My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946)
I don't have much to say about this one. For me westerns generally thrive on strength of personality. My Darling Clementine is pretty pedestrian in that department, lacking a charismatic presence like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. Everything good about it is better in other John Ford or Sergio Leone westerns.
Rating: ** / 5
23/100
Others:
Stalker ***** / 5
The five star rating is tentative, because I don't know what to make of it yet. Tarkovsky movies are just plain beautiful to look at. Stalker is about a supernatural area called 'The zone' whose form is constantly in flux, and has a room in it that grants your innermost desires. The three characters are named based on their jobs, 'Writer', 'Professor', 'Stalker'. A stalker is a person who makes money escorting others to the room without actually going into it. Whereas other scifi films would first demonstrate the danger of the zone by killing off a few unfortunate extras, Stalker doesn't. The audience is put in the same position as Writer and Professor, taking the danger and the mystique of the zone strictly on the stalker's word. (Do we really want to know our innermost desires?) The movie introspectively analyzes the difference between what we want and what we 'really' want. Tarkovsky is three for three at five stars for me now, and I'm adding Solaris to my Netflix queue.
Next: Viridiana
Friday, February 26, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Film theory satire
After I started watching a lot of classic films and art films, I went looking for an online forum where I could discuss them with people. I found one, at theauteurs.com. Initially I thought it was great, but it turned out to be a bastion of elitism and self-validation. After being flamed for liking Star Wars more than L'avventura one too may times, I quit the forum, and this was my goodbye message. I guess it was kind of trollish, but I do think they deserved it. I enjoyed writing it enough that I thought I might as well post it here:
Few times does episodic television manage to meet or exceed the thematic brilliance of cinema. But I've been watching a show that manages to brilliantly and depressingly highlight the emotionally detached, narcissistic nature of modern culture. The characters reflect our own darkest tendencies: Our selfishness, our insecurity. The suppression of our collective ids by the demands of civility, and the ultimate shallowness and destructiveness of that civility.
I speak of course, of Seinfeld. Through nine seasons, the main characters wade through failed relationship after failed relationships. The driving force of the show seems to be the latent homosexual tension between the two main characters, Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza. Jerry, a standup comedian who makes a living by dissecting the faults of others, tries to date women because society demands he live out the suburban fantasy: Wife, kids, true emotional bonding. Through the use of conversational debate tactics, he picks apart the nuances of whatever social situation is in, thereby trivializing it and relieving himself of the pressure to emotionally reciprocate. A subtle tactic designed to prevent those demands from taking him away from George. Through the nine seasons the show ran, Jerry often tries to do good deeds, but like Charles Kane, those good deeds are really designed to make people like him. He doesn't care about doing good; he cares about the credit. Society isn't fooled. Through his musguided attempts to gentrify himself, he ends up destroying all who cross his path: A Pakistani immigrant trying to start his own business loses his restaurant and gets deported, a boy with an immune system deficiency almost dies, his father gets impeached as the president of his retirement community, and all his friends end up in jail. Jerry is unaffected: He blames circumstance and moves on.
George finds other ways to distance himself from other human beings who aren't Jerry. He takes the Charlie Chaplin paradigm of a poor little wretch who lucks into wealth and turns it into the ultimate parasite: Constantly on the prowl for angles he can exploit to live the high life without having to put in any effort. He pretends to be handicapped to get sympathy, he pretends to be a marine biologist to impress women. He constantly builds up these houses of cards that allow him to reap short term benefits with no long term prospects, because he's worried if he actually did succeed it would take him away from Jerry. At one point he caves in to the pressures of civility and proposes to a woman he doesn't really care about. He thinks, finally I'll please them! Finally I'll be acceptable! Within one day of his proposal, he feels stifled and miserable. After weeks of trying to weasel his way out of the engagement without admitting any failure of his own, he lucks out: Susan poisons herself licking wedding envelopes. The wedding envelopes being the instrument of her demise symbolizes the ultimate inevitable failure of society to civilize the suppressed id.
