I started this project because I wanted to see a lot of great films. Now, I've already seen all the films in the top 100. Just, this project is unfinished because 14 of those movies I didn't see this year.
Now I'm finding I'd rather explore out further both to discover directors and films from parts of the world that aren't included in the top 100 than to force myself to watch a lot of films I've already seen just to write about them.
So, I think for the remaining films I'm just going to briefly write my feelings about them from the last time I saw them.
But, if anyone would rather I go through with my original intentions and watch them all this year to write more detailed impressions of them, please comment on this post.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
#15: The Godfather, Part II
The Godfather: Part II (Coppola, 1974)
This one I haven't seen since I first saw it about ten years ago, in my first short lived attempt to get into classic film. (Back before the internet reduced the cost of movie rentals from $8/rental to $9/month, and my only source of income was allowance.) So, I had little or no memory of it and probably no residual understanding of what was really going on. The plot of Godfather II is interesting as it constitutes a study of game theory. Michael does what's in his best interest, assuming everybody else does what's in their best interest. He doesn't trust what people tell him: He trusts them to be greedy. That's how he knows Hyman Roth is lying to him, and that's how he knows Fredo was setting him up. The problem is, Michael is a gangster, so the game theory solution to every problem is to kill everyone. This makes the story a little bit predictable and kind of boring. In the first Godfather there's the genuine question of whether Michael is really capable of murder, and of how far he'll really go into the criminal life he resisted up to the point of his father's shooting to protect his family. In the sequel there's no question: We know he's capable of murder and that there are no boundaries to that capability.
More interesting than the present are the flashbacks to the past where Robert Deniro portrays Vito Corleone before he became the Godfather. As a child his father was murdered by an Italian gangster, and then the rest of his family. Don Ciccio insisted on killing Vito, because despite his mother's claim to the contrary, he knew Vito would one day come looking for revenge. (He was right.) Vito escapes to America, where they change his last name from Andolini to Corleone (The town where he was born) at Ellis Island because it sounds more American. We see a process of allowing immigrants to come over but trying to forcefully assimilate them before accepting them. We then see him first meeting the old men from the first Godfather and forming a criminal enterprise as a statement of pride and independence, all leading up to his first murder, of a local gangster trying to charge them for the right to do business in his territory, and then his belated revenge.
That part, however, only constitues about a third of the movie. The rest of the movie focuses on Michael's rather redundant attempt to make the Corleone family business legitimate. He's doing business with and protecting a businessman in order to own a large part of the casino business in Havana. This all happens during the communist takeover of Cuba. He pinned all his hope of becoming legitimate onto Hyman Roth, then found out Hyman was just as criminal as he was, forcing him to go on a killing spree just to defend himself.
Michael was drawn into the mob to protect his father from assassination. Then once in the mob, his actions to defend himself from other mobsters ended up destroying his family. This is the thesis of the film, and it's one I don't accept. I don't accept the mythology of gangster movies that a decent person could become a mass murderer out of circumstance. If Michael could become a murderer, I believe that's what he always was, even before he had murdered.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
85/100
Next: L'aventura, then random die roll the rest of the way.
One of the reason my update rate slowed way down from the start of the year is that now, all I've got left is films I've already seen, and I'm trying to watch films for the Director's Cup on Mubi, which has taken up most of my movie watching time. But since I came this far I'm going to finish it, with the possible exception of Wizard of Oz. Maybe in lieu of Wizard of Oz I'll write about #101 The Man With A Movie Camera.
This one I haven't seen since I first saw it about ten years ago, in my first short lived attempt to get into classic film. (Back before the internet reduced the cost of movie rentals from $8/rental to $9/month, and my only source of income was allowance.) So, I had little or no memory of it and probably no residual understanding of what was really going on. The plot of Godfather II is interesting as it constitutes a study of game theory. Michael does what's in his best interest, assuming everybody else does what's in their best interest. He doesn't trust what people tell him: He trusts them to be greedy. That's how he knows Hyman Roth is lying to him, and that's how he knows Fredo was setting him up. The problem is, Michael is a gangster, so the game theory solution to every problem is to kill everyone. This makes the story a little bit predictable and kind of boring. In the first Godfather there's the genuine question of whether Michael is really capable of murder, and of how far he'll really go into the criminal life he resisted up to the point of his father's shooting to protect his family. In the sequel there's no question: We know he's capable of murder and that there are no boundaries to that capability.
More interesting than the present are the flashbacks to the past where Robert Deniro portrays Vito Corleone before he became the Godfather. As a child his father was murdered by an Italian gangster, and then the rest of his family. Don Ciccio insisted on killing Vito, because despite his mother's claim to the contrary, he knew Vito would one day come looking for revenge. (He was right.) Vito escapes to America, where they change his last name from Andolini to Corleone (The town where he was born) at Ellis Island because it sounds more American. We see a process of allowing immigrants to come over but trying to forcefully assimilate them before accepting them. We then see him first meeting the old men from the first Godfather and forming a criminal enterprise as a statement of pride and independence, all leading up to his first murder, of a local gangster trying to charge them for the right to do business in his territory, and then his belated revenge.
That part, however, only constitues about a third of the movie. The rest of the movie focuses on Michael's rather redundant attempt to make the Corleone family business legitimate. He's doing business with and protecting a businessman in order to own a large part of the casino business in Havana. This all happens during the communist takeover of Cuba. He pinned all his hope of becoming legitimate onto Hyman Roth, then found out Hyman was just as criminal as he was, forcing him to go on a killing spree just to defend himself.
Michael was drawn into the mob to protect his father from assassination. Then once in the mob, his actions to defend himself from other mobsters ended up destroying his family. This is the thesis of the film, and it's one I don't accept. I don't accept the mythology of gangster movies that a decent person could become a mass murderer out of circumstance. If Michael could become a murderer, I believe that's what he always was, even before he had murdered.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
85/100
Next: L'aventura, then random die roll the rest of the way.
One of the reason my update rate slowed way down from the start of the year is that now, all I've got left is films I've already seen, and I'm trying to watch films for the Director's Cup on Mubi, which has taken up most of my movie watching time. But since I came this far I'm going to finish it, with the possible exception of Wizard of Oz. Maybe in lieu of Wizard of Oz I'll write about #101 The Man With A Movie Camera.
#76: Amarcord
Amarcord (Fellini, 1973)
Not my favorite Fellini, Amarcord shows a cross section of the year in a life of an Italian village during Mussolini's reign. Although the symbols of fascism are there and in the background, they're mostly not part of the story. The villagers pay lip service to fascism, but it doesn't change the way they live very much. The story is very narrative and whimsical, following several different threads and going off on many different tangents. For instance, there's one part where the narrator stops and tells you a story about an Islamic diplomat who came to town with his thirty concubines, and shows up the story a street vendor made up about how the concubines invited them up into their rooms so he could make love to all of them. Another time, one of the main character's schizophrenic brother climbs up in a tree and starts throwing rocks at people screaming "I WANT A WOMAN!" The approach to the characters is pretty typical for Fellini. Eccentric characters, self-unaware of their idiosyncracy. All of it is more amusing than it is interesting. It's a film you should see if you're a fan of Fellini, but not essential.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
84/100
It looks like way back in March I skipped a number, so this makes 84, not 85.
Next: The Godfather Part II, L'aventura
Left:
#8 The Seven Samurai
#17 Casablanca
#21 Touch Of Evil
#28 Psycho
#29 Children Of Paradise
#33 Dr Strangelove
#35 Apocalypse Now
#40 Blade Runner
#45 It's A Wonderful Life
#53 The Seventh Seal
#60 Au Hasard Balthazar
#66 The Wizard Of Oz
#84 Barry Lyndon
#99 Blue Velvet
Not my favorite Fellini, Amarcord shows a cross section of the year in a life of an Italian village during Mussolini's reign. Although the symbols of fascism are there and in the background, they're mostly not part of the story. The villagers pay lip service to fascism, but it doesn't change the way they live very much. The story is very narrative and whimsical, following several different threads and going off on many different tangents. For instance, there's one part where the narrator stops and tells you a story about an Islamic diplomat who came to town with his thirty concubines, and shows up the story a street vendor made up about how the concubines invited them up into their rooms so he could make love to all of them. Another time, one of the main character's schizophrenic brother climbs up in a tree and starts throwing rocks at people screaming "I WANT A WOMAN!" The approach to the characters is pretty typical for Fellini. Eccentric characters, self-unaware of their idiosyncracy. All of it is more amusing than it is interesting. It's a film you should see if you're a fan of Fellini, but not essential.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
84/100
It looks like way back in March I skipped a number, so this makes 84, not 85.
Next: The Godfather Part II, L'aventura
Left:
#8 The Seven Samurai
#17 Casablanca
#21 Touch Of Evil
#28 Psycho
#29 Children Of Paradise
#33 Dr Strangelove
#35 Apocalypse Now
#40 Blade Runner
#45 It's A Wonderful Life
#53 The Seventh Seal
#60 Au Hasard Balthazar
#66 The Wizard Of Oz
#84 Barry Lyndon
#99 Blue Velvet
Thursday, October 21, 2010
#44: Rear Window
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1959)
Maybe the most famous Hitchcock movie, Rear Window takes place almost entirely from a perspective within the main character's apartment. He's a journalist who spends all his time in poor countries with harsh conditions. But now he's got a broken leg, and he's trapped inside his apartment. The film takes place long before the internet age, but in terms of social norms it's eerily predictive of it. He lives in a big apartment complex all of which have windows open to a huge courtyard. His neighbors all watch each other but never interact with each other. They all live their own separate lives, watch and be watched, with a tacit feeling of superiority and contempt for them, and the one with the telescope, he feels in control of them all.
That's the psychology of the movie, but the main plot revolves around a murder. When he's watching one of his neighbors, he sees him fighting with his invalid wife. Then, he falls asleep, wakes up later, and hears a scream. Throughout the night, he sees the husband leaving the apartment several times. He comes to the conclusion that he murdered his wife, and tries to enlist his friends and associates to help him prove it. They try to convince him he's imagining things. He starts to lose his feeling of control and superiority, and his isolation and helplessness is exposed.
The murder plot of the film makes it entertaining and accessible, and the psychological themes make it interesting as well. It's also cinematically interesting in the way the behavior of the neighbors is presented from a distance, controlling the viewer's perspective and knowledge to the perspective and knowledge of the main character.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
84/100
Maybe the most famous Hitchcock movie, Rear Window takes place almost entirely from a perspective within the main character's apartment. He's a journalist who spends all his time in poor countries with harsh conditions. But now he's got a broken leg, and he's trapped inside his apartment. The film takes place long before the internet age, but in terms of social norms it's eerily predictive of it. He lives in a big apartment complex all of which have windows open to a huge courtyard. His neighbors all watch each other but never interact with each other. They all live their own separate lives, watch and be watched, with a tacit feeling of superiority and contempt for them, and the one with the telescope, he feels in control of them all.
That's the psychology of the movie, but the main plot revolves around a murder. When he's watching one of his neighbors, he sees him fighting with his invalid wife. Then, he falls asleep, wakes up later, and hears a scream. Throughout the night, he sees the husband leaving the apartment several times. He comes to the conclusion that he murdered his wife, and tries to enlist his friends and associates to help him prove it. They try to convince him he's imagining things. He starts to lose his feeling of control and superiority, and his isolation and helplessness is exposed.
The murder plot of the film makes it entertaining and accessible, and the psychological themes make it interesting as well. It's also cinematically interesting in the way the behavior of the neighbors is presented from a distance, controlling the viewer's perspective and knowledge to the perspective and knowledge of the main character.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
84/100
Saturday, October 16, 2010
#86: Voyage In Italy
Voyage In Italy
Voyage In Italy follows an English couple taking a vacation in Italy. They don't speak the language, don't understand the culture, and have a typical tourist attitude. They want to see the interesting sights, but stay in their own comfort zone the whole time.
During the trip, you see the characters' marriage falling apart. We see no love and no chemistry between them, and they're constantly critical of each other's faults and defensive about their own. As they handle the affairs of her uncle's estate and travel around the country, they constantly bicker, and the shots let us see things about Italy even if they're not what the ignore characters are paying attention to. The film can be a bit boring to get through, but it all comes together to a nice payoff at the end.
Rating: *** / 5
83/100
I think I won't watch On The Waterfront. I switched it out for L'age Dor, which it replaced in the last TSPDT update, because I really didn't feel like watching it again, especially now that I've discovered a whole lot of other directors I need to explore more deeply.
Next: Rear Window, Amarcord, The Godfather Part II, L'aventura
Voyage In Italy follows an English couple taking a vacation in Italy. They don't speak the language, don't understand the culture, and have a typical tourist attitude. They want to see the interesting sights, but stay in their own comfort zone the whole time.
During the trip, you see the characters' marriage falling apart. We see no love and no chemistry between them, and they're constantly critical of each other's faults and defensive about their own. As they handle the affairs of her uncle's estate and travel around the country, they constantly bicker, and the shots let us see things about Italy even if they're not what the ignore characters are paying attention to. The film can be a bit boring to get through, but it all comes together to a nice payoff at the end.
Rating: *** / 5
83/100
I think I won't watch On The Waterfront. I switched it out for L'age Dor, which it replaced in the last TSPDT update, because I really didn't feel like watching it again, especially now that I've discovered a whole lot of other directors I need to explore more deeply.
Next: Rear Window, Amarcord, The Godfather Part II, L'aventura
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
#42: Persona
Persona (Bergman, 1967)
Bergman is one of my favorite directors, and Persona is my favorite Bergman film. The story focuses on two women. One, Elisabet Volger, is a stage actress who has recently inexplicably shut down and stopped talking and been sent to a mental institution. The other, Alma, is a nurse at that institution. The director of the mental institution presents Elisabet with a theory that she doesn't feel emotions for anyone and spends her life faking the emotions, and she stopped talking so she could stop lying. Her solution is to send Elisabet with Alma to her summer home to relax.
Alma at first is completely open with Elisabet, and identifies with her, almost forming a crush. Then, she reads a letter Elisabet wrote to the hospital director in which she says she is manipulating Alma into using her for a character study. At this point she blows up, and starts to see her as cold and manipulative. At the same time she secretly wonders if she's as cold and manipulative as Elisabet.
My interpretation of the film the first time I saw it was completely different from my interpretation the second time. The first time, I thought Elisabet was the cold, manipulative psychopath and Alma was losing her sense of identity because she was worried she couldn't show love for the child she was pregnant with. The second time, I had a different interpretation. Elisabeth didn't shut down because she was cold and manipulative. She shut down because she had trouble dealing with the violence in the world. When the director gave her the story of the cold, manipulative actress, she adopted it as her persona and starting playing that part, so she could use it as a coping mechanism. When Alma caught her playing that part to the director, she decided to project her own coldness, that she does not like to admit, onto Elisabet. Through her actions we see Alma is the real sociopath. She saw a shard of broken glass on the ground, and Elisabet walking around barefoot, and said nothing so she would cut her foot. She threatened to throw boiling water on Elisabet to get her to talk and break her persona. Alma is the cold, manipulative one, who knows she'll now have to play the part with her child, and receive emotion she can't return.
The movie is heavily open to interpretation but not in a way that seems vague. It uses dreams and tacit emotion in a way that's distinctly Bergman. In a way that invites you to examine and form your own ideas rather than just spelling everything out. It raises the themes of the difference between our inner psychology and the personae we choose to show to others. It's an all around beautiful film.
Rating: ***** / 5
82/101
Next: Voyage In Italy, Rear Window, Amarcord
Bergman is one of my favorite directors, and Persona is my favorite Bergman film. The story focuses on two women. One, Elisabet Volger, is a stage actress who has recently inexplicably shut down and stopped talking and been sent to a mental institution. The other, Alma, is a nurse at that institution. The director of the mental institution presents Elisabet with a theory that she doesn't feel emotions for anyone and spends her life faking the emotions, and she stopped talking so she could stop lying. Her solution is to send Elisabet with Alma to her summer home to relax.
Alma at first is completely open with Elisabet, and identifies with her, almost forming a crush. Then, she reads a letter Elisabet wrote to the hospital director in which she says she is manipulating Alma into using her for a character study. At this point she blows up, and starts to see her as cold and manipulative. At the same time she secretly wonders if she's as cold and manipulative as Elisabet.
My interpretation of the film the first time I saw it was completely different from my interpretation the second time. The first time, I thought Elisabet was the cold, manipulative psychopath and Alma was losing her sense of identity because she was worried she couldn't show love for the child she was pregnant with. The second time, I had a different interpretation. Elisabeth didn't shut down because she was cold and manipulative. She shut down because she had trouble dealing with the violence in the world. When the director gave her the story of the cold, manipulative actress, she adopted it as her persona and starting playing that part, so she could use it as a coping mechanism. When Alma caught her playing that part to the director, she decided to project her own coldness, that she does not like to admit, onto Elisabet. Through her actions we see Alma is the real sociopath. She saw a shard of broken glass on the ground, and Elisabet walking around barefoot, and said nothing so she would cut her foot. She threatened to throw boiling water on Elisabet to get her to talk and break her persona. Alma is the cold, manipulative one, who knows she'll now have to play the part with her child, and receive emotion she can't return.
The movie is heavily open to interpretation but not in a way that seems vague. It uses dreams and tacit emotion in a way that's distinctly Bergman. In a way that invites you to examine and form your own ideas rather than just spelling everything out. It raises the themes of the difference between our inner psychology and the personae we choose to show to others. It's an all around beautiful film.
Rating: ***** / 5
82/101
Next: Voyage In Italy, Rear Window, Amarcord
Sunday, October 10, 2010
#10: Battleship Potemkin
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
Battleship Potemkin is a difficult film to discuss, because it's an important film for good reasons, but it's difficult to enjoy with modern eyes. Stylistically the movie is beautiful. The cuts and the camerawork are brilliant, and really focus on and highlight the emotion of the characters in a way few films can do. But content-wise, it's a communist propaganda piece.
The story is very simple. The crew of a warship are forced to sleep in unsanitary conditions and eat disgusting low-grade meat. The commanders decide to execute crew members who refuse to eat the meat, and the workers rebel against their oppressive leaders. This leads to the civilian population back home joining the rebellion. When the military strike back against the population, this one battleship declares war on the whole system, their only hope for victory to rally all the workers on the other warships to their cause.
