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OT: Edgar Wright's Fave 1000 films

posted 8 years ago by swanstep
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Edgar Wright (director of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World's End, etc.) has listed his 1000 fave films in order of their release:
https://mubi.com/lists/edgar-wrights-favorite-movies

The list is a 'fave' list not a 'greatest' list, so everything there is enjoyable rather than dutiful or territory-marking. I suspect that Wright's tastes are going to coincide with those of a lot of movie-lovers - Wright's choices are mostly movies I like to rewatch/would happily rewatch any time! [Update: On closer inspection Wright's list has way too much genre trash for me and is very present-centered. Still, If pressed for a similar list for myself there'd probably be at least 40-50% overlap with Wright's, which is a lot really - and Wright and I would share a whole bunch of relatively eccentric choices for a list of this kind, e.g., Dames (1934), Threads (1984), Freebie and the Bean (1974), X- The Man With X-ray Eyes (1963), Stepford Wives (1975).]

Hitchcock is, naturally, very well-represented on Wright's list

Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Lady Vanishes
Suspicion
Shadow of a Doubt
Notorious
Rope
Strangers on a Train
Rear Window
Vertigo
NbNW
Psycho
The Birds
Frenzy

Kazan, however, gets 0 and Preston Sturges only gets 1 which feels a little nuts when his recent picks include things at the level of The Martian and What we Do In The Shadows.

Still there are plenty of items on Wright's list that are new to me, and I think that that'll be true for almost everyone. It'll be fun to track those items down (the screen caps chosen for the films on the list are almost always very enticing I find).

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

(the screen caps chosen for the films on the list are almost always very enticing I find).

---

A certain brilliance to how he chose them...and for once, we don't just get "a bunch of titles" as the list. We get MOMENTS. Things that show us -- in just one shot -- What the Movies Are All About.

But the whole list is brilliant. Pretty amazing to me: Mainstream Man here pretty much has seen (I'm guessing) about 75% of the movies on the list from about 1958 to present. Even some of the foreign ones.

And Wright knows his "year to year" stuff. How Gambit rather followed up on Charade, for instance.

Intriguing: he finds room for one 2016 film on the list -- from just a few weeks ago(Neon Demon.) Now, THAT's comprehensive.

Though I'm a bit disappointed that The Nice Guys didn't make it...

---

Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Lady Vanishes
Suspicion
Shadow of a Doubt
Notorious
Rope
Strangers on a Train
Rear Window
Vertigo
NbNW
Psycho
The Birds
Frenzy

--

The AFI Four are in there :

Rear Window
Vertigo
North by Northwest
Psycho

and the "Golden Seven"

(Just add:)

Shadow of a Doubt
Notorious
Stranagers on a Train

---

But no Rebecca? No 39 Steps? Oh, well.

Meanwhile these others made the cut:

(Two from the 30's):

Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Lady Vanishes

One that I can never really love, despite the great technique and Cary's deceptive work:

Suspicion

One that I DO love, for the stunt, for the theme("The horror of people thinking other people are inferior and killable"), for the gay subtext(daring!) and for the quasi-psycho status of the two killers:

Rope

One that is too damn famous NOT to be noticed, not to mention A Landmark in Special Effects Cinema:

The Birds

---

And one that Saved Everything In the Nick of Time(On Hitchcock's Disturbing Terms):

Frenzy

(Note in passing: Edgar Wright personally introduced a showing of Frenzy at a West Los Angeles theater owned by Tarantino, a few years ago. I almost went.)

---

The two I would add to the list above(less, I'm afraid, Suspicion) are:

To Catch a Thief
The Wrong Man....

Two diametrically opposed mini-masterpieces -- one all about rich people, glamour and lightness; the other all about struggling working class people, bleakness and doom

---

Noteable: Batman(1989) did NOT make the list(I don't think) but Batman(1966) DID make the list! Go figure.

And almost 1,000 more! I could go on and on. Charley Varrick! Get Carter! (the first one) The Wrestler!(Rourke great as one of those; Tomei great as the feminine counterpart, a stripper) The Manchurian Candidate! The Untouchables! Die Hard!...All of QTs?..The Wolf of Wall Street!

Hmmm: LA Confidential yes. Love Actually no. I guess Love Actually is my personal Vertigo.

And on and on and on and on...

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

Here's the list (broken up over a couple of posts) in a more easily surveyable form:

Before 1960

1 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Robert Wiene, 1920
2 Nosferatu F.W. Murnau, 1922
3 Safety Last! Sam Taylor, Fred C. Newmeyer, 1923
4 The Gold Rush Charlie Chaplin, 1925
5 The General Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman, 1926
6 Metropolis Fritz Lang, 1927
7 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans F.W. Murnau, 1927
8 Steamboat Bill Jr. Buster Keaton, Charles Reisner, 1928
9 The Cameraman Buster Keaton, Edward Sedgwick, 1928
10 The Passion of Joan of Arc Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928
11 Un chien andalou Luis Bunuel, 1929
12 Animal Crackers Victor Heerman, 1930
13 L'Age d'or Luis Bunuel, 1930
14 City Lights Charlie Chaplin, 1931
15 Dracula Tod Browning, 1931
16 Frankenstein James Whale, 1931
17 Little Caesar Mervyn LeRoy, 1931
18 M Fritz Lang, 1931
19 Monkey Business Norman Z. McLeod, 1931
20 The Public Enemy William A. Wellman, 1931
21 Freaks Tod Browning, 1932
22 Island of Lost Souls Erle C. Kenton, 1932
23 Love Me Tonight Rouben Mamoulian, 1932
24 Scarface Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson, 1932
25 The Mummy Karl Freund, 1932
26 The Old Dark House James Whale, 1932
27 42nd Street Lloyd Bacon, 1933
28 Duck Soup Leo McCarey, 1933
29 Footlight Parade Busby Berkeley, Lloyd Bacon, 1933
30 Gold Diggers of 1933 Mervyn LeRoy, 1933
31 King Kong Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933
32 Sons of the Desert William A. Seiter, 1933
33 The Invisible Man James Whale, 1933
34 Dames Busby Berkeley, Ray Enright, 1934
35 The Man Who Knew Too Much Alfred Hitchcock, 1934
36 The Scarlet Empress Josef von Sternberg, 1934
37 Twentieth Century Howard Hawks, 1934
38 A Night at the Opera Sam Wood, 1935
39 Bride of Frankenstein James Whale, 1935
40 Top Hat Mark Sandrich, 1935
41 Modern Times Charlie Chaplin, 1936
42 The Awful Truth Leo McCarey, 1937
43 Angels with Dirty Faces Michael Curtiz, 1938
44 Bringing Up Baby Howard Hawks, 1938
45 The Adventures of Robin Hood Michael Curtiz, William Keighley, 1938
46 The Lady Vanishes Alfred Hitchcock, 1938
47 The Roaring Twenties Raoul Walsh, 1939
48 The Wizard of Oz Victor Fleming, King Vidor, Mervyn LeRoy, 1939
49 Fantasia Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen & 8 others
50 His Girl Friday Howard Hawks, 1940
51 Pinocchio Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen & 4 others
52 The Bank Dick Edward F. Cline, 1940
53 The Grapes of Wrath John Ford, 1940
54 Citizen Kane Orson Welles, 1941
55 Dumbo Wilfred Jackson, Ben Sharpsteen, Jack Kinney & 3 others
56 Sullivan's Travels Preston Sturges, 1941
57 Suspicion Alfred Hitchcock, 1941
58 The Maltese Falcon John Huston, 1941
59 Cat People Jacques Tourneur, 1942
60 Road to Morocco David Butler, 1942
61 I Walked with a Zombie Jacques Tourneur, 1943
62 Shadow of a Doubt Alfred Hitchcock, 1943
63 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1943
64 Arsenic and Old Lace Frank Capra, 1944
65 Double Indemnity Billy Wilder, 1944
66 Murder, My Sweet Edward Dmytryk, 1944
67 Brief Encounter David Lean, 1945
68 Dead of Night Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton, Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, 1945
69 Detour Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945
70 The Lost Weekend Billy Wilder, 1945
71 A Matter of Life and Death Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1946
72 Beauty and the Beast Jean Cocteau, René Clément, 1946
73 Notorious Alfred Hitchcock, 1946
74 The Big Sleep Howard Hawks, 1946
75 The Killers Robert Siodmak, 1946
76 Black Narcissus Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1947
77 Brighton Rock John Boulting, 1947
78 Nightmare Alley Edmund Goulding, 1947
79 Odd Man Out Carol Reed, 1947
80 Out of the Past Jacques Tourneur, 1947
81 Bicycle Thieves Vittorio De Sica, 1948
82 Oliver Twist David Lean, 1948
83 Rope Alfred Hitchcock, 1948
84 The Red Shoes Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948
85 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre John Huston, 1948
86 Caught Max Ophuls, 1949
87 Criss Cross Robert Siodmak, 1949
88 Jour de fète Jacques Tati, 1949
89 Kind Hearts and Coronets Robert Hamer, 1949
90 The Third Man Carol Reed, 1949
91 All About Eve Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950
92 D.O.A. Rudolph Maté, 1950
93 Gun Crazy Joseph H. Lewis, 1950
94 In a Lonely Place Nicholas Ray, 1950
95 Los olvidados Luis Bunuel, 1950
96 Rashomon Akira Kurosawa, 1950
97 Sunset Boulevard Billy Wilder, 1950
98 The Asphalt Jungle John Huston, 1950
99 Ace in the Hole Billy Wilder, 1951
100 An American in Paris Vincente Minnelli, 1951
101 Strangers on a Train Alfred Hitchcock, 1951
102 The Prowler Joseph Losey, 1951
103 High Noon Fred Zinnemann, 1952
104 Singin' in the Rain Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952
105 Duck Amuck Chuck Jones, 1953
106 Glen or Glenda? Edward D. Wood Jr., 1953
107 House of Wax André De Toth, 1953
108 M. Hulot's Holiday Jacques Tati, 1953
109 The Band Wagon Vincente Minnelli, 1953
110 The Big Heat Fritz Lang, 1953
111 The Wages of Fear Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953
112 Godzilla Ishiro Honda, 1954
113 Magnificent Obsession Douglas Sirk, 1954
114 Rear Window Alfred Hitchcock, 1954
115 Seven Samurai Akira Kurosawa, 1954
116 Them! Gordon Douglas, 1954
117 All That Heaven Allows Douglas Sirk, 1955
118 Bad Day at Black Rock John Sturges, 1955
119 Diabolique Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955
120 It's Always Fair Weather Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1955
121 Kiss Me Deadly Robert Aldrich, 1955
122 Rebel Without a Cause Nicholas Ray, 1955
123 Rififi Jules Dassin, 1955
124 The Big Combo Joseph H. Lewis, 1955
125 The Court Jester Norman Panama, Melvin Frank, 1955
126 The Ladykillers Alexander Mackendrick, 1955
127 The Night of the Hunter Charles Laughton, 1955
128 The Quatermass Xperiment Val Guest, 1955
129 Bigger Than Life Nicholas Ray, 1956
130 Forbidden Planet Fred M. Wilcox, 1956
131 Invasion of the Body Snatchers Don Siegel, 1956
132 The Bad Seed Mervyn LeRoy, 1956
133 The Killing Stanley Kubrick, 1956
134 Written on the Wind Douglas Sirk, 1956
135 12 Angry Men Sidney Lumet, 1957
136 Curse of the Demon Jacques Tourneur, 1957
137 Funny Face Stanley Donen, 1957
138 Kanal Andrzej Wajda, 1957
139 Paths of Glory Stanley Kubrick, 1957
140 Quatermass 2: Enemy from Space Val Guest, 1957
141 Sweet Smell of Success Alexander Mackendrick, 1957
142 The Bridge on the River Kwai David Lean, 1957
143 The Curse of Frankenstein Terence Fisher, 1957
144 The Incredible Shrinking Man Jack Arnold, 1957
145 The Monolith Monsters John Sherwood, 1957
146 The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman, 1957
147 Throne of Blood Akira Kurosawa, 1957
148 What's Opera, Doc? Chuck Jones, 1957
149 Wild Strawberries Ingmar Bergman, 1957
150 A Night to Remember Roy Ward Baker, 1958
151 Ashes and Diamonds Andrzej Wajda, 1958
152 Dracula Terence Fisher, 1958
153 Elevator to the Gallows Louis Malle, 1958
154 Mon oncle Jacques Tati, 1958
155 The 7th Voyage of Sinbad Nathan Juran, 1958
156 The Fly Kurt Neumann, 1958
157 Touch of Evil Orson Welles, 1958
158 Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
159 Whoa, Be-Gone! Chuck Jones, 1958
160 A Bucket of Blood Roger Corman, 1959
161 Ben-Hur William Wyler, 1959
162 Imitation of Life Douglas Sirk, 1959
163 North by Northwest Alfred Hitchcock, 1959
164 Odds Against Tomorrow Robert Wise, 1959
165 Rio Bravo Howard Hawks, 1959
166 The 400 Blows Francois Truffaut, 1959
167 The Mouse That Roared Jack Arnold, 1959

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

1960-1974

168 Beat Girl Edmond T. Gréville, 1960
169 Black Sunday Mario Bava, 1960
170 Breathless Jean-Luc Godard, 1960
171 Eyes Without a Face Georges Franju, 1960
172 La dolce vita Federico Fellini, 1960
173 Peeping Tom Michael Powell, 1960
174 Psycho Alfred Hitchcock, 1960
175 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Karel Reisz, 1960
176 Shoot the Piano Player Francois Truffaut, 1960
177 Spartacus Stanley Kubrick, 1960
178 The Apartment Billy Wilder, 1960
179 The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film Peter Sellers, Richard Lester, 1960
180 The Virgin Spring Ingmar Bergman, 1960
181 Village of the Damned Wolf Rilla, 1960
182 Zazie dans le métro Louis Malle, 1960
183 Pit and the Pendulum Roger Corman, 1961
184 The Curse of the Werewolf Terence Fisher, 1961
185 The Hustler Robert Rossen, 1961
186 The Innocents Jack Clayton, 1961
187 West Side Story Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, 1961
188 Yojimbo Akira Kurosawa, 1961
189 Carnival of Souls Herk Harvey, 1962
190 Jules and Jim Francois Truffaut, 1962
191 Knife in the Water Roman Polanski, 1962
192 The Exterminating Angel Luis Bunuel, 1962
193 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance John Ford, 1962
194 The Manchurian Candidate John Frankenheimer, 1962
195 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Robert Aldrich, 1962
196 81/2 Federico Fellini, 1963
197 Billy Liar John Schlesinger, 1963
198 Bitter Harvest Peter Graham Scott, 1963
199 Black Sabbath Mario Bava, 1963
200 Charade Stanley Donen, 1963
201 From Russia with Love Terence Young, 1963
202 Jason and the Argonauts Don Chaffey, 1963
203 Shock Corridor Samuel Fuller, 1963
204 The Birds Alfred Hitchcock, 1963
205 The Great Escape John Sturges, 1963
206 The Haunting Robert Wise, 1963
207 The Servant Joseph Losey, 1963
208 X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes Roger Corman, 1963
209 A Fistful of Dollars Sergio Leone, 1964
210 A Hard Day's Night Richard Lester, 1964
211 A Shot in the Dark Blake Edwards, 1964
212 Blood and Black Lace Mario Bava, 1964
213 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Stanley Kubrick, 1964
214 First Men in the Moon Nathan Juran, 1964
215 Goldfinger Guy Hamilton, 1964
216 Onibaba Kaneto Shindo, 1964
217 Red Desert Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964
218 The Earth Dies Screaming Terence Fisher, 1964
219 The Masque of the Red Death Roger Corman, 1964
220 The Naked Kiss Samuel Fuller, 1964
221 The Pawnbroker Sidney Lumet, 1964
222 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy, 1964
223 Zulu Cy Endfield, 1964
224 Bunny Lake Is Missing Otto Preminger, 1965
225 Darling John Schlesinger, 1965
226 Dr Terror's House of Horrors Freddie Francis, 1965
227 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Russ Meyer, 1965
228 For a Few Dollars More Sergio Leone, 1965
229 Planet of the Vampires Mario Bava, 1965
230 Repulsion Roman Polanski, 1965
231 Simon of the Desert Luis Bunuel, 1965
232 The 10th Victim Elio Petri, 1965
233 The Collector William Wyler, 1965
234 The Hill Sidney Lumet, 1965
235 The Ipcress File Sidney J. Furie, 1965
236 The Knack ...and How to Get It Richard Lester, 1965
237 Batman Leslie H. Martinson, 1966
238 Blow-Up Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966
239 Cul-de-sac Roman Polanski, 1966
240 Daisies Vera Chytilova, 1966
241 Fantastic Voyage Richard Fleischer, 1966
242 Gambit Ronald Neame, 1966
243 Kill Baby, Kill! Mario Bava, 1966
244 Persona Ingmar Bergman, 1966
245 Seconds John Frankenheimer, 1966
246 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Sergio Leone, 1966
247 The Wild Angels Roger Corman, 1966
248 Tokyo Drifter Seijun Suzuki, 1966
249 What's Up, Tiger Lily? Woody Allen, 1966
250 Belle de jour Luis Bunuel, 1967
251 Bonnie and Clyde Arthur Penn, 1967
252 Cool Hand Luke Stuart Rosenberg, 1967
253 Don't Look Back D.A. Pennebaker, 1967
254 In Cold Blood Richard Brooks, 1967
255 In the Heat of the Night Norman Jewison, 1967
256 Le samourai Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967
257 Mad Monster Party? Jules Bass, 1967
258 Magical Mystery Tour Bernard Knowles, George Harrison, John Lennon & 2 others
259 PlayTime Jacques Tati, 1967
260 Point Blank John Boorman, 1967
261 Privilege Peter Watkins, 1967
262 Quatermass and the Pit Roy Ward Baker, 1967
263 Robbery Peter Yates, 1967
264 The Dirty Dozen Robert Aldrich, 1967
265 The Graduate Mike Nichols, 1967
266 The President's Analyst Theodore J. Flicker, 1967
267 The Producers Mel Brooks, 1967
268 The Trip Roger Corman, 1967
269 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, 1968
270 Barbarella Roger Vadim, 1968
271 Bullitt Peter Yates, 1968
272 Coogan's Bluff Don Siegel, 1968
273 Danger: Diabolik Mario Bava, 1968
274 Dark of the Sun Jack Cardiff, 1968
275 Head Bob Rafelson, 1968
276 If.... Lindsay Anderson, 1968
277 Night of the Living Dead George A. Romero, 1968
278 Once Upon a Time in the West Sergio Leone, 1968
279 Planet of the Apes Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968
280 Pretty Poison Noel Black, 1968
281 Rosemary's Baby Roman Polanski, 1968
282 Spirits of the Dead Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim, 1968
283 The Boston Strangler Richard Fleischer, 1968
284 The Bride Wore Black Francois Truffaut, 1968
285 The Devil Rides Out Terence Fisher, 1968
286 The Great Silence Sergio Corbucci, 1968
287 The Swimmer Sydney Pollack, Frank Perry, 1968
288 The Thomas Crown Affair Norman Jewison, 1968
289 Twisted Nerve Roy Boulting, 1968
290 Vixen! Russ Meyer, 1968
291 Where Eagles Dare Brian G. Hutton, 1968
292 Wild in the Streets Barry Shear, 1968
293 Witchfinder General Michael Reeves, 1968
294 Yellow Submarine George Dunning, Dennis Abey, 1968
295 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid George Roy Hill, 1969
296 Easy Rider Dennis Hopper, 1969
297 Kes Ken Loach, 1969
298 Last Summer Frank Perry, 1969
299 Midnight Cowboy John Schlesinger, 1969
300 Sweet Charity Bob Fosse, 1969
301 Take the Money and Run Woody Allen, 1969
302 The Bed Sitting Room Richard Lester, 1969
303 The House That Screamed Narciso Ibanez Serrador, 1969
304 The Italian Job Peter Collinson, 1969
305 The Laughing Woman Piero Schivazappa, 1969
306 The Wild Bunch Sam Peckinpah, 1969
307 Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? Lee H. Katzin, Bernard Girard, 1969
308 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Russ Meyer, 1970
309 Catch-22 Mike Nichols, 1970
310 Deep End Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970
311 El topo Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970
312 Five Easy Pieces Bob Rafelson, 1970
313 Girly Freddie Francis, 1970
314 Hatchet for the Honeymoon Mario Bava, 1970
315 Little Big Man Arthur Penn, 1970
316 M*A*S*H Robert Altman, 1970
317 Performance Nicolas Roeg, Donald Cammell, 1970
318 Scream and Scream Again Gordon Hessler, 1970
319 The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Dario Argento, 1970
320 The Butcher Claude Chabrol, 1970
321 The Conformist Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970
322 Where's Poppa? Carl Reiner, 1970
323 Zabriskie Point Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970
324 10 Rillington Place Richard Fleischer, 1971
325 A Bay of Blood Mario Bava, 1971
326 A Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrick, 1971
327 Bananas Woody Allen, 1971
328 Daughters of Darkness Harry Kumel, 1971
329 Dirty Harry Don Siegel, 1971
330 Duel Steven Spielberg, 1971
331 Four Flies on Grey Velvet Dario Argento, 1971
332 Get Carter Mike Hodges, 1971
333 Harold and Maude Hal Ashby, 1971
334 Klute Alan J. Pakula, 1971
335 Little Murders Alan Arkin, 1971
336 Melody Waris Hussein, 1971
337 Play Misty for Me Clint Eastwood, 1971
338 Straw Dogs Sam Peckinpah, 1971
339 The Abominable Dr. Phibes Robert Fuest, 1971
340 The Anderson Tapes Sidney Lumet, 1971
341 The Andromeda Strain Robert Wise, 1971
342 The Beguiled Don Siegel, 1971
343 The Boy Friend Ken Russell, 1971
344 The Devils Ken Russell, 1971
345 The French Connection William Friedkin, 1971
346 The Last Picture Show Peter Bogdanovich, 1971
347 THX 1138 George Lucas, 1971
348 Two-Lane Blacktop Monte Hellman, 1971
349 Vanishing Point Richard C. Sarafian, 1971
350 Wake in Fright Ted Kotcheff, 1971
351 Walkabout Nicolas Roeg, 1971
352 Aguirre, the Wrath of God Werner Herzog, 1972
353 Asylum Roy Ward Baker, 1972
354 Cabaret Bob Fosse, 1972
355 Deliverance John Boorman, 1972
356 Frenzy Alfred Hitchcock, 1972
357 Five Fingers of Death Jeong Chang-hwa, 1972
358 Play It Again, Sam Herbert Ross, 1972
359 Prime Cut Michael Ritchie, 1972
360 Silent Running Douglas Trumbull, 1972
361 Tales from the Crypt Freddie Francis, 1972
362 The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie Luis Bunuel, 1972
363 The Getaway Sam Peckinpah, 1972
364 The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola, 1972
365 The Heartbreak Kid Elaine May, 1972
366 The Hot Rock Peter Yates, 1972
367 The Mechanic Michael Winner, 1972
368 The Night Stalker John Llewellyn Moxey, 1972
369 What's Up, Doc? Peter Bogdanovich, 1972
370 American Graffiti George Lucas, 1973
371 Badlands Terrence Malick, 1973
372 Charley Varrick Don Siegel, 1973
373 Coffy Jack Hill, 1973
374 Day for Night Francois Truffaut, 1973
375 Death Line Gary Sherman, 1973
376 Don't Look Now Nicolas Roeg, 1973
377 Electra Glide in Blue James William Guercio, 1973
378 Flesh for Frankenstein Paul Morrissey, Antonio Margheriti, 1973
379 High Plains Drifter Clint Eastwood, 1973
380 Live and Let Die Guy Hamilton, 1973
381 Magnum Force Ted Post, 1973
382 Mean Streets Martin Scorsese, 1973
383 O Lucky Man! Lindsay Anderson, 1973
384 Paper Moon Peter Bogdanovich, 1973
385 Serpico Sidney Lumet, 1973
386 Sisters Brian De Palma, 1973
387 Sleeper Woody Allen, 1973
388 Slither Howard Zieff, 1973
389 The Asphyx Peter Newbrook, 1973
390 The Exorcist William Friedkin, 1973
391 The Last Detail Hal Ashby, 1973
392 The Last of Sheila Herbert Ross, 1973
393 The Legend of Hell House John Hough, 1973
394 The Long Goodbye Robert Altman, 1973
395 The Seven-Ups Philip D'Antoni, 1973
396 The Spirit of the Beehive V√≠ctor Erice, 1973
397 The Three Musketeers Richard Lester, 1973
398 The Wicker Man Robin Hardy, 1973
399 Theater of Blood Douglas Hickox, 1973
400 Westworld Michael Crichton, 1973
401 White Lightning Joseph Sargent, 1973
402 Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore Martin Scorsese, 1974
403 Blazing Saddles Mel Brooks, 1974
404 Blood for Dracula Paul Morrissey, 1974
405 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia Sam Peckinpah, 1974
406 Busting Peter Hyams, 1974
407 Chinatown Roman Polanski, 1974
408 Dark Star John Carpenter, 1974
409 Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry John Hough, 1974
410 Freebie and the Bean Richard Rush, 1974
411 From Beyond the Grave Kevin Connor, 1974
412 Lenny Bob Fosse, 1974
413 Let Sleeping Corpses Lie Jorge Grau, 1974
414 Phantom of the Paradise Brian De Palma, 1974
415 Phase IV Saul Bass, 1974
416 The Conversation Francis Ford Coppola, 1974
417 The Godfather: Part II Francis Ford Coppola, 1974
418 The Golden Voyage of Sinbad Gordon Hessler, 1974
419 The Parallax View Alan J. Pakula, 1974
420 The Sugarland Express Steven Spielberg, 1974
421 The Super Cops Gordon Parks, 1974
422 The Taking of Pelham One Two Three Joseph Sargent, 1974
423 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tobe Hooper, 1974
424 Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Michael Cimino, 1974
425 Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks, 1974

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

1975-1989

426 A Boy and His Dog L.Q. Jones, 1975
427 Death Race 2000 Paul Bartel, 1975
428 Deep Red Dario Argento, 1975
429 Dog Day Afternoon Sidney Lumet, 1975
430 Jaws Steven Spielberg, 1975
431 Lisztomania Ken Russell, 1975
432 Love and Death Woody Allen, 1975
433 Monty Python and the Holy Grail Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, 1975
434 Night Moves Arthur Penn, 1975
435 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Milo≈° Forman, 1975
436 Picnic at Hanging Rock Peter Weir, 1975
437 Supervixens Russ Meyer, 1975
438 The Stepford Wives Bryan Forbes, 1975
439 Assault on Precinct 13 John Carpenter, 1976
440 Bugsy Malone Alan Parker, 1976
441 Carrie Brian De Palma, 1976
442 Logan's Run Michael Anderson, 1976
443 Marathon Man John Schlesinger, 1976
444 Murder by Death Robert Moore, 1976
445 Network Sidney Lumet, 1976
446 Nuts in May Mike Leigh, 1976
447 Taxi Driver Martin Scorsese, 1976
448 The Gumball Rally Chuck Bail, 1976
449 The Man Who Fell to Earth Nicolas Roeg, 1976
450 The Omen Richard Donner, 1976
451 The Tenant Roman Polanski, 1976
452 Who Can Kill a Child? Narciso Ibanez Serrador, 1976
453 Annie Hall Woody Allen, 1977
454 Capricorn One Peter Hyams, 1977
455 Close Encounters of the Third Kind Steven Spielberg, 1977
456 Demon Seed Donald Cammell, 1977
457 Eraserhead David Lynch, 1977
458 High Anxiety Mel Brooks, 1977
459 Jabberwocky Terry Gilliam, 1977
460 Martin George A. Romero, 1977
461 Rolling Thunder John Flynn, 1977
462 Sorcerer William Friedkin, 1977
463 Star Wars George Lucas, 1977
464 Suspiria Dario Argento, 1977
465 That Obscure Object of Desire Luis Bunuel, 1977
466 The Duellists Ridley Scott, 1977
467 The Kentucky Fried Movie John Landis, 1977
468 The Sentinel Michael Winner, 1977
469 The Spy Who Loved Me Lewis Gilbert, 1977
470 Blue Collar Paul Schrader, 1978
471 Coma Michael Crichton, 1978
472 Dawn of the Dead George A. Romero, 1978
473 Days of Heaven Terrence Malick, 1978
474 Death on the Nile John Guillermin, 1978
475 Fingers James Toback, 1978
476 Grease Randal Kleiser, 1978
477 Halloween John Carpenter, 1978
478 I Wanna Hold Your Hand Robert Zemeckis, 1978
479 Invasion of the Body Snatchers Philip Kaufman, 1978
480 Long Weekend Colin Eggleston, 1978
481 National Lampoon's Animal House John Landis, 1978
482 Piranha Joe Dante, 1978
483 Straight Time Ulu Grosbard, 1978
484 Superman Richard Donner, 1978
485 The 36th Chamber of Shaolin Chia-Liang Liu, 1978
486 The Deer Hunter Michael Cimino, 1978
487 The Driver Walter Hill, 1978
488 The Fury Brian De Palma, 1978
489 The Last Waltz Martin Scorsese, 1978
490 The Silent Partner Daryl Duke, 1978
491 Watership Down Martin Rosen, 1978
492 Alien Ridley Scott, 1979
493 All That Jazz Bob Fosse, 1979
494 Being There Hal Ashby, 1979
495 Mad Max George Miller, 1979
496 Manhattan Woody Allen, 1979
497 Monty Python's Life of Brian Terry Jones, 1979
498 Rock 'n' Roll High School Jerry Zucker, Joe Dante, Allan Arkush, 1979
499 Scum Alan Clarke, 1979
500 The Black Hole Gary Nelson, 1979
501 The Brood David Cronenberg, 1979
502 The Jerk Carl Reiner, 1979
503 The Wanderers Philip Kaufman, 1979
504 The Warriors Walter Hill, 1979
505 Winter Kills William Richert, 1979
506 Airplane! Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1980
507 Dressed to Kill Brian De Palma, 1980
508 Flash Gordon Mike Hodges, 1980
509 Raging Bull Martin Scorsese, 1980
510 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back Irvin Kershner, 1980
511 Stardust Memories Woody Allen, 1980
512 Superman II Richard Lester, 1980
513 The Blues Brothers John Landis, 1980
514 The Changeling Peter Medak, 1980
515 The Elephant Man David Lynch, 1980
516 The Fog John Carpenter, 1980
517 The Long Good Friday John Mackenzie, 1980
518 The Ninth Configuration William Peter Blatty, 1980
519 The Shining Stanley Kubrick, 1980
520 The Stunt Man Richard Rush, 1980
521 An American Werewolf in London John Landis, 1981
522 Blow Out Brian De Palma, 1981
523 Body Heat Lawrence Kasdan, 1981
524 Cutter's Way Ivan Passer, 1981
525 Dead & Buried Gary Sherman, 1981
526 Diva Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981
527 Escape from New York John Carpenter, 1981
528 Gregory's Girl Bill Forsyth, 1981
529 Looker Michael Crichton, 1981
530 Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior George Miller, 1981
531 Modern Romance Albert Brooks, 1981
532 Ms. 45 Abel Ferrara, 1981
533 Raiders of the Lost Ark Steven Spielberg, 1981
534 Road Games Richard Franklin, 1981
535 Sharky's Machine Burt Reynolds, 1981
536 Southern Comfort Walter Hill, 1981
537 The Beyond Lucio Fulci, 1981
538 The Evil Dead Sam Raimi, 1981
539 The Howling Joe Dante, 1981
540 Thief Michael Mann, 1981
541 Time Bandits Terry Gilliam, 1981
542 Venom Piers Haggard, 1981
543 48 Hrs. Walter Hill, 1982
544 Blade Runner Ridley Scott, 1982
545 Creepshow George A. Romero, 1982
546 Diner Barry Levinson, 1982
547 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Steven Spielberg, 1982
548 Eating Raoul Paul Bartel, 1982
549 Fitzcarraldo Werner Herzog, 1982
550 Koyaanisqatsi Godfrey Reggio, 1982
551 Poltergeist Tobe Hooper, 1982
552 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Nicholas Meyer, 1982
553 Tenebrae Dario Argento, 1982
554 The King of Comedy Martin Scorsese, 1982
555 The Thing John Carpenter, 1982
556 The Verdict Sidney Lumet, 1982
557 The World According to Garp George Roy Hill, 1982
558 Tootsie Sydney Pollack, 1982
559 Vice Squad Gary Sherman, 1982
560 Xtro Harry Bromley Davenport, 1982
561 Breathless Jim McBride, 1983
562 Christine John Carpenter, 1983
563 Local Hero Bill Forsyth, 1983
564 Project A Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, 1983
565 Risky Business Paul Brickman, 1983
566 Scarface Brian De Palma, 1983
567 The Big Chill Lawrence Kasdan, 1983
568 The Dead Zone David Cronenberg, 1983
569 The Fourth Man Paul Verhoeven, 1983
570 The Hunger Tony Scott, 1983
571 The Man with Two Brains Carl Reiner, 1983
572 Trading Places John Landis, 1983
573 Twilight Zone: The Movie Steven Spielberg, George Miller, John Landis, Joe Dante, 1983
574 A Nightmare on Elm Street Wes Craven, 1984
575 Birdy Alan Parker, 1984
576 Blood Simple Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1984
577 Body Double Brian De Palma, 1984
578 Broadway Danny Rose Woody Allen, 1984
579 Ghostbusters Ivan Reitman, 1984
580 Gremlins Joe Dante, 1984
581 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Steven Spielberg, 1984
582 Meantime Mike Leigh, 1984
583 Paris, Texas Wim Wenders, 1984
584 Repo Man Alex Cox, 1984
585 Stop Making Sense Jonathan Demme, 1984
586 Streets of Fire Walter Hill, 1984
587 The Company of Wolves Neil Jordan, 1984
588 The Hit Stephen Frears, 1984
589 The Terminator James Cameron, 1984
590 This Is Spinal Tap Rob Reiner, 1984
591 Threads Mick Jackson, 1984
592 Top Secret! Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1984
593 Wheels on Meals Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, 1984
594 After Hours Martin Scorsese, 1985
595 Back to the Future Robert Zemeckis, 1985
596 Brazil Terry Gilliam, 1985
597 Crimewave Sam Raimi, 1985
598 Day of the Dead George A. Romero, 1985
599 Into the Night John Landis, 1985
600 Lost in America Albert Brooks, 1985
601 Pee-wee's Big Adventure Tim Burton, 1985
602 Police Story Jackie Chan, 1985
603 Re-Animator Stuart Gordon, 1985
604 The Breakfast Club John Hughes, 1985
605 To Live and Die in L.A. William Friedkin, 1985
606 Witness Peter Weir, 1985
607 A Better Tomorrow John Woo, 1986
608 Aliens James Cameron, 1986
609 Blue Velvet David Lynch, 1986
610 Down by Law Jim Jarmusch, 1986
611 Ferris Bueller's Day Off John Hughes, 1986
612 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer John McNaughton, 1986
613 Manhunter Michael Mann, 1986
614 Mona Lisa Neil Jordan, 1986
615 Something Wild Jonathan Demme, 1986
616 Stand by Me Rob Reiner, 1986
617 The Fly David Cronenberg, 1986
618 A Better Tomorrow II John Woo, 1987
619 A Chinese Ghost Story Ching Siu-Tung, 1987
620 Bad Taste Peter Jackson, 1987
621 Evil Dead II Sam Raimi, 1987
622 Full Metal Jacket Stanley Kubrick, 1987
623 Hellraiser Clive Barker, 1987
624 House of Games David Mamet, 1987
625 Innerspace Joe Dante, 1987
626 Lethal Weapon Richard Donner, 1987
627 Near Dark Kathryn Bigelow, 1987
628 Planes, Trains & Automobiles John Hughes, 1987
629 Prick Up Your Ears Stephen Frears, 1987
630 Raising Arizona Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1987
631 RoboCop Paul Verhoeven, 1987
632 Sign 'o' the Times Prince, 1987
633 The Hidden Jack Sholder, 1987
634 The Princess Bride Rob Reiner, 1987
635 The Untouchables Brian De Palma, 1987
636 Throw Momma from the Train Danny DeVito, 1987
637 Withnail & I Bruce Robinson, 1987
638 A Fish Called Wanda Charles Crichton, 1988
639 Akira Katsuhiro √îtomo, 1988
640 Beetlejuice Tim Burton, 1988
641 Dead Ringers David Cronenberg, 1988
642 Die Hard John McTiernan, 1988
643 Dragons Forever Corey Yuen, Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, 1988
644 Ghosts... of the Civil Dead John Hillcoat, 1988
645 Hairspray John Waters, 1988
646 Heathers Michael Lehmann, 1988
647 High Hopes Mike Leigh, 1988
648 Midnight Run Martin Brest, 1988
649 The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years Penelope Spheeris, 1988
650 The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! David Zucker, 1988
651 The Vanishing George Sluizer, 1988
652 Virile Games Jan ≈†vankmajer, 1988
653 Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen, 1989
654 Do the Right Thing Spike Lee, 1989
655 Drugstore Cowboy Gus Van Sant, 1989
656 Santa sangre Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989
657 The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Peter Greenaway, 1989
658 The Killer John Woo, 1989
659 Violent Cop Takeshi Kitano, 1989

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

1990-2000

660 Arachnophobia Frank Marshall, 1990
661 Goodfellas Martin Scorsese, 1990
662 Gremlins 2: The New Batch Joe Dante, 1990
663 La femme Nikita Luc Besson, 1990
664 Life Is Sweet Mike Leigh, 1990
665 Miami Blues George Armitage, 1990
666 Miller's Crossing Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1990
667 Misery Rob Reiner, 1990
668 Tremors Ron Underwood, 1990
669 Trust Hal Hartley, 1990
670 Wild at Heart David Lynch, 1990
671 Barton Fink Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1991
672 Cape Fear Martin Scorsese, 1991
673 Delicatessen Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro, 1991
674 Homicide David Mamet, 1991
675 JFK Oliver Stone, 1991
676 Johnny Suede Tom DiCillo, 1991
677 L.A. Story Mick Jackson, 1991
678 Naked Lunch David Cronenberg, 1991
679 Point Break Kathryn Bigelow, 1991
680 Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky Lam Ngai Kai, 1991
681 Terminator 2: Judgment Day James Cameron, 1991
682 The Last Boy Scout Tony Scott, 1991
683 The People Under the Stairs Wes Craven, 1991
684 The Rapture Michael Tolkin, 1991
685 The Silence of the Lambs Jonathan Demme, 1991
686 Bad Lieutenant Abel Ferrara, 1992
687 Batman Returns Tim Burton, 1992
688 Bitter Moon Roman Polanski, 1992
689 Dead Alive Peter Jackson, 1992
690 El Mariachi Robert Rodriguez, 1992
691 Glengarry Glen Ross James Foley, 1992
692 Hard Boiled John Woo, 1992
693 Man Bites Dog Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Beno√Æt Poelvoorde, 1992
694 One False Move Carl Franklin, 1992
695 Police Story 3: Super Cop Stanley Tong, 1992
696 Raising Cain Brian De Palma, 1992
697 Reservoir Dogs Quentin Tarantino, 1992
698 Romper Stomper Geoffrey Wright, 1992
699 The Player Robert Altman, 1992
700 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me David Lynch, 1992
701 Unforgiven Clint Eastwood, 1992
702 A Man in Uniform David Wellington, 1993
703 Bad Boy Bubby Rolf de Heer, 1993
704 Carlito's Way Brian De Palma, 1993
705 Cronos Guillermo del Toro, 1993
706 Dazed and Confused Richard Linklater, 1993
707 Groundhog Day Harold Ramis, 1993
708 Jurassic Park Steven Spielberg, 1993
709 Naked Mike Leigh, 1993
710 Raining Stones Ken Loach, 1993
711 Red Rock West John Dahl, 1993
712 Suture Scott McGehee, David Siegel, 1993
713 The Legend II Corey Yuen, 1993
714 True Romance Tony Scott, 1993
715 Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers Nick Park, 1993
716 Amateur Hal Hartley, 1994
717 Chungking Express Wong Kar-wai, 1994
718 Clerks Kevin Smith, 1994
719 Ed Wood Tim Burton, 1994
720 Fist of Legend Gordon Chan, 1994
721 Heavenly Creatures Peter Jackson, 1994
722 Léon: The Professional Luc Besson, 1994
723 Nightwatch Ole Bornedal, 1994
724 Once Were Warriors Lee Tamahori, 1994
725 Pulp Fiction Quentin Tarantino, 1994
726 Speed Jan de Bont, 1994
727 The Last Seduction John Dahl, 1994
728 The Legend of Drunken Master Jackie Chan, Chia-Liang Liu, 1994
729 The Shawshank Redemption Frank Darabont, 1994
730 Three Colors: Red Krzysztof Kie≈õlowski, 1994
731 Desperado Robert Rodriguez, 1995
732 Heat Michael Mann, 1995
733 La Haine Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995
734 Seven David Fincher, 1995
735 The Doom Generation Gregg Araki, 1995
736 The Quick and the Dead Sam Raimi, 1995
737 The Usual Suspects Bryan Singer, 1995
738 Toy Story John Lasseter, 1995
739 Welcome to the Dollhouse Todd Solondz, 1995
740 Big Night Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci, 1996
741 Bottle Rocket Wes Anderson, 1996
742 Bound Lilly Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, 1996
743 Breaking the Waves Lars von Trier, 1996
744 Citizen Ruth Alexander Payne, 1996
745 Flirting with Disaster David O. Russell, 1996
746 Fargo Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1996
747 Freeway Matthew Bright, 1996
748 Romeo Juliet Baz Luhrmann, 1996
749 Scream Wes Craven, 1996
750 Small Faces Gillies MacKinnon, 1996
751 Swingers Doug Liman, 1996
752 Trainspotting Danny Boyle, 1996
753 Waiting for Guffman Christopher Guest, 1996
754 When We Were Kings Leon Gast, 1996
755 Boogie Nights Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997
756 Cube Vincenzo Natali, 1997
757 Fireworks Takeshi Kitano, 1997
758 Funny Games Michael Haneke, 1997
759 Grosse Pointe Blank George Armitage, 1997
760 Gummo Harmony Korine, 1997
761 Jackie Brown Quentin Tarantino, 1997
762 L.A. Confidential Curtis Hanson, 1997
763 Lost Highway David Lynch, 1997
764 Nil by Mouth Gary Oldman, 1997
765 Retroactive Louis Morneau, 1997
766 Starship Troopers Paul Verhoeven, 1997
767 The Ice Storm Ang Lee, 1997
768 A Simple Plan Sam Raimi, 1998
769 American History X Tony Kaye, 1998
770 Buffalo '66 Vincent Gallo, 1998
771 Happiness Todd Solondz, 1998
772 I Stand Alone Gaspar Noé, 1998
773 Last Night Don McKellar, 1998
774 Love Is the Devil John Maybury, 1998
775 Out of Sight Steven Soderbergh, 1998
776 Pi Darren Aronofsky, 1998
777 Ring Hideo Nakata, 1998
778 Run Lola Run Tom Tykwer, 1998
779 Rushmore Wes Anderson, 1998
780 The Celebration Thomas Vinterberg, 1998
781 The General John Boorman, 1998
782 There's Something About Mary Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, 1998
783 Wild Things John McNaughton, 1998
784 A Room for Romeo Brass Shane Meadows, 1999
785 American Movie Chris Smith, 1999
786 Audition Takashi Miike, 1999
787 Being John Malkovich Spike Jonze, 1999
788 Election Alexander Payne, 1999
789 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai Jim Jarmusch, 1999
790 Office Space Mike Judge, 1999
791 South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut Trey Parker, 1999
792 Summer of Sam Spike Lee, 1999
793 The Insider Michael Mann, 1999
794 The Limey Steven Soderbergh, 1999
795 The Matrix Lilly Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, 1999
796 The Sixth Sense M. Night Shyamalan, 1999
797 The Straight Story David Lynch, 1999
798 The Virgin Suicides Sofia Coppola, 1999
799 Three Kings David O. Russell, 1999
800 Wild Zero Tetsuro Takeuchi, 1999
801 Amores perros Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2000
802 Battle Royale Kinji Fukasaku, 2000
803 Best in Show Christopher Guest, 2000
804 Chuck & Buck Miguel Arteta, 2000
805 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ang Lee, 2000
806 In the Mood for Love Wong Kar-wai, 2000
807 Memento Christopher Nolan, 2000
808 Requiem for a Dream Darren Aronofsky, 2000
809 Sexy Beast Jonathan Glazer, 2000
810 Songs from the Second Floor Roy Andersson, 2000
811 The Filth and the Fury Julien Temple, 2000

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

2001-2016

812 The Low Down Jamie Thraves, 2000
813 Amélie Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001
814 Donnie Darko Richard Kelly, 2001
815 Frailty Bill Paxton, 2001
816 Jeepers Creepers Victor Salva, 2001
817 Mulholland Drive David Lynch, 2001
818 Ocean's Eleven Steven Soderbergh, 2001
819 Shaolin Soccer Stephen Chow, 2001
820 Spirited Away Hayao Miyazaki, 2001
821 The Devil's Backbone Guillermo del Toro, 2001
822 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Peter Jackson, 2001
823 The Others Alejandro Amenabar, 2001
824 The Royal Tenenbaums Wes Anderson, 2001
825 Training Day Antoine Fuqua, 2001
826 Y tu mama también Alfonso Cuaron, 2001
827 24 Hour Party People Michael Winterbottom, 2002
828 Adaptation. Spike Jonze, 2002
829 City of God Fernando Meirelles, Katia Lund, 2002
830 Hero Zhang Yimou, 2002
831 Infernal Affairs Andrew Lau Wai-keung, Alan Mak, 2002
832 Irreversible Gaspar Noé, 2002
833 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Park Chan-wook, 2002
834 Good Bye Lenin! Wolfgang Becker, 2003
835 High Tension Alexandre Aja, 2003
836 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Quentin Tarantino, 2003
837 Los Angeles Plays Itself Thom Andersen, 2003
838 Lost in Translation Sofia Coppola, 2003
839 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World Peter Weir, 2003
840 Memories of Murder Bong Joon-ho, 2003
841 Oldboy Park Chan-wook, 2003
842 Ong-Bak Prachya Pinkaew, 2003
843 School of Rock Richard Linklater, 2003
844 The Triplets of Belleville Sylvain Chomet, 2003
845 Touching the Void Kevin Macdonald, 2003
846 Windy City Heat Bobcat Goldthwait, 2003
847 Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy Adam McKay, 2004
848 Before Sunset Richard Linklater, 2004
849 Born to Fight Panna Rittikrai, 2004
850 Collateral Michael Mann, 2004
851 Dead Man's Shoes Shane Meadows, 2004
852 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Michel Gondry, 2004
853 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 Quentin Tarantino, 2004
854 Kung Fu Hustle Stephen Chow, 2004
855 Man on Fire Tony Scott, 2004
856 Napoleon Dynamite Jared Hess, 2004
857 Sideways Alexander Payne, 2004
858 Spider-Man 2 Sam Raimi, 2004
859 Team America: World Police Trey Parker, 2004
860 The Bourne Supremacy Paul Greengrass, 2004
861 The Incredibles Brad Bird, 2004
862 A History of Violence David Cronenberg, 2005
863 Brick Rian Johnson, 2005
864 Brokeback Mountain Ang Lee, 2005
865 Domino Tony Scott, 2005
866 Hidden Michael Haneke, 2005
867 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Shane Black, 2005
868 Sin City Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, 2005
869 The Descent Neil Marshall, 2005
870 Apocalypto Mel Gibson, 2006
871 Casino Royale Martin Campbell, 2006
872 Children of Men Alfonso Cuaron, 2006
873 Inside Man Spike Lee, 2006
874 Marie Antoinette Sofia Coppola, 2006
875 Pan's Labyrinth Guillermo del Toro, 2006
876 The Foot Fist Way Jody Hill, 2006
877 The Host Bong Joon-ho, 2006
878 United 93 Paul Greengrass, 2006
879 [REC] Jaume Balaguero, Paco Plaza, 2007
880 Control Anton Corbijn, 2007
881 Hot Rod Akiva Schaffer, 2007
882 No Country for Old Men Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 2007
883 Persepolis Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi, 2007
884 Superbad Greg Mottola, 2007
885 There Will Be Blood Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007
886 The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters Seth Gordon, 2007
887 Timecrimes Nacho Vigalondo, 2007
888 Zodiac David Fincher, 2007
889 Gomorrah Matteo Garrone, 2008
890 Happy-Go-Lucky Mike Leigh, 2008
891 Hunger Steve McQueen, 2008
892 Let the Right One In Tomas Alfredson, 2008
893 Man on Wire James Marsh, 2008
894 Synecdoche, New York Charlie Kaufman, 2008
895 The Dark Knight Christopher Nolan, 2008
896 The Ruins Carter Smith, 2008
897 The Wrestler Darren Aronofsky, 2008
898 A Prophet Jacques Audiard, 2009
899 A Serious Man Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 2009
900 Coraline Henry Selick, 2009
901 Crank: High Voltage Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor, 2009
902 District 9 Neill Blomkamp, 2009
903 Enter the Void Gaspar Noé, 2009
904 Fantastic Mr. Fox Wes Anderson, 2009
905 Fish Tank Andrea Arnold, 2009
906 Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea, 2009
907 Inglourious Basterds Quentin Tarantino, 2009
908 Le Donk & Scorz-ayz-ee Shane Meadows, 2009
909 Moon Duncan Jones, 2009
910 Splice Vincenzo Natali, 2009
911 World's Greatest Dad Bobcat Goldthwait, 2009
912 13 Assassins Takashi Miike, 2010
913 Animal Kingdom David Michod, 2010
914 Black Swan Darren Aronofsky, 2010
915 Inception Christopher Nolan, 2010
916 Point Blank Fred Cavayé, 2010
917 Senna Asif Kapadia, 2010
918 The Arbor Clio Barnard, 2010
919 The Social Network David Fincher, 2010
920 The Town Ben Affleck, 2010
921 The Trip Michael Winterbottom, 2010
922 Bernie Richard Linklater, 2011
923 Beyond the Black Rainbow Panos Cosmatos, 2011
924 Michael Markus Schleinzer, 2011
925 Midnight in Paris Woody Allen, 2011
926 The Artist Michel Hazanavicius, 2011
927 The Cabin in the Woods Drew Goddard, 2011
928 The Raid: Redemption Gareth Evans, 2011
929 The Skin I Live In Pedro Almodovar, 2011
930 Anna Karenina Joe Wright, 2012
931 Berberian Sound Studio Peter Strickland, 2012
932 Compliance Craig Zobel, 2012
933 Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino, 2012
934 Frances Ha Noah Baumbach, 2012
935 Holy Motors Léos Carax, 2012
936 Killing Them Softly Andrew Dominik, 2012
937 Life of Pi Ang Lee, 2012
938 Looper Rian Johnson, 2012
939 Magic Mike Steven Soderbergh, 2012
940 Moonrise Kingdom Wes Anderson, 2012
941 Skyfall Sam Mendes, 2012
942 Spring Breakers Harmony Korine, 2012
943 The Hunt Thomas Vinterberg, 2012
944 The Imposter Bart Layton, 2012
945 Blue Is the Warmest Color Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013
946 Blue Jasmine Woody Allen, 2013
947 Blue Ruin Jeremy Saulnier, 2013
948 Cheap Thrills E.L. Katz, 2013
949 Her Spike Jonze, 2013
950 Ida Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013
951 Inside Llewyn Davis Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 2013
952 Gravity Alfonso Cuaron, 2013
953 Locke Steven Knight, 2013
954 Only Lovers Left Alive Jim Jarmusch, 2013
955 Prisoners Denis Villeneuve, 2013
956 Snowpiercer Bong Joon-ho, 2013
957 The Counselor Ridley Scott, 2013
958 The Wolf of Wall Street Martin Scorsese, 2013
959 Under the Skin Jonathan Glazer, 2013
960 A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence Roy Andersson, 2014
961 Birdman Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2014
962 Boyhood Richard Linklater, 2014
963 Edge of Tomorrow Doug Liman, 2014
964 Force Majeure Ruben Ostlund, 2014
965 Gone Girl David Fincher, 2014
966 Goodnight Mommy Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala, 2014
967 Interstellar Christopher Nolan, 2014
968 It Follows David Robert Mitchell, 2014
969 John Wick Chad Stahelski, 2014
970 Love & Mercy Bill Pohlad, 2014
971 Nightcrawler Dan Gilroy, 2014
972 The Babadook Jennifer Kent, 2014
973 The Duke of Burgundy Peter Strickland, 2014
974 The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson, 2014
975 The Guest Adam Wingard, 2014
976 The LEGO Movie Phil Lord, Chris McKay, Christopher Miller, 2014
977 The One I Love Charlie McDowell, 2014
978 What We Do in the Shadows Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement, 2014
979 Whiplash Damien Chazelle, 2014
980 Wild Tales Damian Szifron, 2014
981 Carol Todd Haynes, 2015
982 Cop Car Jon Watts, 2015
983 Creed Ryan Coogler, 2015
984 Ex Machina Alex Garland, 2015
985 Green Room Jeremy Saulnier, 2015
986 Inside Out Pete Docter, 2015
987 Mad Max: Fury Road George Miller, 2015
988 Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Christopher McQuarrie, 2015
989 Mistress America Noah Baumbach, 2015
990 Sicario Denis Villeneuve, 2015
991 Spotlight Thomas McCarthy, 2015
992 The Diary of a Teenage Girl Marielle Heller, 2015
993 The Gift Joel Edgerton, 2015
994 The Hateful Eight Quentin Tarantino, 2015
995 The Lobster Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015
996 The Martian Ridley Scott, 2015
997 The Witch Robert Eggers, 2015
998 The Wolfpack Crystal Moselle, 2015
999 Victoria Sebastian Schipper, 2015
1000 The Neon Demon Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

998 The Wolfpack Crystal Moselle, 2015

An undistinguished documentary on a decidedly unweighty subject (and with a massive blindspot about its own conception), The Wolfpack is probably one of Wright's least defensible/sensible picks. Urgent, landmark documentaries like Act of Killing, Fog of War, Capturing The Friedmans, Crumb aren't on his list, and this piece of fluff is? Too bizarre.

Next up, back to the '70s with:
Melody (1971)
Electra Glide in Blue (1973)

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

377 Electra Glide in Blue James William Guercio, 1973

A pretty great-looking ramble through the same territory as Easy Rider and Two-Lane Black-top and Vanishing Point only this time from the vantage-point of a Vietnam Vet, straight arrow, motor-cycle cop in Monument Valley Arizona for the most part (with all the western film resonance that brings). It also has some of the same music instincts as Play Misty for Me and Zabriskie Point from the same period, so, e.g., there's a great concert performance thrown in.

The story and dialogue's fairly elliptical at times so I often had the feeling I was missing something or having to make guesses about what happened... and often the action was staged in a way that just made it easy to miss something. This isn't a problem at home when you can pause and rewind etc., but I imagine that back in 1973 I lot of people probably left the theater going 'Huh?' Films pay a price at the box office for not spelling things out clearly.... but maybe they make it back in rewatchability and cult-status later on?

Superior photography from Conrad Hall is a highlight throughout and some of the movie's thoughts about police paranoia and brutality feel quite timely right now. Every cop we see apart from Robert Blake is corrupt and one fantasizes that there's a 'Police genocide' going on. Yikes.

Jeannine Riley has a good supporting part that pays off with a scene that almost heads into Blue Velvet territory.

Does one really *need* Electra Glide after all the other movies I've mentioned? Probably not, but Wright doesn't seem to have been troubled by that sort of consideration (whereas if I make a top x list I'm always tortured by what I'm having to leave out, so I'm always eager to cull for redundancy, non-essential-ness, etc.!). Anyhow, I'm glad to have seen EGIB in the spirit of '70s downer completeness.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

377 Electra Glide in Blue James William Guercio, 1973
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A pretty great-looking ramble through the same territory as Easy Rider and Two-Lane Black-top and Vanishing Point only this time from the vantage-point of a Vietnam Vet, straight arrow, motor-cycle cop in Monument Valley Arizona for the most part (with all the western film resonance that brings). It also has some of the same music instincts as Play Misty for Me and Zabriskie Point from the same period, so, e.g., there's a great concert performance thrown in.

--

How about them early 70's road movies, huh? Especially the ones with the wide desert vistas and hilly highways ahead...

I would like to point out that a few years ago, I drove from Reno Nevada down to Las Vegas using a desert route and...it was like those movies. Vanishing Point in particular, I think I ran through some of the same desert towns.

---

The story and dialogue's fairly elliptical at times so I often had the feeling I was missing something or having to make guesses about what happened... and often the action was staged in a way that just made it easy to miss something. This isn't a problem at home when you can pause and rewind etc., but I imagine that back in 1973 I lot of people probably left the theater going 'Huh?' Films pay a price at the box office for not spelling things out clearly.... but maybe they make it back in rewatchability and cult-status later on?

--

Maybe. Two Lane Blacktop is another good example of this. The actors are standing there, saying lines, but they don't really fit as dialogue in the razor sharp Ping-Pong Psycho tradition. And the actors mumble. And sometimes the screen goes dark in the lighting and you can't see who's who.

"I Love the Seventies!"

----

Superior photography from Conrad Hall is a highlight throughout and some of the movie's thoughts about police paranoia and brutality feel quite timely right now. Every cop we see apart from Robert Blake is corrupt and one fantasizes that there's a 'Police genocide' going on. Yikes.

---

A theme that never really goes away. Keep in mind that in late (Xmas) 1973, Dirty Harry himself went up against a "uniformed death squad" in "Magnum Force." It seemed to be Clint Eastwood's apologia for the "fascist" aspects of Harry, but it won no solace for him from Pauline Kael(or was it Judith Crist?) who wrote: "Evidently Harry is only mad at these killer cops because they didn't check with him first."

The late Sidney Lumet made many films about crooked cops(Serpico, Prince of the City, Q and A, Night Falls on Manhattan), he said, "because that is the most important topic in the world. If your cops are corrupt, your society is in grave danger." (Or something like that.)

---

Jeannine Riley has a good supporting part that pays off with a scene that almost heads into Blue Velvet territory.

---

I've not seen all of this film, I don't remember her in it. She was a 60's cutie on ...Petticoat Junction?

As the younger folks say around these boards: does she get naked?

Oh, never mind.

---

Does one really *need* Electra Glide after all the other movies I've mentioned? Probably not, but Wright doesn't seem to have been troubled by that sort of consideration (whereas if I make a top x list I'm always tortured by what I'm having to leave out, so I'm always eager to cull for redundancy, non-essential-ness,

---

Well, you're doing a bang-up job.

I've only seen parts of this movie, but I do recall that the director had made his name as a producer of Chicago albums(?) and the famous last shot with Robert Blake , who slowly worked his way up to regular work (Baretta)...mainly by showing up and playing the rebel on Johnny Carson(Carson loved it) ...and of course eventually threw it all away.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

I've not seen all of this film, I don't remember her in it. She was a 60's cutie on ...Petticoat Junction?

That's her.

As the younger folks say around these boards: does she get naked?

No. She's quite sexy though. She plays a beaten-down-by-life waitress/hostess and she's in a belly-top in her big sad scene which shows off her very long mid-riff with a great nipped in waist. Her character tells us she was a rockette before things started going wrong for her, and we see that she's still got a body that won't quit (as guys say).

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

652 Virile Games Jan Svankmajer, 1988

Virile Games is a surreal, 14 minute, word-less, mostly collage and claymation short about football/soccer and the hooliganism that is often associated with it (particularly in the '80s). It didn't do much for me. Should perhaps be seen while intoxicated/stoned to be best appreciated I suspect.

At any rate, VG's inclusion marks Wright's list as a deeply personal one. Sticking to animation broadly conceived, maybe no other film buff alive would pick Virile Games over landmark late '80s animes like Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service yet that's what Wright does.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

336 Melody, Waris Hussein, 1971

Gawd, you need to be 10 or 11 to really enjoy Melody. It's the sort of film that breaks into a pop-song assisted montage literally every couple of minutes, i.e., about half the film is these montages. A very simple story that could be done within an hour is thereby stretched out to nearly double that length. If you quint properly I guess you can see some of Wes Anderson oeuvre as flowing from here, esp. Moonrise Kingdom but also Rushmore. Melody is a little like Moonrise Kingdom made by someone with no interest in production design, no real editing or shot-making skill, no understanding of good dialogue, and no ability to elicit good performances from young actors!

But, I dunno, the IMDb score for this film is 7.9 (on reletively few votes) - which is only just outside the IMDb top 250 (things like The Avengers and Roman Holiday are some of the lowest ranked 8.0s in the top 250 for comparison). So I'm guessing that Melody just does hit people very hard at a certain age and perhaps from a specific generation. There's no arguing with that.

In my view, then, this is another of Wright's picks that's truly personal.

684 The Rapture, Michael Tolkin, 1991

I remember this getting a delayed release or maybe re-release on the art-house circuit after The Player written by Tolkin hit fairly big in 1992....so I was glad to finally get to see it. So...Tolkin does the official Christian end-of-the-world scenario pretty straight. Rather like Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, The Rapture's ideal audience is a a certain sort of thoughtful Christian, almost everyone else it's either going to really annoy or slightly bore. I was in the latter category. That said, there's a good central performance from Mimi Rogers, and her initial (pre-finding God) 'swinger lifestyle' + work ennui is intelligently drawn. Still, *really* not my thing.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

That said, there's a good central performance from Mimi Rogers, and her initial (pre-finding God) 'swinger lifestyle' + work ennui is intelligently drawn

---

I saw The Rapture once on cable. I don't remember much about it other than the premise(which gets talked about and had an HBO series about it a few years ago, the Rapture that is.) I recall that Ms. Rogers(the first Mrs. Tom Cruise, I might add) did some sex scenes as part of that swinger lifestyle part.

What I mainly remember -- but not why it happened, or to who -- was a long terrifying sequence of a crazed shooter killing a lot of folks in an office. Am I right? Was someone close to the Rogers character killed?

The concept of a crazed shooter killing a lot of folks in an office is chilling and too real, I might also add.

I recall one episode of "Six Feet Under." Each episode opened with the death of a character by some oddball means sometimes(a cougar killing a mountain jogger, a woman whose head was crushed when she raised it up out of a sunroof and hit a low hanging pole, etc.) The "probable victim" was in her kitchen cooking with gas and on the phone. She's gonna die. No...the people on the end of the phone are going to die. Office shooting. Big surprise.

The John Grisham courtroom thriller "Runaway Jury" used then-noted actor Dylan McDermott to play a very brief role as a husband and father who is killed in the film's first scene: an office shooting.

I remember these scenes because they just seem to be one of the "top ten" horrors that could be visited upon "regular everyday people" in the course of their work. I doubt that Hitchcock could have ever brought himself to film such a thing...but it was his subject in more cinematic ways.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

What I mainly remember -- but not why it happened, or to who -- was a long terrifying sequence of a crazed shooter killing a lot of folks in an office. Am I right? Was someone close to the Rogers character killed?

That's one of the best and most memorable scenes for sure: pre-X-files, David Duchovny playing Mimi Rogers's husband (a sceptical swinger-type whom Rogers has been able to convert to her hyper-Christianity, and with whom she now - there's a '6 years later' intertitle - has a kid and a thriving business) is the shooter's final victim that we see.

The shooter isn't random, he's one of Duchovny's employees that he has to fire. There's a long-ish scene where we see Duchovny firing him as compassionately as it's possible to do so (explaining how they've tried to work with guy, got him to go to AA, etc. but the work's still terrible) but the guy just gets more and more angry and he ends up hurling a lot of invective against Duchovny's faith and the general saintliness of the office environment that Duchovny has created.

At this point we're about an hour into the movie waiting and expecting The Rapture to begin any second, and we expect that Rapture to be announced by Trumpets blaring from the heavens etc.

After the firing there's a short word-less, chorally-scored scene of Duchovny and Rogers at home in a maximally calm, The-End-Is-Nigh-but-we-couldn't-be-happier prayer circle with their kid. We cut back to a cherubic Duchovny in the office (the next day or possible a few days later we assume) on some thunderous sound. Could it be The Rapture arriving? No! It's the blasts from fired guy shooting up the office. He shoots and kills a few people then Duchonovy runs in to where he is:

uchovny: Louis... (imploringly)
Shooter: No speeches preacher.
Duchovny (raising his hands): I have a little girl.
Shooter: So what? (shoots Duchovny dead, checks that he's dead)

Cut to daughter greeting mourners at family home. Mimi Rogers and her daughter are calm and comforting everyone else.....

The concept of a crazed shooter killing a lot of folks in an office is chilling and too real, I might also add.

I had to check the timeline on this, but it turns out that The Rapture's office-shooting scene may have been one of the first directly responding to the up-tick of such incidents in the '80s. While disgruntled worker/office shooters/rampage killers have always occurred (once every decade or so in the US) there was a flurry in the late '80s and early '90s that really got people talking and nervous - a series of post office-related massacres (hence the grim humor of 'going postal') and a horrible stalking-related case in CA where the guy had the full military armor/1000s of rounds of ammo degree of preparedness for mayhem. The latter story was made into a pretty good and disturbing docu-drama,TV-movie in 1993, 'I Can Make You Love Me', w/ Brooke Shields as the stalkee and John-Boy Walton himself, Richard Thomas as the stalker. I remember that TV-movie being a bit of an event because of its novelty. But The Rapture's scene was 2 years ahead of that...

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

What I mainly remember -- but not why it happened, or to who -- was a long terrifying sequence of a crazed shooter killing a lot of folks in an office. Am I right? Was someone close to the Rogers character killed?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's one of the best and most memorable scenes for sure: pre-X-files, David Duchovny playing Mimi Rogers's husband (a sceptical swinger-type whom Rogers has been able to convert to her hyper-Christianity, and with whom she now - there's a '6 years later' intertitle - has a kid and a thriving business) is the shooter's final victim that we see.

---

Aha. David Duchovny has some of that Dylan McDermitt look to him. Interesting that they played office shooter victims in two separate films.

---

The shooter isn't random, he's one of Duchovny's employees that he has to fire. There's a long-ish scene where we see Duchovny firing him as compassionately as it's possible to do so (explaining how they've tried to work with guy, got him to go to AA, etc. but the work's still terrible) but the guy just gets more and more angry and he ends up hurling a lot of invective against Duchovny's faith and the general saintliness of the office environment that Duchovny has created.