The only female character in the cast, Elaine, is the only one who understands the futility of getting in between Jerry and George. She tried dating Jerry and it didn't work out, so instead of hating him like all the other women Jerry failed to connect with, she accepted him for who he was and became his friend. Elaine symbolizes the self-destructiveness of our collective expectation of perfection. She tries to emotionally connect with men, but she won't accept anything short of perfection. She dumps them because they smoke, because they're against abortion, because they're too religious, or in general because they aren't an exact match for the male archetype she's been told by society she's supposed to want and believes herself entitled to. She justifies this by indulging in Jerry's emotionally detached conversation oriented world.
Then there's Kramer and Newman, who are clearly the collective hallucinations of the other three. Kramer represents Jerry's longing to be uninhibited and uncivilized, just acting on his every impulse and whim with no regard to societal judgment. If Jerry was more like Kramer, he could be with George. Newman on the other hand represents Jerry's id: The all-consuming sociopath seeking to possess everything he comes across. Newman is portrayed as Jerry's arch enemy, symbolizing his unwillingness to embrace his true desires and anger that he can never truly be what society wants.
Then in the final episode of the series, we see Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer put on trial for all of the horrible things they did to others throughout the series. As the old characters come back to vent their anger, we see the great hand of modern culture beating down and ultimately rejecting their flimsy pretenses of civility. Newman is not on trial with them, but watching from the audience, cheering, laughing. (Because society harbors far less ire for those outsiders who make no attempt at all to blend in). When the four are convicted, Newman is happy at first, because the pretenses have been destroyed, but then has a heart attack. The id can not exist without the superego.
I'm surprised such a dark, depressing show was allowed to stay on the air for nine years, and on a major network no less. When I talked to others about Seinfeld, they referred to it like it was a comedy. Can you believe that? They just don't get it! They don't appreciate film the way we do. Next I'm going to watch the show Friends which aired over a similar time period. I don't know much about it, but on first glance it seems like a modern day La Dolce Vita.
(Do you think doing that was a little immature?)
Few times does episodic television manage to meet or exceed the thematic brilliance of cinema. But I've been watching a show that manages to brilliantly and depressingly highlight the emotionally detached, narcissistic nature of modern culture. The characters reflect our own darkest tendencies: Our selfishness, our insecurity. The suppression of our collective ids by the demands of civility, and the ultimate shallowness and destructiveness of that civility.
I speak of course, of Seinfeld. Through nine seasons, the main characters wade through failed relationship after failed relationships. The driving force of the show seems to be the latent homosexual tension between the two main characters, Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza. Jerry, a standup comedian who makes a living by dissecting the faults of others, tries to date women because society demands he live out the suburban fantasy: Wife, kids, true emotional bonding. Through the use of conversational debate tactics, he picks apart the nuances of whatever social situation is in, thereby trivializing it and relieving himself of the pressure to emotionally reciprocate. A subtle tactic designed to prevent those demands from taking him away from George. Through the nine seasons the show ran, Jerry often tries to do good deeds, but like Charles Kane, those good deeds are really designed to make people like him. He doesn't care about doing good; he cares about the credit. Society isn't fooled. Through his musguided attempts to gentrify himself, he ends up destroying all who cross his path: A Pakistani immigrant trying to start his own business loses his restaurant and gets deported, a boy with an immune system deficiency almost dies, his father gets impeached as the president of his retirement community, and all his friends end up in jail. Jerry is unaffected: He blames circumstance and moves on.
George finds other ways to distance himself from other human beings who aren't Jerry. He takes the Charlie Chaplin paradigm of a poor little wretch who lucks into wealth and turns it into the ultimate parasite: Constantly on the prowl for angles he can exploit to live the high life without having to put in any effort. He pretends to be handicapped to get sympathy, he pretends to be a marine biologist to impress women. He constantly builds up these houses of cards that allow him to reap short term benefits with no long term prospects, because he's worried if he actually did succeed it would take him away from Jerry. At one point he caves in to the pressures of civility and proposes to a woman he doesn't really care about. He thinks, finally I'll please them! Finally I'll be acceptable! Within one day of his proposal, he feels stifled and miserable. After weeks of trying to weasel his way out of the engagement without admitting any failure of his own, he lucks out: Susan poisons herself licking wedding envelopes. The wedding envelopes being the instrument of her demise symbolizes the ultimate inevitable failure of society to civilize the suppressed id.