The way they present the idealized new system is very well done. Everybody is crowding together in a mob chanting that everybody will be equal. One man yells out "AND WE'LL SMASH THE JEWS!", and everybody shouts him down. There are no divisions, not even by religion. But, therein lies the hypocrisy of the message of the film. The ruling class are presented unilaterally as cold hearted, lazy, murderous tyrants. There's one scene where the military comes in and starts shooting people arbitrarily, which ends with a baby carriage rolling down a staircase because a soldier shot the baby's mother. One woman is carrying her wounded child, begging for mercy, and the soldiers shoot her down on the spot. So, in the revolution everybody is equal -- except for the prior ruling class, who are barely human, and should all be destroyed.
To me, the foremost expert on communist revolutions in history is George Orwell. Battleship Potemkin plays out the first two or three chapters of Animal Farm, where the oppressed workers cast out their tyrannical oppressors. What it leaves out is the ensuing corruption, and the leaders of the revolution who turn into the new ruling class. It's a propaganda piece for a cause that has been proven by history to lead to disaster.
So, if you're a cinema buff who watches films for cinematography and such, I would highly recommend it. Otherwise, avoid it.
Style rating: ***** / 5
Substance rating: * / 5
Overall rating: *** 1/2 / 5
81/101
Next: Persona, Voyage In Italy, Rear Window
Battleship Potemkin is a difficult film to discuss, because it's an important film for good reasons, but it's difficult to enjoy with modern eyes. Stylistically the movie is beautiful. The cuts and the camerawork are brilliant, and really focus on and highlight the emotion of the characters in a way few films can do. But content-wise, it's a communist propaganda piece.
The story is very simple. The crew of a warship are forced to sleep in unsanitary conditions and eat disgusting low-grade meat. The commanders decide to execute crew members who refuse to eat the meat, and the workers rebel against their oppressive leaders. This leads to the civilian population back home joining the rebellion. When the military strike back against the population, this one battleship declares war on the whole system, their only hope for victory to rally all the workers on the other warships to their cause.
The way they present the idealized new system is very well done. Everybody is crowding together in a mob chanting that everybody will be equal. One man yells out "AND WE'LL SMASH THE JEWS!", and everybody shouts him down. There are no divisions, not even by religion. But, therein lies the hypocrisy of the message of the film. The ruling class are presented unilaterally as cold hearted, lazy, murderous tyrants. There's one scene where the military comes in and starts shooting people arbitrarily, which ends with a baby carriage rolling down a staircase because a soldier shot the baby's mother. One woman is carrying her wounded child, begging for mercy, and the soldiers shoot her down on the spot. So, in the revolution everybody is equal -- except for the prior ruling class, who are barely human, and should all be destroyed.
To me, the foremost expert on communist revolutions in history is George Orwell. Battleship Potemkin plays out the first two or three chapters of Animal Farm, where the oppressed workers cast out their tyrannical oppressors. What it leaves out is the ensuing corruption, and the leaders of the revolution who turn into the new ruling class. It's a propaganda piece for a cause that has been proven by history to lead to disaster.
So, if you're a cinema buff who watches films for cinematography and such, I would highly recommend it. Otherwise, avoid it.
Style rating: ***** / 5
Substance rating: * / 5
Overall rating: *** 1/2 / 5
81/101
Next: Persona, Voyage In Italy, Rear Window
Friday, October 8, 2010
#6: The Godfather
The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
I feel kind of silly doing a writeup for The Godfather. If you're reading this blog at all you've probably already seen it, and nothing I can write can change your opinion one way or another. Godfather is great for all the reasons it's supposed to be great. It's an epic crime drama with brilliant performances and beauatifully staged scenes. If I were to criticize anything it'd be that the juxtopposition of the Christian imagery to scenes of horrendous violence is a little cheesy. But, given that almost every scene in the whole picture is iconic, I really have nothing more to say.
Rating: ***** / 5
Next: The Battleship Potemkin, Persona, Voyage In Italy
80/101
I'm falling behind in my writing, because I started my Masters thesis last month. I've actually already watched those three movies and haven't written about them yet. I should be able to see all 100 (101 if I decide to watch through On The Waterfront again) before the end of the year as planned.
I feel kind of silly doing a writeup for The Godfather. If you're reading this blog at all you've probably already seen it, and nothing I can write can change your opinion one way or another. Godfather is great for all the reasons it's supposed to be great. It's an epic crime drama with brilliant performances and beauatifully staged scenes. If I were to criticize anything it'd be that the juxtopposition of the Christian imagery to scenes of horrendous violence is a little cheesy. But, given that almost every scene in the whole picture is iconic, I really have nothing more to say.
Rating: ***** / 5
Next: The Battleship Potemkin, Persona, Voyage In Italy
80/101
I'm falling behind in my writing, because I started my Masters thesis last month. I've actually already watched those three movies and haven't written about them yet. I should be able to see all 100 (101 if I decide to watch through On The Waterfront again) before the end of the year as planned.
Friday, October 1, 2010
#87: Sansho The Baliff
Sansho The Baliff (Mizoguchi, 1954)
Sansho is the story of a governor of a small province who's thrown out of power for being too generous with his peasants. His wife and children are then kidnapped and sold into slavery. The wife is sold to a different owner than the children. The children spend ten years growing up as slaves, under false names, waiting for their opportunity to escape.
The story revolves around slavery and human trafficking in medieval Japan, but the focus of the story is whether you should maintain nobility of character, even when the consequences of that nobility are disastrous for you and your family. The father is noble to his peasants, and his family gets destroyed. Later his son is faced with the same dilemma. The moral is, it's important to always be principled at all costs.
The story is beautifully told with a lot of emotional nuance. It's an all around great film, if a little slow paced at times.
Rating: ***** / 5
79/101
Next: The Godfather, Persona
Sansho is the story of a governor of a small province who's thrown out of power for being too generous with his peasants. His wife and children are then kidnapped and sold into slavery. The wife is sold to a different owner than the children. The children spend ten years growing up as slaves, under false names, waiting for their opportunity to escape.
The story revolves around slavery and human trafficking in medieval Japan, but the focus of the story is whether you should maintain nobility of character, even when the consequences of that nobility are disastrous for you and your family. The father is noble to his peasants, and his family gets destroyed. Later his son is faced with the same dilemma. The moral is, it's important to always be principled at all costs.
The story is beautifully told with a lot of emotional nuance. It's an all around great film, if a little slow paced at times.
Rating: ***** / 5
79/101
Next: The Godfather, Persona
Saturday, September 25, 2010
#27: The General
The General (Keaton, 1927)
The most interesting thing about this film to me isn't the film itself but the difference in attitude toward military service between the 1920's and today. The film itself is well done but it's a little one dimensional and the humor was a bit too much like a Bugs Bunny cartoon (In the same way Hard Day's Night is a bit too much like Animaniacs.) The film takes place on the confederate side of the Civil War. Buster Keaton plays a small statured slightly affeminate train engineer. He tries to enlist in the army. They take a look at him and tell him to go home, because he's more value to the south as a train engineer than as a soldier. When he gets home there's a rumor he didn't even stand in line to join the army, and everybody calls him a coward. Back then, in the 1860s and the 1920s, fighting in the army was a necessary point of pride, and anybody who didn't was a coward without honor. This is heavy contrast to today's culture, where soldiers are seen as killers and families want their children to stay home where it's safe. I think this change is a mixed bag. On one hand we have less of the chest-pounding nationalism we used to have, but on the other hand we have a lot more apathy.
Getting back to the film, the main conflict of the film involves the Union soldiers stealing a train his girlfriend was on. He follows them alone in his own train, saves her, and comes back alone. The fun of the film is in how Keaton manages to keep up with and then get away from the union soldiers through pure engineering talent and ingenuity. But other than that, the story is kind of silly and there isn't anything really that interesting that goes on.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
78/101
Next: Sansho The Baliff, Godfather, Persona
I'm thinking of starting a different blog devoted only to new releases. There's a lot of good films coming out, a few in mainstream theaters and a lot in art houses. I know there are a lot of people who want to see great films that are coming out but don't want to see the boring pretentious films mixed in with them. Maybe I can help with that.
The most interesting thing about this film to me isn't the film itself but the difference in attitude toward military service between the 1920's and today. The film itself is well done but it's a little one dimensional and the humor was a bit too much like a Bugs Bunny cartoon (In the same way Hard Day's Night is a bit too much like Animaniacs.) The film takes place on the confederate side of the Civil War. Buster Keaton plays a small statured slightly affeminate train engineer. He tries to enlist in the army. They take a look at him and tell him to go home, because he's more value to the south as a train engineer than as a soldier. When he gets home there's a rumor he didn't even stand in line to join the army, and everybody calls him a coward. Back then, in the 1860s and the 1920s, fighting in the army was a necessary point of pride, and anybody who didn't was a coward without honor. This is heavy contrast to today's culture, where soldiers are seen as killers and families want their children to stay home where it's safe. I think this change is a mixed bag. On one hand we have less of the chest-pounding nationalism we used to have, but on the other hand we have a lot more apathy.
Getting back to the film, the main conflict of the film involves the Union soldiers stealing a train his girlfriend was on. He follows them alone in his own train, saves her, and comes back alone. The fun of the film is in how Keaton manages to keep up with and then get away from the union soldiers through pure engineering talent and ingenuity. But other than that, the story is kind of silly and there isn't anything really that interesting that goes on.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
78/101
Next: Sansho The Baliff, Godfather, Persona
I'm thinking of starting a different blog devoted only to new releases. There's a lot of good films coming out, a few in mainstream theaters and a lot in art houses. I know there are a lot of people who want to see great films that are coming out but don't want to see the boring pretentious films mixed in with them. Maybe I can help with that.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
#50: La Strada
La Strada (Fellini, 1954)
Of each of the Fellini films I've seen, La Strada fits the mold the least. It's the least verbose and has the simplest themes. It's also the earliest film I've seen of his by about six years, so I suppose that makes sense. The plot is very simple. A poor isolated rural family sends their daughter to work with a circus performer because one less mouth to feed would ease their financial stress. The girl, Gelsomina has been isolated her whole life to the point of being extremely naive and vulnerable. The circus performer, Zampano, is impulsive, heartless, and hedonistic, and Gelsomina has no defense mechanisms to deal with that. He hits her in order to get her to learn the tasks as his assistant, he leaves her on a street corner all night to have a one night stand, and basically treats her like garbage, and gradually breaks her fragile innocence.
It's a good film, but the themes are a bit too obvious and easy, and the character of Gelsomina while she starts out charming, starts grating on your nerves, especially if you watch the film a second time. I'd call it an important film as part of the Neo-Realism movement, but clearly came before Fellini found his stride.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
77/101
Next: The General, Sansho the Baliff
New films:
Machete 7/10
Exactly what it's supposed to be. If it looks like something you'll like, you'll like it. Delightful over the top action.
Lebanon 9/10
A tank movie from Israel that takes the point of view from inside the tank. We only see out of the tank through the scope. It's really intense, and really focuses on the emotions of the characters as they're constantly in danger and constantly forced to do things they consider morally atrocious because they've been ordered to, or because they could be killed if they don't. The movie presents to us the chaos of war and the way it devalues life, from the perspective of sympathetic, frightened characters. What really makes the film unique is the presentation style and the great camera work.
Of each of the Fellini films I've seen, La Strada fits the mold the least. It's the least verbose and has the simplest themes. It's also the earliest film I've seen of his by about six years, so I suppose that makes sense. The plot is very simple. A poor isolated rural family sends their daughter to work with a circus performer because one less mouth to feed would ease their financial stress. The girl, Gelsomina has been isolated her whole life to the point of being extremely naive and vulnerable. The circus performer, Zampano, is impulsive, heartless, and hedonistic, and Gelsomina has no defense mechanisms to deal with that. He hits her in order to get her to learn the tasks as his assistant, he leaves her on a street corner all night to have a one night stand, and basically treats her like garbage, and gradually breaks her fragile innocence.
It's a good film, but the themes are a bit too obvious and easy, and the character of Gelsomina while she starts out charming, starts grating on your nerves, especially if you watch the film a second time. I'd call it an important film as part of the Neo-Realism movement, but clearly came before Fellini found his stride.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
77/101
Next: The General, Sansho the Baliff
New films:
Machete 7/10
Exactly what it's supposed to be. If it looks like something you'll like, you'll like it. Delightful over the top action.
Lebanon 9/10
A tank movie from Israel that takes the point of view from inside the tank. We only see out of the tank through the scope. It's really intense, and really focuses on the emotions of the characters as they're constantly in danger and constantly forced to do things they consider morally atrocious because they've been ordered to, or because they could be killed if they don't. The movie presents to us the chaos of war and the way it devalues life, from the perspective of sympathetic, frightened characters. What really makes the film unique is the presentation style and the great camera work.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
#19: Raging Bull
Raging Bull (Scorcese, 1980)
I have no idea what to say about this one. I really don't have much to add, except some commentary on biography films in general.
I think biopics should be viewed as if you're viewing fiction, because really they are fiction. They're based on real people and real events, but they're not about those real people. They're about the filmmakers' interpretations of those events. The filmmaker decides what's important about a person, and what parts of his life are the most interesting. The filmmaker also decides what themes to focus on. Some films based on history are wildly inaccurate. If anyone's ever seen A Beautiful Mind and read the book, you can tell the difference. They cut out huge parts of John Nash's character, huge parts of his life, and made stuff up because they wanted to make the audience like the main character more. The John Nash of the book wasn't a loveable jerk. He sexually assaulted some of his male roommmates. A Beautiful Mind is an extreme example, but even the ones that are mostly accurate present the characters the way they choose. But, many are still very good films that tell very good stories. If you get hung up on the historical inaccuracies, you're missing the point of the film. That's why biopics should be viewed as if you're viewing a fictional story. Stories based on made up events are no more fictional than stories based on real events.
Raging Bull seems to be a pretty historically accurate, as far as I know, but Scorcese chooses to focus on the part of his character driven by self-hatred, always trying to prove he's better than everyone. The turning point of La Motta's career, in the film, is when he agreed to take a dive in a fight. But, too prideful to fall down, he just let his opoonent beat him up without falling down, making it obvious that he was taking a dive. At that point he lost his self respect, and started taking his anger out on everybody and accusing them of cheating on him or plotting against him whenever he perceived any kind of slight toward him. To Scorcese, this is the essence of Jake La Motta. This is probably not the essence of the real Jake La Motta, but it's the essence of one person's perception of him, and if you view the film that way, it's a very well written and well acted, if a bit too drawn out film.
Rating: **** / 5
76/101
Next: La Strada, The General
It seems The General and Battleship Potemkin are streaming on Netflix. So the only one I don't really feel like watching that I'll have to put on my Netflix queue is Wizard of Oz. Maybe I can use that as an excuse to try the Pink Floyd thing.
Others:
Days of Heaven **** / 5
I'd give this a 9/10 if I were rating on that scale, but on the scale I'm using for this game, giving more than four stars means it's one of my top 100 films of all time, so it only gets four stars.
I won't say much about it, other than it's a really good film, with really strong character development and very good presentation style.
I have no idea what to say about this one. I really don't have much to add, except some commentary on biography films in general.
I think biopics should be viewed as if you're viewing fiction, because really they are fiction. They're based on real people and real events, but they're not about those real people. They're about the filmmakers' interpretations of those events. The filmmaker decides what's important about a person, and what parts of his life are the most interesting. The filmmaker also decides what themes to focus on. Some films based on history are wildly inaccurate. If anyone's ever seen A Beautiful Mind and read the book, you can tell the difference. They cut out huge parts of John Nash's character, huge parts of his life, and made stuff up because they wanted to make the audience like the main character more. The John Nash of the book wasn't a loveable jerk. He sexually assaulted some of his male roommmates. A Beautiful Mind is an extreme example, but even the ones that are mostly accurate present the characters the way they choose. But, many are still very good films that tell very good stories. If you get hung up on the historical inaccuracies, you're missing the point of the film. That's why biopics should be viewed as if you're viewing a fictional story. Stories based on made up events are no more fictional than stories based on real events.
Raging Bull seems to be a pretty historically accurate, as far as I know, but Scorcese chooses to focus on the part of his character driven by self-hatred, always trying to prove he's better than everyone. The turning point of La Motta's career, in the film, is when he agreed to take a dive in a fight. But, too prideful to fall down, he just let his opoonent beat him up without falling down, making it obvious that he was taking a dive. At that point he lost his self respect, and started taking his anger out on everybody and accusing them of cheating on him or plotting against him whenever he perceived any kind of slight toward him. To Scorcese, this is the essence of Jake La Motta. This is probably not the essence of the real Jake La Motta, but it's the essence of one person's perception of him, and if you view the film that way, it's a very well written and well acted, if a bit too drawn out film.
Rating: **** / 5
76/101
Next: La Strada, The General
It seems The General and Battleship Potemkin are streaming on Netflix. So the only one I don't really feel like watching that I'll have to put on my Netflix queue is Wizard of Oz. Maybe I can use that as an excuse to try the Pink Floyd thing.
Others:
Days of Heaven **** / 5
I'd give this a 9/10 if I were rating on that scale, but on the scale I'm using for this game, giving more than four stars means it's one of my top 100 films of all time, so it only gets four stars.
I won't say much about it, other than it's a really good film, with really strong character development and very good presentation style.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
#63: The Conformist
The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1969)
I'm starting work on my Masters thesis, so these writeups are going to get a bit shorter if I'm going to keep writing them.
I'm not a fan of The Conformist. The main character works for the fascist government in Italy, and he's sent to assassinate some defectors in another country. He doesn't agree with fascism, but he follows it without question. Once fascism is over, he violently rallies against it. He's a man who just conforms; he never acts on his own opinions or morals. At one point he visits a priest and asks for forgiveness for a murder. When he was young, he was molested by a homosexual. The homosexual then asked him to kill him, and he did. The priest acted like the sodomy was a bigger sin than the murder. Then, when he learned he worked for the government, he forgave him immediately. The church also conforms to the fascist government, regardless of what it really feels. According to the movie, most of Italy were conformists, following fascism to protect themselves, then rallying against it once it ended.
Conceptually the movie is strong, but the script is pretty weak and very forced.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
75/101
Next: Raging Bull, La Strada
I'm starting work on my Masters thesis, so these writeups are going to get a bit shorter if I'm going to keep writing them.
