The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (Ford, 1962)
I like watching John Ford Westerns because they make me feel like a Fox News anchor. John Wayne can say the same thing Sean Hannity spends an hour a day obnoxiously yelling at a camera, except when he does it you think it's awesome. John Ford Westerns take place in that mythical world 'When things were better'. You see a guy trying to steal your horse, you shoot him. Sheriff comes by, "Why did you shoot him?" "Because he was trying to steal my horse." "Alright then. Have a nice day." Liberty Valence doesn't deserve a trial, just shoot his ass! All these things, as a modern individual, you might have problems with in real life, are totally awesome when they happen in a movie. Kind of like how when you watch a Tarantino movie, murder and torture are deemed awesome so long as it's the protagonist doing it, and when you watch 24, you quietly accept that Jack Bauer is right about everything.
For a gun toting western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence is remarkably nuanced. It's like a less glamorous and non-overrated version of The Dark Knight. (With John Wayne as Batman, Jimmy Stewart as pre-explosion Harvey Dent, and Liberty Valence as Joker). The most memorable line of the movie 'When the legend becomes fact, you report the legend' has compounded meaning. Besides the meaning for the characters in the movie, it feels like John Ford making a late career statement "This isn't how the Old West really was, but it doesn't matter, because the mythology is more important than the fact." Idealized visions of the past may not be true, but they have the Stephen Colbert-coined quality of 'Truthiness'. Shinbone's transformation from a dusty backwater town to a flourishing city was based on a lie, but John Ford says, why should you care?
Rating: **** / 5
15/100
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
#34: Breathless
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
Breathless is a very style driven movie, and style driven movies tend to divide people based on how they feel about the aesthetic. The main plot of the movie is very simple. The main character is a crook, and at the beginning he has to kill a cop to keep from getting caught. He's being hunted, and he's trying to get enough money to escape. There's an American girl he likes and he's trying to convince her to run off to Rome with him. That's the plot, and the rest is style. The first time I watched Breathless I hated it, but watching it from the beginning having all the important themes in mind I appreciate it a little more. Besides that the 'main character is a huge douche' factor doesn't bother me as much as it did the first time, I can now appreciate how tightly knitted the plot is with the themes.
I can appreciate Breathless a lot. Because Breathless isn't a film you enjoy, it's a film you appreciate. You watch Breathless, then you write a fifty page paper dissecting it. Then other film theory students read your paper and write a sixty page paper about how wrong you are. Then you follow Jean Luc Godard to Santa Teresa, Mexico to meet him -- but I'm getting a little off track here. Breathless was the film that ignited the French New Wave movement in the 60s. It was the first to really use the 'shaky cam' and jump cuts. The thing is, it didn't need to use either of them, and they both come off as useless self indulgence.
The film has some other problems. It suffers from 'Don't tell me, show me' syndrome. There's this one scene where the American girl goes to this panel where a french poet explains that the way French women differ from American women is that 'French women haven't managed to control their men yet'. The main character constantly tells the American girl she's a coward. The idea of the film seems to be that the man honestly follows his animal impulses, whereas the American girl has the same impulses but doesn't act on them because she's afraid of giving up her independence, control, and personal ambition. Fine, those are good themes. But you shouldn't need to have all the characters say them to each others' faces constantly throughout the film to hammer them in.
Then there's the little weird issue that none of the characters have any moral problem with murder. She doesn't want to run away with him to Rome -- not because he's a murderer, or because he's a hostile misogynistic douchebag who only ever acts to satisfy his base impulses, but because she's afraid to give up her control. The point, as far as I can glean, is that the modern refusal to act on whim destroys the romantic paradigm. (I use the word 'paradigm' because that's the word you use to overanalyze things. Just ask Kuhn.) The ending, like many French New Wave movie endings, is driven by allegories for the director's agenda, which also comes off as self indulgence.
Nonetheless, Godard's a skillful enough director that even with the flaws, it's an enjoyable viewing. So this rating may seem higher than the writeup suggests.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
14/100
Next: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, All About Eve
Others:
Dead Ringers ** / 5
I have a friend who really likes Cronenberg. He keeps raving about him, so I keep seeing Cronenberg films. Dead Ringers has one big thing going for it, and it's that Jeremy Irons is incredible playing a pair of twins. But then the twins start going insane for no real reason, and none of any of the characters' behavior or actions seems plausible from start to finish. I just don't get Cronenberg.
Breathless is a very style driven movie, and style driven movies tend to divide people based on how they feel about the aesthetic. The main plot of the movie is very simple. The main character is a crook, and at the beginning he has to kill a cop to keep from getting caught. He's being hunted, and he's trying to get enough money to escape. There's an American girl he likes and he's trying to convince her to run off to Rome with him. That's the plot, and the rest is style. The first time I watched Breathless I hated it, but watching it from the beginning having all the important themes in mind I appreciate it a little more. Besides that the 'main character is a huge douche' factor doesn't bother me as much as it did the first time, I can now appreciate how tightly knitted the plot is with the themes.
I can appreciate Breathless a lot. Because Breathless isn't a film you enjoy, it's a film you appreciate. You watch Breathless, then you write a fifty page paper dissecting it. Then other film theory students read your paper and write a sixty page paper about how wrong you are. Then you follow Jean Luc Godard to Santa Teresa, Mexico to meet him -- but I'm getting a little off track here. Breathless was the film that ignited the French New Wave movement in the 60s. It was the first to really use the 'shaky cam' and jump cuts. The thing is, it didn't need to use either of them, and they both come off as useless self indulgence.
The film has some other problems. It suffers from 'Don't tell me, show me' syndrome. There's this one scene where the American girl goes to this panel where a french poet explains that the way French women differ from American women is that 'French women haven't managed to control their men yet'. The main character constantly tells the American girl she's a coward. The idea of the film seems to be that the man honestly follows his animal impulses, whereas the American girl has the same impulses but doesn't act on them because she's afraid of giving up her independence, control, and personal ambition. Fine, those are good themes. But you shouldn't need to have all the characters say them to each others' faces constantly throughout the film to hammer them in.
Then there's the little weird issue that none of the characters have any moral problem with murder. She doesn't want to run away with him to Rome -- not because he's a murderer, or because he's a hostile misogynistic douchebag who only ever acts to satisfy his base impulses, but because she's afraid to give up her control. The point, as far as I can glean, is that the modern refusal to act on whim destroys the romantic paradigm. (I use the word 'paradigm' because that's the word you use to overanalyze things. Just ask Kuhn.) The ending, like many French New Wave movie endings, is driven by allegories for the director's agenda, which also comes off as self indulgence.