The only female character in the cast, Elaine, is the only one who understands the futility of getting in between Jerry and George. She tried dating Jerry and it didn't work out, so instead of hating him like all the other women Jerry failed to connect with, she accepted him for who he was and became his friend. Elaine symbolizes the self-destructiveness of our collective expectation of perfection. She tries to emotionally connect with men, but she won't accept anything short of perfection. She dumps them because they smoke, because they're against abortion, because they're too religious, or in general because they aren't an exact match for the male archetype she's been told by society she's supposed to want and believes herself entitled to. She justifies this by indulging in Jerry's emotionally detached conversation oriented world.
Then there's Kramer and Newman, who are clearly the collective hallucinations of the other three. Kramer represents Jerry's longing to be uninhibited and uncivilized, just acting on his every impulse and whim with no regard to societal judgment. If Jerry was more like Kramer, he could be with George. Newman on the other hand represents Jerry's id: The all-consuming sociopath seeking to possess everything he comes across. Newman is portrayed as Jerry's arch enemy, symbolizing his unwillingness to embrace his true desires and anger that he can never truly be what society wants.
Then in the final episode of the series, we see Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer put on trial for all of the horrible things they did to others throughout the series. As the old characters come back to vent their anger, we see the great hand of modern culture beating down and ultimately rejecting their flimsy pretenses of civility. Newman is not on trial with them, but watching from the audience, cheering, laughing. (Because society harbors far less ire for those outsiders who make no attempt at all to blend in). When the four are convicted, Newman is happy at first, because the pretenses have been destroyed, but then has a heart attack. The id can not exist without the superego.
I'm surprised such a dark, depressing show was allowed to stay on the air for nine years, and on a major network no less. When I talked to others about Seinfeld, they referred to it like it was a comedy. Can you believe that? They just don't get it! They don't appreciate film the way we do. Next I'm going to watch the show Friends which aired over a similar time period. I don't know much about it, but on first glance it seems like a modern day La Dolce Vita.
(Do you think doing that was a little immature?)
#26 Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver (Scorcese, 1976)
Taxi Driver, more than any other film, focuses on our basic revulsion to the every day horrors we're constantly exposed to. The main character is a maladjusted taxi driver in New York City who spends all day driving around seeing violence, drug use and prostitution. In his life he's isolated, out of touch with other human beings. He meets a woman who's involved with a presidential campaign and tries to connect with her, only to find after her initial curiousity she judges him just as harshly as everyone else does. Because of his lack of social sense and inability to conform, she lumps him in with all the street trash.
When we look for solutions for all the problems of society, we tend to look externally. Politicians ask us to invest all our hopes in them and expect them to perform miracles once elected, and we happily oblige them, not out of laziness so much as having no idea what else to do. So when the presidential candidate winds up in his cab and asks him how he would change things, all he can say is 'Take all the scum on the streets and flush it down the toilet'. The politician gives a typical hollow response, and he sees him for what he is: A lot of empty promises. After he runs into a twelve year old girl named Iris who ran away from home and was manipulated into being a prostitute and a man sits in his cab and tells him all about how he's going to kill his wife for sleeping with a black man, he finally snaps, buys a bunch of guns and trains to become a vigilante.
For a while it looks like he's going to kill the political candidate. He heads to one of his rallies and it looks like he's about to pull out a gun. Then when the secret service man spots him, he runs out and changes his mind. He goes down and kills the pimp and the two other men involved in exploiting Iris, and makes sure to give her a nice gruesome image to scare her into going back to her parents. Because it's not the lying politicians making empty promises who deserve to die; it's the scumbags out there on the street corrupting innocent lives.
After committing this triple murder, he expects to be sent to jail, but instead he's hailed as a hero for rescuing the girl. Because he did what the rest of us secretly wish we could do: He didn't wait for some politician to wave a magic wand and make everythinig better, he went and cleaned up the streets himself. (Does anyone question that 'Sport', the pimp, deserved his fate?)
Taxi Driver is one of those films where the staging techniques are absolutely perfect to bring out the feeling of alienation and powerlessness, but also target our basic human sympathy. Our basic desire to just help somebody who badly needs it. It would probably be on my all time top ten list.