I'm not a fan of The Conformist. The main character works for the fascist government in Italy, and he's sent to assassinate some defectors in another country. He doesn't agree with fascism, but he follows it without question. Once fascism is over, he violently rallies against it. He's a man who just conforms; he never acts on his own opinions or morals. At one point he visits a priest and asks for forgiveness for a murder. When he was young, he was molested by a homosexual. The homosexual then asked him to kill him, and he did. The priest acted like the sodomy was a bigger sin than the murder. Then, when he learned he worked for the government, he forgave him immediately. The church also conforms to the fascist government, regardless of what it really feels. According to the movie, most of Italy were conformists, following fascism to protect themselves, then rallying against it once it ended.
Conceptually the movie is strong, but the script is pretty weak and very forced.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
75/101
Next: Raging Bull, La Strada
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Kurosawa special: #79 Ikiru, #18 Rashomon
Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)
Ikiru is the most well known of Kurosawa films that takes place in present day. The main character is a government worker who's wasting his life quietly playing the beaurocracy to protect his own place in it. He finds out he has stomach cancer (Which in the 1950s was a death sentence), and he goes out to try learn how to start experiencing his life before he dies.
In the film, government beaurocracy is presented cynically and satirically. There's a neighborhood of people who want to fill in a local cesspool and build a playground over it. (This might be the inspiration for the show Parks and Recreation). Nobody wants to handle it. No matter what government office they go to, the clark there says it's the business of some other department. Nobody is interested in accomplishing anything in their job or making anyone's life better. Everybody knows the trick: If you do nothing, you will stay where you are. It's not until the main character knows he's dying that he realizes this is a waste of time.
In the first half of the film, he tries to connect with his family, and he tries to learn how to party like the young people. He's not feeling any of it, and characters while charmed by him at first get freaked out when he tries to cling to them. Finally he goes back to work, making the decision that instead of just wasting his time, he's going to use his position to try to get something done. The project he chooses is to build the playground. He pulls all the right strings, goes against his bosses, perseveres and forces people to summon the will to pull the project through. In the last hour of the film, he's dead, and his coworkers are musing on his behavior in the last few months.
The movie presents some very good satire about the way we live our lives, bordering on the preachy now and then. The first half of the film can be a little long winded. The second half of the film is long, but it needs to be in order to pace the man's coworkers' gradual realization of how much they posthumusly admire him. I think it can be a little philosophically one sided. Playing the game to protect your career and living your life to it's fullest potential aren't always mutually exclusive in the real world.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
Rashomon is one of the earliest films to present a narrative in terms of different characters' different perspectives about an event, rather than just showing the event itself. The facts of the event are clear. A bandit rapes a woman and kills her husband. The bandit, the wife, and the husband (Through a psychic medium) all present their version of the story. Each of them tells a completely different story about the rape and murder, and each tells a story which flatters himself or herself.
Up to the point of the rape, all the stories are the same. That's when they diverge. The bandit tells a story about an honorable fight for the heart of his wife. The wife tells a story about trying to kill herself in shame, until the husband kills himself out of his shame. The dead husband tells a misogynist story about his shamed wife begging the bandit to kill him, then killing himself to save his honor. After the three stories come out, we find out the man who found the body witnessed the whole thing, and he tells a story where all three come off terribly.
The film takes place in 16th century Japan, in a time of extreme poverty where death and murder are commonplace. The main narrative takes place with three men stuck in a rain storm, discussing the events of the rape and murder. One character is a priest, who wants to see the good in mankind, and can't believe a crime like this could happen. He's trying to hold onto his faith in humanity even in such a horrible time. Another character is a misanthropist who sees the human race as animals who will cut each others' throats to survive, and isn't surprised at all by the crime. The third, the witness, is trying to process it all and understand how people could behave this way. The film analyzes the question of whether it's possible to keep your faith in humanity, even knowing the horrible things humans can do.
Rating: ***** / 5
74/101
Ikiru is the most well known of Kurosawa films that takes place in present day. The main character is a government worker who's wasting his life quietly playing the beaurocracy to protect his own place in it. He finds out he has stomach cancer (Which in the 1950s was a death sentence), and he goes out to try learn how to start experiencing his life before he dies.
In the film, government beaurocracy is presented cynically and satirically. There's a neighborhood of people who want to fill in a local cesspool and build a playground over it. (This might be the inspiration for the show Parks and Recreation). Nobody wants to handle it. No matter what government office they go to, the clark there says it's the business of some other department. Nobody is interested in accomplishing anything in their job or making anyone's life better. Everybody knows the trick: If you do nothing, you will stay where you are. It's not until the main character knows he's dying that he realizes this is a waste of time.
In the first half of the film, he tries to connect with his family, and he tries to learn how to party like the young people. He's not feeling any of it, and characters while charmed by him at first get freaked out when he tries to cling to them. Finally he goes back to work, making the decision that instead of just wasting his time, he's going to use his position to try to get something done. The project he chooses is to build the playground. He pulls all the right strings, goes against his bosses, perseveres and forces people to summon the will to pull the project through. In the last hour of the film, he's dead, and his coworkers are musing on his behavior in the last few months.
The movie presents some very good satire about the way we live our lives, bordering on the preachy now and then. The first half of the film can be a little long winded. The second half of the film is long, but it needs to be in order to pace the man's coworkers' gradual realization of how much they posthumusly admire him. I think it can be a little philosophically one sided. Playing the game to protect your career and living your life to it's fullest potential aren't always mutually exclusive in the real world.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
Rashomon is one of the earliest films to present a narrative in terms of different characters' different perspectives about an event, rather than just showing the event itself. The facts of the event are clear. A bandit rapes a woman and kills her husband. The bandit, the wife, and the husband (Through a psychic medium) all present their version of the story. Each of them tells a completely different story about the rape and murder, and each tells a story which flatters himself or herself.
Up to the point of the rape, all the stories are the same. That's when they diverge. The bandit tells a story about an honorable fight for the heart of his wife. The wife tells a story about trying to kill herself in shame, until the husband kills himself out of his shame. The dead husband tells a misogynist story about his shamed wife begging the bandit to kill him, then killing himself to save his honor. After the three stories come out, we find out the man who found the body witnessed the whole thing, and he tells a story where all three come off terribly.
The film takes place in 16th century Japan, in a time of extreme poverty where death and murder are commonplace. The main narrative takes place with three men stuck in a rain storm, discussing the events of the rape and murder. One character is a priest, who wants to see the good in mankind, and can't believe a crime like this could happen. He's trying to hold onto his faith in humanity even in such a horrible time. Another character is a misanthropist who sees the human race as animals who will cut each others' throats to survive, and isn't surprised at all by the crime. The third, the witness, is trying to process it all and understand how people could behave this way. The film analyzes the question of whether it's possible to keep your faith in humanity, even knowing the horrible things humans can do.
Rating: ***** / 5
74/101
Sunday, August 22, 2010
#93: Last Year In Marienbad
Last Year In Marienbad (Resnais, 1961)
Alan Resnais is one of the most notable directors of the French New Wave movement, and one of the best to bring unconventional storytelling techniques and ambiguity of meaning to film. Marienbad takes place in a gothically decorated luxury hotel, with lots of smooth rectangular surfaces and neo-classical marble statues scattered around. A man and a woman meet, and the man claims they met at the same place a year ago, fell in love and agreed to run off together the following year. She can't remember what happened, and as he explores his memory, he's not as certain about his memory as he was either.
There are lots of cuts back to the meeting of the past year, but presented only as the characters recall them, and in stream of consciousness fashion. For instance, there was an incident where the two made love. When she starts to remember it she suddenly acts shocked and drops her glass. He remembers it being a consensual encounter, then starts to remember but refuses the possibility that he forced himself on her. Also, he remembers it as being warm and summerlike outside, but the other guests at the hotel say that he wasn't even there last year, and all the fountains were frozen over at the time. What really happened between these two, or did it even happen at all? The movie explores the uncertainty and ambiguity of memory, which is really more realistic and interesting than the tendency in most movies for people to remember events exactly and accurately to the tiniest detail.
It all works and comes off beautifully because of the presentation style and the simultaneous beauty and emptiness of the setting. I'd recommend it to anybody who really likes French films with unconventional storytelling.
Rating: **** / 5
72/101
Next: Ikiru, Rashomon, The Conformist
New films:
Animal Kingdom: 0/10
A tedious movie filled with predictable mob movie cliches. None of the characters are interesting, and nothing happens in the movie that's interesting. The title 'Animal Kingdom' refers to their attempt at predator/prey relationships to use as symbolism to explain how the world works. It doesn't work. Nothing in the film works. The one thing in the film I didn't hate was a good performance by the main character's grandmother. The rest of the film is filled with boring, predictable garbage and pointless killings just for killing's sake.
I want you to understand I am saying this without any slight inflection of a 'Comic book guy' voice. I seriously mean it. "Worst…movie…ever!"
Alan Resnais is one of the most notable directors of the French New Wave movement, and one of the best to bring unconventional storytelling techniques and ambiguity of meaning to film. Marienbad takes place in a gothically decorated luxury hotel, with lots of smooth rectangular surfaces and neo-classical marble statues scattered around. A man and a woman meet, and the man claims they met at the same place a year ago, fell in love and agreed to run off together the following year. She can't remember what happened, and as he explores his memory, he's not as certain about his memory as he was either.
There are lots of cuts back to the meeting of the past year, but presented only as the characters recall them, and in stream of consciousness fashion. For instance, there was an incident where the two made love. When she starts to remember it she suddenly acts shocked and drops her glass. He remembers it being a consensual encounter, then starts to remember but refuses the possibility that he forced himself on her. Also, he remembers it as being warm and summerlike outside, but the other guests at the hotel say that he wasn't even there last year, and all the fountains were frozen over at the time. What really happened between these two, or did it even happen at all? The movie explores the uncertainty and ambiguity of memory, which is really more realistic and interesting than the tendency in most movies for people to remember events exactly and accurately to the tiniest detail.
It all works and comes off beautifully because of the presentation style and the simultaneous beauty and emptiness of the setting. I'd recommend it to anybody who really likes French films with unconventional storytelling.
Rating: **** / 5
72/101
Next: Ikiru, Rashomon, The Conformist
New films:
Animal Kingdom: 0/10
A tedious movie filled with predictable mob movie cliches. None of the characters are interesting, and nothing happens in the movie that's interesting. The title 'Animal Kingdom' refers to their attempt at predator/prey relationships to use as symbolism to explain how the world works. It doesn't work. Nothing in the film works. The one thing in the film I didn't hate was a good performance by the main character's grandmother. The rest of the film is filled with boring, predictable garbage and pointless killings just for killing's sake.
I want you to understand I am saying this without any slight inflection of a 'Comic book guy' voice. I seriously mean it. "Worst…movie…ever!"
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
#41: The 400 Blows
The 400 Blows (Traffaut, 1959)
The 400 Blows is a very realistic, semiautobiographical film about a child growing up with no stable, loving adult authority figures. His teachers see him as a problem and his parents see him as a burden. In the past he's found he gets in trouble equally whether he follows the rules or not, and nobody believes him when he tells the truth. So, the rules don't matter to him, and when he breaks them he lies his ass off to avoid getting into trouble.
The trouble is, he's an incompetent liar. He skips school one day to go to an amusement park. The next day he comes in and says he missed school because his mother was dead. Another time he cheats on a school assignment by copying the writing of Balzac. Every lie he tells is doomed to failure, and every time he's caught in a lie his parents and teachers bite back worse and worse.
All the boy's actions throughout the film are misguided, but it's also clear his actions follow naturally from the logic of a ten year old who's been inconsistently parented and withheld support, common sense teaching and affection. All of the adults in the film blame all his actions on problems with his character, and punish him with draconian measures that alienate him further.
The film offers sharp criticism of the attitude of society toward troubled children as well as a strong psychological character study on a marginalized child.
Rating: **** / 5
71/101
Next: Last Year In Marienbad, Ikiru, Rashomon
The 400 Blows is a very realistic, semiautobiographical film about a child growing up with no stable, loving adult authority figures. His teachers see him as a problem and his parents see him as a burden. In the past he's found he gets in trouble equally whether he follows the rules or not, and nobody believes him when he tells the truth. So, the rules don't matter to him, and when he breaks them he lies his ass off to avoid getting into trouble.
The trouble is, he's an incompetent liar. He skips school one day to go to an amusement park. The next day he comes in and says he missed school because his mother was dead. Another time he cheats on a school assignment by copying the writing of Balzac. Every lie he tells is doomed to failure, and every time he's caught in a lie his parents and teachers bite back worse and worse.
All the boy's actions throughout the film are misguided, but it's also clear his actions follow naturally from the logic of a ten year old who's been inconsistently parented and withheld support, common sense teaching and affection. All of the adults in the film blame all his actions on problems with his character, and punish him with draconian measures that alienate him further.
The film offers sharp criticism of the attitude of society toward troubled children as well as a strong psychological character study on a marginalized child.
Rating: **** / 5
71/101
Next: Last Year In Marienbad, Ikiru, Rashomon
Sunday, August 15, 2010
#24: The Grand Illusion
The Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1939)
This is one I don't have a lot to say about. It's a World War I anti-war movie about a bunch of French soldiers in a German POW camp. The film is filled with little victories, which are immediately canceled out and revealed as futile. They spend months digging a tunnel, only to get moved to a different prison a few days before it's finished. They try to tell the new prisoners it's there, but they don't speak the same language. They hear France captured a new German base, and they celebrate. A few days later it gets taken back. Neither side ends up really benefiting from the war. The film also shows the human toll the futile war takes along the way.
It's undoubtedly one of the most iconic anti-war movies. I find some of the characters annoying, and I find the setting a little to antiseptic to be a war movie. But, those are minor complaints.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
70/101
Next: The 400 Blows, Last Year In Marienbad
This is one I don't have a lot to say about. It's a World War I anti-war movie about a bunch of French soldiers in a German POW camp. The film is filled with little victories, which are immediately canceled out and revealed as futile. They spend months digging a tunnel, only to get moved to a different prison a few days before it's finished. They try to tell the new prisoners it's there, but they don't speak the same language. They hear France captured a new German base, and they celebrate. A few days later it gets taken back. Neither side ends up really benefiting from the war. The film also shows the human toll the futile war takes along the way.
It's undoubtedly one of the most iconic anti-war movies. I find some of the characters annoying, and I find the setting a little to antiseptic to be a war movie. But, those are minor complaints.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
70/101
Next: The 400 Blows, Last Year In Marienbad
Monday, August 9, 2010
#5: 8 1/2
8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963)
Fellini's most critically praised film is also, among the ones I've seen, his most dense. It's very dialog heavy, it's narrative is very layered, and it requires knowledge of other films at the time. It's also fairly self-referential and self-satirical. The lead character is a filmmaker who's working on a new film. He thinks it's his best, most ingenious work, and everybody around him is trying to drag his ideas down. Throughout the film we see skits from his movie. There's a lot of random confused symbolism, a lot of random scenes from his past, and random criticism of catholic shame, and none of the scenes seem to have any coherent theme between them. To top it off, he's building a big expensive launching pad for a spaceship, because the world is ending and people have to escape.
People around him are talking about him behind his back, criticisms are telling him what's wrong with his ideas, and he's trying not to listen. He's annoyed by them. Later, his wife shows up. There's a character playing his wife in the movie, and it's a very negative one sided portrayal of her. He tries to give a long winded analysis of the character, and his wife as well as other female characters tell him "He just doesn't know how to love". The weight of all the criticism he's been taking in, and now the effect the film is having on his personal life, start to make the film fall apart in his mind. He realizes, he wanted to put everything into the movie, and it ended up having nothing.
There are a lot of little nuances and jokes that could be applied to other Fellini films and other personal struggles he's had making films. The film (Unlike some other films about filmmaking, such as Contempt) has a compelling and interesting narrative, and some very entertaining scenes. But it also serves as an analysis of the culture of art films and a satirical self-portrait of Fellini's film making process. It's not a beginner art film, but it's a very rewarding one for those familiar with Fellini's body of work.
Rating: ***** / 5
69/101
New films:
Get Low: 6/10
Get Low is a film about a man who has lived alone in a secluded cabin for forty years and now wants to throw a funeral party for himself. He tells everyone to come and tell stories about him. But really, everybody only knows him through third hand gossip. What he wants to tell a story of something he did forty years ago that he's been punishing himself for. Robert Duvall plays the lead, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray are in it. The acting is great, and the actors will probably get some oscar nominations they deserve. The problem with the film is the script. It tries too hard to make him loveably quirky, when I would have appreciated a more balanced perspective a bit more. The film will probably get a best picture nomination it doesn't deserve.
Fellini's most critically praised film is also, among the ones I've seen, his most dense. It's very dialog heavy, it's narrative is very layered, and it requires knowledge of other films at the time. It's also fairly self-referential and self-satirical. The lead character is a filmmaker who's working on a new film. He thinks it's his best, most ingenious work, and everybody around him is trying to drag his ideas down. Throughout the film we see skits from his movie. There's a lot of random confused symbolism, a lot of random scenes from his past, and random criticism of catholic shame, and none of the scenes seem to have any coherent theme between them. To top it off, he's building a big expensive launching pad for a spaceship, because the world is ending and people have to escape.
People around him are talking about him behind his back, criticisms are telling him what's wrong with his ideas, and he's trying not to listen. He's annoyed by them. Later, his wife shows up. There's a character playing his wife in the movie, and it's a very negative one sided portrayal of her. He tries to give a long winded analysis of the character, and his wife as well as other female characters tell him "He just doesn't know how to love". The weight of all the criticism he's been taking in, and now the effect the film is having on his personal life, start to make the film fall apart in his mind. He realizes, he wanted to put everything into the movie, and it ended up having nothing.
There are a lot of little nuances and jokes that could be applied to other Fellini films and other personal struggles he's had making films. The film (Unlike some other films about filmmaking, such as Contempt) has a compelling and interesting narrative, and some very entertaining scenes. But it also serves as an analysis of the culture of art films and a satirical self-portrait of Fellini's film making process. It's not a beginner art film, but it's a very rewarding one for those familiar with Fellini's body of work.