Nonetheless, Godard's a skillful enough director that even with the flaws, it's an enjoyable viewing. So this rating may seem higher than the writeup suggests.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
14/100
Next: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, All About Eve
Others:
Dead Ringers ** / 5
I have a friend who really likes Cronenberg. He keeps raving about him, so I keep seeing Cronenberg films. Dead Ringers has one big thing going for it, and it's that Jeremy Irons is incredible playing a pair of twins. But then the twins start going insane for no real reason, and none of any of the characters' behavior or actions seems plausible from start to finish. I just don't get Cronenberg.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
#77: Notorious
Notirious (Hitchcock, 1946)
Notorious is a very Hitchcocky film. The lead male and female characters are exactly like the male and female leads in other Hitchcock films, and Cary Grant plays the 'Hitchcock lead male' with a certain smug paternalism that can be obnoxious at times. When they fall in love at the beginning I don't think it's been justified much yet in the plot -- they fall in love pretty much out of the psychic knowledge that they are the male and female leads of the movie.
I don't have that much more to say about the film. It's a good film which happens not to do anything that isn't exactly the same as something in another Hitchcock movie, except for maybe the clever ending.
Rating: *** / 5
13/100
Next I'm going to try to get one of the ones I didn't like the first time I saw it out of the way, just so they don't all bunch up at the end. Something like Breathless or Nashville. Probably Breathless.
Being way too old fashioned to be 26, I'm just now discovering Netflix. I'll use it for the stuff I think I probably won't want to own.
Others:
Moon *** / 5
Enjoyable film that's a bit too derivative of Ridley Scott.
Police, Adjective **** / 5
A bit of an overly intellectual film that sets out to reverse the cliches of the cop movie genre. The film can be a bit boring, but makes very nuanced points about strict enforcement of victimless crime laws.
Sherlock Holmes 1/2 / 5
It's like watching one of the Batman films from the 90s, except the main character is House.
Notorious is a very Hitchcocky film. The lead male and female characters are exactly like the male and female leads in other Hitchcock films, and Cary Grant plays the 'Hitchcock lead male' with a certain smug paternalism that can be obnoxious at times. When they fall in love at the beginning I don't think it's been justified much yet in the plot -- they fall in love pretty much out of the psychic knowledge that they are the male and female leads of the movie.
I don't have that much more to say about the film. It's a good film which happens not to do anything that isn't exactly the same as something in another Hitchcock movie, except for maybe the clever ending.
Rating: *** / 5
13/100
Next I'm going to try to get one of the ones I didn't like the first time I saw it out of the way, just so they don't all bunch up at the end. Something like Breathless or Nashville. Probably Breathless.
Being way too old fashioned to be 26, I'm just now discovering Netflix. I'll use it for the stuff I think I probably won't want to own.
Others:
Moon *** / 5
Enjoyable film that's a bit too derivative of Ridley Scott.
Police, Adjective **** / 5
A bit of an overly intellectual film that sets out to reverse the cliches of the cop movie genre. The film can be a bit boring, but makes very nuanced points about strict enforcement of victimless crime laws.
Sherlock Holmes 1/2 / 5
It's like watching one of the Batman films from the 90s, except the main character is House.
Friday, January 22, 2010
#46: The Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Welles)
Horray Youtube! (No, seriously, I'm going to pay for all the stuff that anyone has decided to release in the US.)
The first thing I will say is that I have no tolerance for changing sad endings into happy endings to make a movie more marketable. In high school I read the play for Streetcar Named Desire then saw the movie. They kept the ending unhappy but had Stella run out on Stanley at the end, and even that pissed me off. For this movie not only did they cut out 60 minutes, replace a sad ending with a happy ending, but they destroyed the removed footage so Welles could never fix it. Maybe the reason Criterion hasn't picked it up yet is that they're still holding out hope that some day a copy of the original will be discovered somewhere, like just recently happened with Metropolis.
Despite the best efforts of the movie studio, it's still a great movie. It's like a movie adaptation of the song 'Like A Rolling Stone'. The performances are incredible. George Amberson thought he never had to make any money of his own because he could spend his life spending his grandfather's. Then, oops. It's great to see the town start as a classical rural setting then turn into a smoky modern city. It's weird that so many important plot points happen between scenes, but of course, that wasn't the way Welles intended. And the happy ending added on by the studio doesn't really make much sense. It's like all the characters decided to be saints at the last minute just to accomodate the happy feelings of the audience. There's this one episode of 'The Critic' where a film studio edited the ending of Casablanca to have Ilsa decide at the last minute to parachute down from the plane and be with Rick. The ending is like that, only not a parody.
I read that the 2002 version which claims to be based on Welles' original screenplay really isn't at all. So maybe I should read the 1918 novel the movie was based on to see what the story was supposed to be.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
Probable rating of the movie Orson Welles made: **** 1/2 / 5
Other films I've seen for the first time lately:
The Double Life Of Veronique: *** 1/2 / 5
Great main plot, great imagery, maybe a little too overly quiet and subtle. The idea is that two women who look identical were born at the same time with a subtle psychic link to each other, and one gradually discovers this. It's got the same sort of implied knowledge themes and spiritual congruity as the Three Colors trilogy, but doesn't draw you in the same way Blue and Red do.
Now the pace of my getting through the hundred will probably slow down considerably, cause I'll have a lot more to do for a while, and also various TV series will be airing new episodes again.
12/100
Horray Youtube! (No, seriously, I'm going to pay for all the stuff that anyone has decided to release in the US.)
The first thing I will say is that I have no tolerance for changing sad endings into happy endings to make a movie more marketable. In high school I read the play for Streetcar Named Desire then saw the movie. They kept the ending unhappy but had Stella run out on Stanley at the end, and even that pissed me off. For this movie not only did they cut out 60 minutes, replace a sad ending with a happy ending, but they destroyed the removed footage so Welles could never fix it. Maybe the reason Criterion hasn't picked it up yet is that they're still holding out hope that some day a copy of the original will be discovered somewhere, like just recently happened with Metropolis.
Despite the best efforts of the movie studio, it's still a great movie. It's like a movie adaptation of the song 'Like A Rolling Stone'. The performances are incredible. George Amberson thought he never had to make any money of his own because he could spend his life spending his grandfather's. Then, oops. It's great to see the town start as a classical rural setting then turn into a smoky modern city. It's weird that so many important plot points happen between scenes, but of course, that wasn't the way Welles intended. And the happy ending added on by the studio doesn't really make much sense. It's like all the characters decided to be saints at the last minute just to accomodate the happy feelings of the audience. There's this one episode of 'The Critic' where a film studio edited the ending of Casablanca to have Ilsa decide at the last minute to parachute down from the plane and be with Rick. The ending is like that, only not a parody.