---

Yes, I remember this now. Firing an employee is always a tricky bit of business, but nowadays I suppose it can stand as a life-endangering task.

---

Could it be The Rapture arriving? No! It's the blasts from fired guy shooting up the office. He shoots and kills a few people then Duchonovy runs in to where he is:

---

Bait and switch? I cannot recall if The Rapture was actually portrayed in what was a modestly budgeted film. (Ah, hell, besides the office shooting and the sex scenes, I can't remember anything. And all I remember of the sex scenes is that they were there.)

---

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
uchovny: Louis... (imploringly)
Shooter: No speeches preacher.
Duchovny (raising his hands): I have a little girl.
Shooter: So what? (shoots Duchovny dead, checks that he's dead)

Cut to daughter greeting mourners at family home. Mimi Rogers and her daughter are calm and comforting everyone else.....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A sad invocation of what Hitchcock himself covered in Psycho and Frenzy: there's no reasoning with someone gone mad who is out to kill you.

---

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The concept of a crazed shooter killing a lot of folks in an office is chilling and too real, I might also add.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had to check the timeline on this, but it turns out that The Rapture's office-shooting scene may have been one of the first directly responding to the up-tick of such incidents in the '80s. While disgruntled worker/office shooters/rampage killers have always occurred (once every decade or so in the US) there was a flurry in the late '80s and early '90s that really got people talking and nervous - a series of post office-related massacres (hence the grim humor of 'going postal')

---

The post office ones were particularly scary in suggesting that there was something about the work pressure there that was "ready to blow." One massacre inspired another and another.

I've always been incredibly polite to post office workers, no matter how slow they go!

In a different context, I've sometimes felt that the beloved 4 guys versus 200 massacre that climaxes The Wild Bunch could be seen as the Bunch "going postal." Yes, their friend has been tortured and killed, but they are middle-aged men at the end with no prospects...

--

and a horrible stalking-related case in CA where the guy had the full military armor/1000s of rounds of ammo degree of preparedness for mayhem. The latter story was made into a pretty good and disturbing docu-drama,TV-movie in 1993, 'I Can Make You Love Me', w/ Brooke Shields as the stalkee and John-Boy Walton himself, Richard Thomas as the stalker. I remember that TV-movie being a bit of an event because of its novelty. But The Rapture's scene was 2 years ahead of that...

---

Hmmm...didn't see that one. Well, office shootings are "in the air" with everything else that's horrible out there right now. But evidently, the odds are still with us that this WON'T happen to us...

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

901 Crank: High Voltage Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor, 2009

Unbelievably horrible, unless perhaps you see it with a group and you're all stoned out of your gourds, Crank 2 is padded out with various sorts of nonsense and is finally the sort of 90 minute film that is really 80 minutes + ten minutes of credits laced with bloopers.

I actually watched Crank (2006) in preparation for this. It's considerably better. Crank 2 just repeats most of Crank's greatest hits but with much amplified cartoonishness and with no real regard fr wither plot or character, becoming I suppose something like a live-action, hard-R, video-game or Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote movie.

Cranks 2's video-game-y, hyper-kinetic style does remind one a little of Edgar Wright's own Scott Pilgrim (also a failure in my view) but the plain fact of the matter is that Wright's just a lot better at such stuff than Neveldine and Taylor are. I remember N&T getting a bit of buzz out of the Crank films - they had some high-profile fans like Wright! - but that was clearly nuts as their subsequent (three duds in a row) career proves.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

918 The Arbor Clio Barnard, 2010

Absolutely shattering, innovative documentary about the life and family of precocious English voice-of-the-struggling-working-class playwright, Andrea Dunbar (who dies age 29). Becomes a case-study of cycles of hopelessness, abuse, and tragedy that's truly upsetting. Documentary works by having actors largely lipsync to tapes of Dunbar and her family and friends talking through Dunbar's life and those of her kids. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if The Arbor *sounds* at all like your sort of thing, it will be. It's a superb piece of work on a difficult subject-matter, one that probably will be remembered as one of *the* canonical documentaries henceforth. (It's the complete opposite of The Wolfpack from further down Wright's list!)

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

993 The Gift Joel Edgerton, 2015

A very impressive thriller debut written and directed by (as well as co-starring) Edgerton. Owes a fair bit to Haneke's Caché I'd say, or, put another way, The Gift feels like the exact mid-point between Caché and standard Hollywood insinuating-Psycho-inside films going back to at least Strangers On A Train. Good stuff.

Suddenly for me there's reason to look forward to Edgerton's new film Loving about the Loving v. Virginia US Supreme Court Case that struck down all laws (such as Virginia's) forbidding inter-racial marriages. I'd kind of written Loving off as purest Oscar-Bait, but Edgerton showed in The Gift that he's got some serious chops and is one to watch so even if it is Oscar-bait it could be a very superior example. If it is then Edgerton himself may quickly start racking up awards as fellow actors vote for one of their own (following in the footsteps of Redford, Beatty, Costner, Gibson, Affleck, etc.).

Update: Oops, Loving is written and directed by Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special); Edgerton only stars.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

561 Breathless Jim McBride, 1983

An interesting film that I'll need to see again (and meanwhile rewatch Godard's original) before I can reach a final verdict... I'd been looking forward to seeing this for a while since I vaguely remember the film getting poorly reviewed in 1983 and yet I've been aware since the '90s that it has its high-profile fans, most notably QT and Mark Kermode. I guess my way into the film (given that it has little of the timeless, ineffable cool of Godard's original) has therefore been to see it as trying to be a mixture of True Romance and Pulp Fiction before its time. (with a bit of Kill Bill 2 anticipation for good measure). True Romance rewrites and sexes up Badands much the way Breathless (1983) does Breathless (1960), and True Romances's way of using both music and pop-cultural references are both strongly in evidence in Breathless (1983). The use of multi-cultural 'Southlands' LA locations *feels* like Pulp Fiction (although the bits of PF it feels like *most* are, unfortunately, the Butch and Fabienne bits! The female lead in Breathless (1983) is Fabienne stretched out to 80 minutes!). First Time Through then I couldn't really say if I liked B (1983) or not; it's something to be ahead of your time but it doesn't necessarily make you good! Anyhow, it's a good sign that something makes you want to see it again, and Breathless definitely does that.

886 The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters Seth Gordon, 2007

Terrifically entertaining if insubstantial doc. about the world of the world champions of Donkey Kong and other arcade games. Well-edited and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Glad to have seen both of these.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

957 The Counselor Ridley Scott, 2013

Ha, I remember this one getting *slammed* by the critics when it came out... enough so that I never even *considered* seeing it (Scott's been a pretty erratic director since the mid-'80s). Well, The Counselor turns out to be very watchable even somewhat fascinating (even though at least on first viewing the mechanics of the main caper and the double- and triple-crosses are still pretty obscure to me, to the point where I wasn't completely sure who was doing most of the killing at the end of the film). I'll certainly watch it again sometime soon.

The Counselor wr. by Cormac McCarthy is kind working the same beat as McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, and also things like Traffic and Sicario, but with a Double Indemnity/Body Heat layer over the top of the (by now) usual border-land spectacular violence. If that *sounds* like your kind of thing then this film probably will be. Interesting dialogues throughout are the principal compensation for not completely understanding in real-time the plot/caper mechanics.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

954 Only Lovers Left Alive Jim Jarmusch, 2013

A languid vampire tale of no particular distinction in my view. Swinton and Hiddleston are both amazing physical and acting specimens, some of the production design is fun to eyeball, and there's some interesting music, but with little story to speak of and only a few repetitive ideas, OLLA feels like a 30-40 minute exercise needlessly stretched out over two hours.

I'm intrigued by the fact that OLLA made Wright's list but the somewhat similar A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014) - the b/w indie Iranian vampire flick shot in L.A.! - did not. The latter had a few problems, but it still struck me as having most of the virtues of OLLA while being rather more fun, and getting through its paces in about 25 mins less. Hmmm.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

906 Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea, 2009

A fascinating hybrid of documentary and lost-film-reconstruction. In 1964, Clouzot sets out to make his master statement that'll top Vertigo and Marienbad and 81/2. Inferno/Hell/L'Enfer. He gets unprecedented support from an American studio (officially budget is unlimited), and afters month of camera tests and make-up experimentation with the actors, Clouzot heads to his big location with no less than *three* complete ace film-crews.....and things fall apart. Clouzot has become so intrigued with all his new research and exploration that he's barely able to complete scenes. Actors are forced through hundreds of takes and eventually start walking off set, famous DPs do the same, and eventually Clouzot has a big heart attack which closes down production. Clouzot survives but he'll never be the same after the hugely expensive L'Enfer disaster. This doc. reconstructs as much as possible from the 175 reels that were shot (that includes the months of test footage)....and most of it looks amazing. (A good source of frame-grabs for image-avatars! Hence my own recent change in this department.) If Clouzot had been able to complete the film it doubtless would have at least been one of the most visually sensational films of the '60s.

The main problems I have with the doc. are that it leaves out a few big chunks of the story as far as I'm concerned. The big subject of L'Enfer is jealousy and its mind-bending-ness. I find it weird that the film never mentions that *the* great scandalous avant-garde, death-of-the-author French novel of the late '50s was Robbe-Grillet's (writer of Marienbad) Jealousy/La jalousie which plunges you into a twisted-by-jealousy mind in a then new way. That *has* to have been a big background inspiration for Clouzot, yet it's never mentioned in the film.

Something else the film never mentions: in 1994 Chabrol made (with Clouzot's wife's permission) his own film, L'Enfer, from Clouzot's script....and it's *excellent*. More normal than/less *far out*/psychedelic than what Clouzot was trying for....it's still a dynamite film....and it *is* the whole original script so it's really useful to see it *before* seeing the kind of half-reconstruction of Clouzot's intended L'Enfer here.

Anyhow, H-G Clouzot's Inferno (2009) is fascinating if you're into Clouzot and '60s film and/or tales of Directors losing their minds and their films. It wouldn't make my top 1000 list but it's still my sort of thing.

Update: The doc. is currently available in full on youtube (you have to click in the right button to get the english subtitles):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1GH8ck_QEI
Someone has also put up (with a techno soundtrack) about 10 minutes of some of the greatest hits from Clouzot's test footage here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2efgpM-GCA

955 Prisoners Denis Villeneuve, 2013

Pretty solid, long police procedural welded to a kind of commentary on the use of torture in the Global War on Terror. Not sure, first time through what it was actually saying about all that, especially given that the film elided the consequences for all but the main torturer. Villeneuve has pretty much been given the keys to Hollywood after this and Sicario: he's got the new sci-fi Arrival coming out shortly and he's current filming Blade Runner 2049. He's definitely proficient but maybe doesn't have quite the eye and editing chops of a Ridley Scott or a Fincher. Put another way, he's more a Fleisher than a Hitchcock. But, hell, these days we'll take a Fleisher! Villeneuve is one of the few people getting to make relatively big-budget non-superhero, original script films period, and we have to salute the guy for having achieved that status. Still wouldn't put Prisoners on any major lists myself but it's worth seeing.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

842 Ong-Bak Prachya Pinkaew, 2003

A Thai Martial Arts/Parkour/Boxing action-film.... the sort of film that insists on replaying any especially sensational kick or blow from 5 or 6 different angles. Not my sort of thing... and not in the same league I'd say as The Raid: Redemption (2011) (also on Wright's list), a martial arts epic that does a much better job at characterization, story, themes, you name it.

Ong-Bak is fun enough, and doubtless Thailand deserved to have *its* Jackie Chan or Jet Li, but this is not a film I'll watch again, nor will I track down Ong-Bak 2,3,4...

Thinking back to 2003 and looking at what did not make Wright's list from that year including Pirates of The Carribean 1, Dogville, Capturing the Friedmans, Fog of War, Bad Santa, Mystic River, maybe even The Station Agent and Thirteen...I think I'd take any/all of those ahead of Ong-Bak.

In general tho' there's quite a bit of martial arts stuff on Wright's list (QT has the same weakness I believe). I may have to face that, with only very rare exceptions (like The Raid as I mentioned above), that whole genre is a bit of blind-spot for me the way musicals are for some other people. I don't think I'm going to be able to follow through my notional plan to watch everything previously unseen on Wright's list; henceforth I'll mostly pass over anything that's obviously martial artsy.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

970 Love & Mercy Bill Pohlad, 2014

A better-than-average but not truly-superior biopic of Brian Wilson. The films cuts between Wilson in the '60s (played by Paul Dano) as he becomes a studio genius putting together Pet Sounds, Good Vibrations and Surf's Up, and Wilson in the '80s (played by John Cusack) as he finds the love of a good woman (nicely played by Elizabeth Banks, who's growing on me) and breaks free of a wretched psychologist who'd become his ultra-controlling legal guardian. The best things in the film are the studio-whiz recreations with Dano (who's the spitting image of Wilson) and Banks, but of course *they* can never meet since they're in different halves of the film... which is frustrating. For a large chunk of the movie you feel like you've stuck in one of those Julia & Julia movies - a movie of two very unbalanced halves. Ultimately my taste on this front is just more orthodoxly high-brow than Wright's: for me it's insane to have Love and Mercy on a top 1000 list ahead of things like Amadeus and Topsy Turvy and Bound for Glory and I'm Not There, or even Walk The Line and Saving Mr Banks.

626 Lethal Weapon Richard Donner, 1987

It was good to finally catch up with LW. Lots of elements from it - the Xmas setting, people falling from great heights onto cars, the heavy quipping, blonde super-soldier nemesis bad-guy, etc. - turn up but done much better with Die Hard the following year, and various other elements including surprise exploding houses (just as our heroes walk up to them) became de rigeur after this so I guess I have to give LW and Shane Black some credit for a kind of cornerstone '80s and '90s action film, for getting these elements all together and out there first.

Still, for me, the film drags, neither half of the central buddy duo really works for me, the mainly sax and guitar score is obnoxious and obtrusive, the inciting incident of the plot (i.e., the model/hooker jumping to her death) doesn't work at all when you think about it (once the bad-guys are revealed it's clear they would have killed the girl themselves and not used a convoluted scheme of hiring another hooker to poison her), and, e.g., the first guy (who ends up dying in the pool) who shoots at Murtagh and Riggs is just the dead girl's pimp/porno-producer as far as we know, not one of the main bad-guys whose only connection to the dead girl is that she's daughter of one of their own, so *his* action simply doesn't make sense (if *that's* directly from Shane Black's s/play then I say that that s/play isn't very good at plot basics). And visually LW isn't in the same class as things like The Untouchables or Robocop or even Predator or The Lost Boys from the same year. In other words, LW strikes me as kind of a paradigmatic, OK-for-Friday-Night, 3-stars-if-we're-being-very-generous movie. It wouldn't be anywhere near any top-anything list o' mine.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

626 Lethal Weapon Richard Donner, 1987
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was good to finally catch up with LW. Lots of elements from it - the Xmas setting, people falling from great heights onto cars, the heavy quipping, blonde super-soldier nemesis bad-guy, etc. - turn up but done much better with Die Hard the following year

---

Though I too think that Die Hard is a much better thriller and movie than Lethal Weapon, they are bonded together via several elements: the musical composer(Michael Kamen, I believe) had such a distinctive style, particularly during the action scenes, that Die Hard seems a CONTINUATION of Lethal Weapon, and the producer, Joel Silver, made his mark in the nineties by throwing all sorts of big budget money, directors, and cinematographers at these projects. When Clint Eastwood's cheapjack and minimal "The Dead Pool"(Dirty Harry 5) came out in 1988, it was anhilated at the box office by "Die Hard," which showed that: big budgets were now going to be a part of the action movie, too.

I find myself so often nostalgically drawn to the movies of 1958-1962 -- well before my time as an adult movie goer. I find myself more cynically drawn to the movies of the late eighties. They are just as distinctive in their own way, but really, by the late 80's, TV-series style narrative(COP TV series narrative, ala "Starsky and Hutch") had just been gussied up with big budgets, sleek looks, and a kind of "Star Wars"-infused special effects and bullets emphasis.

Lethal Weapon of 1987 was a late-breaking "creative sequel" to the movie that I REALLY think started it all: "48 HRS" of 1982 with Nick Nolte (a favorite of mine at that time; hulking, gravel-voiced but boyish) and Eddie Murphy(exploding as the biggest star SNL ever gave us, yet separate from all the rest of them.) I think Joel Silver produced that , too. But it took the late 80's and Michael Kamen to really set the mold. Cop movies were all the rage for awhile: Tango and Cash(Stallone and Kurt Russell), Red Heat(Schwarzenegger and JAMES Belushi), Stakeout (a comebacking Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez) and ALL the Lethal Weapons, which edged us into the nineties with The Last Boy Scout(from Shane Black again; Bruce Willis and Damon Waynons) and Rush Hour(Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.) And then buddy cops burned out and comic book heroes came in.

All that history is perhaps why "The Nice Guys" was a disproportionately nostalgic and emotional experience for me, this year. (Though Crowe and Gosling aren't cops.)

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and various other elements including surprise exploding houses (just as our heroes walk up to them) became de rigeur after this so I guess I have to give LW and Shane Black some credit for a kind of cornerstone '80s and '90s action film, for getting these elements all together and out there first.

---

They really did. 48 HRS wasn't really done the same way; it took Lethal Weapon to "set the template" for quite some time.

"Die Hard" -- to its credit -- really went in another direction and became a DIFFERENT template: the hero versus terrorists(usually criminals, not political.) The joke became: "Die Hard on a BLANK." Die Hard on a bus(Speed); Die Hard at the hockey game(Sudden Death); Die Hard on a mountain(Cliffhanger); Die Hard on a ship(Speed 2.)

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Still, for me, the film drags, neither half of the central buddy duo really works for me, the mainly sax and guitar score is obnoxious and obtrusive, the inciting incident of the plot (i.e., the model/hooker jumping to her death) doesn't work at all when you think about it (once the bad-guys are revealed it's clear they would have killed the girl themselves and not used a convoluted scheme of hiring another hooker to poison her), and, e.g., the first guy (who ends up dying in the pool) who shoots at Murtagh and Riggs is just the dead girl's pimp/porno-producer as far as we know, not one of the main bad-guys whose only connection to the dead girl is that she's daughter of one of their own, so *his* action simply doesn't make sense (if *that's* directly from Shane Black's s/play then I say that that s/play isn't very good at plot basics).

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"Lethal Weapon" was released in March of 1987; "Die Hard" in the summer of 1988. That one film was selected as a big summer blockbuster and the other as a "spring low-level event" tells you: the studio felt "Lethal Weapon" was flawed in some way. And it was. The script. Famous as Shane Black was for making so much money as a screenwriter so young, his plotting was for crap. A lot of "Lethal Weapon" is literally incoherent, and the whole thing boils down to a WAY too long martial arts/wrestling fight between Mel Gibson and Gary Busey(impressively slimmed down as the albino-haired villain.)

The black/white pairing of Gibson and Danny Glover was probably good box office. And giving Glover the happy family to Gibson's suicidal loner made the movie "Dirty Harry Meets The Cosby Show"(in the words of one critic.)

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And visually LW isn't in the same class as things like The Untouchables or Robocop or even Predator or The Lost Boys from the same year.

--

True. Again...a "March movie," it was. By the way, if The Untouchables was my favorite of 1987 AND of the 80's, one reason is that I think it took the "cop buddy template" of the decade and added elements of period piece, moving drama, great script(David Mamet) and great performances(Connery at length; DeNiro in cameo) and gave us "the best buddy cop movie of the buddy cop decade." Also,The Untouchables did double duty as "kind of a Western" and "kind of a Hitchcock movie"(courtesy of director Brian DePalma, who just couldn't help himself.)

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In other words, LW strikes me as kind of a paradigmatic, OK-for-Friday-Night, 3-stars-if-we're-being-very-generous movie. It wouldn't be anywhere near any top-anything list o' mine.

--

Understood, but this, I think: Warners saw Lethal Weapon the very same way, but they ended up with a much bigger hit than expected, Mel Gibson became a much bigger star than expected, and thus we got Lethal Weapons 2, 3, and 4. Lethal Weapon 2 was one of the big SUMMER movies of 1989 (Warners other big release that summer was Batman; but they promoted Lethal Weapon 2 just as well.)

On Mel Gibson and Lethal Weapon: quite a career break and he almost didn't take it. He was offered two leads at the same time: The Untouchables(Elliott Ness) and Lethal Weapon. Gibson chose Lethal Weapon and got a franchise part; The Untouchables went to Kevin Costner and made HIM a star. In fact, if you tie in Bruce Willis("a TV star") getting Die Hard after Arnold, Sly, Clint and...Al Pacino! and...Richard Gere! turned it down, you can see that 1987-1988 minted three new male movie stars: Gibson, Costner, and Willis. All via cop action roles.

But Mel Gibson had been around a long time. "Mad Max" in 1979 launched him a little bit(it was a foreign indie) and "Mad Max The Road Warrior" in 1982 made him a star but..Gibson then floundered for five years in "prestige" movies like The Year of Living Dangerously, Mrs. Stoffel, The Bounty, and The River that did nothing for his box office profile. His simple choice of "Lethal Weapon" finally did it for Mel Gibson. Perhaps he chafed at that. All those prestige movies and a cop action film made him a superstar.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

Lethal Weapon of 1987 was a late-breaking "creative sequel" to the movie that I REALLY think started it all: "48 HRS" of 1982 with Nick Nolte (a favorite of mine at that time; hulking, gravel-voiced but boyish) and Eddie Murphy(exploding as the biggest star SNL ever gave us, yet separate from all the rest of them.) I think Joel Silver produced that , too. But it took the late 80's and Michael Kamen to really set the mold. Cop movies were all the rage for awhile: Tango and Cash(Stallone and Kurt Russell), Red Heat(Schwarzenegger and JAMES Belushi), Stakeout (a comebacking Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez) and ALL the Lethal Weapons, which edged us into the nineties with The Last Boy Scout(from Shane Black again; Bruce Willis and Damon Waynons) and Rush Hour(Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.) And then buddy cops burned out and comic book heroes came in.

Thanks for all this background ecarle. I didn't see (and still haven't seen) *any*, and it surely is against this background that LW's importance emerges.

All that history is perhaps why "The Nice Guys" was a disproportionately nostalgic and emotional experience for me, this year. (Though Crowe and Gosling aren't cops.)

I thought of The Nice Guys after watching LW... and much prefer it.

On Mel Gibson and Lethal Weapon: quite a career break and he almost didn't take it. He was offered two leads at the same time: The Untouchables(Elliott Ness) and Lethal Weapon. Gibson chose Lethal Weapon and got a franchise part; The Untouchables went to Kevin Costner and made HIM a star. In fact, if you tie in Bruce Willis("a TV star") getting Die Hard after Arnold, Sly, Clint and...Al Pacino! and...Richard Gere! turned it down, you can see that 1987-1988 minted three new male movie stars: Gibson, Costner, and Willis. All via cop action roles.

Interesting.

But Mel Gibson had been around a long time. "Mad Max" in 1979 launched him a little bit(it was a foreign indie) and "Mad Max The Road Warrior" in 1982 made him a star but..Gibson then floundered for five years in "prestige" movies like The Year of Living Dangerously, Mrs. Stoffel, The Bounty, and The River that did nothing for his box office profile. His simple choice of "Lethal Weapon" finally did it for Mel Gibson. Perhaps he chafed at that. All those prestige movies and a cop action film made him a superstar.

Much as I don't think that highly of LW, it does almost eeriely get elements of plot and character and feel to snap into place for the first time that were then picked up by others. And Gibson suddenly snapping into focus as a star with the Martin Riggs character is a really great example of this: I don't think Gibson had ever played 'crazy' before this, ditto I don't think he'd ever been tortured on screen before this (or, hang on, did that happen in the third Mad Max 'Beyond Thunderdome'?).... well after LW this 'crazy quippy Mel who kinda digs being strung-up and tortured' *was* his star persona and what he mainly played on-screen.... and haunted him as a director and off-screen too at least until he ended up flaming out at the end of the '00s from which he's finally come back much older and presumably wiser and calmed down recently.

It's all so fateful around LW isn't it? I really think Gibson would have been downright bad and miscast as Elliot Ness, and if Gibson doesn't do LW then he probably never really transcends his original stoic Aussie/Mad Max semi-stardom. Gibson was Martin Riggs, the audience knew it, and handsomely rewarded him for it. But as with Perkins as Norman there were costs for Gibson from revealing so much... the role was a Faustian bargain for Gibson that I'm sure he's probably thought long and hard about in the last decade or so.

BTW, the AVClub has continued its review of the history of action movies. They're up to 1987 where they of course chose LW:
http://tinyurl.com/jexc96v

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Lethal Weapon of 1987 was a late-breaking "creative sequel" to the movie that I REALLY think started it all: "48 HRS" of 1982 with Nick Nolte (a favorite of mine at that time; hulking, gravel-voiced but boyish) and Eddie Murphy(exploding as the biggest star SNL ever gave us, yet separate from all the rest of them.) I think Joel Silver produced that , too. But it took the late 80's and Michael Kamen to really set the mold. Cop movies were all the rage for awhile: Tango and Cash(Stallone and Kurt Russell), Red Heat(Schwarzenegger and JAMES Belushi), Stakeout (a comebacking Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez) and ALL the Lethal Weapons, which edged us into the nineties with The Last Boy Scout(from Shane Black again; Bruce Willis and Damon Waynons) and Rush Hour(Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.) And then buddy cops burned out and comic book heroes came in.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for all this background ecarle. I didn't see (and still haven't seen) *any*, and it surely is against this background that LW's importance emerges.

---

I saw 'em all. Even as back then, I at least TRIED to keep up better with art films and Oscar bait, too. But to me, those movies were like "eating peanuts." I had a tough office workload back then, and I just enjoyed go seeing the shoot -em ups and the bad guys losing.

They were all "genre" but varations within a theme: for instance, "Stakeout" believably positioned Richard Dreyfuss as a tempermental, wiry "little man" kind of action cop who believably beat the hell out of the bad guys. I was really surprised. BUT Dreyfuss used his Best Actor "sensitivity chops" to romance the endangered female lead believably, too. Emilio Estevez was much more charming than his brother Charlie as the younger buddy.

"Stakeout" also used gorgeous Seattle/Northwest locales and climaxed amidst all the dangerous crushing-logs and dismembering sawmills of the lumber industry.

Tango and Cash worked for giving the ladies two extremely gorgeous male specimens in Stallone and Russell, when both men looked their best and both men had a charisma that far exceeded the material.

Red Heat posited Arnold as Russian cop paired in the US with an American cop and..well, not so good. But by the director of 48 HRS. In fact, in plot if not characters, it is kind of a remake of 48 HRS.

One I forgot was "Shoot to Kill" which brought Sidney Poitier out of semi-retirement to buddy up as an FBI agent paired with outdoorsman Tom Beringer. The plot was scary/nifty, set in the mountains of the Northwest again. Beringer's mountain guide girlfriend has taken five men on a mountain climb -- one of them is a psycho killer criminal mastermind. But which one? While Poitier and Beringer (the city boy and the country boy) try to catch up with the hikers, we get a pretty scary scene in which the killer among the five reveals himself by killing all of the other four in one fell swoop, except for the female guide. Its one of those scenes you just REMEMBER. No hiking climbs with strangers for me.

These movies poured out with EXACTLY the same rapidity that we are getting the comic book movies today, but I fear the comic book trend is immortal.

---

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All that history is perhaps why "The Nice Guys" was a disproportionately nostalgic and emotional experience for me, this year. (Though Crowe and Gosling aren't cops.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought of The Nice Guys after watching LW... and much prefer it.

---

Well , same screenwriter, with two -- maybe three -- more Shane Blacks in between that are even more like The Nice Guys.

ONE: The Last Boy Scout: Willis and Waymans in LA. Great opening scene: a halfback being chased down an NFL field by the defense elects to get his touchdown by pulling a handgun and SHOOTING his pursuers. Then he shoots himself. THAT's a way to start a mystery.

TWO: The Long Kiss Goodnight: the novelty is a woman(Geena Davis) paired with a black private eye (Samuel L. Jackson, hilarious.) Oh, the woman is a happy housewife who slowly remembers that she's a top CIA martials arts expert and assassin.

THREE: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer(as a gay private eye) in LA. This one is the most LIKE The Nice Guys: offbeat, funny, a bit self-mocking.

These movies dragged on into the nineties, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was rather an "attempted Shane Black comeback" in the 00's. It didn't take.

And The Nice Guys just wasn't a big enough hit to bring it all back. I remain nonplussed that The Nice Guys was set in the SEVENTIES. You'd think Black would have set it in The Big Eighties to hook up with his prime era.

--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mel Gibson and Lethal Weapon: quite a career break and he almost didn't take it. He was offered two leads at the same time: The Untouchables(Elliott Ness) and Lethal Weapon. Gibson chose Lethal Weapon and got a franchise part; The Untouchables went to Kevin Costner and made HIM a star. In fact, if you tie in Bruce Willis("a TV star") getting Die Hard after Arnold, Sly, Clint and...Al Pacino! and...Richard Gere! turned it down, you can see that 1987-1988 minted three new male movie stars: Gibson, Costner, and Willis. All via cop action roles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But Mel Gibson had been around a long time. "Mad Max" in 1979 launched him a little bit(it was a foreign indie) and "Mad Max The Road Warrior" in 1982 made him a star but..Gibson then floundered for five years in "prestige" movies like The Year of Living Dangerously, Mrs. Stoffel, The Bounty, and The River that did nothing for his box office profile. His simple choice of "Lethal Weapon" finally did it for Mel Gibson. Perhaps he chafed at that. All those prestige movies and a cop action film made him a superstar.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Much as I don't think that highly of LW, it does almost eeriely get elements of plot and character and feel to snap into place for the first time that were then picked up by others.

---

Yes. Its the old problem, I think. Male leading men of a certain type are simply "handsome guys" until they get a handle on what kind of persona to project. Gibson was simply given too many "square" roles before Lethal Weapon, and the car chases and gargoyles rather swamped him in the Mad Max movies. Here...we get to know Martin Riggs. We come to understand his anguish(an early scene in which he puts a gun in his mouth sets up the trauma that can only be saved by bonding with Glover's family.) Bruce Willis got the persona of the dese/dem/and dose Jersey boy wiscracker(he'd been a COMEDY star before going action) and Kevin Costner had good looks(a combination of Steve McQueen and Gary Cooper), a surfer dude voice and -- crucially, a surliness -- that gave him some anti-hero bona fides.

But all three guys started with...good looks.

Another note on Mel Gibson in LW: he himself noted that he based some of the characterization on the Three Stooges, well two of them(Moe and Curly), and he does a Curly impression in the film. Gibson told an interviewer that the biggest male stars of his time were in comedy, so he put some comedy in his leading man work.

---

And Gibson suddenly snapping into focus as a star with the Martin Riggs character is a really great example of this: I don't think Gibson had ever played 'crazy' before this, ditto I don't think he'd ever been tortured on screen before this (or, hang on, did that happen in the third Mad Max 'Beyond Thunderdome'?)

---

Not so much in Thunderdome. Thunderdome actually seemed like a step back from the exhilaration of The Road Warrior, to me.

But one thing I've read is that "when Hollywood knows it has a potential star, they will wait for him to happen." This happened with Brad Pitt..he had a lot of misses before it kicked in(and he still has no franchises beyond Ocean's Eleven). And it happened with Mel Gibson.

---

.... well after LW this 'crazy quippy Mel who kinda digs being strung-up and tortured'

---

The "strung up and tortured" thing was evidently missed by all for a long time until it became clear that he LIKED such scenes. His long disembowlment in "Braveheart" was the stuff of torture heaven. He got badly beaten in several of the LWs and then, of course, he really went to town with Passion of the Christ. And yet...all was forgiven because he made money and sometimes did cute comedies like "What Women Want."

--
*was* his star persona and what he mainly played on-screen.... and haunted him as a director and off-screen too at least until he ended up flaming out at the end of the '00s from which he's finally come back much older and presumably wiser and calmed down recently.

---

That's the word. He is clean and sober. His new war movie is Oscar bait. Certain scripts are being offered...but not "big" ones. He's around 60, it will get tougher. On the other hand, Denzel and Liam and Costner are finding all sorts of work at that age. Willis, a bit less.

I'm intrigued by two things right now: Gibson's got a giant un-movie star like beard(I assume he'll shave it for the right role) and he's got a pregnant 20-something girlfriend. Rich male movie stars, whether hot or not, still get THOSE. So SHE doesn't care about his past with women.

---

It's all so fateful around LW isn't it? I really think Gibson would have been downright bad and miscast as Elliot Ness,

---

The role required a certain innocence(in the beginning at least) that Gibson didn't have. The barely tested Costner with that surfer guy voice could DO the innocence. And reveal the surliness as he went along. (Costner lucked out in the summer of 1987: The Untouchables launched him as an action star and "No Way Out" gave him a steamy back of the limo sex scene with Sean Young that launched him as a romantic sex star.)

---

and if Gibson doesn't do LW then he probably never really transcends his original stoic Aussie/Mad Max semi-stardom.

---

Probably not. "Mad Max" was too "foreign/art/indie-ish" and his "prestige" movies were not being seen by anyone. "A stroke of Hollywood luck."

--

Yep. Right role, right time. What's weird then, was in those days, the trade press put out word about different actors deciding on different roles. When I read that Gibson was looking at "The Untouchables" or "Lethal Weapon," I knew exactly what The Untouchables would be, but "Lethal Weapon" was just a meaningless title.

--

Gibson was Martin Riggs, the audience knew it, and handsomely rewarded him for it.

---

Gibson was handsome, shirtless he was six-pack fit, but it was the "crazyness" of Martin Riggs that sold the part -- along with how the "crazy" Martin Riggs could bond with the stable Danny Glover and his family. A good part.

The long action stretch at the end -- the escape from the torturers at the nightclub, the bus versus car crash, the machine guns and yes, a little bit, the mano-y-mano twixt Gibson and Busey -- made for one long final stretch of excitement. The critic's pull quote for ads was "the best action movie since Raiders of the Lost Ark."

---

But as with Perkins as Norman there were costs for Gibson from revealing so much... the role was a Faustian bargain for Gibson that I'm sure he's probably thought long and hard about in the last decade or so.

---

Yeah. Word is he was always a bit troubled, had drinking problems early on, had to reconcile his religious-conservative upbringing with the temptations of Hollywood, etc, etc, etc. Becoming a giant movie star can have its pressures.

---

BTW, the AVClub has continued its review of the history of action movies. They're up to 1987 where they of course chose LW:

---

I'll take a look. LW is the right choice. The Untouchables toyed with some "prestige" period piece seriousness. Newsweek called it "the best Mafia movie since The Godfather." That's high praise. (Too high praise.)

Lethal Weapon was "the one."

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

932 Compliance Craig Zobel, 2012

Well-acted, -scored and -shot beyond-belief true crime story. Hard to discuss the content without spoilers, so I won't, but the fact that these events really happened (and were part of a large wave of similar crimes) is little short of staggering. The film probably wisely decides not to overstay its welcome (it's under 90 mins), and in its small way is an important film that needed to be made, and will always be worth watching.

Compliance is, however, not ultimately as interesting as it starts off threatening to be. After 30 minutes I was thinking it was in Lumet and Mike Leigh territory for tense drama rooted in some bit of the real world one normally takes for granted - here it's the world of fast food production and the folks on minimum wages who do those jobs. Somehow that analytical drive gets lost in the second half of the film as it works to wrap up its true-crime plot. Lumet or Leigh would have figured out a way to keep the analysis alive to the end.

633 The Hidden Jack Sholder, 1987

I know that this film has its fans but I thought it was pretty bad. It *looks* like a made-for-TV, SyFy channel movie. The plotting's inconsistent, the action's very unexciting, all the basics really are fluffed. A Cameron or Carpenter or Michael Mann or McTiernan or Friedkin or Verhoeven would have knocked this 'body-snatcher, serial-killer alien on the loose in LA' script into shape and then committed to specific casting and shooting ideas that would have brought the film to life. As it stands The Hidden feels like an empty vessel, as though every single creative decision on it has been exercised in the most lifeless way possible. In sum, The Hidden (1987) is one of the worst '80s movies I've ever seen.

Note that The Hidden is one of 20 films from 1987 that are on Wright's list. I really do find it hard to believe that he chooses it ahead of Predator in particular (same basic genre, vastly superior). And it's just weird to have so much stuff from 1987 and yet to have no room for any of Broadcast News, Dirty Dancing, Radio Days, Wings of Desire, Au Revoir Les Enfants, The Dead, etc..

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

975 The Guest Adam Wingard, 2014

Complete garbage that's nonetheless quite enjoyable. The Guest entertainingly fuses the renegade vet. movie (First Blood) with the slasher (Halloween) with the Psycho-Inside movie (Internal Affairs, Fatal Attraction, Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Single White Female, etc.), and the whole thing's presented with a bit of a wink and the ending/final gag in particular gets a big laugh.

Not a movie I think anyone would need to see more than once (and there's lots of wrong with it technically - e.g., a lot of the action is flat-out unintelligible and much of the dialogue audio is buried by the blaring retro-techno score - some of which is used diegetically in party scenes that it's almost impossible to believe would be soundtracked by such stuff in the real world). Low-brow pop-corn movies for groups of teens have their place, but not on a top #### list in my view.

Update: One point I shoudl have made: the lead/villain is played by Dan Stevens, whom I previously only knew a little for playing a relatively effete character on Downton Abbey. He obviously *really* went for it in this film - he was magnetic, completely convincing as an American and as a buff special forces guys. He does look quite a lot like Paul Walker so I think there may be a real gap for him right on Hollywood just on pure looks alone too. In sum, this was a star-making performance: every Hollywood producer will have seen this film and seen $$. All the jobs he got off the back of this performace/film should be showing up about now. I'll be keeping an eye out for him.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

887 Timecrimes Nacho Vigalondo, 2007

Sweet Spanish Time-travel thriller (certain to be pointlessly remade in English I'd guess). Less convoluted than high-quality genre-peers like Primer (2004) and Predestination (2014) [neither of which makes Wright's list], Timecrimes may pack more of an emotional punch, be more satisfying than those films for most viewers I think. Ultimately Timecrimes feels a little more like Being John Malk and Eternal Sunshine than its time-travel peer-films do, which is probably a good thing for most people.

Since I see essentially all time-travel-themed films that come out, I was maybe a little ahead of the film watching it more than most people would be, which is not ideal. I was expecting a little more convolutedness than I got, so when a central crime *isn't undone* or revealed as having been staged I was surprised. Pleasantly as it happens, but not all genre-experts will feel the same way.

Anyhow, good film, and an impressive directorial debut for writer/director Vigalondo. He's got a very-Charlie-Kaufman-ish-sounding film starring Anne Hathaway coming out early next year called Colossal that should be his ticket to Nolan-, Cuaron-style studio-auteur status if it hits big. I'll be checking it out for sure (it got good, though bemused reviews at the Toronto Film Fest).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

821 The Devil's Backbone Guillermo del Toro, 2001

A stately (first hour a little slow for many viewers I suspect) ghost story set at the end of the Spanish Civil War (in the late '30s) in an Orphanage/School up on Spain's High Plains, TDB is a very nice, controlled piece of work by Del Toro. It suffers a little by comparison with other great Spanish Cvil War-inflected pieces, esp. De Toro's own later Pan's Labyrinth (for which TDB feels like a dry run) and Spirit of the Beehive, both of which are also on Wright's list. Those films strike me as a just a little more interesting than TDB overall - both richer and clearer and better paced from their beginnings and yet more mystery-preserving/inexhaustible/rewatchable by their ends. [Indeed, one slight problem I had with TDB is its final shot, which I initially misinterpreted - I won't explain the problem here because that would involve spoiling the shot of anyone here, but when I rewatched the shot to check, it did strike me that the confusion could and should have been forestalled by the director.]

My preferences here may be just a matter of taste I suppose, and maybe if I'd seen TDB first I wouldn't feel the way I do. At any rate, TDB is still a very good film, with a nice score, some of the best deep-focus color photography this side of VistaVision, some good monologues, and first-rate performances across the board. Certainly, if one is looking for a follow-up watch to Pan's Lab. this is the De Toro film to go for: none of his films in English (Pacific Rim, Mimic, Crimson Peak, Hellboy, Blade 2) are up to the standards of his Spanish-lang films.

240 Daisies Vera Chytilova, 1966

Experimental, surreal, highly episodic Czech film that's both exhausting and exhilirating to watch. Roughly half of the episodes involving our two doll-like leads are pretty memorable for both their content and technicals while the other half are experimental misfires that don't stick in the mind. Put another way, Daisies feels like a real 'film school' film - a film everyone probably should see at some point (esp. if they;re going to be making films themselves) regardless of whether it's strictly enjoyable to do so. Daisies has almost certainly been a good sources of idea for MTV promos and videos back in the day, and doubtless there rare advertising campaigns and fashions shoots as well as other films that have stolen bits and pieces (There's a famous/infamous Rivette film, Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) that I'm pretty sure references and emulates Daisies directly but I'd need to rewatch it to be sure.). Thus, I'm glad to have seen Daises even though it's not really my sort of thing and a tiring watch: no real plot, lots of hyperspeed montage, lots of different film-stocks used, lots of mixing of color with b/w and lots of tinting changes between shots.

Fair enough, then, that Daisies is on Wright's list. Interesting, however, that from 1966, Wright finds no room for Virginia Woolf, Au Hasard Balthazar, Alfie, all films I regard as essential viewing from that year. Film needs its experiments but VW, AHB and A are absolutely thrilling must-sees and as good as films get really. Wright's list is so weird when you get right down to it!

[–] 7 years ago

[deleted]

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

834 Good Bye Lenin! Wolfgang Becker, 2003

German Oscar bait? Warm sentimental tale about a young East German guy whose mother has a heart attack and goes into a coma for about a year starting mid-1989, thereby missing the collapse of the East German State to which she'd devoted her life. When she awakens from the coma still in a very fragile state, the son decides to perpetuate the illusion for her sake that nothing's changed. Hijinks ensue as the illusion gets harder and harder to maintain as the mother recovers enough (at least temporarily) to move around a bit.

I had a continuous feeling of deja vu while watching this film - something else I've seen before shares its type of premise but, frustratingly, I can't think of what I'm being reminded of.

Anyhow, aside from one very amusing, well-shot, well-set-up plot point in the final third of the film, for me Good Bye Lenin never rises above the merely adequate. But I accept that this is the sort of feel-good middle-brow movie (think Forrest Gump, As Good as It Gets, Intouchables, etc.) that's just not my sort of thing. I'm actually surprised that it's Wright's! I'm also bemused really that The Lives of Others (2006), Tin Drum (1979), Das Boot (1981), Wings of Desire (1987), Seventh Continent (1989), Kaspar Hausar (1975), Maria Braun (1972), and many other celebrated German-Language films didn't make Wright's list and this did.

Good Bye Lenin! was the breakthrough of Daniel Bruhl who has gone on to be a reliable presence in Hollywood movies starting with Inglourious Basterds (He's the Nazi sniper who kills Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) and continuing with the lead in Rush, the villain Zemo in Cap Amercia: Civil Wars. Bruhl is good as the slightly crazily dutiful son in GBL.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

835 High Tension Alexandre Aja, 2003

The weakest example I've come across of what's often called 'New French Extreme Horror'. The film starts relatively well with some good ominous sound design and nifty shot-making. Once the film's main harrowing, relentless, slasher/home invasion tale gets going it's fine but undistinguished. Then 10 minutes from the end we get a big twist that's Psycho by way of Fight Club and The Sixth Sense. While the opening scenes of the movie did foreshadow the twist it's one of those twists that makes a nonsense of everything we've seen go on before. Whole settings - e.g., a van where a lot of the action takes place including the revelation of the twist itself - can't exist/ have to all be in the villain's imagination if the twist is accepted. And this is to say that High Tension spontaneously combusts before our eyes.

Update: Thinking a little more, the twist can be made to work (so that the place where the twist is revealed stays real), you just have to throw out the *whole* set-up of the movie where two girls are together driving out to one's family in the country (that never happened!) not just everything that happens when the killing starts. Are twists that require you to throw away essentially everything up to the twist (so that there's literally nothing left for the twist itself to potentially conflict with) any good? Not on the evidence of this stupid stupid movie.

Director and co-writer Aja leapt from High Tension to a very undistinguished career in Hollywood including a The Hills Have Eyes remake and Piranha 3D. Having finally seen his name-making-film High Tension, I can confirm that it's not going-to-Hollywood that's made Aja bad, rather he's always been terrible.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

896 The Ruins Carter Smith, 2008

A bunch of US college kids on (I think) Spring Break in Mexico trek to an off-the-tourist-trail Mayan pyramid/ruin, where all hell breaks loose. Will any of them make it out alive?

The Ruins, while following a standard, simple horror formula (and there are probably at least half a dozen movies with this same formula on Wright's list), is above average production-wise especially for a novice director. Somehow the director, Carter Smith, who hasn't done much since, not only managed to wangle a descent budget, he also was able to get some ace help, e.g., Se7en's DP and The Lord of the Rings' Production Designer. And the kids in the horrific situation basically behave logically and the stresses that develop are believable. The two girls in the horrific situation stand out as better actors than the boys. Particularly good is Laura Ramsey (right before she played Don Draper's young and yummy Cali-babe, Joy, in Season 2 of Mad Men) whose character suffers an especially horrific fate (but maybe only second worst now I think about it - one character gets an ultra-gory operation en route to.... musn't spoil!).

So, The Ruins is pretty good... still, nothing quite makes it exceptional; it doesn't really leave you with anything much to think about (no subtexts) and no performances blow you away. (The Descent (2005) is an example of the same sort of premise but perfected; arguably Green Room (2015) is too.) And I'd rank it well below things like Martyrs, Two Lovers, In Bruges, Wall-E from 2008, none of which Wright mentions.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

881 Hot Rod Akiva Schaffer, 2007

Good grief, what a stinker. The Lonely Island's first movie doesn't have any Lonely Island songs in it which means that it's nothing special. (Reading around a bit about this movie it was written for Will Ferrell, and Andy Samberg and co. were only subbed in quite late in the piece, hence the lack of original songs.)

Hot Rod's not as funny as Will Ferrell's best stuff (Zoolander, Old School, Anchorman, Elf, Lego Movie), and I can see why he ended up passing on it. And Hot Rod's not nearly as good as this year's properly music-driven Lonely Island film Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Not that any of these comparison cases (except possibly the Lego Movie) would get anywhere near most people's best-of-anything list!

Wright was too modest to pick any of his own movies for his list. Well, in my view, Wright's Hot Fuzz (2007) is vastly superior not just to Hot Rod (2007) but to anything Will Ferrell or Lonely Island has done or probably ever will do. While trend-surfing on things like Jack-ass that were big at the time, Hot Rod seems mainly driven by a desire to parody a certain sort of numbskull feel-good '80s film (esp. Karate Kid). Team America (2004) did the latter much better (and with fab songs - 'It's gonna take a montage!'). Hot Rod feels *late*. Compare with Hot Fuzz's razor sharp, surprising, even ingenious parodies of Michael Bay editing styles etc. as well as Midsommer Murder-type English mystery series (where small villages end up having Beirut-level death-rates if you keep track!). Hot Fuzz feels sharp and on-time.

In sum, Hot Rod is probably not worth watching unless you're prepared to get completely blasted and just wallow in its silliness while in that state. Yarp!

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

947 Blue Ruin Jeremy Saulnier, 2013

Well-made, but by-the-numbers revenge drama/thriller that didn't have anything really new to say. The ending didn't quite work for me especially the lame-o final shot (the film seemed to pass up a better ending 60 seconds earlier). Of course, it's hard to have anything new to say about revenge when it (and how it tears both the avenger and the wider community apart) has been a key theme of drama since at least the Ancient Greeks... but famously the South Koreans have consistently found new angles over the last decade+ so Blue Ruin can only be a second-tier achievement to me at best. Still director Saulnier definitely showed some chops with this film, and his recent Green Room is more proficient still. So he's definitely one to keep an eye on right now.

Wright picked a lot of good films for 2013 but still found no room for 3 of my faves that year: 12 Years A Slave, The Act Of Killing, Frances Ha. All of them are at least a class above Blue Ruin in my view.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

944 The Imposter Bart Layton, 2012

One of those mind-bending documentaries in which you continually learn new information but that new info always raises more questions than it answers so that after an hour and a half you're more confused and uncertain, further away from the truth than ever. I can't go into the story at all without spoiling a twist...so let me just say that the case is genuinely interesting and that the doc. is worth seeing. Presumably another shoe will drop at some point in the future settling some of the outstanding questions in the underlying case. An Imposter 2 seems like a good bet for the 2020s at the latest.

I'd rate a bunch of 2012 things that Wright didn't find room for (Amour, The Master, Beasts of The Southern Wild, Frances Ha, Beyond the Hills...) ahead of The Imposter, and Capturing The Friedmans which kind of invented this mind-frazzling sub-genre of doc. didn't make it onto Wright's list for 2003, which seems bizarre. Still, The Imposter (2012) is good and gripping alright.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

867 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Shane Black, 2005

Shane Black gives Robert Downey Jr a first *complete* draft of the Tony Stark/Iron Man character that he'd take to the bank a couple of years after this. Obviously RDJ was a trash-talking motor-mouth throughout the '90s but here his future fortune snaps into focus - he's gonna be a bruised hero/anti-hero after this.

I'd actually need to see the film at least one more time to be sure that the plot machinations all work... but first time through it was pretty convincing. So quite a nice job by writer/director Black. Val Kilmer is an excellent, quirky wing-man for RDJ and Michelle Monagahan (her big break?) is a good not-quite-love interest. If I were them I'd be begging Shane Black and RDJ for a KKBB2 (KKKBBB?).

I can see why Wright in particular likes this one: KKBB feels influenced by Wright's way with transitions and flighty inserts and self-aware dialogue and voice-over.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

867 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Shane Black, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shane Black gives Robert Downey Jr a first *complete* draft of the Tony Stark/Iron Man character that he'd take to the bank a couple of years after this.

--

Some "circularity" here:

Shane Black was somewhat of a "has been" by the time he made KKBB, and Robert Downey Jr had the bad-news drug problems background that was making it hard for him to find work.

Black had had Mel Gibson(Lethal Weapon) and Bruce Willis(The Last Boy Scout) to anchor his bigger hits (or with Scout, most overpaid-for flop), but as a has been director, fell back to near-unemployable RDJ and fading Val Kilmer for this one.

In any event, soon RDJ was employable and had found his big hit in Iron Man, and eventually RDJ could return favors to Shane Black. RDJ got Black hired to direct Iron Man 3, and when The Nice Guys came out last year, it was promoted as "from the director of Iron Man 3" (I guess the millennial generation has no memory of Lethal Weapon.)

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Obviously RDJ was a trash-talking motor-mouth throughout the '90s but here his future fortune snaps into focus - he's gonna be a bruised hero/anti-hero after this.

---

I also think "Zodiac" sealed RDJ's star persona. He's one of the three over-the-title male stars in the film -- Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo are the other two -- but was the only one in the film with true "star charisma." RDJ's "trash talking motor mouth" was also a great line-delivery machine.

Take a look at RDJ as a late-teen actor in "Weird Science" (1985) and on SNL in the 80's and you'll see how he was always handsome, but needed the aging process and other life pressures to give him a true movie star face by the time of Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes. RDJ's face got more handsome with the lines and creases of middle age. The boy became a man...a very cool man.

And the irony remains this: as I write this, pretty much the only acting RDJ DOES anymore is as Iron Man. Its a fulltime, billion-dollar job. And he's clean and sober. Still, I rather miss having RDJ as a star in other films.

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I'd actually need to see the film at least one more time to be sure that the plot machinations all work... but first time through it was pretty convincing. So quite a nice job by writer/director Black.

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KKBB seems to have been inspired by Shane Black's "The Last Boy Scout" (1991; Bruce Willis/Damon Wayans) and to have in turn influenced Black's "The Nice Guys" (2016; Ryan Gosling/Russell Crowe.)

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Val Kilmer is an excellent, quirky wing-man for RDJ

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Kilmer's "gimmick" being that his character is gay...but the requisite macho cool guy who shoots, fights, kills.

Val Kilmer will get his place in screen history for one particular role and how he played it: Doc Holliday in Tombstone. As I have noted before, Doc Holiday is a "foolproof" role and yet Kilmer...aided and abetted by great lines to deliver...beat 'em all (Victor Mature, Kirk Douglas, Jason Robards, Dennis Quaid...Cesar Romero?)

But Kilmer was good other times and other places. He's great in "Real Genius"(not to be confused with "Weird Science" of the same year) and he should have been the star of Top Gun, not support to Cruise.

Anyway, the years moved on and Val Kilmer became less of a star than he should have been. But "KKBB" shows how good he could be.

--

and Michelle Monagahan (her big break?) is a good not-quite-love interest.

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She's irritating in that movie...if beautiful. I thought she disappeared but there she was in Patriot's Day last week.

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If I were them I'd be begging Shane Black and RDJ for a KKBB2 (KKKBBB?).

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Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was the title of a Pauline Kael review book, but also of some obscure movie, I think. Before the title ended up on Black's movie.

I do love how a bunch of other "dead or disappeared celebs" like Abe Lincoln and Elvis come walking into RDJ's hospital room at the end, and then are pushed out of the room. Kind of a "fantasy breaking of the fourth wall."

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I can see why Wright in particular likes this one: KKBB feels influenced by Wright's way with transitions and flighty inserts and self-aware dialogue and voice-over.

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So who saw who first?

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

819 Shaolin Soccer Stephen Chow, 2001

Somewhere between Jerry Lewis and Adam Sandler (if Sandler directed his own pictures rather than having one of his buddies do it) lies Hong Kong/China's Stephen Chow. I've seen three of his pictures now including last year's mega-hit, The Mermaid, and he's not for me (Kung Fu Hustle (2004) is the best of the three I've seen). All of his pictures are broad, slapsticky comedies, most with a martial arts component, and all with an allegedly heartwarming 'triumph of the underdog' story woven through it. Shaolin Soccer (2011) is typical. It's occasionally funny and is fairly good-natured throughout (albeit with more literal pain and humiliation-type humor than most westerners are going to find amusing), but there's not much in it to interest anyone above the age of 14 tops (but I'd say the same thing about Sandler's hits).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

865 Domino Tony Scott, 2005

Half-way though D I'm seriously losing the will to live... One of the worst-, stupidly hyperactively-directed movies I think I've ever seen (at any rate it's down in the same class as kindred things like Michael Bay's Transformers 2), with a terrible, inane script, led by Kiera Knightley at her most wooden (Ikea Knightley)...may revisit this post if I muster the energy to finish D. It's a shocker (so far).

Update: No, sorry, not finishing this one. Life's too short. Never have I watched anything before that *thinks* it's being so edgy and yet has the most inane plotting, laborious dialogue, cringeworthy VO from Knightley's character, the worst on-the-nose sound design and editing. Truly this is a career low for everyone involved. I'm baffled that Wright rates Domino at all. I have a horrible feeling that QT might have liked Domino too. If so then I can only surmise that cocaine is a hell of a drug....

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

499 Scum Alan Clarke, 1979

Impressive Juvenile Prison expose/drama. I vaguely remember the fuss about it at the time - it led to some institutional and legal change in the UK I believe. Great looking - a reminder of the clarity of properly lit (not overlit!) 35mm images with top equipment by the late '70s. I like the gritty social realist UK tradition in film and TV and I guess Scum (1979) is a deserved classic in that. Still, from 1979, Wright doesn't find room for Apocalypse Now, Tin Drum, Breaking Away, Hair, Nosferatu, Stalker. I'd probably take most of those over Scum (1979 was a *great* film year!).

682 The Last Boy Scout Tony Scott, 1991

The evil opposite of Scum (1979): a cretinous buddy-detective movie that's absurd from the get-go. I suppose the way its fans must view LBS is as a comedy about buddy-action films - no cliche-box goes unticked, everything's to excess. But I wasn't laughing. Terrible story, horrible dialogue, the worst overlit visuals and preposterous action this side of Michael Bay. Like Bay's films, LBS is one of those films that makes you want to burn Hollywood and the star system (for producers and writers as much as for actors) to the ground. Just awful.

Needless to say, I don't see how Wright could seriously have LBC make the cut for 1991 and yet have no room for things like Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, von Trier's Europa (a.k.a. Zentropa), even Thelma and Louise (the best Scott film of 1991 by miles!).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

747 Freeway Matthew Bright, 1996

Outrageous, highly entertaining down-and-dirty-fest anchored by a powerhouse performance from Reese Witherspoon (Vanessa Lutz has to be up there with her Tracey Flick from Election as her finest creation). It's interesting that compelling super-flawed characters that dominate a whole movie *are* around for very young actresses but become much rarer as their careers progress. It's as if adult women characters mostly aren't allowed to be this flawed, this outrageous, and often, let's face it, they are nurturing roles of various sorts and are left effectively supporting the flawed male leads. Anyhow, it just is striking that young actress from Witherspoon to Christina Ricci to Ellen Page to Juliette Lewis often make huge impacts in disreputable roles in their teens then quickly settle down into less interesting work.

The writer-director here, Matthew Bright doesn't seem to have done much more of note. Too bad.

Interesting looking at the 1996 films that I'd rate very highly that *didn't* make Wright's list, e.g., Secrets and Lies, Lone Star, Cronenberg's Crash. Other omitted 1996 films I'd definitely take above Freeway, notwithstanding its pleasures, include Sling Blade, Emma, Shall We Dance?, and maybe Hard Eight.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

662 Gremlins 2: The New Batch Joe Dante, 1990

Did Gremlins need a sequel? On this evidence, No. Some of the weaknesses of the original reassert themselves - the dull as dishwater lead couple of Zach Gilligan and Phoebe Cates (such a beauty, never really learned to act - Jennifer Connolly arrived about now with the same look and ate her lunch) are back and no smarter except for devising the positively miraculous solution to the gremlin problem at the end; the gremlins are repetitive in the destructivness and in their movie-parodies. Gizmo still rules though, and there are quite a few good parodies and jokes - but most kids wouldn't have been able to spot the Marathon Man, and other refs. so there was an audience problem for this film (whereas the original had the sustained It's a Wonderful Life parody that most US kids at least would have).

One semi-remarkable thing that kids-in-1990 probably wouldn't have gotten is that much of the film parodies Donald Trump. The whole film unfolds in the Clamp Center in NYC - a tower complex run by an eccentric, megalomaniacal billionaire developer and TV entrepreneur Daniel R. Clamp. This is possibly a little funnier now than it was in 1990. Still, I wonder whether keeping the gremlins almost completely inside the one building was the right move. We did kind of *want* to see them rampage through Times Square, the subway system, the Met, MoMA the Guggenheim, the Dakota (where Rosemary's Baby was filmed and John Lennonon lived and died) and so on.

At any rate, I found Gremlins just OK and not really recommendable - it wouldn't be anywhere near my own list of best films of 1990. Mainstream Films from 1990 that didn't make Wright's list that I'd rate significantly higher than Gremlins 2 include Jacob's Ladder, Metropolitan, Total Recall, An Angel At My Table, Edward Scissorhands, Internal Affairs, and probably Pretty Woman and Ghost.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Did Gremlins need a sequel? On this evidence, No.

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But it got one. I guess I"ll give William Goldman's profane phrase a rest about what kind of movie it was.

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Some of the weaknesses of the original reassert themselves - the dull as dishwater lead couple of Zach Gilligan and Phoebe Cates (such a beauty, never really learned to act

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But she will always have her Fast Times at Ridgemont High swimming pool scene to live by...and I think she is still married to the much-older Kevin Kline.

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- Jennifer Connolly arrived about now with the same look and ate her lunch)

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Well...Jennifer Connolly back then. WOW. So curvaceous and busty. These days...so skinny and emaciated. Oscar will do that to ya.

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are back and no smarter except for devising the positively miraculous solution to the gremlin problem at the end; the gremlins are repetitive in the destructivness and in their movie-parodies. Gizmo still rules though, and there are quite a few good parodies and jokes - but most kids wouldn't have been able to spot the Marathon Man, and other refs. so there was an audience problem for this film (whereas the original had the sustained It's a Wonderful Life parody that most US kids at least would have).

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As I recall, Gremlins 2 got some good reviews but many of them felt the film had no real audience...too intense for kids, not enough for adults, "film buffs only."

I recall putting Gremlins 2 into the VHS player for some young relatives..and I had to pull it out when they started crying in terror. I don't think I ever saw it all the way through.

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One semi-remarkable thing that kids-in-1990 probably wouldn't have gotten is that much of the film parodies Donald Trump. The whole film unfolds in the Clamp Center in NYC - a tower complex run by an eccentric, megalomaniacal billionaire developer and TV entrepreneur Daniel R. Clamp. This is possibly a little funnier now than it was in 1990.

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Its amazing to think that our current President's media profile goes back to 1990...and before. Obama was "new and semi-unknown" when he got the Presidency. We've had Trump around a long time -- long enough for him to wear out his celebrity welcome. Still, the Presidency is often about "back to the future" people: Nixon, Reagan...Hillary?

(Hillary? I mean, this recount business, anything can happen...these are the days of surprise.)

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Still, I wonder whether keeping the gremlins almost completely inside the one building was the right move. We did kind of *want* to see them rampage through Times Square, the subway system, the Met, MoMA the Guggenheim, the Dakota (where Rosemary's Baby was filmed and John Lennonon lived and died) and so on

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Sometimes one sees a movie and sees the BETTER movie that wasn't made. NYC is expensive to film in, maybe budget considerations got them.

This: There is a writer of Science Fiction books, TV episodes(The Outer Limits) and film reviews named Harlan Ellison. I don't even know if he is still alive, I think so. Pretty old now, but always a rebellious, angry, curmudgeon.

Anyway, I bought a book of Ellison's reviews and articles a few years back and I reached his 1984 screed(SEVERAL articles) about how sick and putrid and awful he thought the original "Gremlins" was. He didn't like Spielberg(the producer; Joe Dante was the director) and felt this movie used a "children's movie" framework to invoke all sorts of horrific material that would pollute the minds of old and young alike.

I linger on this because after reading those essays, I now react like Pavlov's dog to mention of the original "Gremlins": "Oh, Gremlins? Harlan Ellison said that movie is Satan's Work!"

Ha.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

Well...Jennifer Connolly back then. WOW. So curvaceous and busty. These days...so skinny and emaciated. Oscar will do that to ya.

I think she became ultra-skinny (and actual breast-reduction surgery was part of that I believe) well-before Oscar. It's evidently the look Connolly herself wants - I wonder though whether she thought she needed to make herself less canonically sexy to be taken seriously as an actress?

At any rate, I tend to think that ultra-skinny looks start to lose whatever appeal they have when people get into their 30s and 40s - actors who stay on that path are constantly in danger of losing a few more pounds and then starting to trigger that refugee/concentration camp survivor memory in the audience; we instinctively start to fear for them. Connolly doesn't seem to work much any more perhaps because of this phenomenon.

Sometimes one sees a movie and sees the BETTER movie that wasn't made. NYC is expensive to film in, maybe budget considerations got them.

Yes, that occurred to me too. Reading around, people who like Gremlins 2 a lot really like all the Loony Tune references in the film and all of the insider jokes about the first movie, e.g., Phoebe Cates's big macabre speech in the first movie about her Dad dying stuck in the chimney pretending to be Santa gets lampooned here by having Cates make another speech about another Holiday's memories....and nobody is the slightest bit interested.

There is a writer of Science Fiction books, TV episodes(The Outer Limits) and film reviews named Harlan Ellison. I don't even know if he is still alive, I think so. Pretty old now, but always a rebellious, angry, curmudgeon.

Anyway, I bought a book of Ellison's reviews and articles a few years back and I reached his 1984 screed(SEVERAL articles) about how sick and putrid and awful he thought the original "Gremlins" was. He didn't like Spielberg(the producer; Joe Dante was the director) and felt this movie used a "children's movie" framework to invoke all sorts of horrific material that would pollute the minds of old and young alike.

Curmudgeon is right. He sued James Cameron for The Terminator's supposed infringement on Ellison's Outer Limits's episode about a soldier travelling through time. I watched the ep. and didn't really see that anythign substantial had been stolen . Still Cameron caved, handed over some money and the closing credits are now led by an acknowledgement to Harlan Ellison.

Anyhow, I'm surprised that someone as dyspeptic as Ellison would be so upset by Gremlins bringing a little subversive nastiness to kids Xmas movies. Gremlins was a hard PG-13 (in the year that Temple of Doom was a similarly hard, gory PG-13). And things like Poltergeist had been pretty scary for kids before that. It was up to people to educate themselves before taking their kids to such movies - the warnings were all there just as they were there later for The Dark Knight and Man Of Steel or even The Force Awakens. People need to take those rating and age-recommendations more seriously than they do. These really aren't films for very young kids under full loss-of-control movie-conditions. Watching at home with full parental supervision and finger on the pause button if things get to intense or even have to be skipped is the way to go.

From my perspective, though, Gremlins (1984) had some problems but it was quite a lot of fun, and first time through the basic premise of the Gremlins' development was fine. Having to do it all again only with additional genetic modification, however, was a bit painful.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

There is a writer of Science Fiction books, TV episodes(The Outer Limits) and film reviews named Harlan Ellison. I don't even know if he is still alive, I think so. Pretty old now, but always a rebellious, angry, curmudgeon.

Anyway, I bought a book of Ellison's reviews and articles a few years back and I reached his 1984 screed(SEVERAL articles) about how sick and putrid and awful he thought the original "Gremlins" was. He didn't like Spielberg(the producer; Joe Dante was the director) and felt this movie used a "children's movie" framework to invoke all sorts of horrific material that would pollute the minds of old and young alike.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Curmudgeon is right. He sued James Cameron for The Terminator's supposed infringement on Ellison's Outer Limits's episode about a soldier travelling through time. I watched the ep. and didn't really see that anythign substantial had been stolen . Still Cameron caved, handed over some money and the closing credits are now led by an acknowledgement to Harlan Ellison.

---

I've been looking for this post for weeks. You're rolling out so many great film capsule reviews here that I get lost in the search.

I just wanted to elaborate a bit on this Harlan Ellison guy.

I bought his book because it was cheap, very large, filled with reviews(I like to read reviews) and because what encounters I had with him in the 70's(on TV talk shows and just one time, in person when he did a book signing in LA) evidenced...a yeah .. a REAL curmudgeon.