Rating: ***** / 5
69/101
New films:
Get Low: 6/10
Get Low is a film about a man who has lived alone in a secluded cabin for forty years and now wants to throw a funeral party for himself. He tells everyone to come and tell stories about him. But really, everybody only knows him through third hand gossip. What he wants to tell a story of something he did forty years ago that he's been punishing himself for. Robert Duvall plays the lead, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray are in it. The acting is great, and the actors will probably get some oscar nominations they deserve. The problem with the film is the script. It tries too hard to make him loveably quirky, when I would have appreciated a more balanced perspective a bit more. The film will probably get a best picture nomination it doesn't deserve.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
#37: The Night Of The Hunter
Night Of The Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
Night of the Hunter is one of those short, simple films about simple ideas without an excess of dialog. The premise is simple. A boy's father robbed a bank, killing two people in the process. He makes it home and gives him the money, and tells him not to tell anyone where it is, then gets caught and hung. But before he's hung, he meets a serial killer in jail who was caught for stealing a car, and lets it slip out that the money is hidden somewhere at home. So, the serial killer goes to the boy's village and marries his mother. Everybody is enamored with him because he's so convincing pretending to be a preacher. Have you ever seen a cartoon or parody movie where a bad guy has 'Love' and 'Hate' tattooed on his fingers? That's from Night Of The Hunter.
The major themes of the movie are 'false prophets' and predators. The killer is the predator and the children are the prey. In the middle of the movie there's lots of shots of animals hunting animals, spider webs and the like to symbolize the childrens' total vulnerability.
The movie opens with a bible quote: "A good tree can only bear good fruit. A corrupt tree can only bear corrupt fruit. You will know each by their fruit". In addition to the 'hunter', the killer is also the 'false prophet'. It's not until the children meet a woman who is not fooled and sees the situation as it is that they get protected from the predator.
But, the real villain of the film is the kids' father. The serial killer is just an animal, an automatic function of the world lacking free will. It's a fact of nature that if the children have all this money the predators of the world will come after it. The father should never have put that kind of adult responsibility in the hands of children not equipped to handle it.
The movie is short, simple, well written with great imagery, and expresses it's ideas really beautifully.
Rating: ***** / 5
68/101
Night of the Hunter is one of those short, simple films about simple ideas without an excess of dialog. The premise is simple. A boy's father robbed a bank, killing two people in the process. He makes it home and gives him the money, and tells him not to tell anyone where it is, then gets caught and hung. But before he's hung, he meets a serial killer in jail who was caught for stealing a car, and lets it slip out that the money is hidden somewhere at home. So, the serial killer goes to the boy's village and marries his mother. Everybody is enamored with him because he's so convincing pretending to be a preacher. Have you ever seen a cartoon or parody movie where a bad guy has 'Love' and 'Hate' tattooed on his fingers? That's from Night Of The Hunter.
The major themes of the movie are 'false prophets' and predators. The killer is the predator and the children are the prey. In the middle of the movie there's lots of shots of animals hunting animals, spider webs and the like to symbolize the childrens' total vulnerability.
The movie opens with a bible quote: "A good tree can only bear good fruit. A corrupt tree can only bear corrupt fruit. You will know each by their fruit". In addition to the 'hunter', the killer is also the 'false prophet'. It's not until the children meet a woman who is not fooled and sees the situation as it is that they get protected from the predator.
But, the real villain of the film is the kids' father. The serial killer is just an animal, an automatic function of the world lacking free will. It's a fact of nature that if the children have all this money the predators of the world will come after it. The father should never have put that kind of adult responsibility in the hands of children not equipped to handle it.
The movie is short, simple, well written with great imagery, and expresses it's ideas really beautifully.
Rating: ***** / 5
68/101
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
#49 Jules and Jim, #67 Greed, #51 The Wild Bunch
In this one I try to get out brief writeups of all the ones I've watched but haven't written up yet.
Jules and Jim (Traffaut, 1961)
Jules and Jim is more or less the exact movie you think of when you think of 'Arty French film'. All the characters are symbolic of something, they all follow their personal impulses in ways that comment on social conventions paying little attention to things with outside consequences. This sometimes causes characters to behave in random confusing ways that make them less believeable but more symbolic.
The plot is about two (heterosexual) men who have a very close friendship. They go on vacations together, date women together (Both of them and one woman), and so on. They want the women they meet to conform to iconized statuesque images of femininity. They meet a woman Catherine who looks exactly like a statue they liked. She doesn't want to conform to any image of the good wife, but wants to be in control of her relationship with both of them. They go off to war, fighting for opposite sides, and spend the war in terror that they'll kill the other. They both survive, and when they get back, Catherine has married Jules. They have a child, and her relationship sours with Jules, so she starts dating Jim, and they all live together in the same house. Catherine tries to tame Jim the same way she tamed Jules, but Jim still wants that culturally mandated image of femininity and family, which Catherine won't give him, always trying to control the relationship on her own terms.
It's very well directed, acted, and scripted, but the whole commentary on gender can make the plot seem arbitrary and characters seem weak.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
Greed (Von Stroheim, 1924)
Greed is an early silent film with three major versions. The ten hour version Von Stroheim originally wanted to make, the four hour version he produced when the studio made him cut it down, and the 140 minute one the studio made against Von Stroheim's will. The version I saw is the four hour one. It covers a story called 'McTeague' about a man who marries a woman he loves, but then when she wins the lottery and becomes miserly, and everybody is driven to hatred by jealousy and greed, wanting to get their hands on their share of the loterry winnings. A lot of sequences aren't in full motion, but are instead a montage of photographs explaining the story. The jumping back and forth from photographs and motion has an awkward effect on the pacing. Both elements were done well, but it's weird seeing them coexist. Particularly since the film was made in a time when the quality of actors willing to appear in films was limited. Also, there isn't really enough in the story to justify it being four hours long. Greed is kind of like what happens when a director is so in love with his idea that he doesn't listen to editors.
Rating: *** / 5
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
A classic western that follows the anti-hero formula better than anyone else in the genre except Leone. The characters are a bunch of aging outlaws who want to make one last big score before they retire. Although they say they want to retire, you get the impression they'd never be happy in idleness, and they've got a secret desire to go out in a blaze of glory that manifests later in the film. The railroad hired a contract to kill them, and the man in charge forces a member of the gang who was caught to help kill them or else go back to jail. Throughout the movie the portrayal of the characters leads you to root for the bad guys. The outlaws are loyal to each other, and they're always respectable, manly, and competent, save for the fact they'll kill people if they have to in order to make a steal. The 'good guys' on the other hand exhibit even less regard for human life than the bad guys. They plan massacres in the middle of public squares where civilians are guaranteed to get caught in the crossfire. Except for the former member of the gang who is the only competent one and the only one who behaves respectively, all the other hunters are incompetent, impulsive, and greedy. Everyones a murderer so you root for the ones who are nicer and more respectable when they're not murdering. It's a very fun, very well acted movie with a really incredibly choreographed train heist scene.
Rating: **** / 5
67/101
Others:
The Best Of Youth: **** 1/2 / 5
A six hour film. Okay, that should scare away all the people who won't like it. The movie covers two brothers across fourty years of Italian history. They're both idealistic but express their idealism in different ways. Matteo can never accept that the world doesn't meet his expectations, so he keeps running from place to place and from job to job. When the world fails to meet Nicola's standards, he compensates by lowering his expectations. Many of the characters in the film start out with blond hair, but later in the film randomly have brown or black hair. It's only brought up by one character in the entire six hours. I believe the blond hair represents a blank slate, and the brown hair represents the real world manifestation of that person.
For me it didn't start to wear out it's welcome until about four and a half hours in. If you're willing to spend the time to watch it, it's a great movie.
New movies:
The Kids Are Alright: 6/10
A movie that tries to show a lesbian family with two kids as having the same highs and lows as any heterosexual family unit. It's got a good script and great acting, but it wears it's political intentions a bit too obviously on it's sleeeve, which can sometimes make the characters feel like symbols rather than individuals. And they kind of cheat at the end by making it too easy to hate the sperm donor father. If they made the sperm donor father a nice guy they would have had to deal with the ethical dilemmas in a more nuanced way.
Here's a list of the movies I haven't watched this year yet:
8 1/2
Godfather
The Seven Samurai
Battleship Potemkin
Godfather: Part II
Casablanca
Rashomon
Raging Bull
Touch of Evil
The Grand Illusion
The General
Children of Paradise
Dr Strangelove
Apocalypse Now
The Night Of The Hunter
L'avventura
Blade Runner
The 400 Blows
Persona
Rear Window
It's A Wonderful Life
La Strada
The Seventh Seal
Au Hasard Balthazar
The Conformist
The Wizard Of Oz
Amarcord
Ikiru
Barry Lyndon
Journey To Italy
Sansho The Baliff
Last Near In Marienbad
Blue Velvet
On The Waterfront
There aren't any left that I both haven't seen and don't own. The only problem remaining is whether I really want to spend money or Netflix time on the ones I don't necessarily like. Battleship Potemkin, The General, Wizard of Oz. For Wizard of Oz I was hoping it'd come on TV so I could put it on in the background and pay half-attention to it. When I get toward the end I'll see if I really want to watch these ones again.
Jules and Jim (Traffaut, 1961)
Jules and Jim is more or less the exact movie you think of when you think of 'Arty French film'. All the characters are symbolic of something, they all follow their personal impulses in ways that comment on social conventions paying little attention to things with outside consequences. This sometimes causes characters to behave in random confusing ways that make them less believeable but more symbolic.
The plot is about two (heterosexual) men who have a very close friendship. They go on vacations together, date women together (Both of them and one woman), and so on. They want the women they meet to conform to iconized statuesque images of femininity. They meet a woman Catherine who looks exactly like a statue they liked. She doesn't want to conform to any image of the good wife, but wants to be in control of her relationship with both of them. They go off to war, fighting for opposite sides, and spend the war in terror that they'll kill the other. They both survive, and when they get back, Catherine has married Jules. They have a child, and her relationship sours with Jules, so she starts dating Jim, and they all live together in the same house. Catherine tries to tame Jim the same way she tamed Jules, but Jim still wants that culturally mandated image of femininity and family, which Catherine won't give him, always trying to control the relationship on her own terms.
It's very well directed, acted, and scripted, but the whole commentary on gender can make the plot seem arbitrary and characters seem weak.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
Greed (Von Stroheim, 1924)
Greed is an early silent film with three major versions. The ten hour version Von Stroheim originally wanted to make, the four hour version he produced when the studio made him cut it down, and the 140 minute one the studio made against Von Stroheim's will. The version I saw is the four hour one. It covers a story called 'McTeague' about a man who marries a woman he loves, but then when she wins the lottery and becomes miserly, and everybody is driven to hatred by jealousy and greed, wanting to get their hands on their share of the loterry winnings. A lot of sequences aren't in full motion, but are instead a montage of photographs explaining the story. The jumping back and forth from photographs and motion has an awkward effect on the pacing. Both elements were done well, but it's weird seeing them coexist. Particularly since the film was made in a time when the quality of actors willing to appear in films was limited. Also, there isn't really enough in the story to justify it being four hours long. Greed is kind of like what happens when a director is so in love with his idea that he doesn't listen to editors.
Rating: *** / 5
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
A classic western that follows the anti-hero formula better than anyone else in the genre except Leone. The characters are a bunch of aging outlaws who want to make one last big score before they retire. Although they say they want to retire, you get the impression they'd never be happy in idleness, and they've got a secret desire to go out in a blaze of glory that manifests later in the film. The railroad hired a contract to kill them, and the man in charge forces a member of the gang who was caught to help kill them or else go back to jail. Throughout the movie the portrayal of the characters leads you to root for the bad guys. The outlaws are loyal to each other, and they're always respectable, manly, and competent, save for the fact they'll kill people if they have to in order to make a steal. The 'good guys' on the other hand exhibit even less regard for human life than the bad guys. They plan massacres in the middle of public squares where civilians are guaranteed to get caught in the crossfire. Except for the former member of the gang who is the only competent one and the only one who behaves respectively, all the other hunters are incompetent, impulsive, and greedy. Everyones a murderer so you root for the ones who are nicer and more respectable when they're not murdering. It's a very fun, very well acted movie with a really incredibly choreographed train heist scene.
Rating: **** / 5
67/101
Others:
The Best Of Youth: **** 1/2 / 5
A six hour film. Okay, that should scare away all the people who won't like it. The movie covers two brothers across fourty years of Italian history. They're both idealistic but express their idealism in different ways. Matteo can never accept that the world doesn't meet his expectations, so he keeps running from place to place and from job to job. When the world fails to meet Nicola's standards, he compensates by lowering his expectations. Many of the characters in the film start out with blond hair, but later in the film randomly have brown or black hair. It's only brought up by one character in the entire six hours. I believe the blond hair represents a blank slate, and the brown hair represents the real world manifestation of that person.
For me it didn't start to wear out it's welcome until about four and a half hours in. If you're willing to spend the time to watch it, it's a great movie.
New movies:
The Kids Are Alright: 6/10
A movie that tries to show a lesbian family with two kids as having the same highs and lows as any heterosexual family unit. It's got a good script and great acting, but it wears it's political intentions a bit too obviously on it's sleeeve, which can sometimes make the characters feel like symbols rather than individuals. And they kind of cheat at the end by making it too easy to hate the sperm donor father. If they made the sperm donor father a nice guy they would have had to deal with the ethical dilemmas in a more nuanced way.
Here's a list of the movies I haven't watched this year yet:
8 1/2
Godfather
The Seven Samurai
Battleship Potemkin
Godfather: Part II
Casablanca
Rashomon
Raging Bull
Touch of Evil
The Grand Illusion
The General
Children of Paradise
Dr Strangelove
Apocalypse Now
The Night Of The Hunter
L'avventura
Blade Runner
The 400 Blows
Persona
Rear Window
It's A Wonderful Life
La Strada
The Seventh Seal
Au Hasard Balthazar
The Conformist
The Wizard Of Oz
Amarcord
Ikiru
Barry Lyndon
Journey To Italy
Sansho The Baliff
Last Near In Marienbad
Blue Velvet
On The Waterfront
There aren't any left that I both haven't seen and don't own. The only problem remaining is whether I really want to spend money or Netflix time on the ones I don't necessarily like. Battleship Potemkin, The General, Wizard of Oz. For Wizard of Oz I was hoping it'd come on TV so I could put it on in the background and pay half-attention to it. When I get toward the end I'll see if I really want to watch these ones again.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
#82: Letter From An Unknown Woman
Letter From An Unknown Woman (Ophuls, 1948)
I'm falling behind on these writeups. Maybe I'll stop trying to write long ones and just give a blurb unless it's one of my absolute favorites and I want to write a lot about it. (I don't think many people are reading these things anyway.)
Letter From An Unknown Woman has a pretty cliche romantic plot. A man gets a letter from a woman he doesn't know. The letter says that she will probably be dead soon, and she wants him to know that she's been in love with him her entire life. She met him when she was a teenager and he was a famous piano prodigy. She worked as a maid in the building he was living in, and her room was next to his. She fell in love with him listening to him play the piano. At this point she fixates on him. She defines herself according to who she thinks he wants her to be, and refuses to be courted by any other man.
At the beginning I referred to the plot as 'Romantic', but it's really anti-romantic. All the time he spends with her, he's really just skirt chasing. She's so fixated on him that she spends her entire life pining for her image of him. The movie takes a lot of romantic cliches and shows them lead to nowhere except a lot of opportunities -- not missed -- just not pursued.
The beauty of the movie is in the ambiance of the scenes and the cinematography. It's directed so beautifully that you're pulled into and entranced by a story which in and of itself is very cliche. Every scene is memorable, and every image is purposeful.
Letter From An Unknown Woman is not in print in the US. I'd like to thank the country of Korea for printing a lot of NTSC-ALL region coded DVDs for english speaking movies that aren't in print in the US. You can turn off the Korean subtitles, and get them a lot cheaper than their US counterparts. I also got Voyage and Italy on a Korean DVD, as well as about ten Chaplin movies.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
64/101
New movies:
Toy Story 3: 9/10
The adventure component of the film is oriented at kids, but the emotional themes are oriented at the people who were kids when the first movie came out. The movie is character-driven and genuinely funny, and hits home with the themes of the dread of being thrown out when you're not needed anymore. It's possibly the best kids' film I've seen since Lion King.
Inception: 7/10
Great visuals, great multi-linear storytelling, good enough acting, average script. An enjoyable movie, but has some plausibility issues at points, and spends too much time explaining the physics of the dream states. The movie would have been paced better and made a little more sense if they just told us minimally what we needed to know to understand the plot and threw us more quickly into the main dream.
Wild Grass: 3/10
There's some beautiful images in the film. But, the plot is paced awkwardly and the characters motivations are not interesting, nor do they make any sense. I haven't seen Resnais' earlier famous work, but I probably should just to repair my opinion of him.
On the plus side, it gives hope to stalkers everywhere. "Never give up! She will someday return your affections!"
I'm falling behind on these writeups. Maybe I'll stop trying to write long ones and just give a blurb unless it's one of my absolute favorites and I want to write a lot about it. (I don't think many people are reading these things anyway.)
Letter From An Unknown Woman has a pretty cliche romantic plot. A man gets a letter from a woman he doesn't know. The letter says that she will probably be dead soon, and she wants him to know that she's been in love with him her entire life. She met him when she was a teenager and he was a famous piano prodigy. She worked as a maid in the building he was living in, and her room was next to his. She fell in love with him listening to him play the piano. At this point she fixates on him. She defines herself according to who she thinks he wants her to be, and refuses to be courted by any other man.
At the beginning I referred to the plot as 'Romantic', but it's really anti-romantic. All the time he spends with her, he's really just skirt chasing. She's so fixated on him that she spends her entire life pining for her image of him. The movie takes a lot of romantic cliches and shows them lead to nowhere except a lot of opportunities -- not missed -- just not pursued.
The beauty of the movie is in the ambiance of the scenes and the cinematography. It's directed so beautifully that you're pulled into and entranced by a story which in and of itself is very cliche. Every scene is memorable, and every image is purposeful.
Letter From An Unknown Woman is not in print in the US. I'd like to thank the country of Korea for printing a lot of NTSC-ALL region coded DVDs for english speaking movies that aren't in print in the US. You can turn off the Korean subtitles, and get them a lot cheaper than their US counterparts. I also got Voyage and Italy on a Korean DVD, as well as about ten Chaplin movies.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
64/101
New movies:
Toy Story 3: 9/10
The adventure component of the film is oriented at kids, but the emotional themes are oriented at the people who were kids when the first movie came out. The movie is character-driven and genuinely funny, and hits home with the themes of the dread of being thrown out when you're not needed anymore. It's possibly the best kids' film I've seen since Lion King.