I read that the 2002 version which claims to be based on Welles' original screenplay really isn't at all. So maybe I should read the 1918 novel the movie was based on to see what the story was supposed to be.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
Probable rating of the movie Orson Welles made: **** 1/2 / 5
Other films I've seen for the first time lately:
The Double Life Of Veronique: *** 1/2 / 5
Great main plot, great imagery, maybe a little too overly quiet and subtle. The idea is that two women who look identical were born at the same time with a subtle psychic link to each other, and one gradually discovers this. It's got the same sort of implied knowledge themes and spiritual congruity as the Three Colors trilogy, but doesn't draw you in the same way Blue and Red do.
Now the pace of my getting through the hundred will probably slow down considerably, cause I'll have a lot more to do for a while, and also various TV series will be airing new episodes again.
12/100
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
#69: Metropolis
Metropolis (1926, Lang)
Metropolis is a film made in a time before actors with any actual talent wanted anything to do with moving pictures. The whole thing reminds me of the parodies of silent films in Singin In The Rain. I don't understand the critical praise. The basic idea behind the plot is an excellent idea. A futuristic utopia maintained by an underground city of slaves. But the only way to ignore the cheesy plotting, the poor production and the silent film overacting is to take the film historian perspective that because it was made in 1926, all the flaws are actually virtues. That argument doesn't hold much weight with me, because Murnau had all the same setbacks and made silent films that look a whole lot better with characters who could pass for human.
Then of course there's the 'robot duplicate' plot, which doesn't make sense at all if you think about it for three seconds. You'd think the workers would notice their messiah suddenly had an eye twitch for no apparent reason and completely changed her message, instead of blindly following her to violent revolution. "Let's destroy the machines, thereby flooding our city!" (Later) "Oh wait, our children are in the city! Crap. KILL THE WITCH! It's her fault we didn't apply basic common sense to our actions!"
Lang does some neat stuff with double exposures, except far inferior to what Murnau does with them. Everything has a sort of deliberately cheesy mad scientist vibe to it. The film has Marxist overtones and offers the solution for all class conflict for there to be a mediator between the leaders and the workers, and of course the main character is THE ONE who can be the mediator. (If only they'd thought of unionizing!) It's said that Metropolis is one of the most influential scifi films. Maybe that means I should blame Metropolis for all the annoying camp and oversimplified politics that plagued the genre for decades.
The DVD I've been watching says 'Over a quarter of the footage has been lost forever.' Only, checking the Metropolis page at imdb.com, a negative of the original film was just found and is going to be showed in Berlin on February 10th. Which means I need to go sell this version on ebay now before other people hear about this.
Rating: * 1/2 / 5
I'm realizing now that Magnificent Ambersons is on Youtube. Maybe I should rush and try to see it that way before somebody does something about that. (Yeah yeah. I'll pay for it when somebody freaking lets me.)
Metropolis is a film made in a time before actors with any actual talent wanted anything to do with moving pictures. The whole thing reminds me of the parodies of silent films in Singin In The Rain. I don't understand the critical praise. The basic idea behind the plot is an excellent idea. A futuristic utopia maintained by an underground city of slaves. But the only way to ignore the cheesy plotting, the poor production and the silent film overacting is to take the film historian perspective that because it was made in 1926, all the flaws are actually virtues. That argument doesn't hold much weight with me, because Murnau had all the same setbacks and made silent films that look a whole lot better with characters who could pass for human.
Then of course there's the 'robot duplicate' plot, which doesn't make sense at all if you think about it for three seconds. You'd think the workers would notice their messiah suddenly had an eye twitch for no apparent reason and completely changed her message, instead of blindly following her to violent revolution. "Let's destroy the machines, thereby flooding our city!" (Later) "Oh wait, our children are in the city! Crap. KILL THE WITCH! It's her fault we didn't apply basic common sense to our actions!"
Lang does some neat stuff with double exposures, except far inferior to what Murnau does with them. Everything has a sort of deliberately cheesy mad scientist vibe to it. The film has Marxist overtones and offers the solution for all class conflict for there to be a mediator between the leaders and the workers, and of course the main character is THE ONE who can be the mediator. (If only they'd thought of unionizing!) It's said that Metropolis is one of the most influential scifi films. Maybe that means I should blame Metropolis for all the annoying camp and oversimplified politics that plagued the genre for decades.
The DVD I've been watching says 'Over a quarter of the footage has been lost forever.' Only, checking the Metropolis page at imdb.com, a negative of the original film was just found and is going to be showed in Berlin on February 10th. Which means I need to go sell this version on ebay now before other people hear about this.
Rating: * 1/2 / 5
I'm realizing now that Magnificent Ambersons is on Youtube. Maybe I should rush and try to see it that way before somebody does something about that. (Yeah yeah. I'll pay for it when somebody freaking lets me.)
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
#102* L'age Dor
L'age Dor (Bunuel, 1930)
L'age Dor is a film that fell out of the TSPDT top 100 in the last update that I decided to swap for On The Waterfront, which entered the TSPDT top 100 in the last update, because I didn't feel like spending any money to see it again.
L'age Dor is a good film to test your pretentious friends with. Here's the experiment. You pick a theme out of a hat, then you tell your friends that is what the film is about. Then you show them the film. If they tell you you're right, that's what the film is about: They're pretentious liars who don't want to admit to you they'd rather be watching superhero movies.
I don't know how to explain half the scenes in it. The movie is so surrealist it makes Eraserhead look like Paul Blart: Mallcop. What themes I do understand in it I only do because they're similar to themes in other Bunuel films Viridiana and Belle de Jour. There's the theme of id versus superego. The main part of the movie takes place at this rich party where rich people behave puritanically. This guy comes in who acts completely on impulse. She sneaks off with him because she wants to explore said impulses, then decides she'd rather not leave her puritanical world. The guy then gets mad so he throws the pope out the window. Then Jesus rapes schoolgirls. (I wonder how Bunuel feels about Catholicism?)
L'age Dor was so much more openly sexual than the other films of its time that it was censored for fifty years. Maybe that's part of the reason the film has such a cult following. People who are against censorship tend to assume anything that is censored is automatically awesome, and people who hate the mainstream assume anything confusing must be brilliant.
Rating: *** / 5
I've gotten through ten films in nineteen days, way ahead of the pace I need to finish this thing. I won't keep up the one movie per two days pace, because my spring classes are starting soon. Hopefully I can use the next week to get far enough ahead that I won't fall way behind during the semester.
