In this one I try to get out brief writeups of all the ones I've watched but haven't written up yet.
Jules and Jim (Traffaut, 1961)
Jules and Jim is more or less the exact movie you think of when you think of 'Arty French film'. All the characters are symbolic of something, they all follow their personal impulses in ways that comment on social conventions paying little attention to things with outside consequences. This sometimes causes characters to behave in random confusing ways that make them less believeable but more symbolic.
The plot is about two (heterosexual) men who have a very close friendship. They go on vacations together, date women together (Both of them and one woman), and so on. They want the women they meet to conform to iconized statuesque images of femininity. They meet a woman Catherine who looks exactly like a statue they liked. She doesn't want to conform to any image of the good wife, but wants to be in control of her relationship with both of them. They go off to war, fighting for opposite sides, and spend the war in terror that they'll kill the other. They both survive, and when they get back, Catherine has married Jules. They have a child, and her relationship sours with Jules, so she starts dating Jim, and they all live together in the same house. Catherine tries to tame Jim the same way she tamed Jules, but Jim still wants that culturally mandated image of femininity and family, which Catherine won't give him, always trying to control the relationship on her own terms.
It's very well directed, acted, and scripted, but the whole commentary on gender can make the plot seem arbitrary and characters seem weak.
Rating: *** 1/2 / 5
Greed (Von Stroheim, 1924)
Greed is an early silent film with three major versions. The ten hour version Von Stroheim originally wanted to make, the four hour version he produced when the studio made him cut it down, and the 140 minute one the studio made against Von Stroheim's will. The version I saw is the four hour one. It covers a story called 'McTeague' about a man who marries a woman he loves, but then when she wins the lottery and becomes miserly, and everybody is driven to hatred by jealousy and greed, wanting to get their hands on their share of the loterry winnings. A lot of sequences aren't in full motion, but are instead a montage of photographs explaining the story. The jumping back and forth from photographs and motion has an awkward effect on the pacing. Both elements were done well, but it's weird seeing them coexist. Particularly since the film was made in a time when the quality of actors willing to appear in films was limited. Also, there isn't really enough in the story to justify it being four hours long. Greed is kind of like what happens when a director is so in love with his idea that he doesn't listen to editors.
Rating: *** / 5
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
A classic western that follows the anti-hero formula better than anyone else in the genre except Leone. The characters are a bunch of aging outlaws who want to make one last big score before they retire. Although they say they want to retire, you get the impression they'd never be happy in idleness, and they've got a secret desire to go out in a blaze of glory that manifests later in the film. The railroad hired a contract to kill them, and the man in charge forces a member of the gang who was caught to help kill them or else go back to jail. Throughout the movie the portrayal of the characters leads you to root for the bad guys. The outlaws are loyal to each other, and they're always respectable, manly, and competent, save for the fact they'll kill people if they have to in order to make a steal. The 'good guys' on the other hand exhibit even less regard for human life than the bad guys. They plan massacres in the middle of public squares where civilians are guaranteed to get caught in the crossfire. Except for the former member of the gang who is the only competent one and the only one who behaves respectively, all the other hunters are incompetent, impulsive, and greedy. Everyones a murderer so you root for the ones who are nicer and more respectable when they're not murdering. It's a very fun, very well acted movie with a really incredibly choreographed train heist scene.
Rating: **** / 5
67/101
Others:
The Best Of Youth: **** 1/2 / 5
A six hour film. Okay, that should scare away all the people who won't like it. The movie covers two brothers across fourty years of Italian history. They're both idealistic but express their idealism in different ways. Matteo can never accept that the world doesn't meet his expectations, so he keeps running from place to place and from job to job. When the world fails to meet Nicola's standards, he compensates by lowering his expectations. Many of the characters in the film start out with blond hair, but later in the film randomly have brown or black hair. It's only brought up by one character in the entire six hours. I believe the blond hair represents a blank slate, and the brown hair represents the real world manifestation of that person.
For me it didn't start to wear out it's welcome until about four and a half hours in. If you're willing to spend the time to watch it, it's a great movie.
New movies:
The Kids Are Alright: 6/10
A movie that tries to show a lesbian family with two kids as having the same highs and lows as any heterosexual family unit. It's got a good script and great acting, but it wears it's political intentions a bit too obviously on it's sleeeve, which can sometimes make the characters feel like symbols rather than individuals. And they kind of cheat at the end by making it too easy to hate the sperm donor father. If they made the sperm donor father a nice guy they would have had to deal with the ethical dilemmas in a more nuanced way.
Here's a list of the movies I haven't watched this year yet:
8 1/2
Godfather
The Seven Samurai
Battleship Potemkin
Godfather: Part II
Casablanca
Rashomon
Raging Bull
Touch of Evil
The Grand Illusion
The General
Children of Paradise
Dr Strangelove
Apocalypse Now
The Night Of The Hunter
L'avventura
Blade Runner
The 400 Blows
Persona
Rear Window
It's A Wonderful Life
La Strada
The Seventh Seal
Au Hasard Balthazar
The Conformist
The Wizard Of Oz
Amarcord
Ikiru
Barry Lyndon
Journey To Italy
Sansho The Baliff
Last Near In Marienbad
Blue Velvet
On The Waterfront
There aren't any left that I both haven't seen and don't own. The only problem remaining is whether I really want to spend money or Netflix time on the ones I don't necessarily like. Battleship Potemkin, The General, Wizard of Oz. For Wizard of Oz I was hoping it'd come on TV so I could put it on in the background and pay half-attention to it. When I get toward the end I'll see if I really want to watch these ones again.
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