Inception: 7/10
Great visuals, great multi-linear storytelling, good enough acting, average script. An enjoyable movie, but has some plausibility issues at points, and spends too much time explaining the physics of the dream states. The movie would have been paced better and made a little more sense if they just told us minimally what we needed to know to understand the plot and threw us more quickly into the main dream.
Wild Grass: 3/10
There's some beautiful images in the film. But, the plot is paced awkwardly and the characters motivations are not interesting, nor do they make any sense. I haven't seen Resnais' earlier famous work, but I probably should just to repair my opinion of him.
On the plus side, it gives hope to stalkers everywhere. "Never give up! She will someday return your affections!"
Thursday, July 15, 2010
#14: Bicycle Thieves
Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)
I'll say before I get started, Bicycle Thieves is on my short list for greatest films of all time. A lot of people like to talk about the accomplishment of the film, that De Sica used nonprofessional actors and produced the film for only $50,000. But that kind of talk can mislead you into thinking the film only has historical merit. The film is a realistic, simple, and universal look at the emotional impact of extreme poverty, and every single scene of the movie is memorable.
The movie starts out with a mob of unemployed workers waiting outside a work agency to see if they have any work for them today. You get the impression they do this every day, and usually only a few of them if any are given jobs. The main character is given a job hanging posters around the city, but he can only get the job if he has his bicycle, which he sold for grocery money. So to keep the job, he has to sell his bed sheets to buy the bicycle back. But his first day on the job, his bicycle is stolen. He goes to the police, and they tell him there's nothing they can do for him. All they can do is take the serial number of the bicycle so if he finds it on his own at a pawn shop or something he can prove it's his. He goes off in search of the thief, but it's a big city and he didn't get a very good look at him, so his chances are slim to nil from the beginning. Along the way he accuses and threatens people of being involved in the theft. The job represents his escape from helplessness and his ability to support his family and give them happiness like a man is supposed to, and his helplessness at losing his bicycle causes him to lash out at everybody, eventually putting him on the same level as the thief. The film is beautiful and completely engrossing the whole way through. It's short and simple, with no wasted scenes or excess dialog. There may be a few films on the same level as this one, but none that are better.
Rating: ***** / 5
63/101
Next: Letter From An Unknown Woman, Jules and Jim, Greed
New films:
The Girl Who Played With Fire: 5/10
The movie is good 'further development' for the characters established in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But it doesn't have much to offer that's new of it's own.
I'll say before I get started, Bicycle Thieves is on my short list for greatest films of all time. A lot of people like to talk about the accomplishment of the film, that De Sica used nonprofessional actors and produced the film for only $50,000. But that kind of talk can mislead you into thinking the film only has historical merit. The film is a realistic, simple, and universal look at the emotional impact of extreme poverty, and every single scene of the movie is memorable.
The movie starts out with a mob of unemployed workers waiting outside a work agency to see if they have any work for them today. You get the impression they do this every day, and usually only a few of them if any are given jobs. The main character is given a job hanging posters around the city, but he can only get the job if he has his bicycle, which he sold for grocery money. So to keep the job, he has to sell his bed sheets to buy the bicycle back. But his first day on the job, his bicycle is stolen. He goes to the police, and they tell him there's nothing they can do for him. All they can do is take the serial number of the bicycle so if he finds it on his own at a pawn shop or something he can prove it's his. He goes off in search of the thief, but it's a big city and he didn't get a very good look at him, so his chances are slim to nil from the beginning. Along the way he accuses and threatens people of being involved in the theft. The job represents his escape from helplessness and his ability to support his family and give them happiness like a man is supposed to, and his helplessness at losing his bicycle causes him to lash out at everybody, eventually putting him on the same level as the thief. The film is beautiful and completely engrossing the whole way through. It's short and simple, with no wasted scenes or excess dialog. There may be a few films on the same level as this one, but none that are better.
Rating: ***** / 5
63/101
Next: Letter From An Unknown Woman, Jules and Jim, Greed
New films:
The Girl Who Played With Fire: 5/10
The movie is good 'further development' for the characters established in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But it doesn't have much to offer that's new of it's own.
Monday, July 12, 2010
#98: Rome, Open City
Rome, Open City (Rosselini, 1945)
Rome, Open City is a postwar film about the resistance against the Nazis in Italy. I just happened to see this film right after Army of Shadows, a movie made in the sixties about the resistance against the Nazis in France, and the contrast in styles unfortunately colored my perception of the movie. Where Army of Shadows is dark, emotional and realistic, Rome, Open City is unapologetically cinematic. Characters are split neatly along the good/evil dichotomy and everything is idealized. This is fine, but it was weird seeing it right after a movie that took the opposite approach.
It's hard for me to talk about my feelings about Rome, Open City without comparing it to Army of Shadows. In Army of Shadows when a man is torutred he looks utterly disfigured and mutilated. The man in Rome, Open City who is tortured looks like he's just been in a bar fight. In Army of Shadows, the characters have to murder their friends for naming names to the Nazis. In Rome Open City, nobody ever folds under torture, and Nazis are willing to debate you about the morarlity of giving them information. They're very upset that an Italian can resist torture. It means Italians are equal to Germans! Rome Open City is a great movie, but the unavoidable contrast to a far more realistic account of Nazi occupation makes it hard to see it on it's own merits.
Trying to be objective, the movie has great acting, great directing, and a lot of really good dialog. The movie came out right after World War II, so I figure it's intent was to heal some of the national wounds left by the war. (Whereas the intent of Army of Shadows was for a director to show the audience a difficult period of his life.)
Rome, Open City: **** / 5
Army of Shadows: **** / 5
62/101
I've gotten a little behind on reviews. I've also watched Bicycle Thieves, Jules and Jim, and Letter From An Unknown Woman. I'll try to catch up in the next few days.
Rome, Open City is a postwar film about the resistance against the Nazis in Italy. I just happened to see this film right after Army of Shadows, a movie made in the sixties about the resistance against the Nazis in France, and the contrast in styles unfortunately colored my perception of the movie. Where Army of Shadows is dark, emotional and realistic, Rome, Open City is unapologetically cinematic. Characters are split neatly along the good/evil dichotomy and everything is idealized. This is fine, but it was weird seeing it right after a movie that took the opposite approach.
It's hard for me to talk about my feelings about Rome, Open City without comparing it to Army of Shadows. In Army of Shadows when a man is torutred he looks utterly disfigured and mutilated. The man in Rome, Open City who is tortured looks like he's just been in a bar fight. In Army of Shadows, the characters have to murder their friends for naming names to the Nazis. In Rome Open City, nobody ever folds under torture, and Nazis are willing to debate you about the morarlity of giving them information. They're very upset that an Italian can resist torture. It means Italians are equal to Germans! Rome Open City is a great movie, but the unavoidable contrast to a far more realistic account of Nazi occupation makes it hard to see it on it's own merits.
Trying to be objective, the movie has great acting, great directing, and a lot of really good dialog. The movie came out right after World War II, so I figure it's intent was to heal some of the national wounds left by the war. (Whereas the intent of Army of Shadows was for a director to show the audience a difficult period of his life.)
Rome, Open City: **** / 5
Army of Shadows: **** / 5
62/101
I've gotten a little behind on reviews. I've also watched Bicycle Thieves, Jules and Jim, and Letter From An Unknown Woman. I'll try to catch up in the next few days.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
#65: The Leopard
The Leopard (Visconti, 1963)
The Leopard is about a rich family over the time Italy changed from a monarchy to a democracy. At the beginning, when the revolution is going on, everybody is in complete denial that anything significant is happening. They all live their sheltered lives as normal assuming everything will go on as normal. Later in the film when democratic elections are introduced, they continue to live their lives as if culture still revolves around them, as if nothing has changed. The only one who displays any actual awareness of any change is the main character played by Burt Lancaster. He's just as arrogant and self-important as everyone else at the beginning, then at the end becomes cynical and starts to see his ignorant, sheltered life for what it really is. He says "We were the leopards, and they are the jackals", referring to the demagogues who are now in power.
But through a majority of the film, the focus isn't on any of the political intrigue. The camera focuses on the internal melodrama of the main character's wealthy family, and the politics are in the background, reflected on by the characters. His daughter is courted by a soldier who is the son of a friend, and his wife says he's not good enough to marry into the family. She wanted their daughter to marry a rich cousin. He's going to give the soldier a big estate along with his daughter. As they explore the big empty house he remarks "Any mansion where you know every room isn't worth living in". He's been drawn into the same sheltered self important world as everyone else.
The movie can be a little bit dry and conversational at times, over three hours, but the dull parts are carried by Lancaster's performance. The dialog can be very clever, but it's a hard movie to get all the way through in one sitting.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
New films:
I Am Love: 8/10
This film I wouldn't recommend to anyone but big film buffs. The core plot is a little bit weak, and the strength of the film lies in the visuals and cinematography. It follows the Reicchi family, a rich family obsessed with the importance of family traditions and the family name. At the beginning the elder of the family dies and leaves the family business to his son and grandson. Through the story we see that everybody is really in it for themselves and only talk about the importance of the Reicchi name to make themselves feel important. The wife of the son who inherited the business is a Russian woman who married into the family young and changed her name to an Italian one. Gradually she rediscovers her identity outside the Reicchi name and becomes liberated from it. The problem with the plot is it's often arbitrary and random. If the entire film weren't so well presented, it would be a big problem.
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work: 6/10
A documentary about a year in the life of Joan Rivers. What makes the film worth seeing is it strips away all the exaggerated presentations of her in the media, and instead presents her as an insecure workaholic, who's a great comedian but terrified of criticism. If you like stand up comedy it's worth seeing.
The Leopard is about a rich family over the time Italy changed from a monarchy to a democracy. At the beginning, when the revolution is going on, everybody is in complete denial that anything significant is happening. They all live their sheltered lives as normal assuming everything will go on as normal. Later in the film when democratic elections are introduced, they continue to live their lives as if culture still revolves around them, as if nothing has changed. The only one who displays any actual awareness of any change is the main character played by Burt Lancaster. He's just as arrogant and self-important as everyone else at the beginning, then at the end becomes cynical and starts to see his ignorant, sheltered life for what it really is. He says "We were the leopards, and they are the jackals", referring to the demagogues who are now in power.
But through a majority of the film, the focus isn't on any of the political intrigue. The camera focuses on the internal melodrama of the main character's wealthy family, and the politics are in the background, reflected on by the characters. His daughter is courted by a soldier who is the son of a friend, and his wife says he's not good enough to marry into the family. She wanted their daughter to marry a rich cousin. He's going to give the soldier a big estate along with his daughter. As they explore the big empty house he remarks "Any mansion where you know every room isn't worth living in". He's been drawn into the same sheltered self important world as everyone else.
The movie can be a little bit dry and conversational at times, over three hours, but the dull parts are carried by Lancaster's performance. The dialog can be very clever, but it's a hard movie to get all the way through in one sitting.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
New films:
I Am Love: 8/10
This film I wouldn't recommend to anyone but big film buffs. The core plot is a little bit weak, and the strength of the film lies in the visuals and cinematography. It follows the Reicchi family, a rich family obsessed with the importance of family traditions and the family name. At the beginning the elder of the family dies and leaves the family business to his son and grandson. Through the story we see that everybody is really in it for themselves and only talk about the importance of the Reicchi name to make themselves feel important. The wife of the son who inherited the business is a Russian woman who married into the family young and changed her name to an Italian one. Gradually she rediscovers her identity outside the Reicchi name and becomes liberated from it. The problem with the plot is it's often arbitrary and random. If the entire film weren't so well presented, it would be a big problem.
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work: 6/10
A documentary about a year in the life of Joan Rivers. What makes the film worth seeing is it strips away all the exaggerated presentations of her in the media, and instead presents her as an insecure workaholic, who's a great comedian but terrified of criticism. If you like stand up comedy it's worth seeing.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
#55: Modern Times
Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
There's not much to say about one Chaplin film that doesn't apply to the other Chaplin films. He's a master of slapstick comedy and has a grudge against the upper class. He's so good at the former you don't care whether or not you agree with his political commentary.
In Modern Times he portrays working in a factory as unbearable and dehumanizing. The boss is looking for ways to eliminate lunch breaks, so he experiments with a contraption to feed employees automatically, without taking their hands away from the production line. He then dismisses it not because it treats human beings like animals, but because it's 'Not practical'. He meets a seventeen year old girl who's on the run because her father was arrested and she ran away from social services. Every time the two of them try to carve some kind of living out for themselves, the dehumanizing system bears down on them and forces them away.
It's a good thing Chaplin came up in the era of silent films. If his earliest movies had words, he probably would have had more of his socialist political commentary and less of his slapstick.
Rating: **** / 5
60/101
Looking down the list, the only ones I haven't seen that aren't on Netflix are Letter from An Unknown Woman, Greed, and Voyage In Italy. If it comes down to it I may have to get expensive used compies on Amazon or Ebay.
Others:
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari: ***** / 5
This is easily my second favorite silent film. It has the best score I've ever heard in a movie, and some beautiful visuals. The movie is black and white but the film is heavily tinted in various colors. The music has a lot of jazzy sax and guitar, some of which sounds like stuff that didn't popularize until the sixties. It sounds impressively ahead of it's time, and always fits the scene perfectly. The acting is a little too exaggerated and pantomimic, but that's the case with almost all movies of that era. The plot is as simple as the other movies of the era, but it has psychological horror movie elements also way ahead of it's time.
There's not much to say about one Chaplin film that doesn't apply to the other Chaplin films. He's a master of slapstick comedy and has a grudge against the upper class. He's so good at the former you don't care whether or not you agree with his political commentary.
In Modern Times he portrays working in a factory as unbearable and dehumanizing. The boss is looking for ways to eliminate lunch breaks, so he experiments with a contraption to feed employees automatically, without taking their hands away from the production line. He then dismisses it not because it treats human beings like animals, but because it's 'Not practical'. He meets a seventeen year old girl who's on the run because her father was arrested and she ran away from social services. Every time the two of them try to carve some kind of living out for themselves, the dehumanizing system bears down on them and forces them away.
It's a good thing Chaplin came up in the era of silent films. If his earliest movies had words, he probably would have had more of his socialist political commentary and less of his slapstick.
Rating: **** / 5
60/101
Looking down the list, the only ones I haven't seen that aren't on Netflix are Letter from An Unknown Woman, Greed, and Voyage In Italy. If it comes down to it I may have to get expensive used compies on Amazon or Ebay.
Others:
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari: ***** / 5
This is easily my second favorite silent film. It has the best score I've ever heard in a movie, and some beautiful visuals. The movie is black and white but the film is heavily tinted in various colors. The music has a lot of jazzy sax and guitar, some of which sounds like stuff that didn't popularize until the sixties. It sounds impressively ahead of it's time, and always fits the scene perfectly. The acting is a little too exaggerated and pantomimic, but that's the case with almost all movies of that era. The plot is as simple as the other movies of the era, but it has psychological horror movie elements also way ahead of it's time.
Monday, June 28, 2010
#81: Pickpocket
Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959)
My viewing of Pickpocket had the unfortunate timing of coming about a month after I finished Crime and Punishment. Pickpocket borrows a few themes and character interactions directly from Crime and Punishment. Pickpocket is about a petty thief whereas Crime and Punishment is about a murderer, but the characters both give the same motives. They believe there are extraordinary people who aren't subject to the law. The interaction between him and the police officer is very similar to the interaction between Raskolinov and Porfiry in Crime and Punishment. The police officer points out that everybody believes they are one of those extraordinary men. As he hones his pickpocketing craft, it becomes more and more evident that his kleptomania is an addiction rather than a hobby or a means for gain. He can't resist it even when it's obviously not a good idea.
The heart of the film comes in his interaction with a woman whose father disowns her after she gets pregnant. (Which is another one of those cultural differences you notice when you're watching old movies. Women being abandoned by their families because they got pregnant before marraige.) She knows he's a hopeless addict, but she accepts him because he's the only one willing to stay with her. The few moments in the film with that character express the need for human connection in bleak times, no matter what the source of that connection.
Rating: **** / 5
It might have gotten half the fifth star if I hadn't seen it so soon after reading a book it borrowed ideas from.
59/101
My viewing of Pickpocket had the unfortunate timing of coming about a month after I finished Crime and Punishment. Pickpocket borrows a few themes and character interactions directly from Crime and Punishment. Pickpocket is about a petty thief whereas Crime and Punishment is about a murderer, but the characters both give the same motives. They believe there are extraordinary people who aren't subject to the law. The interaction between him and the police officer is very similar to the interaction between Raskolinov and Porfiry in Crime and Punishment. The police officer points out that everybody believes they are one of those extraordinary men. As he hones his pickpocketing craft, it becomes more and more evident that his kleptomania is an addiction rather than a hobby or a means for gain. He can't resist it even when it's obviously not a good idea.
The heart of the film comes in his interaction with a woman whose father disowns her after she gets pregnant. (Which is another one of those cultural differences you notice when you're watching old movies. Women being abandoned by their families because they got pregnant before marraige.) She knows he's a hopeless addict, but she accepts him because he's the only one willing to stay with her. The few moments in the film with that character express the need for human connection in bleak times, no matter what the source of that connection.
Rating: **** / 5
It might have gotten half the fifth star if I hadn't seen it so soon after reading a book it borrowed ideas from.
59/101
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
#52: Contempt
Contempt (Godard, 1963)
I think I'm just about done with Godard. I've seen three of his films. At first I thought, "Okay, I just don't get his cinematic style". So I've listened to what other people have to say about him. I've seen three of his films, one of them twice. I get his cinematic style now. His films suck.
It's not that what he has to say in his films isn't interesting. He has lots of interesting things to say, and cool ideas about what a film should be. But his characters say those ideas directly to the camera. He has no characters. His characters are empty symbols, incapable of self awareness or even the slightest hint of human thought or behavior. Never have I seen such interesting ideas implemented so badly. Godard clearly thinks he's earned such theatrical license he doesn't even need to justify his intellectual masturbation with a plot.
In Contempt, the main character is a playwrite who is asked to write a script for a movie of the Odyssey. He and his wife despise each other but stay together, holding on to the ideal of being in love. He wants to make Ulysses' motives into that he stayed away from home for ten years because he hates Penelope so much. The director fights him, and he complains that audiences don't like intelligent cinema. (That's not the character complaining, it's Godard. The character is just the one talking.) He fights with the producer and director who are strawmen for soulless mechanical filmmaking over the direction of the script, and then quits. Idiots. They don't understand his artistic genius! They want a return on their stupid financial investment.