Next: Metropolis
10/100
L'age Dor is a film that fell out of the TSPDT top 100 in the last update that I decided to swap for On The Waterfront, which entered the TSPDT top 100 in the last update, because I didn't feel like spending any money to see it again.
L'age Dor is a good film to test your pretentious friends with. Here's the experiment. You pick a theme out of a hat, then you tell your friends that is what the film is about. Then you show them the film. If they tell you you're right, that's what the film is about: They're pretentious liars who don't want to admit to you they'd rather be watching superhero movies.
I don't know how to explain half the scenes in it. The movie is so surrealist it makes Eraserhead look like Paul Blart: Mallcop. What themes I do understand in it I only do because they're similar to themes in other Bunuel films Viridiana and Belle de Jour. There's the theme of id versus superego. The main part of the movie takes place at this rich party where rich people behave puritanically. This guy comes in who acts completely on impulse. She sneaks off with him because she wants to explore said impulses, then decides she'd rather not leave her puritanical world. The guy then gets mad so he throws the pope out the window. Then Jesus rapes schoolgirls. (I wonder how Bunuel feels about Catholicism?)
L'age Dor was so much more openly sexual than the other films of its time that it was censored for fifty years. Maybe that's part of the reason the film has such a cult following. People who are against censorship tend to assume anything that is censored is automatically awesome, and people who hate the mainstream assume anything confusing must be brilliant.
Rating: *** / 5
I've gotten through ten films in nineteen days, way ahead of the pace I need to finish this thing. I won't keep up the one movie per two days pace, because my spring classes are starting soon. Hopefully I can use the next week to get far enough ahead that I won't fall way behind during the semester.
Next: Metropolis
10/100
Monday, January 18, 2010
#1: Citizen Kane
I'm really ahead of pace as of right now. In 18 days I've gotten through 9 movies. The pace won't last, because pretty soon my spring classes start. I might as well try to get as far ahead of pace as possible before then.
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1942)
Take a look at any 'best movie of all time' poll, and Citizen Kane will be #1. There are a handful of movies that will always appear in the top 20 or so (Vertigo, 2001, Rashomon, Bicycle Thieves, etc), but there'll be in all different orders. I never understood that. It's undeniably a great movie, but I don't understand what puts it so far above every other movie ever made that it monopolizes the #1 spot. Maybe the real reason is that while people disagree that it's #1, nobody puts it lower than #10 or so. (You're no respectable critic if you don't love Citizen Kane!)
Of course, I've never watched the movie objectively. It hasn't been possible to watch objectively for at least 20 years. Anyone with any exposure to pop culture knows what Rosebud is, and anyone in a position to want to watch Citizen Kane has probably been told it's the greatest movie ever made. Those are the standards to now judge it against, and you can't even watch it the way it was intended anymore, in the dark about Rosebud.
Orson Welles saw film as a means to espouse his world views and his values. He was well known as a hot headed fiercely opinionated egotist, and it came through in many of his roles. He played a lot of characters who made moral compromises which they rationalized throughout the film, only to be revealed as hateful and evil. In Citizen Kane his agenda is to display the hollow inhumanity of fame and fortune, and his methodology is brilliant. The first thing we see is the public face of Charles Kane, then we gradually investigate the private face. The attention to detail and the deliberate camera movement highlight perfectly everything we're supposed to see about the scene in addition to what all the characters are saying. It was the first film to use many of these techniques (Not that I care whether a film is influential). Flaws in the film production-wise are hard to find. The only flaws lie in Orson Welles' ideological conceits. If you don't accept those conceits that the pursuit of money and the pursuit of love are mutually destructive on Mr Welles' terms, just like Charles Kane wanted to be loved on his own terms, all you've got is a bunch of masterfully presented drama. (And one might argue it drags toward the end.)
Does it deserve the automatic '#1 film of all time' nod? Maybe it deserves to be considered #1, but not automatically in every single poll. Maybe I should take a look at the individual submissions that make up those polls and find out whether a lot of people put it as #1 on their own lists, or if it just happens to be the one not left off any individual list. (Whereas other films may get more #1 placements but also more omissions.)
On a side note, why don't they make puzzles like that anymore, with pieces all different shapes? Now puzzles are just a bunch of square pieces with bulges.
Rating: *****/5
9/100
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1942)
Take a look at any 'best movie of all time' poll, and Citizen Kane will be #1. There are a handful of movies that will always appear in the top 20 or so (Vertigo, 2001, Rashomon, Bicycle Thieves, etc), but there'll be in all different orders. I never understood that. It's undeniably a great movie, but I don't understand what puts it so far above every other movie ever made that it monopolizes the #1 spot. Maybe the real reason is that while people disagree that it's #1, nobody puts it lower than #10 or so. (You're no respectable critic if you don't love Citizen Kane!)
Of course, I've never watched the movie objectively. It hasn't been possible to watch objectively for at least 20 years. Anyone with any exposure to pop culture knows what Rosebud is, and anyone in a position to want to watch Citizen Kane has probably been told it's the greatest movie ever made. Those are the standards to now judge it against, and you can't even watch it the way it was intended anymore, in the dark about Rosebud.
Orson Welles saw film as a means to espouse his world views and his values. He was well known as a hot headed fiercely opinionated egotist, and it came through in many of his roles. He played a lot of characters who made moral compromises which they rationalized throughout the film, only to be revealed as hateful and evil. In Citizen Kane his agenda is to display the hollow inhumanity of fame and fortune, and his methodology is brilliant. The first thing we see is the public face of Charles Kane, then we gradually investigate the private face. The attention to detail and the deliberate camera movement highlight perfectly everything we're supposed to see about the scene in addition to what all the characters are saying. It was the first film to use many of these techniques (Not that I care whether a film is influential). Flaws in the film production-wise are hard to find. The only flaws lie in Orson Welles' ideological conceits. If you don't accept those conceits that the pursuit of money and the pursuit of love are mutually destructive on Mr Welles' terms, just like Charles Kane wanted to be loved on his own terms, all you've got is a bunch of masterfully presented drama. (And one might argue it drags toward the end.)
Does it deserve the automatic '#1 film of all time' nod? Maybe it deserves to be considered #1, but not automatically in every single poll. Maybe I should take a look at the individual submissions that make up those polls and find out whether a lot of people put it as #1 on their own lists, or if it just happens to be the one not left off any individual list. (Whereas other films may get more #1 placements but also more omissions.)
On a side note, why don't they make puzzles like that anymore, with pieces all different shapes? Now puzzles are just a bunch of square pieces with bulges.