And one of those guys who, given that he is usually ranting and screeching about how stupid everybody else's work is...well, it creates "glass house" issues.

Ellison seems to have a "for real" Science Fiction novel writing career(he rants against calling it "SciFi"); he DID write for The Outer Limits, and sometimes my favorite old 60's show, Burke's Law. (In his book, Ellison writes about arriving in LA with a dime in his pocket, going to a writer's cattle call for Burke's Law in an auditorium filled with writers...and pitching/selling his whodunit idea on the spot.) I think there are Star Trek scripts in there and other episodic TV over the 80's and maybe 90's. There are any number of scripts not sold, or deals that fell apart and, well, that's Hollywood.

Anyway, his book of 80's movie reviews is worth a skim if only to read a man in full screaming screed mode. Its interesting reading, both about the movies and the man.

And some of the reviews are from the 70's and 60s. One 1968 review of Rosemary's Baby is a positive rave and Ellison called it on that one: "This movie will be remembered decades from now."

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Anyhow, I'm surprised that someone as dyspeptic as Ellison would be so upset by Gremlins bringing a little subversive nastiness to kids Xmas movies.

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Hoo boy, you can't imagine.

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Gremlins was a hard PG-13 (in the year that Temple of Doom was a similarly hard, gory PG-13). And things like Poltergeist had been pretty scary for kids before that.

--

Interestingly, Ellison speaks well of Poltergeist, I guess because its director Tobe Hooper, was a personal friend(and Ellision swears Spielberg did NOT realy direct it.)

---

It was up to people to educate themselves before taking their kids to such movies - the warnings were all there just as they were there later for The Dark Knight and Man Of Steel or even The Force Awakens. People need to take those rating and age-recommendations more seriously than they do. These really aren't films for very young kids under full loss-of-control movie-conditions. Watching at home with full parental supervision and finger on the pause button if things get to intense or even have to be skipped is the way to go.

---

Its funny to me. I grew up in the 60's with Psycho in the air and eventually, Bonnie and Clyde, Wait Until Dark, and The Wild Bunch (to name three) to "negotiate to see." I braced for the violence, but it didn't much affect me when it came. Still, these all felt like movies made for ADULTS that I, as a kid or pre-teen, had to navigate carefully.

I think the issue with Gremlins and Poltergeist (and Indy Jones and the Temple of Doom, too) is that these movies with "kiddie surfaces" went for the gore and/or nastiness a bit too much. It didn't bother me, I was plenty old by then. But these films seemed "stuck" between something as adult as "Psycho" and something as childish (but scary) as "101 Dalmations"(with Cruella DeVille out to make a coat out of puppy skins.)

MY issue with Gremlins and Poltergeist (and Innerspace and Indy/Temple of Doom) is that I think they are missing the adult characterization and lines of better movies like those made by Hitchcock. And how about The Goonies? Is that not ONLY for kids? I thought so when I saw it. And I ain't liking no movie called "Goonies," anyway.

Remember when Mark Wahlberg was on SNL a few years back talking to an adult Josh Brolin, and Wahlberg said "Yeah, you're Josh Brolin"..(beat, disgusted look.) "Goonies."

And walked away.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

870 Apocalypto Mel Gibson, 2006

A pretty good effort from Mr Gibson. You have to hand it to the guy, he paid for Passion of the Christ himself and reaped the massive rewards, then when he could get a studio to pick up the tab again he got them to fund a movie no one else (not named 'Werner Herzog') would have made and that only Gibson could have gotten made, with only native Central-American Indian actors, and them only speaking ancient native languages.

On the one hand the film is incredibly immersive and intense (and, somewhat contrary to its reputation, no sicker or gorier than, say, Last of The Mohicans) and a great achievement in production design and sheer shooting-on-location chutzpah. On the other hand it's got a crumby digital look some of the time (digital cameras needed a few more years development before there wasn't a serious price to be paid for using them), the plot relies on some of the hoariest plot points imaginable, e.g., our hero is saved from being routinely sacrificed at the top of an Aztec temple by a full solar eclipse. One of the very first adventure stories I read as a kid, Enid Blyton's The Secret Mountain uses this plot-point and even at age 6 or 7 I knew it was the sort of ultra-fanciful billion-to-one coincidence that a story should never rely on. Gibson used another super-duper coincidence for the final plot-point which I won't spoil here. And this is to say that despite the film's stunning efforts at something like immersive realism the plot architecture here is creakiest old adventure-Hollywood that Douglas Fairbanks Senior would have roared with laughter at. Reading around a bit too, it's allegedly the case that Gibson's doesn't have his Central-American history and culture at all right - blurring the difference between Aztecs and Mayans for example. I don't know enough about that stuff to be troubled by the license that Gibson took...but the experts were appalled... Gibson seems to have wanted the film to be a big statement about how empires fall - see the epigraph with which the film opens - but that whole side of the film is rendered suspect by the Hollywood-plotting and completely vitiated by getting the basic history and culture stuff so wrong.

Not to worry: Apocalypto succeeds as an immersive action movie and as an update of The Naked Prey (with the slight oddity that a days-long chase through a dense jungle is rather less plausibly linear than a chase across relatively lightly forested plains in The Naked Prey). That's evidently enough for Wright. For me, however, A is a good, occasionally very good film rather than any sort of great one. 2006 films that Wright doesn't select that I'd rate ahead of A include The Lives of Others, Volver, Paprika, The Prestige, Friedkin's Bug, Away From Her, Wind That Shakes The Barley.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

705 Cronos Guillermo del Toro, 1993

Del Toro's debut feature at age 29 has all his personal signatures that have become so familiar: Absolute reverence for Spirit of The Beehive (1973) - Del Toro may love Hitchcock but his heart is in this Spanish classic; here Del Toro uses a near doppelganger for Beehive's Ana Torrent -, love of monsters and vampire-like entities and of infernal machines, the complete parity of child-like/dream views of the world and adult daytime views, Ron Perlman as a good-luck charm, and so on. The copy I got to watch was very dark in parts to the point where I couldn't see what was going on. This may mean that the film is worth a Criterion edition purchase to get to see it in ideal quality.

De Toro makes his $1.5 Million budget look about $10 million, and made a minor classic to boot. That's how you do it! Hollywood noticed, and the rest is sort-of-history although I think it's fair to say that Del Toro hasn't yet quite delivered the sort of humungous Lucas/Spielberg/Cameron-level pop hit that Hollywood was sort of counting on him for.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

786 Audition Takashi Miike, 1999

Audition (which due to its fearsome reputation I've spent the last 10 years avoiding, notwithstanding IMDb's consistent recommendation of it to me) turns out to be some kind of masterpiece. It's made with Kubrickian levels of control over image, pace, tone... and packs a kind of dual punch thematically. On the one hand this is a nightmare of every man who's forced himself out onto the dating scene in middle-age, and it acutely depicts all sorts of levels of delusion on the male side about finding the ideal woman and what the ideal woman could do for you. On the other hand, the film provides in avenging, nutso angel, Asami, an image of compressed female rage at various sorts of abuse at male hands that woman-kind as a whole suffer. Along with about 10 minutes worth ultra-graphic torture, the film also has a number of inventive half-dream/half-flash-back sequences that are truly amazing and worthy of study I think. We watch them and know that aren't consistently interpretable as *anything* rather they embody a kind of higher cinematic logic that sweeps us along.

As prep for Audition I watched another Miike film from the same year, Dead or Alive (Miike is ultra-prolific - he's made 90+ films by the age of 56 including 5 or so in the year of Audition alone). Instead of the slow-burn, Kubrickian Audition, DOA is a manic, drug-fuelled gangster epic that I found impossible to understand, and when it lapsed into comic book insanity where all of Japan is destroyed at the end I guess it was saying 'Just have a laugh, don't even try to make sense of this'. Not my sort of thing. Audition very much was my sort of thing although I'll probably never sit through the torture scenes again (I'm pretty needle-phobic).

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

Continuing to work my way through the entries on Wight's list that I hadn't seen...

529 Looker Michael Crichton, 1981

Directed by someone else this might have been OK, but Crichton doesn't have a clue. Action is unexciting, suspenseless, and frequently incoherent. Overall the film is so poorly edited that the 'big political conspiracy' angle that's supposed to emerge from underneath 'the models getting scanned then killed' stuff never comes into focus. Dreadful dialogue and performances throughout - Finney and Coburn have never been worse; I don't think they had a chance. Yhe film has nothing to recommend it apart from its vague sense of prophecy about where technology was heading - maybe that vision was intoxicating in 1981, but, honestly, I don't think it was. Looker (1981) is truly an eccentric fave for Wright - maybe it's so because it was very encouraging to Wright? You watch Looker (1981) and surely say 'I could do *that*, better than *that*!' whereas no one says that after watching near contemporaries like Blow Out (1980), Raiders (1981), Blade Runner (1982).

985 Green Room Jeremy Saulnier, 2015

Pretty good, effective thriller about a touring punk band that (relatively inadvertently) plays a show at a white supremacist camp in the backblocks of the North-West where they see something they shouldn't have, and trouble ensues (they end up holed up in the Green Room, hence the title). Semi-breakthrough performances by the new Chekhov, Anton Yelschin (who died in a freak drive-way accident last month - this movie much more than Star Trek makes that feel like a significant loss for film) and by the English-actress-with-the-best-name-ever, feels-like-she's-been-coming-for-along-time, Imogen Poots (in Green Room she's the spitting image of a young Roseanne Arquette + better acting chops). Writer/Director Saulnier is getting a lot of praise for this film... probably most of that's justified but, my 2c, I could have done with a little more sketching out of the band members and of the skinhead adversaries. It was hard to keep straight who was doing what to whom some of the time (heavy color-mangling of the image into the gloomy greens didn't help with that). See it if you want to check out Yelschin and Poots or if the 'Assault on Precinct 13 inside a Neo-nazi camp' premise appeals.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

529 Looker Michael Crichton, 1981
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Directed by someone else this might have been OK, but Crichton doesn't have a clue.

---

So odd. Crichton was a science-brilliant man who segued from being a medical doctor to writing best-sellers(The Andromeda Strain) -- and at one time having the #1 movie(Jurassic Park), TV show(ER) and book(?) at the same time -- Chricton's attempts at directing were pretty amateurish. That goes for his very smart "Westworld," too(which becomes a high-tech sex-and-sadism HBO series very soon.)

I guess great directors are born, not educated in medical school.

---

Action is unexciting, suspenseless, and frequently incoherent. Overall the film is so poorly edited that the 'big political conspiracy' angle that's supposed to emerge from underneath 'the models getting scanned then killed' stuff never comes into focus.

---

I saw it on release and a bit on TV over the years. Can't remember much more than the admittedly-clever device of a "gun" that freezes time and allows other people to punch you while you are just standing there. That gun makes for a fun fight scene or two.

---

Dreadful dialogue and performances throughout - Finney and Coburn have never been worse; I don't think they had a chance.

---

I felt bad for both of them. On Finney's part, he was trying for a few films to be a "regular action hero" and the fit was just wrong, plus he started too old. James Coburn could be my favorite movie star this side of Rod Taylor who never really got the right breaks. Some say he became a star at exactly the wrong time, just ahead of Nicholson et al and without studio help to be in the right vehicles. I thought Coburn was a great movie star in that he took "offbeat physical aspects"(teeth too big, face too simian, voice too booming) and somehow came off handsome and cool. Even, for a bit, in "Looker."

Could it be that Coburn's greatest moments were as a memorable character guy? The Magnificent Seven(outdrawing a gun with his knife; saying very little.) Charade(Telling Cary Grant: "You fell fer her like an egg off a tall cheeckin! You ignoramous! You nincompoop!") And as James Garner's Navy pal in "The Americanization of Emily," always found by Garner with a new semi-nude British girl in his 1964 bed. (The film was originally cast with William Holden in the Garner part and Garner in the Coburn part...musical chairs!)

Well, Coburn was cheeky as Our Man Flint(a cooler Bond spoof than Matt Helm with Dino, though both were pretty bad) and has a cult classic in "The President's Analyst"(That's what he is, so everybody -- CIA, FBI, Russians, The Phone Company, wants to kidnap him for his Presidential info or to kill him first. Very 1967 hip and hippie.)

---

---

Yhe film has nothing to recommend it apart from its vague sense of prophecy about where technology was heading - maybe that vision was intoxicating in 1981, but, honestly, I don't think it was. Looker (1981) is truly an eccentric fave for Wright - maybe it's so because it was very encouraging to Wright? You watch Looker (1981) and surely say 'I could do *that*, better than *that*!' whereas no one says that after watching near contemporaries like Blow Out (1980), Raiders (1981), Blade Runner (1982).

--

Hard to say what or why Wright liked it. That "gun," maybe. And hey, all those LOOKERS (models.) The film had a weird final credit sequence with a pseudo-hip song called "Looker" that gets spooky over images of hot models in commericals; I do remember liking that.

--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
985 Green Room Jeremy Saulnier, 2015
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pretty good, effective thriller about a touring punk band that (relatively inadvertently) plays a show at a white supremacist camp in the backblocks of the North-West where they see something they shouldn't have, and trouble ensues (they end up holed up in the Green Room, hence the title). Semi-breakthrough performances by the new Chekhov, Anton Yelschin (who died in a freak drive-way accident last month - this movie much more than Star Trek makes that feel like a significant loss for film) and by the English-actress-with-the-best-name-ever, feels-like-she's-been-coming-for-along-time, Imogen Poots (in Green Room she's the spitting image of a young Roseanne Arquette + better acting chops). Writer/Director Saulnier is getting a lot of praise for this film... probably most of that's justified but, my 2c, I could have done with a little more sketching out of the band members and of the skinhead adversaries. It was hard to keep straight who was doing what to whom some of the time (heavy color-mangling of the image into the gloomy greens didn't help with that). See it if you want to check out Yelschin and Poots or if the 'Assault on Precinct 13 inside a Neo-nazi camp' premise appeals.

---

I read good and grim reviews of this one, my type of tale. With Patrick Stewart as a Neo-Nazi?

Good lead on Imogen Poots(the best name this side of Allison Doody from Indy and the Last Crusade?) and too bad about Yelschin.

1981 and 2015 movies. Only 998 more to go. Oh, wait, you've seen most of them.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

Hard to say what or why Wright liked it. That "gun," maybe.

The gun started off cool but the film used them (and countermeasures to them like sheilding your eyes/glasses) so inconsistently that they ceased being cool about half way through I found. They were also a completely redundant tech relative to the main through-the-tv-hypnotism (whose mechanism was completely unexplained! is it a gun-ike mechanism that carries through TV reproduction? what?) of the *main conspiracy plot*. That is, the guns ended up being emblematic of the broken-backed nature of the plot.

So odd. Crichton was a science-brilliant man who segued from being a medical doctor to writing best-sellers(The Andromeda Strain) -- and at one time having the #1 movie(Jurassic Park), TV show(ER) and book(?) at the same time -- Chricton's attempts at directing were pretty amateurish. That goes for his very smart "Westworld," too(which becomes a high-tech sex-and-sadism HBO series very soon.)

I guess great directors are born, not educated in medical school.

George Miller was a qualified, successful surgeon before deciding he wanted to make movie. He never made any short films before financing the first, ultra-low-budget Mad Max himself (making it on weekends I believe).... and never looked back after that. It does seem that, in many cases, at lot of what you need to be a good director (good at visualization, good with actors, good at judging performances, good at hiring and firing, good at organizing and motivating.....) is something that that probably can't be taught as such and that you either have, maybe not at birth but at least by the time you first step onto a movie set, or you don't.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

1981 and 2015 movies. Only 998 more to go. Oh, wait, you've seen most of them.

Heh. I hadn't seen about 200 of the films on Wright's list... so it's one of my many mini-projects to work through those. I'm sure I won't complete the mini-project, but it's fun at least for a while to try to check stuff off (particularly if items have something else about them that intrigues).

Next up for this project, some '70s movies that Wright identifies that I'd mostly never even heard of before:

335. Little Murders, Alan Arkin 1971
388. Slither, Howard Zieff, 1973 (I'd assumed that this was a snake-/slug-monster movie, but apparently not!)
490. The Silent Partner, Daryl Duke, 1978

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

Next up for this project, some '70s movies that Wright identifies that I'd mostly never even heard of before:

335. Little Murders, Alan Arkin 1971
388. Slither, Howard Zieff, 1973 (I'd assumed that this was a snake-/slug-monster movie, but apparently not!)
490. The Silent Partner, Daryl Duke, 1978

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I am here to tell you that I saw each and every one of those films, first run. Pretty much in the near-empty theaters of the 70's which were a "crisis zone" for admissions in those years. Though The Silent Partner was out in 1978 when things were turning around (Star Wars , Grease, Superman) for big box office. It was well reviewed. A "sleeper."

I'll not prejudice your takeaways from the films, but I will tell you this:

One review for "Slither" compared it to "North by Northwest." And that review made it into print ads as a "selling point".

Several reviews for "The Silent Partner" compared it to Strangers on a Train. I don't recall if Strangers was mentioned in the ads; it was perhaps too long ago and far away in 1978.

Little Murders and Slither reflect that kind of gritty/grimy shaggy-ness of early 70's films, I might add. Comparing them to the look of 1981's "Looker" is an exercise in changing ...er...looks.

I do believe that Little Murders brings Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould together again after the great MASH; but differently. Director Alan Arkin is in it, memorably, I think.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

388. Slither, Howard Zieff, 1973 (I'd assumed that this was a snake-/slug-monster movie, but apparently not!)
----

One review for "Slither" compared it to "North by Northwest." And that review made it into print ads as a "selling point".

Little Murders and Slither reflect that kind of gritty/grimy shaggy-ness of early 70's films, I might add.

OK, have seen and enjoyed Slither (1973) a lot. I guess Slither does hark back to NbNW once or twice - there's an early meeting on a rural highway for example that reminds of the basic setting for NbNW's cropduster scene, and there's a bingo-hall setting used to freeze the 'bad guys' that reminds of NbNW's auction scene.

But, really, the presiding spirit here is indeed the laid-back, character-driven road movie/shaggy dog stories that occurs repeatedly in '70s films (not just in US films, Wim Wenders has a whole series of them in Germany). The Coens and Alexander Payne and PTA still make these kind of movies I guess (at one point I was thinking that maybe the people in the mysterious vans were going to turn out to be a group of nihilists), and I guess Curb Your Enthusiam and even Seinfeld carry on this loose tradition too.

Sally Kellerman's fruitcake Kitty was pretty great as was Peter Boyle's Barry Fenaka, and Caan can do no wrong at this point in his career. So....while Slither isn't quite a super-gem the way The Gambler or Charley Varrick or Scarecrow or Friends of Eddie Coyle is, I'd say it's in the same ballpark as pleasurable little numbers from the period like The Outfit, Cisco Pike, Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry. I'm glad to have seen it.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

335. Little Murders, Alan Arkin 1971

----
Little Murders and Slither reflect that kind of gritty/grimy shaggy-ness of early 70's films, I might add....
I do believe that Little Murders brings Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould together again after the great MASH; but differently. Director Alan Arkin is in it, memorably, I think.

Wow, Little Murders, while close to being a filmed play (far from my favorite *sort* of film) is pretty great. While it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and I don't think it's quite as polished and gem-like as The Heartbreak Kid and Harold and Maude (the two obvious era comparables that I'd recommend to anyone), it might even be a little better than Elaine May's A New Leaf or than US-French and French societal-break-down comedies like Mr Freedom (1969) and Les Valseuses (1974). Heavier things like Godard's Weekend (1967) and If....(1968) lurk in the background as influences I believe, and Carnal Knowledge (1971) perhaps as a darker kindred spirit (same writer I think). Interesting that Wright doesn't have Carnal Knowledge on his list.

I had to watch a pretty crumby copy of Little Murders - fairly low resolution and with Italian subtitles at the bottom of the frame. This isn't ideal for appreciating Gordon Willis's cinematography.

The basic comedy of cringe and awkwardness is a bit tiring to watch even on a small computer screen. It must have been very confronting on the big screen in 1971. I just read Roger Ebert's (very +ve) 1971 review of LM and he definitely felt the film to be relentless and intense and a not entirely pleasant experience.

Sutherland kind of burst into the movie as a breath of fresh air in - very funny - for a moment it felt almost like Nicholson coming in and vastly improving Easy Rider half way through, but really that's unfair: LM was doing fine without Sutherland and didn't need saving exactly. But a break from family focus was welcome, and there's just something about Sutherland's *voice* that is always good to hear in a movie.

Reading around a bit about LM now I see that Megan Draper awkwardly auditioned for the original production of LM play near the end of Mad Men's Season 5. I'll have to rewatch those scenes at some point to see the connections. I gather that one irony is that notwithstanding that she's constantly checked out during the auidition) Megan can't get the part because she's way too tall-and-beautiful for the only young female part (Patsy) in theplay, and another is that although teh production had hipster cred in 1967 it failed spectaculary, lasting only a week. LM was subsequently revived in London to great acclaim then brought back to Broadway in 1969 when it was at last a hit. Anyhow, what Megan misses out on in 1967 is a dud.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

BTW, an interesting stat about Wright's list. Although it contains many repeat-directors with Hitchcock the most at 12 entries, there are still 546 separate directors on the list: more than I thought at first glance.

That is, the average director has 1000/546 ~ 1.8 entries on Wright's list

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Thus reinstalling Hitchcock as the "Babe Ruth of classic movies."

I think I saw one list where he had nine on it.

And as for the AFI thriller list, I think these made the top ten:

Psycho(Number One)
NXNW
Rear Window
The Birds
maybe Vertigo?

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Part of it is starting early (the 20s, with The Lodger sometimes scoring, but definitely the 30's). Part of it is ending late (Frank Capra and John Ford made no films in the seventies, Hitchcock did.)

But a lot of it was just making great, entertaining movies with cinematic style and narrative/thematic profundity to spare. I cant think of a "lightweight" Hitchcock movie -- no , not even The Trouble With Harry, To Catch a Thief, or Family Plot.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

1000. The Neon Demon, Nicholas Winding Refn, 2016

Simply dreadful. Hard to know where to begin in criticizing TND since there's so much that's disappointing about it. NWR needs to go back to Denmark; concentrate on getting some original ideas (instead of lifelessly compositing ideas together from Polanski and Argento and Lynch and Kubrick and also from a cult film that's on Wright's list and that has its moments, Beyond the Black Rainbow), writing believable characters that someone might conceivably root for or care about, and capturing a sense of a place that actually exists (the LA in TND contains about 10 people; it's maddening). The longer NWR's been in LA, the worse his movies have gotten.

I gather that TND has lost a lot of money so maybe NWR will have no choice but to go back to Europe to get his next films funded, but that's what I think he needs to do in any case.

[–] Mr_K_Pratt 8 years ago

That's a shame, I love his "Pusher" series.

I watched Beyond the Black Rainbow a few nights ago without realising it was one off Wright's list, it reminded me of THX 1138 amongst others.

YOU SHOULDN'T BE EATING SAUSAGES!!

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

That's a shame, I love his "Pusher" series.

Me too. I also loved Bronson and Valhalla.

I should perhaps add to my comments above about The Neon Demon (i) that they're 'only my opinion'. I can't honestly recommend TND to anyone - it really made me mad! - but, on another level, I do want other people to make up their own minds about it.

And (ii) that I've occasionally reacted very negatively to films in the past and then had to eat my words over the next decade or so. The prime example of this is Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, which I found tooth-grindingly horrible on release but which I've grown to appreciate (though not love). And EWS is one of the 10 or so key films on which TND draws (not just in its basic story of a shadowy overclass serviced by and preying on a cadre of near-identical tall model/courtesan types, but also in slathering the proceedings with esoteric conspiracy symbols), so maybe I'm primed to dislike TND in a way that other people aren't.

I watched Beyond the Black Rainbow a few nights ago without realising it was one off Wright's list, it reminded me of THX 1138 amongst others.

THX is a good point of reference. I really need to see Beyond the Black Rainbow again to figure out what I think about it, but first time through (plus a few rewatches of key scenes after reading up about it online) I guess that I was impressed by how committed it was to its own trippy aesthetic, and to being something like a 'lost '70s cult film'. I guess proof that BBR has real vaue is that since I watched it about 6 months ago (after reading an AVclub article about it) I am finding that I see traces of it everywhere, not just in TND but also in Netflix's Stranger Things whose strange institute and 'lost '80s Spielberg film' aesthetic reminded of BBR.

[–] Mr_K_Pratt 8 years ago

I've never seen EWS and I'm a big fan of Kubrick's other work, mainly 2001 and A Clockwork Orange. I'll have to give it a watch sometime.

It's funny you should mention Stranger Things. I watched it a couple of weeks ago and this was the recommendation I read from a friend on facebook that made me want to immediately watch BBR.

Stranger Things fans, check out a 2010 movie called Beyond The Black Rainbow. It's almost the same story RE it's set in 1983, there's the telepathic girl locked up and the seriously '80s tone and soundtrack...there's no doubt this was a massive influence, though it's more surreal than Stranger Things. It's also very reminiscent of Ex Machina and Under The Skin . Recommended! It's a real trip.

I've not seen either of the two other films he mentioned.

YOU SHOULDN'T BE EATING SAUSAGES!!

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

It's also very reminiscent of Ex Machina and Under The Skin . Recommended! It's a real trip.

I've not seen either of the two other films he mentioned.

Both EM and UTS are really worth seeing. UTS ended up being my favorite film of 2013 (ahead of 12 Years A Slave, The Act Of Killing, Gravity, Frances Ha), and EM was in my top 5 for 2015 (with only Son of Saul and Room clearly ahead of it in my view).

I guess I don't see that much connection between EM and Stranger Things, whereas ST flat-out lifted the design of Eleven's initial liquid black void (her on-ramp to the Upside-Down as it were) from UTS. While its possible to draw some more general parallels between ScarJo's character in UTS and Eleven in ST, UTS has such a poetic, art-film feel to it, which is to say a completely different feel from ST, that I don't regard those sorts of parallels as serious or illuminating in any way.

I can actually imagine another much more upsetting and haunted version of ST with, e.g., some analogue of UTS's beach scene, but such a substantively-influenced-by-UTS version of ST probably wouldn't be a hit!

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

490. The Silent Partner, Daryl Duke, 1978

An incredibly fun movie that, while being broadly in Hitchcock's wheelhouse throughout, explodes into Hitchcockiana in its third act. There Psycho is repeatedly homaged from the big death scene onwards (including esp. the clean-up after the death), but so too are Vertigo and NbNW and Family Plot, and finally even the Alfred Hitchcock Hour's very shocking and scary ep. 'An Unlocked Window'. I dare say that The Silent Partner, while only a very good film rather than a truly great one, is actually a *must see* for Hitchcockians.

TSP is an inside-job film, and I have to say that even though such films tend to be hard sells to the public (because who, at least in the abstract, cares to know enough about racetracks or casinos or banks or insurance or whatever the intricate system the insider is going to try to game), *if* you can get people to see them, they're among the most satisfying movie experiences.

At least if the film is done well, in 2 hours you come to really get a feel for how the intricate system that's now going to be gamed works both technically and humanly. And then there's enormous room for the plot to twist as the out-smarter isn't quite as smart as he thinks he is, but maybe he's still smart enough! You're on the side of a bad guy throughout, but almost always against worse guys. Suspense emerges naturally with every turn because the whole scheme always involves people wearing a couple of different hats, very small margins, and precise timing. The upshot: in 2 hours you get your money's worth, more than that.

TSP immerses you in retail banking set in one of the grandest malls in the whole world still, Eaton Center in Toronto. Elliot Gould is as good as always. Christopher Plummer channels Barry Foster's Bob Rusk a bit, a very beautiful Celine Lomez makes a big impact (why didn't she get a big career after this?), Susannah York is good as a fellow bank clerk.

Curtis Hanson did the adapted screenplay (from a novel - apparently there's prior Danish movie adaptation too). I quite liked some of Hanson's cheapie directing for Corman before this, e.g., The Arousers, but doing this bit of complicated/flashy writing must have helped him a lot into get studio directing jobs.

The production side of TSP is also interesting. This is the first film by a production partnership that was all over '80s and early '90s movies: Carolco from Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna (I may have messed up these names a bit). TSP was a big success commercially and critically in Canada and then became a sleeper hit elsewhere including the US. Kassar and Vajna were on their way.

A couple of minor complaints: (i) the monetary sums seemed off. $50K in 1978 isn't enough to fight to the death over I'd say, nor is it enough to run away to make a new life with. (ii) the shootout near the end seemed a little technically weak to me, like they didn't do the sound and blood-bags sides of things justice.

Overall, though, TSP was a very good time indeed and definitely inspired 'they don't make 'em like this any more' wistfulness in me.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

I dare say that The Silent Partner, while only a very good film rather than a truly great one, is actually a *must see* for Hitchcockians.

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You're zipping through the Wright list at a speed and density that is a bit mind-boggling, but great to read, swanstep. I can't keep up on everything, probably won't comment on everything, but here, you do seem to have hit one of those fairly famous "Hitchcock homages" that really seems to get him.

I'd say that comes from the screenplay being by Curtis Hanson, a film scholar/film critic who spent a LONG time building a film directing career that climaxed with the great "LA Confidential" in 1997...almost twenty years after "The Silent Partner."

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TSP is an inside-job film, and I have to say that even though such films tend to be hard sells to the public (because who, at least in the abstract, cares to know enough about racetracks or casinos or banks or insurance or whatever the intricate system the insider is going to try to game), *if* you can get people to see them, they're among the most satisfying movie experiences.

---

These are highly intelligent variations on the "caper film" and in the financials category, I'd include Hot Millions and The Silver Bears in there -- movies I saw, liked, and can't remember for the life of me.

That's becoming a theme here as you go through the Wright list. I realize the extent to which one set of movies is well set in my memory(NXNW, Psycho, The Wild Bunch, Bullitt, The Manchurian Candidate) through constant reviewing while yet another set(Little Murders, Slither, The Silent Partner) are long ago memories of a "first and only viewing." Bits and pieces of those memories remain.

With The Silent Partner, it was Gould as the good guy and Plummer as the bad guy(Strangers on a Train was the supposed template but indeed by 1979, villains were far more Barry Foster than Robert Walker in the psycho brutality department); that beautiful woman co-star; a truly gory murder involving, as I recall, a fish tank, and a memorable line by Gould after he is shot in the arm: "I've always wondered what it would feel like to be shot. (Pause) It really hurts!" I figure that's how it would feel.

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At least if the film is done well, in 2 hours you come to really get a feel for how the intricate system that's now going to be gamed works both technically and humanly.

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I like that.

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And then there's enormous room for the plot to twist as the out-smarter isn't quite as smart as he thinks he is, but maybe he's still smart enough!

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That's well put. Its more fun when the out-smarter himself is out-smarted and has to "improvise and regroup."

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You're on the side of a bad guy throughout, but almost always against worse guys.

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I'll not seek spoilers here, but I'm unsure which bad guy you are talking about.

That said, the Hays Code break-down of the 70's gave us all sorts of movies where "bad guys took on badder guys" and the good guys were on the sidelines: The Sting, Charley Varrick, The Getaway(McQueen/MacGraw)...Family Plot(though Blanche and Lumley were con artists who at least did the hard work of investigation to get their séance facts right.)

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Suspense emerges naturally with every turn because the whole scheme always involves people wearing a couple of different hats, very small margins, and precise timing. The upshot: in 2 hours you get your money's worth, more than that.

---

Gee, I saw it on release. Now, I'm getting a hankering to see it again.

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TSP immerses you in retail banking set in one of the grandest malls in the whole world still, Eaton Center in Toronto.

--

Interesting.

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Elliot Gould is as good as always.

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Gould started the 70's as a budding superstar. Bob and Carol and Ted and Alive at the very end of 1969 got him an Oscar nomination; MASH a few months later made him a "cool guy" star and suddenly, he was in everything. Too much, indeed. He made so many failed movies in the first three years of the 70s that by the time Altman used him again for the great "Long Goodbye," it was intended as a Gould comeback.

That didn't really work, but Gould was dependable for the rest of the decade as a second tier star. I like him paired with -- James Caan! -- in "Harry and Walter Go to New York" a period piece in which villain Michael Caine says of Gould and Caan: "They're not idiots. They would need training and education to BECOME idiots!"

Interesting to me: Elliott Gould sought out Alfred Hitchcock in the 70's just to talk to him on the phone, have lunch occasionally, be a pal. At the same time, the "Hitchcock touch" is well within both Capricorn One and The Silent Partner, and Gould eventually tried to buy Hitchcock's script of "The Short Night" after Hitch's death(I've read that script. Hitch pitched the lead of an amateur spy to Connery and Eastwood -- but its an Elliott Gould part.) And Gould joined Cybill Shepard in a remake of "The Lady Vanishes."

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Christopher Plummer channels Barry Foster's Bob Rusk a bit,

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I suppose so. Like I said, I recall his killing side to be quite brutal and his charming side to be quite charming.

Shall I "bury a lede" in this post and comment that if there are two unsung Hitchcock characters and performances that I will likely champion above all others -- because of the impact they had on me -- they are likely Martin Balsam as Arbogast and Barry Foster as Bob Rusk. One a victim; one a killer. Both incredibly charismatic and lightly comic performances by actors who really didn't get all that much of a shot at stardom. Psycho is popular enough to have raised Balsam's profile over the years, but Frenzy is a bit too obscure to have generated much discussion of Foster.

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a very beautiful Celine Lomez makes a big impact (why didn't she get a big career after this?),

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Beats me, but I DO remember how beautiful she was. One remembers the real beauties who DON'T become stars.

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Susannah York is good as a fellow bank clerk.

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Susannah York was an interesting actress with a kind of "homespun sexuality" to her work. As I recall, she made the most of the "R" rating with things like playing a lesbian in The Killing of Sister George (1968) and also in "X, Y, and Z"(stealing Liz Taylor from Michael Caine, in one of those bad movies Caine made while turning down Frenzy. On the other hand, I think Susannah York turned down Babs in Frenzy. Hell, EVERYBODY with a star name turned down Frenzy.) York was in the "I coulda been a star" category. And she gave a great, sad performance in the ultra-depressing "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" I think she got an Oscar nom for that.

By the time we reach The Silent Partner, I guess York was winding down her career, but she will be remembered.

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I'll here chime in on Little Murders and Slither with brief bits:

Little Murders was an incredibly grim film with a comic edge. As I recall, all through it , the characters have to "move fast" when outside on the street because snipers are everywhere. Some make it, some don't, and some bullets enter homes and kill people there.

I feel like America is getting closer to that reality all the time.

As for "Slither," I felt the NXNW connections were tenuous beyond what you described, swanstep. I felt cheated being brought into that movie with that NXNW promotion. Still, today, "Slither" is EXACTLY what the seventies gave us that we can't get today: oddball, shaggy, goes somewhere but not really. I'm not even sure indies do that.

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The Wright List: Keep 'em coming!

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

These are highly intelligent variations on the "caper film" and in the financials category, I'd include Hot Millions and The Silver Bears in there -- movies I saw, liked, and can't remember for the life of me.

Never heard of these two before - will put 'em on my list.

You're on the side of a bad guy throughout, but almost always against worse guys.
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I'll not seek spoilers here, but I'm unsure which bad guy you are talking about.

Oh, I just mean that strictly speaking in all such movies, we're on the side of whoever's trying to get away with gaming the system (here Gould) who are in fact bad guys, of course against the much worse guys. I guess TSP does stack the deck a little in favor of Gould - Plummer's much worse guy is a truly nasty villain - and the films consistently mocks all of Gould's bank colleagues/bosses etc except for York.

By the time we reach The Silent Partner, I guess York was winding down her career, but she will be remembered.

By TSP she was looking a little too mousey at 39 or so by Hollywood standards to get big parts, but in TSP it works well because she looks the part of a of mid-career mall-banking person and a good match for Gould. I guess she was still looking glamorous as Superman's doomed mom that year and again 1980 but I think all those scenes with her and Brando were shot in very gauzy, soft lighting/filtered to be flattering, not harsh mall lighting. Checking IMDb, it was mainly TV and certainly no studio pictures after that.

Little Murders was an incredibly grim film with a comic edge. As I recall, all through it , the characters have to "move fast" when outside on the street because snipers are everywhere. Some make it, some don't, and some bullets enter homes and kill people there.

I feel like America is getting closer to that reality all the time.

Don't give into Trump's vision ecarle! Honestly, crime rate and murder rates in particular are still a lot lower in the US overall than they were in the '70s-'90. Even Chicago which is a having an anomalously *very* bad time right now is *nowhere near* what the norm was when I lived there (with considerable trepidation I might add) in the mid-'90s.

Chicago looks like it might end up with 600 murders in 2016, which is a shocking increase from recent years (and massively out of step with most of the nation). But from 1990-2000 the annual murders in the city were always well above 600 and were mostly in the 800-900 range.

Little Murders is set in late '60s, early '70s NYC which saw an explosion of murder and quite unnerving random violence. Checking the stats - throughout the '30s , '40s, 50's and early '60s, NYC had around 400-500 murders annually. It increase sharply in the '60s jumping sharply to around 1000 in 1968 and by 1971 it reaches between 1500-2000 and stays there for the next 20 years, peaking in the early '90s. That rate then collapses so that by 2002 NYC is back to something like its historic norms of around 500 murders per year.....and the number of murders in NYC has continued to drift down since so that it's in the 300s these days.

Even deaths from actual terrorism are well-down these days in both Europe and the US from where they were in the 1970s. And, heck, with the recent ceasefire/peace deal in Colombia for the first time for 500 years (i.e., since European settlement of the New World began) there isn't a war anywhere in the whole Western Hemisphere. Much of the world outside the middle east and a couple of bits of Africa is actually pretty peaceful right now. Two cheers for us!

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

BTW, the movie trades are reporting that Sony is offering Daniel Craig $150 million to come back for two more Bond films.

I understand that Craig must be financially secure already, but an extra $150 million jacks you to another level - you'd make about somewhere between $200K and $300K in interest per *week* from that.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

BTW, the movie trades are reporting that Sony is offering Daniel Craig $150 million to come back for two more Bond films.

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I guess Craig's saying "I would rather cut my throat than do another Bond movie" was a solid negotiating tool.

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I understand that Craig must be financially secure already, but an extra $150 million jacks you to another level - you'd make about somewhere between $200K and $300K in interest per *week* from that.

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Very nice. The true irony here is that Craig hasn't proved much of a movie star in movies OTHER than Bond. But the producers are offering him that kind of money I'd say, because HIS Bond movies have hit huge paydays and -- why change horses in a stream? Its why Johnny Depp in Pirates movies and RDJ in Iron Man movies always get top pay, too.

Recall that Sean Connery was offered zillions to come back for "Diamonds are Forever," and he took them and did it. Then they offered him mega-zillions for "Live and Let Die," and he said no. Enter Roger Moore.

And Sean Connery remains the only James Bond who had a fully self-supporting superstar career aside from the franchise. (Pierce Brosnan is a so-so Second Place.)

Connery came back as Bond yet again in "Never Say Never Again"(get it?) but that was a special deal designed by Connery to "betray" the makers of the Bond series(Broccoli/Saltzman and their heirs) so Connery didn't have to come back to THEM. Some guy owned the rights to "Thunderall" who was NOT Broccoli/Salztman, so "Never Say Never Again" is a remake of "Thunderball" with a decidedly different look and feel from the other Bond movies. It is also very overlong and dull at the end, and Connery said "the producer didn't know what he was doing." (This was Talia Shire's then-husband and Jason Schwartzman's always-father.) Well, gee, Sean -- maybe you should have stuck to Broccoli.

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I can't imagine Daniel Craig turning down that money. But maybe...

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

I can't imagine Daniel Craig turning down that money. But maybe...

Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?

The future, Ms Weisz! The future.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

Don't give into Trump's vision ecarle!

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OK, but ya gotta admit its the cable TV news/internet news vision, too. It seems like only weeks, anymore, between reports of "mass shooters" (schools, malls, movie theaters.)

I was in a public building the other day and they had a large poster on the wall: "What to do in case of random shooter attack." I like how it devolved down to: "Only if there is no escape or rescue imminent should you attempt a physical confrontation with the shooter."

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Honestly, crime rate and murder rates in particular are still a lot lower in the US overall than they were in the '70s-'90.

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I liked reading all the detail from you, from here on down below.

One thing I've always had to confront. I've lived a pretty long time, and read newspaper headlines for decades now about "the horrors of life." The assassinations and riots in the 60's. The Texas Tower sniper. The Vietnam War. How dangerous NYC was in the 70's. The airline hijackings. And then the big one: 9/11. Plus all these mass shootings.

And not once has my life entered these zones. Nor has my family. Nor have my friends.

Its a numbers game -- population in America puts it at 400 million to what...20? And hopefully I won't encounter it.

But if your statistics below tell me one story, swanstep, it is that the "you are there" instant impact of social media has blown our murders way out of proportion to the statistical reality.

You know, Hitchcock rather took this subject up with Psycho and, more vividly, with Frenzy: most of the time you are safe in this world, but some people meet up with psychos. In the shower. In their office at lunch. Its just bad luck.

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Even Chicago which is a having an anomalously *very* bad time right now is *nowhere near* what the norm was when I lived there (with considerable trepidation I might add) in the mid-'90s.

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Considerable trepidation indeed. A braver man than I am.

Well, this also ties into this fact: homicides will always occur somewhere. The world is an ugly place, in some places.

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Chicago looks like it might end up with 600 murders in 2016, which is a shocking increase from recent years (and massively out of step with most of the nation). But from 1990-2000 the annual murders in the city were always well above 600 and were mostly in the 800-900 range.

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Is this being attributed to something? An increase in birthrate some years ago that led to a large cohort of young, angry people?

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Little Murders is set in late '60s, early '70s NYC which saw an explosion of murder and quite unnerving random violence. Checking the stats - throughout the '30s , '40s, 50's and early '60s, NYC had around 400-500 murders annually. It increase sharply in the '60s jumping sharply to around 1000 in 1968 and by 1971 it reaches between 1500-2000 and stays there for the next 20 years, peaking in the early '90s. That rate then collapses so that by 2002 NYC is back to something like its historic norms of around 500 murders per year.....and the number of murders in NYC has continued to drift down since so that it's in the 300s these days.

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Again, I wonder why. Certainly, 70's movies about NYC like Little Murders and Taxi Driver posit a horrible city.

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Even deaths from actual terrorism are well-down these days in both Europe and the US from where they were in the 1970s.

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That's pretty amazing, given what we are reading.

I expect what terrorism has succeeded at doing is convincing folks that no where is safe and their time could come at ANY time, any place.

Like at a movie theater.

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And, heck, with the recent ceasefire/peace deal in Colombia for the first time for 500 years (i.e., since European settlement of the New World began) there isn't a war anywhere in the whole Western Hemisphere. Much of the world outside the middle east and a couple of bits of Africa is actually pretty peaceful right now. Two cheers for us!

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Well, good to read. I do feel better.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

But if your statistics below tell me one story, swanstep, it is that the "you are there" instant impact of social media has blown our murders way out of proportion to the statistical reality.

This is certainly a big part of it. Very competitive media environments creates the 'if it bleeds it leads' strategy. Natural disasters too are much more widely and intensely covered that they used to be, and people who live in some of the most generally pleasant places in the whole world from California to the Pacific NorthWest to Japan to Italy to New Zealand have to live these days in *full awareness* of all the risks for big earthquakes and tsunamis (or worse) that come with living in these places. The same natural forces that made these places beautiful, that pushed up those mountains (and dropped other bits into the sea) are still at work tearing those places apart. Anyhow, really living with the awareness of those scientific facts ain't easy, and that's what a lot of us are forced to do these days.

Chicago looks like it might end up with 600 murders in 2016, which is a shocking increase from recent years (and massively out of step with most of the nation). But from 1990-2000 the annual murders in the city were always well above 600 and were mostly in the 800-900 range.

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Is this being attributed to something? An increase in birthrate some years ago that led to a large cohort of young, angry people?

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Little Murders is set in late '60s, early '70s NYC which saw an explosion of murder and quite unnerving random violence. Checking the stats - throughout the '30s , '40s, 50's and early '60s, NYC had around 400-500 murders annually. It increase sharply in the '60s jumping sharply to around 1000 in 1968 and by 1971 it reaches between 1500-2000 and stays there for the next 20 years, peaking in the early '90s. That rate then collapses so that by 2002 NYC is back to something like its historic norms of around 500 murders per year.....and the number of murders in NYC has continued to drift down since so that it's in the 300s these days.

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Again, I wonder why. Certainly, 70's movies about NYC like Little Murders and Taxi Driver posit a horrible city.

The collapse in crime and especially murder rates since the early '90s is still argued about and the recent upticks (which may be nothing more than what statisticians call regression to means) haven't clarified anything yet.

One big response in the '90s to the surge in crime and murders (esp. in big cities) throughout the 70s-90s was the 'get tough on crime', mandatory minimum sentencing, 3 strikes laws, and so on stuff. This response imprisoned truly huge numbers of people for much longer than peole had even been imprisoned before. That 'incarceration state' which is one of Bill Clinton's legacies isn't so popular these days. It's *very expensive* to run and keep building more prisons, and people have lost confidence that it was really responsible for the great crime decline, meanwhile the costs to communities outside of having a whole generation of prisoners and then ex-prisoners are very vivid now.

But it's all very complicated: a professor at U Chicago, Steve Levitt, the 'freakonomics' guy, made his name in the late '90s with a paper that argued that abotu 50% of the great crime drop was due to the impact of abortion, i.e., he looked at the timing of the crime drops in a wide range of states compared to when abortion became widely available in those states after Roe v. Wade and found some correlations that couldn't be made to disappear by taking into account other factors. So the idea is that the '90s saw for the first time a whole generation of 'unwanted then neglected or worse kids' who'd formerly have grown up to be most of your big crims when they were in their 20s in fact snuffed out before birth.

I'm kind of expecting Levitt to come out with his big bomb-throwing sequel soon, showing how much of the recent crime uptick can be plausibly attributed to the re-stigmatizing of abortion and the restrictions on abortion availability that started kicking in in a lot of places big time by the late '90s.

Good times ahead in behavioral economics academia I predict!

Less controversially, the upticks in particular cities like Chicago do seem to be driven by generational factors to do with imprisonment and drug use. Ultimately a new generation subject to the same exasperating poverty and general hopelessness conditions rises that doesn't remember a previous generation's drug wars and incarceration horrors. Bad, gangsterish behaviors start to look like business opportunities again and then become something-like fashion in whole neighborhoods.

Above all, when I studied all this back around 2000 it became clear that there were a lot of factors at work and that some of the most important factors in the US were deeply specific and cultural. E.g., there was one brilliant study around that time tracking the influence of one particular county in South Carolina, Edgefield County home of Senator Strom Thurmond, which had an incredibly bloody history throughout the 19C. Basically everyone there always settled disputes with violence (including Thurmond's family which is drenched in blood) and the basic way in which men conducted themselves was via an extreme honor code where if you felt slighted in any way you could defend your honor by killing someone. Not-coincidentally, white people in Edgefield County held more slaves per capita than almost anywhere else in the US and those slaves were treated even worse there than slaves were in the rest of SC, which itself generally embraced harsher forms of slavery than the rest of the Confederacy.

Anyhow, the study tried to trace where all the ex-slaves from Edgefield County went and whether they took the honor code culture of their former masters with them (passed it on to their kids and so on). The study was inconclusive, it was hard to get good data as you can imagine, but it was also suggestive. It *looked* like the worst, most intractable pockets of violent culture across much of the east and midwest did in fact correlate with outflows from Edgefield County and the persistence of crazy honor codes in those enclaves that are an engine for violently-settled grievance.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

You're zipping through the Wright list at a speed and density that is a bit mind-boggling, but great to read,

Well, thanks!

Obviously I picked some of the low-hanging fruit from Wright's list (relative to my tastes) to start with... I'm not going to be so enthusiastic when it comes time to watch things like Apocalypto, Domino, Man on Fire, Crank 2: High Voltage, Lethal Weapon, etc..

In the meantime I've got a bunch of other thing queued up before I get back to Wright's list again:

Some Gene Wilder flicks (Silver Streak and Stir Crazy)
The Loved One (1965) - a black comedy (in b/w) with your guy Jonathan Winters playing two roles - looks *great*!
Ajami (2009) - about the one neighborhood in all of Israel that's nobody's territory as such, where Jews, Christians, Muslims actually mingle. Heard very good things about it.
Poetry (2010) - good Japanese end of life drama I've had recommended to me.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

You're zipping through the Wright list at a speed and density that is a bit mind-boggling, but great to read,
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Well, thanks!

Obviously I picked some of the low-hanging fruit from Wright's list (relative to my tastes) to start with... I'm not going to be so enthusiastic when it comes time to watch things like Apocalypto, Domino, Man on Fire, Crank 2: High Voltage, Lethal Weapon, etc..

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Of that group, it is Man on Fire that I like the most. Denzel Washington is one of our more interesting stars. Two Oscars on the one hand, but a real interest in playing A-list B-movieish "ruthless good guy avenger roles" on the other that has paid off twice now -- Man on Fire and The Equalizer -- and is about to again, with The Mag 7. What Denzel is doing, IMHO, is building a John Wayne career of dependable tough heroism, with occasional forays into "acting"(recently, "Flight") which seem to get him Oscar noms "whenever he wants them." But he seems to prefer the aging action hero stuff. (I read somewhere where Denzel is currently the most reliable "profit-making" star in movies. All that action stuff.)

Man on Fire is a "visual match-up" to Domino -- same director, one of the Scott brothers I think -- in which pieces of dialogue appear on the screen even as they are spoken. The decision to cast Denzel was canny, for his vengeance is against a crew of Mexican child kidnappers whom he tortures for information and dispatches with a mercilessness that would not work if a white actor were cast to do these things to Hispanics. The film also has a great little crooked-lawyer role for Mickey Rourke that helped set up his "Wrestler" comeback , and alas, return to near obscurity now.

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In the meantime I've got a bunch of other thing queued up before I get back to Wright's list again:

Some Gene Wilder flicks (Silver Streak and Stir Crazy)

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Umm...formulaic. But funny. BTW, I hear that the Gene Wilder/Gilda Radner movie "Hanky Panky" is an even more direct homage to NXNW that Silver Streak.

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The Loved One (1965) - a black comedy (in b/w) with your guy Jonathan Winters playing two roles - looks *great*!

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Winters is my guy, alright. He seems to have been underused and mis-used in his heyday (the sixties.) We really only have Mad Mad World as a movie that "got him" -- and he only played one character. Its all that crazy improv as a guest star on TV variety shows and talk shows where he shined. A lot of them are on YouTube. Winters himself was given a CBS variety show but it didn't last very long; as I recall he looked too constricted having to introduce singers and act out sketches.

What's cool in "The Loved One" is that one of his characters is as close to a straight role as I've seen Winters play -- he's a movie studio excecutive with a tough minded , practical world view.

The Loved One also features Rod Steiger as mortician "Mr. Joyboy", who caters to an overweight Mother with too much affection --- we've been offered Steiger as Joyboy as what Norman Bates might have been if cast closer to Bloch's book.

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Ajami (2009) - about the one neighborhood in all of Israel that's nobody's territory as such, where Jews, Christians, Muslims actually mingle. Heard very good things about it.
Poetry (2010) - good Japanese end of life drama I've had recommended to me.

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Looking forward to reading. Thus, I expand my horizons.

[–] Doghouse-6 8 years ago

BTW, I hear that the Gene Wilder/Gilda Radner movie "Hanky Panky" is an even more direct homage to NXNW that Silver Streak.

I like them both equally, and while SS somehow feels more like NBNW to me, the homage elements, upon reflection, are pretty much equally distributed.

SS has the train; the cool and confident sexy lady; the urbane villain; the climactic "thrill" set piece.

HP has "the wrong man" formula (complete with news video replacing the incriminating U.N. photo); the "government secrets" (with an NSA computer tape in place of microfilm); the enigmatic intelligence official; a "death by plane" sequence (this time with the protagonists on board with an incapacitated pilot):

RADNER (to Wilder, desperately trying to bring the craft under control): "DO something!"

WILDER (in full hysteria mode): "I AM doing something: I'm crashing an airplane!"

Both have the cross-country pursuits catching the mild-mannered "everyman" up therein. But in place of both "sexy lady" Clayburgh and comic sidekick Pryor, HP wraps the damsel in distress and sidekick into the person of the quirky Radner. Although HP relies more heavily on deliberately comic interludes, the sense of personal jeopardy Wilder imparts seems more sincerely played. When government man Robert Prosky implies a trade of the rescue of Radner (in the baddies' clutches) for Wilder's cooperation in securing the real tape to replace the forgery they have, Wilder's desperation and shocked outrage are anything but funny: "I don't care about this! I don't care BEANS for this...Are you gonna let that girl die?"

Laconic and cold-as-ice ostensible villain, fedora-sporting Richard Widmark, doesn't have any Hitchcock counterpart of which I can think.

Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

Wilder's desperation and shocked outrage are anything but funny: "I don't care about this! I don't care BEANS for this...Are you gonna let that girl die?"

--(Paraphrased)"If you are going to let this girl fly away with him and possibly never come back, maybe you should think about LOSING a few cold wars"

Sounds like a near-match?

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Laconic and cold-as-ice ostensible villain, fedora-sporting Richard Widmark, doesn't have any Hitchcock counterpart of which I can think.

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I'm afraid not. Widmark landed a few of these arch-villain roles in his later years -- Coma was another -- and he never really quite fit the bill beyond being a "Late Golden Era Star."

Thanks for the nifty and comprehensive comparison, doghouse. I suppose a real issue here is that Gilda Radner was never going to be as sexy as Eva Marie Saint. Jill Clayburgh wasn't really, either, but seemed to have been given just the right make-up, hairstyle, wardrobe and lines to pull it off in SS.

There had been plenty of wrong man films before NXNW (The 39 Steps, Saboteur and, er, The Wrong Man in Hitchcock's own wheelhouse)...but NXNW seemed to "set the template" for all thereafter: more sex, more action, more one liners.

[–] Doghouse-6 8 years ago

Wilder's desperation and shocked outrage are anything but funny: "I don't care about this! I don't care BEANS for this...Are you gonna let that girl die?"

--(Paraphrased)"If you are going to let this girl fly away with him and possibly never come back, maybe you should think about LOSING a few cold wars"

Sounds like a near-match?

Woo! I didn't even realize I was raising a target, and you hit the bullseye! I just love your facility for zeroing in on the "connective tissue."

Thanks for the nifty and comprehensive comparison

In view of the above, I'm thinking now there must be a lot I missed.

There had been plenty of wrong man films before NXNW (The 39 Steps, Saboteur and, er, The Wrong Man in Hitchcock's own wheelhouse)...but NXNW seemed to "set the template" for all thereafter: more sex, more action, more one liners.

Or perhaps was the perfected culmination of all that came before. Didn't Lehman somewhere along the line get the idea to realize "the ultimate Hitchcock picture," or something like that? It might be even more remarkable that a first-time collaborator, who sometimes felt as adrift as the Mary Deare, came as close as one might get.

Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

I don't think "Mr. Ricco" made the Wright List, but I figured this might be a good thread to place this little talk, rather than starting a new OT thread.

Turner Classic Movies is going through some changes"

They'll be doing another one of their "cruise with the celebrities" Caribbean cruises in November; but it will be the final one. On board are Leslie Caron and Jerry Lewis, pretty iconic just by themselves. But Kim Novak is coming and, well...Vertigo IS the Number One movie, yes? Quite a coup. Also aboard: Diane Baker, who might have a thing or two to say about Marnie. And Mirage. And Strait-Jacket(where she was hired to replace Anne Helm when star Joan Crawford fired Helm on that William Castle/Robert Bloch picture.)

The main older host Robert Osborne has pretty much vanished without a trace. There are concerns about his health, promises he'll be back...who knows? They have a new young female Hispanic host, and a new gay one in Michael Feinstein, the accomplished singer/pianist (I think he's permanent, maybe I'm wrong).

The August "Summer Under the Stars" promotion of a star a day seemed to eschew a lot of the "usual names" in favor of some lesser knowns. Fair enough.

But when they had "Dean Martin Day," curiosity drove me to record and watch "Mr. Ricco" (1975), which intrigues me for a few reasons:

NEAR-FINAL FILMS OF THE STARS: To my mind , perhaps three major stars got "perfect" final films: John Wayne in The Shootist(Don Siegel directing; about a gunfighter dying of cancer, made three years before Wayne did); On Golden Pond(Henry Fonda wins his first Best Actor Oscar just in time, dying soon thereafter) and, arguably, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"(in which Spencer Tracy was dead before the film was even released, but reunited with Kate for one last tearful time.)

But more often, big stars went out with a whimper instead of a bang, and a final "leading role" film that just didn't fit quite right -- and was often not in the star's final film.

Case in point: James Stewart in Fool's Parade(1971.) Its kind of a Southern Gothic 30's action picture, with Jimmy sporting a fake eye he takes out to scare people with. This was Stewart's final lead role, but he went on to cameo in Airport 77, The Big Sleep remake...and The Shootist(most memorably there, as the Old Doctor who tells the Old Gunfighter he's got the Big C.)

Case in point: Frank Sinatra. Sinatra made a "smutty sex-comedy Western"(with a PG rating) called "Dirty Dingus Magee" in 1970, right before he retired from singing and acting in 1971. Neither retirement stuck -- he was back singing by '73 and did one more theatrical movie in ...1980, I think: "The First Deadly Sin." But "Dirty Dingus MaGee" felt like the Final Frank Sinatra lead. The last time he was seriously considered to BE the lead. He took and then withdrew from Dirty Harry around the same time. I fear the Sinatra Harry movie would have been less taut than Don Siegel's version with Clint Eastwood. Talk about a "save" in movie history!

Case in point: James Cagney. His final lead was in 1961, for Billy Wilder. "One, Two , Three." Cagney retired, but came back 20 big years later in 1981 for Ragtime. Cagney got top billing. It was an A-movie. And Cagney is good in it , in a meaty role. But Cagney only shows up for the third act, and he is old and despite the nastiness and fire being there in a new form..he's old and he's not the star. Ragtime should have been a great swan song, but Cagney came back ONE MORE TIME in a TV movie about an old boxer, and...shouldn't have.

Case in point: Dean Martin. His final lead was on TCM the other day: "Mr. Ricco" from 1975. As with the gentlemen above, this was Dino's last true lead, but he went on to do some bad things after: cameos in the two bad Cannonball Run movies(with Sammy in two and Frankie in one), and some TV movie.

DEAN MARTIN IN ...SHAFT?

One watches "Mr. Ricco" figuring: Dino had to have looked at the rushes and final print(if he even cared to) and said: "That's it. I'm done." And its weird, because sometimes in the film, he is charismatic, and sometimes he is handsome, and sometimes he is tough(he is believable in a couple of fistfight scenes.) But other times, he looks like a plastic surgery victim(with bright white false teeth), and acts with that kind of spaced out fake-dopiness of his TV show(which I admired very much, he was ALWAYS cool on that show, in that environment, but which doesn't work playing a serious character.)

But the main problem with "Mr. Ricco" is this: Dino just doesn't FIT. He doesn't fit the character. Or the San Francisco setting. Or the gritty seventies filmmaking on display(director Paul Bogart had some good reviews from people like Pauline Kael on other movies.) And Dino decidedly doesn't fit the "Blaxploitation" angles of the film, with its reliance on a black activist plotline.

The simple word would be "miscast." But its weirder than that. Here is a perfectly workable B-level seventies crime thriller that would have been passable with say, Burt Lancaster or Charles Bronson in the lead. But every time Dino turns up on the screen instead, it is as if he has been superimposed via CGI. Its like Bogart in the Dick Van Dyke role in Mary Poppins or something.

I'm guessing that Dino's handlers said something like "It a perfect departure for you, Dean -- black power issues, a "Dirty Harry" backdrop, we can make you relevant again."

BEGIN SPOILERS

To its credit, the film is tough and interesting on its black issues and its legal issues. Its a "Black Lives Matter" film decades early. Dino is a criminal defense attorney who gets a black activist off on a murder charge. Soon, two uniformed cops are gunned down by the black activist (or so it seems -- Psycho is relevant here.) A dirty cop guns down a DIFFERENT black activist -- and asks Dino to defend him("You said it doesn't matter if your client is innocent or guilty.)". And Dino -- whose character contributes to the ACLU (Dino?) -- finds himself conflicted to learn that the ORIGINAL black activist committed the crime of which Dino got him aquitted (says the activist: "Just because you got me off a murder I did commit, doesn't mean you can get me off a murder I didn't commit.")

Dino pays a price for his sins(i.e. being a criminal defense attorney who gets somebody off who did it, but hell, maybe just for being a criminal defense attorney.) His girlfriend takes a bullet for him at the end. The black activist committing the new crimes is...a white man in disguise(the brother of the woman murdered for real the first time by the REAL black activist.)

Yep, "Mr. Ricco" is relevant in many ways and tough-minded in many ways(the one black activist who DID kill somebody but NOT these new victims...gets away scot free.) But somehow Dean Martin isn't the man for the movie. And to his credit, he seems to have known it. No more serious roles. No more leading roles. Done.

Side-bar: Dino's smooth lawyer is teamed up with Cindy Williams as his assistant, cute as a button between American Graffiti and Laverne and Shirley, here. They also give "Mr. Ricco" a little dog as a companion(he is a widower), a middle-aged girlfriend(no go-go girl girlfriends in this one), and a group of Italian-American friends with whom he speaks Italian. The character is nicely set up for a TV series...and ends up in "Shaft meets To Kill A Mockingbird" instead. Actually, this movie reminded me of the Sidney Poitier sequels to "In the Heat of the Night" -- "They Call Me MR. Tibbs!" and "The Organization."

B-level, but fascinating. And I was reminded: Dean Martin DID act very well in The Young Lions, Some Came Running, and especially Rio Bravo. And he was a full-on superstar on his long-running Number One TV show. He had what it takes, for a long time, but by Mr. Ricco...he didn't. No matter, the TV series, Airport and investing in half the land in Southern California made Dino very rich. He didn't need any of this anymore.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

What Denzel is doing, IMHO, is building a John Wayne career of dependable tough heroism, with occasional forays into "acting"(recently, "Flight") which seem to get him Oscar noms "whenever he wants them." But he seems to prefer the aging action hero stuff. (I read somewhere where Denzel is currently the most reliable "profit-making" star in movies. All that action stuff.)

There's something incredibly satisfying on-screen about a big bear of a man, not quite in the physical shape of his youth and peak star-dom, but still able to plausibly beat the tar out of puny bad guys. Liam Neeson has done very well with this sort of thing too. Taken was nothing special as a movie but I defy anyone not to viscerally enjoy seeing Neeson on the warpath, and I guess Denzel has plied the same territory. I guess not just Wayne but also Marvin are the forebears here.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

There's something incredibly satisfying on-screen about a big bear of a man, not quite in the physical shape of his youth and peak star-dom, but still able to plausibly beat the tar out of puny bad guys.

--

I suppose size has something to do with it. Height too -- which is more Neeson's ace, but also some "muscular girth." Denzel in The Equalizer was something to behold, holding back and holding back and then -- when he could be peaceful no longer-- "scientifically" setting a stopwatch by which to kill all opponents "on schedule." He sold -- as did Neeson in Taken -- a nobody-does-it-better knowledge of martial arts with a fit enough older guy's body. Still, I daresay its a fantasy.

Or is it? A veteran fighter might indeed easily take out a younger man who " doesn't know the moves."

--

Liam Neeson has done very well with this sort of thing too. Taken was nothing special as a movie but I defy anyone not to viscerally enjoy seeing Neeson on the warpath, and I guess Denzel has plied the same territory.

---

I recall reading just one review of Taken on the day it was released -- a January day, nothing great expected of it -- and saying "I want to see that." I saw it that night, I enjoyed Neeson's famous speech "I have certain specialized skills...I will find you and I will kill you" and then came the real selling point of the movie, I think: he did the IMPOSSIBLE, got his daughter to safety without breaking much of a sweat against ANY opponent. The "one-sided" nature of almost all the fights was a fantasy deluxe for the middle-aged man.

--

I guess not just Wayne but also Marvin are the forebears here.

---

True enough. Wayne was perhaps more "gentlemanly," at least until some of his last films. Marvin set the pace for white-haired middle-aged ruthless unstoppability (in Point Blank, especially).

Some of this "middle aged action star trend" is vengeance against the generation of "boy stars" like -- yeah, sorry -- Matt Damon, who fight well but carry no personal history with them(well in the beginning; Matt's getting pretty middle-aged , himself.)

But I also think that some moviemakers are pretty savvy: the Baby Boomers are still quite a crowd, and giving us middle-aged action men and middle-aged men and women who still have sex gives us our own role models. And in the real world, I think the sex is at least still being had. If not the beating up.

Additional note on Denzel: a few years back, he did a remake of "The Taking of Pelham 123" in basically a hyped-up version of the Walter Matthau role, with John Travolta in for Robert Shaw's villain. Denzel elected to SHOW his excess weight, giving us a perfectly "weighted" vision of a chair-bound bureaucrat with a gut, but great skills of his own to show off. And a secret. This ain't nearly as good as the original, but Denzel and Travolta were good middle aged stars.

Speaking of which. Denzel obviously has no compunction against remakes: he's done The Manchurian Candidate, Pelham 123, Man on Fire(originally a Scott Glenn "B") and now The Magnificent Seven. And The Equalizer was a remake of a TV series. I trust Denzel trusts the material. He never made that Strangers on a Train sequel that was announced with him(and his Equalizer/Mag 7 director Antoine Fuqua) and I'll always wonder: Guy or Bruno?

And a coupla years ago, he did a quasi "Charley Varrick" remake called "Two Guns" in which young(?) Mark Wahlberg caught Denzel with a much younger girlfriend and said to her: "Oh, I get it. A daddy thing."

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

Some Gene Wilder flicks (Silver Streak and Stir Crazy)
---
Umm...formulaic. But funny.

Silver Streak... yes, quite formaulaic, and the direction by Arthur Hiller of Love Story fame is no great shakes. Sometimes scenes just didn't seem to be properly finished, e.g., there's a cow-milking scene that ends without a punch-line or any kind of pay-off. The film lacked comic energy until Pryor came on board. Wilder himself seemed much more comfortable in the buddy-comedy the film becomes than in the quasi-NbNW/Charade romantic thriller it starts off by being. Worth streaming/renting but not a keeper.

