm, ecstatic beauty of the opening shot of A Prairie Home Companion: Mickey’s Dining Car glowing in the night, the turned back of narrator Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) visible through the window as he finishes his cheap meal, pays, and rises to step out into a heartland street painted with light and color after rain…
• Business-as-usual in The Departed: Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) disappears into a back room for a while. When he comes back to reenter the conversation, he’s wearing a bloody apron. We never know why….
• Brick: The Bad Guy’s (Lukas Haas) mom interrupting a rec room showdown with offers of cookies and apple juice…
• Half Nelson: Ryan Gosling’s heroin-addicted teacher storms into the drug-dealer’s hangout to tell the charismatic fellow (Anthony Mackie) to stay away from a little girl he’s taken under his wing–and gets detoured by the lure of shooting up….
• A lively mandrake root swims in a pan of milk beneath a pregnant woman’s bed—Pan’s Labyrinth…