Rating: *****/5
9/100
Sunday, January 17, 2010
#13: Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962, Lean)
I'm going to comment on this movie as if it's a work of fiction, because it is. It is a fiction movie, which details similar events to those that actually happened, and characters with the same names of the actual people involved.
Lawrence of Arabia is a great action epic. The cinematography is beautiful, and the fighting scenes are beautifully (And expensively) staged. The character of Lawrence though portrayed as an egotist and sadist with a messiah complex is also given a childlike playfulness which balances him out. The story is paced well, and even when it gets to the point where Lawrence sees himself as an Arab, he's never allowed to completely immerse himself in the culture, and is ultimately expelled from it. His mystique exaggerated by dramatic journalism, he goes home as a British hero.
Lawrence of Arabia is a great movie, but it doesn't stylistically stand out very much. The only thing that makes the movie unique is it's ambition. The characters don't have much depth and there isn't much going on in the plot beyond the surface. British films from around that time also tend to fashionably go out of their way to beat down British hubris, which can result in British military officers coming off as a little too beaurocratic.
The portrayal of the Arab world has not aged well. Particularly in the light of the last decade it comes off as euro-centric and far less believeable. Seeing as the movie is a work of fiction I am happily willing to suspend disbelief.
Rating: ****/5
I'm making a ruling for this project that I'm allowed to substitute movies in the January 2010 TSPDT top 100 for ones in the December 2008 TSPDT. So instead of watching On The Waterfront, I'll be watching L'age Dor. I didn't like On The Waterfront when I saw it last year, whereas I really like Bunuel.
8/100
Others:
The White Ribbon ** / 5
Tries so hard to imitate great art films it forgets said great art films had original scripts, unique styles and memorable performances.
Crazy Heart *** / 5
Great performance by Jeff Bridges. Maggie Gyllenhal was too much of a stock love interest. The themes of the movie were very similar to The Wrestler.
On The Waterfront ** 1/2 / 5
Since I'm not counting it toward the hundred, here's how I feel about it based on seeing it last November. Marlon Brando is great. The script sucks. It's hard to watch after seeing post-Godfather mob films because you wonder why they don't just whack him. The characters' behaviors are based on dramatic contrivances instead of based on genuine emotions.
Next: Citizen Kane, L'age Dor, Metropolis
I'm going to comment on this movie as if it's a work of fiction, because it is. It is a fiction movie, which details similar events to those that actually happened, and characters with the same names of the actual people involved.
Lawrence of Arabia is a great action epic. The cinematography is beautiful, and the fighting scenes are beautifully (And expensively) staged. The character of Lawrence though portrayed as an egotist and sadist with a messiah complex is also given a childlike playfulness which balances him out. The story is paced well, and even when it gets to the point where Lawrence sees himself as an Arab, he's never allowed to completely immerse himself in the culture, and is ultimately expelled from it. His mystique exaggerated by dramatic journalism, he goes home as a British hero.
Lawrence of Arabia is a great movie, but it doesn't stylistically stand out very much. The only thing that makes the movie unique is it's ambition. The characters don't have much depth and there isn't much going on in the plot beyond the surface. British films from around that time also tend to fashionably go out of their way to beat down British hubris, which can result in British military officers coming off as a little too beaurocratic.
The portrayal of the Arab world has not aged well. Particularly in the light of the last decade it comes off as euro-centric and far less believeable. Seeing as the movie is a work of fiction I am happily willing to suspend disbelief.
Rating: ****/5
I'm making a ruling for this project that I'm allowed to substitute movies in the January 2010 TSPDT top 100 for ones in the December 2008 TSPDT. So instead of watching On The Waterfront, I'll be watching L'age Dor. I didn't like On The Waterfront when I saw it last year, whereas I really like Bunuel.
8/100
Others:
The White Ribbon ** / 5
Tries so hard to imitate great art films it forgets said great art films had original scripts, unique styles and memorable performances.
Crazy Heart *** / 5
Great performance by Jeff Bridges. Maggie Gyllenhal was too much of a stock love interest. The themes of the movie were very similar to The Wrestler.
On The Waterfront ** 1/2 / 5
Since I'm not counting it toward the hundred, here's how I feel about it based on seeing it last November. Marlon Brando is great. The script sucks. It's hard to watch after seeing post-Godfather mob films because you wonder why they don't just whack him. The characters' behaviors are based on dramatic contrivances instead of based on genuine emotions.
Next: Citizen Kane, L'age Dor, Metropolis
Friday, January 15, 2010
#43: Andrei Rublev
Andrei Rublev (1966, Tarkovsky)
So, I picked up Battle of Algiers and Sansho The Baliff because deepdiscount was having a 45% off sale for Criterion. Maybe I should have just bought all the exclusively criterion ones in the top 100, becuase that's probably the cheapest I'll ever find them. But out of interest of staying both out of debt and marginally liquid, I just picked up those two.
Two weeks in and I've already exhausted Tarkovsky. I've never seen a movie like the two of his I've seen. They've got such beautiful aesthetics, and non-linear storytelling that tries to evoke strong emotion rather than just follow a protagonist through a series of events. The story takes place in medieval Russia, and is episodic, following various characters through events that are only thematically related. There's the theme of following Christian rituals while at the same time being inhumanly cruel to others, with the implication that it is more Christian to be forgiving than wrathful. There's also the theme of the relationship between artists and the limitations placed by society, which it manages to pull off without seeming self-indulgent because of its historical setting. Andrei Rublev, the main character who is based on a famous Russian painter, is barely present for much of the movie, and when he is present usually as a witness.
One of the episodes is about a character stumbling into a coven and being tied up out of fear he'll get soldiers to come kill them. Another is about the son of a dead master at forging bells who's left alone after his village is destroyed by invaders and disease. He wants to get the other bell-makers to take him with him by saying his father knew the secret of bell-making and only passed it onto him. He then micromanages the forging of a giant silver bell commissioned by the grand prince, and puts himself in a situation where he knows if the bell does not work he will be beheaded. Each of the episodes is violent, engaging, and emotionally devastating.
Rating: *****/5
If I ever see Stalker or Solaris used or cheap, I will have to get them, even though they aren't in the 100.
7/100
So, I picked up Battle of Algiers and Sansho The Baliff because deepdiscount was having a 45% off sale for Criterion. Maybe I should have just bought all the exclusively criterion ones in the top 100, becuase that's probably the cheapest I'll ever find them. But out of interest of staying both out of debt and marginally liquid, I just picked up those two.