Interesting to see Richard Kiel do a first draft of his Jaws character for OO7 films. Knowing where Kiel *could* take such a character, however, makes the Silver Streak version seem terribly underdone. That dude can be both very scary and very funny and he's neither in SS.

The Loved One (1965) - a black comedy (in b/w) with your guy Jonathan Winters playing two roles - looks *great*!
---
Winters is my guy, alright. He seems to have been underused and mis-used in his heyday (the sixties.) We really only have Mad Mad World as a movie that "got him" -- and he only played one character. Its all that crazy improv as a guest star on TV variety shows and talk shows where he shined. A lot of them are on YouTube. Winters himself was given a CBS variety show but it didn't last very long; as I recall he looked too constricted having to introduce singers and act out sketches.

What's cool in "The Loved One" is that one of his characters is as close to a straight role as I've seen Winters play -- he's a movie studio excecutive with a tough minded , practical world view.

The Loved One also features Rod Steiger as mortician "Mr. Joyboy", who caters to an overweight Mother with too much affection --- we've been offered Steiger as Joyboy as what Norman Bates might have been if cast closer to Bloch's book.

I was quite disappointed by The Loved One. It felt very clunky and uncertain in its tone to me which may testify to there being a few too many big egos behind the scenes. Tony Richardson (dir.) hot off Tom Jones, Terry Southern (writ.) hot off Dr Strangelove, Haskell Wexler (d.p.) hot off The Best Man and America America, something never quite gels. The amount of obvious, sloppily looped in dialogue is positively alarming which is bizarre - Richardson must get the blame for that. Robert Morse never convinces an English emigre (and how is he supposed to be working anyway? As a tourist you can't legally - there's a customs/border scene at the beginning that kind of alerts you to this as a problem but the film gives no help). It's bizarre that Richardson coming from England didn't bring a Finney or Tom Courtney or McDowell or, heck, Davy Jones with him to play the part. The film kind of sets up a bizarre woman as Robert Morse's and Rod Steiger's characters's mutual love-interest (Miss Thanatogeneous = Miss Death-causing) but she's clearly completely mad so exactly why Morse would be throwing himself at her is uncertain (she's also very uneducated not to recognize any of Morse's poetry, so why oh why is he, the aspiring poet interested in her? I mean there are plenty of young males chasing after idealized women in '60s movies from Tom Courtney chasing Julie Christie in Billy Liar to Dustin Hoffman chasing Katherine Ross in The Graduate. I can't even imagine what sort of knockout Miss Thanatogenous would need to be to sell TLO's story). Obviously there's a big helping of sneering criticism of all-things-American going on in the film, so maybe she's supposed to symbolize/criticize all-American-womanhood or something, but I didn't quite get it I'm sorry.

The Loved One wasn't very funny and didn't have anthing particularly clever to say. It's kind of a half-way house between Strangelove and The Graduate but those film are both riotously funny and enormously clever about their chosen topics, so TLO is not flattered at all by its natural comparisons.

The story felt a little broken-backed - we think it's going to be about the film-industry but that turn out to be just a pretext for the main Burial industry focus.

TLO *does* look fabulous with all of Haskell Wexler deep-focus wide-screen b/w, but that's not enough.

Rod Steiger is pretty jolly great channeling Sellers in both Lolita and Strangelove, and giving another view of post-Norman Bates manhood gone horribly wrong. Still, laughs were in very short supply.

One nice feature of seeing TLO is it made me appreciate what Mad Men did with Morse as Bert Cooper a little more. Bert's impromptu eulogy ('She was an astronaut) for the borderline bonkers old secretary Miss Blankenship in one of Mad Man's key episodes, 'The Beautiful Girls', now seems to me to clearly draw on Morse's sending Miss Thantogenous's body into space at the end of TLO. Nice work there Mr Weiner.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

Some Gene Wilder flicks (Silver Streak and Stir Crazy)
---
Umm...formulaic. But funny.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Silver Streak... yes, quite formaulaic, and the direction by Arthur Hiller of Love Story fame is no great shakes.

--

Perhaps not kosher of me to note that Arthur Hiller himself passed away very recently -- the last two weeks. But I'll bet Hiller himself would say that he had the "career of the journeyman director," working on anything and everything with enough professionalism that hits like Love Story and Silver Streak were his to do occasionally. I also recall Hiller being affiliated with the Academy a lot...he was an officer?...which might be part of the problem.

In any event, RIP Arthur Hiller. Your name is on some pretty famous pop movies.

---

Sometimes scenes just didn't seem to be properly finished, e.g., there's a cow-milking scene that ends without a punch-line or any kind of pay-off. The film lacked comic energy until Pryor came on board. Wilder himself seemed much more comfortable in the buddy-comedy the film becomes than in the quasi-NbNW/Charade romantic thriller it starts off by being. Worth streaming/renting but not a keeper.

---

It was a bit of a hybrid -- had it ONLY done the Wilder/Clayburgh/McGoohan plot, I figure it would have been an OK time killer(as long as it kept the train crash at the end.) But with Pryor on board...excellent.

I wonder why Pryor comes in so late. I wonder if he wasn't ADDED a few drafts in.

We might add to Psycho two Gene Wilder films...Willy Wonka as the first and Silver Streak as the second...in which it takes FOREVER to get the main character(or main funny character) into the movie and to get the REAL story going. I've never much liked the half hour-plus it takes to get Willy Wonka into his movie. There must have been a better way to get those kids their winning tickets. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe the long build-up worked like the Marion Crane story in Psycho.

And again, with Pryor in Silver Streak...why wait so long? Though I gotta admit, how he ENTERS the movie is great.

---

Interesting to see Richard Kiel do a first draft of his Jaws character for OO7 films. Knowing where Kiel *could* take such a character, however, makes the Silver Streak version seem terribly underdone. That dude can be both very scary and very funny and he's neither in SS.

---

True. I would like to add that Kiel was doing first first drafts of Jaws way back in The Wild Wild West series in the 60's. He was a supertall henchman to supershort little person villain Miguelito Loveless(Michael Dunn.) I always figured that both Dunn and Kiel were used on the series because handsome lead Robert Conrad was a pretty short guy...thus he could tower over Dunn and seem "normal" beneath Kiel.

Kiel is also a silent alien who grabs the hero of that Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" -- just after the hero learns that "To Serve Man" is a COOKBOOK!

So Dick Kiel went back aways.

And forward aways -- in "The Longest Yard" (1974) he's a convict asked to play football against the guards. The giant replies with quiet, sweet pleasure: "Play the guards? Yeah...I'd like that."

I don't think it was too long ago that Richard Kiel died...he lived pretty long for a "tall person." He was still working Star Trek conventions and Com Con, I think.

I was quite disappointed by The Loved One. It felt very clunky and uncertain in its tone to me which may testify to there being a few too many big egos behind the scenes. Tony Richardson (dir.) hot off Tom Jones, Terry Southern (writ.) hot off Dr Strangelove, Haskell Wexler (d.p.) hot off The Best Man and America America, something never quite gels. The amount of obvious, sloppily looped in dialogue is positively alarming which is bizarre - Richardson must get the blame for that.

---

As I recall, there were all sorts of production and distribution problems with The Loved One...it was one of those "who can they film THIS?" books that didn't get the script or cast or support it truly needed.

Robert Morse never convinces an English emigre (and how is he supposed to be working anyway? As a tourist you can't legally - there's a customs/border scene at the beginning that kind of alerts you to this as a problem but the film gives no help). It's bizarre that Richardson coming from England didn't bring a Finney or Tom Courtney or McDowell or, heck, Davy Jones with him to play the part.

---

Its possible...just possible, I don't know...that the bigger names turned it down. I don't think McDowall was a name yet, and Davy Jones wasn't going to be taken seriously (Though hey, Jones has passed, but the REST of the Monkees are getting a big tribute this year -- retrospective albums, a new album, a tour, and...RESPECT. I loved 'em. But then I was a kid. But then, they were Marx Brothers cool and their songs were written by pros. Much better than The Partridge Family. But I digress.)

---

The film kind of sets up a bizarre woman as Robert Morse's and Rod Steiger's characters's mutual love-interest (Miss Thanatogeneous = Miss Death-causing) but she's clearly completely mad so exactly why Morse would be throwing himself at her is uncertain (she's also very uneducated not to recognize any of Morse's poetry, so why oh why is he, the aspiring poet interested in her? I mean there are plenty of young males chasing after idealized women in '60s movies from Tom Courtney chasing Julie Christie in Billy Liar to Dustin Hoffman chasing Katherine Ross in The Graduate. I can't even imagine what sort of knockout Miss Thanatogenous would need to be to sell TLO's story).

---

I think that gal was a girlfriend of one of the producers. "Those were the days."

---

Obviously there's a big helping of sneering criticism of all-things-American going on in the film, so maybe she's supposed to symbolize/criticize all-American-womanhood or something, but I didn't quite get it I'm sorry.

---

Me,neither. And if that sneering criticism WAS there...not much box office. Still, its evidently not that good. I only saw it once, don't really remember it. I liked James Coburn in the first scene, next to Morse...he had STAR POWER.

---

The Loved One wasn't very funny and didn't have anthing particularly clever to say. It's kind of a half-way house between Strangelove and The Graduate but those film are both riotously funny and enormously clever about their chosen topics, so TLO is not flattered at all by its natural comparisons.

---

You can't win 'em all, cult-film-wise.

---

The story felt a little broken-backed - we think it's going to be about the film-industry but that turn out to be just a pretext for the main Burial industry focus.

--

Yet ANOTHER Psycho structure...one story becomes a different one.

---

TLO *does* look fabulous with all of Haskell Wexler deep-focus wide-screen b/w, but that's not enough.

--

I love 1960's b/w films. I don't know why. The film stock seems different than in the fifties, everything's more cool and modern. This starts(barely) with Psycho and then powers on through The Apartment, Lonely are the Brave, Strangelove, Fail-Safe, The Manchurian Candidate...and on and on.

I think it stops about 1967 with In Cold Blood.

---

---

Rod Steiger is pretty jolly great channeling Sellers in both Lolita and Strangelove, and giving another view of post-Norman Bates manhood gone horribly wrong.

---

Its a damn weird performance. And not a gay performance, as I recall. He DOES like that lady. Of course, Liberace is also in this.

---

Still, laughs were in very short supply.

---

It didn't know what it was.

---

One nice feature of seeing TLO is it made me appreciate what Mad Men did with Morse as Bert Cooper a little more. Bert's impromptu eulogy ('She was an astronaut) for the borderline bonkers old secretary Miss Blankenship in one of Mad Man's key episodes, 'The Beautiful Girls', now seems to me to clearly draw on Morse's sending Miss Thantogenous's body into space at the end of TLO. Nice work there Mr Weiner.

---

Had no idea! Nice work indeed.

To which I'd add: in his 60s heyday, I didn't think young Robert Morse had much charisma. He was a boyish "mugger," I felt, too goofy. But by the time he became an "old man," he changed. Line delivery, mannerisms, gravitas.

Still, way back in the 60's, along with his iconic role in "How to Succeed in Business," Morse scored as a skirt-chasing professional cheater of a husband trying to lure Walter Matthau to cheat on HIS wife, in the astonishingly sexist "Guide for the Married Man." Morse actually seemed pretty cool in that one...but he's a villain who gets his comeuppance. (And he kept the mugging to the trailer for the film.)

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

You can't win 'em all, cult-film-wise.

Indeed. There's no getting around that being a movie fan means seeing your share of failures.

And look at the keepers I've had just off Wright's list these last few weeks:

Criss Cross
The Laughing Woman
Bird With The Crystal Plumage
Little Murders
Slither
The Silent Partner
Hero (2002)
Green Room

None of these are perfect, but all have things in them to admire and lessons to teach. I'll rewatch each of them at some point, the best more than once.

[–] Doghouse-6 8 years ago

I wonder why Pryor comes in so late. I wonder if he wasn't ADDED a few drafts in.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

The whole middle sequence with Pryor seems very much like an extended version of one of the eccentric interludes that Hitchcock would sometimes insert into his "chase" adventures: the impromptu speech (copied somewhat in The Third Man) or farmer and his wife in The 39 Steps; the carnival wagon in Saboteur (and dozens of similar episodes in man-on-the-run or rom-com-cum-road-films of other directors). They serve their purpose, and then they're over. As George and Grover say their (first) goodbyes, their arc feels complete, finishing with a punchline (Pryor's reply to the cop who asks if he needs a lift anywhere: "Well, I left my car in Kansas City") that hints at his being off on further adventures of his own, as we and George rejoin the main plot.

---

Great analogy. Its quite possible that Grover was written as a "one sequence cameo" of some sort(which happened in "road movies" all the time)...and then expanded once it was learned that Pryor could do the role, or even in the writing process.

I'll re-drop a name I dropped some take back in the writer of the Silver Streak script, Colin Higgins, who, in 1975 or so, sat in an LA bar with myself and some mutual friends(he knew one of them, he didn't know me) and told us that he had written Harold and Maude and that he had just sold "Super Chief"(which became "Silver Streak.") I'm almost certain he said it would star Wilder AND Pryor.

---

It's Grover's surprise reappearance at the train that, despite the comic gold of Wilder and Pryor's cinematic rapport, struck me as tacked on afterthought, story-wise (which is not to suggest it was at all unwelcome). Other than his coffee-spilling/gun-pulling confrontation with Devereau, there just doesn't seem to be much reason for Pryor to be there, except to mine a few more nuggets of that comic gold.

---

Silver Streak is on my somewhat lengthy list of "movies I saw with a full house and full house reaction" and I recall things like the big laughs and applause at the coffee spill confrontation and, of course, the blackface sequence. But I also remember how every time Pryor showed up again after we thought he was gone...he got huge applause.

And...when Pryor made his REAL final appearance in the film -- saying goodbye to the lovers while driving off in a purloined display car -- he got applause and cheers. Almost a standing ovation.

Its why I remember Silver Streak as a big deal...I think sometimes just putting a movie in the DVD player cannot give a modern viewer that experience of the "full house cheers" effect.

On a related note:

I think this WAS planned in the screenplay, but Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment is yet another character who seems to leave the movie...but keeps coming back. And since every time he comes back, the story has gotten sadder (flowing tears sadder)...he is EXTREMELY welcome in the story. Which is one reason I think Jack won a Supporting Oscar for that one.

[–] Doghouse-6 8 years ago

Its quite possible that Grover was written as a "one sequence cameo" of some sort(which happened in "road movies" all the time)...and then expanded once it was learned that Pryor could do the role, or even in the writing process.

It frustrated me that I could come up with only those paltry few examples, so I'm glad you were keyed in to what I had in mind. A couple more examples have bubbled to the surface, and another in Hitchcock, I guess, would be Lila Kedrova's Countess in Torn Curtain. But instead of the fond partings and expressions of gratitude and good luck, she's dropped rather unceremoniously and pathetically.

I also remember how every time Pryor showed up again after we thought he was gone...he got huge applause.

And perhaps this demonstrates an instance of the device that Silver Streak got right where other films, following convention, failed to take advantage.

Another film maker, Mel Brooks (who followed convention only for the purpose of satirizing it), incorporated a similar surprise reappearance a few years earlier in his own "road film," The Twelve Chairs, with the husband and wife who'd been plagued by avaricious priest Dom Deluise finding themselves again at his mercy hundreds of miles away from where their first encounter took place. And in another upturning of convention, their role is that of thwarting - or at least resisting - the ostensible villain rather than directly aiding the protagonist(s).

Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

505 Winter Kills William Richert, 1979

I gather that this film polarizes people, hence it was a big flop in 1979 but that it has always had its fans/defenders. I'm afraid that, at least on first viewing, I'm negatively polarized by it: I thought it was a near complete disaster (with the only redeeming features being the cast full of intriguing cameos for film buffs and the occasional nice visuals and pieces of design care of Vilmos Zsigmond and Robert Boyle respectively).

Idiotically plotted with the clumsiest flashback structure that I can remember, Winter Kills is deeply uncertain in its tone, and manages I suppose to be both a lousy thriller and a lousy satire. The film obviously reminds us of lot of other films - not just the obvious conspiracy thrillers but things like Chinatown through John Huston's presence as a booming patriarch and Network via Perkins giving a kind of lame-o, tin-eared version of Ned Beatty's big speech in that movie. Some stuff even unflatteringly reminds us of later films: Huston accused by Bridges of being something like a common thief responds that he's something like The Prince of Thief/The Jupiter of Thieves.... well that can't help but reminds us of Rickman's Hans Gruber's much better version of the same response to a similar taunt in Die Hard. The end of WK struck me as a Batman v. Superman-level embarrassment - Huston decides to commit suicide (for what reason?) but, no, he decides to clutch on to something (for what reason?) then falls to his death anyway. Meanwhile we really aren't sure whether he's the actual big bad or Perkins and some abstract corporation is (a la Point Blank and arguably The Parallax View) - it matters for how we understand what Bridges is going to do now (whether the omnipotent death machine corporation that has (preposterously if its intentional as we're supposed to believe) almost killed Bridges many times, and has killed is lover etc., will now follow his orders?

One of the more disappointing movies I've ever seen given the talent involved both in front of and behind the camera. I've been vaguely looking forward to seeing this film since the early '80s when it's title was used for a pretty good wintry album track:
https://youtu.be/Fzc30bJJJmI
I actually think that because of that track and the title I ended up thinking that the film was set in a snowbound Moscow (perhaps conflating it with Gorky Park (1983), another film I never saw but always vaguely intended to). Winter environments, however, play only a marginal role in the actual WK. Too bad.

It occurs to me that maybe, just maybe the Coens or Scorsese could have saved this film, threading the needle between mystery-thriller and black comedy. At any rate, I regard Burn After Reading and After Hours as kind of ideal case kindred spirits to what I *suspect* director Richert was trying to achieve.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

I gather that this film polarizes people, hence it was a big flop in 1979 but that it has always had its fans/defenders.

---

I'm a fan/defender...except I think it is a terrible movie indeed.

How can THAT happen?

Well, that cast mainly, bordering on totally. For different reasons I was a fan of Anthony Perkins(from one main film but then he haunted me) and Richard Boone(from about six films, and not much from his famous TV show at all) and those two ALONE being in the same movie drew my attention to it. But then we got Huston and Hayden and Wallach and Mifune and (as I recall, long time since I've seen it) someone was always turning up worth watching . For Boone, this would be his last major film release before his death in 1981. For Perkins, this was among his last works (in a busy 1979-80 period of solid work, he did The Black Hole and fflolkes and this) before taking on Psycho II and locking in as Norman Bates forever.)

Jeff Bridges was the lead, this was early on in his astonishingly long career as an "underrated second tier star." He was heading for his most fit and handsome looks in this film(he needed a few more years to age properly and look even better), he holds the story together as best he can.

And he gets a sex scene with the gorgeous Belinda Bauer that I remember to this day. She's beautiful and naked and yelling all the time so he gently puts a pillow over her mouth to quiet her down, and it just goes from very sexy to rather funny. Watching it all I could think was: "This Jeff Bridges is one lucky fellah." That scene was probably worth his making the movie, right there.

---

I'm afraid that, at least on first viewing, I'm negatively polarized by it: I thought it was a near complete disaster (with the only redeeming features being the cast full of intriguing cameos for film buffs and the occasional nice visuals and pieces of design care of Vilmos Zsigmond and Robert Boyle respectively).

---

Pros in the cast and behind the camera...Boyle was an old Hitchcock hand, of course.

What went wrong, from what I've read, was that Richert kept running out of money and having to shut production down. It was made over at least two years, I think, off and on, with actors having to be found again and the "flashback" structure, I think, was designed to hide the fact that many scripted scenes could not be filmed.

The plotting incoherence that you speak to , swanstep, could come (heavily, if not necessarily exclusively), from a neophyte film director losing control of his funding, his ability to film all scenes, and the ability to make the movie he intended to make. Its just a buncha scenes stuck together. So one watches and listens to Perkins and Boone and just enjoys on general nostalgia. (To Boone's credit, he got praise as the only good thing in "WinterKills" from LA Times critic Charles Champlin who wrote, "Boone speaks his every line with a power and authority that makes you believe what he says is the word of God." I'd like to add that Boone was great at pointing his finger to make dramatic points.)

Funny story about Richard Boone and the busted budget on WinterKills. He showed up at the seaside location near where his scenes on a ship were to be filmed, and told an assistant director that "he wanted to go fishing." "But you are due on the ship in an hour to film your scene, we have to transport you."

Boone: "Its too beautiful a day not to go fishing , first." Boone rented a boat and took the guy out fishing with him. But it had a ship to shore radio. Boone waited until the radio started squwaking, and heard a message:

"Your agent got the money wired to him."

"Well, that's great," Boone told the assistant director on the boat with him. "I'm finally paid for this thing. Now, I'll go play my scene."

End of fishing trip.

---

I like Winterkills in spite of itself. All those stars, that sex scene.

Too bad , though: it was from a novel by Richard Condon, whose Manchurian Candidate was a pre-Kennedy assassination tale of Presidential candidate assassination; WinterKills was ABOUT the Kennedy assassination, in a roundabout way. A truly great film could have been made, I suppose, had the right director had the rights.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

in a busy 1979-80 period of solid work, (Perkins) did The Black Hole and fflolkes and this (WinterKills)

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After I wrote that, I reflected on how interesting it was to see Anthony Perkins still working in this period. Psycho II and a "last decade career save" was coming in 1983(shot in 1982), but Perkins WAS working and those three movies suggest how interesting he could still be.

WinterKills was a mess but Perkins sure was Perkins in it...bizarrely so. His Psycho II/Psycho III persona can be seen here...a lot more hyper and atonal in his speech and movements than in Psyco. And there is a weird scene in which Jeff Bridges methodically breaks Perkins' arms...and Perkins just keeps talking. I can't remember if he shows much pain at all.

The Black Hole was from the dying-out "old" Walt Disney Studios(before the TV moguls took it over in the 80s.) It was a great premise poorly staged, kind of "Star Wars Meets Psycho," in that the action takes place in a decidedly Gothic looking space station on the edge of ...The Black Hole. Eventually , that space station is sucked into the Black Hole. We needed 2001. We got Disney circa 1979.

But the cast made the film seem like The Best Unsung Movie of.... 1961: Ernest Borgnine, Tony Perkins, and Yvette Mimieux as part of the crew exploring the Gothic space station; Maximillian Schell as the Crazed Captain Nemo type whose spacecraft it was. (A somewhat more modern cast member was Robert Forster to round out the explorers trapped in Schell's lair.)

Memorable for the skinny/rotund pairing of Borgnine and Perkins in many scenes. Notable (in a Disney movie especially) for Perkins dying a good guy's death when a villain robot drills with his robot-drill-hand through the book in Perkins' hands and into his heart(no blood is shown, but it is a Psycho-esuqe way to go.)

"ffolkes" has a real place in my heart, if only because of the cast: Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins, and James Mason. You read that right. Norman Bates and Philip Vandamn in the same movie! But 1980, so both men were older(particularly Mason, who was much older than Perkins to start with.)

"ffolkes" is "Die Hard eight years early" but with a cheaper budget and less witty lines. Perkins is essentially "Hans Gruber eight years early" - a terrorist for money who has, with his gang, taken over three oil platforms on the North Sea.
Perkins didn't have Alan Rickman to study, so HIS gang boss was a more nasty and cruel bit of work(when someone tries to serve him poison coffee, he makes THEM drink it) -- surprisingly villainous for Perkins, DESPITE his having been such a brutal killer in Psycho(but such a sweet one). Indeed, Perkins' son singled out this "nasty villain" role in ffolkes as a real waste of the sympathy Perkins had developed as Norman.

In ffolkes, Perkins and Mason have a scene together, as I remember, and Mason figures in the (cheap) action climax VERSUS Perkins. Mason is a Naval commander trying to negotiate with Perkins. As for Roger Moore, he's the good guy, with a fun gimmick: fflokes HATES WOMEN, won't be around them, has no interest in romance, etc. But not gay.

I'm pretty sure Anthony Perkins did a lot more movies at the end of the 70's, too. I seem to remember him in Les Miserables on TV(he played the Inspector) and in some Alan Rudolph indie with his wife, Berry Berenson, and First You Cry(a tale of a marriage and breast cancer) with Mary Tyler Moore, and just working a LOT. But not really as a star.

The key to Perkins' longevity at this time may have been that his loyal agent was superagent Sue Mengers -- Perkins had been one of her first clients when she was just starting out.

Mengers tried to stop Perkins from making Psycho II, but he told her, "Face it, Sue...I AM Norman Bates."

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

The Black Hole was from the dying-out "old" Walt Disney Studios... It was a great premise poorly staged, kind of "Star Wars Meets Psycho,".... We needed 2001. We got Disney circa 1979..... Memorable for the skinny/rotund pairing of Borgnine and Perkins in many scenes. Notable (in a Disney movie especially) for Perkins dying a good guy's death when a villain robot drills with his robot-drill-hand through the book in Perkins' hands and into his heart(no blood is shown, but it is a Psycho-esuqe way to go.)

I haven't see The Black Hole (except for a few clips) since its first release. Some OK-ish sfx and Perkins and others pretty good but the story was terrible. In general I think that 2001 and also perhaps Solaris (which played around on one screen once a week for a lot of the '70s where I was as a kid and was billed as 'The Russian 2001') have been *terrible* influences on sci-fi film: they've tempted people to tell nonsensical stories about 'people going to the end of the universe to discover themselves'. The Black Hole ends with people being sucked into the Black Hole and finding essentially the Christian Hell and Heaven in there. This is stooopid. And things like Contact and Event Horizon and Interstellar and lots and lots of others things (a '70s Tv-show called Space 1999 did it every couple of episodes!) collapse with versions of the same kind of 'at the end of the universe there's just more us' conceit (will The Arrival fall into a version of this trap in a few weeks time?...let's hope not.... If Amy Adams's parents, say, start walking out of the Alien spaceships I'm outta there.)

Anyhow, Edgar Wright doesn't feel this way since(The Black Hole is #500 on his list) and obviously Chris Nolan doesn't either since I've seen him list The Black Hole as one of *his* very favorite films and Interstellar showed its influence. Nuts!

Back to Winter Kills: the gal and the sex scene. She was pretty alright - very Isabelle Adjani-ish from some angles for sure. The film had been so erratic up till that point that I thought it was going to twist: Smothering someone's orgasmic kerfuffle with a pillow is inherently risky and have Bridges either kill her deliberately, kill her inadvertently, kill her in some sort of framing set-up seemed on the cards. But no... this movie didn't seem to be able to do anything right

Anyhow, one thing that Winter Kill and its mystery gal put in perspective again for me was how truly great The Silent Partner (1978) and *its* sexy mystery gal (Celine Lomez) were. *She* was a should-have-been star and that movie knew what it was doing in every scene. Celine Lomez dies horribly, memorably, the Winter Kills Gal dies off-screen and honesty never really comes into focus (we don't know *what* the hell to make of the very final scene of the film with Bridges leaving a message on her answering machine?).

A final remark: perhaps Winter Kill makes Wrights list for the same reason that I speculated Looker (1981) did: as a young film-maker it can be inspiring to see something that's a complete mess precisely because it makes film-making look attainable. *You* can do better than that so just get out there and write it and *do* it.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

537 The Beyond Lucio Fulci, 1981

More frickin' dreadfulness. A semi-legendary video nasty from the early '80s turns out to be a complete waste of time. Lots of gore, little suspense, silly score, horrble sound including all dialogue post-recorded throughout, nothing makes a lick of sense (and not in any interestingly surreal way - this isn't dream logic, more like low-budget making it up as we go along), characters consistently idiotic and dialogue is beyond childish throughout.

Makes other cheapie horrors from nearby on Wright's list like The Howling and Evil Dead look like masterpieces of suspenseful construction by comparison (with dialogue by Chayefsky and acting straight from The Actor's Studio).

Catriona MacColl in the lead is quite beautiful (a dead ringer for Hope Davis who had a moment in the late '90s and early '00s). Would that she had a real script and didn't have to loop in all her dialogue.

I guess that The Beyond (1981) *is* one of those semi-famous horror films that genre-fans sort of have to see eventually. I've watched extreme things like Hellraiser and Driller Killer with that sort of genre-covering idea in mind before... but The Beyond doesn't have the ideas or humor of either of those. It just struck me as kind of pitiful and incompetent.

Whatever I suggested above about Winter Kills maybe being inspiring to a young Wright because a complete mess makes film-making look attainable - "*You* can do better than that so just get out there and write it and *do* it." - applies doubly to The Beyond.

My official recommendation: Ignore the horror mavens and avoid at all costs.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

The Black Hole was from the dying-out "old" Walt Disney Studios... It was a great premise poorly staged, kind of "Star Wars Meets Psycho,".... We needed 2001. We got Disney circa 1979..... Memorable for the skinny/rotund pairing of Borgnine and Perkins in many scenes. Notable (in a Disney movie especially) for Perkins dying a good guy's death when a villain robot drills with his robot-drill-hand through the book in Perkins' hands and into his heart(no blood is shown, but it is a Psycho-esuqe way to go.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I haven't see The Black Hole (except for a few clips) since its first release.

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I missed this post of yours somehow and rediscovered it while reading your entries here (fascinating reading though I can only respond on movies I myself have seen.)

One thing I recall about the release of The Black Hole is that it went out at Christmas, 1979, along with three other big releases:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture(the first movie; Robert Wise directing)
1941 (Spielberg's first since Close Encounters with an "Animal House"/SNL cast.)
The Jerk (Steve Martin's first movie, again with an SNL connection.)

These four movies shared ad space as the "big Christmas 1979 multiplex attractions," and I went to all of them and...all of them were disappointing. Just goes to show you; the movies can hit a bad patch, sometimes.

I know "The Jerk" has a lot of fans, but it seemed to mess up Martin's "cool dumb guy" stand-up act(which I saw live, twice, in 1978) in favor of a "hick dumb guy" act. "Star Trek" excited with the return of Kirk, Spock and Company, but was terribly, terribly dull(Robert Wise's blockbuster career ends here.) I like the last hour of "1941" and John Williams' truly rousing All-American march of a score but -- Spielberg really blew the first hour and had a script that pushed the wrong characters as leads(the boring ones, played by boring young actors -- with Belushi and Ackroyd and Tim "Animal House" Matheson pushed off to the side.)

"The Black Hole" was rather paired with "Star Trek" as the "Star Wars clones of the season." Each failed -- bigtime -- against "Star Wars" in a major way.

--

Some OK-ish sfx

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The imagery of the Gothic Spacecraft hovering in space near the Black Hole was arresting and promised something Classic. It was not terribly far off from the combination of the Bates Motel hovering down the hill from the Bates Mansion in Psycho really; "flavorful and atmospheric."

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and Perkins and others pretty good

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A reminder that our garden-variety "minor star actors"(Perkins, Borgnine, Maximillian Schell) may have struggled getting parts, but they WERE good. Charismatic pros working off their bigger days (Psycho for Perkins; Judgment at Nuremburg for Schell; Marty and The Wild Bunch and Willard and The Poseidon Adventure for Borgnine -- hey, wait, Borgnine had a great career! Classic movies, hit movies, and McHale's Navy to get a bigger fan base)

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but the story was terrible.

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Yeah. And the overall look of the project. Compared to the smooth and expensive looking Star Wars follow-ups like Alien and Blade Runner, "The Black Hole" looked pretty cheesy, as if the Old Disney Studios just couldn't compete with the Lucas Generation.

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In general I think that 2001 and also perhaps Solaris (which played around on one screen once a week for a lot of the '70s where I was as a kid and was billed as 'The Russian 2001') have been *terrible* influences on sci-fi film: they've tempted people to tell nonsensical stories about 'people going to the end of the universe to discover themselves'.

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A good point. These stories all HAVE to be "art films" at heart, and GOOD art films are hard to pull off. You've got to be a true artist, for one thing. An abstract artist, perhaps.

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The Black Hole ends with people being sucked into the Black Hole and finding essentially the Christian Hell and Heaven in there. This is stooopid.

--

And poorly rendered. Here is a perfect example of something Hitchcock warned against: the movie that sets up such anticipation about "the solution to the mystery" that the solution is a let-down (Hitchcock abandoned "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" on this principle.)

--

And things like Contact and Event Horizon and Interstellar and lots and lots of others things (a '70s Tv-show called Space 1999 did it every couple of episodes!) collapse with versions of the same kind of 'at the end of the universe there's just more us' conceit (will The Arrival fall into a version of this trap in a few weeks time?...let's hope not.... If Amy Adams's parents, say, start walking out of the Alien spaceships I'm outta there.)

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Ha. I've always had an idea for a Science Fiction film in which the first 80% of it is a space voyage across the universe with the greatest effects imaginable..and then the travelers land on a planet, get out of the spacecraft ...and find themselves in a smoggy, dumpy, Fast Food , strip mall and body shop- clogged facsimile of the worst blocks in North Hollywood(I would FILM it in North Hollywood.) Idea being: zillions of miles, millions in special effects and...not only is the distant planet like Earth, but its like the clunkiest most industrial part of earth.

I mean, if other planets are populated, who is to say that they aren't just as clunky as ours in certain aspects, just as dull and cheap?

This is a musing...not an idea for a real movie.

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Anyhow, Edgar Wright doesn't feel this way since(The Black Hole is #500 on his list) and obviously Chris Nolan doesn't either since I've seen him list The Black Hole as one of *his* very favorite films and Interstellar showed its influence. Nuts!

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Well, it was a cool IDEA, The Black Hole was. Were these guys kids when it came out?

And I recall rooting for a movie starring Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine and Max Schell in 1979. Plus...Yvette Mimieux, already near forgotten almost 20 years after The Time Machine. Plus: Robert Forster, super-handsome then but not yet possessed of his "Jackie Brown" middle aged cool.

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Back to Winter Kills: the gal and the sex scene. She was pretty alright - very Isabelle Adjani-ish from some angles for sure. The film had been so erratic up till that point that I thought it was going to twist: Smothering someone's orgasmic kerfuffle with a pillow is inherently risky and have Bridges either kill her deliberately, kill her inadvertently, kill her in some sort of framing set-up seemed on the cards. But no... this movie didn't seem to be able to do anything right

--

I recall thinking that killing her during sex was a possibility...but Bridges character was too good a guy to do that. I saw this more as a "comedy sex scene" and sex CAN be comical. Sometimes one ends up laughing with one's partner if things don't go right.

---

Anyhow, one thing that Winter Kill and its mystery gal put in perspective again for me was how truly great The Silent Partner (1978) and *its* sexy mystery gal (Celine Lomez) were. *She* was a should-have-been star and that movie knew what it was doing in every scene. Celine Lomez dies horribly, memorably, the Winter Kills Gal dies off-screen and honesty never really comes into focus (we don't know *what* the hell to make of the very final scene of the film with Bridges leaving a message on her answering machine?).

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Its funny. I have seen WinterKills recently enough -- and have the VHS cover - to picture the pretty woman in that movie. I can't remember what Celine Lomez looked like...but I DO remember that she was hot, hot, hot. Which made her horrifying death all the sicker, I think. And the killer all the more hateable.

Beautiful women and handsome men; at base, what most movie actors are. Sure, we have the "character troops" that currently includes JK Simmons and Allison Janey and we had character stars like Walter Matthau and Gene Hackman and Glenda Jackson, but... more often than not, its beauty that gets these people their roles. Especially women.

I was thinking about this with the current influx of young beauties like J-Law, her doppelganger Haley Bennett, and Margot Robbie. Us guys love pretty women. And though they are aging, male lookers like Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and George Clooney are there for the ladies...plus a bunch of younger guys(Zac Efron, James Marsden) who strike me as "too young and pretty" to obtain stardom.

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A final remark: perhaps Winter Kill makes Wrights list for the same reason that I speculated Looker (1981) did: as a young film-maker it can be inspiring to see something that's a complete mess precisely because it makes film-making look attainable. *You* can do better than that so just get out there and write it and *do* it.

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That's a great theory. An "offshoot" that I have been thinking about lately is how 86-year old Clint Eastwood could deliver a fine-looking film in Sully, while some young director with only a few credits got "Jurrassic World" and IT looked perfect. In short, movies perhaps aren't THAT hard to make...if you have a big budget and professional cast and crew.

The "messiness" that is "WinterKills" reflects its poor financing as well as its director's ineptitude. Conversely, I've always felt that Hitchcock got one of his best in "North by Northwest" because on THAT one, MGM gave him all the budget he needed: to hire Cary Grant AND James Mason(with Eva Marie, too), a supporting cast of hundreds; locations all over the US, and the best sets money could buy.

Sometimes money makes a classic. IF the script is good.

[–] movieghoul 7 years ago

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

ecarle, ever see Joe Dante's Explorers? It follows your aliens can be clunky theme, where when the kids get their close encounter with the alien, the alien turns out to have the soul and manners of an aging Borsht Belt standup comic.

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Oh, yes, I saw that one. And not only did the alien behave that way, but it turned out he had ingested YEARS of signals from American televisions...sitcoms from the 50s to the 80's, variety show comedians, commercials, infomercials, jingles...all accompanied by a laugh track. The alien just regurgitated all this bad entertainment and noise ad nauseum. The kid explorers eventually just got the hell out of there.

That was the other charm of "Explorers": that three teenage boys might BUILD their own spacecraft and get that far (one of them was Ethan Hawke as I recall.)

A good movie from the "Spielberg 80s collection" but with Joe Dante as the keeper of the "junk culture" of our youth.

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One issue with my movie idea: the explorers would need to land in an area that matches strip mall AMERICA to a "t." I realize that earth is a place of many cultures and physical designs, but strip mall America would have to be the end point of this "fantastic voyage."

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

Beautiful women and handsome men; at base, what most movie actors are. Sure, we have the "character troops" that currently includes JK Simmons and Allison Janey and we had character stars like Walter Matthau and Gene Hackman and Glenda Jackson, but... more often than not, its beauty that gets these people their roles. Especially women.

I've been having a few thought along these lines myself recently since I've been watching a few minor, late 1960s Catherine Deneuve films - La Chamade and Manon 70.

These films are directed by relatively no-name directors and, put simply, aren't very good (they're sub-Blake Edwards sex-farces mixed with French or maybe Pinter-ish moodiness - Manon 70 more farce in Ungaro fashions, La Chamade more moodiness in Yves St Laurent - they're both big *clothes* movies). And yet... they are quite watchable because of Deneuve who's at her peak of beauty and sexual power. Both films are about a young woman whose beauty compels all the men around her to throw themselves at her and how she takes advantage of that. There's a sense that in 1968-1969 that's all that Deneuve *can* play. She's so stunning that the only story that can be told with her is 'everything revolves around the girl, hijinks ensue'. Deneuve was very beautiful both before and after this period, of course, but at this point she's actually unbalancingly, disruptively visually stimulating and therefore probably of no use to a good director! So, in both La Chamade and Manon 70 the camera just drinks in Deneuve, and as viewers we're... satisfied.

You don't even *attempt* to make these movies if you don't have a beauty-phenom on hand, just as you don't try to make certain sorts of musicals unless you're sure that you can get an actual Gene Kelly, triple-threat-type.

These are extreme cases, but they get at something about commercial film-making generally; that it's in large part a platform for rare specimens and extraordinary talents to be offered up to us for our delectation.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Beautiful women and handsome men; at base, what most movie actors are. Sure, we have the "character troops" that currently includes JK Simmons and Allison Janey and we had character stars like Walter Matthau and Gene Hackman and Glenda Jackson, but... more often than not, its beauty that gets these people their roles. Especially women.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been having a few thought along these lines myself recently since I've been watching a few minor, late 1960s Catherine Deneuve films - La Chamade and Manon 70.

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I've not seen those. Now I want to. At least I've seen Belle de Jour and Missisippi Mermaid (Deneuve and "the French McQueen," Belmondo, do Hitchcock.)

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These films are directed by relatively no-name directors and, put simply, aren't very good (they're sub-Blake Edwards sex-farces with a bit of French moodiness stirred through the mix). And yet... they are quite watchable because of Deneuve who's at her peak of beauty and sexual power.

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Sounds like what happened earlier with Brigitte Bardot.

And let's pause a moment to consider the illustrious filmmaking career of director Roger Vadim. I don't know if he was any good, but his wives included BB and Jane Fonda in her sexpot prime, yes? Or was BB just a girlfriend?

--

Both films are about a young woman whose beauty compels all the men around her to throw themselves at her and how she takes advantage of that. There's a sense that in 1968-1969 that's all that Deneuve *can* play. She's so stunning that the only story that can be told with her is 'everything revolves around the girl, hijinks ensue'.

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I suppose women of a certain peak beauty have to use their early years to "be gazed upon." Acting or characterization isn't particularly necessary.

Modernly, gals like J-Law and now Haley Bennett aren't quite THAT perfect, but they project sexuality and that "girl next door who will attack you in a taxicab" thing that Hitchcock always talked about (and hostile reporter Orianna Fallaci called him on it: "Have you ever been in a taxi cab with such a woman?" Hitch replied, "Of course not...but one hears things." Or maybe just imagines them for storytelling purposes! Lighten up, Orianna.)

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Deneuve was very beautiful both before and after this period, of course, but at this point she's actually unbalancingly, disruptively visually stimulating and therefore probably of no use to a good director!

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Ha. A great concept. As it turned out, she COULD act, so...the later years paid off in a different way.

Denueve was a "Hitchcock blonde who got away," and it turns out he lunched with her in 1968 to discuss a movie; her diary tells the tale but doesn't name the movie. Topaz? She's too young to play the mother Nicole and too old to play the daughter OF Nicole. Perhaps The Short Night , which, in '69, Hitchcock announced as his next picture after Topaz. (Nope -- too much Cold War after Torn Curtain and Topaz failed; Frenzy instead.)

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So, in both La Chamade and Manon 70 the camera just drinks in Deneuve, and as viewers we're... satisfied.

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I see what you did there.

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You don't even *attempt* to make these movies if you don't have a beauty-phenom on hand, just as you don't try to make certain sorts of musicals unless you're sure that you can get an actual Gene Kelly, triple-threat-type.

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Different talents...both born to be used by the movies and the movies alone.

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These are extreme cases, but they get at something about commercial film-making generally; that it's in large part a platform for rare specimens and extraordinary talents to be offered up to us for our delectation.

---

That's right. On the male side, I recall what some writer said about Sean Connery: if he hadn't have hit as James Bond, would he have become a star? The writer's answer: YES. Connery had the height and the size and the face and the voice -- some OTHER movie would have made him a star.

Stars are rare.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

586 Streets of Fire Walter Hill, 1984

What Walter Hill made when the mega-profitability of 48 Hours meant he was pre-green-lit for almost anything.... isn't *quite* as atrocious as its reputation at the time (and its subsequent disappearance from memory) suggests but it's still pretty awful. One big problem SOF doesn't solve is that (with one exception) the music it's built around is terrible, sub-Pat Benatar/sub-Meat Loaf, worst-of-the-'80s rock. There were a whole bunch of music-inflected films in 1984 from Stop Making Sense to Purple Rain to Beat Street. Some of these were dodgy as films but they all had killer music, and often killer performances of that music. SOF is an almost complete failure on this front. The exception is a soft-pop track called 'I Can Dream About You' which was a minor hit at the time and is well performed by minor characters in the film.

Another big problem with SOF is that its editing strategy is straight out of MTV videos and advertising of the time: the timing of cuts, the intercutting between mastershots and close-up inserts, the very drawing-attention-to-themselves wipes and dissolves all feel misguided to me.

The story is presented in title cards as 'A Rock & Roll Fable' set in 'Another Time Another Place...'. I don't detect much that was fable-like in the story, unless that's being equated with basic story idiocy (in the first scene Willem Dafoe's bad guy kidnaps Diane Lane's rock-star *on stage* in front of thousands of people - he then proceeds to hold her prisoner for days - the terms of her abuse at his hands are left vague. Eventually our hero busts her out etc.. The police later have lots of contact with Dafoe but never think to arrest him for you-know all the publicly-witnessed kidnapping and abuse. That is, in the movie, that Lane escaped and is in some sense OK after her ordeal excuplates the inciting crimes, which is absurd). The leads, Michael Paré and Diane Lane, have little chemistry, no good dialogue, and terrible '80s hair. Willem Dafoe, seemingly auditioning for Green Goblin 17 years later, is the best thing in the film by miles.

If I was being charitable, I guess I could see SOF as having, like say some cult-appeal for '80s enthusiasts - so much neon, so much blue over-lighting, so much smoke and fire, so much loading of top of the frame with overhangs and pillars, someone saw Blade Runner! someone's auditioning for the right to light Moley Crue videos in the years ahead! To anyone else, however, SOF is pretty weak stuff. You're putting *this* ahead of Amadeus, Once Upon A Time In America, Stranger than Paradise from 1984? Really Mr Wright?

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

536 Southern Comfort Walter Hill, 1981

An ingenious thriller with a wopping great Vietnam subtext and a powerful location - the forbidding, alien, Cajun swamplands of Louisiana (as foreign as you can get within the US I'd say) such that it's a quite an achievement even to have shot a movie there. And the film's final 20 minutes are its best 20 minutes - spine-tingling, fist-pumping stuff, brilliantly edited (and worthy of close study I think). Ambiguous, downer ending makes SC feel like a throwback to the early '70s (which is when it's set).

Some of the dialogue and characterizations could probably have done with a polish but Southern Comforts's basic concept is so strong and well-realized that it's a definite keeper from 1981. I think SC is at least at the level of genre faves from 1981 such as American Werewolf in London, Evil Dead, Escape from New York, Ms 45 (all of which make Wright's list). Of course it's retarded that things like Das Boot and Gallipoli *aren't* on Wright's list, but c'est la vie Wrightien!

261 Privilege Peter Watkins, 1967

Yikes, a fundamentally stupid film from the normally reliable (The War Game, Punishment Park) Watkins. Unhappy, uncharismatic pop star is supposed to be the biggest thing since the Beatles and becomes the tool of a fascist British government and of a resurgent organized state religion. Watkins doesn't seem to understand how pop music works or ever could work, how it moves fast and is always hybridizing and constantly creating new in-crowds and out-crowds. It prizes personality (the no one truly unhappy with being a pop-star can possibly be it for long let alone become the biggest thing in the world) and innovation but also imitation so that there's never a basis in pop for long-term hegemony (there's always a new personality just around the corner, and any successful innovation gets immitated ad nauseam so that as soon as maximal popularity is reached, the clock is already ticking and people's ears are already looking for an exit). The only good part of the film is a strikingly shot fascist rally that actually makes no sense (it's a *real* fascist rally for the governemt and the state religion not, what actually makes sense, the pseudo-fascism of a mega-performance star, somethign that Pink Floyd and Queen and the rest of the huge '70s bands would end up thinking long and hard about). It's completely misguided but amazing looking.

The film never decides whether it's a mock documentary or a drama... the leads, Paul Jones and ultra-glam supermodel of the time Jean Shrimpton, look utterly stranded throughout. In my view, Privilege just doesn't work. Watkins is a filmmaker of ideas and here the idea just don't stack up, and another 50 years of experience with pop-music has helped us see that they don't (maybe the unique reverence in which the Beatles were briefly held in 1967 made certain fearful possibilities seem more real then than they've ever been since).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

471 Coma Michael Crichton, 1978

Good paranoid thriller that maybe loses some energy near the end. Richard Widmark ends up making a big speech that's evidently supposed to be comparable to big dark '70s speeches by John Huston or Ned Beatty or Pacino....and... it doesn't quite work. Not only does what he say not really speak to the crimes in question, the camera for the most part inhabits Bujold's drugged perspective so that *we* are woozy when we should be most clearly understanding things so we can feel the bad guy's temptation (both how he was tempted to this awfulness and the corrupting temptation he now represents for our hero and all of us).

Bets parts of the film are the near hospital documentary first half. Bujold and Douglas are attractive and believable in this setting and no score underlines that we're learning how the Hospital functions. My current main doctor looks like Bujold - lucky me - I'll have to see whether she's seen the film and provide her with a copy if she hasn't.

So, while it's not quite at the level of best thrillers for 1978 in my view (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Silent Partner, maybe The Driver and Fingers), Coma is a good directorial effort from Crichton (much better than Looker a few years later).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

444 Murder by Death Robert Moore, 1976

Yikes, didn't work for me at all beyond the odd funny line. Some coming from the Hercule Poirot-ish guy: ('He will be taken to the gas chamber and hung', 'I'm not a Frenchie, I'm a Belgie') but most for me coming from - surprise surprise - Truman Capote. His ranting about Wang's inability to use English pronouns made me chuckle, and my one true belly laugh was from Capote's enumeration of each detective tradition's cardinal sins. Indeed, I must try to find a copy of that speech - here it is -

You've tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now, the tables are turned. Millions of angry mystery readers are now getting their revenge. When the world learns I've outsmarted you, they'll be selling your $1.95 books for twelve cents.

Ha! The big bust was Peter Sellers. In this regard, MBD reminded me of an even worse late Sellers movie I saw in high school (with great expectations) where he played Fu Manchu. Having to play Oriental was Sellers's kryptonite; one of the cleverest, funniest men ever suddenly falls completely flat. Peter Falk was pretty good, perhaps because he's getting to do classic Bogart generally not just Sam Spade narrowly.

I've opined before that humor is very fragile. It can end up tied to its particular time more than more dramatic forms, and ultimately our responses to it feel very personal. As far as comedies from 1976, I'd definitely take Bad News Bears and Silver Streak over Murder by Death.

Stellar 1976 movies that didn't make Wright's list include 1900, The Outlaw Josey Wales, In The Realm of The Senses, The Ascent, All The President's Men. He also didn't rate moody German slowies like Heart Of Glass and Kings of The Road. I'm ultimately not sure what I think of these two (they're hard to stay awake though for a start) but they're two of the great consciouness-altering movie-going experiences of my life.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

452 Who Can Kill a Child? Narciso Ibanez Serrador, 1976

Searrdor (or is his surname Ibanez Serrador?) for his second (and sadly final) film is right on the the mid-'70s zeitgeist. In the mix there's a bit of Village of the Damned and of The Birds (but with Children!), some Jaws, some of It's Alive, some The Omen, maybe some early De Palma and early Cronenberg [although the exact content bears some resemblance to The Brood (1979) the end of WCKAC? is right out of the ending to the wonderful Shivers (1975)].

That said, the rhythm of the film is perhaps a little more classical and Hitchcockian than was ideal for a film-maker in 1976. The first shock doesn't arrive until 50 minutes in. It's a doozy and really well-handled and set-up (shudder - it's awful!)... and so are the other shocks that come along, but I can easily imagine the film's primary audience of teenagers not being inclined to put up with such deliberate pacing. In addition, Having seen Serrador's masterly control in a single interior location/set in The House that Screamed, I can imagine him being a little less comfortable with the necessarily more run-and-gun location shooting, again very zeitgeist-riding, that's in evidence here. Maybe these two consideration are part of why Serrador walked away from film after this.

Serrador shows his gift for casting again: leads Lewis Fiander and Prunella Ransome are both excellent, but perhaps even more important for making a cheap film look like a million bucks they both remind of much more famous actors: Fiander is a near-dead-ringer for Don't Look Now-period Donald Sutherland and Ransome is like the love-child of Julie Christie and Jane Asher. They completely convince as a couple we already feel we know and that we're just inclined to hang with for a solid 40+ minutes at the beginning of the movie (teenagers may disagree - see above!).

The film has a few narrative wobbles in the middle when *after* hell has finally broken loose, our leads dilly-dally a bit in a way that strains credibility. That's too bad. The film finishes strongly but we don't get the rush from being in entirely assured hands that we do in The House That Screamed.

In sum, for me, while WCKAC? is very much worth seeing - it's two biggest shocks are up there with the biggest of the '70s - it's a 7.5-8/10 film where THTS is an 8.5-9/10. That's still a splendid start to a career, and it was a loss for film that Serrador didn't continue.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

597 Crimewave Sam Raimi, 1985

Utterly horrendous early collaboration between Sam Raimi and the Coens. It is I suppose a fairly good attempt at a live-action Loony Tunes/Chuck Jones Cartoon... and might have some appeal to very young kids on those grounds. But for me it just confirmed the quixotic nature of the desire to make Live-Action Cartoons.

On the one hand Crimewave proves that the end-product of such as desire is a poor substitute for the the freedom and anarchy of that school of animation.

On the other hand the incredibly loud and broad characterizations in that end product reduces our ability to care about the characters as such. You probably need amazing star-power - e.g. Jim Carrey or Dick Van Dyke or Jerry Lewis in their respective primes - and incredible quality control over technicals to avoid this outcome. Famously, however, Raimi had to contend with the studio not allowing him to cast the people he wanted either in front of or behind the camera - so this thing was doomed. Both Raimi and the Coens have disowned the film for this reason and have explicitly said that they believe they're lucky Crimewave didn't kill off their careers in embryo.). Also, the cartoonish consequence-less-ness of actions undermines the physicalness and jeopardy of the physical comedy.

In genre terms the cartoonish quality of Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 is here imported into a Coen-y Noir setting. That doesn't *sound* like a good fit, and so it proves. In a sense, the Coens were able to show how noir elements could combine well with manic though not cartoon-ish energy in Raising Arizona and Big Lebowski and various other films. Preston Sturges not Chuck Jones proved to be the comedic pole-star they needed.

One of Woody Allens exs and early leading lady, Louise Lasser, gives the best performance by miles in the movie. Score one for her. Everyone else stinks.

There is some fascination in watching Raimi and the Coens screw up (and be screwed over by a Studio) so royally this once. I'll now join Raimi and the Coens themselves by never speaking of this abomination again. Shudder.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

525 Dead & Buried Gary Sherman, 1981

Atrocious, gory, slasher mystery that seemed to be turning into something more like The Wicker Man or Shirley Jackson's The Lottery but in fact turns into The Stepford Wives (extended to cover everyone, Zombie edition). It gets more and more ludicrous as it goes along (at every successive point more and more that came before makes retrospectively no sense).

Apparently the film has quite a cult following (Wright's not alone in liking it that's for sure), but this is a cult I can't join. More talent behind the camera at least on paper than in front of it: script is by Shussett and O'Bannon who wrote Alien, DP is Steve Poster who assisted on Blade Runner and Close Encounters and would go on to do things like Donnie Darko, and the director is Gary Sherman who made the flawed but impressive Death Line (1972) (which I encountered and reviewed on this thread a few days ago).

The end-product here, however, is a huge disappointment, with neither the script nor the photography nor the direction at all up to par. Gory fx by Stan Winston are the standouts.

Actors all underwhelm, but in fairness nobody could save this script.

I note that a *lot* of the cases in which I think Wright has lost his marbles stem from this period of the early '80s. I was scathing about Wright's picks of Looker and The Beyond from 1981 for example. Wright was only 7 in 1981 so presumably he saw these things on video later and around the same time and when he was still very young (say 12 or 13). All of these movies feel to me like the sort of thing that could impress and intrigue someone that young and maybe nobody else. Oh well.... it's a theory.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

All of these movies feel to me like the sort of thing that could impress and intrigue someone that young and maybe nobody else. Oh well.... it's a theory.

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Well, its a pretty good theory if one refines it a bit.

I read somewhere that, as with many life experiences, the movies affect us most strongly in our teens and our 20s...which is why so many movies are targeted to that age bracket today. The irony is: once upon a time, teens to 20's filmgoers liked more adult-themed movies with more adultish actors(Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, John Wayne). Somewhere along the way, it was determined to CAST all many big movies with teens to 20's. Hence The Hunger Games and Twilight to name a two.

Anyway, you can certainly use me as an example. I certainly loved movies in and from the 60's like The Great Race, Rio Conchos(not Bravo; Conchos) and The Birds because they appealed to me at that age. And now they trail in my memory as "great" because perhaps they are greater than memories than as movies. Though, I don't think so -- all three of those "entertainments" have sophistication, great casts(well, The Birds not so much) and great stories on their side.

The Golden Era for movies for me is the seventies -- but so was it a golden era for me. High school and college in there, the best early years of life. At the movies? Well, with the R-rating in place to gird our loins on some of them, we got MASH the movie, Dirty Harry, The Godfather, The Sting, American Graffiti, The Way We Were, The Exorcist, Chinatown, The Towering Inferno, Jaws, Rocky, Network, Star Wars, Animal House...the list goes on and on and in my heart...them's the best movies of my life. And those are the ones everybody knows. My best-of-year pleasures include the lesser known Charley Varrick, The Shootist, Black Sunday, and North Dallas Forty.

Hitchcock plays a special role, and I figured something out one time. North by Northwest(1959) hooked me for life when I first saw it in 1967, Psycho hooked me UNSEEN in 1965(its theatrical re-release triggered tons of school and parental "forbidden fruit" talk) and kept the claw in until 1970, when I finally got to see it, and liked it.

And Frenzy came out -- to rave comeback reviews for Hitchcock -- in 1972. I saw Frenzy a mere TWO YEARS after I first saw Psycho in 1970. No WONDER they are linked together as near equals in my mind. And -- wait for it -- Frenzy is from the seventies, my favorite decade, so it gets to be a favorite BEYOND its somewhat bleak and graphic limitations(though I still believe it is incredibly well-scripted, cinematic and as meaningful as Psycho to the key theme of our times: the capacity for madness and murderous evil -- against innocents -- within the otherwise human heart.)

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Thus, back to Wright. Perhaps Looker charged him up in childhood in a way it would not if he were in his 30's. But if so, that only joins him to a LOT of us for whom our movie going years, say, 5 to 30, were much more emotionally different than the years after(and, alas, the years TODAY, for me. I still like movies...but they rarely if ever excite men anymore.)

I'll close with this: In my mind's eye, I STILL see North by Northwest as the most spectacular action-adventure movie of my life. Which -- if you look at it in 2016 -- is patently ridiculous. Three action sequences in the whole thing, one of them so-so(the drunken car drive), the other two rather abstract and bereft of machine guns and explosions on a wide scale. A crop duster chases a man. A couple hang from Mount Rushmore as baddies try to kill them.

But you see...North by Northwest is a movie I still see IN MY MIND at the pre-teen age I saw it , and WHEN I saw it, in 1967, long before The Wild Bunch and Dirty Harry and Star Wars and Die Hard and The Matrix changed the very concept of "action."

All that said, Looker ain't that good. Though I liked the "freeze gun gimmick," and seeing James Coburn in one of his last "cool roles"(a very bad illness and old age changed him in later years) and that weird fake-techno song over the credits at the end, even as we see beautiful "girls" in silent, banal commercials as the song plays.

[–] movieghoul 7 years ago

I don't remember much of Looker except that unlike, say, The Stepford Wives, the reveal didn't make any sense in that there was no motivation for what the bad guys were doing. Extremely sloppy plotting as I dimly recall.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

@ movieghoul. For what it's worth I saw and discussed (with ecarle) Looker near the beginning of this thread, i.e., here:
http://tinyurl.com/z3o7883
But overall my view about Looker was that it was one of those movies that most people (and the culture at large) are going to forget for good reason: it's not good enough to be worth putting all the thinking and rewatching energy into to figure out all the things wrong with it. Dead and Buried (1981) is absolutely the same way.

I later watched and reviewed another Crichton-directed film, Coma (1978). I thought it was quite a lot better; still not great but worth seeing and thinking over.

Back near the beginning of this thread too there was some good discussion of the way in which one's inevitably prisoner to some extent of 'the movies you were there to see as they came out', the movies that shaped you and that in many cases were made *for* you, that you and your generations tastes helped shape.

I guess that one thing I should add to my carping about Dead and Buried (1981) is that Wright made Shaun of The Dead (2004), one of the best and certainly the funniest zombie movie ever, and I can believe there were important lessons both positive and negative that he took from films like Dead and Buried to make Shaun. So, bravo to Wright for making something so super-pleasurable from a whole bunch of terrific films and a whole lotta dreck.

Still, you're in your 40s and making your big list, and you choose 20+ films from 1981 (as much as whole decades of film get earlier in your list!). No matter how important Looker or Dead and Buried might be to you personally, there are little movies like Gallipoli and Das Boot from that year that you omitted that a blind dog would agree have a tad more to offer. *Those* are the films that future generations should really keep tabs on (alongside Raiders and many other 1981 good 'uns on Wright's list with which nobody could have any quarrel. Raiders is my 8 year old nephew's favorite film, and Indiana Jones is his favorite lego video game character, and deservedly so.)

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

I began with 230 or so movies from Wright's list that I hadn't seen. I've now checked out 76 of those. Here are my rough grades for those:

A (ranked - but I highly recommend all of these)
68 Dead of Night Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton, Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, 1945
234 The Hill Sidney Lumet, 1965
231 Simon of the Desert Luis Bunuel, 1965
95 Los olvidados Luis Bunuel, 1950
490 The Silent Partner Daryl Duke, 1978
303 The House That Screamed Narciso Ibanez Serrador, 1969
305 The Laughing Woman Piero Schivazappa, 1969
918 The Arbor Clio Barnard, 2010
993 The Gift Joel Edgerton, 2015
363 The Getaway Sam Peckinpah, 1972
335 Little Murders Alan Arkin, 1971
22 Island of Lost Souls Erle C. Kenton, 1932
561 Breathless Jim McBride, 1983
887 Timecrimes Nacho Vigalondo, 2007

B (roughly ranked - all are recommended and very worth watching)

499 Scum Alan Clarke, 1979
747 Freeway Matthew Bright, 1996
870 Apocalypto Mel Gibson, 2006
830 Hero Zhang Yimou, 2002
240 Daisies Vera Chytilova, 1966
375 Death Line Gary Sherman, 1973
377 Electra Glide in Blue James William Guercio, 1973
388 Slither Howard Zieff, 1973
536 Southern Comfort Walter Hill, 1981
821 The Devil's Backbone Guillermo del Toro, 2001
955 Prisoners Denis Villeneuve, 2013
985 Green Room Jeremy Saulnier, 2015
954 Only Lovers Left Alive Jim Jarmusch, 2013
87 Criss Cross Robert Siodmak, 1949
17 Little Caesar Mervyn LeRoy, 1931
319 The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Dario Argento, 1970
322 Where's Poppa? Carl Reiner, 1970
452 Who Can Kill a Child? Narciso Ibanez Serrador, 1976
242 Gambit Ronald Neame, 1966
886 The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters Seth Gordon, 2007
932 Compliance Craig Zobel, 2012

Muddled Middle (unranked - almost all of these have a maddening mixture of terrible flaws and strong redeeming features which makes them hard to assign a grade to. I think they're all worth seeing, but your mileage may vary)

19 Monkey Business Norman Z. McLeod, 1931
92 D.O.A. Rudolph Maté, 1950
120 It's Always Fair Weather Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1955
124 The Big Combo Joseph H. Lewis, 1955
128 The Quatermass Xperiment Val Guest, 1955
140 Quatermass 2: Enemy from Space Val Guest, 1957
164 Odds Against Tomorrow Robert Wise, 1959
168 Beat Girl Edmond T. Gréville, 1960
179 The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film Peter Sellers, Richard Lester, 1960
232 The 10th Victim Elio Petri, 1965
261 Privilege Peter Watkins, 1967
262 Quatermass and the Pit Roy Ward Baker, 1967
302 The Bed Sitting Room Richard Lester, 1969
313 Girly Freddie Francis, 1970
328 Daughters of Darkness Harry Kumel, 1971
336 Melody Waris Hussein, 1971
373 Coffy Jack Hill, 1973
389 The Asphyx Peter Newbrook, 1973
413 Let Sleeping Corpses Lie Jorge Grau, 1974
444 Murder by Death Robert Moore, 1976
471 Coma Michael Crichton, 1978
626 Lethal Weapon Richard Donner, 1987
652 Virile Games Jan ≈†vankmajer, 1988
684 The Rapture Michael Tolkin, 1991
842 Ong-Bak Prachya Pinkaew, 2003
957 The Counselor Ridley Scott, 2013
970 Love & Mercy Bill Pohlad, 2014
975 The Guest Adam Wingard, 2014
998 The Wolfpack Crystal Moselle, 2015
1000 The Neon Demon Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016

F (unranked - infuriatingly bad films for the most part)

682 The Last Boy Scout Tony Scott, 1991
662 Gremlins 2: The New Batch Joe Dante, 1990
901 Crank: High Voltage Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor, 2009
633 The Hidden Jack Sholder, 1987
505 Winter Kills William Richert, 1979
525 Dead & Buried Gary Sherman, 1981
529 Looker Michael Crichton, 1981
537 The Beyond Lucio Fulci, 1981
586 Streets of Fire Walter Hill, 1984
597 Crimewave Sam Raimi, 1985

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Sweet Lord Almighty...thank you for undertaking this project.

I'm wondering if somebody somehow can get word of it to Wright himself? Here's hoping a reader or the imdb staff can make that happen.

Even if you don't always -- or at all -- agree with Wright's choices.

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682 The Last Boy Scout Tony Scott, 1991

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What's interesting about The Last Boy Scout is that it was bid on by all the major studios and brought its screenwriter, Shane Black, a massive payday for a screenwriter. Massive paydays for screenwriters should be encouraged, but...not for The Last Boy Scout. Or any of Joe Ezterhas' all-the-same, all-rotten scripts.

Black was/is a better writer than Ezterhas, but the fact that both men got such big bucks for bad scripts relates to the BAD side of the whole Michael Ovitz, agent-as-star, movie-as-product era of movie production. "Script auctions" were really about studios "locking down material" before another studio could, quality be damned. Things are a little better now.

All that said, The Last Boy Scout was, to me, just another Lethal Weapon knock-off, neither better nor worse than the template. I always liked Bruce Willis on the screen; Die Hard made him a new kind of macho star..wise-cracking Joisey joker. Irony: things like Last Boy Scout almost killed Willis' career off...and then he took "Pulp Fiction" for peanuts and relaunched as a star with "gravitas."

I also like -- as an idea -- the opening scene of the movie, in which a tailback running the ball towards a touchdown defeats his coverage by SHOOTING them -- and then shooting himself in the head. (Gambling debt overload.) Dramatic. And in the rain. Just one of those ideas I rather like -- matched, a coupla decades later, in "The Dark Knight Rises" by the scene of a tailback running the TD as the entire field collapses into the earth beneath him.