Rating: ***** / 5
22/101
Taxi Driver, more than any other film, focuses on our basic revulsion to the every day horrors we're constantly exposed to. The main character is a maladjusted taxi driver in New York City who spends all day driving around seeing violence, drug use and prostitution. In his life he's isolated, out of touch with other human beings. He meets a woman who's involved with a presidential campaign and tries to connect with her, only to find after her initial curiousity she judges him just as harshly as everyone else does. Because of his lack of social sense and inability to conform, she lumps him in with all the street trash.
When we look for solutions for all the problems of society, we tend to look externally. Politicians ask us to invest all our hopes in them and expect them to perform miracles once elected, and we happily oblige them, not out of laziness so much as having no idea what else to do. So when the presidential candidate winds up in his cab and asks him how he would change things, all he can say is 'Take all the scum on the streets and flush it down the toilet'. The politician gives a typical hollow response, and he sees him for what he is: A lot of empty promises. After he runs into a twelve year old girl named Iris who ran away from home and was manipulated into being a prostitute and a man sits in his cab and tells him all about how he's going to kill his wife for sleeping with a black man, he finally snaps, buys a bunch of guns and trains to become a vigilante.
For a while it looks like he's going to kill the political candidate. He heads to one of his rallies and it looks like he's about to pull out a gun. Then when the secret service man spots him, he runs out and changes his mind. He goes down and kills the pimp and the two other men involved in exploiting Iris, and makes sure to give her a nice gruesome image to scare her into going back to her parents. Because it's not the lying politicians making empty promises who deserve to die; it's the scumbags out there on the street corrupting innocent lives.
After committing this triple murder, he expects to be sent to jail, but instead he's hailed as a hero for rescuing the girl. Because he did what the rest of us secretly wish we could do: He didn't wait for some politician to wave a magic wand and make everythinig better, he went and cleaned up the streets himself. (Does anyone question that 'Sport', the pimp, deserved his fate?)
Taxi Driver is one of those films where the staging techniques are absolutely perfect to bring out the feeling of alienation and powerlessness, but also target our basic human sympathy. Our basic desire to just help somebody who badly needs it. It would probably be on my all time top ten list.
Rating: ***** / 5
22/101
Sunday, February 21, 2010
#74: Nashville
Nashville (Altman, 1975)
I've been looking at comments at imdb.com to understand why so many people think so highly of Nashville. They make some good arguments: The layered narrative, the psuedo-documentary style, the spontaneity of life, the smart analysis of political campaigns (The reform candidate who spends the movie preaching from a van through a megaphone, never actually being seen). They're right, Nashville is a very well made movie.
But they also call it a 'Portrait of America'. Really? That's a pretty selective portrait. Does Altman see Americans as a bunch of narrow minded, combative, self centered idiots? In the sprawling cast of two dozen characters, hardly a single one is sympathetic. The only one who seems to show any genuine concern for another human being is Lily Tomlin's character, and only for her deaf kids. And while it may be true people are obsessed with celebrities, they aren't as obsessed as they are on television. Most of the time when people focus on celebrities it's only because they're the easiest common ground they can find to connect with other people, not out of genuine obsession.
Nashville is the sort of movie like Boogie Nights that tries to make a portrait of a culture by having the camera opnely condescend the characters. That sort of appraoch makes the cast hard to connect with, and if that's Altman's idea of 'realism', he has a pretty one dimensional view of human nature.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
21/101
Next: Taxi Driver
Others:
Red Riding 1974: *** 1/2 / 5
Red Riding 1980: ** 1/2 / 5
The first two parts of the Red Riding trilogy. I'm going to wait for the DVD to see the third. 1974 has a vigilante reporter main character that is really engaging and a cool dark atmosphere, but it's also slow paced in the middle and has a lot of cliche predictable police corruption. 1980 has all the problems with 1974 without any of the benefits.
25th Hour: **** / 5
Very powerfully emotional movie about a man who's going to jail for seven years in one day. The movie has the message that you can argue all day about whether drug laws are just, whether a 17 year old is any less capable of giving consent than an 18 year old, but if you break those laws and get caught, you have nobody to blame but yourself for ruining your life.