Two weeks in and I've already exhausted Tarkovsky. I've never seen a movie like the two of his I've seen. They've got such beautiful aesthetics, and non-linear storytelling that tries to evoke strong emotion rather than just follow a protagonist through a series of events. The story takes place in medieval Russia, and is episodic, following various characters through events that are only thematically related. There's the theme of following Christian rituals while at the same time being inhumanly cruel to others, with the implication that it is more Christian to be forgiving than wrathful. There's also the theme of the relationship between artists and the limitations placed by society, which it manages to pull off without seeming self-indulgent because of its historical setting. Andrei Rublev, the main character who is based on a famous Russian painter, is barely present for much of the movie, and when he is present usually as a witness.
One of the episodes is about a character stumbling into a coven and being tied up out of fear he'll get soldiers to come kill them. Another is about the son of a dead master at forging bells who's left alone after his village is destroyed by invaders and disease. He wants to get the other bell-makers to take him with him by saying his father knew the secret of bell-making and only passed it onto him. He then micromanages the forging of a giant silver bell commissioned by the grand prince, and puts himself in a situation where he knows if the bell does not work he will be beheaded. Each of the episodes is violent, engaging, and emotionally devastating.
Rating: *****/5
If I ever see Stalker or Solaris used or cheap, I will have to get them, even though they aren't in the 100.
7/100
Thursday, January 14, 2010
TSPDT update published
So, here are the changes to the top 100:
In:
Jaws
On The Waterfront
Blue Velvet
Duck Soup
Out:
L'age Dor
The Man With The Movie Camera
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Sherlock Jr
Good things about this change: I already have Blue Velvet, and Jaws and Duck Soup will probably be much cheaper to get than the other four. I also know I don't like Buster Keaton, so now only need to watch one of his films.
Bad things about this change: I was looking forward to seeing L'age Dor because I'm a Bunuel fan. I also saw On The Waterfront last year, didn't like it, and sold it.
Good things that should have happened and didn't: Star Wars moved up to 104 and Annie Hall to 105. Ran moved up to 116. All three of those are more deserving of top 100 status than three of the four that got it.
I'm thinking of maybe allowing myself to substitute On The Waterfront for L'age Dor. Or at least, allowing myself to comment on On The Waterfront based on having seen it at the beginning of December.
So, here's a full list of the ones I don't own:
#20 Passion of Joan Of Arc
#32 The Gold Rush
#45 It's A Wonderful Life (Have seen)
#46 The Magnificent Ambersons
#54 Intolerance
#55 Modern Times (Have seen)
#61 Gone With The Wind
#64 Peter Panchali
#65 The Leopard
#66 Wizard of Oz (Have seen)
#67 Greed
#68 The Mirror (Have seen and already commented this year)
#72 To Be Or Not To Be
#74 Nashville (Have seen)
#78 Madame de...
#80 Bringing Up Baby
#81 Pickpocket
#82 Letter from An Unknown Woman
#86 Voyage In Italy
#87 Sansho The Baliff
#88 Playtime
#89 Jaws
#90 A Clockwork Orange
#91 Battle of Algiers
#92 Pierrot le fou
#93 Last Year In Marienbad
#94 On The Waterfront (Have seen)
#95 My Darling Clementine
#98 Rome, Open City
#100 Duck Soup
So, 29 movies I need to seek out.
Now, anything Fleming is probably going to be super-easy to find on television. Ditto It's A Wonderful Life, especially when it gets closer to Christmas. So no need to put any money down on them.
Also, just about anything American except Magnificent Ambersons or Chaplin I can probably easily find under $10 on Amazon. So I can just disregard them and pick them up whenever I feel like it.
Which leaves maybe 15 of them that I will actually need to put down criterion prices on and Magnificent Ambersons which I have no idea how to find. Few enough that I can probably just pick one up every time I get a sizeable paycheck and it isn't an insurance payment week.
If anybody knows how the hell to see Magnificent Ambersons except for region 2 DVDs, please tell me. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll show at the Brattle Theater at some point over the year.
In:
Jaws
On The Waterfront
Blue Velvet
Duck Soup
Out:
L'age Dor
The Man With The Movie Camera
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Sherlock Jr
Good things about this change: I already have Blue Velvet, and Jaws and Duck Soup will probably be much cheaper to get than the other four. I also know I don't like Buster Keaton, so now only need to watch one of his films.
Bad things about this change: I was looking forward to seeing L'age Dor because I'm a Bunuel fan. I also saw On The Waterfront last year, didn't like it, and sold it.
Good things that should have happened and didn't: Star Wars moved up to 104 and Annie Hall to 105. Ran moved up to 116. All three of those are more deserving of top 100 status than three of the four that got it.
I'm thinking of maybe allowing myself to substitute On The Waterfront for L'age Dor. Or at least, allowing myself to comment on On The Waterfront based on having seen it at the beginning of December.
So, here's a full list of the ones I don't own:
#20 Passion of Joan Of Arc
#32 The Gold Rush
#45 It's A Wonderful Life (Have seen)
#46 The Magnificent Ambersons
#54 Intolerance
#55 Modern Times (Have seen)
#61 Gone With The Wind
#64 Peter Panchali
#65 The Leopard
#66 Wizard of Oz (Have seen)
#67 Greed
#68 The Mirror (Have seen and already commented this year)
#72 To Be Or Not To Be
#74 Nashville (Have seen)
#78 Madame de...
#80 Bringing Up Baby
#81 Pickpocket
#82 Letter from An Unknown Woman
#86 Voyage In Italy
#87 Sansho The Baliff
#88 Playtime
#89 Jaws
#90 A Clockwork Orange
#91 Battle of Algiers
#92 Pierrot le fou
#93 Last Year In Marienbad
#94 On The Waterfront (Have seen)
#95 My Darling Clementine
#98 Rome, Open City
#100 Duck Soup
So, 29 movies I need to seek out.
Now, anything Fleming is probably going to be super-easy to find on television. Ditto It's A Wonderful Life, especially when it gets closer to Christmas. So no need to put any money down on them.
Also, just about anything American except Magnificent Ambersons or Chaplin I can probably easily find under $10 on Amazon. So I can just disregard them and pick them up whenever I feel like it.
Which leaves maybe 15 of them that I will actually need to put down criterion prices on and Magnificent Ambersons which I have no idea how to find. Few enough that I can probably just pick one up every time I get a sizeable paycheck and it isn't an insurance payment week.
If anybody knows how the hell to see Magnificent Ambersons except for region 2 DVDs, please tell me. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll show at the Brattle Theater at some point over the year.
Monday, January 11, 2010
#53: M
So, the DVD of L'atalante I ordered on ebay arrived today. The listing said it was coded for all regions. This, was a lie. It's Korean region coded. Fortunately all I spent on it was $4.99, but according to the seller's return policy I'm responsible for shipping charges on returns, so I wouldn't even make anything back.