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505 Winter Kills William Richert, 1979

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Well, OK, but any movie that's got Richard Boone AND Anthony Perkins in it is OK by me. Plus Jeff Bridges(what a great unsung star over the decades; when he was young and beautiful he was still a character guy, and now he IS a character guy.) And that sexy woman. Plus John Huston, Eli Wallach, Sterling Hayden, Toshiro Mifune, Liz. All great to look at and listen to. It almost doesn't MATTER that the damn thing makes no sense.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

625 Innerspace Joe Dante, 1987

Amusing, hyperactive, over-stuffed Fantastic Voyage-ish comedy-adventure as a miniaturized Dennis Quaid tries to escape from being inside Martin Short. Full of all sorts of scientific sleights-of-hand and ultra-convenient plot-points, as well as all manner of director Joe Dante's customary weird touches (esp. on the near-comedy villains side of the plot), Innerspace is *quite* a lot of fun throughout....

But it's no Back To The Future (the obvious model for the sort of comedy sci-fi that's attempted here) - not as tight, not as funny or as well-cast or as exciting, music not nearly as good, and so on. Spielberg Executive Produces and clearly Innerspace had a very healthy budget. And the expectation of a sequel is more baldy set-up in Innerspace's final scene than in any other original film that I can remember! That sequel never arrived because the film wasn't a hit (covering its production costs but not its marketing costs in the US for example - maybe it broke even worldwide, maybe).

Wannabe-blockbusters that got close (but no cigar!) are almost their own delicate form of Hollywood fauna (think Lone Ranger recently, Rocketeer back in the day, and so on). So there's some pleasure to be had from Innerspace in that insider-y way too. Still, I'd never pick Innerspace for any sort of 'top' list myself (Wright picks 17 films from 1987 including Innerspace but finds no room for Wings of Desire, Au Revoir Les Enfant, The Dead, Broadcast News, Full Metal Jacket, Radio Days, not to mention Dirty Dancing, which is about as good as pop-film-making gets on the distaff side of things. Oh well...)

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

And the expectation of a sequel is more baldy set-up in Innerspace's final scene than in any other original film that I can remember!

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There's something about a movie doing that that almost makes me want to root AGAINST as sequel -- "What? You don't think this story was story enough to stand on its own and last?"

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That sequel never arrived because the film wasn't a hit (covering its production costs but not its marketing costs in the US for example - maybe it broke even worldwide, maybe).

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This thing happened in the mid-eighties where Spielberg "went serious"(The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun) and "farmed out" the genre stuff to Zemeckis(Back to the Future, Roger Rabbit) and Dante(Gremlins, Innerspace.) And my memory of it was that everybody lost. Spielberg was really out of his depth trying to do Oscar-bait, and his "farmers" didn't really deliver the classics, either. "Back to the Future" was the best and most lasting of them, but even that one is lacking, to me(and the character of Biff is one of the most irritating characters in movies, you ask me.)

I would contend that one reason Innerspace flopped was: Martin Short. Sorry, that guy CAN be funny(see: his 60 Minutes smoking interviewee on SNL), but he's one of those "always on" types of comedians who never seemed to work the "cool side of the street" where Bill Murray and Chevy Chase worked. He's a bit more of a Rip Taylor/Jerry Lewis derivative. I didn't much like spending a whole movie with him; Short is better in short support roles(as in "Mars Attacks!")

Dennis Quaid enjoyed a brief "second tier" macho leading man stint in the eighties that peaked in 1987 with Innerspace and The Big Easy(sexy New Orleans crime romance with Ellen Barkin.) But Quaid could never quite get past having a face that was borderline odd-looking; he just didn't last against bigger stars like Kevin Costner(for the short time that Costner was a star) or Kurt Russell (still hanging in there today.)

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Wannabe-blockbusters that got close (but no cigar!) are almost their own delicate form of Hollywood fauna (think Lone Ranger recently, Rocketeer back in the day, and so on).

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Funny you mention The Lone Ranger and The Rocketeer, which are exactly 20 years apart and hit me just the right way. They COULD have been my favorite movies of 2011 and 1991, respectively -- they were smart and funny and "in" and spectacular in the action payoffs.

By comparison, I have to say that I recall the "mash-up" of these Spielberg-produced thrillers of the 80's -- Poltergeist, Gremlins, Innerspace, The Goonies - as rather depressing me at the time. I was already too old to be their target audience, and they felt like "kids movies with a nasty nerd's edge" -- Spielberg's persona seemed to loom over them in a most offputting way. Spielberg told a story one time of he and his childhood friends going to movie theaters with cans of vegetable soup and pouring their contents out from their mouths as "fake vomit" near customers. His 1980s PRODUCER productions had that feeling to me.

I'll try to get to him in another post, but curmudgeon Science Fiction(he HATES "SciFi" novelist/critic Harlan Ellison hated all of those movies, too, and much the same for the same reasons I did. Though Ellison --also like me -- liked much of what Spielberg was doing in the genre HIMSELF -- ET, Raiders, and of course back to Jaws(Spielberg's best movie, to me.) (THAT said, Ellison goes way past me in general hatred of a lot of things in movies and society.)

As Hitchcock recedes into the recesses of "ancient history"(i.e. before 1970) as a movie showman I will still find his movies to be the ones that connected to me in a much better way than Spielberg's. North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds may be working in Spielberg's territory...but they are much more sophisticated, adult-level exercises in narrative, character, and cinematics than what SS and his minions wrought in the 80's.

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[–] swanstep 7 years ago

This thing happened in the mid-eighties where Spielberg "went serious"(The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun) and "farmed out" the genre stuff to Zemeckis(Back to the Future, Roger Rabbit) and Dante(Gremlins, Innerspace.) And my memory of it was that everybody lost. Spielberg was really out of his depth trying to do Oscar-bait, and his "farmers" didn't really deliver the classics, either. "Back to the Future" was the best and most lasting of them, but even that one is lacking, to me(and the character of Biff is one of the most irritating characters in movies, you ask me.)

Interesting analysis. I hadn't quite put all those movies together in that way myself. You may be right. That said, I do find Back To The Future (the original) triumphant myself, but, tellingly, it feels like a close-run-thing in the sense that it's Michael J. Fox's winning presence that makes the whole thing fly. They did a few weeks shooting with Eric Stoltz before pulling the plug and restarting with Fox (who they'd always wanted but who couldn't get free enough of his TV obligations - I guess a money truck must have eased that problem). Even the biggest fans of BTTF agree that had they not made tat move that BTTF probably wouldn't have been half the hit it was. In the sequels there's a similar not-potential but *actual* bum-note that makes *them* seem even more fragile constructions. I forget the exact reason, but the actress (Jennifer Wells?) who plays Marty McFly's hot '80s girlfriend, Jennifer in BTTF couldn't/wouldn't do the sequels, so they replaced her with not-quite-as-hot Alison Shue (who'd later have an indifferent career with one amazing turn in the very affecting, Leaving Las Vegas - Susan Sarandon, so worthy on many other occasions, stole her Oscar in a classic piece of Academy chicanery that year). Zemeckis and Gale cited the replacement awkwardness as the reasons to have Jennifer/Shue sleep through most of BTTF2 and be off-stage for almost all of BTTF3. But my own sense is that this was BS... and the failure to develop Jennifer's character at all across 4 more hours of film felt like a symptom of the unwillingness of Zemeckis and Gale to let the franchise breathe at all (1's tightness started to feel in retrospect like a near escape more than an asset). 2 & 3 felt like watching kids solve trivial variants of the same math problems whereas develping Jennifer at all would have required them to solve a higher level equation with more variables, so they passed. It certainly made BTTF future overall feel like more of a boys-only-zone than the first film had promised, and my sense is that women felt the exclusion and stayed away. The sequels made declining amounts of money even without adjusting for 5 years of inflation.

I would contend that one reason Innerspace flopped was: Martin Short. Sorry, that guy CAN be funny(see: his 60 Minutes smoking interviewee on SNL), but he's one of those "always on" types of comedians who never seemed to work the "cool side of the street" where Bill Murray and Chevy Chase worked. He's a bit more of a Rip Taylor/Jerry Lewis derivative. I didn't much like spending a whole movie with him; Short is better in short support roles(as in "Mars Attacks!")

Yes. Well said. Put another way, he's no Michael J. Fox or even Michael Keaton. For whatever reason (small eyes, weaselly features?) we just don't connect with him enough for big-screen star-dom to be possible, to *want* to spend a whole movie in his company.

Dennis Quaid enjoyed a brief "second tier" macho leading man stint in the eighties that peaked in 1987 with Innerspace and The Big Easy(sexy New Orleans crime romance with Ellen Barkin.) But Quaid could never quite get past having a face that was borderline odd-looking; he just didn't last against bigger stars like Kevin Costner(for the short time that Costner was a star) or Kurt Russell (still hanging in there today.)

Agreed there's something off-putting about Quaid too, and the movie seems to write *for* that at the beginning of Innerspace - his character is a real jerk. One of the movie's problems is that we're supposed to believe he's been redeemed by the experience, saved from his insufferable jerkiness by spending 24 (or is it 48? did they get the times right in the movie? - I felt like we missed a night-time; no sleeping) hours inside Martin Short's. But there's absolutely no mechanism for that prima facie absurd redemption....except for...uh oh.... the most absurd plot point when Quaid gets passed through kissing saliva into Meg Ryan, scoots immediately and completely accidentally down to Ryan's character's uterus to discover she's pregnant (with his kid) then instantaneous is back up to the saliva again for transfer back to Short. Oh brother.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

602 Police Story Jackie Chan, 1985

Jackie Chan writes, directs, and stars in Police Story (1985). For the most part this is a very rough, slapsticky, formualic cop-witness-protection story. About 20% of the film's running time, however, is taken up with various sorts of chases and fights designed to showcase Chan's martial arts and physical comedy skills and esp. his Keaton-ish ability and willingness to do genuinely dangerous stunts. This 20 minutes or so is the only reason to see the movie.

The opening battle and chase to subdue a drug gang is I suppose a classic. Watching it, you notice a bunch of sub-sequences that Hollywood action directors flat out stole. E.g., at one point Chan and the drug guys are both in cars and with the road down the mountain blocked they take parallel direct ways down the mountainside ploughing through the shanty-town that covers it. Michael Bay stole all this for Bad Boys 2 (a movie I've never seen all the way through but I ave checked out its action scenes). I remember Siskel and Ebert castigating Bay for this particular scene on the grounds of its immorality: the police's parallel track through the shanty-town *must* be killing lots of innocents and injuring many more. Well the immorality of the action didn't bother Jackie Chan either.) Wikipedia lists other movies such as Tango&Cash that stole other bits from the opening scene of PS too. Of course, on one level this is just fair play since Chan steals lots from Keaton for this opening scene (e.g. running down a collapsing slope a la Seven Chances (1925)) and maybe from Chaplin too (there's a bus-sequence that I can't immediately place that *feels* like it has to have been strongly inspired by Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd).

The film never again reaches the heights of its bravura opening. There is a bunch of glass breaking in the final sequence in the film that looks *very* dangerous. The glass is breaking off in big sheets so that it's not safety glass of any standard type that's for sure. And there's a fall/dive by Chan where he uses a string of Mall atrium lights to brake himself that's probably incredibly dangerous. The film's so impressed by the stunt that they show it whole, top-to-bottom from three different angles! But that's about it.

In sum, I don't think the movie as a whole is worth seeing. The opening sequence is, however, worth tracking down. Watch it here (or be my guest watch the whole thing!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ifzR9U0cU4

Wright's taste in 1985 feels completely wacky to me. He picks horrendous messes such as Crimewave and very partial achievements such as Police Story but finds no room for near perfect films such as A Room With A View, Purple Rose of Cairo, Vagabond, Ran, Shoah, Come and See, My Beautiful Laundrette, and the like.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

478 I Wanna Hold Your Hand Robert Zemeckis, 1978

Charming first film from Zemeckis (Spielberg producing) about a bunch of New Jersey teens trying to connect with the Beatles on the day of their first Ed Sullivan appearance in NYC. Good performance from all the main girls, esp. Nancy Allen and Wendie Jo Sperber. Most of the performers actually went directly from this to working together with Spielberg on 1941, which probably didn't do their careers much good since IWHYH lost money and 1941 probably made money but an insignificant amount and so was widely reported as 'Spielberg's first flop'.

Why did IWHYH flop? Probably it's just a matter of timing - 1978 was pretty much the low ebb of Beatles awareness, when they were least cool before Lennon's death kicked off new waves of Beatles appreciation and imitation. (About ten years after a true, dominant, era-defining, mega-act ends seems to be a common low point - the culture *has* to get over them and in a way almost forget about them so that new things can be born.)

But maybe there's also something just too minor about the story of IWHYH to be a completely satisfying movie you pay money to go out and see. It has *some* of the youthful character-driven feel of American Graffiti, Diner, Breaking Away, That Thing You Do, Dazed and Confused but it doesn't feel as consequential or ultimately as emotionally satisfying as any of those. Perhaps too the obstacle-driven plottiness that's much in evidence here and that would serve Zemeckis and Gale so well on Back To The Future somehow keeps IWHYH too light and busy thereby preventing it from from becoming more than just charming, from becoming a true American youth classic like those other films I just mentioned.

Still, 'She Loves You' remains one of the definitive pop records and performances, and Nancy Allen completely losing it in the audience is now indelibly associated with it for me, and you know that can't be bad. Worth seeing.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

571 The Man with Two Brains Carl Reiner, 1983

The weakest of Carl Reiner's three films on Wright's list after Where's Poppa? and The Jerk, TMWTB has several big laughs, but is mostly just too slapsticky and dumb to work well for me. Possibly great if one is a 12 year old boy.

Kathleen Turner in her prime is quite the sex-bomb. Sadly the script never succeeded in making her character coherent. A lot of the humor in the film has dated pretty badly. Martin's supposedly relatively sweet character has such neanderthal attitudes towards women that he now comes across as very creepy and almost as deserving the bad treatment Kathleen Turner's character dishes out to him.

I guess I'm glad to have seen TMWTB finally, but in the year of Risky Business, Trading Places, Local Hero, King of Comedy, Zelig, The Meaning of Life, maybe even National Lampoon's Vacation, it's well off the pace and simply not a competitive contemporary comedy. In most years the #8 comedy of the year isn't generally recommendable (i.e., except to people with special interests in particular directors or stars), and that's the case here.

I confess to being very surprised that Wright didn't pick things like King of Comedy and Meaning of Life from 1983.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

426 A Boy and His Dog L.Q. Jones, 1975

This film has lots of flaws including poorly staged and edited action scenes, underwhelming sets, propping and other production design elements, and undistinguished photography. ABAHD reminds one a little of George Lucas's THX-11138 but Lucas's control of the film medium, attentiveness to production design and so on is so much greater... THX is ready for the big time, feels like a film-maker has arrived. Not so at all with ABAHD.

All that conceded, however, I kinda loved ABAHD! It's full of good ideas even if it doesn't have the budget and technique to properly realize them. It fearlessly commits its leading man Vic (Don Johnson) to being an inhabitant of a post-apocalyptic world where dogs are used to literally sniff out remaining women to be raped and then killed and maybe eaten. It completely commits to Vic having a telepathic connection with his smarter-than-him dog Blood, and we *do* accept Blood's character. I think George Lucas might have taken notes from this for figuring out how to get his own non-human characters to be accepted by audiences. There are anticipations throughout of Mad Max and Star Wars and The Terminator.

Ultimately, the very-Clockwork Orange-ish trailer for ABAHD gives the game away about where the film goes astray in its second half. The Down Under world feels like a satirical target rather than a real place whereas the surface world is a proper world. In the film we know that Vic feels this way too but that's just putting a lampshade on the underlying bad phenomenon of mixing two completely different story modes. Still, even with this gear-grinding in the narrative I found the film interesting and enjoyable enough so that at a brisk 90 minutes none of its problems really bugged me.

Not a great movie but an interesting and important one for the development of sci-fi in the movies I'd say. Definitely worth tracking down, ABAHD is currently available on youtube in several places including here in HD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyFC_rFobX8
I also recommend this youtube backgrounder on the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogOwdg2r_oU

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

612 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer John McNaughton, 1986

Powerful, intriguing '80s classic lives up to its reputation. On the one hand its got a pseudo- documentary vibe, on the other hand it avoids hand-held cameras and frequently goes for long tableaus of crime scenes accompanied by very stylized electronic, non-dance music. Almost ever shot feels well-framed. The film plays a nasty trick on the audience by making us like the titular serial-killer or at least strongly prefer him over the creepier, more chaotic, more rapey Otis. The film makes good use of Chicago locations. Something I was very struck and unnerved by when I lived there was just how desolate and empty the city could feel. Unless you were in the heart of the North Side the truth was that if you walked around at night there were always people around but only enough to be worrisome, and never enough so that you could feel safe.

Not as flat-out harrowing as other hard-edged serial killer films such as Angst (1983) and Man Bites Dog (1995), HPOAS nonetheless disturbs with the casualness and impunity with which Henry and Otis kill and the sense that the milieu out of which these sorts of people tend to emerge and which contains a level of abuse and general horror that shocks the conscience is nonetheless still out there.

While there are numerous 1986 films I'd pick ahead of HPOAS that aren't on Wright's list, HPOAS has its own special power, and probably is essential viewing for anyone who's seen their share of serial killer films. It stands as a semi-documentary boundary case for that whole sub-genre of horror.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

612 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer John McNaughton, 1986
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Powerful, intriguing '80s classic lives up to its reputation.

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SPOILERS:

I saw this film once. And once was enough...though it was certainly very good for what it was....absolutely horrifying in a very real way.

And I'll open by noting that one critic wrote:

"Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" is the most profound attack on audience bloodlust since Hitchcock's Frenzy."

That the critic referenced Frenzy, and not Psycho, made a very valid point to me: Frenzy had been Hitchcock's treatise on the REALITY of the serial killer. No "boo!" scares in a shower or at the top of a staircase, stylized and scored to scream-worthy screeching violins. Just the cold, hard vicious reality of the men in this world who are so twisted that killing the innocent becomes their sole reason for existing. Killing other human beings(especially defenseless women) for pleasure is their "real job." With rape on the menu as well.

And these people kill for the simple pleasure of KILLING. At least when animals kill other animals, it is almost always for food. Or maybe turf supremacy. But not "for pleasure."

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The film plays a nasty trick on the audience by making us like the titular serial-killer or at least strongly prefer him over the creepier, more chaotic, more rapey Otis.

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The film "double crosses" us in that regard. Its really the story of TWO serial killers(based on a REAL story of two serial killers who paired up) and we are led to believe that one of them -- Henry, the better-looking one -- is in some way "a better man" who will "do the right thing" in the end. In short, Henry takes a stand against Otis's incestuous attempt to rape his own sister, and Henry kills Otis. So we start to think of Henry -- against all better judgement -- as ALMOST a hero(even though we've seen him kill men, women and CHILDREN with casual sadistic cruelty.)

And then Henry goes and kills Otis's sister on his own. He just can't help what he is.

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The film makes good use of Chicago locations. Something I was very struck and unnerved by when I lived there was just how desolate and empty the city could feel. Unless you were in the heart of the North Side the truth was that if you walked around at night there were always people around but only enough to be worrisome, and never enough so that you could feel safe.

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Interesting insights. I know that Psycho gave us the "scariness of the American backwater," but urban jungles can be even scarier given the kinds of people who hang there. (I suppose Hitchcock's "urban jungle" movie was...yeah...Frenzy.)

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Not as flat-out harrowing as other hard-edged serial killer films such as Angst (1983) and Man Bites Dog (1995),

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I've seen Man Bites Dog, too. It opens with a totally random strangling of a woman that makes the main Frenzy strangling look like a mild murder on Columbo. The shocking idea in both cases(mercifully rare in real life): a man might just pick any woman at random and amuse himself sexually by killing her, just like that, for no reason at all. (When a man killing a man enters the equation, the story is somewhat less cruel.)

Man Bites Dog also has a certain dark humor to it: THIS serial killer has a camera crew following him around as he kills people, and eventually, they run into ANOTHER serial killer with ANOTHER camera crew. Gore ensues.

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HPOAS nonetheless disturbs with the casualness and impunity with which Henry and Otis kill and the sense that the milieu out of which these sorts of people tend to emerge and which contains a level of abuse and general horror that shocks the conscience is nonetheless still out there.

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The film took a little critical heat for saying something that no Hitchcock film wanted to say: extreme poverty with no education and no parenting(or sexually and physically abusive parenting) can PRODUCE psychopaths. They aren't as cute as Norman Bates or as erudite as Hannibal Lecter. They are developmentally disabled in some ways, dumb as a box of rocks, dull as dishwater...and mean.

I recall once doing a post on Frenzy in which I tried to describe how "genteel" Hitchcock was in dividing the rape and murder into stylized, not-as-graphic as it seems, one-by-one shots -- and the entire post was deleted by an administrator. So I won't go into detail about Henry's crimes, with one exception:

When he DOES stab Otis to death -- the shot(to my mind) is what we DIDN'T see when Mother finished Arbogast off on the floor in Psycho. Hitchcock kept Arbogast below the frame as he was killed, and faded out. The director here gives us Henry's stabbing of Otis as a single take medium shot with all the real horror of a man stabbing another man to death. And in the eye for part of it. Where the knife(actually, a metal COMB handle?!) lands its blows does not matter to the killer. He's not squeamish at all.

Meaningful. That one time.

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While there are numerous 1986 films I'd pick ahead of HPOAS that aren't on Wright's list, HPOAS has its own special power, and probably is essential viewing for anyone who's seen their share of serial killer films. It stands as a semi-documentary boundary case for that whole sub-genre of horror.

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I've noted that Psycho and Frenzy are about my outer limit for the serial killer genre...but we could add Silence of the Lambs and Seven too. Studio values will out.

I've not spent much if any time on the 1,000s of gorefest slasher films made since Psycho, but yes, occasionally, the reviews draw me to the "critically acclaimed worst of the worst." Henry the Serial Killer is such a film. It gives us, in no uncertain terms, the base, bedrock lowlife reality of REAL serial killers.

And it is no fun at all.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

503 The Wanderers Philip Kaufman, 1979

Very nice slice of teenage and gang life in 1963 in the (Italian parts of the) Bronx. It works well as a kind of pre-history of The Sopranos since one of the best characters in The Wanderers is Despie Galasso played by Toni Kalem who was fan fave Angie on the Sopranos. Kalem has an amazingly expressive face. No one does crushed and desperate but also unsinkable like her. At 17 or so she's a marvel (esp. in the strip-poker scene where it starts to dawn on her that she's losing her boyfriend) and here her dad is the previous (or two) generation's Toni Soprano and her beau Richie (Ken Wahl) is going to turn into Sal unless he's very careful.

Th Wanderers also works both as an East Coast American Graffiti (The Wanderers has the music mixed louder than almost any movie I can think of) *and* as a prequel to Saturday Night Fever *and* as an immediate precursor to Zemeckis's I Wanna Hold our Hand. Hmmm... you could almost mix these films into a single epic about music and cultural change. Throw Diner and Animal House, maybe even Mean Streets, in there too. At the very least that's a hell of a summer movie sequence to run.

In 1979 The Wanderers kind of got lumped together with The Warriors, but it's a character/slice of life study not an action movie so this was a mistake.

Definitely glad to have caught up with this one. It's not quite a *great film* but it's a 'must see' because it's very good and part of a great little sub-tradition in American film, one that's close to my heart anyway.

In some respects both Mad Men and The Sopranos completed this tradition building out The Wanderers' treatment of the era (and a street's eye view of cultural change) and of an American-Italian identity strong enough to persist though any wider changes respectively to 60-80 hours each.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

599 Into the Night John Landis, 1985

I know some people really rate this films (e.g., Mark Kermode rates it above Scorsese's somewhat similar After Hours!), but I felt it really didn't work. Landis films a lot of it like he's half asleep, as if he's as insomnia-distracted as his protagonist Ed.

Maybe casting is the big problem here. Jeff Goldblum is a fun screen actor but here he's required to play a straight arrow, which means he has to turn off a lot of what makes him appealing in teh first place. Michelle Pfeiffer meanwhile is the agent of manic disorder who disrupts and wakes up Mr Straight Arrow's life. Pfeiffer is a terrific screen presence (including of course being one of the most beautiful actresses ever) but she's too controlled and lady-like and not-a-nut to be a compelling wild gal. Melanie Griffith, Roseanne Arquette, Diane Keaton, Kathleen Turner (not to mention Colbert, Stanwyck, K. Hepburn et al. back in real screwball times) all would be a lot better in this role. (That said, in the last 15 minutes or so ITN, Pfeiffer's smiley beauty star-power does kind of wear you down - Michelle, it's been a pleasure just to watch you.)

With Goldblum and Pfeiffer miscast and Landis seemingly asleep on the job the film never catches fire despite the odd funny moment. (The film bizarrely, unfunnily has lots and lots of cameos from other directors and Hollywood figure of various sorts - a good film to keep in ones back pocket for 6 degrees of separation games!)

Into The Night also features one of the worst blaring '80s scores (with heavy syth drums and wailing guitars) that I can remember. Awful.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

I know some people really rate this films

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That would be...me...so here comes some gentle rebuttal...

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(e.g., Mark Kermode rates it above Scorsese's somewhat similar After Hours!),

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Well, they are both "dusk til dawn movies" that take place over an entire night. I like Into the Night better as an entertainment; After Hours plays more arty and nightmarish.

The whole idea of "dusk til dawn movies" is probably worth someone's thesis or article, somewhere. I trust many of us here HAVE some memories of "dusk til dawn" adventures, mainly in our younger years when we could stay up that long. Its a magical time "while the city sleeps" but during which all sorts of nefarious things can occur.

Or it is a romantic time. "American Graffiti" was a bittersweet dusk-til-dawn movie because when dawn came...high school, teenage years, and innocence ended for these college-bound or nowhere-bound youths.

Or its a horrific time. The QT/Rodriguez movie CALLED "From Dusk Til Dawn" had George Clooney, QT as two brutal criminal brothers fighting vampires from dusk til dawn in a Mexican strip club.

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but I felt it really didn't work. Landis films a lot of it like he's half asleep, as if he's as insomnia-distracted as his protagonist Ed.

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Well, I think it does work, for what it is -- indeed a sleepy shaggy dog tale which SHOULD be a thriller, but doesn't really play like one. Despite a number of very violent killings along the way that Landis elects to set up as slapstick comedy both before the gore arrives and DURING it.

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Maybe casting is the big problem here. Jeff Goldblum is a fun screen actor but here he's required to play a straight arrow, which means he has to turn off a lot of what makes him appealing in teh first place.

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Oh, I like his straight arrow here -- who always has Jeff Goldblum's offbeat speech patterns and hyper-intelligent facial expressions bubbling along with his portrayal of the classic Hitchcock character: "the ordinary man swept up in an extraordinary situation." And he IS, exactly that character. Michelle Pffeifer leaps onto his car hood at LAX and she's being chased and Jeff's swept up into it and...its a movie trope as old as Hitchcock to be sure. Given that Michelle is SO beautiful, the deadpan Jeff (amusingly named "Ed") goes along for the to-the-death ride.

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Michelle Pfeiffer meanwhile is the agent of manic disorder who disrupts and wakes up Mr Straight Arrow's life. Pfeiffer is a terrific screen presence (including of course being one of the most beautiful actresses ever) but she's too controlled and lady-like and not-a-nut to be a compelling wild gal.

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Yes, Michelle Pffeifer was always an interesting conundrum -- beautiful but rather inaccessible as a human being. I suppose she could have been a Hitchcock blonde back in the day, but even Grace Kelly had more heart and soul.

It was perhaps bad for Michelle(I give up trying to spell her last name) that one of her earliest roles was as Elvira the ice-cold cocaine queen in "Scarface." Michelle was so good in the role that it rather locked her in as self-absorbed, cold, contemptuous of everyone. Trying to "warm up" in movies like "Into the Night" was a difficult task. Though I do remember Michelle's big smile at the end of "Into the Night" decaring "Happy Ending" in a very direct way. Also, I believe this is the only movie in which she was seen, albeit briefly, nude. Which humanized her an extra step or two. Also-- a distinctive red jacket is Michelle's key wardrobe in this film, its almost like Roger O. Thornhill's silver gray suit in NXNW.
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Melanie Griffith, Roseanne Arquette, Diane Keaton, Kathleen Turner (not to mention Colbert, Stanwyck, K. Hepburn et al. back in real screwball times) all would be a lot better in this role.

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Perhaps. I think the "surprise" of Michelle in the role was that with all her stately beauty she DID come around to loving Goldblum's straight arrow. Also, she was believable in being caught up with the murderous crooks in this film..because she's been in Scarface.

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(That said, in the last 15 minutes or so ITN, Pfeiffer's smiley beauty star-power does kind of wear you down - Michelle, it's been a pleasure just to watch you.)

Well, again to that final smile. It is simultaneous with the end credits and her name appearing on screen with her face as the first big notes of BB King's "Midnight Hour" come on the soundtrack. Its exhilarating.

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(The film bizarrely, unfunnily has lots and lots of cameos from other directors and Hollywood figure of various sorts - a good film to keep in ones back pocket for 6 degrees of separation games!)

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Well, there's a story behind that. And to me personally, its when I came to believe Hitchcock's dictum "My love of cinema is stronger than my love of morality."

John Landis had made the surprise mega hit "Animal House" in 1978 and became a just-this-side of Lucas and Spielberg film god for the 80's. The Blues Brothers was over-expensive and not as good as "Animal House," but it was a hit. Then came the funny-gory "American Werewolf in London" with its state of the art "realistic" werewolf effects(no dissolves -- the actor's body grows hair and stretches out as we watch.)

And then came The Twilight Zone. Filming in the summer of 1982 for summer 1983 release, Landis had one of four segments of the film. Most of us know what happened: during the filming a night scene of Viet Cong helicopters chasing actor Vic Morrow(with two small Vietnamese children in his arms), the chopper crashed INTO Morrow and the children, killing all three and decapitating some of them.

Director John Landis, the chopper pilot, the effects artists and other crew members, all ended up on trial for the three deaths. The picture of Landis summoned up in a book about the case painted Landis as another one of those super-arrogant Hollywood brats who snuck the child actors onto a late night shoot against state law and refused to allow dummies to be substituted for the kids into the shot . He wanted Morrow, the kids AND the chopper in the same shot, with explosives blowing up around them that proved to be improperly set. In short, Landis came off as guilty of SOMETHING that led to the child deaths(the death of tough guy actor Morrow seemed somehow more acceptable.)

Landis was aquitted in the criminal trial but paid a lot of civil damages. Dan Ackroyd came to Landis' defense, saying "this was an industrial accident," nothing more.

Indeed, even as Landis's Twilight Zone deaths had occurred, he went right into directing the Dan Ackroyd/Eddie Murphy hit "Trading Places." But that had been set up before the Zone accident. Landis was in career trouble immediately after Trading Places came out in 1983.

And so: Into the Night features all those directors "in solidarity" with Landis for being "witch-hunted" on the deaths of the two kids and Vic Morrow. And this is what I mean by "love of cinema vs love of morality." I believe enough of that book on the Twilight Zone case to believe that Landis (quite usual for Hollywood) egomania DID lead to the deaths of those kids but...I really liked "Into the Night" and accepted that all those other directors were backing him.

Truth be told, Landis' career never really recovered. I think he managed to direct a few more major 80's movies and then he fizzled out. The Twilight Zone deaths DID come to shut down what could have been a longer, bigger, better career.

Two Psycho connections for John Landis: He's in "Psycho IV: The Beginning" in a dramatic role, and on the "Trailers from Hell" website, he hosts Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho trailer. In real life, Hitchcock was a huge Animal House fan who made late-breaking friends with John Landis in the last two years of Hitchcock's life.

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Into The Night also features one of the worst blaring '80s scores (with heavy syth drums and wailing guitars) that I can remember. Awful.

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Oh perhaps. But it has those great BB King songs at the beginning of the movie("Into the Night") and over the end credits with cast shots("Midnight Hour.")

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I like Into the Night for a lot of reasons. The early scenes establishing Goldblum's Ed as a man with what should be a great profession -- aerospace engineer -- that looks boring beyond all comprehension. A pretty, attentive wife who -- Ed learns when he comes home early -- is having sex with her boss at Ed's house (Ed spies on this, and does not confront the wife.) An inability to sleep that leads Ed to drive around all night in LA...and right into the life-or-death drug smuggling and murder plot that Michelle drags him into.

One the "all night thriller" kicks in, I just love the sense of LA at night and the many nefarious characters with whom Ed crosses paths:

Carl Perkins and Davie Bowie as mobster hit-men, fighting it out to the death with knives in a penthouse suite with "Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein" eerily playing on multiple TVs around them.

Ed's exchange with Perkins at a private gambling club(paraphrased):

Ed: I need to meet with Mr. Sharif.
Carl Perkins: He's not here.
Ed: Yes he is. I see him over there.
Perkins: (GROWLS) He..just LEFT!

Bowie's street corner exchange with Ed:

Bowie: Ed, is it? I want to tell you, I've been watching you tonight.
Ed: Really?
Bowie: Yes...and you're good. You're VERY good. I'm very impressed.
Ed: Well, thank you.
Bowie puts pistol in Ed's mouth.
Bowie: Very good. I'm very impressed.

(Folks have noted that David Bowie looks, sounds and acts just like Ricky Gervais in this scene, with the latter's British smarm.)

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Or the scene at Michelle's brother's house. The brother isn't there, but his apartment is wall to wall with Elvis paraphanalia: movie posters, photographs, record covers..and then the brother arrives and its the delightful Bruce McGill(D-Day from Animal House) in full Elvis regalia...and full hatred for his evidently cant-be-trusted spends-all-his-money wrecks-his-car sister.

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Or the late breaking appearance of Vera Miles --- just a few years after Psycho II. She's playing the raging , unloving wife of an old rich guy (Richard Farnsworth) whose girlfriend Michelle is and...well, its classic Beyotch Vera Miles. Lila Crane Loomis, up another notch. I will say that I don't think Vera LOOKED too good in this scene from 1985,and perhaps that's why she has hidden herself from public view for the past 25 years or so.

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John Landis cheekily cast himself as one of four "SAVAK Iranian Secret Police" characters(the other three are legitimately Middle Eastern actors) who roll through the movie crashing into one another like the Four Stooges and then kill people(nice people, INNOCENT people) and even a dog..with great brutality. Each of these four comical killers meets a gory end, including John Landis. And I kind of think he took the role for a reason....

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But these incidents don't really capture the true draw of "Into the Night" for me: how it FEELS. I've driven some of those LA streets "all night long" myself, and the film captures how LA's West Side can be filled with homes of both the rich and the struggling..all closed down and silent in a city that closes down early. The film also intersects in two sequences with Hollywood people -- at the home studio and at their Malibu beach houses -- and captures the tough arrogance and entitlement of such people(director Paul Mazursky gives us a perfect portrait of a director who won't let somebody like Jeff Goldblum near his lady.)

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I think an interesting aspect of your review of these movies for me, swanstep, -- at least when you cover a movie I saw on release -- is that I can't help thinking seeing any "old" movie for the first time TODAY(like "Into the Night" of 1985, or The Anderson Tapes of 1971) sort of takes away the element of when it was made.

This is always the big deal with Psycho of course. Anybody who watches Psycho today on a TV screen rather than in a theater filled with screaming patrons isn't REALLY seeing Psycho.

But even with a lesser piece like 'Into the Night," well, I think you had to be there, at least a little. Its very much a movie OF the 80's, sort of a companion piece to "Miami Vice" in look and feel(though on the West Coast) and, well...of its time. And in my case personally I saw Into the Night (and The Anderson Tapes), when I was much younger, with a different feeling FOR life.

And to me, the really "special" aspect of "Into the Night" is this: By 1984/85, thanks to The Twilight Zone, John Landis was a pariah, a persona non grata, and for reasons at once empathetic and arrogant, his Hollywood tribe of directors chose to embrace him in public, on screen, with this quirky little ultra-violent thriller. The ultra-violence, I think , was perhaps even a bit of a "nose thumb" of Landis towards his "Twilight Zone" accusers. He embraced violence this time, he didn't turn his back on it.

Interesting movie. And I really like Jeff Goldblum in a deadpan mode, I have to say.

PS. Michelle Pffeifer is a bit too cold for me in this movie, but another actress named Kathryn Harrold was the true hottie in it. She spends most of the movie in a one-piece white swimsuit. Great body, sexy face, wisecracking manner. Maybe she should have had the lead. I believe that Harrold quit movies to marry some Washington DC figure.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

(e.g., Mark Kermode rates it above Scorsese's somewhat similar After Hours!),
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Well, they are both "dusk til dawn movies" that take place over an entire night. I like Into the Night better as an entertainment; After Hours plays more arty and nightmarish.

After Hours is much more visually intense even in its opening scenes, i.e., before any adventures start happening, than Into The Night. Perhaps another way of putting my basic objection to ITN is that its casual style struck me as a poor fit for its content (which involves quite a lot of R-rated violence and nudity). Causal framing and editing can work for an American Graffiti or a Dazed and Confued but doesn't seem to me to fit with ITN's story.

Relatedly, I find that it is just ITN's misfortune to feel hemmed in by similar but better '80s films up to and including things like Demme's Something Wild.

(That said, in the last 15 minutes or so ITN, Pfeiffer's smiley beauty star-power does kind of wear you down - Michelle, it's been a pleasure just to watch you.)

Well, again to that final smile. It is simultaneous with the end credits and her name appearing on screen with her face as the first big notes of BB King's "Midnight Hour" come on the soundtrack. Its exhilarating.

I can do without BB King with an '80s backing track myself, but yeah that final image of Michelle P. is so brain-melting that it's easy at that point to forgive all of the movie's other sins. That's star-power for you. Too bad that Pfeiffer wasn't generally that interested in playing up to her natural glamour.

Carl Perkins and Davie Bowie as mobster hit-men, fighting it out to the death with knives in a penthouse suite with "Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein" eerily playing on multiple TVs around them.

Good scene. I don't remember Bowie's role in Into The Night being remembered much in teh orgy of attention around his recent death. This movie (which I confess I'd never heard of until Wright's listing of it) really has been forgotten.

Or the late breaking appearance of Vera Miles --- just a few years after Psycho II. She's playing the raging, unloving wife of an old rich guy (Richard Farnsworth) whose girlfriend Michelle is and...well, its classic Beyotch Vera Miles. Lila Crane Loomis, up another notch. I will say that I don't think Vera LOOKED too good in this scene from 1985,and perhaps that's why she has hidden herself from public view for the past 25 years or so

Ha! Tough but fair. Good to see Miles, even though, you're right that she must have been pretty sick of always playing the post-Lila mega-bitch.

But these incidents don't really capture the true draw of "Into the Night" for me: how it FEELS. I've driven some of those LA streets "all night long" myself, and the film captures how LA's West Side can be filled with homes of both the rich and the struggling..all closed down and silent in a city that closes down early.

Reading Into The Night's IMDb board a bit, other Angelenos testify that the film capture their experience of the city at the time too. One thing that stands out for me is that still in 1984/1985 the cars on Americans streets look like '70s gas-guzzlers. I think the Ford Taurus arrives in 1986 and almost instantly there's more of a stylistic continuity on the roads with what's driven now. Even Back To The Future (1985) which features a Toyota 4x4 feels a lot more modern in this respect than ITN.

She makes an impact for sure. She's given some business to do in one scene where she's alone and has a moment in front of a mirror to straighten and smooth out and generally fit best inside her swimsuit. It's something that we males never normally get to see...so it feels like a little quasi-erotic gift to us...and then her character gets bumped off shortly afterwards, i.e., just as we were getting attached to her! We remember the actress and character because of that. Interesting that she left Hollywood...

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

e.g., Mark Kermode rates it above Scorsese's somewhat similar After Hours!),
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Well, they are both "dusk til dawn movies" that take place over an entire night. I like Into the Night better as an entertainment; After Hours plays more arty and nightmarish.
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After Hours is much more visually intense even in its opening scenes, i.e., before any adventures start happening, than Into The Night. Perhaps another way of putting my basic objection to ITN is that its casual style struck me as a poor fit for its content (which involves quite a lot of R-rated violence and nudity). Causal framing and editing can work for an American Graffiti or a Dazed and Confued but doesn't seem to me to fit with ITN's story.

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That's likely the issue, here. John Landis had great skills with comic timing in Animal House, but he really also had a world-class script by National Lampoon magazine pros, and once his scripts deteriorated -- starting with Blues Brothers -- Landis rather flailed around as an auteur.

I think another way to put it is that "Into the Night" is "studio glossy" and not "indie real" as an offbeat movie. I mean, its got VERA MILES in it.

On the other hand, one reason I like Into the Night better than After Hours and Something Wild is that it IS glossy. Fun. Hitchcockian at times, Animal House-ian at other times. Probably the whole tone of the movie is summed up in that fight to the death with A and C meet Frankenstein in the background.

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Relatedly, I find that it is just ITN's misfortune to feel hemmed in by similar but better '80s films up to and including things like Demme's Something Wild.

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As noted above. I liked Something Wild, but it eventually got down and dirty and REAL about the dangers posed to the innocent guy(Jeff Daniels) and his wild new girlfriend(Melanie Griffith) by the oh-too-real criminal psycho ex-husband(Ray Liotta.)

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I can do without BB King with an '80s backing track myself

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Oh. OK. But for me, how the movie STARTS with BB King, and then FINISHES with BB King...is part of the "fun" of the movie.

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but yeah that final image of Michelle P. is so brain-melting that it's easy at that point to forgive all of the movie's other sins. That's star-power for you. Too bad that Pfeiffer wasn't generally that interested in playing up to her natural glamour.

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She had an interesting career, up way high for awhile and then voluntarily removed from the biz. She married a hot and respected TV writer-producer, David Kelley (Boston Legal) -- who unfortunately for him was eventually eclipsed by the Sopranos/Mad Men era of quality TV and suddenly looked "old hat." Still, Michelle seemed to love him and they both had money and that was it.

I'm intrigued to see Michelle taking on Lauren Bacall's over-talkative matron role in "Murder on the Orient Express." Seems age-appropriate and fun for Michelle; maybe a mini-comeback as an older actress?

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Carl Perkins and Davie Bowie as mobster hit-men, fighting it out to the death with knives in a penthouse suite with "Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein" eerily playing on multiple TVs around them.
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Good scene. I don't remember Bowie's role in Into The Night being remembered much in teh orgy of attention around his recent death. This movie (which I confess I'd never heard of until Wright's listing of it) really has been forgotten.

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It has been forgotten and yet, I tell ya, I flashed on that other scene ("I'm impressed Ed. Very impressed. You're VERY good") when I learned that Bowie had died. Shows you how limited my knowledge was of him!

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Or the late breaking appearance of Vera Miles --- just a few years after Psycho II. She's playing the raging, unloving wife of an old rich guy (Richard Farnsworth) whose girlfriend Michelle is and...well, its classic Beyotch Vera Miles. Lila Crane Loomis, up another notch. I will say that I don't think Vera LOOKED too good in this scene from 1985,and perhaps that's why she has hidden herself from public view for the past 25 years or so
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Ha! Tough but fair.

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Tough but fair and...I'm afraid, too mean. But I will try to explain further:

All actors and actresses age, but it is a matter of how well they age, I suppose, that controls THEIR interest in remaining in the public eye. Unlike her peers like Janet Leigh(who had a little work done) and Kim Novak(who had a lot of work done) and Eva Marie Saint(who had no work done), Vera Miles starting around the time of Psycho II seemed to start to look older than she really was, just a bit more I dunno, "pre-elderly" than the others.

So that's why, I'm guessing, that Miles retreated from the public eye. I could be entirely wrong. And I shouldn't have been mean about it. Its more like I felt well, maybe THAT's the reason.

And I know that I myself have retreated from the public eye ...but then I never started off as a movie star. Hah.

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Good to see Miles, even though, you're right that she must have been pretty sick of always playing the post-Lila mega-bitch.

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I'll guess that John Landis had some regard for her given his friendship with Hitchcock and sense that she'd be "right for the role." A producer of Psycho II may have also been involved on this film, I think.

Did you know that Vera Miles was under consideration in 1970 for the Ellen Burstyn part in Peter Bogdanovich's "Last Picture Show"? What a comeback THAT might have been for Miles at the right time. Bogdo saw Miles because of her roots with John Ford -- recall that Ben Johnson got cast in the film and got an Oscar.

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But these incidents don't really capture the true draw of "Into the Night" for me: how it FEELS. I've driven some of those LA streets "all night long" myself, and the film captures how LA's West Side can be filled with homes of both the rich and the struggling..all closed down and silent in a city that closes down early.
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Reading Into The Night's IMDb board a bit, other Angelenos testify that the film capture their experience of the city at the time too.

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Sometimes, that aspect of a movie can MAKE the movie. Its a mix of identification and nostalgia. Into the Night of 1985 summoned up my memories of driving around LA in 1975. It was already nostaligic to me on first viewing. (I'm kind of hoping for some of that nostalgia when I eventually see La La Land.)

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One thing that stands out for me is that still in 1984/1985 the cars on Americans streets look like '70s gas-guzzlers. I think the Ford Taurus arrives in 1986 and almost instantly there's more of a stylistic continuity on the roads with what's driven now.

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And yet, in 1988, "Die Hard" had a scene with an LA gas station selling gas at 88 cents a gallon or something.

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Even Back To The Future (1985) which features a Toyota 4x4 feels a lot more modern in this respect than ITN.

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Hmmm...well, Landis didn't have the BTTF budget.

In fact, given that Spielberg produced BTTF, I'll note that the "Twilight Zone" tragedy led to a real split between Spielberg and Landis.

Spielberg produced Twilight Zone, and the four segments were given for direction to Spielberg and Lucas(the two "superstars") and George Miller(Mad Max) and Joe Dante(Gremlins to come) to direct. Miller and Dante outshone SS and Landis.

Landis' segment was released "in honor of Vic Morrow' but was horribly truncated in storyline (the kids and the chopper were removed), and sad to watch. As for Spielberg's segment, its pretty bad really -- and the reason, evidently, is that once Landis had his fatal accident, SS barely wanted to direct his segment. He was barely there to direct, and dodging inquiries from the LA cops and state safety agencies. (That SS had to endure the bad press of The Twilight Zone during the ET summer really bugged him -- and may have hurt ET's Oscar chances.)

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(Kathryn Harrold) She makes an impact for sure. She's given some business to do in one scene where she's alone and has a moment in front of a mirror to straighten and smooth out and generally fit best inside her swimsuit. It's something that we males never normally get to see...so it feels like a little quasi-erotic gift to us...

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Oh, don't some of us remember THAT.

And the next year, she did a scene with Arnold Schwarzenegger in a movie called "Raw Deal" where she stripped down to a negligee-teddy in a fancy restaurant in front of everybody. Kathryn "No Fear" Harrold.

And some of us remember THAT.

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and then her character gets bumped off shortly afterwards, i.e., just as we were getting attached to her!

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Yes, its Marion Crane-ish. She'd been very sexy, and fairly nice(she's Michelle's pal and slimy director Paul Mazursky's squeeze) and the SAVAK killers chase her and drown her at Malibu in a scene that shifts from sexy to slapstick to...horrible. Its really the worst killing in the movie.

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We remember the actress and character because of that.

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Yes. You might say she stole the movie from Michelle...but to no real career advantage.

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Interesting that she left Hollywood...

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Yes, I can picture the Democrat politico she married , he's on TV a lot. I guess I should go over to her board and see if they are still married. He wasn't an elected official; a behind the scenes guy.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

[–] movieghoul 7 years ago

Landis had a habit of inviting friends onto his sets to watch his filming, which practice may have played a big part in the TZ tragedy. There's no way it was necessary for actors to be on the set at the same time as the helicopter, this was Landis showing off.

I suspect Hitchcock never invited friends to his shoots and if he did, they would likely have come away disillusioned with how "fake" moviemaking is.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Landis had a habit of inviting friends onto his sets to watch his filming, which practice may have played a big part in the TZ tragedy. There's no way it was necessary for actors to be on the set at the same time as the helicopter, this was Landis showing off.

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Interesting aspect of the tragedy. I simply didn't remember that -- if it pushed Landis to put the kids out there, not good.

Landis was put through the "agony" of a criminal trial that he had to spend bucks to win, and the civil actions led to money payouts. Again, his career did spiral down, even though he can be found all the time at "Trailers from Hell" being a funny, likeable guy.

I read a book on the making of Animal House, where the producer wrote the following(paraphrased):

"John Landis was a novice director(Kentucky Fried Movie) who asked with as much humility as possible if he could possibly direct Animal House.

That was the last time I ever saw or heard John Landis do anything with humility."

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I suspect Hitchcock never invited friends to his shoots and if he did, they would likely have come away disillusioned with how "fake" moviemaking is.

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Yes, Hitchcock was as famous for having "closed sets" as Billy Wilder was famous for inviting the world to watch, with bleachers (Peter Sellers complained, "He's running a bloody Cooks Tour through here!" shortly before having to quit Kiss Me Stupid over a heart attack.)

I've been on a few movie sets in my time, and aside from the fakery, the real issue is the long, long, LONG time between takes and, quite frankly, the boredom of getting it all on film.

The "funnest" thing I got to witness was a fight scene between two groups of men -- heroes and villains -- on a "yacht interior cabin set" at Warners. The movie: "Doc Savage: Man of Bronze," a George Pal production which nobody remembers. Anyway on "action!" all these men stood up from their chairs and starting throwing punches at each other but -- no contact, no fist-fight sounds, it was like watching a bunch of mimes dance with each other.

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Here's one to puncture a balloon:

Is not one of the most famous "final moments of murder" when Arbogast gets it on the floor of the foyer in Psycho? That horrible scream, that knife coming down.

Oh to have been on the set for "cut!"...and Martin Balsam picked himself up, wiped his bloody brow clean, and walked off. Perhaps with whoever played "Mother" patting him on the back.

Glad I wasn't there for THAT.

Oh, no, it was quite real for me....

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

588 The Hit Stephen Frears, 1984

Willie Parker (Terrence Stamp) is in witness protection in sunny Spain after ratting out his co-crims back in England. That can't last, and after 15 years the mob finally tracks him down with the intention of bring him to Paris and then killing him painfully. The Hit (1984) follows how Willie and two hitmen (John Hurt and Tim Roth) fare on the road to Paris. Simple premises like these often work very well for movies and TH is one of the best examples of this out there. Rich philosophical themes about death (with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Bierce obvious influences for those in the know) and vivid characterizations and great side characters make for a near perfect little gem.

Wes Anderson and Chris Nolan have at various times listed TH as among their very favorite films, and lots of excellent films since from Sexy Beast to The Limey to Pulp Fiction to In Bruges to Fireworks to Calvary, in retospect owe something to TH. Highly recommended (with the proviso that TH is a small, understated film not one that sets out to 'blow you away').

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

498 Rock 'n' Roll High School Jerry Zucker, Joe Dante, Allan Arkush, 1979

Ultra-primitive attempt to do a kind of Animal House/Kentucky Fried Movie for High School sort of works because of The Ramones' participation. Amazingly they were only the fourth or fifth choice of the Producers for the key role.... amazing because they had in 1979 a unique mix of retro-ness and up-to-date-ness and also were uniquely the musical personification of exactly classic monster-movies and Corman-ish B-pictures. And, even more amazing, the Ramones hold the same pivotal place in youth culture today - all of their key tracks are still youth standards and nothing since has supplanted their primal fun-ness.

Everything about the film that doesn't directly involve the Ramones is pretty feeble, and RnRHS isn't in the same league as Fast Times or Animal House.

It's hard for me to compute how Wright could have RnRHS on his list for 1979 while Breaking Away, Tin Drum, Apocalypse Now, Herzog's Nosferatu, Stalker, Hair, North Dallas Forty, and even small delights like Time after Time and A Little Romance didn't make the cut.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

470 Blue Collar Paul Schrader, 1978

Paul Schrader's directorial debut feels like quite a time-capsule right now. Though it's relentlessly focused on the grim aspects of '70s Detroit and on the various Catch-22s that confronted auto-workers at the time, given what's happened since, Blue Collar captures what is currently thought of as a golden era of a lot of employment and relatively widely-shared wealth. Within a decade or two, automation and foreign competition would destroy almost all of the jobs depicted; the tough neighborhoods depicted would become virtual ghost-towns; and unions and remaining wages would wither. And in 2016 all the people depicted would vote for Trump with the agenda to more or less try to bring back the kinds of jobs and problems that Schrader anatomizes.

Fine work by Pryor, Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto in the leads w/ Pryor being a particular revelation. I've never seen him better. The film turns a little didactic at the end, but otherwise has a good tone and pace throughout.

I wondered a bit about a scene where our family men (at least two of them) sneak out and do a night of drugs and whoring (with the implication that this is a fairly regular occurrence for them)... I don't see *these* guys as being able to drop a couple of hundred $ each on evenings like that - it was like we strayed momentarily into some *other* Schrader-film where gangsters with large cash-flows misbehave.

Anyhow, 1978 was a bit of a lean year for film, so even with its flaws I can see how Blue Collar would end up on some peoples end of year lists.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

468 The Sentinel Michael Winner, 1977

Hilariously derivative theological thriller from Michael ('Death Wish') Winner. The film's Rosemary+Lee Remick-in-The-Omen-with-a-twist protagonist is nicely played by Christina Raines (who was Keith Carradine's squeeze in Nashville and in real life). That characetr is a big-shot model as the film begins so the opening (with a very loud and insistent orchrstrl score) feels a lot like a De Palma of the time (and perhaps a bit like a mid-'70s Giallo too). Soon however the extensive Rosemary's Baby and Omen influences crowd the De Palma out. The story's somewhat convoluted and the jittery editing doesn't make it especially easy to follow, and I'm not convinced on first viewing that either a character played by Ava Gardner or the actions of the Catholic Church (or some special sect within it) make sense given the final story we're given about what's going on. In The Sentinels's favor I suppose are a couple of scenes that no one will ever forget (despite the fact that the editing appears to be far from optimal), but the derivativeness and the general silliness of the story, and Chris Sarandon's poorly written boyfriend character (his performance is pretty bad too in my view but the script gives him no help) make this movie impossible to recommend. I almost can't believe that it's on Wright's list. Maybe Wright saw it when he was very young - it's a hard-R film with sexuality and violence and (controversially) real deformed people used in the climax and that all that alone might be enough to make it a favorite if you see it on vhs when you're 13.

480 Long Weekend Colin Eggleston, 1978

Wow, a near-classic environmental thriller out of Australia that puts an environmentally heedless Virginia Woolf-style feuding couple out in nature and has nature apparently strike back. The tagline on the poster for LW was, "Their crime was against nature. Nature found them guilty."

A favorite of QT's, LW carries a lot of The Birds' DNA (if Mitch and Melanie were tearing strips off each other) plus a bit of Deliverance's DNA, plus even a bit of L'Avventura and other Antonioni anomie-fests. Fantastic use of widescreen, lots of ingenious shots and sound fx, excellent performances from both leads, LW is consistently unnerving for its whole 90 minutes, and has a great ending. I loved it. Viewers who aren't comfortable with missing explanations won't like it as much as I do but all would agree I think that LW is an impressive piece of work. It's surprising in a way that LW's director and its writer (different guys) didn't get called up to the Hollywood big leagues for this. Maybe if Aussie audiences had got out and supported it more than they did (hardly at all apparently).

Note that, like a lot of good films with strong underlying ideas, LW at various points seems to be heading in directions the film ultimately doesn't go. But since where it *does* go is pretty excellent you don't mind about those roads not taken but it *is* true that other great films would have emerged if the film had gone those ways. Not only do we get to make those alternative movies in our mind, looking back over movie history since LW we can sort of see a bunch of other movies *as* those alternatives.

Thus, for example, I reviewed The Ruins (2008) earlier in this Wright-quest. One of its major plot-points involves the protagonists at The Ruins finding that they're being infected by, have growing-on-them this moss-like plant-material which lives on the titular ruins they're visiting. Well, LW has a version of this idea but doesn't follow it up in detail. I suspect that there are a few subsequent 'vicious nature' movies that play in this way like LW alternative histories. I wonder how widely seen LW ever was? At any rate even if there was this direct influence, this isn't plagiarism, rather it's exactly what working writers in commercial film *should* be doing. Strong films tend to burst with interesting ideas and possibilities, and following up those ideas and exploring those possibilities is nice work, essential work. It's a testimony to LW's strength and value that it precisely suggests all these other movies one might make (or from from the perspective of the 2010s all these other movies that have been made).

[–] movieghoul 7 years ago

When I saw The Sentinel on TV in the 70s, I was working with a woman who lived in Brooklyn Heights, and I joked that I had always suspected that the gate to hell was somewhere in that section of Brooklyn. (The revelation is so silly I didn't dignify it with a Spoiler alert.)

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

305 The Laughing Woman, dir. Piero Schivazappa, 1969

Have checked this film out now... and it's quite fun. Its visual flare reminded me of various things from the period including Danger:Diabolik (1968) and (off Wright's list, what's up with that?) Two For the Road (1967) and Perversion Story (1969), while some of its entrapment and dominance-and-submission sexual themes resonate with a range of offerings from The Collector (1966) through to more recent films (all of which are on Wright's list) such as Beyond The Black Rainbow (2007), Duke of Burgundy (2014), and Ex Machina (2015). In other words, The Laughing Woman (1969) is the sort of sexy, stylized, slightly loopy, 'Eurotrash' B-movie that can be seen as a point of reference for a whole strand inside alternative/art-house cinema that many movie-buffs, including myself, have a weakness for.

The core of TLW is Dagmar Lassander's presence/performance as the apparently dominated party, Maria, whose big 'dance'/striptease scene is the turning point of the film. This alone is enough to place Lassander (whom I'd never encountered or even heard of before this) in Euro-hottie, B-movie-queen heaven, but her taking over the movie from that point (while kind of doing her best Audrey-Hepburn-from-Two-For-The-Road impression) makes her role more complex and impressive (and the sort of thing that certain sorts of feminists are going to get behind) than you at first think. TLW is the sort of infectious B-movie that gets better and better as it goes along, and it's easy to see why it's on Wright's list. I'm glad to have seen it.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

322 Where's Poppa? Carl Reiner, 1970

Another entry from the fabled period in which the big Hollywood studios, here UA, were green-lighting almost anything if it was relatively inexpensive... Where's Poppa? is very rough and uneven, technicals-wise, acting-wise, script-wise, but it has a a couple of scenes that feel crucial to the development both of what we might call 'NYC, cringe comedy' (Allen, Seinfeld, Curb, Louis CK) and of what we might call gross-out comedy (Dumb and Dumber, Something about Mary, South Park). Indeed, all of the people and films just mentioned have directly stolen gags, lines, and tones from WP?

Probably only South Park these days would have a big rape-humor sequence (where the rape-victim ends up sending a bunch of roses to the rapist, etc.) let alone combining it with racial elements. And in fact I think that South Park has got a lot of plaudits over the years for being 'outrageous' for doing exactly what WP? did only much more riskily not-in-animation.

So, WP? is clearly *important* for comedy history, but is it a great or even good film? I don't so. Ultimately the male lead George Segal just isn't funny enough as either a straight man or as a crazy guy for the movie to really work. Almost anyone would have been better than him I think. His love interest, Trish Van DeVere (sp?) also feels underpowered. And Ruth Gordon doesn't connect here at all - great in Rosemary's Baby and Harold and Maude, in films without a strong driector like WP? and Inside Daisy Clover she just chews up the scenery with old-lady schtick. Ron Leibman as George Segal's brother kind of swans in half-way through and saves the film acting-wise. He ends up having to carry the rape-humor-plot but the first time we see him is in a mugging scene that turns into The Naked Prey with some wild musical accompaniment... outrageous and brilliant.

The basic 'son needs to get rid of his awful mother' plot anticipates some of Danny De Vito's Throw Mama From The Train (Wright #636) but De Vito's Hitchcock-and-Welles-spiced-up confection is a huge upgrade from WP? in most respects. (I assume that despite being De Vito's debut Throw Mama probably had at least 10x the budget of WP? even after adjusting for inflation. Studios had changed business models completely and were rolling in dough again by the mid '80s.)

In sum, I'm glad to have seen WP? but for me it's nowhere near a 'top 1000' entry.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

313 Girly Freddie Francis, 1970

Pretty much the definition of intriguing oddity, Girly (1970) is the story of a deranged pseudo-family living in a crumbling old mansion playing games of nursery rhyme infantilization. The youngest members of the family - including the titular Girly, who plays the nymphette, are sent out to bring back new playmates and hijinks up to and including death ensure. The film commits to its Beales of Grey Gardens meets Texas Chainsaw Family premise (apparently director Francis started with the mansion location and had a script written for it!) and rings the obvious changes - no major twists or even location changes, but he ending was a little more open-ended than I expected...

Vanessa Shaw's performance as Girly anchors the film. She's a dead-ringer for Clueless-period Alicia Silverstone and had plenty of acting chops (way more than Silverstone ever displayed). This *could* have been a star-making performance for her if, against all odds, the film had blown up, but apparently it barely got a release, sunk almost without a trace. Reading around, Shaw did a few more cheapie horror films than married a Hollywood producer, Robert Chartoff, and retired. Too bad.

Not a must-see film by any means, but entertaining enough I suppose.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

389 The Asphyx Peter Newbrook, 1973

Cheaply but fairly handsomely mounted Victorian-para-psychology horror doomed by terrible sound and FX, and a poorly paced, nonsensical-by-its-own-lights story. Presumably Wright saw this when he was very young and easily impressed....

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

168 Beat Girl Edmond T. Gréville, 1960

From the year of Psycho Wright chooses a fairly undistinguished, sullen teenager/J(uvenile) D(elinquent) flick. Gillian Hills (who'd later appear naked in both Blow Up and - at ultra-high-speed - in Clockwork Orange) is here the sullen beatnik teen doing her best Bardot and often threatening to get naked. In fact there's a lot of pretty risqué stuff for 1960 in this film - lots of scenes in strip-clubs with dancers down to pasties and g-strings, and there's one 'humping the stage' routine which apparently was too hot for the original release in 1960, but is now restored. (It's something - like a Motley Crue vid from the late '80s! - about as filthy as you can get while still technically having no nudity.)

The soundtrack, which is a brash rockabilly-Jazz hybrid from a young John Barry jazz ensemble, is a highlight, and Christopher Lee is good as a creepy strip-club owner, but really the (full of grating implausibilities) script and dull dialogue and mostly flat performances mean that I could never seriously recommend the film. Prurient interest in bump-and-grind set to John Barry and quasi-scholarly interest in the break-down of censorship only gets you so far! Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) too has a breakthrough-for-the-time strip-tease scene, but it's also a masterpiece in every other respect, yet it didn't make Wright's list.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

128 The Quatermass Xperiment Val Guest, 1955
140 Quatermass 2: Enemy from Space Val Guest, 1957
262 Quatermass and the Pit Roy Ward Baker, 1967 (a.k.a. 5 Million Miles to Earth)

Gawd, these were all pretty abysmal I'm afraid. Maybe if you catch them at exactly the right age (10?) they might do something for you (presumably that was how Wright caught them), but otherwise they are just painful to sit through. No particularly good ideas, wafer thin characters, terrible dialogue, lousy sfx, painful plotting which in each film sees much of the second and third acts turn into stories about struggling against bureaucracy (which never learns - Qatermass saves Earth from Alien takeover in the first two films, yet his warnings against yet another alien takeover in the third film are given no special weight by bureaucrats, the public etc.).

Quatermass and the Pit is a little more suspenseful and better acted than the other two, but it's still far from good.

[–] franzkabuki 7 years ago

That sounds a little harsh - Quatermass 2 in particular seemed rather effective in a climate where ridiculous sci-fi/creature flicks were unstoppably oozing out from the studios day and night. I mean it comes with some pretty stark, noirish black and white photography (never more compelling than in that climactic, oily trek through a factory) that gives it a reasonably sinister look and a pervasive air of bleakness of something that can be taken at least semi-seriously. Also, I thought the character of Quatermass - a driven as-hole, but not altogether unreasonable - was actually a case of successful stereotype avoidance, being neither a mad scientist running amok nor an absent-minded bumbling fool.

Far as I'm concerned the third film was really the weakest - one of those rare cases where a solidly budgeted remake would actually be a good idea.

Wouldn't rate any of them nowhere near as high as this Wright guy does though.

"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

That sounds a little harsh - Quatermass 2 in particular seemed rather effective in a climate where ridiculous sci-fi/creature flicks were unstoppably oozing out from the studios day and night. I mean it comes with some pretty stark, noirish black and white photography

Maybe you're right about this. I watched the three films together on the same day, which perhaps accentuated their formulaic-ness for me. Quatermass 2 struck me as almost a complete re-run of the first film, with the slight ratcheting up of the alien threat to having *already infected* most of the govt and then a whole village introduced only then to be *completely forgotten about*. E.g. when the heroes are trapped by the alien-controlled they're helpfully left in the very room that controls the atmosphere for the aliens! Bit of a hole in the super-smart and conniving Aliens' plans there...

Also, I thought the character of Quatermass - a driven as-hole, but not altogether unreasonable - was actually a case of successful stereotype avoidance, being neither a mad scientist running amok nor an absent-minded bumbling fool.

Fair point I suppose, but I found his Quatermass so wooden and unappealing that he was almost hard to watch. Obviously his character is some sort of forerunner to Dr Who (perhaps particularly as he was played as a kind of adjunct to the United Nations by Jon Pertwee in the 1970's) but I dare say that Dr Who just did this 'drive a-hole whom everyone tolerate because he has the goods' character a *lot* better. This Qatermass especially needs a sidekick/companion to soften him! That hindsight is possibly unfair, but it's also inevitable (it's like watching early '30s movies like 'Trouble in Paradise' which have a Cary Grant character before Cary Grant can get those roles.... they just do read as partial movies now because of the way the underlying genre evolved)

Far as I'm concerned the third film was really the weakest - one of those rare cases where a solidly budgeted remake would actually be a good idea.

I'm torn about it. I liked the new Qatermass actor and character (not quite the same driven a-hole) and the female near-sidekick felt to me like a good step, and there was something going on with camera movements and suspense that worked better for me.... still the story kind of bogged down in the middle, and the *beep* ideas about the Martians seeding intelligent life here and also being talked about in medieval manuscripts....somehow these kinds of 'big ideas' never work on film I find, you always just end up with lots of self-impressed blabbing and explaining which is very inert (shades of both Prometheus and those Da Vinci Code/Dan Brown movies that Tom Hanks keeps making).