Inland Empire: *** / 5
David Lynch being super-surreal. The movie has themes of abuse of women, affairs, and confusion of reality with Hollywood fiction. The visuals are shadowy and awesome. But, it's also one of those movies where Lynch forgets that surrealness works better if you have something concrete to anchor it on.
I've been looking at comments at imdb.com to understand why so many people think so highly of Nashville. They make some good arguments: The layered narrative, the psuedo-documentary style, the spontaneity of life, the smart analysis of political campaigns (The reform candidate who spends the movie preaching from a van through a megaphone, never actually being seen). They're right, Nashville is a very well made movie.
But they also call it a 'Portrait of America'. Really? That's a pretty selective portrait. Does Altman see Americans as a bunch of narrow minded, combative, self centered idiots? In the sprawling cast of two dozen characters, hardly a single one is sympathetic. The only one who seems to show any genuine concern for another human being is Lily Tomlin's character, and only for her deaf kids. And while it may be true people are obsessed with celebrities, they aren't as obsessed as they are on television. Most of the time when people focus on celebrities it's only because they're the easiest common ground they can find to connect with other people, not out of genuine obsession.
Nashville is the sort of movie like Boogie Nights that tries to make a portrait of a culture by having the camera opnely condescend the characters. That sort of appraoch makes the cast hard to connect with, and if that's Altman's idea of 'realism', he has a pretty one dimensional view of human nature.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
21/101
Next: Taxi Driver
Others:
Red Riding 1974: *** 1/2 / 5
Red Riding 1980: ** 1/2 / 5
The first two parts of the Red Riding trilogy. I'm going to wait for the DVD to see the third. 1974 has a vigilante reporter main character that is really engaging and a cool dark atmosphere, but it's also slow paced in the middle and has a lot of cliche predictable police corruption. 1980 has all the problems with 1974 without any of the benefits.
25th Hour: **** / 5
Very powerfully emotional movie about a man who's going to jail for seven years in one day. The movie has the message that you can argue all day about whether drug laws are just, whether a 17 year old is any less capable of giving consent than an 18 year old, but if you break those laws and get caught, you have nobody to blame but yourself for ruining your life.
Inland Empire: *** / 5
David Lynch being super-surreal. The movie has themes of abuse of women, affairs, and confusion of reality with Hollywood fiction. The visuals are shadowy and awesome. But, it's also one of those movies where Lynch forgets that surrealness works better if you have something concrete to anchor it on.
Monday, February 15, 2010
#91: The Battle Of Algiers
The Battle Of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1965)
The immediately striking thing about The Battle of Algiers is that it's happening right now. It's the exact movie I've wanted to see made about the Iraq insurgency, only it's about the Algerian insurgency against the French Colonials fifty years ago. Not only is it realistic and true to the cultural nuances, it's not a propaganda film for any side. The camera plays strictly the role of the reporter. It shows what both the French and the FLN are doing and what they're thinking.
An outside military with superior force is pit against a local population with a determined minority of terrorists. One of the the terrorist leaders asserts that while terrorist attacks are a beginning to revolution, it will never be successful without action by the general population. So they wage a propaganda war, not only to win over the hearts and minds of the Algerian people, but to win world legitimacy.
Both sides are protrayed as brutal and inhumane, but also driven by military necessity. If anyone is portrayed as the victims it's the general Arab population in Algeria. They're faced with a choice between two evils, on one side an outside force that sees them as inferiors, on another side violent nationals who attack civilian targets and want to impose a religious dictatorship. They're just trying to live their lives, but if they take one side, they get attacked by the other, and if they try to take neither they get attacked by both. In a final parallel with the current wars, after the leaders of the insurgency are killed and there's a two year period of peace, violence breaks out again, and when the Algerian people get passionate about revolution, that's when they win their independence. (That's not a spoiler, cause it's historically true.)
For all it's ambition and scope, the film is remarkably personal and the characters remkarably three dimensional. The lack of a 'message' or obvious slant or agenda makes the film a lot more powerful than say, a Michael Moore or Steven Soderbergh film.