As his fans will tell you, Godard challenges the notion of filmmaking, and all the cliches about what a film has to be. Some examples. He challenges whether meaningless abstractions built upon meaningless abstractions have to have any connection at all with the human experience. He even goes so far as to challenge whether intellectuallism has to be intelligent! The result is a movie often discussed intensely by film theory students, but rarely enjoyed.
Rating: * 1/2 / 5
58/101
I think I'm just about done with Godard. I've seen three of his films. At first I thought, "Okay, I just don't get his cinematic style". So I've listened to what other people have to say about him. I've seen three of his films, one of them twice. I get his cinematic style now. His films suck.
It's not that what he has to say in his films isn't interesting. He has lots of interesting things to say, and cool ideas about what a film should be. But his characters say those ideas directly to the camera. He has no characters. His characters are empty symbols, incapable of self awareness or even the slightest hint of human thought or behavior. Never have I seen such interesting ideas implemented so badly. Godard clearly thinks he's earned such theatrical license he doesn't even need to justify his intellectual masturbation with a plot.
In Contempt, the main character is a playwrite who is asked to write a script for a movie of the Odyssey. He and his wife despise each other but stay together, holding on to the ideal of being in love. He wants to make Ulysses' motives into that he stayed away from home for ten years because he hates Penelope so much. The director fights him, and he complains that audiences don't like intelligent cinema. (That's not the character complaining, it's Godard. The character is just the one talking.) He fights with the producer and director who are strawmen for soulless mechanical filmmaking over the direction of the script, and then quits. Idiots. They don't understand his artistic genius! They want a return on their stupid financial investment.
As his fans will tell you, Godard challenges the notion of filmmaking, and all the cliches about what a film has to be. Some examples. He challenges whether meaningless abstractions built upon meaningless abstractions have to have any connection at all with the human experience. He even goes so far as to challenge whether intellectuallism has to be intelligent! The result is a movie often discussed intensely by film theory students, but rarely enjoyed.
Rating: * 1/2 / 5
58/101
#9: Singin In The Rain
Singin In The Rain (Kelly, 1952)
This was a pleasant surprise for me. All the other comedies from the same era I've seen have been inane. I'm biased against musicals. But, Singin In The Rain pulls it off in a way that's intelligent but still really identifiable and easy to watch. It finds a way to sum up the soul of pop culture and the art of entertainment.
The main characters are famous silent film actors, right before the beginning of talking pictures. When they try to make their latest project into a talking picture, it turns out all the exaggerated pantomime and cheesy dialog you could get away with in a silent film seems ridiculous when you add sound. They realize they don't have the acting talent to pull off a talking picture and think their careers are over. But then they realize, the sort of pure performance charisma and campy antics they worked at through their early career is accepted in a musical. So they work through some lame plot devices to justify having modern singing and dancing in a rennaisance setting. We see the fickleness of taste and also our willingness to accept pure ridiculousness so long as it's entertaining and the ridiculousness is the point. Also, it manages to compare popular entertainment to 'Serious theatre', and you come off with the message, "Yes, it can't be compared to Hamlet, but who cares?"
Rating: **** / 5
57/101
This was a pleasant surprise for me. All the other comedies from the same era I've seen have been inane. I'm biased against musicals. But, Singin In The Rain pulls it off in a way that's intelligent but still really identifiable and easy to watch. It finds a way to sum up the soul of pop culture and the art of entertainment.
The main characters are famous silent film actors, right before the beginning of talking pictures. When they try to make their latest project into a talking picture, it turns out all the exaggerated pantomime and cheesy dialog you could get away with in a silent film seems ridiculous when you add sound. They realize they don't have the acting talent to pull off a talking picture and think their careers are over. But then they realize, the sort of pure performance charisma and campy antics they worked at through their early career is accepted in a musical. So they work through some lame plot devices to justify having modern singing and dancing in a rennaisance setting. We see the fickleness of taste and also our willingness to accept pure ridiculousness so long as it's entertaining and the ridiculousness is the point. Also, it manages to compare popular entertainment to 'Serious theatre', and you come off with the message, "Yes, it can't be compared to Hamlet, but who cares?"
Rating: **** / 5
57/101
Saturday, June 19, 2010
#62: Once Upon A Time In The West
Once Upon A Time In The West (Leone, 1968)
What attracts me to Leone westerns is the aesthetic. It's the same aesthetic that's now drawing millions of people to Red Dead Redemption. Other famous westerns try to be idyllically American. That's why they cast John Wayne. Leone presents the old West as the kind of dusty, chaotic anarchy where the strong do whatever they feel like doing.
Once Upon A Time In The West shows the beginning of the end of the Old West in pictures. The strong silent 'Real men' are being replaced by businessmen who know hundreds of angles to make more money. The story is, a woman who used to be a prostitute marries a man who owns a seemingly useless piece of land out in the west. When she arrives, she finds him and his entire family murdered. She still wants to cling to that new life that he was going to give her, so instead of heading back to New Orleans she stays and manages his land. It turns out, the land isn't as useless as everyone thinks it is. Her husband knew that the railroad would eventually extend west, and because it sat upon the only water within a hundred miles, it would be forced to come right through his property. The bad guy, the businessman who controls the railroad, had his family killed to avoid having to pay out to him to run the railroad through his land.
Her husband was visionary in that he foresaw the end of the classic 'Old West' early enough to speculate future profits from the expansion of the city into the desert. Now that development is an unstoppable tide that will put an end to the entire paradigm of the lawless West and the 'Real man'.
The 'Real men' in the picture are represented by a hitman hired by the bad guy and a drifter played by Charles Bronson. The drifter goes out of his way to frustrate the hitman and interfere with his plans to steal the land, but doesn't appear to have any personal motive. The hitman on the other hand tries to take on the tricks he learns from the businessman to make a profit, but the drifter sees through him and recognizes him as being not a businessman, but 'Just a man', which he refers to as 'A dying race'. It's those two, and it's the world changing around them, but because they're men, they don't care about anything but their pride and independence. This way the film comes off like a sendoff to the entire 'Old West' lifestyle.
Rating: **** / 5
56/101
Others:
Damnation: *** 1/2 / 5
A bleak movie about the irreversibility of life with a similar visual style to Tarkovsky. The movie is in black and white and the staging of the scenes if beautiful and hits the emotional notes perfectly.
New movies:
Winter's Bone: 9/10
The best movie of 2010 so far. A 17 year old girl whose father cooks crystal meth who takes care of her insane mother and two siblings is going to lose the house if her father doesn't show up for his trial date. She has to find her father but everyone else in the community is blocking her because they're involved in the drug trade as well. The film has themes of powerlessness and despair of poverty, but also exposes empathy and caring from the sorts of people we wouldn't consider to be empathetic. There's no other movie like it.
What attracts me to Leone westerns is the aesthetic. It's the same aesthetic that's now drawing millions of people to Red Dead Redemption. Other famous westerns try to be idyllically American. That's why they cast John Wayne. Leone presents the old West as the kind of dusty, chaotic anarchy where the strong do whatever they feel like doing.
Once Upon A Time In The West shows the beginning of the end of the Old West in pictures. The strong silent 'Real men' are being replaced by businessmen who know hundreds of angles to make more money. The story is, a woman who used to be a prostitute marries a man who owns a seemingly useless piece of land out in the west. When she arrives, she finds him and his entire family murdered. She still wants to cling to that new life that he was going to give her, so instead of heading back to New Orleans she stays and manages his land. It turns out, the land isn't as useless as everyone thinks it is. Her husband knew that the railroad would eventually extend west, and because it sat upon the only water within a hundred miles, it would be forced to come right through his property. The bad guy, the businessman who controls the railroad, had his family killed to avoid having to pay out to him to run the railroad through his land.
Her husband was visionary in that he foresaw the end of the classic 'Old West' early enough to speculate future profits from the expansion of the city into the desert. Now that development is an unstoppable tide that will put an end to the entire paradigm of the lawless West and the 'Real man'.
The 'Real men' in the picture are represented by a hitman hired by the bad guy and a drifter played by Charles Bronson. The drifter goes out of his way to frustrate the hitman and interfere with his plans to steal the land, but doesn't appear to have any personal motive. The hitman on the other hand tries to take on the tricks he learns from the businessman to make a profit, but the drifter sees through him and recognizes him as being not a businessman, but 'Just a man', which he refers to as 'A dying race'. It's those two, and it's the world changing around them, but because they're men, they don't care about anything but their pride and independence. This way the film comes off like a sendoff to the entire 'Old West' lifestyle.
Rating: **** / 5
56/101
Others:
Damnation: *** 1/2 / 5
A bleak movie about the irreversibility of life with a similar visual style to Tarkovsky. The movie is in black and white and the staging of the scenes if beautiful and hits the emotional notes perfectly.
New movies:
Winter's Bone: 9/10
The best movie of 2010 so far. A 17 year old girl whose father cooks crystal meth who takes care of her insane mother and two siblings is going to lose the house if her father doesn't show up for his trial date. She has to find her father but everyone else in the community is blocking her because they're involved in the drug trade as well. The film has themes of powerlessness and despair of poverty, but also exposes empathy and caring from the sorts of people we wouldn't consider to be empathetic. There's no other movie like it.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
#80: Bringing Up Baby
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938)
This one I had trouble even getting through. I don't know what it is about comedies of the 40s and 50s, but other than Singin In The Rain (Which I'm in the middle of watching right now and will write about soon), all of them seem completely inane. They're like sitcoms from the 80s and 90s, only with better actors. They're filled with farse situations where characters are incapable of questioning even the most ridiculous lies. All the gags are predictable, all the women are loveable airheads (Is that how people saw women in the 40s and 50s?) and they don't even have the slapstick that make the stupid comedies from the earlier 30s enjoyable.
Even the acting in this one isn't very good. Cary Grant is good at playing one character, and this isn't it. He's trying to do this weird nerd-voice for the whole film and he just can't do it. And at the end it feels like there's no reason the main characters should get together except "They're the main characters, therefore…".
Other than a few amusing moments involving a leopard, the film did absolutely nothing for me.
Rating: * 1/2 / 5
Others:
Paris, Texas: **** 1/2 / 5
Four years ago, the main character disappeared, and his son showed up on his brother's doorstep. Now, he suddenly appears, barely willing to talk. His brother brings him home, and he decides he wants to reconnect with his son and bring his family back together, but what happened four years ago to make him just leave and his mother just leave her son? The revelation of that question is one of the greatest scenes I've ever seen, and the ending is one of the most emotional. All around it's just a beautiful movie.
This one I had trouble even getting through. I don't know what it is about comedies of the 40s and 50s, but other than Singin In The Rain (Which I'm in the middle of watching right now and will write about soon), all of them seem completely inane. They're like sitcoms from the 80s and 90s, only with better actors. They're filled with farse situations where characters are incapable of questioning even the most ridiculous lies. All the gags are predictable, all the women are loveable airheads (Is that how people saw women in the 40s and 50s?) and they don't even have the slapstick that make the stupid comedies from the earlier 30s enjoyable.
Even the acting in this one isn't very good. Cary Grant is good at playing one character, and this isn't it. He's trying to do this weird nerd-voice for the whole film and he just can't do it. And at the end it feels like there's no reason the main characters should get together except "They're the main characters, therefore…".
Other than a few amusing moments involving a leopard, the film did absolutely nothing for me.
Rating: * 1/2 / 5
Others:
Paris, Texas: **** 1/2 / 5
Four years ago, the main character disappeared, and his son showed up on his brother's doorstep. Now, he suddenly appears, barely willing to talk. His brother brings him home, and he decides he wants to reconnect with his son and bring his family back together, but what happened four years ago to make him just leave and his mother just leave her son? The revelation of that question is one of the greatest scenes I've ever seen, and the ending is one of the most emotional. All around it's just a beautiful movie.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
#58: Rio Bravo
Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)
Rio Bravo is campy, artificial, a strictly for fun Western that showcases the star personalities of the likes of John Wayne and James Dean. It's a very fun movie to watch. The plot is pretty stereotypical for a Western. (So much in fact, it's the basis of that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the holodeck characters were all replaced with Data.) A man murders another in a bar for no reason. The sherriff arrests him and has to hold him until the county prosecutors arrive. But, his rich brother shows up with a team of hitmen to get him out. A team of quirky personalities, including a drunk and a crippled old man are greatly outnumbered and their only leverage is that they can 'Accidentally' shoot the murderer at any time. The plot is strictly cliche and only works because the actors carry it well and the plot is structured competently. If that's the sort of thing you go for, I recommend it to you.
Rating: *** / 5
54/101
Rio Bravo is campy, artificial, a strictly for fun Western that showcases the star personalities of the likes of John Wayne and James Dean. It's a very fun movie to watch. The plot is pretty stereotypical for a Western. (So much in fact, it's the basis of that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the holodeck characters were all replaced with Data.) A man murders another in a bar for no reason. The sherriff arrests him and has to hold him until the county prosecutors arrive. But, his rich brother shows up with a team of hitmen to get him out. A team of quirky personalities, including a drunk and a crippled old man are greatly outnumbered and their only leverage is that they can 'Accidentally' shoot the murderer at any time. The plot is strictly cliche and only works because the actors carry it well and the plot is structured competently. If that's the sort of thing you go for, I recommend it to you.
Rating: *** / 5
54/101
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
#64: Pather Panchali
Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955)
Pather Panchali is one of those films with very high artistic value and very low entertainment value. The first film from India to attain worldwide fame, it's a personal story of a poor family that can't find any success making money, but still tries to get by without sacrificing their ambitions and dignity. They're looked down upon by their neighbors because they can't pay back their debts and because the daughter of the family is a petty thief. The husband keeps finding tenuous employments that pay out for a while, but then stop paying out and disappear. He's forced to go far away with no communication for months trying to find money to bring back, and while he's gone the house is deteriorating and falling apart. In all this the son, Apu is born. The lesson he learns from living through all these family tragedies so early in life is that he should never get attached to anything, because he will only lose it.
The character development is subtle and beautiful, and the beauty of the film is how they react and cope as the tragic events of the plot unfold. The story telling style and the scenery are also beautiful. It's the sort of film any film buff should see once but probably won't want to see again.
Pather Panchali is the first part in a trilogy. I haven't seen the other two, but as it's known as the 'Apu Trilogy', I assume it details how Apu copes in later stages of his life after what he's gone through in his early childhood.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
53/101
New movies:
Air Doll: 4/10
Air Doll is a film by Kore-Eda, the same director who did Nobody Knows and Still Walking, about a blow up doll who comes to life. It sounds like the premise of a Rob Schneider flick, but it takes the approach of having the doll experience the world with the wonder of a child, but with the constant knowledge that everyone sees her as nothing but a 'Substitute' whose function is to bring pleasure. It could have worked, but some of the writing and plot twists are just plain silly. And since the bare premise is also just plain silly, but the tone of the movie is preachy and anti-modern, it all just comes off as stupid.
Pather Panchali is one of those films with very high artistic value and very low entertainment value. The first film from India to attain worldwide fame, it's a personal story of a poor family that can't find any success making money, but still tries to get by without sacrificing their ambitions and dignity. They're looked down upon by their neighbors because they can't pay back their debts and because the daughter of the family is a petty thief. The husband keeps finding tenuous employments that pay out for a while, but then stop paying out and disappear. He's forced to go far away with no communication for months trying to find money to bring back, and while he's gone the house is deteriorating and falling apart. In all this the son, Apu is born. The lesson he learns from living through all these family tragedies so early in life is that he should never get attached to anything, because he will only lose it.
The character development is subtle and beautiful, and the beauty of the film is how they react and cope as the tragic events of the plot unfold. The story telling style and the scenery are also beautiful. It's the sort of film any film buff should see once but probably won't want to see again.
Pather Panchali is the first part in a trilogy. I haven't seen the other two, but as it's known as the 'Apu Trilogy', I assume it details how Apu copes in later stages of his life after what he's gone through in his early childhood.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
53/101
New movies:
Air Doll: 4/10
Air Doll is a film by Kore-Eda, the same director who did Nobody Knows and Still Walking, about a blow up doll who comes to life. It sounds like the premise of a Rob Schneider flick, but it takes the approach of having the doll experience the world with the wonder of a child, but with the constant knowledge that everyone sees her as nothing but a 'Substitute' whose function is to bring pleasure. It could have worked, but some of the writing and plot twists are just plain silly. And since the bare premise is also just plain silly, but the tone of the movie is preachy and anti-modern, it all just comes off as stupid.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
#22: Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959)
I'll start by saying what most professional critics always forget to say. I AM NOT THE AUDIENCE FOR THIS FILM.
Some Like It Hot has a ridiculous premise. These two guys are musicians who accidentally witness a mob murder. They hide from the gangsters trying to kill them by dressing up like women and joining an all woman band. One of them falls in love with 'Sugar Cane' (Marilyn Monroe) and expands the deception by first interrogating her about what she likes in a man then impersonating that exact man. It's all pretty stupid, but it's so well pulled off it kind of works. It's well written and well carried by the actors. Even if it's full of shallow stereotypes and all the women in the film fit the 1950's idyllic female mold of the loveable airhead.
Rating for me: ** 1/2 / 5
Rating for your grandmother: ***** / 5
52/101
I'll start by saying what most professional critics always forget to say. I AM NOT THE AUDIENCE FOR THIS FILM.
Some Like It Hot has a ridiculous premise. These two guys are musicians who accidentally witness a mob murder. They hide from the gangsters trying to kill them by dressing up like women and joining an all woman band. One of them falls in love with 'Sugar Cane' (Marilyn Monroe) and expands the deception by first interrogating her about what she likes in a man then impersonating that exact man. It's all pretty stupid, but it's so well pulled off it kind of works. It's well written and well carried by the actors. Even if it's full of shallow stereotypes and all the women in the film fit the 1950's idyllic female mold of the loveable airhead.