Full disclosure: I ended up grumpier when watching Qatermass 2 than I did during the others because it's from 1957, a really great movie year. It bums me out that Q2 is on Wright's list and Night of Cabiria, Face in The Crowd, The Cranes Are Flying aren't. Realistically, I'd dump all Q films and put those in!

Or, another more-sci-fi line of reasoning I found myself musing about while watching Q2: The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) *is* on Wright's list.... I only got around to watching it a few years ago, and was very impressed. I don't know whether I'd include it on my list of the very best films fro 1957, but TISM is a beautifully made, thoughtful film, a further confirmation that 1950's Hollywood sci-fi was pretty great. Anyhow, I think that any impartial viewer would say that TISM is in a different league from Q2... as are things like (the more similar in content) Day The Earth Stood Still (1951).... which *isn't* on Wright's list. Even from a pop-films-only, genre-fan perspective, then, I don't think Wright's list makes much sense!

[–] franzkabuki 7 years ago

I thought the first Quatermass film was kind of bland and forgettable next to its sequel... but to navigate all the details, I would have to see these things again (been a while). Usually I'm pretty sensitive to various ways of hokum, but I don't really recall having been troubled by such in Q2 at least... although I certainly agree that Donlevy isn't exactly the most naturalistic of actors to have roamed the earth. Idk, these numbers were okay by me. The third one though... mounds of soil cramped in some little basement or whatever it was combined with that high-minded jabber you mention... it really did feel like an extra penny or two would have helped things considerably. Wouldn't have felt so drab. But that's Quatermass - a trilogy I never really dreamed I'd be defending the way I do here. Because by and large, I'm indifferent.

Shrinking Man's pretty effective, Jack Arnold being the kind of hack who churned out a few decent numbers every once in a while (The Mouse That Roared being the best he ever managed as far as I'm concerned). That's not my favourite cheapo sci-fi from 1957, however - that honor would belong to Roger Corman's Not Of This Earth - a surprisingly creepy and perceptive critique of suburban conformism and alienation, it would seem. Quite similar in these regards to the 1958 I Married A Monster From Outer Space, another piece reaching quite a bit above its lowly origins. And while I'm at it, I might as well round this out with another couple of favourites when it comes to this type of deal - the witty and scary early disaster number The Day The World Caught Fire from 1961 (by none other than Val Guest) as well as another Corman success The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. Those things would be what I'd consider the tops in the disreputable genre in question.

1957 was indeed a rather good year for film - I really didn't bother to pedantically go over those 1000 movies by the illustrious Mr Wright, but he certainly should have included stuff like 12 Angry Men, Sweet Smell Of Success, Wild Strawberries, Paths Of Glory, Throne Of Blood, The Seventh Seal and, perhaps above all, River Kwai which, as I think I learned from another thread, you seriously dislike. Well, that okay though - me, I happen to think Lawrence Of Arabia is a tedious case of good-looking movie stars exchanging phoney dialogue and striking poses in the desert. Tried to watch it twice and on the second attempt, I actually fell asleep - something that pretty much 'never' happens to me. I'm damned difficult to bore with a movie. Well... one of these days I'll watch it for the third time. I guess.

PS: Scanning the OP retroactively, I see Threads mentioned. It's such a little known flick, but one of the most brutal and disturbing I've ever seen. Good to see somebody else appreciating the horrorshow.

"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

That's not my favourite cheapo sci-fi from 1957, however - that honor would belong to Roger Corman's Not Of This Earth - a surprisingly creepy and perceptive critique of suburban conformism and alienation, it would seem.

New to me. Thanks for the tip.

Quite similar in these regards to the 1958 I Married A Monster From Outer Space, another piece reaching quite a bit above its lowly origins.

I quite like that one. I watched it originally simply because it was edited by Hitchcock's big editor (including on Psycho), George Tomasini, but it turned out to be pretty good value across the board (e.g., Art direction by Henry Bumstead who worked with Hitch a bit). I do suspect that I Married may play a bit better *today* than it did even 20 years ago. What may have been intended as a cautionary tale about wives not being able to trust their commie beatnik husbands now reads as about wives' fears of their closeted, gay husbands. This gets some laughs but also makes the film newly fascinating, e.g., some of the nicely shot night-time street scenes haunt and the now-easier-to-see subtext explains why.

the witty and scary early disaster number The Day The World Caught Fire from 1961 (by none other than Val Guest) as well as another Corman success The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. Those things would be what I'd consider the tops in the disreputable genre in question.

I like both of these a lot. Both are good-looking, exciting, funny, well-acted, and well-directed films. Both a lot better than any Qatermass film I dare say!

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

328 Daughters of Darkness Harry Kumel, 1971

Preposterous, intermittently visually stylish film that may have invented the 'languid erotic vampire' sub-genre (see The Hunger, Only Lovers Left Alive, in part Neon Demon, and many others), DoD didn't work at all for me, but your mileage may vary. I think some viewers will get off on the general tone of eurotrash kinkiness and that that together with the occasionally impressive visuals, some of which look forward to the cinema du look stuff from France in the early '80s (Diva, Subway, etc.) and others of which resonate with 'big wintry hotel' films of the past and future (Marienbad, Shining) will be enough for them. I'm pretty reluctant, however, to give a film a pass when it doesn't have much on the way of characters or dialogue or plot.

DoD with its main wintry seaside hotel location reminded me a bit of The King of Marvin Gardens (1972).... but the comparison does DoD few favors. KMG has unforgettable performances, characters, dialogue, on top of great visuals and a decent story. By comparison, DoD feels like at most half a movie.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

411 From Beyond the Grave Kevin Connor, 1974

Tepid horror anthology film. Sort of Dead of Night (1945) minus the ingenious scripts and the bravura direction. Lesley Ann Downs (an early '80s Mrs Friedkin) is incredibly dishy in one of the stories.... nothing else really stands out. Not top-1000 material in my view.

I am struck by all these horror stories where there's a magic door or Magic mirror....something that's a portal into another dimension of reality. Nobody ever reacts the way anyone would react in the real world - call in lots of experts to investigate the discovery of the century and yourself stand well back/move out - if another dimension has *really* opened up then it's as likely to swallow the earth as it is to just sit there. New physics is a big deal, but you don't want to be standing next to a point source of new energies and forces.

I guess there are *some* stories where the portal/occult object gets appropriately handed over to the experts and the military, but even *they* can't handle it. That's a better, more realistic story I think.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

231 Simon of the Desert Luis Bunuel, 1965

Immaculate short feature (just 45 mins) from Bunuel, with interesting ideas and well-judged visuals throughout, and an ending for the ages. SOTD is probably a little too simple to be considered top-tier Bunuel, but second- and third-tier Bunuel like second- and third-tier Hitchcock is still better than most directors' best, and *so* exemplary - you can probably teach and learn almost all of film-making from SOTD. Great stuff.

Wright's non-selections from 1965 include Battle of Algiers, Sound of Music, Pierrot Le Fou, Juliet of the Spirits. Wow

302 The Bed Sitting Room Richard Lester, 1969

Ha, after Lester's Beatles movies and the the whole notion of 'swinging London' blew up giving the world Repulsion, Blow-Up and the like, almost every American studio established a London-based subsidiary green-lighting its own slate of films to be shot in the UK. By around 1969-1970, however, almost all those subsidiaries had folded.... because of films like Lester's The Bed-Sitting Room (1969)! United Artists London probably had a heart attack when the saw the final cut of the BSR (they apparently held up its release for over a year) - even now it's way too strange and experimental to pull much of an audience (although perhaps the drugs of the time would have helped a bit). The BSR is set around the former site of London about three years after a nuclear holocaust left only about 20 people alive in Southern England. The story and jokes revolve around absurds attempts by people to cling on to social roles, class distinctions, administrative structures, and so on that no longer make sense. In this strange world (filmed largely it seems in various quarries and slag-heaps around England), people have largely lost their minds but even odder things are afoot: people now have the disturbing tendencies to turn into (still talking and sentient) bits of furniture or whole rooms or animals. Lots of famous-in-the-UK comics participate but nothing's very funny. It's a trippy movie though, and possibly worth seeing if you enjoy that sort of thing. A lot of people, however, are going to lose patience with The BSR, and I'd personally find it hard to recommend it to anyone who's not a completist. The BSR is not nearly as good or as fun as Performance - another studio-breaking trippy movie from around the same time - and as a cutting-edge, absurdist comedy I think the stuff coming out of the US at the time from Little Murders to Where's Poppa to Cold Turkey to Putney Swope is just plain sharper and better.

Wright's non-selections for 1969 include Z, Andrei Rublev, They Shoot Horses, Army of Shadows, Chabrol's The Unfaithful Wife, Putney Swope, etc.. Hmmm.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

303 The House That Screamed Narciso Ibanez Serrador, 1969

A near-superb, sustained atmospheric, girls-boarding-school horror/thriller. Very Hitchcockian, and I think it's fair to say that Hitch would have preferred to have made this rather than Topaz in 1969.

Reading around a bit about writer-director Serrador he seems to have been the principal avowed Hitchcock acolyte in Spain in the '60s. He only made 2 feature films reserving most of his time for several long-running TV series in Spain, one of which was a mystery anthology hosted Hitch/Serling-style by Serrador. It sounds as though his TV work made him very wealthy.

The House That Screamed features tremendously fluid camera moves and dazzling control over lighting (the story is set sometime in the 19C so lots of candle-light), marvellous sets and propping mean great art direction, and shot in 70mm, THTS generally looks like a dream. Serrador gets fantastic performances top to bottom from his actresses, twists are satisfying.... In general, the camera's always in the right place, no shot is wasted, every cut mean something. The film contains some terrific set pieces but all linking scenes are well-structured and meaningful. Basically Serrador looks like the complete package as a director and it has to be counted as a shame that he didn't make more features. Goodness knows, the commercial cinema can't afford to squander talents when they come who can make genre films of this level of intensity and precision, who can just make a whole movie sing. I can't wait to see Serrador's other feature film (also on Wright's List), Who Can Kill A Child? (1975).

THTS feels like the missing link between Hitchcock and his contemporary Spanish-language students, Del Toro (Pan's Lab), Amenabar (The Others), Bayona (The Orphanage), maybe even Vigalondo.

The version of THTS I watched feels like it might be a missing a few scenes and the soundtrack was pretty scratchy and some of the dubbing is pretty distracting (apparently the different actresses just used their home languages throughout the production and the film went out massively dubbed into different languages across Europe in a particular - so no pure Spanish version with English Subs exists).
Apparently at least some of these problems are going to cured shortly when the film comes out on blu-ray for the first time - there's a 94 min and a 104 min cut going to be contained on the disc. Probably worth a purchase.

Lead actress, Christine Galbo who was impressive and looked-like-a-star in the best scenes of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie a few weeks back in this film-quest, is just as good here in a bigger role in a much better overall film. She's got one of those almost featureless faces that the camera loves. She reminded me throughout of Hedy Lamarr, but also Blade-Runner era Sean Young, and also mid-'90s Gwyneth Paltrow. Another actress who also jumps out, Mary Maude, looks a lot like Katharine Ross. Some of this has to be down to the director - he's cast well and got his main gals looking and feeling like stars. They look as right as the movie feels.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

363 The Getaway Sam Peckinpah, 1972

I'd heard vaguely bad or dismissive things about this movie over the years... well, boy, I was misinformed. The Getaway is pure pleasure, a blast. Even Ali McGraw's acting wasn't a turn-off as far as I was concerned.

Dynamite editing and incredible energy in visual compositions from the very opening scene, The Getaway starts moving and never stops until a wonderful coda with Slim Pickens at the end. Just a fantastic, fantastically enjoyable film. Of course, 1972 is a year full of riches and The Getaway probably isn't one of very best films of the year - The Godfather and Deliverance and Aguirre and Frenzy and Solaris and Cres and Whispers and Ulzana's Raid and a few others really give you a hell of lot to think about when you walk out of the theater and The Getaway doesn't. But The Getaway may be one of the most flat-out enjoyable films of the year. even though The Getaway is drenched in early '70s grit, the kind of fist-pumping good-time it provides anticipates I think the kind of feeling that people got from '80s films such as Die Hard and The Terminator. At any rate I think I'll be watching The Getaway once every year or so from here out just as a very good time indeed.

I need to rewatch in any case to get the plot completely straight: I still wasn't clear by the end why Doc wouldn't have anticipated that everyone would wait for him in El Paso.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

I'd heard vaguely bad or dismissive things about this movie over the years...

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Probably from me.

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well, boy, I was misinformed.

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If it WAS me...sorry.

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The Getaway is pure pleasure, a blast. Even Ali McGraw's acting wasn't a turn-off as far as I was concerned.

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Her acting was pretty bad -- wooden, I'd say -- but there can be no doubt that for a few years there in the early seventies, Ali McGraw WAS a star. Goodbye Columbus(where, oddly, her acting is pretty natural) started it; Love Story zoomed her on up(and her acting THERE is pretty unnatural) and then the great marquee thing: "McQueen/McGraw" and their real-life love story took her even higher.

And then Steve married her and took her away from all that.

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Dynamite editing and incredible energy in visual compositions from the very opening scene,

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Between my fandom of Hitchocck and QT - - there was Peckinpah.

After making his name with "Ride the HIgh Country" in 1962, he had an incredible run of films from 1969(The Wild Bunch) to 1977 (Cross of Iron), even if only about half of them were hits. He was helped by a bunch of magazines and critics out to declare a "whole new slate" of film auteurs. Robert Altman was big at the same time, but had no real hits other than MASH. Peckinpah got the auteur nod, too(the impact of The Wild Bunch in general and its final massacre in particular can never be underestimated on the young critics and filmmakers of the time), but his penchant for violence made him "the new Hitchcock" as much as "the new John Ford."

And yet, there's a gentle little rodeo story called Junior Bonner in there, too.

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The Getaway starts moving and never stops until a wonderful coda with Slim Pickens at the end. Just a fantastic, fantastically enjoyable film.

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Wow. Now, I'M going to look at it again. McQueen is great in it (he's playing "Doc McCoy" -- sound familiar?) and in the same year that he played Sollozzo in The Godfather, here's a far shaggier and now-moustachioed Al Lettieri playing the bad guy. He died young of cancer not too many years later.

My problem with The Getaway at the time -- and hell, I was really just a teenager with an overactive sense of "film" -- was that, compared to the grandeur and precision of "The Wild Bunch," "The Getaway" seemed more sloppy and perfunctory. It was definitely a "seventies film" in its look...and not in a good way, to me.

Peckinpah wrote to MacGraw of the film, "Well, its doing what it was supposed to do...making $20 million." I think Peckinpah saw it as a meal ticket movie, something he could do to make a little money between auteur masterpieces. And yet, it IS an auteuristic work, Peckinpah's all the way.

As for Steve McQueen, he kind of NEEDED The Getaway. He really hadn't had a big hit since Bullitt, and as some wag said, "to make big money, Steve McQueen needs a gun in his hand." Interesting: McQueen as a producer offered this to Peter Bogdanovich first, because The Last Picture Show is set in Texas as is The Getaway. But Bogdo demanded his girlfriend Cybill Shepard get the female role. Evidently, McQueen preferred a different kind of wooden.

I've read some bios on Peckinpah -- a massively damaged man who was deep into substance abuse not too long after The Wild Bunch came out and just went downhill from there, and STILL made some great, wild movies. Of interest is that the gentle Junior Bonner(starring Steve McQueen, made bupkus) and the violent Getaway(starring Steve McQueen, made tons) both came out in 1972, and critic William Pechter found the first one a masterpiece and the second to be the work of, well, let's quote Pechter: "I just hope Peckinpah understands what a whore he is on The Getaway."

Critics. Your friends, your foes. Same year.

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Of course, 1972 is a year full of riches and The Getaway probably isn't one of very best films of the year - The Godfather and Deliverance and Aguirre and Frenzy and Solaris and Cres and Whispers and Ulzana's Raid and a few others really give you a hell of lot to think about when you walk out of the theater and The Getaway doesn't.

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I do remember this: The Getaway was scheduled for Christmas and a lot of us waited the whole year to get it. The combination of "Wild Bunch" Peckinpah and "Bullitt" McQueen was enough to get some delirium going. Maybe I was just expecting too much. As a matter of contrast, the other big 1972 Christmas movie was: The Poseidon Adventure.

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But The Getaway may be one of the most flat-out enjoyable films of the year. even though The Getaway is drenched in early '70s grit, the kind of fist-pumping good-time it provides anticipates I think the kind of feeling that people got from '80s films such as Die Hard and The Terminator. At any rate I think I'll be watching The Getaway once every year or so from here out just as a very good time indeed.

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Very impressed. A few detailed thoughts from me on it:

I love the early bit where McQueen meets crime boss Ben Johnson and his gang on a group of floating restaurant boats in a canal in San Antonio. A very "Hitchcock" scene to me -- and Peckinpah was a big Hitchcock fan and, for my money, much better at "Hitchcock style" than DePalma.

I like McQueen's look in the film -- black suit, white shirt, tie...he's like a hipper, thinner Blues Brother. And about as handsome as he would ever be, nicely aged(this look continued on into Papillon and Towering Inferno; actually he's a bit TOO young looking as Bullitt). Though I do remember in 1972, long-haired me thought McQueen's prison haircut was too short and too clunky. Now, it looks fine.

The film interestingly shows convict McQueen as in love with McGraw, but quite capable of slapping her around(in one scene, over her infidelity with Johnson) and threatening her (when she "loses" the money; his boiling, tamped-down rage is palpable.) It is a very REALISTIC criminal love story.

A DVD commentary track shows us a GREAT, tiny little shot in the movie. McQueen has figured out that a thief has the money and has just boarded a train. McQueen gets on the train and beats up the thief and recovers the dough. BUT its a tiny little shot of a flash of McQueen's black-suited body boarding the train, glimpsed between some trunks behing hauled away from the train, that is great. Blink and you'll miss it. Only a DVD commentator could point it out where I could see it. In the movie, you think that McQueen just "materializes out of nowhere" next to the thief. No, that shot of him boarding the train...

The final shoot-em-up in the hotel isn't at "Wild Bunch Final Masscare" level(nothing could be, Peckinpah got days and budget galore to film THAT one), but its not half bad and has the signature slo-mo AND regular speed Peckinpah poetry. And a machine gun.

The final scene with Slim Pickens is just great.

Years later, they remade The Getaway with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. Richard Farnsworth did the Pickens part well. Michael Madsen(Joe Cool Psycho from Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill and The Hateful Eight) was a great new QT-version of the Lettieri character. The "new" Getaway was custom-made, shiny and perfect in look...but had none of the grit of the original. And Alec Baldwin was hardly McQueen. Though Basinger (Baldwin's wife at the time) was better than MaGraw.

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I need to rewatch in any case to get the plot completely straight: I still wasn't clear by the end why Doc wouldn't have anticipated that everyone would wait for him in El Paso.

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Nor I. Those bad guys driving along in their convertible Cadillac with their Stetsons on, BTW, were an image "borrowed" from a TV episode Peckinpah directed in the sixties, something with Lee Marvin.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

373 Coffy Jack Hill, 1973

Fairly serious-minded revenge (for sister's troubled life and death as well as for wider community problems with drugs) thriller mixes uneasily with blaxploitation and boobs-ploitation elements in my view, but perhaps how it worked for audiences at the time is that they came for the exploitation elements and then were impressed by the more moody revenge stuff. The final shot of Coffy walking off down the beach has a weight to it that surprises.

Some nasty deaths (esp. a 'dragged behind a car' death scene) are well-staged and -shot, and are I guess paradigms of on-the-cheap action-sequences that deliver. Doubtless they got whoops and cheers from audiences at the time. And there's a moment when Coffy and her good-cop semi-boyfriend are home-invaded by balaclaved gunmen (who remind us of Scorpio in Dirty Harry - this is serious). The boyfriend is very seriously injured/brain-damaged and Coffy herself is briefly sexually assaulted. The film doesn't quite seem to know what do do with this level of horribleness nor does it grapple with the fact that it's a lie that Coffy tells later gets the main black pimp, Prince George (whose blaxpolitation presence we've been enjoying) dragged behind a car for a most horrible death.

The final revenge death in the movie seemed to me to typify the problem that movie was unable to solve - we're supposed to believe that that Coffy can't quite fulfil her revenge destiny and kill her corrupt Black Politician until a white gal he's obviously now sleeping with appears, and then *that's* what finally pushes her over the edge. But that's strictly a pandering, exploitation plot-point, one the undermines the seriousness of Coffy's revenge (which the final beach image nonetheless returns us to).

I'm glad to have seen Coffy (1973), but ultimately it strikes me as a bit of muddle, moreover, I'm not on the Pam Grier bandwagon: she's OK here, but that's all. The soundtrack by Roy Ayers lacks the personality of the great blaxploitation soundtracks from Shaft, Superfly, Black Caesar.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

242 Gambit Ronald Neame, 1966

An OK-ish romantic comedy caper-movie, better than How To Steal A Million from the same year, but not as good as Arabesque, let alone Charade or That Man From Rio (probably the two best in genre in my view although the later shades into more James Bond and even Indiana Jones territory) or even Topkapi. Good stars (Caine and MacLaine) with whom it's a pleasure to spend time (and who are well-cast - see How To Steal a Million for good stars [O'Toole and A. Hepburn] poorly cast) are the main reasons to see this film. Neame's direction is a little lifeless: functional but without the pizazz you'd get from a Donen or a Hitchcock (Neame worked with Hitch on Blackmail).

Best scene is also the silliest: even though it comes across as a low-budget Topkapi, MacLaine's character continues to surprise us and Caine's character by squeezing though a cage-top into confined sensor-ridden space. We wonder whether she'll be able to repeat the trick going up out of the cage, but then Caine tells her he loves her and Maclaine's character suddenly turns into Charity Valentine and blunders straight through the sensors! This may be satisfying to some viewers but it amounted to throwing away the surprisingly careful and smart character that had been revealed gradually to the audience up till that point. Also, retrospectively, once the full caper-plot is revealed, I'm not sure the whole sequence makes sense. Caine needed to trigger the alarm to see where the real statue was hidden. But then why go though the elaborate attempt not to trigger sensors on the fake statue? And how could he know that as part of responding to the theft of the fake that house-staff would reveal the locations of the real one? And we're supposed to believe that Herbert Lom kept the *real* statue behind an easily accessible panel not in, say, a combination-protected safe? Really?)

Two intriguing features of the film: (1) it begins with twenty minutes of an idealized run-though of the caper perhaps borrowing a smidgeon from Unfaithfully Yours (1948); (2) it has a sort of sub-text about how Caine as a kind of representative over-confident white male character is always underestimating women and nonwhite characters. It's sort of an 'eclipse of James Bond' movie. But the film doesn't quite follow through on this idea.

Interesting that Wright picks Gambit from 1966 but not Alfie, a much stronger and more satisfying Caine film I'd say.

Still, star-power is star-power and Gambit (and Caine and MacLaine) is probably a good way to spend an afternoon at the movies. Probably good for families scared off by Virginia Woolf (shockingly not on Wright's list!).

Update: Regular contributor to this board, ecarle, pens a lovely Valentine to Gambit (1966) here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060445/board/flat/164691650

[–] movieghoul 7 years ago

I loved Gambit for the trick opening sequence and the Caine-Maclaine relationship. Agree the ending doesn't bear scrutiny.

I remember the ad line: "You can give away the ending, it's too funny to keep secret, but don't give away the beginning!"

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

I remember the ad line: "You can give away the ending, it's too funny to keep secret, but don't give away the beginning!"

I saw that ad. on Gambit's IMDb web-page. It feels like the end of the 'imploring the audience not to give away something' advertizing trend that Psycho is the most famous example of (and may even have started).

And the color, star-driven, rom-com. caper film didn't go much past 1966 - I can't think of any later than that - so Gambit (1966) has a place in movie history as a 'boundary' film in a couple of respects.

Note that Gambit (1966) got a direct-to-dvd-in-the-US remake in 2012 w/ Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz and Alan Rickman (and a Coen Bros script). And there's an un-related X-men spin-off called 'Gambit' coming out next year (or the year after).

[–] movieghoul 7 years ago

Interesting that Caine was very hot at the time, with 4 starring roles in theaters (Gambit, Alfie, Funeral in Berlin and The Wrong Box) but hardly a household name. Gambit and Berlin were soso programmers while Alfie and Box were art house releases, although Alfie did break out when it got major Oscar noms.

Gambit is indeed near the end of the line for caper films made under the Production Code which required that crime not pay, so writers had to come up with twist endings to ensure it didn't. When this restriction was lifted we started getting films like Dollars and The Getaway where they did get away with it, but the twist endings were lost.

One film from 1966 which pushed the envelope was Dead Heat on a Merry Go ROund, in which technically crime paid for James Coburn, until we learn that the straight and narrow would have been much more profitable.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Still, star-power is star-power and Gambit (and Caine and MacLaine) is probably a good way to spend an afternoon at the movies. Probably good for families scared off by Virginia Woolf (shockingly not on Wright's list!).

Update: Regular contributor to this board, ecarle, pens a lovely Valentine to Gambit (1966) here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060445/board/flat/164691650

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Hey, swanstep, thanks for the shout out.

I guess that piece "gets it done" as to my sentiments towards Gambit, but I think the interesting thing that happens at this moment -- between you and me -- is that YOU are seeing Gambit for the first time literally 50 years after I did (it was a December, 1966 Christmas season attraction.)

So, I saw it through the eyes of 50 years ago -- childhood/pre-teen -- and you are seeing it through the eyes of an experienced adult with a certain view of the movies of your own.

In some ways, I was too young to "get" Gambit when I saw it as an older kid(or younger teen?) , but in some ways,I got it just fine. And I got it with the emotion OF a kid, a kind of lovesick kid who had a "Charlie Brown and the red headed girl" longing for romance of some sort at that age.

Thus, I will always remember how happy -- exhilarated happy -- I was when Michael Caine said "I love you" and MacLaine leaped back through the alarms and set everything off. Your "bad moment" in the movie is the one I have remembered all my life.

But I saw it through a late-blooming child's eyes, all psyched up for the girls I hoped lay ahead(they did, but not quite in the movie-ish way I wanted.)

Two movies out around Christmas time 1966 were "Gambit" and the macho buddy team Western "The Professionals." In my Los Angeles area town, they played on the same street, in theaters about a block from each other -- theaters where I caught about 30% of ALL my movies in the mid-sixties in the town where I lived --everything from Mary Poppins to Wait Until Dark.

I know that I saw "The Professionals" on Christmas Day -- and it has been my favorite of 1966 ever since. But "Gambit" our family saw probably the same week, because we "bunched together" the Christmas hits we wanted to see. "Gambit" and "The Professionals" persist, 50 years later, as positive memories of my movie-going youth.

---

Interestingly, there wasn't much more than a year between the release of "Gambit" to theaters and its premiere on NBC TV. This was before DVDs and cable meant movies could still earn coin after theatrical; this was FREE TV, and so I guess "Gambit" wasn't much of a hit(I thought so at the time I saw it again on TV.)

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

375 Death Line Gary Sherman, 1973

Death Line a.k.a. Raw Meat, which IMDb lists as being from *1972* is the first of three films by director Gary Sherman on Wright's list (none of which I'd seen or even heard of before). It's a bit of a mess on some levels, e.g., none of the leads (two young students on the one hand and Donald Pleasence as a genuinely irritating Police Inspector on the other hand) are particularly good or are very well written for; e.g. 2., a little like Frenzy it mostly alternates scenes between these two groups, and without the craft of Hitchcock+Shaffer loses any momentum when it does so.

But...Death Line has a number of good features that counterbalance its weaknesses:

1. Sound Design is impressive throughout, starting with cool music over the opening credits. The whole film is on youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ICcMfX_Do
2. At 24 mins in, we suddenly 'meet the monsters' (underground cannibals as it happens) via a *seven minute* backward-tracking shot (with atmospheric sound design throughout) that's definitely the Touch-Of-Evil-opening of underground-cannibal movies!
3. Just *before* we meet the monsters we learn via the Police some things about them that already make them objects of pity as much as of terror, and after the super-duper intro we're on their terrible side as much as we are of their victims.
4. There are some pretty efficient scares throughout and shooting on location in abandoned London railway tunnels is genuinely atmospheric.
5. As the film winds towards its climax, haunting long static shots of the underground tunnels start to recur marking Death Line as an art-film as much as an ordinary horror.
6. On a deep level DL feels like a companion-piece to other London movies of the period from Frenzy to 10 Rillington Place to Deep End. This is a crumbling, can-barely-keep-the-lights-on London full of darkness and horrible history, encrusted with class divisions and evil secrets alike.

For all these reasons, Death Line has clearly stuck in people's memories (and thanks to that fan-base it's currently getting a big restoration and will get a fancy Blu-ray release next year). Its alarming deficiencies mean DL would never appear on my own top-anything, but it has its moments and is definitely worth seeing.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

234 The Hill Sidney Lumet, 1965

Sean Connery's *other* movie in the year of Thunderball, the somewhat undeserving Bond mega-hit that made Connery rich. Allegedly it was the lack of attention to The Hill (which Connery rightly knew was pretty extraordinary overall and some of the best acting he'd ever do) at the time that started to jaundice Connery on Bond and on the Bond audience. Note that Connery drops a big, fat, facing-the-camera F-bomb in the devastating (very '70s-depressing well before the '70s) final scene of The Hill. The film should be better known than it is just for doing that.

Anyhow, The Hill isn't that well known today, but it should be. It's top-tier Lumet, the equal of Dog Day and Network and Fail Safe, maybe just a little below 12 Angry Men. Great 'impossible' opening shot and lots of innovative hand-held camera and nifty editing abounds. Connery's a force throughout but as part of a group of soldiers he's very generous to the other actors and doesn't dominate proceedings unrealistically for large chunks of the film.

Super single set/location for the military prison in the desert in Northern Africa during WW2....it would be interesting to see some background material about the making of The Hill.

Great film, straight into my top 10 of 1965.

Oh and if you want to understand the dialogue you'll probably need to turn on subtitles - the combination of varied regional British accents and the extreme, barked military shouting and military idioms overwhelmed my ability to decode in real time, and it was a relief to turn on subtitles Beare of catching The Hill in any medium or format where you don't have an English subtitles option.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

233 The Collector William Wyler, 1965

Solid though not especially inspired work from Wyler here adapting the first, famous take-a-woman-prisoner novel, John Fowles's The Collector. I read the book a long time ago and IIRC the film's a pretty faithful adaptation. I recall the class issues between captor and captive being explored a bit more in the novel and there being a more of a queasy sense of the girl 'deserving it' because she's more a bit more clearly a condescending snob etc. there than she is in the film. Samantha Eggar gives an excellent performance but her Miranda is maybe a shade or two nicer than in the book.

When I say the film though solid didn't strike me as especially inspired I guess what I'm *really* saying is that Wyler himself may have been too nice-a-guy for this material (like Cameron Crowe directing a Fincher-style wig-out in Vanilla Sky). Someone properly on the Hitchcock-Chabrol-Polanski-Tarantino scale of inner sickness probably would have kicked this material to the next level, amkign us cringe and cower. Of course, one thing that makes me say this is that we're drowning in prisoner-taking scenarios these days, and when we're see 10 Cloverfield Lane or Room or Prisoners or Martyrs.... we're effectively watching The Collector 11.0 at least. There's effectively been an on-going research program in Prisoner-Taker-film suspense techniques for 30+ years, compared to which the Original must necessarily feel-underpowered. And The Collector doesn't have any great, untoppable set-pieces and synergies with the music, and super-snappy dialogue the way Psycho does to keep it out ahead of its imitators and successors.

Wyler's film does keep a version of the book's nasty ending (prevailing over the studio, Columbia Pictures who apparently commissioned an alternative from Strangelove/Candy it-writer-of the-period, Terry Southern). We have to salute Wyler for that, and his film finishes strongly (albeit in exactly the way that leaves people in a bad mood, and often leads to bad word of mouth and limited inclinations to rewatch, comapre with The Talented Mr Ripley).

I still don't know what Wright's doing *not* selecting Battle of Algiers or Pierrot Le fou or Juliet of the Spirits or Cat Ballou as part of his 1965 contingent, all of which I'd take over The Collector. TC is maybe just a bit too safe and Oscar-baity for me (it got three classy noms for director, actress, and adapted script), notwithstanding its material.

Reading around on The Collector's IMDb board, there's a big division there between people who like Maurice Jarre's score and those who think it detracts from the film. I guess I'm in the latter camp, but I'd probably need to see The Collector again to be sure. And since the film's a bit one-note and grueling and leaves you with a bitter-aftertaste, that second-viewing isn't happening any time soon!

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

357 Five Fingers of Death Jeong Chang-hwa, 1972

I've had to watch a very low-res (barely VHS quality), English dub of this film. This undoubtedly detracted form my experience of FFoD throughout. And, for example, there's a late action scene in the dark that I couldn't make head nor tail of, and I imagine that that would be far less of a problem with pristine 35mm and Blu-ray presentations of the film.

So, my opinions on this one must be provisional.... A lot of what I can get out of FFoD is, of course, it's influence on QT's Kill Bills. I'm pretty sure that I would liked the wild/hilarious alarm sound that goes off every time the hero uses his 'Iron Fist' powers even if QT hadn't lifted it for Thurman's The Bride character, but who knows? It still feels, from our post-QT perspective, that those are the coolest/silliest seconds in the movie (repeated 5 or so times I think). Do we really need the rest?

Well there *is* the second coolest/silliest thing about film - also lifted by QT - the eyeball plucking (both eyes) which happens a couple of times. But beyond that?

I dunno. Most of the story and much of the fighting felt like it was just passable - quickly-written and -shot boilerplate - and this furthered my inbuilt post-QT tendency to see the film somewhat archly and as a reservoir of ticks and gimmicks to be incorporated into better films. Genuinely slapdash stuff like the reverse shots within fights always taking place against bright blue skies even when the fight's at night make the film hard to take seriously - but maybe I'm not on the right wavelength for this stuff. And in any case the dubbing probably prevents much performance nuance.

It may well be that FFOD can't be understood apart from the vast tradition of productions from The Shaw Brothers studio. Here is a list of their films:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shaw_Brothers_films
FFoD comes in the middle of their output. It was the first Kung Fu movie to hit big in the Western World but it was probably the Shaw Brothers 50th or so film in the genre. And I'm never going to do the deep dive into the studio's output that would probably be ideal.

In conclusion, I may not be, may never be in a position to have a properly informed opinion about FFoD. I didn't enjoy it much, but between the cool moments that QT stripmined and it's world-historical importance in the '70s, I'm glad I saw it. And as I mentioned above, I *do* plan to see it in a visually pristine, undubbed form someday. There's an outside chance that *that* could be a revelation.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

340 The Anderson Tapes Sidney Lumet, 1971

Strange mixture of a heist thriller and a satire on the burgeoning surveillance state of the early 1970s. The joke is that the heist gets taken down not by any of ineffectual (because it's illegal and systematic and can't be used in court) surveillance but via a kid's ham radio transmission being relayed to police. That said, I didn't quite get why the police responded in exactly the high tech way they did if they weren't in on the surveillance by the IRS, the DEA, the jilted lovers etc..

At least on first viewing, I think it's fair to say that the film doesn't quite work. It has lots of goofy sound fx and tricksy flash-forwards to no obvious good end. The humor about the residents of the building getting robbed doesn't quite land or connect with the humor about police procedure and about crazy over surveilance. Lumet we gather is no Norman Lear or Carl Reiner. The intricacies of the hapless heist team, and the mob connection are all a little odd I found and without real pay-off. The girlfiend/Dyan Cannon sub-plot did pay-off but, at least if I understood it, it was central that she was kind of annoyed by the loss of control that came with being sexually satisfied (and expression of this was what was comically focused on on tape). This has to be one of the dopiest girlfriend problems ever, and it was fundamentally unbelievable given how Cannon was introduced in the movie, i.e., as a woman who's very sexually in-charge. Maybe Lumet just never found the right tone to get all these pieces to gell?

Connery's good, but it's definitely far and away the least of his three collabs with Lumet that I've seen. And Balsam is fine as a flamboyant gay character, but not as good as he'd be for Lumet in a bunch of other things.

In sum, at least on first viewing, The Anderson Tapes feels inessential, and a movie for Lumet and '70s completists only.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

183 Pit and the Pendulum Roger Corman, 1961

Vincent Price's hammery is a lot to swallow.....but Pit and The Pendulum (1961) is pretty amazing if you give it a chance (I was only partially able to for some reason but I understand that that's *my* problem not the film's). A vivid color palette and a near-continuous lush score and a gas-lighting, dead-or-not wife plot makes it feel like the operatic Vertigo of horror films with a common source (esp. in PATP's case for a central shock) in Diabolique.

Tidy sfx, good matte paintings and mostly plausibly detailed sets throughout are a highlight. (I remember hearing Corman talk about the sets for this movie in a documentary: I believe that they built on top of the sets for his previous Poe adaptation and the sets for *that* mostly recycled and redressed very large expensive sets that some big Hollywood medieval costume epic had left behind at the studio in the UK where Corman was shooting. So P&TP's sets in effect build directly on the budgets of two prior films. [Updates: Whoops, I have the facts wrong here. PATP was filmed in LA and the story I remember hearing from Corman must have been from Masque of the Red Death (1964). That said, PATP's sets were largely recycled, redressed props and sets from all over Hollywood. I think AIP had some primary deal with Universal for use of their old sets and props but Corman did a lot of scavenging from and side-deals with other studios as well for PATP.]

Price is going to be a serious obstacle for lots of people (and was for me). I like him better as a genuine evil master-mind rather than, as for the most part here, as a flowery-voiced victim wrongly accused. And I laughed a *lot* at his 'loony' faces in the should-be-terrifying final sequence. If one can stay away from the likes of me, however, then that final sequence is pretty gripping I think and includes a final shot for the ages (followed by a return to the kooky psychdelic pre-credits, colors-of-running-paint stuff, which I found very effective (analogue sfx!).

In general, I'd say that PATP was probably rightly a mind-bender for kids at the movies and on Chiller TV back in the day. I'm too old and cynical for the full effect now but I guess I can see how it could have been as important to some kids as Forbidden Planet and Day The Earth Stood Still and Planet of the Apes, etc were to me. When you try to score Corman's career this is one of his big ones - a decent-sized hit all over the world and relatively critically beloved.

219 The Masque of the Red Death Roger Corman, 1964

For me, Vincent Price is a lot better in Masque than he is in PATP, but almost everything else feels less inspired. Too much in the story of a tyrannical Satanist Prince offering shelter to a chosen few from a red death plague-scape outside his castle's walls is just arbitrary as far as I could see. It's never clear why exactly Price's Prospero has such grand designs for Jane Asher's ingenue. Presumably he means to defile her in some way, not convert her as such since there's no reason to believe that'll work. But then why sacrifice his actual satanist-other-half? Surely she'd be up for helping the defiling along? I didn't get it. Similarly, I didn't understand why Price's character didn't kill both villagers once Asher's character refuses the choice of which should die. And the dwarf Hop-toad's revenge on Alexandro feels unrelated to the rest of the film (and also disproportionate, but we're supposed not to notice that because we're on the Hop-Toad's side?).

There's some Bergman's Seventh Seal (1957), which had been a big art-house hit, in Masque, but compared to SS, M feels murky and claustrophic and unpoetic and filled with arbitrariness as already discussed. Masque is ultimately more 'Def Leppard video hilariously ineptly referring to Bergman without any understanding whatsoever':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_7rzyjRUaQ
than the real thing.

All that said, there is a level of commitment to far-out color schemes, and kooky semi-avant-garde dream sequences, and to doing a kind of Bergman-for-kids/stupidly-satanic-Heavy-Metal-Video-before-its-time content here, not to mention winsome it-girl and long-term McCartney-girlfriend, Asher being easy on teh eyes, that I can imagine Masque tantalizing certain sorts of teens in the mid-'60s. Masque therefore deserves some credit, but I wouldn't myself ever recommend it to anyone.

This completes our mini-tour of Corman via Wright....and the winner for me is definitely the one I'd already seen, X:The Man With X-Ray Eyes (1963).

X > PATP > Bucket,Masque.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

248 Tokyo Drifter Seijun Suzuki, 1966

I could make neither head nor tail out of Tokyo Drifter. This is a gangster/hitman story that seems influenced equally by Godard's ironic gangster tales, by Sergio Leone westerns, and by The Girl Hunt Ballet sequence from The Bandwagon! It read to me as visually stylish mostly for its own sake... but personally I need a story that hangs together, and dialogue that's witty, etc. to care about what happens to a bunch of no-good gangsters. And to be clear, Suzuki doesn't seem to care for basic slike continuity of who's in a scene. We go from shot to reverse shot and people disappear in this film, which is just maddening when, precisely because the ganagster's all look and dress alike, we're working overtime to try to follow who's who.

TD is a fave of hipster directors like Tarantino, Jarmusch, Park Chan-Wook... and this and Suzuki's later film Branded to Kill (1967) became a kind of hipster litmus test in the '90s. I only watched Branded to Kill at the time and didn't like *it* either (although I's now say that at least it's better than TD). There *were* Japanese new wave films I liked, e.g., Teshigahara's Woman In The Dunes and Face of Another. I also liked truly avant-garde stuff like Funeral of Roses. But stuff like Suzuki's that mashed up genres and styles (but without any apparent control whatsoever) just fell flat for me.

Anyhow, there's currently a completely gorgeous 720p version of Tokyo Drifter up on youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUEfwYxAKyg
so you can easily make up your own mind about it.

Semi-Famously, Suzuki got fired by the Nikkatsu studio in Japan after Branded To Kill (after Tokyo Drifter they only banned him from filming in color any more!) for making 'films that make no sense and no money'. I feel for the studio here because his films really *don't* make a lick of sense both overall and within scenes. But for a lot of people I think that Suzuki's struggles with his studio and eventual firing made him a hero.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

392 The Last of Sheila Herbert Ross, 1973

Superior whodunnit from director Ross and writers Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim(!). A rewatch of a few crucial scenes seems to confirm that the whodunnit works, no cheating, which is an achievement. And as a bonus since all the suspects and victims are in the movie business, the film is drenched in witty insider jokes about Hollywood and moviemaking more generally. The final whodunnit revelation is actually one of those! Of course I can't discuss that without spoiling a lot, but I was amused and impressed. As a Hollywood insider piece it fits well on a shelf with things like SOB (1979) and The Stunt Man (1980) and The Player (1992), and as a whodunnit I guess it fits well with And Then There Were None, Murder On The Orient Express, Death On The Mile, Murder By Death. Wright himself clearly borrowed quite a bit from The Last of Sheila for the whodunnit mechanics of his Hot Fuzz (2007).

I'm with Hitchcock in thinking that the game-playing aspects of whodunnits tend to flatten out our emotional responses, hence that they do not make for the most satisfying movies. But TLOS is defintiely a good instance of the form, maybe one of the very best. While I probably wouldn't canonize TLOS myself, I can understand why others would. Good movie that's a triumph for Anthony Perkins and Sondheim, and a must see for whodunnit fans and fans of Hollywood-insider-tales.

p.s. the DVD of The Last of Sheila has a 2004 commentary track by Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon. I'm half way through it right now and it's pretty hilarious from all three of them (Welch somewhat inadvertently perhaps). Benjamin and Cannon in paricular pretty much make being a working, successful Hollywood Actor (below the superstar level) sound like the best thing ever... a constant round of partying and hanging out and working with beautiful and fascinating friends in fabulous places (TLOS was filmed in the South of France). They all make clear how much they loved Tony Perkins who apparently hosted lots of intricate game-based parties for Hollywood pals like the one in the movie.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

392 The Last of Sheila Herbert Ross, 1973
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Superior whodunnit from director Ross and writers Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim(!). A rewatch of a few crucial scenes seems to confirm that the whodunnit works, no cheating, which is an achievement.

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Recall that Mike Nichols said "the only intelligent actor I ever worked with was Anthony Perkins." WHEN Nichols said that, I don't know (they worked together on Catch 22 in 1970. If Nichols had said it in 1980, that would sweep Jack Nicholson, George C. Scott and Warren Beatty into the not-smart mix.) Anyway, Perkins was evidently known for inventing(often with Sondheim in New York City) these intricate role-playing games.

---

--- And as a bonus since all the suspects and victims are in the movie business, the film is drenched in witty insider jokes about Hollywood and moviemaking more generally.

---

Specifically, Dyan Cannon's cynical, loud-mouthed sex-crazed agent was based on Sue Mengers, the "super agent of the 70's" who started out with Tony Perkins as one of her first clients. (And who, in a biography, revealed having had an affair with Martin Balsam! Psycho was big in Mengers' life.)

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Of course I can't discuss that without spoiling a lot, but I was amused and impressed.

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Well, let's face it, Perkins was evidently a very intelligent actor and Sondheim had the particular genius of the songwriter-composer. This was a "prestige" script for a thriller.

---

As a Hollywood insider piece it fits well on a shelf with things like SOB (1979) and The Stunt Man (1980) and The Player (1992),

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And a bit more realistic on the nuts and bolts of the business, I might add.

---

and as a whodunnit I guess it fits well with And Then There Were None, Murder On The Orient Express, Death On The Mile, Murder By Death.

---

Yes. Funny, we seem to have gotten a lot of those in the 70's. There were versions of And Then There Were None(Ten Little Indians) in the forties and sixties, but I'm sure there was one in the 70s.

As for the rest, all seventies.

---

Wright himself clearly borrowed quite a bit from The Last of Sheila for the whodunnit mechanics of his Hot Fuzz (2007).

---

I recall liking Hot Fuzz a lot, particularly with its full review of every cop and crime movie ever made in a rather less spoofy way than American films like Airplane. However, I can't remember individual scenes, or the The Last of Shiela bit.

I suppose this is a good place to note that Quentin Tarantino at least TRIED to revive the whodunit with "The Hateful Eight" last year. The clues at once seemed too easy for Samuel L. Jackson to figure out(Minnie banned Mexicans from her place, so why would she entrust this Mexican to run her place for a week) and too hard(the jelly bean) , but the contours were there. Everybody trapped in the same place and a question not so much of whodunit but who was GOING to do it...and how many of them?

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I'm with Hitchcock in thinking that the game-playing aspects of whodunnits tend to flatten out our emotional responses, hence that they do not make for the most satisfying movies.

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He felt there was no suspense in trying to "puzzle it out," and little payoff in the killer being revealed.

Psycho is an anomaly here. There IS a mystery solution(the twist -- Mother is Norman), but Hitchcock doesn't really do much to "sell it." I expect the main mystery driving much of Psycho is: What does Mother's face look like? Honestly. Whether we consciously want to know, or unconsciously, that's what drives the mystery. Which is why the fact that "Mother has two faces"(her dead skull face AND Norman's face) is such a powerful double-whammy of a reveal.

I'll also cast a vote for Frenzy here as doing something I liked.

Take a movie like Clint Eastwood's "Tightrope." A strangler is on the loose, but he wears a ski mask. Only in the very last minutes of the film does Clint pull that ski mask off to reveal...just some guy. Who gets run over by a train a minute later. There, thus ends up being no real power to the killer, and we waited a whole movie to see him.

But in Frenzy, we meet Bob Rusk early on , and have to view him commit HIS first strangling with a full view of his face and -- voila! -- the killer is a CHARACTER, a human being who walks and talks and inspires our curiosity: how does a killer like this FUNCTION amidst sane people in society. Rusk also drives movie-long suspense as his friend Blaney is sought for his crimes.

Had we seen only the bodies of Rusk's murders, or the murders with no view of the killer(say from Rusk's POV of the victim only)...we'd be back in whodunit ville.

---

---

But TLOS is defintiely a good instance of the form, maybe one of the very best. While I probably wouldn't canonize TLOS myself, I can understand why others would.

---

I think it is one of the very best, script-wise, but somewhat lacking as a "great movie." It has the downside of 1973 within it: a flat and perfunctory look, as if it was shot with a local news crew's cameras. And Herbert Ross really wasn't in Hitchcock's range for style.

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Good movie that's a triumph for Anthony Perkins and Sondheim,

---

Very much so. Perkins had a rather low-key career in the 70's. He worked all the time(thanks to Sue Mengers), sometimes in TV, sometimes in movies, but "Last of Shiela" stood as a testament to his intelligence. Perkins was more than the average actor.

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and a must see for whodunnit fans and fans of Hollywood-insider-tales.

---

Great for both. Time to mention a guilty pleasure star favorite of mine -- James Coburn. Coburn had a bigger career than that other guy I'm always plugging(Richard Boone) and was able to work as a second-tier star pretty much until 1978(when he did his first TV movie, "The Dain Curse.") But it never quite "clicked" for Coburn. I'm not sure why. Possibly because while he had a great, deep booming voice, his features were a bit exaggerated --- huge teeth, a slightly simian look. Warren Beatty or Robert Redford, he wasn't. He seems to have known it and thus took roles like his movie producer in The Last of Shiela -- a mean, bullying rotter, a blackmailer of other movie people. With a line about some actor's last Western -- "What was it called, a fistful of lasagna?"

Plus, we got James Mason in this baby. Which puts Vandamm and Norman in SOME proximity (they would share the screen in "fflokes" 7 years later.)

I do believe that Perkins considered playing the role that Richard Benjamin took.

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p.s. the DVD of The Last of Sheila has a 2004 commentary track by Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon. I'm half way through it right now and it's pretty hilarious from all three of them (Welch somewhat inadvertently perhaps).

---
Poor Raquel. Everything about her seemed inadvertent. Other actors didn't much like her. She got a nice career boost in 1974 and 1975 as a physical comedienne of sorts in Richard Lester's The Three/Four Musketeers, but aside from that , not much of a career.

Dyan Cannon was, famously, a wife of Cary Grant's and the mother of his only child, a daughter who now looks more like mom than dad.

Grant saw Cannon on a TV series called "Malibu Run"(imagine, Cary Grant at home watching TV), fell in love on the spot, called Dyan's agent...and wooed and married her soon thereafter.

In the days "post-Cary," Dyan Cannon was revealed as a very sassy, saucy presence as a screen star. And sexier than hell in "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" and "The Anderson Tapes." What she DIDN'T seem like was someone who would match up well with Cary Grant. And she didn't. They divorced.

Richard Benjamin was interesting. Married fairly young to Paula Prentiss(a very sexy and saucy woman of ANOTHER type...brunette, husky-voice), Benjamin had to sit back and watch the world think that Paula Prentiss was married to her on-screen romantic partner , Jim Hutton. Prentiss was a bigger star than Benjamin for the early sixties; then they did a TV show together("He and She") then by the seventies, HE was the bigger star for awhile. A seesaw career romance...but they stuck by each other and I think both are alive and still married today.

---

--- Benjamin and Cannon in paricular pretty much make being a working, successful Hollywood Actor (below the superstar level) sound like the best thing ever... a constant round of partying and hanging out and working with beautiful and fascinating friends in fabulous places (TLOS was filmed in the South of France).

--

Interesting that you note "below the superstar level." Because I guess its true that superstars have bigger reputations to protect and more work to do to maintain that level of power. Meanwhile, "working actors" doing well just get to have fun.

Dean Martin was a boxer in his early years, and then a blackjack dealer, he said, "on my feet 8 hours a day." He said compared to those jobs, "movie acting isn't any work at all." He was rather contemptuous of it. I suppose that's true, but getting to stardom and maintaining stardom is the hard part. Acting may not take a toll on the feet, but it takes on one the psyche. And you have to watch your waistline!

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They all make clear how much they loved Tony Perkins who apparently hosted lots of intricate game-based parties for Hollywood pals like the one in the movie.

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I think people liked Anthony Perkins when he was alive -- though he could be prickly and beyotchy in his later, less successful years -- but they LOVED him once he passed. At 60(young, nowadays.) Bravely from a very public illness(AIDs), and with loving family all around him.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

As a Hollywood insider piece it fits well on a shelf with things like SOB (1979) and The Stunt Man (1980) and The Player (1992),
---
And a bit more realistic on the nuts and bolts of the business, I might add.

The final revenge of Mason and Cannon on Benjamin's character is not just narratively neat it also feels like it nails a kind of underlying shark-like industry-coldness always-moving-forwardness and care-less-ness about death... that's the flip-side of the sheer-fun-stuff that the film depicts and that Benjamin and Cannon confirm so strongly in their commentary.

and as a whodunnit I guess it fits well with And Then There Were None, Murder On The Orient Express, Death On The Mile, Murder By Death.
---
Yes. Funny, we seem to have gotten a lot of those in the 70's. There were versions of And Then There Were None(Ten Little Indians) in the forties and sixties, but I'm sure there was one in the 70s.
As for the rest, all seventies.

I suspect that this whodunnit trend in the '70s functioned intentionally as counter-programming aimed at older folk to both all the very confronting and edgy mainstream '70s stuff and also the sfx blockbusters.

Time to mention a guilty pleasure star favorite of mine -- James Coburn. Coburn had a bigger career than that other guy I'm always plugging(Richard Boone) and was able to work as a second-tier star pretty much until 1978(when he did his first TV movie, "The Dain Curse.") But it never quite "clicked" for Coburn. I'm not sure why. Possibly because while he had a great, deep booming voice, his features were a bit exaggerated --- huge teeth, a slightly simian look. Warren Beatty or Robert Redford, he wasn't. He seems to have known it and thus took roles like his movie producer in The Last of Shiela -- a mean, bullying rotter, a blackmailer of other movie people. With a line about some actor's last Western -- "What was it called, a fistful of lasagna?"

This was a *perfect* role for Coburn.The facial structure stuff that you mention that probably did limit his stardom is *perfect* for a slightly-sinister, know-it-all director. It really feels like a first-draft of O'Toole's Eli Cross character in The Stuntman. (O'Toole's quirky facial structure helped make him a star! The tiny tiny physical differences that make huge difference in Hollywood careers!

Coburn comes across as flat-out smarter than he usually does in TLOS.... but I guess that's the power of a great script... suddenly every actor who's overqualified for most of the roles they ever get to do has a lot to play with and chew on (The Mad Men phenomenon) and they're released to be the best versions of themselves. Cannon, Benjamin, Coburn, Joan Hackett, a young Ian McShane, alost everyone is near the best they'll ever be in this... Mason of course is a genuine superstar (Benjamin and Cannon in the commentary kind of say that Mason is for them the greatest overall movie-star....well doubtless they're being in the moment when they say that but I think we all know what they mean - you can make a case for all sorts of people and the thing is you *can* make the case of Mason.) so he's not better than he's ever been since *he* almost never gets less than amazing roles. But he delivers and is fantatsic too.

In general one has to say that, apart possibly from Raquel, this movie needed and got really quick smart actors.

Richard Benjamin was interesting. Married fairly young to Paula Prentiss(a very sexy and saucy woman of ANOTHER type...brunette, husky-voice), Benjamin had to sit back and watch the world think that Paula Prentiss was married to her on-screen romantic partner , Jim Hutton. Prentiss was a bigger star than Benjamin for the early sixties; then they did a TV show together("He and She") then by the seventies, HE was the bigger star for awhile. A seesaw career romance...but they stuck by each other and I think both are alive and still married today.

Yep, there's something about Paula P....that made her stand out even in Hollywood. Cannon taks about it in the commentary both because she's obviously fairly close friends with Benjamin and Prentiss and because Prentiss was with them in the South of France while they filmed TLOS (why wouldn't she be?). Apparently Perkins only came over once to the sets/locations but they filmed the script with only very very few changes.

Interesting that you note "below the superstar level." Because I guess its true that superstars have bigger reputations to protect and more work to do to maintain that level of power. Meanwhile, "working actors" doing well just get to have fun.

I'm sure being a non-superstar has its problems - it definitely must help to have one genuinely big payday in the mix (e.g., like Jason Alexander in Seinfeld) but Cannon and Benjamin are a good advertisement for that niche.... they've both had a lot of fun acting, got to do a bunch of directing each etc..

I think people liked Anthony Perkins when he was alive -- though he could be prickly and beyotchy in his later, less successful years -- but they LOVED him once he passed. At 60(young, nowadays.) Bravely from a very public illness(AIDs), and with loving family all around him.

I'm sure real-life Perkins had his drama which would have been trying but he evidently had lots of up-sides and those are what well-meaning people/friends etc. are going to focus on when he's gone.

Anyhow, TLOS is so well-scripted that it's rather a shame that Perkins didn't write some more scripts.

Happy Holidays! Am looking forward to seeing La La Land on Tuesday.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

Wright himself clearly borrowed quite a bit from The Last of Sheila for the whodunnit mechanics of his Hot Fuzz (2007).
---
I recall liking Hot Fuzz a lot, particularly with its full review of every cop and crime movie ever made in a rather less spoofy way than American films like Airplane. However, I can't remember individual scenes, or the The Last of Shiela bit.

Actually I need to see Hot Fuzz (2007) again myself to be sure! I remember there was a bunch of tricky whodunnit stuff near the end and know now *in my bones* that if I rewatched I'd see the careful repurposing of TLOS moves. But a rewatch is still required - I shouldn't have implied that I have those scenes right at my mental fingertips.

[–] filmklassik 7 years ago

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Weird how an incredibly bright guy like Mike Nichols could make a remark like that ("The only intelligent actor I ever worked with was Anthony Perkins") and not assume he'd be pissing off every actor he ever worked with not named Anthony Perkins.

In fact I wonder if that story isn't apocryphal. ...Or if Nichols wasn't perhaps being misquoted.

--

In the newly hot topic era of "fake news," this quote perhaps can hang high as an example of: "I read it somewhere...but who is to say it is true?"

Actually, the quote is longer and it goes like this: "The only intelligent actor I ever worked with was Anthony Perkins...except for Richard Burton, who was, well...something..."

Actually, the "Burton clause" makes the statement seem more real to me, as if Nichols indeed HAD given thought to all the actors he worked with.

I guess I should do an "internet hunt" for the quote because it is pretty important not only IF Nichols said that, but WHEN Nichols said that. If it was in 1970 when he worked with Perkins on Catch-22, the only three movies Nichols had directed were Virginia Woolf, The Graduate, and Catch 22. Still, enough actors in there to really get in trouble...

I suppose we need to recall that a lot of directors don't really much like actors, from the snarky comments I've read. Hitchocck had his "actors are cattle" and "actors are children" quotes, and when one interviewer asked for more detail, Hitchcock opined: "Well, I just don't really like them that much. They put on airs, for one thing."

I'm not sure the phrase "put on airs" was used after 1910.

Otto Preminger was famous for yelling at and humiliating his lesser actors(like Tom Tryon, who pretty much quit the business over it, and even Faye Dunaway early in her career.) Otto would usually kiss up to his stars (Stewart, Wayne, Fonda) but accidentally yelled at Kirk Douglas one time, and almost got punched out.

One reason movie directors don't much like movie stars is: movie stars get paid a lot more. "Just to show up and read lines," while the director does all the work. (Or so they think.)

THAT said, my God, all the DVD documentaries where the directors praise the actors and the actors praise the directors, and certainly we have those pairings like Johnny Depp/Tim Burton and Robert DeNiro/Martin Scorsese.

So, I suppose it depends on the director.

You wanna know somebody who hated Mike Nichols?

Former Paramount executive Peter Bart, who wrote how Nichols parlayed the early triumphs of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate into a career with a lot of failures(Catch 22, Day of the Dolphin, The Fortune) and a lot of self-importance and self-regard.

But then, Nichols came back with a lot of good HBO work and "Charlie Wilson's War" at the end. Not to mention "The Birdcage." I guess you could say in the final years, Nichols was rather a good "director for hire."

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

257 Mad Monster Party? Jules Bass, 1967

A relatively little-seen Rankin-Bass production that's some sort of apotheosis of all '60s horror and youth-culture.

Baron von Frankenstein voiced by and looking exactly like Boris Karloff, lives the experimenters life in a castle on an island with his Monster, the Monster's Mate (voiced by and looking exactly like Phyllis Dillert), another va-va-voom female creation, Francesca, who's a combination of an old-style femme fatale and early '60s bombshell like Monroe or Ann Margret or Verna Lisi or... and an army of zombies lead by Yech the creep who sounds and looks exactly like Peter Lorre.

The film begins with the Baron discovering not how to create life but how to 'destroy matter'. We see him blow up a bird in the distance with an incredible thermonuclear blast after injecting it with just a drop of his new serum. The Baron then sends out bats with messages to all his monster pals (we think) to discuss with them how they'll use this awesome weapon. The monsters summoned include Dracula (who at one point looks into the camera and says 'Now I'll show you who's the real Bat-man'... before turning into a bat), Werewolf, The Invisible Man (who sounds like Sydney Greenstreet's Ferari in Casablanca and wears that character's fez), The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde, and a mysterious 'It'. The Baron also summons his nephew who mostly looks and sounds like Jimmy Stewart (but he's actually a bit more of a naif and a homely glasses-wearing nerd than Stewart ever played so there's a fair bit of Jerry Lewis's nerdy scientist in The Nutty Professor in there too).

Hijinks ensue as it emerges that the Baron also intends to retire and pass on all his secrets including the thermonuclear serum to his nephew.

The films ends with Francesca changing sides from being a bad, femme fatale girl (in league with Dracula) and escaping with the nephew for true love, etc. As they sail away from island she confesses to the nephew that she's not a real woman and that she's another of the Baron's creations, mostly made of metal she goes on to say (more robot scientist than grave-robber this Baron!). The Nephew shrugs, 'Nobody's perfect'.

Shortly before this final scene things resolved themselves back on the island too. "It" finally showed up and turned out to be King Kong, who smashes the castle and captures Franseca (who gets to do her best Fay Wray) meanwhile the Baron and his zombie army takes to the skies in biplanes. Kong/'It' is forced to put down Franseca (allowing her to escape with the nephew) in order to ward off the biplanes....but Kong/'It' has no defence against the Baron's serum, all of which is used to trigger the thermonuclear destruction of Kong and in fact the whole island. All the monsters appear to be dead in the story from this. Our lovers watch the mushroom cloud rise behind them (adorned implausibly with fireworks exploding!) as they sail away.

I'm not sure how good Mad Monster Party? (1967) really is but it's quite funny even as an adult, has some pretty good Mancini/John Barry-ish music + some pretty hip garage rock ('Do the The Mummy'), and its integration of nuclear threats and Bond-villain-ish locations is ingenious. MMP? does therefore feel like a capstone document of the era. It's interesting too how it treats almost the whole of movie and celebrity history like an adjunct to the Universal monsters pantheon, as boiling down to a field of instantly recognizable extremes and archetypical characters and images and voices. Worth tracking down.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

292 Wild in the Streets Barry Shear, 1968

Rock star Max Frost founds a vast youth political movement built around lowering the age of qualification to vote to 14. Through a variety of shenanigans (including putting lots of LSD in the DC water-supply) the constitution is changed so that all age restrictions for public office are lowered to 14. Max Frost quickly becomes President and immediately acquires near dictatorial powers. Although a lot of the traditional branches of govt power such as the military and the FBI and CIA and the Secret Service are dissolved, there still seem so be lot of Hitler-Youth like folk around to enforce new laws putting all people at age 35 or older into concentration camps where they're forced to wear mu-mus and fed LSD. We learn through newscasts that the American youth revolution has caught on elsewhere (even in places like Russia and China).

Made by American International to exploit the real fears of 1968, Wild In The Streets is a stupider, less cynical counterpart to Privilege (1967) which I watched earlier in this project. WITS is also related in its basic time to another Corman production The Trip (1967). None of these films strike me as particularly good, but all are perhaps worth watching as part of the cultural archaeology of the late '60s. Maybe WITS helped elect Nixon?

Hal Holbrook is quite good as a Ted Kennedy-like Democrat who rides the youth tiger into the US Senate but is then devoured by it. he is last seen mu-mu'd and hanging himself in an 'oldies' concentration camp. Shelley Winters is fun as the very trying-be-hip, supportive mother of Max Frost. She too meets a grisly end in the camps.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

253 Don't Look Back D.A. Pennebaker, 1967

Famous Dylan Doc. lives up to its reputations as one of the definitive music films and documentaries. Dylan's playing is as precise as it would ever be, his singing is for once completely in tune, he's at his peak cute-ness I'd say, and Dylan's combative streak in interviews works better than it would ever work again. All of which is to say that the doc-makers lucked out and captured an amazing moment in Dylan's career (it's 1965 right between Bringing it all Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited and in England where he's starting to hit the top of the charts for the first time any after being big-upped there by The Beatles).

The film looks utterly terrific shot in glorious, hand-held 16mm with some sort of magic lens that has great depth of field/focus yet works with just ambient light day or night. Amazing.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

266 The President's Analyst Theodore J. Flicker, 1967

In a bumper year for complicated, brilliant, visually audacious comedies (The Graduate, Bedazzled, Two For The Road, even Belle de Jour and Two or Three Things I Know About Her), The President's Analyst can't quite compete. In almost any other year, however, it's probably one of the 2 or 3 hipster favorites of the year.

The script by the director Ted Flicker feels right on literary trend: Flicker's strongly influenced by Vonnegut and Southern, but in ironically identifying The Phone Company as the Big Bad, he also feels influenced a lot by Pynchon's then new The Crying of Lot 49. And that's to say that this feels like a world-view that's already ironizing and lampooning the conspiracy theory narratives of the '70s. The film loses Pynchonesque density once it heads out to the Great Lakes, settling instead for some big laughs and a simpler, pure-shaggy-dog-story style of humor... And this is to say that while Flicker the director can't quite do justice to Flicker the writer throughout, Flicker the writer loses a full head of steam about 2/3s of the way through. Still, it's very entertaining throughout, and, hey, even the part of the film that I'm claiming is underwritten is still good enough to have foreshadowed and inspired other excellent works. E.g., there's a phonebooth scene there that the classic Spanish tv-film La Cabina (1972) recapitulates and extends.

In TPA's favor too is that the technological surveillance state it depicts as omnipotent and out of control,which was largely fantasy in 1967, is real 50 years later. Some of TPA's biggest jokes are genuinely queasy-making now (and the fighting between the FBI and CIA and the sense of both being home to peculiar pathologies and maybe one or both of them being in league with the Russians feels close to today's headlines).