Rating: ***** / 5
20/101
On a side note, A Serious Man comes out on DVD tomorrow. I highly recommend it. It was my favorite film of 2009. (**** 1/2 / 5)
Next I'll try to get another of the ones I didn't like that much the first time out of the way. Maybe Nashville or Ikiru.
The immediately striking thing about The Battle of Algiers is that it's happening right now. It's the exact movie I've wanted to see made about the Iraq insurgency, only it's about the Algerian insurgency against the French Colonials fifty years ago. Not only is it realistic and true to the cultural nuances, it's not a propaganda film for any side. The camera plays strictly the role of the reporter. It shows what both the French and the FLN are doing and what they're thinking.
An outside military with superior force is pit against a local population with a determined minority of terrorists. One of the the terrorist leaders asserts that while terrorist attacks are a beginning to revolution, it will never be successful without action by the general population. So they wage a propaganda war, not only to win over the hearts and minds of the Algerian people, but to win world legitimacy.
Both sides are protrayed as brutal and inhumane, but also driven by military necessity. If anyone is portrayed as the victims it's the general Arab population in Algeria. They're faced with a choice between two evils, on one side an outside force that sees them as inferiors, on another side violent nationals who attack civilian targets and want to impose a religious dictatorship. They're just trying to live their lives, but if they take one side, they get attacked by the other, and if they try to take neither they get attacked by both. In a final parallel with the current wars, after the leaders of the insurgency are killed and there's a two year period of peace, violence breaks out again, and when the Algerian people get passionate about revolution, that's when they win their independence. (That's not a spoiler, cause it's historically true.)
For all it's ambition and scope, the film is remarkably personal and the characters remkarably three dimensional. The lack of a 'message' or obvious slant or agenda makes the film a lot more powerful than say, a Michael Moore or Steven Soderbergh film.
Rating: ***** / 5
20/101
On a side note, A Serious Man comes out on DVD tomorrow. I highly recommend it. It was my favorite film of 2009. (**** 1/2 / 5)
Next I'll try to get another of the ones I didn't like that much the first time out of the way. Maybe Nashville or Ikiru.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
#32: The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925)
I've liked the other two Chaplin films I've seen. He invented a lot of the slapstick antics that came to define comedy in the first half of the twentieth century, but for all his simple visual gags his social satire is surprisingly modern. The character he plays in all his big films is anti-bourgeouis. His dirty, disheveled appearance, childlike simpleness and ignorance to social conventions are everything a rich aristocrat would see as useless and pathetic. He exists outside the machine of society, but he's also the only character who puts any effort into heping others, even though he has the least resources to do it with. He's always playing little tricks or doing little odd jobs to get the money he needs to survive and help who he wants to help, regardless of the lack of dignity or social judgment. (And his visual comedy antics can get some occasional big laughs too.)
The Gold Rush doesn't work quite as well as the other two Chaplin films I've seen. There aren't as many 'big laugh' moments or as concise satire as Modern Times and City Lights. Also the narration is a little off putting. In the other two films you have mostly visual information to work with to get information about the plot, but in Gold Rush the voiceovers tell you all about what's going on, and it distracts you from everything that worked about silent films.
Rating: **** / 5
19/101
Others:
Unforgiven: ** 1/2 / 5
I watched it because of it's high placement by critics, but it's nowhere near as good as the Sergio Leone or John Ford Westerns. It seemed like it was mixing Western mythology with modern personalities, and that doesn't work as well as just using Western mythology.
I've liked the other two Chaplin films I've seen. He invented a lot of the slapstick antics that came to define comedy in the first half of the twentieth century, but for all his simple visual gags his social satire is surprisingly modern. The character he plays in all his big films is anti-bourgeouis. His dirty, disheveled appearance, childlike simpleness and ignorance to social conventions are everything a rich aristocrat would see as useless and pathetic. He exists outside the machine of society, but he's also the only character who puts any effort into heping others, even though he has the least resources to do it with. He's always playing little tricks or doing little odd jobs to get the money he needs to survive and help who he wants to help, regardless of the lack of dignity or social judgment. (And his visual comedy antics can get some occasional big laughs too.)