Rating for me: ** 1/2 / 5
Rating for your grandmother: ***** / 5
52/101
Sunday, May 30, 2010
#56: Wild Strawberries
Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)
This is a film I hadn't seen since I was a teenager and had different expectations from movies, so I might as well have never seen it. Wild Strawberries might be in the top ten of all time in terms of pscyhological character development. The film opens with the very famous dream sequence where the man sees the clock with no hands and himself in a coffin. He's a man in his seventies being honored for a lifetime of academic achievement, and his mortality is hitting him in the face all at once. He looks back and sees his life in a whole different light. He drove everybody close to him away by keeping a cold, rational distance from everyone to suit his intellectual pride. He judges himself and makes a new effort to connect to the people in his life. There isn't really much more to say about it than that without getting into a deeper scene by scene analysis of the imagery and dialog, because despite the nuanced character development, Wild Strawberries is a very simple film. Bergman doing what Bergman does best.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
51/101
Others:
Dogville ** / 5
I like the concept of this film more than I like the actual film. The set looks like the set of a high school play. It's a big flat black board with props drawn in chalk on the ground. The problem is, the plot is like a high school play except R rated, and it's so long (Almost three hours) it can be hard to get through. A woman on the run from the mob comes upon a small mountain town called Dogville and is helped by one of it's people who enlists the rest of the town to help her. She helps them out and gains their trust. But after they realize it's dangerous to keep her and she has nowhere else to go, their ugliness starts to come out. They start to feel more and more entitled to take whatever they want from her, to the point they treat her like a slave or an animal. Then at the end, after you see this poor girl being exploited for three hours, through her moralizing she turns out to be just as depraved and barbaric as the townsfolk. Again, a wonderful concept for a movie. But it's just too long to be so simple and very boring to sit through.
This is a film I hadn't seen since I was a teenager and had different expectations from movies, so I might as well have never seen it. Wild Strawberries might be in the top ten of all time in terms of pscyhological character development. The film opens with the very famous dream sequence where the man sees the clock with no hands and himself in a coffin. He's a man in his seventies being honored for a lifetime of academic achievement, and his mortality is hitting him in the face all at once. He looks back and sees his life in a whole different light. He drove everybody close to him away by keeping a cold, rational distance from everyone to suit his intellectual pride. He judges himself and makes a new effort to connect to the people in his life. There isn't really much more to say about it than that without getting into a deeper scene by scene analysis of the imagery and dialog, because despite the nuanced character development, Wild Strawberries is a very simple film. Bergman doing what Bergman does best.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
51/101
Others:
Dogville ** / 5
I like the concept of this film more than I like the actual film. The set looks like the set of a high school play. It's a big flat black board with props drawn in chalk on the ground. The problem is, the plot is like a high school play except R rated, and it's so long (Almost three hours) it can be hard to get through. A woman on the run from the mob comes upon a small mountain town called Dogville and is helped by one of it's people who enlists the rest of the town to help her. She helps them out and gains their trust. But after they realize it's dangerous to keep her and she has nowhere else to go, their ugliness starts to come out. They start to feel more and more entitled to take whatever they want from her, to the point they treat her like a slave or an animal. Then at the end, after you see this poor girl being exploited for three hours, through her moralizing she turns out to be just as depraved and barbaric as the townsfolk. Again, a wonderful concept for a movie. But it's just too long to be so simple and very boring to sit through.
Friday, May 28, 2010
#25: City Lights
City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
Chaplin movies are so simple there's not a whole lot to say about them. Chaplin is the master of physical comedy in silent films, and he's got a grudge against those who consider themselves 'High society'. In this one he plays (Shockingly) a poor man who doesn't fit in with rich society. He meets a blind woman and falls in love with her, and she thinks he's rich because he was driving the car of a rich man he lucked into talking out of suicide. Problem is, the rich guy can only recognize him when he's drunk, so when the blind woman needs money to avoid being evicted, he has to desparately try to get her money. It's all very funny and a nice little story, and ends up in a very memorable final scene.
Rating: **** / 5
50/101
Halfway there and it's only May. That's a good pace. I found Pather Panchali, the hardest one to find left, cheap on VHS. (It would have been like $70 on DVD. No.)
Others:
Elephant: ** 1/2 / 5
A realistic film that follows a day of school that ends with a Columbine style shooting. In the first hour of the film the kind of actors they got worked in the film's favor. But then when there are kids marching through the halls with guns, nobody seems to emotionally react very much. I don't see the terror, or the panic. People walk toward the sound of gunfire instead of away from it. People have a gun in their face and calmly say "Please don't do this. Please don't do this". The acting just doesn't make me feel the tragedy.
New films:
Mother and Child: 7/10
One of the most emotional films I've seen in a while. It follows two main characters. a 51 year old woman who had a baby when she was 14, and her daughter she's never met. Both have severe social dysfunctions. The mother is overly demanding a drives everyone away, and the daughter avoids any long term relationships altogether because she doesn't want anyone to expect anything from her. Based on the adoption contract, the only way for them to get in contact with each other is for one to leave a letter that the other can receive if she ever comes looking. Both of them sort of secretly want to meet each other but avoid seeking each other out. Parts of the film are very happy, other parts are very sad, and the entire resolution is emotionally moving.
Chaplin movies are so simple there's not a whole lot to say about them. Chaplin is the master of physical comedy in silent films, and he's got a grudge against those who consider themselves 'High society'. In this one he plays (Shockingly) a poor man who doesn't fit in with rich society. He meets a blind woman and falls in love with her, and she thinks he's rich because he was driving the car of a rich man he lucked into talking out of suicide. Problem is, the rich guy can only recognize him when he's drunk, so when the blind woman needs money to avoid being evicted, he has to desparately try to get her money. It's all very funny and a nice little story, and ends up in a very memorable final scene.
Rating: **** / 5
50/101
Halfway there and it's only May. That's a good pace. I found Pather Panchali, the hardest one to find left, cheap on VHS. (It would have been like $70 on DVD. No.)
Others:
Elephant: ** 1/2 / 5
A realistic film that follows a day of school that ends with a Columbine style shooting. In the first hour of the film the kind of actors they got worked in the film's favor. But then when there are kids marching through the halls with guns, nobody seems to emotionally react very much. I don't see the terror, or the panic. People walk toward the sound of gunfire instead of away from it. People have a gun in their face and calmly say "Please don't do this. Please don't do this". The acting just doesn't make me feel the tragedy.
New films:
Mother and Child: 7/10
One of the most emotional films I've seen in a while. It follows two main characters. a 51 year old woman who had a baby when she was 14, and her daughter she's never met. Both have severe social dysfunctions. The mother is overly demanding a drives everyone away, and the daughter avoids any long term relationships altogether because she doesn't want anyone to expect anything from her. Based on the adoption contract, the only way for them to get in contact with each other is for one to leave a letter that the other can receive if she ever comes looking. Both of them sort of secretly want to meet each other but avoid seeking each other out. Parts of the film are very happy, other parts are very sad, and the entire resolution is emotionally moving.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
#75: Fanny and Alexander
Fanny And Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
I have so much to say about this one. It's gonna be hard to keep it short. Fanny and Alexander is a late career Bergman film that comes off as a reflection on his whole career. It's supposedly semi-autobiographical and touches on death, religion, spirits, affluence, theater, psychology and perception, and basically all the major themes that formed the basis for his career.
Fanny and Alexander are children of an actor who dies at the beginning of the film. They've spent all their lives in a large mansion with their expansive, wealthy family. But after their father dies, her mother marries a bishop, who insists they cut all ties to their former life. The mother doesn't want to force this on them, but the bishop imposes himself and cuts off all the contact they have with the rest of their family. The mother decides she wants to leave him, but she is unable to because he threatens to sue her for abandonment and take her children. When she sneaks off to spend time with her family, the bishop imposes very harsh Christian punishments. He locks them in their bedroom all day, and he beats Alexander with a cane or forces him to sleep in the attic without food for the slightest infraction. Because of all of this, Alexander wishes for the bishop to die a painful death.
As harshly as the priest is portrayed for the large part of the film in retrospect he's portrayed a little more charitably, and that all ties in to the notion of 'The small world' versus 'The big world' brought up through the film. At the beginning, the father refers to the stage as the 'Little world', and says 'Through the little world, we can be diverted from the big world, or perhaps attain a greater understanding of it'. That line comes off as Bergman speaking directly to his audience, reflecting on film. But later on, the childrens' uncle refers to their sheltered lives in the big luxurious mansion as 'The little world', and says that people get angry and hateful when their little world is taken away from them. Our own personal worlds we live in are a form of stage, and we can't handle having our illusions taken away. The children couldn't live without their version of the world, and it made them wish death to another human being. But at the same time, the bishop's behavior is explained away as just a reflection of the way he was raised. Bergman lets the bad guy off the hook.
Fanny and Alexander could have been Bergman's last film, and if it had been, it would have been the perfect swan song for him, just as Ran was the perfect swan song for Kurosawa.
Rating: ***** / 5
49/101
Others:
Raising Arizona: **** 1/2 / 5
This film seems like it was the inspiration for the show My Name Is Earl. A ex-con who finds out his wife is barren kidnaps a child from a family that had quintuplets. He tries to change his nature and become a better man, and finds he keeps being drawn back to his old behavior. The film manages to tread the line of being funny, entertaining, human and emotional all at the same time.
Law Of Desire: *** / 5
Having seen many of Almodovar's films, I knew he had explicitly sexual dialog, and many of his characters were homosexuals or transsexuals. Still, Law of Desire (One of his earlier films) shocked me with how explicit it was in all of those regards. Basically, a man moves away from a man he loves, and starts up an affair with another man. He still exchanges letters with the first man, but his new lover goes and murders the old lover, out of a desire to possess him. What strikes me the most about Almodovar films is that characters take all these things that we consider controversial and edgy and treat them like they're just a normal fact of nature. It strips away the political aspect of these themes and just tells a love story.
New movies:
Robin Hood: 4/10
Robin Hood is yet another 'Franchise reboot'. It covers all the events that happened prior to what we consider to be the Robin Hood mythology. Robin Hood is reimagined as a willful ultra-masculine principled idealist. This movie was intended to be the 'Batman Begins' or 'Casino Royale' of Robin Hood, and replace the camp with grit. The first half of the film is very successful in doing so, but as the film moves on it becomes more and more cheesy and predictable. And then when they made Maid Marion into a fully modern woman who led troops into battle (Even though it took place in 12th century England), it dispelled all the 'gritty realism' the film earned in the first hour.
I have so much to say about this one. It's gonna be hard to keep it short. Fanny and Alexander is a late career Bergman film that comes off as a reflection on his whole career. It's supposedly semi-autobiographical and touches on death, religion, spirits, affluence, theater, psychology and perception, and basically all the major themes that formed the basis for his career.
Fanny and Alexander are children of an actor who dies at the beginning of the film. They've spent all their lives in a large mansion with their expansive, wealthy family. But after their father dies, her mother marries a bishop, who insists they cut all ties to their former life. The mother doesn't want to force this on them, but the bishop imposes himself and cuts off all the contact they have with the rest of their family. The mother decides she wants to leave him, but she is unable to because he threatens to sue her for abandonment and take her children. When she sneaks off to spend time with her family, the bishop imposes very harsh Christian punishments. He locks them in their bedroom all day, and he beats Alexander with a cane or forces him to sleep in the attic without food for the slightest infraction. Because of all of this, Alexander wishes for the bishop to die a painful death.
As harshly as the priest is portrayed for the large part of the film in retrospect he's portrayed a little more charitably, and that all ties in to the notion of 'The small world' versus 'The big world' brought up through the film. At the beginning, the father refers to the stage as the 'Little world', and says 'Through the little world, we can be diverted from the big world, or perhaps attain a greater understanding of it'. That line comes off as Bergman speaking directly to his audience, reflecting on film. But later on, the childrens' uncle refers to their sheltered lives in the big luxurious mansion as 'The little world', and says that people get angry and hateful when their little world is taken away from them. Our own personal worlds we live in are a form of stage, and we can't handle having our illusions taken away. The children couldn't live without their version of the world, and it made them wish death to another human being. But at the same time, the bishop's behavior is explained away as just a reflection of the way he was raised. Bergman lets the bad guy off the hook.
Fanny and Alexander could have been Bergman's last film, and if it had been, it would have been the perfect swan song for him, just as Ran was the perfect swan song for Kurosawa.
Rating: ***** / 5
49/101
Others:
Raising Arizona: **** 1/2 / 5
This film seems like it was the inspiration for the show My Name Is Earl. A ex-con who finds out his wife is barren kidnaps a child from a family that had quintuplets. He tries to change his nature and become a better man, and finds he keeps being drawn back to his old behavior. The film manages to tread the line of being funny, entertaining, human and emotional all at the same time.
Law Of Desire: *** / 5
Having seen many of Almodovar's films, I knew he had explicitly sexual dialog, and many of his characters were homosexuals or transsexuals. Still, Law of Desire (One of his earlier films) shocked me with how explicit it was in all of those regards. Basically, a man moves away from a man he loves, and starts up an affair with another man. He still exchanges letters with the first man, but his new lover goes and murders the old lover, out of a desire to possess him. What strikes me the most about Almodovar films is that characters take all these things that we consider controversial and edgy and treat them like they're just a normal fact of nature. It strips away the political aspect of these themes and just tells a love story.
New movies:
Robin Hood: 4/10
Robin Hood is yet another 'Franchise reboot'. It covers all the events that happened prior to what we consider to be the Robin Hood mythology. Robin Hood is reimagined as a willful ultra-masculine principled idealist. This movie was intended to be the 'Batman Begins' or 'Casino Royale' of Robin Hood, and replace the camp with grit. The first half of the film is very successful in doing so, but as the film moves on it becomes more and more cheesy and predictable. And then when they made Maid Marion into a fully modern woman who led troops into battle (Even though it took place in 12th century England), it dispelled all the 'gritty realism' the film earned in the first hour.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
#16: L'atalante
L'atalante (Vigo, 1934)
L'atalante is one of the TSPDT top 100 that you can't find on DVD in the US. I had to buy a VHS copy on ebay. The particular copy I got was in circulation at the Seattle library in 1990. I was surprised when I put it in and it still played. Watching a film on an old VHS tape reminded me how much better DVDs are.
It's one of those films in the vein of Sunrise that tries to tell a love story that's universal to the human condition. Those stories, of course, seem far less universal when you watch them from a perspecitve after the cultural revolution. The story is that a girl from a small village marries the captain of a shipping vessel and leaves her home. The girl wants to see big cities, make a lot of new friends, and have a lot of new experiences. The guy is possessive and jealous and flips out when she tries to do anything that isn't sit around on the ship and be a wife. Later she sneaks off the ship to go see Paris, and the guy gets angry and leaves. When she's gone, he remembers how much he loves her.
Similar to Sunrise, this would never happen this way in a modern context. If a man behaved the way the man behaved, the woman would probably tell him to go frack himself. In a time when we've disregarded the notion of women's lives being possessed by their husbands, it's harder to connect with these films. It helps in Sunrise that the cinematography and scene staging are good enough to draw you in on their own accord. For L'atalante, that isn't the case, and the result is the film coming off like a historical relic.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
48/101
Others:
Spider: **** / 5
With the other Cronenberg films I've seen (History of Violence, the one with the twins), I tend to like what Cronenberg is trying to do but not be able to connect with the result. Spider explores the personal history of a schizophrenic man, and with the twist at the end, really draws me in like the other two didn't.
New films:
Please Give: 8/10
The film centers around a family that sells antiques they bought from the families of recently deceased, and a family whose belligerent 91 year old grandmother is the first family's neighbor. It's a multilinear story and a black comedy. The antique selling mother is always trying to do good for others, but in subtly hypocritical ways. She gives fives and twenties to homeless people on the street but won't give her daughter with serious self esteem issues the money to buy clothes to make her feel good about herself. The film is entertaining and funny, but also manages to make very poignant satire about current times.
L'atalante is one of the TSPDT top 100 that you can't find on DVD in the US. I had to buy a VHS copy on ebay. The particular copy I got was in circulation at the Seattle library in 1990. I was surprised when I put it in and it still played. Watching a film on an old VHS tape reminded me how much better DVDs are.
It's one of those films in the vein of Sunrise that tries to tell a love story that's universal to the human condition. Those stories, of course, seem far less universal when you watch them from a perspecitve after the cultural revolution. The story is that a girl from a small village marries the captain of a shipping vessel and leaves her home. The girl wants to see big cities, make a lot of new friends, and have a lot of new experiences. The guy is possessive and jealous and flips out when she tries to do anything that isn't sit around on the ship and be a wife. Later she sneaks off the ship to go see Paris, and the guy gets angry and leaves. When she's gone, he remembers how much he loves her.
Similar to Sunrise, this would never happen this way in a modern context. If a man behaved the way the man behaved, the woman would probably tell him to go frack himself. In a time when we've disregarded the notion of women's lives being possessed by their husbands, it's harder to connect with these films. It helps in Sunrise that the cinematography and scene staging are good enough to draw you in on their own accord. For L'atalante, that isn't the case, and the result is the film coming off like a historical relic.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
48/101
Others:
Spider: **** / 5
With the other Cronenberg films I've seen (History of Violence, the one with the twins), I tend to like what Cronenberg is trying to do but not be able to connect with the result. Spider explores the personal history of a schizophrenic man, and with the twist at the end, really draws me in like the other two didn't.
New films:
Please Give: 8/10
The film centers around a family that sells antiques they bought from the families of recently deceased, and a family whose belligerent 91 year old grandmother is the first family's neighbor. It's a multilinear story and a black comedy. The antique selling mother is always trying to do good for others, but in subtly hypocritical ways. She gives fives and twenties to homeless people on the street but won't give her daughter with serious self esteem issues the money to buy clothes to make her feel good about herself. The film is entertaining and funny, but also manages to make very poignant satire about current times.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
#57: North By Northwest
North By Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)
Hitchcock's most mainstream film, North By Northwest revolves around certain iconic scenes. The cropduster, the fight on Mt Rushmore, and other scenes seem designed to be put in trailors and parodied for years. The main character is played by Cary Grant, Mister Handsome of the 40s through 60s. They worked really hard to put butts in movie theater seats belonging to people who would not otherwise be interested in psychological thrillers. The plot is a pretty typical Hitchcock plot. A man being hunted by criminals mistaking him for a government spy, who meets a woman involved in a multi-layered net of deception. It takes basically the average plot across on Hitchcock movies and gives it the gloss and production value of a Hollywood film.
This mainstream production is a mixed bag. It makes it more fun and entertaining than other Hitchcock films, but it also makes it less psychologically interesting and harder to suspend disbelief. For instance, the crop duster scene. I work for a crime syndicate and manage to send a person I believe to be a government spy to an isolated location alone. I want to kill him. What's my weapon of choice? A crop duster! Because it's way easier and more likely to succeed to run an airplane into somebody than to just drive by with a machine gun! The scenes most designed to broaden the appeal of the movie are the scenes that come off as the silliest. The effect is, North by Northwest is the Hitchcock movie you watch if all you're in the mood for is light entertainment. Which, sometimes you are. But if you're looking for something as psychologically interesting as Vertigo or Strangers on a Train, you'll be disappointed.