All the other L'atalante DVDs I've found are absurdly expensive. Luckily the VHS is really cheap. Which will possibly be the last VHS I ever buy.
M (1931, Lang):
M might be the earliest talkie in my collection. You can kind of tell it's Fritz Lang's first talkie, because there are a lot of exaggerated facial expressions. M is about a serial child murderer. The focus isn't on the murders, but rather the public hysteria caused by the murders. Whereas a newer film would probably show the killings in graphic detail, M simply shows the killer buying a child a balloon, and the next day she's disappeared.
People accuse each other of being the killer because they gave a child the time of day. Witnesses can't even agree on what color hat the suspect was wearing. All the vagaries of investigating a crime that terrifies the public are shown. Only it's not just the police looking for the killer. The mob is looking for him too, at the same time, racing the police to find him because they prefer mob justice to legal justice. With this contrast the film analyzes the difference between the two and which is more preferable, and makes the case for giving killers legal protections even at the ire of the general public.
The plot is kept simple and to the point, without distracting melodrama, self righteous speeches or tangental side stories. That kind of simplicity of focus is something that a lot of newer films could probably benefit from.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
6/100
Next: Andrei Rublev, Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane
All the other L'atalante DVDs I've found are absurdly expensive. Luckily the VHS is really cheap. Which will possibly be the last VHS I ever buy.
M (1931, Lang):
M might be the earliest talkie in my collection. You can kind of tell it's Fritz Lang's first talkie, because there are a lot of exaggerated facial expressions. M is about a serial child murderer. The focus isn't on the murders, but rather the public hysteria caused by the murders. Whereas a newer film would probably show the killings in graphic detail, M simply shows the killer buying a child a balloon, and the next day she's disappeared.
People accuse each other of being the killer because they gave a child the time of day. Witnesses can't even agree on what color hat the suspect was wearing. All the vagaries of investigating a crime that terrifies the public are shown. Only it's not just the police looking for the killer. The mob is looking for him too, at the same time, racing the police to find him because they prefer mob justice to legal justice. With this contrast the film analyzes the difference between the two and which is more preferable, and makes the case for giving killers legal protections even at the ire of the general public.
The plot is kept simple and to the point, without distracting melodrama, self righteous speeches or tangental side stories. That kind of simplicity of focus is something that a lot of newer films could probably benefit from.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
6/100
Next: Andrei Rublev, Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane
Sunday, January 10, 2010
#34: Ordet
Ordet (1955, Dreyer)
This is the third Dreyer film I've seen and the third that's fallen flat with me. His entire style is drab and off-putting. Everybody moves and talks really slowly, and have entire conversations looking off in random directions instead of at each other. They all deliver their lines like they're fortelling the end of days, usually without moving their heads at all. The characters are simplistic and one dimensional and seem to have no vision beyond their own closed circle. They're also so singular in their motivation and ideology they barely come off as human.
The other two Dreyer films I've seen are Day of Wrath and Vampyr. All three are staged like a silent film -- but Vampyr is the only one that actually is one. I'm not even sure I want to spend the money Passion of Joan of Arc would cost, just in the name of finishing the whole top 100.
I do have a few positive things to say about the movie. It shows the same contempt between orthodox Christianity and secular Christianity that still fractures the religion today, with the same mutual elitism. The central question of the film about whether miracles still happen in present day is hard for me to connect with because I don't believe in the supernatural, but in the context of the film it's a potent theme. But that question should have been answered more subtly. Instead it all comes off as a Sunday School parable.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
And, some other films I've seen meanwhile that are not in the TSPDT top 100.
The Life And Death of Colonel Blimp:
It poses the question of 'Should we fight with our principles when the enemy doesn't' decades before Jack Bauer first tortured.
****/5 (High art value, low entertainment value)
Avatar:
Great visuals as expected, cliche story as expected. It does tell the cliche story well enough to be really entertaining, but the last sixty minutes could have stood to be a little less predictable and formulaic.
****/5 (High entertainment value, low art value)
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeouisis:
The whole dream upon dream upon dream thing can be a bit tacky, but I like the nuanced way it gets at people who aspire to be seen as part of the upper class when it's clear to everyone they're only posing.
**** 1/2 /5 (High in both)
This is the third Dreyer film I've seen and the third that's fallen flat with me. His entire style is drab and off-putting. Everybody moves and talks really slowly, and have entire conversations looking off in random directions instead of at each other. They all deliver their lines like they're fortelling the end of days, usually without moving their heads at all. The characters are simplistic and one dimensional and seem to have no vision beyond their own closed circle. They're also so singular in their motivation and ideology they barely come off as human.
The other two Dreyer films I've seen are Day of Wrath and Vampyr. All three are staged like a silent film -- but Vampyr is the only one that actually is one. I'm not even sure I want to spend the money Passion of Joan of Arc would cost, just in the name of finishing the whole top 100.
I do have a few positive things to say about the movie. It shows the same contempt between orthodox Christianity and secular Christianity that still fractures the religion today, with the same mutual elitism. The central question of the film about whether miracles still happen in present day is hard for me to connect with because I don't believe in the supernatural, but in the context of the film it's a potent theme. But that question should have been answered more subtly. Instead it all comes off as a Sunday School parable.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
And, some other films I've seen meanwhile that are not in the TSPDT top 100.
The Life And Death of Colonel Blimp:
It poses the question of 'Should we fight with our principles when the enemy doesn't' decades before Jack Bauer first tortured.
****/5 (High art value, low entertainment value)
Avatar:
Great visuals as expected, cliche story as expected. It does tell the cliche story well enough to be really entertaining, but the last sixty minutes could have stood to be a little less predictable and formulaic.
****/5 (High entertainment value, low art value)
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeouisis:
The whole dream upon dream upon dream thing can be a bit tacky, but I like the nuanced way it gets at people who aspire to be seen as part of the upper class when it's clear to everyone they're only posing.
**** 1/2 /5 (High in both)
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
#4: 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
It's strange watching films made in the past that take place in our present. There are space stations with functioning artificial gravity and machines that use abstract reasoning, but giant cameras and no internet. Then there's Back To The Future where in 2015 we have flying cars and cold fusion but no mobile phones. Maybe we should all, as a race, just stop trying to predict what technology will be like in the future.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a very influential film. I mention that first because when we enjoy movies, it's only because we're so excited about the way those movies affected future films, right? That's why all the films that were the most influential appear at the top of every poll ever made, no matter how poorly they've aged. Because there's no such thing as movie fans, just film theory students.