The Gold Rush doesn't work quite as well as the other two Chaplin films I've seen. There aren't as many 'big laugh' moments or as concise satire as Modern Times and City Lights. Also the narration is a little off putting. In the other two films you have mostly visual information to work with to get information about the plot, but in Gold Rush the voiceovers tell you all about what's going on, and it distracts you from everything that worked about silent films.
Rating: **** / 5
19/101
Others:
Unforgiven: ** 1/2 / 5
I watched it because of it's high placement by critics, but it's nowhere near as good as the Sergio Leone or John Ford Westerns. It seemed like it was mixing Western mythology with modern personalities, and that doesn't work as well as just using Western mythology.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
#96: Goodfellas
Goodfellas (Scorcese, 1990)
Goodfellas is the only movie from the 1990s in the TSPDT top 100. This I attribute mostly to the fact that this particular website uses lists made from now all the way back to the 1950s equally, and Goodfellas has a few years on Pulp Fiction and other arguably more deserving 90's movies. It's probably the most influential gangster film made since the Godfather movies. It clearly influenced The Sopranos. (Half the supporting cast also appeared in The Sopranos.)
Goodfellas tries to explain what makes the gangster life so attractive. You can go wherever you want without waiting in line, do whatever you want. If you get in with them, everybody immediately treats you with respect. Gangsters are walking male ids, unaccountable to society. (At least through the eyes of a wide eyed kid.)
Then you delve deeper into the gangster life and look at it more long term and realize loyalty doesn't really exist, and your best friends will kill you the second you become inconvenient to them.
The acting and scripting are great as to be expected from a Scorcese film, but I think gangster films are a bit overrated. There's only so much I can be made to care about the fate of a bunch of thugs and murderers. And I don't see why they all have to be so long. But, as a gangster film, there's not a whole lot I can fault it on.
Rating: **** / 5
18/101
Next: The Gold Rush
Goodfellas is the only movie from the 1990s in the TSPDT top 100. This I attribute mostly to the fact that this particular website uses lists made from now all the way back to the 1950s equally, and Goodfellas has a few years on Pulp Fiction and other arguably more deserving 90's movies. It's probably the most influential gangster film made since the Godfather movies. It clearly influenced The Sopranos. (Half the supporting cast also appeared in The Sopranos.)
Goodfellas tries to explain what makes the gangster life so attractive. You can go wherever you want without waiting in line, do whatever you want. If you get in with them, everybody immediately treats you with respect. Gangsters are walking male ids, unaccountable to society. (At least through the eyes of a wide eyed kid.)
Then you delve deeper into the gangster life and look at it more long term and realize loyalty doesn't really exist, and your best friends will kill you the second you become inconvenient to them.
The acting and scripting are great as to be expected from a Scorcese film, but I think gangster films are a bit overrated. There's only so much I can be made to care about the fate of a bunch of thugs and murderers. And I don't see why they all have to be so long. But, as a gangster film, there's not a whole lot I can fault it on.
Rating: **** / 5
18/101
Next: The Gold Rush
Saturday, February 6, 2010
#47: Ugetsu
Ugetsu (1953, Mizoguchi)
In the early fiftees there was a flurry of great Japanese films that all take place in sixteenth century Japan. Most of them feature samurais. I don't know how to explain this trend other than a bandwagon effect, but the output explores all the nuances of samurai mythology.
Ugetsu follows a group of peasants whose village is ransacked by samurai preparing for war. They're steal everything that's useful to them, kidnap men for forced labor, and rape women. The story focuses on two families, the men of which have ambition to escape the fate of peasantry, one of them through becoming a samurai and one through being accepted by the upper classes for his expert craftsmanship. In their pursuit of these ends they leave their homes and put their families in danger. Both stories are adapted from Japanese novels about the dangers of ambition, especially in a time of civil war and poverty. The cinematography is beautiful and realistic and the characters come off as universally human.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
17/101*
*I found the copy of On The Waterfront I thought I already sold, so I'm adding that back to the hundred.
Others:
Oldboy: **** / 5
Oldboy is a twist-driven movie with sort of a dark Fight Club-esque take on Hitchcockian psychological drama.