Coburn is a bit hit or miss in this role I think - too broad at times for the film's good I'd say. The spies and spies-masters, however, are almost all excellent, and characteristically for films in this period, extraordinarily pretty young women adorn many scenes (I'm not complaining!).

Good not great film, but very much worth seeing I'd say.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

218 The Earth Dies Screaming Terence Fisher, 1964

Ugh, superior score and b/w cinematography can't save this minimally suspenseful, almost-completely action-free alien-invasion turkey. Hardly worth running through the minimal plot and its problems, but the ineptitude and unthreateningness of the ultra-slow invaders (or their robot emissaries) and their human zombie slaves is just laughable. TEDS may have influenced some classic Dr Who stories with the cybermen and the autons, but really those stories are much more fun and exciting and with much better characters to boot.

TEDS is not worth seeing unless you're a sci-fi completist. I don't see how Wright can seriously prefer this to Mary Poppins or Fail Safe or Band of Outsiders or That Man from Rio or Seven Days In May, etc. as his list requires. Bad Edgar.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

298 Last Summer Frank Perry, 1969

A film by Katy Perry's uncle (and the director of The Swimmer and Diary of a Mad Housewife) that's never been available on dvd or blu-ray, so that cropped and slightly censored versions for VHS (with lousy sound) are all that are currently viewable.

Last Summer doesn't have all the stylish touches and visual tricks of The Swimmer, but it is suffused with the same death-in-the-family mournfulness. Three good-looking teens (played by Barbara Hershey, Bruce Davison, and Richard Thomas) strike up a friendship at the beach shore one summer. They experiment with alcohol and pot and some nudity with each other but much to the guys chagrin do not have sex. A fourth much less cool kid, Rhoda played by Catherine Burns, arrives late to their menage, and bad things happen. Barbara Hershey's cool girl, Sandy, shows some early signs of cruelty and being a bit of a monster, but the guys (plausibly in my view) are too interested in getting laid and hanging out with a cool chick to be character police. The movie ends with two crises brought on by Sandy deciding to torment Rhoda which the boys (including Thomas's character who had befriended and even felt some attraction for Rhoda) shockingly go along with.

I'm not sure how plausible the boys' actions are at the end of the film myself. [Was the film suggesting that the boys go along with Sandy's mean and then brutal schemes in part out of sexual frustration?] And I'm not sure about some the writing for Catherine Rush in the final crisis. And I'm not sure the first crisis (w/ a Hispanic man) quite works as shown either. Reading around, I see that lots of people find the end of the movie very powerful (see Roger Ebert's original 5 star review online), and don't raise objections of the sort that I find it natural to raise. So maybe I just didn't quite get Last Summer.

For me, then, Last Summer is an interesting film that deserves to be available uncropped and with sound cleaned up, but it's not in my view any sort of forgotten masterpiece. Burns got a supporting actress nom for her Rhoda... but I don't quite see it myself (she gets a big oscar-baity monologue that for me read as precisely that - maybe its subtler qualities would register more in 35mm or in a proper restoration). In general though, every Chabrol and every Bresson film around this time is better written than, and more daring than and nastier than Last Summer, and I don't expect that that judgement would be changed by a Blu-ray release of LS (stranger things have happened tho'). Currently, then, it feels to to me as though fans are grading LS on a 'for Hollywood' curve, but I do no such thing! At any rate, sticking to Hollywood, I'd take They Shoot Horses over Last Summer any day for 1969. Strange that Wright finds no place for that (let alone Z etc.).

Interestingly for Hitchcockians, the underlying novel here was by Evan Hunter of The Birds screenplay fame. I wonder why Hunter didn't do the screenplay for LS?

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

So what would happen when Universal's monsters met the Hard-R '70s of Midnight movies?

378 Flesh for Frankenstein Paul Morrissey, Antonio Margheriti, 1973
404 Blood for Dracula Paul Morrissey, 1974

Flesh For Frankenstein (1973) is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Horribly acted, horribly scripted, amateurish grand guignol nonsense. Avoid at all costs unless perhaps you have exactly the right Midnight movie crowd and the right drugs to watch it with. Seeing it in any compos mentis state is an excruciatingly boring 2 hours of your life you'll never get back.

Blood for Dracula (1974) which uses many of the same actors as FFF is a terrible movie by any normal standards, but is still a *lot* better than FFF. As in FFF the pacing is all wrong and the dialogue is risible (and not in any good way) but Udo Kier's Count is a lot better than his Baron Frankenstein, and Joe Delleseandro's common servant/rustic/stud role a is lot better here than in FFF), and the movie is much more functional than FFF is as a soft-porn (Dellasandro gets it on somewhat wittily - thwarting Dracula's desires for a Virgin's blood - with a bunch of genuinely lovely Italian gals. Unfortunately there's some rape-y stuff in that storyline too... ) The story here, unlike that in FFF, does kind of come together at the end and is both funny and a little poignant even as this most sickly of vampires meets the same end as Holy Grail's black knight would a year later!

BFD probably isn't worth watching unless you're a '70s or a vampire completist, but if you want to expose yourself to just one of these tortuous, brain-dead, Warhol-branded films then BFD is your best bet.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

285 The Devil Rides Out Terence Fisher, 1968

The final (and most recent) Terrence Fisher-directed entry on Wright's list is a kind of third-personal and country-house counterpart to Rosemary's Baby's largely-from-Mia-Farrow's perspective and urban take on satanist matters. TDRO has its fans but for me it feels like it was made about 10 years before Rosemary's Baby (TDRO is implicitly set back in the 1930s, when the underlying novel was a bit a of a sensation) and really amounts to a detailed demonstration of the rightness of all of Polanski's choices (following Levin's underlying novel) about what supernatural stuff to show and what not to show to, about what about what lighting to use if you're go to try play this sort of material straight, etc.. Fisher's trying to do exactly that but he's can't seem to think himself outside the crumby sets and colors and costumes synonymous with Hammer horrors. Deep down too - and I expect that this just follows directly from the book they were adapting - much of the action is simply unbelievable. People who have accepted that weird stuff is going on, time and again continue to do things that under those conditions *no one* would do. Christopher Lee is good as a good guy for a change but the boat had sailed on this sort of production by 1968 and Lee can't change that.

One key sequence with a spider in TDRO reminded me a little of a horrifying scene in a recent Black Mirror episode, 'Playtest'. Maybe modern sfx could have saved TDRO, made it as scary as it wants to be... but no, not really. I won't spoil it completely but let's just say that both the 'power of Jesus' and time-travel are involved in TDRO's ending. No amount of sfx improvement can save that kind of narrative dog's breakfast (it's like the bad endings of Superman and Omen 3 had a baby that went back in time to 1968....).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

283 The Boston Strangler Richard Fleischer, 1968

Always solid Richard Fleischer turns in a pretty gripping account of the Boston Strangler case. Although *we* see that Tony Curtis's character, Albert DeSalvo *did it*, the case against him in the film in partly circumstantial (he could be placed near the scenes of 10 or so different crimes at the relevant times) and partly based on a confession extracted from DeSalvo who (by the film's own account) is extremely mentally disturbed. Historically these sorts of confession-based, zero-physical evidence cases have proved incredibly vulnerable to undermining by physical evidence developed later as technology for analyzing samples improved. And in fact, in the real world, DNA evidence appears to have cleared Albert DeSalvo of the Strangler's crimes. All of this means that the film probably looks and feels quite different these days than it did on release. In a sense BS must now look like the dramatization of a rush to judgment and the commission of another crime against DeSalvo.

That's a lot to deal with when you're watching a movie.... so I'll try to set those truth-seeking and moral evaluation side of things aside here. Fleischer uses various sorts of split-screens and insert sub-screens in a variety of ways: sometimes to show all the parallel leads being investigated, sometimes to pair the killer's POV with the victim's or potential victims, and so on. The film commits to this visual idea early on and I thought it worked pretty well, especially during the police procedural part of the film. George Kennedy and Murray Hamilton are among the cops and when the film is with them and others I think it's in very good hands. Henry Fonda is also very good as the special lead investigator. Curtis as Albert DeSalvo enters the film over half way through, and in my view neither he nor the film is good after that. Somehow, necessarily Curtis/DeSalvo forms a kind of inert center for the second half of the film. There's a trace of 'Norman being interrogated by Arbogast' in the scenes between Fonda and Curtis, but a middle-aged Curtis just doesn't hold the screen as well as a young Perkins and neither the dialogue nor the sheer visual flair that was there to support Perkins is there in this case.

I was struck that the Fleischer's film never quite punches home one of its big points: that the Boston cops had spent a heck of a lot of time chasing red herrings among sexual minorities in Boston when (accepting the truth of the DeSalvo story) the guy they were looking for led a superficially normal life with a Wife and family and was a gas company guy who inherently always gave people a reason to open their doors to him. The last point is crucial - they could have caught DeSalvo at least in a circumstantial/Prime Suspect kind of way just by scrutinizing all the Gas/Electricity/Air Con/Repairs, etc. guys in the city, i.e., all the people who gave people a prima facie reason to open their doors. I expected there to be a scene with the cops regretting how they'd conducted their investigations, but no....

In sum, a good film, esp. the first half, but not a great one. I don't think that Curtis is the revelation here that is sometimes claimed: I prefer him in Don't Make Waves let alone Sweet Smell of Success. And the off-screen issues about the type of investigation the film valorizes and the injustice it probably helped perpetrate are very troubling... if you let them trouble you.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

361 Tales from the Crypt Freddie Francis, 1972

Lugubrious British horror anthology film is adequate. None of the sub-stories nor the framing story surprised me (but to be fair that may be because I've watched 3 or 4 Horror anthology films quite recent, i.e., as part of my Wright-quest). Talented DP turned schlock-director, Freddie Francis, constructs some nice visuals and a range of good Brit actors are vividly brutal and vividly brutalized as the case may be - everyone's believable. But perhaps because (unless you're thick!) both the basic punitive purpose of the framing story and the basic shape of all the sub-stories comes into focus very early on (which requires all protagonists to be horrible people), the film drags I found

A perfectly adequate film (particularly if you have taste for misanthropy and unrelieved gloominess) but it wouldn't be on my top anything list.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

361 Tales from the Crypt Freddie Francis, 1972
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lugubrious British horror anthology film is adequate. None of the sub-stories nor the framing story surprised me (but to be fair that may be because I've watched 3 or 4 Horror anthology films quite recent, i.e., as part of my Wright-quest).

---

Well, here's where a "You Had to Be There" element creeps in for me. 1972. A drive-in with "the gang." And...you had to be there.

For we settled in mixed(but not all dating) groups of boys and girls in our cars and watched this film with a certain "desire that it scare us" -- and one story in particular DID.

Its the one about Joan Collins. Its Christmas time and she kills her husband with a poker to the head(Oh, God, Mother, blood...) Collins has a little girl, but evidently...what's one less daddy?

"By sheer coincidence," radio reports alert us that a psychopath has escaped the nearby asylum and killed a street Santa Claus and was last seen dressed as Santa.

And then-- in 1972, in a few crowded cars at the drive-in with my friends -- everybody began jumping and screaming everytime "Bad Santa" appeared at window or tried to break down the door to Joan Collins' home. I still remember, though, a long high shot of the killer Santa making his first appearance walking up to the door of Joan's house. This shot ALONE -- simply the appearance of Psycho Santa in the front yard courtyard of the house, got one of our guys going "Oh, no...he's here.." and more screams.

We were young. And I kept my Psycho/Frenzy snobbery to myself.

The Santa story is a "siege" story(think The Birds or Straw Dogs) and it ends with everybody in our cars at the drive-in screaming their heads off at a simple shot:

Beaded curtains from one room in the house. The smiling little girl pokes her head out of them..."Look , Mommy! Look who's come to visit us!" And above the little girl's head thorugh the curtains pops...Santa's head. Except he's ugly and mottled and leering in anticipation of murder...and he strangles Joan Collins(a killer herself, remember) to death.

That "head popping through the curtains" thing, BTW, is how Robert Bloch describe Mrs. Bates head coming through the shower curtain the novel "Psycho" -- "like a disembodied head floating in space." Hitchcock couldn't film THAT without giving Norman away, but its nice to see how it plays in Tales From the Crypt.

This does not make 1972's Tales From the Crypt a "good movie." But it makes it a good memory, the kind of movie shocker story with a twist(the little girl lets Santa in) that kids talk about for years after. (I will note that Psycho got this kind of talk, but Frenzy did not -- our gang saw Frenzy at the same drive-in, in the same year, that we saw Tales From the Crypt, and it didn't play with the gang at all as a shocker. I "enjoyed" Frenzy on my own, as an inveterate young Hitchcock buff, and at other screenings that year.)

---

Note in passing: Another of the 1972 Crypt tales had a male character having to choose between the ravenous dogs behind him and the human-tight tunnel embedded with razor blades in front of him. We remember THAT finish from 1972 as well. And the other one, too, I guess...the dead guy who isn't dead but somebody's chopping him up? After the famous Santa episode, it all gets rather fuzzy.

They converted that 1972 movie of "Tales From the Crypt" (from the EC Horror Comics series of the 50's that was banned by Congress) into a long-running and super-gory series on HBO...and they did the Santa tale again. I can't remember who had the Joan Collins role.

I do remember THIS from one of the Tales from the Crypt episodes: We got a variation on "Rear Window" with this "what if?": "What if we got to look into Lars Thorwald's suitcase full of severed limbs?" Oh, yeah...

And finally this: a film critic named Leslie Halliwell once called "Psycho": "Hitchcock's EC Horror Comic." In certain ways, it well was. Mrs. Bates had that Cryptkeeper look and the murders were quite gory for 1960, and "Psycho" came on the tail of the MUCH gorier murders in the 1950's EC horror comics, but "approached them."

I think the issue of Tales From the Crypt that got the Congressional banning was the one where an evil baseballer spiked the second baseman with poisoned shoes and killed him -- so the rest of the opppsing team "went Psycho." They cut up the bad baseballer into body parts and "played ball" -- his head was the baseball, his leg was the bat, his heart was first base...

....or maybe the one where the evil fireman killed a good fireman so the entire rest of the fire department "went psycho" -- and replaced the fireman's slide pole with one made entirely of a giant razor. You can imagine what happened when the bad fireman slid down THAT.

Tales from the Crypt, 1972: Mediocre horror movie but it has history behind it(including Psycho) and events following it(the HBO series.)

And one more thing: I recall when an aged and thin Michael Douglas married a younger and voluptuous Catherine Zeta-Jones, some wag said "Zeta-Jones seems to have married the Cryptkeeper." I've never been able to look at Michael Douglas without thinking about that quote.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

Beaded curtains from one room in the house. The smiling little girl pokes her head out of them..."Look , Mommy! Look who's come to visit us!" And above the little girl's head through the curtains pops...Santa's head. Except he's ugly and mottled and leering in anticipation of murder...and he strangles Joan Collins(a killer herself, remember) to death.

I guess that that's a good moment, but for some reason the Santa-maniac they cast seemed a little feeble to me (and this was true even when he was outside the house)....so the climactic moment didn't have quite the zing it should for me.

Note in passing: Another of the 1972 Crypt tales had a male character having to choose between the ravenous dogs behind him and the human-tight tunnel embedded with razor blades in front of him. We remember THAT finish from 1972 as well. And the other one, too, I guess...the dead guy who isn't dead but somebody's chopping him up? After the famous Santa episode, it all gets rather fuzzy.

The razor-corridor vs dog dilemma is memorable. The thing that sold that storyline was that the lead blind-guy was played by the guy from Clockwork Orange whose wife raped in front of him by Alex and who later constructs a Beethoven torture for Alex. You really *can* believe that he'd come up with some pretty fiendish way to get even with the malevolent, ex-military doctor.

And one more thing: I recall when an aged and thin Michael Douglas married a younger and voluptuous Catherine Zeta-Jones, some wag said "Zeta-Jones seems to have married the Cryptkeeper." I've never been able to look at Michael Douglas without thinking about that quote.

Ha. Whenever I hear the world crpt-keeper I think of Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday where she swaps bods with her daughter played by Lindsay Lohan. After the switch, Lohan-in-Mom's-body looks in the mirror and shrieks 'I'm like the crypt-keeper':
http://imoviequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/6-Freaky-friday-quotes.gif

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

424 Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Michael Cimino, 1974

Fantastically enjoyable film that's a winning combination of road-movie, car-chase-movie, buddy-movie, heist-movie, and '70s downer epic (with just a touch of existentialist surrealism as its almost as though our heroes can never escape the high plains of Montana). Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, and George Kennedy are all amazing, but the script is littered with vivid small parts and lots of good jokes both dialogue- and situation-driven. In any other year the ending's a heart-breaker, but in the context of 1974 it probably doesn't even count as a *real* downer.

I think that the case could be made that T&L is Cimino's best film. At any rate it's an astonishingly assured debut. Certainly T&L is just as beautifully shot as The Deerhunter and Heaven's Gate, and I'd say it's better paced than either of those.

Obviously 1974 is one of the greatest years in movie history, and it may be that T&L is too 'light' to rank with the very best of that year... but really that's more of an accounting problem than anything else. There probably are something like 20 classics from 1974 and T&L is rightly one of them.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

331 Four Flies on Grey Velvet Dario Argento, 1971

Daft, incoherent early Giallo from Argento. Particular scenes simply can *not* be explained in the ways that the film ultimately requires - e.g., something supernatural is needed in one main death scene, and the finally identified killer wouldn't be a stranger and so trigger crazy responses in house-pets in other key scenes. Oddly for Argento, Four Flies has quite a lot of low-brow humor in it. This was presumably an experiment on Argento's part - it did not work.

I could go on about many more of the film's problem areas but it isn't really good enough to be worth that effort. FFoGV is not a film I regard as recommendable to anyone.

FFoGV's good points? There's some good jammed rock music on the soundtrack and quite interesting score throughout. And there's one good and memorable scene in the film right at the end. Although you lose *something* by not having the full context for the scene, youtube has all most people are ever going to need from FFoGV here:
https://youtu.be/9KjNAi9dbBc

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

263 Robbery Peter Yates, 1967

Peter Yates's debut feature and the one that got him the Bullitt job (hence his whole Hollywood career) is a nifty caper picture that's front-loaded with a pre-caper and its associated car chase. This prologue to the main action is what startled McQueen and got him to track down Yates for Bullitt. Lead crim and caper-architect is played well by Stanley Baker who's a dead ringer for Sean Connery except maybe even more macho. Baker was a big star in the UK in the '50s and was one of the first people whom James Bond in Dr No was offered to after Cary Grant passed. He turned the role down for ostensibly the same reasons as Grant: Baker didn't want to commit to a three-picture-deal. On the evidence of Robbery he'd have been very similar to Connery as Bond and indeed it must have helped the near-unknown Connery get the part that he looked so much like Baker.

One of the other main crims is played by Bob Rusk himself, Barry Foster and many of the other cast members are familiar to me from '70s UK crime/police procedural TV series. Robbery probably helped a lot of people on their ways.

While not at the level of the very best caper/heist pictures such as Asphalt Jungle, Rififi, Le Cercle Rouge, The Killing, Silent Partner, etc., Robbery is a slick piece of work, and is indeed the sort of thing that *should* get you a call from Hollywood. Quite a few stunts and shots from the film have since become part of the limgua fance for action films, e.g., is there any earlier example of a getaway car being rolled out the back of a moving truck and driving off?

So, Robbery is a pretty good movie, and probably the 5th best Yates films I've seen after Bullitt, Eddie Coyle, Breaking Away and probably The Dresser. Do watch it on Blu-ray or Blu-ray-derived download if you can. Previous releases on dvd had the aspect ratio all wrong: pan-and-scanning and lopping off sideways material to get to 4-3, and also including lots of unwanted open-matte coverage particularly at the bottom of the frame. The Blu-ray looks fantastic and feels like a new film (I started watching free-copies on youtube and dailymotion but once I saw the difference in the frame and picture quality that the Blu-ray/restored version offered I abandoned the cheapskate's option and did not regret it.

Anyhow, I've really enjoyed a lot of my recent Wright-quest entries: all these terrific career-making debut features from Robbery to The Hit to Thunderbolt and Lighfoot. All are keepers.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

263 Robbery Peter Yates, 1967
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Peter Yates's debut feature and the one that got him the Bullitt job (hence his whole Hollywood career)

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Yep. Rarely has one famous film(Bullitt) been so connected one not-so-famous film(Robbery.)

Though, once Bullitt hit big in 1968, NBC started showing Robbery a lot until Bullitt could hit TV(when that happened -- it was on CBS, though.)

--

is a nifty caper picture that's front-loaded with a pre-caper and its associated car chase. This prologue to the main action is what startled McQueen and got him to track down Yates for Bullitt.

---

I wonder if McQueen saw this on his own or if someone brought it to him. Just wondering.

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Lead crim and caper-architect is played well by Stanley Baker who's a dead ringer for Sean Connery except maybe even more macho. Baker was a big star in the UK in the '50s and was one of the first people whom James Bond in Dr No was offered to after Cary Grant passed. He turned the role down for ostensibly the same reasons as Grant: Baker didn't want to commit to a three-picture-deal. On the evidence of Robbery he'd have been very similar to Connery as Bond and indeed it must have helped the near-unknown Connery get the part that he looked so much like Baker.

---

I've seen Stanley Baker movies and it does seem "he had his shot and missed it."

Michael Caine broke through in a supporting role in "Zulu" (1964) -- but the top billed star was...Stanley Baker. And Baker was also the producer of the film. Caine wrote in an auto-bio that when Caine started worrying aloud that the director was going to fire him, an ANGRY Baker yelled "I'm the producer of this film, and you won't get fired by anyone but me, and I don't want to fire you! So do your job!"

And Caine became a bigger star than Baker.

One odd thing I remember about Stanley Baker: he was part of the six man team that took on "The Guns of Navarone." Three of the six were big stars -- Greg Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn -- and three were lesser knowns :Anthony Quayle from The Wrong Man, James Darren for the teens, and...Stanley Baker. And Baker barely said a word. Like James Coburn in The Mag 7, Baker was "the knife man."

I believe Stanley Baker died rather young.

He must have kicked himself over Bond. Cary Grant didn't NEED Bond; it could have really helped Baker.

--

One of the other main crims is played by Bob Rusk himself, Barry Foster and many of the other cast members are familiar to me from '70s UK crime/police procedural TV series. Robbery probably helped a lot of people on their ways.

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Yes, after I saw Frenzy in 1972 and was charmed/appalled by Barry Foster...I kept finding him in all these earlier films: Robbery, Inspector Clouseau(one where Alan Arkin played the detective, and it didn't work, good as Arkin always is), David Lean's Ryan's Daughter. Its like a minor-key version of how Tony Perkins "infected" all his movies as Norman Bates to me.

But alas, movie stardom eluded Foster. So he found TV stardom as a Dutch detective on a British crime show.

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While not at the level of the very best caper/heist pictures such as Asphalt Jungle, Rififi, Le Cercle Rouge, The Killing, Silent Partner, etc.,

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That's a nice list..and of "caper" movies where things are rougher and tougher than in the "fou-fou" caper movies like The Pink Panther.

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Robbery is a slick piece of work, and is indeed the sort of thing that *should* get you a call from Hollywood. Quite a few stunts and shots from the film have since become part of the limgua fance for action films, e.g., is there any earlier example of a getaway car being rolled out the back of a moving truck and driving off?

---

Not that I can recall. Though in the LATER "Hot Rock" (1972) a getaway car drives INTO the back of a truck. Not moving, I don't think. Hey, wait a minute...PETER YATES directed The Hot Rock! (Redford and George Segal as modern-day Butch and Sundance in a script by the same writer, William Goldman.)

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So, Robbery is a pretty good movie, and probably the 5th best Yates films I've seen after Bullitt, Eddie Coyle, Breaking Away and probably The Dresser.

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Try The Hot Rock. Of course, Yates also did "The Deep." Big hit, mediocre movie.

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Anyhow, I've really enjoyed a lot of my recent Wright-quest entries: all these terrific career-making debut features from Robbery to The Hit to Thunderbolt and Lighfoot. All are keepers.

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I'm not sure I saw your Thunderbolt and Lightfoot entry. That's a not-really-a-guilty pleasure of 1974(I mean, Clint was a star.) I do recall thinking it was interesting that Dirty Harry himself here played a criminal -- a robber whose caper involved a little violence against innocents and cops. Young Jeff Bridges got an Oscar nom -- Clint's first brush with The Big One.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

Two more horror anthology films (Wright has at least 10 of these on his list).

353 Asylum Roy Ward Baker, 1972

Written by Robert Bloch of Psycho fame, one of the sub-stories features an Arbogast-like death at the top of a staircase. That story features lovely Charlotte Rampling with almost-as-lovely Britt Ekland as her suspiciously alter-ego-ish friend Lucy (you see the twist coming a mile off but, hey, if it's good enough for Images, Black Swan, et al.). That story is about as interesting as it gets. The other three main stories are all variants of 'things come to life', and the framing story is one of those truly preposterous ideas: a Psychiatrist interviews for a position at an asylum is told the previous holder of the position went nuts and is now one of the inmates. He'll be considered further for the position if he can interview all of the current inmates and correctly identify which one was his (potential) predecessor. The person offering the interviewee these odd terms has himself recently been crippled after being attacked by an inmate. There appears to be no security of any sort. In sum, nobody let alone a qualified Doctor would accept such interview terms. [Compare: There was a Black Mirror ep. this year that featured a US student in London who needs some quick cash who signs up for a Video Game Test for a cutting-edge horror-video game company. As part of the test you have have to sign all sorts of waivers and get brain implants etc. so you understand roughly that this is going to be some sort of horror virtual reality experience where the game's going to be right in your head and have access to all your worst fears, etc. Things do not go well. The ep. called 'Playtest' was fun, but was somewhat vitiated by the fact that nobody at all sane would ever sign up for anything like that, and at the very least it's not something you'd ever agree to do by yourself. At the very least you'd want to bring friends along to external check for you since the whole point is that your first person perspective is going to be completely under the control of a secretive corporation. In The Black Mirror case as in Bloch's we ultimately have to believe that we're watching very stupid people fall headlong into an absurdly perilous predicament....]

Director Roy Baker (of A Night to Remember) feels like he's really slumming it - having earlier fallen to Hammer films he's now in the sub-Hammer basement. A terrible blaring classical score (featuring lots of Mussourgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition) doesn't help; it really makes the film feel cheaply slapped together.

545 Creepshow George A. Romero, 1982

Romero directed and Stephen King-scripted (and acted solo, playing a hayseed in one segment!) tribute to EC 'Weird Tales'-type comics. Very committed to those comic-book origins in that we get lots of comic paneling on sceen and we often freeze-frame into and out of animated linking segments. There's also a presiding spirit of black comedy and campiness....which is going to appeal to some people more than others. It didn't really work for me perhaps because I don't have have much connection to the source material... but that's my problem, your mileage may vary. As with Asylum, a lot of the sub-stories turned on 'things coming to life' which got old quickly for me... but if that's what the comics were and it's your thing then good for you! The best sub-story for me - genuinely disgusting but I'm quite bug-phobic - was the final (non-frame) cockroaches-take-over-a-germophobe's-apartment story. I've had my own history with cockroaches....shudder.

Another story used Margaret Morrison Hall at Carnegie Mellon U in Pittsburgh as a location. I knew it in the '90s after the exterior had been cleaned up and it was quite fun to see it in its pre-cleaning grungy glory.

Anyhow, I'd score Creepshow 6-7/10 and Asylum 3-4/10. Probably all horror genre fans will want to check out the former at some point, but the latter can mostly safely be set aside.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

With IMDb pulling the pin on its messageboards, I won't be able to complete my voyage to the bottom of Wright's 1000 here.

Probably my final entry is a short one on:

249 What's Up, Tiger Lily? Woody Allen, 1966

I remember this one still doing a bit of business at rep. houses in the 1980s, but I missed it then so was glad to finally catch up with it now. Or at least I was until the darn thing got going... The basic gag of taking a silly Japanese gangster film and redubbing much of the audio with ridiculous dialogue isn't really that promising when you think about it. Allen and his crew of jokers manage to land a couple of good moments of ridiculousness, e.g., with redubbing they have a character addressing a woman as his mother then he punches her smack in the face) and a running verbal gag of a character who at a moment's provocation always starts abusing people with 'Spartan Pig, Saracen Dog...' But there aren't enough of these hits to make it worthwhile. I was pretty bored most of the time. Of course there are undercurrents too of mocking Japanese culture and of oogling Japnese women, and out-dated references to Japanese products (cars, toys, etc.) as synonymous with junk, etc.. Obviously WUTL? is coming from a time when people were much more comfortable with ethnic sterotype-humor...so there's that too.

In WUTL?'s defence, I assume that most of its audience over the years has probably seen it drunk or stoned (not my current state)... Moreover, I'm prepared to believe that I just have a blindspot with respect to certain sorts of junky films that many people can get a lot out of. I don't like the Ed Wood films I've seen, and Russ Meyer aside from Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls does nothing for me. WUTL? probably falls into that same zone of Z-grade bad-movie-making to which I'm blind or, changing metaphors, allergic.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

With IMDb pulling the pin on its messageboards, I won't be able to complete my voyage to the bottom of Wright's 1000 here.

--

But hopefully...somewhere?

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Probably my final entry

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Here's hoping NOT. A little under two weeks to go.

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is a short one on:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
249 What's Up, Tiger Lily? Woody Allen, 1966
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I remember this one still doing a bit of business at rep. houses in the 1980s, but I missed it then so was glad to finally catch up with it now.

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It also got a lot of local TV screenings in the early 70's, just as the "funny Woody Allen" career was first taking off. It was like "half of a real Woody Allen" movie, in that he appears on screen to introduce it and the lines are clearly written by him. I can't recall if he does any of the dubbed voices.

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Or at least I was until the darn thing got going... The basic gag of taking a silly Japanese gangster film and redubbing much of the audio with ridiculous dialogue isn't really that promising when you think about it.

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...and Tiger Lily reveals something early on about Early Woody. He wasn't always THAT funny. Take a look today at his first "starring Woody indiefilms" like "Take the Money and Run" and "Bananas" and "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" and you will see that a lot of the jokes fall flat or are too easy. (Still, a lot of his jokes hit BIG: "The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty.")

Woody hit big in the beginning because he was NEW(allowing a generation to leave Bob Hope and Jack Benny behind) and because he had a great movie star persona. I've always said that, rather like Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen was a much bigger deal as a movie star than as a writer-director. Of course, Clint didn't write, but you get the idea.

Anyway, "Tiger Lily" has a lot of lines that fall flat, too. But a number of lines work.

--- Allen and his crew of jokers manage to land a couple of good moments of ridiculousness, e.g., with redubbing they have a character addressing a woman as his mother then he punches her smack in the face) and a running verbal gag of a character who at a moment's provocation always starts abusing people with 'Spartan Pig, Saracen Dog...'

---

Funny moments, both.

A gag that managed to play on broadcast TV even though it was quite "dirty":

On screen, a woman dressed only in a towel approaches the spy hero. Then she removes the towel, revealing her nakedness(but we are behind the actress.)

As redubbed:

Woman in towel: Name three Presidents.
Spy hero: Washington.
Woman in towel advances closer.
Spy hero: Jefferson.
Woman reaches spy hero and drops her towel as he looks at her body.
Spy hero: (Beat) Uh...Lincoln?

Get it?

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But there aren't enough of these hits to make it worthwhile. I was pretty bored most of the time.

--

The weird thing is that one keeps finding oneself following the REAL plot of this only so-so Japanese Bond-type film. That Woody changes the MacGuffin into the "recipe for an egg salad sandwich" is only sort of funny, so we just go with the movie AS IT IS, and listen to the jokes with only the occasional laugh along the way.

BTW, this all started in 1963 with a syndicated American series called "Fractured Flickers" in which the Rocky and Bullwinkle gang put VERY funny dialogue over old silent movies(that ran too fast.) Its sacrlige now, what they did to those movies. But it was hilarious. I own the entire series. Its quite sophisticated for its time.

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Of course there are undercurrents too of mocking Japanese culture and of oogling Japnese women, and out-dated references to Japanese products (cars, toys, etc.) as synonymous with junk, etc..

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Yep. Its not as bad as Mickey Rooney as the Japanese guy in Breakfast at Tiffany's but...the world has changed.

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Obviously WUTL? is coming from a time when people were much more comfortable with ethnic sterotype-humor...so there's that too.

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The issue invariably becomes: will we allow these old movies to even EXIST? Breakfast at Tiffany's -- such a charming and classic film in so many ways -- h has been REVOKED from playing at various small town "On the Green Summer Movie Festivals" because of Rooney's character. Which is ironic, because the Rooney character is the one part of "Breakfast at Tiffany" that plays like Blake Edwards Clouseau-style trademark slapstick.

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In WUTL?'s defence, I assume that most of its audience over the years has probably seen it drunk or stoned (not my current state)...

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Glad to hear that. Hah. But it would have been OK. Its MY state, what with the IMDb boards going away. I'm in mourning.

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Moreover, I'm prepared to believe that I just have a blindspot with respect to certain sorts of junky films that many people can get a lot out of. I don't like the Ed Wood films I've seen, and Russ Meyer aside from Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls does nothing for me. WUTL? probably falls into that same zone of Z-grade bad-movie-making to which I'm blind or, changing metaphors, allergic.

---

They are an acquired taste. "So bad its good" doesn't work if its THAT bad.

I expect Tiger Lily will be allowed to circulate because it IS the first Woody Allen project that was his alone. Around this time in the 60's, he was better known as a comedian on TV (Dean Martin, Ed Sullivan) and for his too-brief, always funny appearances in movies like "What's New Pussycat?" and "Casino Royale." THOSE movies had big budgets; Woody started "indie" to get his own voice.

[–] movieghoul 7 years ago

Allen did write the screenplay for Pussycat (although who knows how much tinkering it went through) and he also wrote or interjected his dialogue in Casino Royale. IMO the hilarious execution scene in CR is the first great Allen moment on the big screen.

[–] jay441 7 years ago

Woman in towel: Name three Presidents.
Spy hero: Washington.
Woman in towel advances closer.
Spy hero: Jefferson.
Woman reaches spy hero and drops her towel as he looks at her body.
Spy hero: (Beat) Uh...Lincoln?

Get it?

Since the boards are ending (but there's hope, there's a petition to sign on another thread) I'll venture that "Lincoln" could be changed to the name of another more recent president (actually two recent POTUS's), and also I'm not sure the joke could be made today and still apply. Nuff sed. (I'll miss ya, boards).

It's hit or miss on the funny quotes but some are so silly you can't help chuckle: "It's Wing Fool, you fat! I mean Wing Fat, you fool!" Or when the spy recovers his conciousness after being knocked out and, rubbing the back of his head says," Owww, my leg."

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

212 Blood and Black Lace Mario Bava, 1964

B&BL is clearly an important film in that it's ground zero for all sorts of characteristic Giallo features - indifference to plot in favor of a relatively disconnected series of quasi-dream-like stalking sequences and kills almost all of which have a sexual angle (the victim is almost always a very beautiful woman in her underwear - or later naked), exaggerated color, a fashion/beauty industry setting, and so on. And these features of Giallos in turn influenced both the development of US slashers and stylists such as De Palma and more recently Winding Refn.

But recognizing something's importance isn't the same thing as liking it, and for me B&BL fell pretty flat, managing to be both not at all scary and not at all suspenseful (one or two kills make you wince). One problem is that the Giallo elements that are introduced here aren't pushed to the extremes that they'd later be, and I cant un-see all the later stuff, and so don't register the modertae versions here as *that* interesting. Another problem is that Bava is as unintersted in performance quality and dialogue as he is in plot...so a heck of a lot is being given up to give birth to a first draft of the new here. And that doesn't feel like a good trade. B&BL reminded me a little of Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) but B&BL is about 10% as interesting as PT. Needless to say, the wit and sharp editing of Psycho feels utterly alien to B&BL. It's not a good trade-off for me yet, maybe not until the early 1970s.

Note that the 'indifference to plot' in B&BL extends as far as motivations: not only are we encouraged to think little about the whodunnit side of the who when the solution is revealed it makes no sense of the ferocity of the actual crimes we've seen. That is, the details of the crimes would only really make sense if there was some true psychopathy or vengefulness at issue not the coverup of a black-mail. Of course by leaving this big hole in the picture Bava does encourage a kind of quasi-feminist speculation about a kind of free-floating misogyny that's around in the beauty/fashion industry. It's almost as if the revealed killers aren't the real killers. But I can't myself endorse Bava's inattentiveness and incoherence even if it does allow for fun speculations.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

314 Hatchet for the Honeymoon Mario Bava, 1970

HFTH has all sorts of interesting ideas story-wise and performance-wise and visually and sonically but the whole in my view never comes together, adding up to another miss from Bava for me.

The lead is a wedding dress-designer, John Harrington whom we know from the beginning is a psychopathic serial killer of women (women wearing his wedding dresses as it happens!). There's a bit of Norman Bates about him (as we'll later find out) but there's also a striking anticipation of Amercian's Psycho's Patrick Bateman in his character. He does some long voice over monologues coldly describing himself as a killer, his predilections, etc. (the actor even looks like Christian Bale in AP in some shots). The lead actor retired from film after this which is a surprise because he's definitely got a movie star look and might have given early '70s Eastwood and Beatty a run for their money if he'd stuck at it.

The movie twists from a character-study of a Psycho into an eccentric ghost-story: Harrington kills his (awful) wife and her ghost stalks him in the decidely unusual way of being mostly invisible to him but visible to everyone else...so even though he can't see her she's there to thwart his attempts to pick up new women! [Note that this is a ghost story that can't be interpreted other than supernaturally whereas you'd expect that the film would try to keep open the possibility that the ghost is just or mostly a projection of Harrington's Psychosis - there are, after all, other figures in the film that it's pretty clear early on *are* just Harrington's psyschological projections that way! Anthow, HFTH has both real ghosts and psychological ghosts/projections wandering around at the same time most of the time! It's the opposite of scary or suspecnseful to have your audience kind of puzzling over this, so one wonders if Bava really thought this through.]

The third main character (who bizarrely never gets integrated into the ghost-story) is a model played by the truly lovely B-movie queen, Dagmar Lassander (of The Laughing Woman fame from this quest), whom Harrington lusts after except that he fears he'll be driven to kill her so he also pushes her away...

Interesting music floats through the picture unfortunately with little apparent logic... Ultimately it feels like Bava never quite got control of this material. And as with Blood and Black Lace (1964), one can easy imagine other film-makers taking HFTH as a starting flag, taking over the good ideas within the film for themselves and possibly perfecting them.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

I guess the most obvious complaint/disappointment about Wright's list is its present-centered-ness: only 48 movies total from pre-1940 whereas Wright thinks there have been that been that many keepers since Gravity (2013). This complaint reaches its apotheosis when looking at 1939, traditionally throught of as one of the most golden of movie years, from which Wright takes only 2 films whereas Wright picks at least 18 films from 2015 (and yet somehow manages to leave out the two best, must-watch movies of last year according to me, Son Of Saul and Room!). I don't think it had occurred to anyone before Wright's list that it was so much as *possible* that 2015 was nine times as enjoyable a movie year as the year of Wizard of Oz, Rules of The Game, Gone With The Wind, Dark Victory, Stagecoach, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Of Mice and Men, Ninotchka, and so on.

I thought it might be useful to list a few films from that pre-1940 period that I find intensely enjoyable/rewatchable that Wright passed over (I actually don't believe that Wright doesn't love these films too - I think he's just discounted them prematurely/wrongly to make room for all sorts of forgettable mediocrities from recent times):

[in roughly anti-chronological order, ***-ing the ones that are *absolutely* non-negotiable in my view; note all items on my list are complete successes that are accessible to everyone now, not just to film scholars and students, hence, sorry, no Griffith, no Eisenstein, no Gance, no Menilmontant or Cabiria or The Crowd or Haxan, etc.]
Rules of The Game***
Gone With The Wind***
Dark Victory
Stagecoach***
Mr Smith Goes To Washington***
Young Mr Lincoln
Of Mice and Men***
Ninotchka
Olympia
Holiday***
Grand Illusion***
Stage Door***
Lost Horizon
Stella Dallas***
Swing Time***
Fury
Dead End
Make Way for Tomorrow***
My Man Godfrey***
The 39 Steps***
Top Hat
Sylvia Scarlett
Alice Adams
It Happened One Night***
Ruggles of Red Gap
The Thin Man
Little Women
Baby Face***
Design for Living***
Trouble In Paradise
Shanghai Express
The Blue Angel
The Man with A Movie Camera
Blackmail
The Public Enemy
All Quiet on the Western Front***
The Man Who Laughs
The Lodger
Entr'Acte
Sherlock Jr***
The Thief of Baghdad

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

I don't think it had occurred to anyone before Wright's list that it was so much as *possible* that 2015 was nine times as enjoyable a movie year as the year of Wizard of Oz, Rules of The Game, Gone With The Wind, Dark Victory, Stagecoach, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Of Mice and Men, Ninotchka, and so on.

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That's a very interesting point but I think it helps underline how this particular list works.

Wright seems to be favoring those movies that he "was here to see."

And I can dig on that.

The example I have used in the past is that while I have seen pretty much every Jack Nicholson movie since Easy Rider in 1969 -- because I've BEEN HERE since 1969, caught most of them first run in theaters the two to three times he worked a year -- I have never seen and will never see every Spencer Tracy movie because I would have to somehow retroactively watch (how?) everything he made from the 30s through the 40's...when I WASN'T here.

For my own part, I was very heartened to see that once one reaches 1950 on his list, from there to about 2001, I've seen about 5 out of every 6 films on the list. I DID manage to see a lot of movies in my life (Though many of the ones from the 50's I caught on TV in the sixties; I wasn't here for all of the fifties in much of a cognitive way.)

And Wright DOES pick a lot of the GOOD multiplex stuff. Top Secret(just as funny as Airplane and from the same makers, but oddly based on movies like "Torn Curtain," so nobody knew what was being spoofed.) Arachnaphobia(Jaws with spiders -- John Goodman is Quint as a pest control man.) John Wick(my favorite of 2014.)

---

On the issue of 1939 being the greatest movie year, that's one that is unassailable (as a historical matter of sheer number of movies released) but not necessarily all that personal anymore. Me, personally? The films of 1939 are just too old, with none of the frankness allowed since the R-rating, historical artifacts in the main, now.

Hell, as a matter of action and cast, I'm the kind of trogloydyte who prefers Gordon Douglas' 1966 remake of Stagecoach(in Cinemascope and Technicolor with an exciting Jerry Goldsmith score) to John Ford's Spartan and spare 1939 original. (I'm also a closet Gordon Douglas fan -- his movies are the little known Them, Rio Conchos, Stagecoach, Robin and the Seven Hoods, and Tony Rome, fun entertainments all.)

But then, for a generation or two behind me, how I feel about 1939 is that's likely how they feel about the two years that I find to be the big ones: 1959 and 1960. Those years, too, were "pre-R," but the films made in them pushed the envelope and were sexy, frank, and violent enough. (Psycho, The Apartment, Anatomy of a Murder, Some Like It Hot, Spartacus North by Northwest...though not Rio Bravo or A Hole in the Head. Those two are rather innocent.)

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I love Wright's list and doesn't 1,000 make a hell of a lot more sense than 100?

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

Wright seems to be favoring those movies that he "was here to see."

You have a lot more information about movies you were 'here to see'. You can be sensitive to *exactly* the milieu a film is building off, of how it represents an *incremental* achievement, you know *exactly* which expectations it was delightfully trying to subvert etc., *exactly* what its original achievement was (something that in the case of a big hit gets harder and harder to see through all the imitations), you get *all* the different levels of jokes, understand all the cultural and political references, and as a result you get to be able to make very fine discriminations among grades of trash that has no counterpart with older movies, which mostly and increasingly with age have to stand on their own merits.

Looked at the other way around, however, all this extra information, however, leads one to be super-charitable toward stuff from your own era in a way you can never be to anything else. Since I don't like the idea of being mentally imprisoned in any one era my own preference is to constantly try to take a longer view and in a sense de-bias my own responses to films as far as possible so that I hold, e.g., Neon Demon (2016) and Stage Door (1937) to the same standards.

So, for example, John Wick was pretty amusing all-told. It wittily traded on all of us having a kind of close awareness of Keanu's career and persona (the 'hotel for assassins' stuff felt like something out of The Matrix), and took for granted that we'd seen about a million urban revenge action films before and that nobody who enjoys the genre takes it that seriously (hence the dog, and hence the general one-dimensional feel of the film). [There's a non-hit comedy film out this summer called 'Keanu' which builds on John Wick I guess and is something about a cat? Is it any good?] But all of this necessary background won't be especially apparent to people in 40 years time. Will anyone watch John Wick in 40 years time? Do the people who *really* like JW even *expect* anyone to care about this film 40 years from now? Now I think about it, my own positive but rather muted reaction to JW just *is* me instinctively thinking of it as a light piece of fun that'll be soon forgotten. I enjoyed it, but it was also a bit empty, no layers, so nothing from it has really stuck with me or inspired me to see it again. The opposite is true for me of Grand Budapest Hotel and The Immigrant from JW's year or Point Blank (1967) or Get Carter (1971) or The Limey (1999) from JW's genre.

One prime example of what I regard as necessary de-biasing connects with the auteur approach to watching films. It comes through loud and clear from Wright's list that he finds some directors kind of infinitely fascinating so that *their* grand messes are (because of all the interesting connections through their whole oeuvre) more enjoyable than other people's solid but more stand alone work. So, for example, almost every David Lynch film is on Wright's list, including Wild At Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Lost Highway. Now, I think these films are worth seeing (with Lost Highway the best, most complete of the three in my view) and all of them look better retrospectively after Mulholland Dr. But none in my view were among the best movies of their years, and WAH and TP:FWWM are actaully quite poor. They're fascinating messes but still messes, hence they're in my view automatically taggable as 'minor films' and, auterist pleasures notwithstanding, they're not *really* as enjoyable as other movies of the time that don't make Wright's list. I've never met anyone who really likes Wild At Heart, whereas Jacob's Ladder from the same year *regularly* comes up (Lyne's no Lynch but JL rocked and, you'd think, would be right up Wright's alley). And TP:FWWM for 1992? Nobody preferred that to, for example, The Crying Game or Husbands and Wives, which were among the really vital films that year. Wright is, I suspect, just mis-remembering, hence distorting his own faves list.

Doubtless it's some kind of fool's errand to dispute someone else's Favorites List, but when I press on Wright's list a bit, I find it looks hastily thrown together. Another example that makes me think this: only one Almodovar film is on Wright's list, 2011's The Skin I Live In. But it's almost impossible to believe that that's anyone's favorite Almodovar film. It's the equivalent of (someone you believe has seen most Hitchcocks) only having one Hitchcock on a list and it being Dial M For Murder!

Interesting stat: Wright's peak fave is 1973, which gets 31 entries on his list; as much as 1940-1947 combined. I don't think anyone had considered it so much as possible before for anyone (who's not 12 in 1973) to prefer, e.g., Live and Let Die (1973) and Theater of Blood (1973), over all of Casablanca (1942), It's A Wonderful Life (1946), Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The Lady Eve (1941), To Be Or Not To Be (1942), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Now, Voyager (1942), and so on. But that's Wright's official position now!

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

Wright seems to be favoring those movies that he "was here to see."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You have a lot more information about movies you were 'here to see'. You can be sensitive to *exactly* the milieu a film is building off, of how it represents an *incremental* achievement, you know *exactly* which expectations it was delightfully trying to subvert etc., *exactly* what its original achievement was (something that in the case of a big hit gets harder and harder to see through all the imitations), you get *all* the different levels of jokes, understand all the cultural and political references, and as a result you get to be able to make very fine discriminations among grades of trash that has no counterpart with older movies, which mostly and increasingly with age have to stand on their own merits.

---

Well stated, as usual!

My Hitchcocockian example here is Topaz versus Suspicion.

"On the books," objectively, "Topaz" is considered an old man's embarrassing failure and Suspicion was a hit, a success, with some great stars(in Cary Grant, one of the greatest) and, despite its "cop out" ending, a successful accepted tale.

Well, I was alive to see "Topaz" in 1969 and it was a formative movie going experience to me in "all that was around it"(both a burgeoning Hitchcock fanship and a happy year of my late childhood) and...for personal reasons...I really like Topaz.

Meanwhile, Suspicion is well made, has great ideas(the glowing glass of milk), some real subtlety about the dynamics of marriage and in-law-hood and...I just can't connect to it. And..I just don't relate to Joan Fontaine much at all. Such a weak sister...today.

But mainly what I can't relate to about Suspicion is...I wasn't here. Those who DID see it, in that year(1941), with THEIR sense of good acting(Fontaine...she won an Oscar), a good story, etc. Well, on paper...Suspicion IS better than Topaz, and a Hitchocck success versus a Hitchcock failure.

Funny(I realize at this moment) that I chose to pit Topaz against Suspicion. For they shares something: re-shot, ineffective alternative endings. You blow the ending of a movie, you got real problems.

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Looked at the other way around, however, all this extra information, however, leads one to be super-charitable toward stuff from your own era in a way you can never be to anything else.

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As above. Bingo.

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Since I don't like the idea of being mentally imprisoned in any one era my own preference is to constantly try to take a longer view and in a sense de-bias my own responses to films as far as possible so that I hold, e.g., Neon Demon (2016) and Stage Door (1937) to the same standards.

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I envy you...and I hang my own head in shame. Though I tell you -- King Kong and The Wizard of Oz(both from the 30's) play pretty damn well today for me.

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So, for example, John Wick was pretty amusing all-told. It wittily traded on all of us having a kind of close awareness of Keanu's career and persona (the 'hotel for assassins' stuff felt like something out of The Matrix), and took for granted that we'd seen about a million urban revenge action films before and that nobody who enjoys the genre takes it that seriously (hence the dog, and hence the general one-dimensional feel of the film).

---

The fact that they had "boiled down the plot" to such an essential rationale -- "A punk killed John Wick's puppy and John Wick won't stop killing people til he kills the punk" is part of the film's basic charm, to me. It allowed all that carnage to go forward BECAUSE of the one dimensionality.

But within that simplicity, I felt, was one very good piece of theme : the punk is a punk, but his Russian crime boss father IS his father...and the father is COMPELLED to try to protect his son with everything he has. When the father finally makes the decision to give up his own son...something one dimensional becomes(for me) something profound.)

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[There's a non-hit comedy film out this summer called 'Keanu' which builds on John Wick I guess and is something about a cat? Is it any good?]

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I haven't seen it, I don't know -- but I was wondering about that connection myself.

Recall, that, as "guilty pleasure stars" go, I was always a Keanu Reeve fan, and I was pleased to see that John Wick gave him a comeback. A John Wick II is coming -- a mistake dramatically but nice for Keanu's career.

WHY was I a Keanu Reeve fan? Well, I think it has to do with the contradictions within him - such a boyish manner and beautiful face and yet, in films like Speed, The Matrix and now John Wick...he puts that boyishness in the service of really tough guy. Or one who BECOMES tough(The Matrix.)

Keanu seems to get the "can't act" thing brought down on him as much as John Gavin did with Psycho...but both of them had/have something. Keanu has more.

I also hear that Keanu is a nice guy who gave up some of his "Matrix" points to the CGI guys.

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But all of this necessary background won't be especially apparent to people in 40 years time. Will anyone watch John Wick in 40 years time? Do the people who *really* like JW even *expect* anyone to care about this film 40 years from now? Now I think about it, my own positive but rather muted reaction to JW just *is* me instinctively thinking of it as a light piece of fun that'll be soon forgotten. I enjoyed it, but it was also a bit empty, no layers, so nothing from it has really stuck with me or inspired me to see it again. The opposite is true for me of Grand Budapest Hotel and The Immigrant from JW's year or Point Blank (1967) or Get Carter (1971) or The Limey (1999) from JW's genre.

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Hard to say if anyone will care about John Wick forty years from now. I still care about Charley Varrick 40 years past it...and that movie wasn't a hit and was on NBC TV less than a year after its theatrical release. I think in both cases, critics took note that "the usual crime action formula" had been improved upon in some manner. If these movies linger at all, it is as "cult items" that -- now, we know -- can be preserved for cable or internet forever.

This about John Wick: it came out within a month of "The Equalizer" which had ALMOST the same simplicity, basically the same hero(a trained killer who comes out of retirement), and, basically, the same villains: Russian mobsters. "The Equalizer" chose to put in a lot more plot and exposition between intermittent action scenes(having an Oscar-caliber star like Denzel in the lead compelled it) but fed off the same concept: a Tough Guy avenges attacks on the helpless(a puppy in John Wick; pretty young Russian hookers in The Equalizer.) "John Wick" went for a much higher body count and wall-to-wall, stylized action, but "The Equalizer" offers similar satisfaction of revenge.

And: its "The Equalizer" team who shall soon bring us "The Magnificent Seven" which looks to trade on the same Very Bad Bad Guys, Very Good Good Guys and Very Violent Revenge as its operational hook. (Too bad Denzel couldn't get Keanu as one of his Seven.)

And thus: John Wick begat The Equalizer begat The Magnificent Seven and I have about two years among the three of them on the same wavelength of action entertainment. Satisfying movies, all (one sight unseen.)

----

One prime example of what I regard as necessary de-biasing connects with the auteur approach to watching films. It comes through loud and clear from Wright's list that he finds some directors kind of infinitely fascinating so that *their* grand messes are (because of all the interesting connections through their whole oeuvre) more enjoyable than other people's solid but more stand alone work. So, for example, almost every David Lynch film is on Wright's list, including Wild At Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Lost Highway. Now, I think these films are worth seeing (with Lost Highway the best, most complete of the three in my view) and all of them look better retrospectively after Mulholland Dr. But none in my view were among the best movies of their years, and WAH and TP:FWWM are actaully quite poor. They're fascinating messes but still messes, hence they're in my view automatically taggable as 'minor films' and, auterist pleasures notwithstanding, they're not *really* as enjoyable as other movies of the time that don't make Wright's list.

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Well, that's really the gist of the auteur thing, isn't it? I make allowances for Hitchcock and QT based on their best when enjoying their less-best...they just can't MAKE bad movies in terms of pleasing me in some way.

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I've never met anyone who really likes Wild At Heart,

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Eh..its pretty sexy. I knew one WOMAN who really liked it, and showed it to me. Go figure. Plus she always used one catchphrase from the movie, incessantly: "How your mind works, peanut, is God's own wonder." At least, I think that's the line.

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Doubtless it's some kind of fool's errand to dispute someone else's Favorites List, but when I press on Wright's list a bit, I find it looks hastily thrown together.

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I'd say, a list of 1,000 forces this. He probably wrote down every movie he ever saw and subtracted some.

And personal taste matters. The critics didn't much like Torn Curtain, Topaz, and Family Plot, but they are among my favorites in 1966, 1969, and 1976. They gave me pleasure in the anticipation AND the watching, even if that watching was invariably couched in "but these scenes are boring, and those scenes are badly written."

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Another example that makes me think this: only one Almodovar film is on Wright's list, 2011's The Skin I Live In. But it's almost impossible to believe that that's anyone's favorite Almodovar film. It's the equivalent of (someone you believe has seen most Hitchcocks) only having one Hitchcock on a list and it being Dial M For Murder!

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Ha. I would like to add that I like Torn Curtain, Topaz, and Family Plot ALL better than Dial M for Murder, which is pretty much stuck in one room for the duration, gives Bob Cummings too much to do, and which peaks with the attack on Kelly and then slogs on down to a decent "Columbo" ending. Though I do love Milland's elegant evil towards Swan in Act One...how a really suave guy reveals a black heart of murderous intent towards his wife and sadistic domination of another man.

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Interesting stat: Wright's peak fave is 1973, which gets 31 entries on his list; as much as 1940-1947 combined. I don't think anyone had considered it so much as possible before for anyone (who's not 12 in 1973) to prefer, e.g., Live and Let Die (1973) and Theater of Blood (1973), over all of Casablanca (1942), It's A Wonderful Life (1946), Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The Lady Eve (1941), To Be Or Not To Be (1942), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Now, Voyager (1942), and so on. But that's Wright's official position now!

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Well, again...personal experience, maybe. How old IS Wright now?

I do recall loving 1973 for the sheer variety of the year. Whereas The Godfather dominated '72 and Jaws dominated '75 and the critical community gave '74 jointly to Godfather II and Chinatown, it seemed like 1973 had something for everyone. The Sting and The Exorcist as year-end blockbusters, with the latter as a "Psycho"-like worldwide phenomenon. American Graffiti to capture youth 50's/early 60's nostalgia and set the course for the years ahead(Star Wars, Happy Days). Westworld's great premise of men seeking to "live" a Western with robot men to kill and robot women to have sex with(it becomes an HBO series this year); "The Way We Were" a great, smart, sad love story; "The Long Goodbye" reinventing Raymond Chandler for a shambling Elliott Gould via shambling Robert Altman; "The Paper Chase" positing not only the world of law school, but the world of ALL higher education for teens looking ahead and adults looking back, Woody Allen doing a Dixieland-scored Keaton(Buster, not Diane) in Sleeper. Clint Eastwood and Walter Matthau(!!) dueling as SF cops in Magnum Force and The Laughing Policeman; Clint in rare Western mode in High Plains Drifter. And Walter Matthau for Clint's director Don Siegel in "Charley Varrick"(a great crime tale which is really "The Sting" in plot, too).

And indeed Theater of Blood(the Shakespearan murders were horrific and funny at the same time) and Live and Let Die(well, not that one...James Bond goes seventies clunky with a lightweight cutie-pie in for Big Sean.) But the Bond movie did have a great Paul McCartney theme song that dominated the summer car radios of '73.

Hey, I LOVED 1973.

But those forties movies are greater classics, no doubt about it.

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[–] swanstep 8 years ago

87 Criss Cross Robert Siodmak, 1949

Criss Cross (1949) struck me as a fairly routine noir (albeit its dialogue never crackles like the best noirs') with one big exception: the central, filled-with-smoke-and-confusion heist-gone-wrong scene is a cracker, brilliantly filmed from beginning to end. Numerous other action scenes have stolen liberally from it I think, perhaps especially Kurosawa in Seven Samourai but probably Dassin and Leone and the Coens in a bunch of things (maybe even the sandstorm conflagration in American Sniper owes a bit to it). It's something for Siodmak to have cooked up an action scene that makes complete sense but that also just *looks* cool, and action style-merchants since have duly taken note.

For 'old LA' fans, CC also has a bunch of scenes in the old Bunker Hill downtown with streetcars and cable-cars alike all running. Cool.

One great scene wouldn't be enough to get something onto my top 1000, but Wright's in part at least an action film-maker so probably that's the sense this makes sense for him.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

17 Little Caesar Mervyn LeRoy, 1931

Little Caesar suffers by comparison with Wellman's The Public Enemy and Hawks's Scarface that followed immediately after it. Eddie G. just isn't Cagney especially, LeRoy offers little in the way of visual or editing flair (I think he probably learned some lessons by being shown up so quickly by Wellman and Hawks - LeRoy's subsequent films are much flashier with a much stronger directorial hand than in LC), and the basic rise-and-fall story just better done with better dames, better gun-fights, better you name it in the other films. Glad I saw LC for completeness's sake but it wouldn't be anywhere near my top 1000. 1931 had a bunch of (still) intensely interesting and fun films including M, Public Enemy, Frankenstein, City Lights, but LC isn't one of them.

68 Dead of Night Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton, Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, 1945

Wow, an anthology movie that substantially anticipates the tones and signature sub-genres and full-on twisterama of both Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.

At the half-way point I wasn't especially impressed, but the last half hour delivers big-time. That end of the movie includes a bit of Psycho-anticipation in the following psychologist debrief scene (for the Psychologist's own story about a murdering Ventriloquist, Frere and his dummy, Hugo):

Dr Van Sratten: One of the most complete examples of dual identity in the history of medical science.
Someone else: You mean that half the time Frere was Frere and the other half he was his dummy?
Dr Van Sratten: Exactly. And in the end, the dummy got the upper hand entirely.
Someone else: But how did the dummy get from one room to another? Under its own steam?
Dr Van Sratten: Without knowing what he was doing, Frere took it himself. Impelled by the dominating Hugo half of his mind. That is the scientific explanation. But, no doubt, you people would prefer a more colourful one. That Hugo had become endowed with an existence of his own.

Dead of Night's ending or series of endings *after* the Ventril. story (apparently) twistingly wraps up and is debriefed is pretty stunning even now, long after almost all of its tricks have been pillaged by Hitch and Serling and Polanski and then been completely absorbed into the wider culture from there. One struggles to imagine exactly how mind-blowing it must have felt in 1945.

In conclusion then, Dead of Night is a must see for Psycho-fans and for everyone else really, notwithstanding that at least the first half is going to seem a little quaint.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

More on Dead of Night (1945) and Hitchcock:

1. Note that the Ventroloquist story (which ends right before the Psychologist debrief) ends with the Ventriloquist in a largely white cell speaking with his own mouth in the dummy's voice - i.e. with broadly the same import as hearing Mother's voice over Norman's face.
2. And the ventriloqized ventriloquist is played by Michael Redgrave who'd worked with Hitch in a major role in The Lady Vanishes (he's the musicologist, Gilbert), has a small role in The Innocents (1961), and who, let's face it, has that slightly stiff but slightly boyish look that Perkins, Lawrence Harvey, Michael Rennie, and a bunch of others all had in the '50s and '60s.
3. I'm pretty sure then that Psycho DNA is to be found in DoN, probably via Bloch as well as Hitch.
4. It's worth pointing out that Dead of Night (1945) is from Ealing Studios which (i) was run by Michael Balcon who'd produced for Hitchcock in the '30s esp. The 39 Steps, and (ii) we know that Hitch kept a pretty close eye on Ealing's output probably in part because of that personal connection with Balcon. We know, for example, that Hitchcock absolutely *loved* Ealing's greatest film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) (the brilliant serial killer black comedy that Chaplin tried and failed to make with Mr Verdoux). Hitchcock effectively restaged King Hearts and Coronets in 1957 for The Salt Lake Times! This photo-article included the famous shots of Hitch dressed as a woman. In the article he plays versions of all the 8 roles that Alec Guiness played in KH&C including Aunt Agatha. This link has the details if you're interested:
http://tinyurl.com/gqk2le8
including a sub-link to the whole Salt Lake Times article.

Anyhow, I wonder if there isn't an overarching story to be told here about Hitchcock's career. He was already an anthologized mystery-story publisher in the '40s but effectively his Hollywood career was all tied up then with working with slighty more elevated materails for big stars like Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, and Cary Grant. The more disreputable but exciting stuff that they were doing back at Ealing Studios in England was right up Hitch's alley but frustratingly he couldn't really do that stuff at the big Hollywood studios.....until TV came knocking and then he could do that sort of macabre but humorous stuff every week. Psycho from this perspective is just the moment when finally the world of Hitch's star-driven Hollywood entertainments and the world of his publishing, TV, Ealing-influenced side came together.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

1. Note that the Ventroloquist story (which ends right before the Psychologist debrief) ends with the Ventriloquist in a largely white cell speaking with his own mouth in the dummy's voice - i.e. with broadly the same import as hearing Mother's voice over Norman's face.

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Well, I guess we have to add Dead of Night to Diabolique, Touch of Evil, House on Haunted Hill and Sunset Boulevard as influences on Psycho. What a pastiche! And yet, none of the above had the raw screamable shocks of the shower and staircase murders and the fruit cellar climax. Hitch took it all up to a much higher level of terror. Its as if Psycho always manages to wriggle out of looking like a TOTAL copycat movie. The shocks were BIG.

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2. And the ventriloqized ventriloquist is played by Michael Redgrave who'd worked with Hitch in a major role in The Lady Vanishes (he's the musicologist, Gilbert), has a small role in The Innocents (1961), and who, let's face it, has that slightly stiff but slightly boyish look that Perkins, Lawrence Harvey, Michael Rennie, and a bunch of others all had in the '50s and '60s.

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They were of a castable type, the polar opposite of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum. I guess the movies needed them then. Perhaps women liked them?

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3. I'm pretty sure then that Psycho DNA is to be found in DoN, probably via Bloch as well as Hitch.

Likely Bloch first, and then Hitchcock in viewing DON, and then Stefano in borrowing some of the sentence structure of the shrink scene.

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4. It's worth pointing out that Dead of Night (1945) is from Ealing Studios which (i) was run by Michael Balcon who'd produced for Hitchcock in the '30s esp. The 39 Steps, and (ii) we know that Hitch kept a pretty close eye on Ealing's output probably in part because of that personal connection with Balcon.

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Yes.

The "alternative Hitchcock career" has him sticking it out in England and working with Ealing and skipping big Hollywood movies and stars. However, it is believed he would have still made Frenzy. (But not for Ealing?)

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We know, for example, that Hitchcock absolutely *loved* Ealing's greatest film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) (the brilliant serial killer black comedy that Chaplin tried and failed to make with Mr Verdoux). Hitchcock effectively restaged King Hearts and Coronets in 1957 for The Salt Lake Times! This photo-article included the famous shots of Hitch dressed as a woman. In the article he plays versions of all the 8 roles that Alec Guiness played in KH&C including Aunt Agatha. This link has the details if you're interested:
http://tinyurl.com/gqk2le8
including a sub-link to the whole Salt Lake Times article.

---

Wow. And yet KHAC isn't really in the Hitchcock manner; there's not much suspense to it, its too gimmicky.

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Anyhow, I wonder if there isn't an overarching story to be told here about Hitchcock's career. He was already an anthologized mystery-story publisher in the '40s but effectively his Hollywood career was all tied up then with working with slighty more elevated materails for big stars like Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, and Cary Grant. The more disreputable but exciting stuff that they were doing back at Ealing Studios in England was right up Hitch's alley but frustratingly he couldn't really do that stuff at the big Hollywood studios.....until TV came knocking and then he could do that sort of macabre but humorous stuff every week. Psycho from this perspective is just the moment when finally the world of Hitch's star-driven Hollywood entertainments and the world of his publishing, TV, Ealing-influenced side came together

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I will buy all of this. As you know I struggle with Hitchcock's forties output -- he seems better than his films back then, which too often are as much dramas (Rebecca, Suspicion, The Paradine Case, Under Capricorn) as thrillers. Hollywood had Hitch on a bit of a leash. (It could have been worse; the record shows that the studios kept trying to foist "normal studio dramas" on him -- had he made those, he would have lost his suspense persona and his stardom, and been more easily fired and cast aside.)