Rating: *** / 5
47/101
Next: L'atalante
Others:
Hannah and Her Sisters **** / 5
A pretty typical Woody Allen film. It revolves around three sisters and their present and past husbands. Woody Allen's character used to be married to Hannah, and now Michael Caine's character is. Woody Allen has some unexplained hearing loss, and has to go in for a CAT scan. He's told it might be cancer in the worst case scenario, but it turns out he's totally fine, which sets him off on an existential crisis. Michael Caine's character is attracted to one of Hannah's sisters, and they have an affair. It's a good film, but nothing that stands out from Woody Allen's other films.
New films:
The Good, The Bad, and The Weird: 6/10
A Korean take on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The Good is a man trying to kill the bad guy for being the notorious 'Finger chopper'. The Bad is a sadist trying to prove he's the best. The Weird is a bandit who's only in it for the money. Like the original it all ends up in a three way duel at the treasure site, with a very different genre-defying result. Based on it's connection with The Good, The Bad and the Ugly I expected a gunslinging tour de force. The problem is, the Good and Bad are kind of boring, and the only interesting character is The Weird. The action scenes are cool but the parts of the movie that aren't action scenes are boring. Overall it's worth seeing but nothing special.
Hitchcock's most mainstream film, North By Northwest revolves around certain iconic scenes. The cropduster, the fight on Mt Rushmore, and other scenes seem designed to be put in trailors and parodied for years. The main character is played by Cary Grant, Mister Handsome of the 40s through 60s. They worked really hard to put butts in movie theater seats belonging to people who would not otherwise be interested in psychological thrillers. The plot is a pretty typical Hitchcock plot. A man being hunted by criminals mistaking him for a government spy, who meets a woman involved in a multi-layered net of deception. It takes basically the average plot across on Hitchcock movies and gives it the gloss and production value of a Hollywood film.
This mainstream production is a mixed bag. It makes it more fun and entertaining than other Hitchcock films, but it also makes it less psychologically interesting and harder to suspend disbelief. For instance, the crop duster scene. I work for a crime syndicate and manage to send a person I believe to be a government spy to an isolated location alone. I want to kill him. What's my weapon of choice? A crop duster! Because it's way easier and more likely to succeed to run an airplane into somebody than to just drive by with a machine gun! The scenes most designed to broaden the appeal of the movie are the scenes that come off as the silliest. The effect is, North by Northwest is the Hitchcock movie you watch if all you're in the mood for is light entertainment. Which, sometimes you are. But if you're looking for something as psychologically interesting as Vertigo or Strangers on a Train, you'll be disappointed.
Rating: *** / 5
47/101
Next: L'atalante
Others:
Hannah and Her Sisters **** / 5
A pretty typical Woody Allen film. It revolves around three sisters and their present and past husbands. Woody Allen's character used to be married to Hannah, and now Michael Caine's character is. Woody Allen has some unexplained hearing loss, and has to go in for a CAT scan. He's told it might be cancer in the worst case scenario, but it turns out he's totally fine, which sets him off on an existential crisis. Michael Caine's character is attracted to one of Hannah's sisters, and they have an affair. It's a good film, but nothing that stands out from Woody Allen's other films.
New films:
The Good, The Bad, and The Weird: 6/10
A Korean take on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The Good is a man trying to kill the bad guy for being the notorious 'Finger chopper'. The Bad is a sadist trying to prove he's the best. The Weird is a bandit who's only in it for the money. Like the original it all ends up in a three way duel at the treasure site, with a very different genre-defying result. Based on it's connection with The Good, The Bad and the Ugly I expected a gunslinging tour de force. The problem is, the Good and Bad are kind of boring, and the only interesting character is The Weird. The action scenes are cool but the parts of the movie that aren't action scenes are boring. Overall it's worth seeing but nothing special.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
#36: Chinatown
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
I've got a love/hate relationship with Polanski films. On one hand the writing is really incredible and they always have really good casts. On the other hand, all the ones I've seen have featured well intentioned but cynical men investigating some massive conspiracy on their own and causing more harm than good. The conspiracies aren't always entirely plausible. It's like he takes corruption stories from the news, approaches them with zero skepticism and stretches them out to their logical extremes.
In the case of Chinatown, it's okay, becuase Jack Nicholson is awesome. He plays the part of the well intentioned cynical PI thinking he can take on corruption on his own so well, you can suspend disbelief more easily than you can for a movie like Ghost Writer. Chinatown also has more than it's share of iconic scenes that have been parody fodder for years.
Another reason it's easier to suspend disbelief for a movie like Chinatown than one like The Ghost Writer is the setting. It takes place in the 1930s during the expansion and development of Los Angeles, and uses that setting to deconstruct the noir genre. In old PI films, you can always tell who the bad guys are. They're always cackling evilly, they've got giant scars, they're running around murdering people in cold blood. The villains in Chinatown are the opposite. They're cool, calm, collected, politic, and opportunistic. They don't spend their time chasing after jewel encrusted falcons. They spend their time trying to control the entire water supply for a desert city for a thousand times the payout. They commit their murders privately, and the police do whatever they say because they're such god damned rich important people. Nicholson figures out just enough of the conspiracy to give him a glimmer of hope that the bad guy can be taken down, and plays around with the same kind of clever setups they play in old detective stories. Unfortunately, his plans rest on the police acting like policemen and not cronies, and the outcome would have been better if he'd just stayed out of the whole thing altogether.
Rating: ***** / 5
46/100
Others:
Ghost World: *** / 5
I thought I'd like this one more, but the concept has been done to death. Introverted, cynical, intelligent, sarcastic outcast tries not to sell out and ends up alienating everyone. The main character is very similar to Claire Fisher from Six Feet Under, only she was written with a lot more depth and sensitivity. The exact same concept was done more believably and poingantly in the recent movie Greenberg. Some of the assumptions of the writing misrepresent the real world. She needs to get a job, and she thinks her only option is a boring customer service job. I tell you, there are plenty of low paying easy jobs that don't involve customer interaction and don't require such complete conformity. Why is this introverted individualist only applying to movie theatre popcorn stands? And, the scene at the art gallery? I'm sure regular audiences would jump to the conclusion that the icon was a statement of racism, but the art crowd would jump just as easily to the conclusion that it's a comment on racism. I've seen far more superficially racist paintings at art galleries, but the art community gets the intention. Ghost World portrays the world a lot more monotonous and alienating than it really is.
The Piano Teacher: ** 1/2 / 5
Haneke films are derivative of Ingmar Bergman. I guess I can see the merit of what he's tyring to do, but the result is the characters barely come off as human. He goes for the aesthetic of Bergman without the psychological relevance.
I've got a love/hate relationship with Polanski films. On one hand the writing is really incredible and they always have really good casts. On the other hand, all the ones I've seen have featured well intentioned but cynical men investigating some massive conspiracy on their own and causing more harm than good. The conspiracies aren't always entirely plausible. It's like he takes corruption stories from the news, approaches them with zero skepticism and stretches them out to their logical extremes.
In the case of Chinatown, it's okay, becuase Jack Nicholson is awesome. He plays the part of the well intentioned cynical PI thinking he can take on corruption on his own so well, you can suspend disbelief more easily than you can for a movie like Ghost Writer. Chinatown also has more than it's share of iconic scenes that have been parody fodder for years.
Another reason it's easier to suspend disbelief for a movie like Chinatown than one like The Ghost Writer is the setting. It takes place in the 1930s during the expansion and development of Los Angeles, and uses that setting to deconstruct the noir genre. In old PI films, you can always tell who the bad guys are. They're always cackling evilly, they've got giant scars, they're running around murdering people in cold blood. The villains in Chinatown are the opposite. They're cool, calm, collected, politic, and opportunistic. They don't spend their time chasing after jewel encrusted falcons. They spend their time trying to control the entire water supply for a desert city for a thousand times the payout. They commit their murders privately, and the police do whatever they say because they're such god damned rich important people. Nicholson figures out just enough of the conspiracy to give him a glimmer of hope that the bad guy can be taken down, and plays around with the same kind of clever setups they play in old detective stories. Unfortunately, his plans rest on the police acting like policemen and not cronies, and the outcome would have been better if he'd just stayed out of the whole thing altogether.
Rating: ***** / 5
46/100
Others:
Ghost World: *** / 5
I thought I'd like this one more, but the concept has been done to death. Introverted, cynical, intelligent, sarcastic outcast tries not to sell out and ends up alienating everyone. The main character is very similar to Claire Fisher from Six Feet Under, only she was written with a lot more depth and sensitivity. The exact same concept was done more believably and poingantly in the recent movie Greenberg. Some of the assumptions of the writing misrepresent the real world. She needs to get a job, and she thinks her only option is a boring customer service job. I tell you, there are plenty of low paying easy jobs that don't involve customer interaction and don't require such complete conformity. Why is this introverted individualist only applying to movie theatre popcorn stands? And, the scene at the art gallery? I'm sure regular audiences would jump to the conclusion that the icon was a statement of racism, but the art crowd would jump just as easily to the conclusion that it's a comment on racism. I've seen far more superficially racist paintings at art galleries, but the art community gets the intention. Ghost World portrays the world a lot more monotonous and alienating than it really is.
The Piano Teacher: ** 1/2 / 5
Haneke films are derivative of Ingmar Bergman. I guess I can see the merit of what he's tyring to do, but the result is the characters barely come off as human. He goes for the aesthetic of Bergman without the psychological relevance.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
#7: The Searchers
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
When I'm watching the Searchers I imagine it being aired nightly at Fox News headquarters. It presents the view of the world that crowd considers idyllically American. Men are men, women are women, children are innocent. There's one culture that nobody questions. Arguments between men are solved by beating each other up then having a drink together. There are lines like 'Living as an Indian isn't really living'. Then there's John Wayne, the unshacklable badass loner who can dominate any situation purely by exuding manly charisma. These are the reasons I think it's widely considered (And by TSPDT) Ford's best film. It's the American ideal that a sizeable chunk of the country pines for.
The plot is fairly simple. John Wayne arrives at his brother's ranch having served in the Confederacy. He's bitter and angry about the defeat. Shortly after, a tribe of Indians attack, killing his brother and his entire family except two daughters who they capture. He and a young family friend spend five years chasing after the Indians and his neices. He wants to get revenge against the Indians, but the young friend only wants to save the girl. Now, the older daughter they killed almost immediately, but the younger girl they raised as one of their own. Wayne thinks 'She's not white, not anymore', and plans to kill her, but the young friend still sees her as the little girl she used to be and wants to stop him. This is the main issue of the movie, and it all comes out as an exploration of what it means to be a man, what it means to be American and what it means to be human. Like many John Ford films it's got a sense of emotional realness, but also like many John Ford films it puts cultural idealism above cultural realness. It's a great film, but those predisposed to watch Fox News would like it a lot more than those who aren't.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
45/101
Next: Chinatown
When I'm watching the Searchers I imagine it being aired nightly at Fox News headquarters. It presents the view of the world that crowd considers idyllically American. Men are men, women are women, children are innocent. There's one culture that nobody questions. Arguments between men are solved by beating each other up then having a drink together. There are lines like 'Living as an Indian isn't really living'. Then there's John Wayne, the unshacklable badass loner who can dominate any situation purely by exuding manly charisma. These are the reasons I think it's widely considered (And by TSPDT) Ford's best film. It's the American ideal that a sizeable chunk of the country pines for.
The plot is fairly simple. John Wayne arrives at his brother's ranch having served in the Confederacy. He's bitter and angry about the defeat. Shortly after, a tribe of Indians attack, killing his brother and his entire family except two daughters who they capture. He and a young family friend spend five years chasing after the Indians and his neices. He wants to get revenge against the Indians, but the young friend only wants to save the girl. Now, the older daughter they killed almost immediately, but the younger girl they raised as one of their own. Wayne thinks 'She's not white, not anymore', and plans to kill her, but the young friend still sees her as the little girl she used to be and wants to stop him. This is the main issue of the movie, and it all comes out as an exploration of what it means to be a man, what it means to be American and what it means to be human. Like many John Ford films it's got a sense of emotional realness, but also like many John Ford films it puts cultural idealism above cultural realness. It's a great film, but those predisposed to watch Fox News would like it a lot more than those who aren't.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
45/101
Next: Chinatown
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
#59: The Apartment
The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)
The Apartment is a film that plays right to Jack Lemmon's strengths, and it's his performance that gives the film it's character. He plays C C Baxter, a low ranked worker in a huge insurance company who gets promotions by letting managers bring their mistresses to his apartment. Personally he hates what they're doing, but he doesn't feel like he's better than them either. He's willing to play the playboy to his neighbors, even repeating the lines given to him by his bosses ("Take them out a few times and immediately they assume you're thinking about marriage!")
He meets and falls in love with a girl who works the elevator in his building. Only, she used to be the mistress of one of the managers who uses his apartment and is trying to get her back as his mistress. He keeps teasing the idea of marriage but clearly has no intention of leaving his wife. Baxter finds this awful, but his own history has made him cynical enough that he just plays along and makes things easy for them.
The way it's framed is pretty predictable, but it's done well enough that it works. The audience roots for Baxter and the girl to get together, and there are a series of almost-happens that lead to misinterpretations that lead to the girl going back to the manager or Baxter retreating into his cynicism. Lemmon plays it all well enough for the movie to be entertaining.
The only problem I have with the film is that it can be a little self righteous and preachy. But you can forgive it, first because it was made in the 60's, and second because it's a comedy.
44/101
Next: The Searchers, Chinatown
The Apartment is a film that plays right to Jack Lemmon's strengths, and it's his performance that gives the film it's character. He plays C C Baxter, a low ranked worker in a huge insurance company who gets promotions by letting managers bring their mistresses to his apartment. Personally he hates what they're doing, but he doesn't feel like he's better than them either. He's willing to play the playboy to his neighbors, even repeating the lines given to him by his bosses ("Take them out a few times and immediately they assume you're thinking about marriage!")
He meets and falls in love with a girl who works the elevator in his building. Only, she used to be the mistress of one of the managers who uses his apartment and is trying to get her back as his mistress. He keeps teasing the idea of marriage but clearly has no intention of leaving his wife. Baxter finds this awful, but his own history has made him cynical enough that he just plays along and makes things easy for them.
The way it's framed is pretty predictable, but it's done well enough that it works. The audience roots for Baxter and the girl to get together, and there are a series of almost-happens that lead to misinterpretations that lead to the girl going back to the manager or Baxter retreating into his cynicism. Lemmon plays it all well enough for the movie to be entertaining.
The only problem I have with the film is that it can be a little self righteous and preachy. But you can forgive it, first because it was made in the 60's, and second because it's a comedy.
44/101
Next: The Searchers, Chinatown
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
#100: Duck Soup
Duck Soup (McCarey, 1933)
What can I say about it? It's Marx Brothers. If you've seen any Marx Brothers that should tell you all you need to know about it. They're very good at what they do. Some parts are hilarious, but those are mostly the parts where it's just Groucho rattling off one liners or Harpo screwing around with someone. The funny parts have nothing to do with the ridiculous plot. It's not a movie you generally watch when you're over ten, unless you're slavishly following a critics' list like I am.
Rating: ** / 5 for adults, **** / 5 for kids
43/101
What can I say about it? It's Marx Brothers. If you've seen any Marx Brothers that should tell you all you need to know about it. They're very good at what they do. Some parts are hilarious, but those are mostly the parts where it's just Groucho rattling off one liners or Harpo screwing around with someone. The funny parts have nothing to do with the ridiculous plot. It's not a movie you generally watch when you're over ten, unless you're slavishly following a critics' list like I am.
Rating: ** / 5 for adults, **** / 5 for kids
43/101
Thursday, April 22, 2010
#83: Stagecoach
Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)
A pretty straightforward Western. There's a stagecoach of people trying to cross from one town to another, and there are Indians trying to kill them. What strikes me most about the film is that there's no actual gunplay until over an hour in. The first hour is spent on character development, and it's very good character development. The characters are set up as opposites to each other. A refined lady and a prostitute, a Union soldier and a Confederacy soldier. And then John Wayne, a criminal escaped from prison to kill the guys who killed his father. They fight, then Indians attack them, then they've bonded. It's pretty simple, but John Ford and John Wayne play it well enough that it works.
Rating: **** / 5
42/101
Next: The Apartment, Duck Soup
Others:
Amores Perrors: **** / 5
A perfect example of multilinear storytelling done right.
Dancer In The Dark: *** 1/2 / 5
A musical it's okay for guys to like. Depressing as hell. The music is written by Bjork.
The Taste Of Others: *** / 5
A French comedy of impressions about a lot of people with different points of view. The characters are brought together in intertwining ways, and in every case, you can tell each character has a completely different interpretation of the situation. It works, but it's a little boring.
Newer movies:
The Secret In Their Eyes: 5/10
A former detective is writing a novel about a rape/murder case twenty years ago, and in doing so reconnects with a woman he worked with. The acting is good. The director likes the shaky cam a little too much. Not all the plot twists are believable.
A pretty straightforward Western. There's a stagecoach of people trying to cross from one town to another, and there are Indians trying to kill them. What strikes me most about the film is that there's no actual gunplay until over an hour in. The first hour is spent on character development, and it's very good character development. The characters are set up as opposites to each other. A refined lady and a prostitute, a Union soldier and a Confederacy soldier. And then John Wayne, a criminal escaped from prison to kill the guys who killed his father. They fight, then Indians attack them, then they've bonded. It's pretty simple, but John Ford and John Wayne play it well enough that it works.
Rating: **** / 5
42/101
Next: The Apartment, Duck Soup
Others:
Amores Perrors: **** / 5
A perfect example of multilinear storytelling done right.
Dancer In The Dark: *** 1/2 / 5
A musical it's okay for guys to like. Depressing as hell. The music is written by Bjork.
The Taste Of Others: *** / 5
A French comedy of impressions about a lot of people with different points of view. The characters are brought together in intertwining ways, and in every case, you can tell each character has a completely different interpretation of the situation. It works, but it's a little boring.
Newer movies:
The Secret In Their Eyes: 5/10
A former detective is writing a novel about a rape/murder case twenty years ago, and in doing so reconnects with a woman he worked with. The acting is good. The director likes the shaky cam a little too much. Not all the plot twists are believable.
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