Fish Tank *** / 5
A realistic movie about a teenage girl who fights everyone in her life, until she falls in love with the father figure in her mother's boyfriend. There was one part of the movie toward the end I didn't buy at all, but otherwise, the movie seemed like a psychologically true portrayal of teenagers raised without a strong parental presence.
Next: Goodfellas
In the early fiftees there was a flurry of great Japanese films that all take place in sixteenth century Japan. Most of them feature samurais. I don't know how to explain this trend other than a bandwagon effect, but the output explores all the nuances of samurai mythology.
Ugetsu follows a group of peasants whose village is ransacked by samurai preparing for war. They're steal everything that's useful to them, kidnap men for forced labor, and rape women. The story focuses on two families, the men of which have ambition to escape the fate of peasantry, one of them through becoming a samurai and one through being accepted by the upper classes for his expert craftsmanship. In their pursuit of these ends they leave their homes and put their families in danger. Both stories are adapted from Japanese novels about the dangers of ambition, especially in a time of civil war and poverty. The cinematography is beautiful and realistic and the characters come off as universally human.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
17/101*
*I found the copy of On The Waterfront I thought I already sold, so I'm adding that back to the hundred.
Others:
Oldboy: **** / 5
Oldboy is a twist-driven movie with sort of a dark Fight Club-esque take on Hitchcockian psychological drama.
Fish Tank *** / 5
A realistic movie about a teenage girl who fights everyone in her life, until she falls in love with the father figure in her mother's boyfriend. There was one part of the movie toward the end I didn't buy at all, but otherwise, the movie seemed like a psychologically true portrayal of teenagers raised without a strong parental presence.
Next: Goodfellas
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
#70: All About Eve
All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)
All About Eve is an example of great scripting coming together with great acting. It personifies all the good qualities of the 40s-50s era of Hollywood. Bette Davis is wonderful and all the acting is good, and the multi-narrative style is engaging. Through the story of a woman who manipulates herself into being a star by treating her public persona like another character in a play, the movie dismantles the mythology of Hollywood, portraying it as elitist, cold heartedly ambitious and utilitarian.
It's also ironic to watch All About Eve as part of a venture to watch the 100 most critically acclaimed movies of all time. The character Adison Dewitt is a smug intellectual critic who at the very start of the film describes his service to the theater industry as 'necessary'. He takes self-satisfied delight in being the grand arbitrer of good taste, and here I am following his instructions.
There are a few 1950s-isms that in this day and age seem a bit awkward, like the way Margo acts like her theater career is now irrelevant because she's getting married. (There's no way a modern film could have a line like "A woman isn't really a woman if she doesn't have a husband to wake up next to.") But those sorts of things are overlookable because of the general high quality and attention to detail of the scripting. The final shot with the younger girl manipulating Eve and watching dozens of images of herself in triangular mirrors holding Eve's award sums up the entire picture.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
16/100
Next: Ugetsu, Goodfellas
All About Eve is an example of great scripting coming together with great acting. It personifies all the good qualities of the 40s-50s era of Hollywood. Bette Davis is wonderful and all the acting is good, and the multi-narrative style is engaging. Through the story of a woman who manipulates herself into being a star by treating her public persona like another character in a play, the movie dismantles the mythology of Hollywood, portraying it as elitist, cold heartedly ambitious and utilitarian.
It's also ironic to watch All About Eve as part of a venture to watch the 100 most critically acclaimed movies of all time. The character Adison Dewitt is a smug intellectual critic who at the very start of the film describes his service to the theater industry as 'necessary'. He takes self-satisfied delight in being the grand arbitrer of good taste, and here I am following his instructions.
There are a few 1950s-isms that in this day and age seem a bit awkward, like the way Margo acts like her theater career is now irrelevant because she's getting married. (There's no way a modern film could have a line like "A woman isn't really a woman if she doesn't have a husband to wake up next to.") But those sorts of things are overlookable because of the general high quality and attention to detail of the scripting. The final shot with the younger girl manipulating Eve and watching dozens of images of herself in triangular mirrors holding Eve's award sums up the entire picture.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
16/100
Next: Ugetsu, Goodfellas
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)