Okay, so if it weren't for 2001 a lot of my favorite science fiction wouldn't exist. But 'I came first' points only go so far. As for all Kubrick films the visual style is awesome, but the pacing in this case is dictated by the style, and some aspects of the style haven't aged well. The ship design, for instance, just looks awkward, and the apes with human eyeballs cast an awkward tone on that entire sequence. The pacing of the entire first hour of the film is dictated by the style and thematic conceit, and now that the novelty of the space age imagery has worn off, that entire hour is pretty tedious. The part of the film people remember it for; the Hal part, ages a little better. But if you ignore the style points and look solely at the substance of the plot, there's nothing that other films and TV series the film influenced haven't done a lot better. The biological characters are dull and generic. The only memorable character is Hal, humanity's arrogance reflected in its creations. But if you're not impressed by Kubrick's intellectual conceits about human nature and progress, Hal's the only bright spot of the movie, and the last twenty minutes are just a bunch of cool psychadelic colors and an ending that's all concept and no actual plot. (Of course, being a David Lynch fan, I can't justify complaining about that.)
Style rating: ***** / 5
Substance rating: *** / 5
Overall rating: *** 3/4 / 5
4/100
It's strange watching films made in the past that take place in our present. There are space stations with functioning artificial gravity and machines that use abstract reasoning, but giant cameras and no internet. Then there's Back To The Future where in 2015 we have flying cars and cold fusion but no mobile phones. Maybe we should all, as a race, just stop trying to predict what technology will be like in the future.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a very influential film. I mention that first because when we enjoy movies, it's only because we're so excited about the way those movies affected future films, right? That's why all the films that were the most influential appear at the top of every poll ever made, no matter how poorly they've aged. Because there's no such thing as movie fans, just film theory students.
Okay, so if it weren't for 2001 a lot of my favorite science fiction wouldn't exist. But 'I came first' points only go so far. As for all Kubrick films the visual style is awesome, but the pacing in this case is dictated by the style, and some aspects of the style haven't aged well. The ship design, for instance, just looks awkward, and the apes with human eyeballs cast an awkward tone on that entire sequence. The pacing of the entire first hour of the film is dictated by the style and thematic conceit, and now that the novelty of the space age imagery has worn off, that entire hour is pretty tedious. The part of the film people remember it for; the Hal part, ages a little better. But if you ignore the style points and look solely at the substance of the plot, there's nothing that other films and TV series the film influenced haven't done a lot better. The biological characters are dull and generic. The only memorable character is Hal, humanity's arrogance reflected in its creations. But if you're not impressed by Kubrick's intellectual conceits about human nature and progress, Hal's the only bright spot of the movie, and the last twenty minutes are just a bunch of cool psychadelic colors and an ending that's all concept and no actual plot. (Of course, being a David Lynch fan, I can't justify complaining about that.)
Style rating: ***** / 5
Substance rating: *** / 5
Overall rating: *** 3/4 / 5
4/100
Monday, January 4, 2010
#2: Vertigo
The reason I chose Vertigo is that I'll be mostly watching movies I haven't seen first, and most of the ones in the top 100 are foreign ones. So, I decided to knock off one of my favorite American films.
When I first saw Vertigo a few years ago I would have called it the greatest film of all time. It has one of the great twists in history. The problem with twists of course is they only work once. You can never watch a film based around a twist the same way you did the first time. Hitchcock films thrive on the psychological drama more than anything, and when you watch the beginning of the film knowing what's really going on, it dispels a lot of the tension it had the first time.
It's still a beautiful film. Jimmy Stewart is perfect for a Hitchcock lead. He's one of the only ones who can play the sort of charismatically-in-control male that Hitchcock likes with an edge of humor. The emotional themes in Vertigo of feeling guilt over personal weakness beyond your control and both main characters' desires for redemption might be the most potent in Hitchcock canon.
Rating: *****/5
3/100
When I first saw Vertigo a few years ago I would have called it the greatest film of all time. It has one of the great twists in history. The problem with twists of course is they only work once. You can never watch a film based around a twist the same way you did the first time. Hitchcock films thrive on the psychological drama more than anything, and when you watch the beginning of the film knowing what's really going on, it dispels a lot of the tension it had the first time.
It's still a beautiful film. Jimmy Stewart is perfect for a Hitchcock lead. He's one of the only ones who can play the sort of charismatically-in-control male that Hitchcock likes with an edge of humor. The emotional themes in Vertigo of feeling guilt over personal weakness beyond your control and both main characters' desires for redemption might be the most potent in Hitchcock canon.
Rating: *****/5
3/100
Friday, January 1, 2010
#26 La Dolce Vita
La Dolce Vita (1960, Fellini)
First off I will say that Fellini films suffer in translation due to the sheer amount of talking that happens in them. His films look so beautiful, but you miss out on it because you spend the whole time staring at the subtitles at the bottom. If you don't speak Italian, Fellini films other than La Strada may take a second or third viewing before you can fully absorb them.
La Dolce Vita is about a journalist, Marcelo, who strives to find meaning surrounded by frivolousness. You're taken through a series of events in the Marcelo's life where he's surrounded by celebrities and wealthy people whose boisterous behavior is portrayed as shallow and absurd. Marcelo is portrayed as an intellectual who wants to rise above the superficial nonsense, but he's constantly driven back into it because it's easy and profitable. Even with the depressing message of the film, it's got so much flair it's consistently entertaining.
There's a lot of films from France and Italy in the 60's that analyze and judge modern lifestyles. The thing that sets Fellini apart from the rest is that he could do it while still being entertaining and fun to watch.
Rating: ****1/2 / 5
2/100
First off I will say that Fellini films suffer in translation due to the sheer amount of talking that happens in them. His films look so beautiful, but you miss out on it because you spend the whole time staring at the subtitles at the bottom. If you don't speak Italian, Fellini films other than La Strada may take a second or third viewing before you can fully absorb them.
La Dolce Vita is about a journalist, Marcelo, who strives to find meaning surrounded by frivolousness. You're taken through a series of events in the Marcelo's life where he's surrounded by celebrities and wealthy people whose boisterous behavior is portrayed as shallow and absurd. Marcelo is portrayed as an intellectual who wants to rise above the superficial nonsense, but he's constantly driven back into it because it's easy and profitable. Even with the depressing message of the film, it's got so much flair it's consistently entertaining.
There's a lot of films from France and Italy in the 60's that analyze and judge modern lifestyles. The thing that sets Fellini apart from the rest is that he could do it while still being entertaining and fun to watch.
Rating: ****1/2 / 5
2/100
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