The Hitchcock TV show arrives in the US around the same time as Diabolique, and tracks along with Touch of Evil and William Castle et al and...Psycho was almost the unavoidable climax to the whole thing. Keep in mind, Hitchcock had been relentlessly looking for a horror property since Diabolique hit(he may have thought he had it in the novel from which Vertigo was made , until he "got" that one)... and when he found Psycho, he was ready for it. BOOM..it got bought , it got scripted, it got cast, it got made.

He'd been waiting for it.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

3. I'm pretty sure then that Psycho DNA is to be found in DoN, probably via Bloch as well as Hitch.

Likely Bloch first, and then Hitchcock in viewing DON, and then Stefano in borrowing some of the sentence structure of the shrink scene.

Re-reading Bloch, Sam's recounting to Lila of Dr Steiner's diagnosis of Norman includes the following:

"Then the horror wasn't in the house," Lila murmured. "It was in his head."
"Steiner says the relationship was like that of a ventriloquist and his dummy. Mother and _little_ Norman must have carried on regular conversations."

So, while we'd have to know whether Bloch saw DoN to be 100% sure, it's looking good for DoN influence on Psycho via Bloch as well as Hitch.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

Re-reading Bloch, Sam's recounting to Lila of Dr Steiner's diagnosis of Norman includes the following:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Then the horror wasn't in the house," Lila murmured. "It was in his head."
"Steiner says the relationship was like that of a ventriloquist and his dummy. Mother and _little_ Norman must have carried on regular conversations."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, while we'd have to know whether Bloch saw DoN to be 100% sure, it's looking good for DoN influence on Psycho via Bloch as well as Hitch.

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"There ye go." I'd say this is now almost "legally conclusive in a court of law." Dead of Night likely inspired the writing of Psycho the book, and in turn of Psycho the film.

THAT said, I'll reaffirm my thought posed above: perhaps for Hitchocck, the plot -- however strong and laid out in films before Psycho -- was nonetheless subordinate to the "cinematic shocks": I can't think of a film before Psycho of the group we always mention that has anything as shocking and brutal as the two murders.

There is also the brilliant matter of the motel as the "house of horror in front of the house of horror." Now, Orson Welles had given us a malevolent motel in Touch of Evil but its all "false alarms" as to anyone getting killed there. Janet Leigh is menaced there, but not killed there, and not raped there.

Psycho gave us a motel and postulated it as a literal death trap waiting by the side of the road for unsuspecting female customers(and the unsuspecting investigators who track them). With the kicker of that historic old house up the hill behind it.

THESE elements give Psycho its own punch, and likely gave it blockbuster earnings in 1960 and classic status today.

PS. I'll opine that Touch of Evil comes the closest to Psycho in the murder category: Welles' stalk-and-kill strangling of petty mob boss Akim Tamiroff...with Leigh awakening to see Tamiroff's bug-eyed head above her bed(influential, perhaps, both to Arbogast's bug-eyed bloody face AND Mother's skull face in Psycho -- but not as scary as either.)

[–] CharlesTheBold 7 years ago

Another thing about DEAD OF NIGHT: the man in the hearse nightmare who said "Room for one more!" looked like a dead ringer for Alfred Hitchcock, which made his grim-reaper symbolism even funnier. ( I think the actor's name was something like Matthew Malleson) . He also played the comic executioner in KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

At the half-way point I wasn't especially impressed, but the last half hour delivers big-time. That end of the movie includes a bit of Psycho-anticipation in the following psychologist debrief scene (for the Psychologist's own story about a murdering Ventriloquist, Frere and his dummy, Hugo):

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Van Sratten: One of the most complete examples of dual identity in the history of medical science.
Someone else: You mean that half the time Frere was Frere and the other half he was his dummy?
Dr Van Sratten: Exactly. And in the end, the dummy got the upper hand entirely.
Someone else: But how did the dummy get from one room to another? Under its own steam?
Dr Van Sratten: Without knowing what he was doing, Frere took it himself. Impelled by the dominating Hugo half of his mind. That is the scientific explanation. But, no doubt, you people would prefer a more colourful one. That Hugo had become endowed with an existence of his own.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? This IS the shrink scene 15 years early("the dummy got the upper hand entirely" is rather like "in Norman's case, the dominant personality has won") Were there a lot of "review complainers" about THAT shrink scene, I wonder? Probably not. It sounds shorter. But we can figure that Robert Bloch saw Dead of Night, maybe Joe Stefano, too(given how close the dialogue is.)

As we've noted, the "split personality" story was there a long time before Psycho -- in this, in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and in The Wolfman. Perhaps one of the many great things about Psycho is how this rather "standard" split personality twist was quite magnificently hidden from the audience this time and only exploded on them at the end. Key to that, I believe, is that Norman turned into a female personality(complete, alas with a largely female recorded voice.)

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Dead of Night's ending or series of endings *after* the Ventril. story (apparently) twistingly wraps up and is debriefed is pretty stunning even now, long after almost all of its tricks have been pillaged by Hitch and Serling and Polanski and then been completely absorbed into the wider culture from there. One struggles to imagine exactly how mind-blowing it must have felt in 1945.

In conclusion then, Dead of Night is a must see for Psycho-fans and for everyone else really, notwithstanding that at least the first half is going to seem a little quaint.

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I'll go looking. I must admit I've read of "Dead of Night" and the ventriloquist story for years now. And both The Twilight Zone and the movie "Magic"(1978), lifted the tale of the ventriloquist dummy, too. In some ways, these are simply re-tellings of the same story for new times, but with what twists can be found.

In "Magic," we have the great early scene in which showbiz agent Burgess Meredith demands of mentally ill ventriloquist Anthony Hopkins(hiding out at an old backwater motel!) that he either remain silent for five complete minutes. The dummy can't talk. If the dummy talks, its off to the institution for Hopkins. Its an excruciatingly long five minutes...and Anthony Per-- er Hopkins, can't do it. The dummy talks, the agent dies.

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

In conclusion then, Dead of Night is a must see for Psycho-fans and for everyone else really, notwithstanding that at least the first half is going to seem a little quaint.

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I'll go looking.

Dead of Night (1945) plays on TCM in the US fairly regularly. Next screening appears to be for Halloween, Oct 31 at 2.30 p.m..

There are also various copies floating around on line (e.g., one on a sub-youtube site called veoh.com although it's fairly low quality). The copy I watched was a little better than that and had been taped off TCM.

Anyhow, DoN is a quite amazing film in terms of how much of later culture it anticipates. And Ealing didn't make another horror film (anthology or otherwise)! Famously they went broke in the mid '50s and one has to wonder whether they could have avoided that if they'd taken DoN seriously as a template for a horror/thriller sub-division. Heck, *they* could have gone into TV and made AHP or Twilight Zone themselves!

Of course, it's easier said than done to churn out lots of good genre films or tv shows. AHP and TZ had the strong personalties of Hitch and Serling respesctively to give the viewer something each week even when the stories weren't so strong. That anthology tv-movie, "Trilogy of Terror' is pretty great too, but if its success were easy to replicate, Dan Curtis would have done so.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

413 Let Sleeping Corpses Lie Jorge Grau, 1974

Decent zombie film which mutates into a 'wrong man' thriller as the police disbelieve our '70s-Jeff-Bridges-like hero who's trying to warn them about the zombies and suspect him of the Zs' murders. The third act then mutates into what we might call a full-on '1974 movie' where we're in compete darkness most of the time and no matter how hard the good guys struggle, things turn out awfully, they get blamed, killed, and the Z-producing system only gets stronger. 'Forget it George, it's Zombie-town' is never heard but feels like it hangs over the whole film.

That probably makes LSCL sound better than it is: despite the occasional nice shot or sequence that's well-edited and suspenseful, a lot of the time it's pretty rough, the action's unclear, and there's a lot of breathless rushing around between a set of locations whose inter-relationships we never really get straight. The main female character is reduced to being an in-distress, shrieker for almost the whole film which gets old, and so on.

LSCL does feel like a real influence on Wright's Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, with humor about British unflappability subbing in for LSCL's 1974 bleakness. For reasons of completeness then, I'm happy to have seen LSCL, but I'm also pretty sure that I never need to see LSCL again.

Update: Rewatching the best scene in the movie - the zombie introduction scene - it's pretty darn great. The trouble is that *it* has an almost Spielbergian feel - the camera's exactly in the right places throughout, and at the moment when tension is ratcheting up we suddenly get some beautiful close-ups of our leads, they look like stars, and we are in good hands. This is a problems only because nothing else in the film feels that well constructed or even feels like it has the same director. Our leads never feel like stars-in-the-making again or even ever register as real characters again. Not sure what happened with the film-making that it should exhibit such a pronounced difference across one scene. The experience is a little like with Piranha 2 - James Cameron's little-know directorial debut. I watched this for Cameron-completeness at some point - anyhow it's truly dreadful except for one ridiculous but really well-staged scene in a morgue. It's as if Cameron had almost no budget for the film and then blew most of it on the time and sfx to stage one really great set-piece. The rest of LSCL is much better than the rest of Piranha 2 but there's almost the same delta in quality.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

22 Island of Lost Souls Erle C. Kenton, 1932

IoLS has a lot in common with Freaks (1932) but also with the two, great 'mysterious island' movies King Kong (1933) and The Most Dangerous Game (1933). Together these 4 films form a quartet of semi-horrors focused on the policing of the boundary between the human and the non-human. IoLS has great make-up effects, a taut, thoughtful script from the Wells novel, and Laughton as an unforgettable Morreau. Great voice-work from him throughout and even better blood-curdling screams at the end together with Kenton's steady direction make IoLS a near-classic. It doesn't have Kong's spectacle or Freaks' outrageousness/mind-blowingness (even in the expurgated form we have it in), but it's of similar basic quality I'd say. A must see in other words (what took me so long?).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

19 Monkey Business Norman Z. McLeod, 1931

A very pure example of Marxian anarchy, almost no plot, just gag after gag (for better or worse), brothers plays themselves, no Margaret Dumont, no one else makes any impact whatsoever.

I guess, on reflection, that I prefer my Marx brothers a little more mixed/impure where there's more story and a stronger, more visual directorial hand in the mix (see, e.g., McCarey and Sam Wood doing Duck Soup and A Night At The Opera respectively). Monkey Business (1931) just wasn't involving enough, was too one-note for me (I much prefer Hawks's Monk Bus (1952) w/ Grant, Rogers, Monroe - not on Wright's list -... I think that's enough to get me banned from some cineaste circles!)

[–] suzishadow 7 years ago

I much prefer Hawks's Monk Bus (1952) w/ Grant, Rogers, Monroe - not on Wright's list -... I think that's enough to get me banned from some cineaste circles!)

I prefer HH's Monkey Business, too.

"Fire bad. Tree pretty."

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

92 D.O.A. Rudolph Maté, 1950
124 The Big Combo Joseph H. Lewis, 1955

Two partially successful noirs, both with superior photography (director Naté was himself one of the great DPs for Dreyer before coming to Hollywood to shoot things like Foreign Correspondent for Hitch, To Be or Not To be for Lubitsch, Gilda, and so on), and both let down by inferior acting and plotting. DOA is further hampered by terrrible sound fx early and ponderous Tiomkin score. Raksin's jazzy score for Big Combo is well-judges by comparison.

Redeeming features for Big Combo include typical, late-noir looseness about sexuality: both male leads are explicitly characetrized by their sexual ablities to pleasure women, and a couple of the henchmen are clearly signaled as a gay couple. Like Kiss Me Deadly (1955) there's a sense that everyone good or bad is getting their rocks off in pretty callous ways.

Redeeming features for DOA include a good hot-jazz/jump-blues scene and its general picture of 1950 San Fran as party town. It's a shame in a way that the picture doesn't stay there instead of diverting to LA.

DOA bears some resemblance to Kazan's Panic In The Streets (1950), a New Orleans Noir, but PITS strikes me as a much better overall film. British Noir, Night and The City (1950) also strikes me as more complete, less flawed than DOA. Neither of these are on Wright's list. Also not on Wright's list from 1950, Cukor's sparkling Born Yesterday or Ophuls' luminous La Ronde.

From 1955, I'd definitely take Smiles of A Summer Night, Ordet, Man From Laramie, To Catch A Thief over Big Combo

DOA and Big Combo are definitely worth seeing but they're not in my view among the best films of their respective years, they're the third or fourth best noirs of their years. Nor are they super-fun enough so that their strengths just overwhelm their weaknesses: which is what, e.g., Rebel Without a Cause and To Catch a Thief and La Ronde and Gun Crazy strike me as being.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

95 Los olvidados Luis Bunuel, 1950

Essential film in the tradition of ultra-grim films about societies (here Mexico) eat their poor children alive. The post-war period saw a bunch of classics on the theme of lost children in Europe after WW2, esp. Germany Year Zero and Forbidden Games. Los Olvidados then shows that poor kids surviving (barely) in Mexico City untouched by war have it no better than refugee kids and kids surviving in ruins in Europe.

Perhaps because of the greater universality of peacetime poverty (compared with post-war scenario) Los Olvidados looks forward to 400 Blows and City of God (which I needs to rewatch now to spot its explicit references to Los Olvidados) and Lilya-4-Ever in a way that the German-Y-Z and Forbidden Games don't.

So, a tough watch, and not at all the playful surealism of early and late Bunuel, and its probably true that if LO was the first film on the topic I'd watched rather than the 21st I'd be less deatched from it than I in fact was. Los Olvidados did feel like 'eating my vegetables', but, well, you *do* have to eat your vegatables! I've very glad to have seen LO. I should have seen it long ago. I'm glad it's over with now.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

120 It's Always Fair Weather Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1955

IAFW famously lost MGM a lot of money and helped precipitate the end of the Arthur Freed unit there. Its fractious production also saw the end of Kelly and Donen's working relationship and (most of) their friendship.

But is the film itself a failure? I think so, but it's also kind of fascinating. E.g., many of its good ideas aren't very well-developed (hence FAIL), but it's still fascinating to see in anlage what people like Wilder&Diamond and Demy&Legrand would take to the bank over the next decade. More on this at the end of this note.

What makes the film a failure? First, not a single memorable or even particularly good song. Second, dance opportunity after dance opportunity is missed: e.g. 1, Kelly and Charisse are a romantic couple in the film but they never dance together. WTF? e.g. 2., Kelly has a male dance partner in Michal Kidd (a star choreographer making his front-of-camera debut I Believe but aside from a bustling opening number with three guys and a sequence of three guys parallel dancing in split screen Kidd and Kelly never dance together. Moreover Kidd never gets a solo number (a big one was planned but Kelly out of jealousy nixed it causing big blowups with Donen and Kidd). This is insane. Donald O'Connor feels a long time ago in 1955. e.g. 3. There's no climactic dance number rather there's just a brawl. Again, WTF?

Overall, the film's musical and dance strategies just seem misguided throughout. In a couple of numbers you can feel that Donen is trying to *give* the number to Kidd by putting him in a light color while having Kelly and Dan Daily disappear in dark suits. But this is like watching a representation of Donen trying to sabotage his own picture. It's nuts. And Charisse's solo number is actually with bunch of pug-ugly boxers and Charisse while great is pretty covered-up throughout. It's as though the film trying to lose money! Dolores Gray who plays a loathsome TV-presenter (who's almost a Jean Hagen figure) gets a big song and dance number that's deliberately bad ('I'm just a faithful lassie looking for a faithful lad'), but since Gray is a B/way trouper she almost makes it good/work. Still, Gray's no movie star and on an instinctive level there's no way to understand why she should be getting all that focus and time. The balance in the film is all wrong in my view.

So far I haven't said anything about what IAFW's actually about: three war chums drink up big as they are decommissioned at the end of WW2 and agree to meet again exactly ten years later (i.e., in 1955) in the same bar. We get a montage of the next ten years disappointments for each man, then they meet as planned and can't stand each other. The rest of the film is then them figuring out that they've all become heels of various sorts, taking some actions about their lives (Kelly getting together with Charisse for example), and learning to like themselves and each other again.

It sum, IAFW tackles some of the same issues as Wyler's stone-cold-classic Best Years Of Our Lives while also treating in outline some of the emerging characteristic 1950s male ennui about being A Man In A Gray-flannelled Suit, dealing with intrusive TV, nuclear nightmares, proto-feminism (from both Charisse's character and Gray's) and so on. This is a pretty down-beat stew of ideas for a movie musical, esp. when combined with an overall theme about the fickleness and unsteadiness of friendships in civilian life where people naturally spread across a big continent. But having announced these big topics the film doesn't really do much with them. Instead it really makes you want to see Best Years of Our Lives or The Apartment again.

Kelly's big solo number on rollerskates - probably the only scene from the movie that most people would have any awareness of (I think it was excerpted in That's Entertainment) - is pretty nifty but the actual song he sings is 'I Like Myself' which is as bad as it sounds. It's sung and danced right after it's become clear to Kelly that Charisse is 'the one', he's taken charge of his life, and so on, and the self-absorption and self-analysis just hits the wrong note I'm afraid. Plus while the dancing soars Previn's music just doesn't. IAFW is like the evil inverse of Singin' In The Rain: there *everything* just fits and here, even when the pieces are interesting they don't quite fit together, and the emergent feeling is very muted.

Technically the film is strange too. It's in a very wide, at least 2.5-1 Cinemascope aspect ratio, and this means that Donen feels he can't come in and do closeups (unless he artificially shrinks the screen into panels which he does occasionally). Emotions never quite land for this reason I'm afraid. And the overall color pallette is pretty muted for an MGM musical. I guess I think I know what they were going for - the look and feel of Frank Sinatra's albums of the time In The Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swinging Lovers but they don't have Sinatra or his songs on the soundtrack... apparently IAFW began life as a sequel to On The Town... what might have been.

What's picked up from IAFW by others later? Well, Demy and Legrand and Varda (in part) made bank out of gloomy, Sinatra-ish musicals in the 1960s. IAFW is kind of pointing at a kind of elegaic post-Hollywood musical that it would take the French to figure out properly. And Dan Daily's character in IAFW is a corporate-man office drone tortured by management-speak. His big solo number is 'Saturation-wise'. Good idea....but it took Wilder and Diamond to really make something of this idea in The Apartment. Seeing IAFW in fact made me read a bunch of The Apartment's screenplay to remind myself of what that well-worked out version of IAFW's idea looked like. That script is here:
http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/apartment.html
and it ends not with Fran Kubelik's 'Shut up and Deal' but with some nice description:

Bud begins to deal, never taking his eyes off her. Fran
removes her coat, starts picking up her cards and arranging
them. Bud, a look of pure joy on his face, deals -- and
deals -- and keeps dealing.

And that's about it. Story-wise.

FADE OUT.

Brilliant.

You can see what I'm getting at: IAFW doesn't work but it's kind of a fascinating hub-film nonetheless for immaculate predecessors such as Best Year of Our Lives and On The Town and Singin' In The Rain and mighty successors such as The Apartment and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. For me, it's flat out crazy that Wright has IAFW on his list and not The Best Years of Our Lives, but in a perverse way it's probably easier to knock out a quick 1000 words on IAFW! Hence this post.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

Technically the film [It's Always Fair Weather] is strange too. It's in a very wide, at least 2.5-1 Cinemascope aspect ratio, and this means that Donen feels he can't come in and do closeups (unless he artificially shrinks the screen into panels which he does occasionally). Emotions never quite land for this reason I'm afraid.

I just read that La La Land (2016) is the same 2.5+-1, Cinemascope aspect ratio. The reviews don't seem to suggest that La La Land has any problems with close-ups or emotional connection more generally. It'll be interesting for me to see how that works.

Remember too that the problem ultra-wide screen raises for dance-based musicals is that, unless you are a philistine like Baz Luhrmann, then you'll want to shoot the dance sequences mostly from head to toe (plus a bit of covering space). That height has the perverse effect of shrinking the dancers horizontally within the frame. This problem in turn tempts choreographers and directors to fill up all that unwanted side-ways real-estate with other dancers. So suddenly rows of people, whose faces you can't really see, not the stars you want become the main event. Intimacy is lost.

The successful dance-based musicals that use ultra wide-screen are, principally, West Side and Seven Brides. Why/how does it work in those cases? Well, West Side famously succeeds *in spite* of its central couple-stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer... it really is the Jets and the Sharks and large ethnic groupings and *their* singing and dancing that carry the movie. In Seven Brides again it's large, 7+-strong groupings of men and women rather than solo stars or pairs that are the center of attention. In sum, these are exceptional musicals whose content seems to warrant lots of collective row-action - raising barns, busting up a gym, taking over a schoolyard, and so on.

But is La La Land like that? It doesn't seem so. It looks like it's a solo- and pair-dancing-based, boy-meets-girl tale. Most of La La Land's content inspirations from Singin' In The Rain to Umbrellas of Cherbourg were in 1.33-1.85 ratios seemingly for very good reasons. Demy's follow-up to Umbrellas, The Young Girls of Rochefort is the closest, at 2.35-1, but that's not an especially auspicious comparison since it mainly involves group dancing (it's about Carnies coming to a town - and the two main sisters in the story often dance together with their beau-wannabes so again there's lots of 4-people, natural row spacing) and when it *does* break down to solos and pairs (esp. the sequence with Gene Kelly and Francoise Dorleac near the end) then I think that the asp. ratio *does* distance us from the dancing in a way that's unhelpful. I and probably Chazelle first saw Rochefort in cropped forms where this wasn't a problem, but post-BluRay it's widely available in its true wide-screen format - though not as wide as Cinemascope! - such scenes don't work as well as they used to in my view.

In sum, director Chazelle has created a large number of problems for himself with his choice of aspect ratio. I'd guess that the horizontal character of LA has tempted him in this direction, but there have to have been trade-offs. Will crowd numbers that play to the asp. ratio squash the intimate story and their dances, or not? Assuming the film's good, I'll probably see it a couple of times, and if so, I'll do one nerd viewing where I concentrate on the asp. ratio question in every shot and scene. I'm really looking forward to this movie!

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

164 Odds Against Tomorrow Robert Wise, 1959

Decent tortured-Robert-Ryan-film that turns into a caper-film. Three leads (Raym, Begley, Bellefonte) are excellent with good hard-boiled dame turns from noir-stalwart Gloria Grahame and Shelley Winters. Excellent avant-jazz score too is a standout.

What prevents the film from being better-than-decent is, I think, the caper itself. It comes unstuck very quickly and realistically and then the film seemingly notices that it's coming up short tacks on a White Heat (1949) ending but without any good dialogue, which doesn't really work. A coda back in the city at the end (i.e., with some of the left behind dames and kids) perhaps underlining that the caper wasn;t really the point and offering us something else, might have been a good idea, maybe with some editing tricks to delinearize the narrative a bit.

So, for me at least, OAT isn't a complete film and so is properly in that penumbra of near-misses outside the list of best films of the year in 1959. Art-film staples that don't make Wright's list, e.g., Hiroshima Mon Amour and Pickpocket (one of Taxi Driver's models) are complete and just better. So in my view are somewhat chance-taking Hollywood things like Suddenly Last Summer and often underrated stuff like Pillow Talk and maybe The Nun's Story. (Obviously I have no disagreements with the NBNW, Some Like it Hot, Rio Bravo, Imitation of Life, Rio Bravo core of Wright's 1959 cohort).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

33 The Invisible Man James Whale, 1933

A fast-paced, good-looking romp/semi-thrill-ride from James Whale that was a big hit in its time. It struck me now however, as being as of less interest than Whale's other famous films (Waterloo Bridge, Frankenstein, The Old Dark House). The basic problems seem to be with the story itself: invisible guy, Griffin, is utterly megalomaniacal from the beginning; it's not as though the temptations of invisibility themselves are corrupting here. We really just can't wait for him to be cornered and shot. Any sympathy for him from his sort of love-interest (Titanic's Gloria Stuart in her salad days) feels completey misguided and Stuart really has nothing to play. The whole film (which is only 71 minutes) is really only a single Act and the end feels completely predestined, which doesn't make for the greatest viewing experience.

1933 was a pretty good movie year including a bunch not on Wright's list: Design For Living (peak Lubitsch), Baby Face (Stanwyck becomes a big star), Little Women (Cukor and Kate Hepburn make first beautiful music together). Invisible Man (1933) is fine but not good enough methinks.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

160 A Bucket of Blood Roger Corman, 1959

Another very short film (just over an hour). This time the obvious observation is that with a bit of trimming this could be a half-hour Twilight Zone ep. The final scene of ABOB teases us with the prospect of a seemingly impossible twist ('He's gonna turn himself into one of his statues! But how is that possible?) and doesn't quite deliver... Maybe Serling could have figured out a way to make that final scene pop?

As always with Corman's own stuff, he reveals himself as a good technician. Camera amost always feels like it's in the right place, edits are punchy, decent performances are the norm. He's better than William Castle on that level, and you can feel him having really learned his lessons from Hitchcock and Welles and Lang in this film.

Takedowns of beatnik culture were old news by 1959 but the idea that the counter-culture could hide psychopaths probably felt prescient shortly after ABOB's release. Still, the story here is just so-so, and somehow Dick Miller's character never achieves any great heights of piteousness or tragedy. Corman doesn't have a Stefano or Shulberg or Chayefsky or Lehmann in his corner taking characters and scripts to the next level. And there's some (unhelpful) ambiguity as to how much Dick Miller's character understands what he's done at the end of the film, which together with the slight stupidity you have to impute to everyone else in the film that they don't pay much attention to, e.g., one of the prettiest cafe regulars going missing, makes the wrap up feel tentative.

In sum, ABOB wouldn't be anywhere my best-of-1959 list. We have a couple more Cormans coming up (his Poe films) in the early '60s. Can any of those equal X- The Man With X-ray Eyes which is currently my fave Corman-directed picture and worthy of a top-10-ish placing for its year.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Another very short film (just over an hour). This time the obvious observation is that with a bit of trimming this could be a half-hour Twilight Zone ep.

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...or an Alfred Hitchcock Hour...though those started in '62.

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As always with Corman's own stuff,

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And it is intriguing to think about how many "Roger Corman movies" were DIRECTED by Corman. More often -- and as time went on-- he seemed to content himself with being a mini-mogul and giving chances to everybody else(Bogdanvich, Scorsese, etc.)

I've always been intrigued that given how cheapjack and poorly written most Roger Corman movies are, I think he graduated from Stanford University. Goes to show you..the degree doesn't make the man. Possibly the production and business smarts came from there, though. But Roger Corman movies look like somebody without a high school education made them.

Which leads me into a trap: a LOT of people without a high school education are very smart, and/or become very rich.

I have read that the MPAA resisted all attempts from Jack Nicholson(not the Nicholson who helped run American International; and people thought they WERE related, and they weren't) and Martin Scorsese to give Roger Corman an honorary Oscar for so much schlock. But...didn't they? Eventually? (And I think Peter Bogdanovich's excellent "Targets" was from Corman.)

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he reveals himself as a good technician. Camera amost always feels like it's in the right place, edits are punchy, decent performances are the norm. He's better than William Castle on that level, and you can feel him having really learned his lessons from Hitchcock and Welles and Lang in this film.

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Interestingly put. I saw this a few months ago on TCM and at a minimum, I felt the performances were good.

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Takedowns of beatnik culture were old news by 1959 but the idea that the counter-culture could hide psychopaths probably felt prescient shortly after ABOB's release.

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Well Charlie Manson was ten years away and hidden more in the hippie culture, but who's to say the Beatniks were equally susceptible to embaracing madness?

I might add that "Bucket of Blood" is circa 1959 , and its more famous sibling "Little Shop of Horrors" (with Jack Nicholson doing a memorable cameo) was in 1960, and these are EXACTLY the kind of movies Hitchocck was "sensing in the marketplace" and demanding a "Hitchcock response"(Psycho, of course.)

The murders in Bucket of Blood are pretty gory, if not shown..the beheading of one poor sucker ends with his death off screen but a most Arbogastian "final scream."

In some ways, Bucket of Blood is JUST as shocking as Psycho(probably the savge nature of the murders), but ultimately...no. The victims simply weren't built up as human beings as in Psycho, the murders weren't as graphic and extended in time as in Psycho. Still...we're in the ballpark, content-wise.

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Still, the story here is just so-so,

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True. A guy kills people(well, a cat first) and puts plaster on them and voila...he's a hit sculptor! Shades of House of Wax, a little too predictable and nowhere near the weirdness of that plant that yells "Feed Me" in Little Shop of Horrors(which later became a musical and a movie with Bill Murray in the NIcholson cameo.)

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and somehow Dick Miller's character never achieves any great heights of piteousness or tragedy.

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True. Though Dick Miller seemed to catch the fancy of Joe Dante, who put Miller in most all of his 1980's movies that I'm not so enamored of (Gremlins, Innerspace) -- but is Miller in "Matinee"(1993), which I AM enamored of?

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Corman doesn't have a Stefano or Shulberg or Chayefsky or Lehmann in his corner taking characters and scripts to the next level.

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Hitchcock worked at the top of the studio system where talent is plentiful...and expensive. Thus Hitchcock could make the best WITH the best...though he got Joe Stefano, a tyro, at a real bargain and damn...great dialogue!

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And there's some (unhelpful) ambiguity as to how much Dick Miller's character understands what he's done at the end of the film, which together with the slight stupidity you have to impute to everyone else in the film that they don't pay much attention to, e.g.,

--

Didn't Roger Ebert call this "the stupid plot" where the whole thing falls apart if anyone notices what's going on?

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one of the prettiest cafe regulars going missing, makes the wrap up feel tentative.

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In sum, ABOB wouldn't be anywhere my best-of-1959 list.

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Well, as you've mentioned before, 1959 is the year where one finds North by Northwest, Rio Bravo, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder....one of the best years ever. Oh yeah, Ben-Hur, too. And Pillow Talk.

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We have a couple more Cormans coming up (his Poe films) in the early '60s. Can any of those equal X- The Man With X-ray Eyes which is currently my fave Corman-directed picture and worthy of a top-10-ish placing for its year.

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I dunno. Let's find out. Vincent Price becomes part of the discussion...

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

In sum, ABOB wouldn't be anywhere my best-of-1959 list.

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Well, as you've mentioned before, 1959 is the year where one finds North by Northwest, Rio Bravo, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder....one of the best years ever. Oh yeah, Ben-Hur, too. And Pillow Talk.

To be fair, NbNW, Rio Bravo, Ben-Hur (and also Imitation of Life and The 400 Blows) are all on Wright's list.... but, yep, no SLIH, Anatomy of a Murder, Pillow Talk, Suddenly Last Summer, Pickpocket, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Shadows, The Nun's Story, and so on. Bucket of Blood is quite good but the competition's hot.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

145 The Monolith Monsters John Sherwood, 1957

Undistinguished, formula '50s sci-fi. Meteorites expand fast when exposed to water (and also seem to turn people into stone although that side of the threat is woefully under-developed), threaten to overrun small town and after that.... the world? Salt water, however, turns out to dissolve them real good. The End.

Some pretty good sfx of the towering then collapsing and shattering then rebuilding meteorite monoliths are the high-lights. Everything else about the production is utterly perfunctory. Makes the Quatermass '50s films, which I was quite dismissive of earlier in this quest, look like masterpieces. TMM isn't the worst film on Wright's list but it's one of the least interesting. Not really worth watching unless you're a '50s sci-fi completist.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

107 House of Wax André De Toth, 1953

Maybe you had to be there (either in 1953 or in one of its '60s and '70s revivals) to get this one... One of the original 3-D hits, House of Wax (1953) 3-D aside is a remarkably pedestrian thriller. Vincent Price has a super-elaborate scheme for both settling scores with enemies and re-populating his wax museum. One that involves lots of collaborators and lots and lots of ways of getting found out. It should have been possible to make Price's character a piteous, Phantom-/Hunchback-like figure but the film is too busy showing off 3-D to expand him beyond stock-villainy.

In sum, I found this film a real disappointment, one of the worst, genuinely famous films. I prefer the imitator, Corman's Bucket Of Blood (1959)!

To think that Wright chose HOW (and also Glen or Glenda!) over things like The Ear-rings of Madame D., Tokyo Story, From Here To Eternity, Shane, Roman Holiday, Pickup on South St, The Man Between, and so on.

[–] jay441 7 years ago

I've read some intriguing personal anecdotes on this board about encounters with Golden Age Hollywood, and now here's mine.

House of Wax director André De Toth visited my university film theory class in the mid-80s. Clean-shaven head, black eyepatch. No riding crop. Our young Hungarian film professor asked him, twice, about his alleged involvement in filming, for Nazi Germany, one of Hitler's invasions, and, twice, De Toth politely declined to answer.

I don't remember too much else about this visit, except that at the next class meeting one of the students said that Veronica Lake had been married to De Toth (!) and had written in her autobiography that he would practice goose-stepping in the back yard (!!).

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

House of Wax director André De Toth visited my university film theory class in the mid-80s. Clean-shaven head, black eyepatch. No riding crop. Our young Hungarian film professor asked him, twice, about his alleged involvement in filming, for Nazi Germany, one of Hitler's invasions, and, twice, De Toth politely declined to answer.

I don't remember too much else about this visit, except that at the next class meeting one of the students said that Veronica Lake had been married to De Toth (!) and had written in her autobiography that he would practice goose-stepping in the back yard (!!).

Great anecdote thanks. I don't know much about De Toth .and hadn't heard about his marriage to Veronica Lake (she must have been quite a catch for him). Apparently he had his eye-patch at the time of House of Wax, since one of the most famous anecdotes about the film is the ironic note that De Toth with almost no 3-D perception himself nonetheless had to direct one of the biggest 3-D features. This Obit make him sound like a real character:
http://tinyurl.com/hyog8lg
I think I'll have to check out his westerns.

[–] Byrdz 7 years ago

Maybe you had to be there ... to get this one.

You might have something there. When it opened it was quite thye thing to see and it was really REALLY scary. Course seeing it as a kid probably helped !

Bushinsky's wax head on the shelf and then he moves ! 😨JUMP !!!

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Maybe you had to be there (either in 1953 or in one of its '60s and '70s revivals) to get this one... One of the original 3-D hits, House of Wax (1953) 3-D aside is a remarkably pedestrian thriller.

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I tell ya, swanstep, your reviews of the Wright list are coming so fast and furious I keep missing some. The update (with the interesting De Toth story from another poster) drew me to this December post and, well, "gentle rebuttal" time again.

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Vincent Price has a super-elaborate scheme for both settling scores with enemies and re-populating his wax museum. One that involves lots of collaborators and lots and lots of ways of getting found out.

---

Ha. I must admit the plotting here isn't particularly sophisticated. Its another reason that Hitchcock's thrillers always seem "a cut above." Hitchcock rarely took "the easy way out" on plotting. There had to be some logic and feasibility to how matters unfolded, even in the most fantastic of his thrillers. Hitchcock had a direction for writers: "Anticipate questions that the audience will be asking themselves...and answer those questions as soon as you can in the script."

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It should have been possible to make Price's character a piteous, Phantom-/Hunchback-like figure but the film is too busy showing off 3-D to expand him beyond stock-villainy.

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Well, I think he comes off as a bit of both. In the opening scene before he is burned and misfigured, he's a nice enough guy, an artiste who is being sold out by his nefarious in-it-for-the bucks partner. The resulting fire turns him into a madman and I think what's scary about it is that Price kills both enemies(the partner) and innocents(Phyllis Kirk's roommate Carolyn Jones) alike. We can root FOR Price when he murders the partner, but we have to root against him when he kills Jones.

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In sum, I found this film a real disappointment, one of the worst, genuinely famous films. I prefer the imitator, Corman's Bucket Of Blood (1959)!

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Well, its definitely a "had to be there" thing. I see "House of Wax" as really aimed at a pre-teen audience. Its almost William Castle level in terms of the simplicity of the script and the basics of the scares. Its for kids OR.."the kids in all adults."

House of Wax made the rounds of The Million Dollar Movie in Los Angeles in the 60's(9 showings a week), along with The Magnificent Seven, Them, and Dial M for Murder, so its a strong memory of childhood.

I recall a 3-D re-release in 1971 that I couldn't go to because the only theater showing it in my town was...a PORNO THEATER. My parents wouldn't let me go in there, even for a "regular" movie. I caught a 3-D showing years later(for once, I can't even remember which decade) and I know that I found most memorable...the guy bouncing rubber balls on a string off a paddle at us.

All that said, I have this great "original release" memory from none other than ..my mother. She saw the film on release in 1953 with some girlfriends and she said they were all screaming and jumping all through it. The "Psycho" of its time for THEM. A more innocent time.

Noteable: Charles Bronson(then Buchinsky) as Price's mute assistant, a character who plays rather sad and slow-minded, but nonetheless tries to put the hero's head in a guillotine during the climax. Its almost Hitchcockian, our "sympathy for the villain" here.

Noteable: this has Frank Lovejoy in it as the older heroic cop; I'm not much of an expert on 40's/50's actors, but Lovejoy sure had an accessible, gruff everyman quality to him. Durable. And his name cracks me up: Frank Lovejoy. Its like the first name doesn't match the last name, and Lovejoy sounds too sweet for such a tough guy. I recall Lovejoy as a cop in the estimable Bogart movie "In a Lonely Place" -- Frank Lovejoy evidently could shift from serious(Bogart) to campy(Price) as the studio required it.

Noteable: Phyillis Kirk, the female star of the movie, went on to star in a TV series version of "The Thin Man" with Peter Lawford, and then as a local LA TV host. Between House of Wax, The Thin Man TV series and that hosting job, I saw a LOT of Phyillis Kirk in the sixties. She had one of those interesting "second tier working actress" careers. And in "House of Wax," she's nude(if covered by straps while tied down on a table) at the finale...rather erotic stuff for us young boys of the time.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

32 Sons of the Desert William A. Seiter, 1933

Reputedly one of Laurel and Hardy's best pictures, SOTD is certainly the best of the handful of L&D films I've seen. Unfortunately, that's not saying very much. L&D's films are visually primitive compared to Chaplin/Keaton/Lloyd and without any of the physical grace and real gifts for pratfalls that the great early comedians shared. Watching L&D here there's the occasional laugh (often at the shocking physical violence dished out to Olly by his screen-wife) but nothing too uproarious.

Perhaps the biggest thing that L&H have going for them is also the thing that makes them largely impotent now: their buddy schtick and pricklish wives schtick and not especially artful whack-on-the-head slapstick are *all* the future of comedy in both movies and TV. The Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello and The Honeymooners and Martin and Lewis are just their most obvious superior descendants.

Anyhow, I'm glad I suppose to have seen Sons of the Desert, but I'll never watch it again.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

102 The Prowler Joseph Losey, 1951

A surprising, depressing noir. Hard to discuss without giving away plot points, the film concerns corrupt, murdering cops, horrendous husbands, and at-the-end-of-their-rope wives. Nobody's clean in this picture, and the picture's no fun at all I'm afraid. A black-listed Trumbo had a hand in the script but didn't manage to come up with any good dialogue this time. The story's strong with maybe just a few implausibilities holding things back. The final gun-down by police is a little too wild-west given the circumstances of the case at the time.... but it makes for some good visuals.

Worth seeing....perhaps most of all for some nifty feints and red herrings early on and the High Sierra-like ending with some strong acting from Evelyn Keyes.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

143 The Curse of Frankenstein Terence Fisher, 1957

Uninspired color remake of Whale's 1931 classic. Major innovations are that (i) Baron Frankenstein is much more malevolent - he murders someone to procure his brain for the creature, he murders the maid with whom he cheats on his wife (and whom he otherwise treats abominably) once she threatens to expose him to authorities, and so on; (ii) the key assistant is the Baron's equal and actively undermines him; (iii) the creature (played by Christopher Lee) is humanized (iv) villagers play almost no part in the story, (v) Baron's wife (Hazel Court) is voluptuous.

I don't think the film is good enough to be worth going into its failings in great detail, but, for example, I was staggered at how inconsistently innovations (ii) and (iii) were applied. One moment the assistant Paul is appalled by the Baron's murderousness, the next he's happy to cover it up; one moment the creature does seem a genuinely piteous figure (but of course this was there in 1931 too - people just tend to forget it) the next a figure of something like horror (and the movie doesn't even *decide* whether the creature actually did kill an old man and a kid
or why). Just really poorly written I'm afraid.

TCoF makes you re-appreciate the wonders of Whale's cinematography and sfx and make-up and sets. (You *believe* that Whale's Frankenstein might actually be able to raise the dead whereas Fisher and Cushing's House of Wax-like bubbling beakers etc. look more fit to turn out candles.)

Apparently TCoF was a solid hit in 1957. I speculate that a generation of kids of kids who'd recently grooved on Whale's masterpiece on tv were hungry for a new Frankenstein. Hammer and TCoF shrewdly, lucratively catered to that unmet demand, but not by being any good in my view.

152 Horror of Dracula Terence Fisher, 1958

The TCoF team returns the following year with Horror of Dracula (a.k.a. Dracula), essentially a color remake of Dracula (1931)... and... that's more like it! There are innovations across the board so that if you are familiar with prior films then HoD is ahead of you, e.g., here Jonathan Harker *wants* to be summoned to Dracula's castle because he's actually a long-time vampire-hunter (perhaps second only to Van Helsing) and then Harker gets killed early on. And most importantly for where Vamp-films would go from here: the drug-taking analogy/subtext with Vampirism is made explicit, the Count's violence and sexuality are greatly amped up, the subtext of unleashed female sexuality of his women victims is made explicit, and the violence of the vampire-hunters is vivid (crucifixes inflicting burns, etc.).

I still don't think much of Terrence Fisher's direction and everything from the plotting to the art-direction is only adequate in my view. But, especially if you're young, HoD is suspenseful and scary at times (and the sex and drug undercurrents rising to the surface are both winners) and Cushing and Lee (who's not seen enough in my view!) are real stars as Van Helsing and Dracula. They were born to play these roles, and Hammer Films would make big bucks from and for them on HoD and a host of its sequels.

In sum, even though HoD doesn't do that much for me now, I think it's worth seeing as a fairly interesting, turning-point update of the basic Nosferatu (1922)/Dracula (1931) template.

184 The Curse of the Werewolf Terence Fisher, 1961

A pleasant surprise: Hammer continues its pillaging of Universal Studios monsters by tackling Wolf-man/Werewolves and really going its own merry way way with it. The adult character (played by Oliver Reed) who'll become our werewolf doesn't arrive until over half way through the film. Everything leading up to that is a convoluted prologue explaining cruel the cruel social structures leading up to the horrific circumstances of our Wolfie's conception and birth. The effect is to make the tale something like a supernaturalized Oliver Twist, that is, a romantic origin story and coming-of-age fable... with claws. When Oliver Reed shows up the effect is then galvanizing because we're right there with him and together with Martin Mathews the acting shoots up at least three levels of naturalism above what Hammer usually manages. Reed and Matthews are almost *too* good together - they aren't plausible at all as 18C -dwellers instead we're suddenly in Reed's actual world of brawling angry, Shakespeare-drunk young men in social realist dramas. But director Fisher (again!) just runs with his actors energies rather than keeping a tight grip on period - it works.

The movie's violence escalates at the same rate as its tragicness, making for an unusual horror, very much reminding me of The Fly (1986) and also Hunchback of Notre Dame (the Laughton one). Our Wolfie protagonist is left begging for his loved ones to kill him, which must have been pretty stunning to people in 1961.

Unusual mixed film that defintely makes the case that the werewolf is the dramatically richest monster out there. I'd bet that women especially dug this film

Sfx for the werewolf and transformations are poor...much worse than Universal managed... but the film's characetrizations and performances are so strong that none of that matters. Fisher's direction is getting better - scenes are well-blocked, better shot-making throughout.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

150 A Night to Remember Roy Ward Baker, 1958

ANTR stands to Cameron's Titanic (1997) as '50s monster movies do to Alien and Aliens and The Thing (1982). In each case the '50s versions stick to essentials and move-right-along compared to their more long-winded successors (e.g., ANTR hits the iceberg in the time it takes Cameron's Titanic just to leave port!), but the advances in movie-making are so sensational in the successor versions that there's no going back....

ANTR hits most of the non-soapy beats that Titanic does, but honestly I missed the soap and the Celine Dion and the power of movie stars (not just Kate and Leo, Kathy Bates we miss dreadfully too) and the extravagant sfx. ANTR *does* cover more of the rescue what-ifs than Cameron finds time for in his nearly 4 hours, so there's that... but it's not enough. Director Baker does a solid job, but time and again one never quite sees what one wants to see. We never really *see* what happens to the ship's designer, the captain, etc. everything's just implied...well, hell no! Show me! We never see the ice-berg slice upon the ship rather we occupy only perspective of people above deck who don't know what's gone on below the water-line. Something very cinematic is going on and we can't see it in 1958 perhaps just because of limitations on sfx.

Wright putting ANTR on his list over Titanic (1997), I'm sorry, strikes me as a case of being 'too-cool-to-like-Titanic'.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Something very cinematic is going on and we can't see it in 1958 perhaps just because of limitations on sfx.

Wright putting ANTR on his list over Titanic (1997), I'm sorry, strikes me as a case of being 'too-cool-to-like-Titanic'.

--

This all ties in, I think, to the idea that modern-day remakes with all the SFX that earlier eras did not have...CAN be better movies. The Thing, The Fly...maybe even (for action) The Magnificent Seven.

In other words...sequels: no(in the main.) Remakes: yes (sometimes.) Newer IS better for a new generation that would like to see better effects and indeed, in Titanic, much more detail of "how it felt to be there, and what it looked like."

It took forever for the ship to hit the iceberg in the now-famous Cameron version, but it sure seemed to pay off in empathy for the ill-fated couple.

Cameron's absolutely brilliant decision -- and who knows if it was "true" or not -- was to have the ship split in two so that the stern reared up and become a "tall tower above the sea" -- a platform both for a series of "Vertigo-falls" to the death for certain passengers, and a "ride" for Leo and Kate to take all the way under the surface...the two lovers are literally the last people to go underwater, which reflects Leo's intense quest to keep Kate OUT of the water for as long as possible.

Another favorite "doom scene" for me in Cameron's Titanic is when the captain elects to enter his wheelhouse and face the water alone. The windows around him fill with green water and for a moment, it is as if he is surrounded by an acquarium...and then the water breaks through.

---

There were several other movies made about the Titanic. A TV movie with George C. Scott for one.

But in the sixties on TV, the one that got played over and over -- from the NBC Saturday Night at the Movies to local channels -- was an early fifties version (1953?) from 20 Century Fox that took the reality of the sinking and added a few nice fictional tales. It was a tearjerker at the end.

Erudite Clifton Webb and older-but-still tough Barbara Stanwyck are a rich, bickering couple en route to divorce when the Titanic docks in New York. They have a pre-teen son. Webb is cold to the son, stern in discipline, "above him."

And at the end, the son leaps out of the lifeboat from his mother, Stanwyck , climbs back onto the Titanic, and elects to stand next to his father and die with the man.

Perhaps a pre-feminist ending, but very moving, as Stanwyck cries from the lifeboat, helplessly watching her son return to her husband to die, and the father(Clifton Webb, suddenly moving) tells his son "I've never been more proud of you in my life" as father and son sink below the waves.

The 1953 Titanic had a scene that was cut from the Cameron, evidently true: an old woman refuses to get on the lifeboat and elects to stay with her old husband: "I've been with him for 50 years, I don't intend to separate from him now."

The 1953 version is actually better on the effects than the British 1958 version, and certainly filled with ersatz human drama -- plus some of the usual truisms(the Great Thelma Ritter is the Unsinkable Molly Brown.)

I think I only saw the well-reviewed "Night to Remember" once...but I much prefer the Stanwyck/Webb Titanic. Its got those Golden Era dramatic flourishes. And it was MY Titanic...only James Cameron came along and did it better.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

Cameron's absolutely brilliant decision -- and who knows if it was "true" or not -- was to have the ship split in two so that the stern reared up and become a "tall tower above the sea" -- a platform both for a series of "Vertigo-falls" to the death for certain passengers, and a "ride" for Leo and Kate to take all the way under the surface...the two lovers are literally the last people to go underwater, which reflects Leo's intense quest to keep Kate OUT of the water for as long as possible.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Yes, this is a cinematic masterstroke all right: the ship gets much *much* more vertical in Titanic (1997) so that the basic structuring of the action for 30 minutes as the ship sinks (the first time is just much more suspenseful and intense). *THEN* the ship splits in two, *then* we go up *again* but *faster* this time and get *completely* vertical.

--

I remember being somewhere between awestruck and amazed as this became Cameron's "scheme" for the sinking. I think both the 1953 Titanic and the 1958 Night to Remember just gave us the slow sinking of one intact vessel.

Perhaps it was callous to turn the real tragedy of the Titanic into a "thrill" ride" with the ship splitting in two, "bouncing" and turning into a "tower of death" but -- man are you THERE! (I also like how David Warner's sub-villain ends up falling into the split area and dying there.)

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In some respects the whole clunky framing story is justified by having the scientists/explorers present this new basic *what happened* to the audience in simulation outline first (justified by the distribution of the wreck on the bottom of the sea - everyone accepts now that the ship did come down in two big pieces and that when you try to model how that could happen you just do end up with Cameron's basic account - the cinematic motherlode!) so we don't miss a thing and pre-understand everything that's going to happen.

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Yes, I recall being intrigued by that computer simulation and how it didn't match previous versions of the Titanic sinking...and then it all "paid off" when Cameron dramatized it.

Hitchcock was famous for many things, but his set-pieces were part of it: the plane crash into the ocean at the end of Foreign Correspondent is very Titantic-ish, for instance. Here, Cameron dreamed up his OWN kind of set-piece for the Titanic sinking, and we will never forget it.

As for the old lady framing - - it was sweet. And well spoofed by the REAL star of that scene -- Bill Paxton -- when he hosted Saturday Night Live and spoofed the final scene:

Paxton: Wait a minute, lady -- you've subjected us to two hours of a Harlequin Romance novel and you're telling me you DON'T have the necklace?

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I'll have to check out Titanic (1953) - Stanwyck and Ritter I''m in!

---

They are both good. Stanwyck's reaction as a mother watching her young son leap back onto the Titanic from the safety of the lifeboat, is the stuff of tears. And Clifton Webb is quite moving in his final scene.

Ritter is Ritter...great as always. (Isn't it true that at least part of the greatness of Rear Window is that Hitchcock got Thelma Ritter for it?)

There are also good bits for a very young Robert Wagner and Richard Basehart in the film. One dies, one doesn't.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

This all ties in, I think, to the idea that modern-day remakes with all the SFX that earlier eras did not have...CAN be better movies. The Thing, The Fly...maybe even (for action) The Magnificent Seven.

In other words...sequels: no(in the main.) Remakes: yes (sometimes.) Newer IS better for a new generation that would like to see better effects and indeed, in Titanic, much more detail of "how it felt to be there, and what it looked like."

Yes, doubtless previous directors *wanted* to show, e.g., huge volumes of water crashing through atriums, people being sucked down with the ship, people going blue etc./freezing to death in the icy water, and so on, but they soon wisely decided they couldn't pull those sorts of shots off. Cameron not only had modern CGI, he had $200 million in mid-'90s dollars (a budget no other director could have gotten) to do these sorts of shots (as many times and with as much research as they took to get right).

The Thing and The Fly are two great examples aren't they? The Thing (1982) is much closer to the original terrifying short-story than The Thing (1951) because Hawks and co simply had no way to make a shape-shifting/human-impersonating alien. And while The Fly (1986) isn't harking back to an original story, changing the conceit so the transformation happens gradually is so thematically and cinematically potent.... if anyone in the '50s had had the idea they'd have soon abandoned it as impossible to get on film in any believable way.

[–] Doghouse-6 7 years ago

But in the sixties on TV, the one that got played over and over -- from the NBC Saturday Night at the Movies to local channels -- was an early fifties version (1953?) from 20 Century Fox that took the reality of the sinking and added a few nice fictional tales.

And it was MY Titanic

I imagine that was true for many U.S.-raised kids of our generation, ec. While T-53 (pardon my economy) was something of a broadcast staple for years, if ANTR ever got any U.S. airplay around that time, I wasn't aware of it.

Based solely on the facts, a cautionary tale so full of historical import, tragedy, irony and social commentary - attaining "legend in its own time" status - seems a natural for an epic, big-screen treatment, and yet it took 85 years for one that captured public imagination in the way the actual event had.

There's something about setting intimate human drama against the backdrop of a momentous historical episode that renders it more compelling, and as satisfying as T-53 is in this time-honored mode, it's no more about the Titanic than San Francisco was about an earthquake, Gone With the Wind about the Civil War or Dr. Zhivago about the Russian Revolution. They're about Blackie and Mary and Scarlett and Rhett and Yuri and Lara...and Richard and Julia.

I think it must have been my first exposure to either Webb or Stanwyck, and while I have no idea whether there was any such intention on the film makers' parts, it also had a seductive effect on a pre-teen mind (mine, anyway): you tune in for the "cool" factor of history's most infamous maritime disaster, and long before you get that "reward," you've absorbed some very intelligent drama encompassing mature themes of infidelity and conflicting family dynamics, along with broader ones of class distinction, personal redemption, self-sacrifice and nobility.

And Stanwyck and Webb were just the ones to sell it. Her appealingly forceful "earth mother" toughness, the elegance and class of which were inherent in their defiant strength and forbearance, were a perfect counterpoint to Webb's highborn effeteness, which could charm and amuse even as its cold waspishness repelled. The parries and thrusts of their power struggle are irresistible.

So, while ANTR was the film for those seeking accurate, blow-by-blow dramatic documentation, T-53 was the one for "lose yourself in the story" involvement. And in its own way, it may have been every bit as accurate in imparting, however fictionally, the reality of the human toll: hundreds of people of all stations in life for whom the short-term concerns of an ocean voyage, the long-term ones of emigration or ongoing ones of other personal matters were suddenly disrupted by those of life or death in the face of an unexpected event of unimaginable magnitude.

Whether one evaluates T-97 (again, economy) as towering cinema achievement, manipulative pop culture razzmatazz or something in between, what Cameron did so effectively was to combine those approaches, employing the simple premise of star-crossed lovers allowing us access to each part of the ship - as well as to key historic figures - through whose eyes we witness every facet of the event at its most significant moment.

If he'd come along 75 years earlier, I can easily imagine James Cameron as having become one of the best-remembered pioneers of shaping early cinema, combining basic and easily digestible elements of story construction and character, depicting clearly-defined heroes, heroines, villains and themes, with envelope-pushing technical adventurousness.

Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Good to hear from you, doghouse!

But in the sixties on TV, the one that got played over and over -- from the NBC Saturday Night at the Movies to local channels -- was an early fifties version (1953?) from 20 Century Fox that took the reality of the sinking and added a few nice fictional tales.

And it was MY Titanic
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I imagine that was true for many U.S.-raised kids of our generation, ec. While T-53 (pardon my economy) was something of a broadcast staple for years, if ANTR ever got any U.S. airplay around that time, I wasn't aware of it.

---

"A Night to Remember" got, as I recall, two showings on the CBS Friday Night Movie in the late sixties. That's when I saw it, one of those times, and, frankly, it suffered to me in comparison to the polished Hollywood tearjerker-epic that T-53 had been. It seemed more like a "semi-documentary" of the tale.

T-53 was an early showing of NBC Saturday Night at the Movies(which launched around 1962 with a package of Fox movies)...and then played incessantly on local TV in LA through the sixties. I practically memorized T-53, though usually when I watched it, I waited til the iceberg entered the story.

--

Based solely on the facts, a cautionary tale so full of historical import, tragedy, irony and social commentary - attaining "legend in its own time" status - seems a natural for an epic, big-screen treatment, and yet it took 85 years for one that captured public imagination in the way the actual event had.

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Is this a good place to note that Alfred Hitchcock's first assigned production for David Selznick was to be...a film about the Titanic? That Hitchcock was moved over to "Rebecca" always rather bugged Hitch, I think. Titanic would have made a bigger, ahem, splash for Hitchcock's set-piece techniques. Perhaps that's why Foreign Correspondent of 1940(the year of Rebecca) has that plane crash into the sea.

Hitchcock gave some interviews with his ideas for Titanic. Like starting with glasses filled with wine shifting on a tilting table and crashing to the floor.

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There's something about setting intimate human drama against the backdrop of a momentous historical episode that renders it more compelling, and as satisfying as T-53 is in this time-honored mode, it's no more about the Titanic than San Francisco was about an earthquake, Gone With the Wind about the Civil War or Dr. Zhivago about the Russian Revolution. They're about Blackie and Mary and Scarlett and Rhett and Yuri and Lara...and Richard and Julia.

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Well stated, across the board. The two American Titanics took pains to give us fictional characters as centerpieces(Stanwyck/Webb; Leo/Kate) and then to surround them with some of the real people in the tragedy(Molly Brown, John Jacob Astor.) Interesting: the 1953 Titanic centered on two middle-aged adults(Stanwyck/Webb.) The 1997 Titanic centered on two youngsters(Leo/Kate.) Thus did the movies "shift to youth" over the decades (though young Robert Wagner and Jean Peters are the Leo/Kate of the 1953 film, but they are secondary.)

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I think it must have been my first exposure to either Webb or Stanwyck, and while I have no idea whether there was any such intention on the film makers' parts, it also had a seductive effect on a pre-teen mind (mine, anyway): you tune in for the "cool" factor of history's most infamous maritime disaster, and long before you get that "reward," you've absorbed some very intelligent drama encompassing mature themes of infidelity and conflicting family dynamics, along with broader ones of class distinction, personal redemption, self-sacrifice and nobility.

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Yes. Look, I'll be frank. Even as a youngster, I was more interested in the adult and erudite conflicts of Stanwyck and Webb that I was interested in the "Harlequin romance" young love stuff with Leo and Kate decades later. I guess I always just liked the drama that comes with "more life experience."

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And Stanwyck and Webb were just the ones to sell it. Her appealingly forceful "earth mother" toughness, the elegance and class of which were inherent in their defiant strength and forbearance, were a perfect counterpoint to Webb's highborn effeteness, which could charm and amuse even as its cold waspishness repelled. The parries and thrusts of their power struggle are irresistible.

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Its great casting. I suppose film history has given Stanwyck more "weight" and more classics -- but Webb was very much her match here. And the idea of the effete Webb finding HIS manliness in the face of disaster -- and then the love of his son -- was very moving. (Its a bit wobbly given today's viewpoint, though: the son would rather "die like a man" with his father than live a long life with his mother. Oh, well.)

Ritter's Molly Brown gets the "true life scene" that survived to the 1997 version: on her lifeboat she rats out and humiliates the "man dressed like a woman to escape." Such cowardice. (Allen Joslyn in T-53, I can't remember who played the part in '97.)

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So, while ANTR was the film for those seeking accurate, blow-by-blow dramatic documentation, T-53 was the one for "lose yourself in the story" involvement.

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And "the critics" preferred ANTR accordingly to T-53. But...not me.

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And in its own way, it may have been every bit as accurate in imparting, however fictionally, the reality of the human toll: hundreds of people of all stations in life for whom the short-term concerns of an ocean voyage, the long-term ones of emigration or ongoing ones of other personal matters were suddenly disrupted by those of life or death in the face of an unexpected event of unimaginable magnitude.

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It isn't the first disaster movie(San Francisco and other films have that honor), but it is the most moving and ironic and REAL. And I guess T-53 at least wins for getting there first. Its the first Titanic movie...Hitchcock lost his chance for one in 1940.

I have some vivid childhood memories of things said to me by my parents, and I do remember my mother telling me the story of the Titanic in one succinct sentence:

"It was promoted as an unsinkable ship -- and it sank on its first voyage."

Even as a kid, I got the irony of THAT statement.

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Whether one evaluates T-97 (again, economy) as towering cinema achievement, manipulative pop culture razzmatazz or something in between, what Cameron did so effectively was to combine those approaches, employing the simple premise of star-crossed lovers allowing us access to each part of the ship - as well as to key historic figures - through whose eyes we witness every facet of the event at its most significant moment.

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Yes, that's all there. And all versions got, I think, the most painful aspect of the Titanic experience:

We're all on this ship together...and suddenly, it sinking. And after some initial hopes that everything will be OK and the ship will survive...it becomes clear that it WILL sink, that most people will die and...its simply a matter of waiting. Waiting for the water to overtake the ship until there's ONLY water, and no ship, and death(for most.)

Its rather an analogy to our "voyage through life," isn't it? We're all on a sinking ship...its just a matter of when we go beneath the waves. And some people are allowed to live longer, at the expense of others(women, in a time when they were deferred to, and that's OK, and the rich, and that's NOT.)

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If he'd come along 75 years earlier, I can easily imagine James Cameron as having become one of the best-remembered pioneers of shaping early cinema, combining basic and easily digestible elements of story construction and character, depicting clearly-defined heroes, heroines, villains and themes, with envelope-pushing technical adventurousness.

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Yes, Cameron's mega-success seems to reflect his understanding of this. Titanic had more heart than its predecessors, but The Terminator(s), Aliens, and especially True Lies all had great big giant set-pieces to wow everybody.
Avatar rather seemed too much to me, too CGI, too animated -- but it is clearly where Cameron is going to spend much of the rest of his life.

[–] movieghoul 7 years ago

I've always been amused by the fact that the surname of the Webb-Stanwyck family is Sturges. THe son is listed as Norman on IMDB but I'm not sure he had a first name in the movie.

This may have been an in joke by the brass at Fox. FOx had had a contentious relationship with writer/director Preston Sturges, and Sturges was the son of the type of continent-hopping socialite parents who might well have been on the Titanic's maiden voyage. And he would have been about the age of the son in 1912.

So Fox may have indulged in a fantasy where Preston Sturges is killed off as a child by the sinking of the Titanic.

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

"It was promoted as an unsinkable ship -- and it sank on its first voyage."
Even as a kid, I got the irony of THAT statement.

The Onion had the final word on this a while back.
http://www.theonion.com/graphic/april-16-1912-10645

Avatar rather seemed too much to me, too CGI, too animated -- but it is clearly where Cameron is going to spend much of the rest of his life.

Yep, he's got a $1 Billion (US$) production budget for 4 Avatar sequels, shooting on which began down here in NZ a few months ago (after endless delays). Apparently a lot of work has gone into the scripts causing the delays, but I'd bet that Cameron's commitment to always being technically cutting edge has also caused problems. There are always better cameras and more data-intensive formats to be explored and every change at that front end will necessitate more building out of the computational back-end to support the enhanced digital work-flow. Every time you dilly-dally for another 6 months you'll be gripped anew by the terror that you're not using the absolutely latest/greatest tech.

I liked Avatar a lot but Zoe Saldana and (especially) Sam Worthington are/were no Kate and Leo, and Avatar's sweeping song over the end credits called I think 'I see you' is/was no 'The Heart Will Go On'. Avatar made tons and tons of money but these misses on the stars and song fronts suggested at the time that Avatar *wasn't* going to become a Titanic or Star Wars-level cultural reference point. And it really hasn't. And that they're bringing Sigourney Weaver back from the dead for the sequels suggests that Cameron knows he's got a star-shortage on his hands.

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

"It was promoted as an unsinkable ship -- and it sank on its first voyage."
Even as a kid, I got the irony of THAT statement.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Onion had the final word on this a while back.
http://www.theonion.com/graphic/april-16-1912-10645

---

Hilarious! Count on The Onion to get it right, and best, every time.

You know the statement "It was promoted as an unsinkable ship...and it sank on its first voyage" is probably a textbook definition of "ironic." Wanna teach a kid what "ironic" is....use this example.

Some years ago, the now forgetten(?) singer Alanis Morisette had a song called 'Ironic," with a bunch of examples that some expert said were mostly NOT ironic. Titanic, is.

And the metaphors go beyond the unsinkable sinking. You have the various classes of passengers and how they were treated. You have the simile of life itself..we are ALL on the Titanic...but only in terms of our individual lives. Some folks will disappear beneath the waves before others.

A stray thought on the 1953 Titanic: young Robert Wagner survives. To avoid his looking like a coward not going down with the men, they have him try to help someone, he is knocked unconscious, falls off the ship, and is dragged into a lifeboat with his beloved to as "not to let him drown." The instinct of others saves him. An interesting plot twist.

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Avatar rather seemed too much to me, too CGI, too animated -- but it is clearly where Cameron is going to spend much of the rest of his life.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yep, he's got a $1 Billion (US$) production budget for 4 Avatar sequels, shooting on which began down here in NZ a few months ago (after endless delays). Apparently a lot of work has gone into the scripts causing the delays, but I'd bet that Cameron's commitment to always being technically cutting edge has also caused problems. There are always better cameras and more data-intensive formats to be explored and every change at that front end will necessitate more building out of the computational back-end to support the enhanced digital work-flow. Every time you dilly-dally for another 6 months you'll be gripped anew by the terror that you're not using the absolutely latest/greatest tech.

---

Well, Cameron seems to know not only what he's doing but what he WANTS to do. He'll always have The Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2, True Lies(a fun one) and above all, Titanic, as calling cards. Let Avatar be the rest of his life. Its the way HE wants it. The technology aging fears strike me as a bit OCD, he's in Kubrick/Warren Beatty territory. But he can be if he wants to.

I always used to note this however: Hitchcock had the hit of Psycho -- which Hitchcock himself later called "a once in a lifetime thing, I'll never have that success again with one movie " but delayed only about 2 years to start filming The Birds. Cameron hit the jackpot with Titanic...and took 12 years to do Avatar! To get back up to bat(3-D documentaries aside.) Hitchocck was a braver man. Also older with less time to waste.

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I liked Avatar a lot

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How it looked yes...the story, not so much. It IS like Dances with Wolves.

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but Zoe Saldana and (especially) Sam Worthington are/were no Kate and Leo, and Avatar's sweeping song over the end credits called I think 'I see you' is/was no 'The Heart Will Go On'.

--

Avatar had a theme song?

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Avatar made tons and tons of money but these misses on the stars and song fronts suggested at the time that Avatar *wasn't* going to become a Titanic or Star Wars-level cultural reference point.

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I think studies were done that showed if you considered inflation, supercostly 3-D tickets and the impact of uncaring worldwide audiences "who showed up just to show up" thus pushing the grosses higher, Avatar simply didn't connect with folks like Titanic did. And it got fewer re-viewings. Didn't stay in theaters so long. Isn't shown on TV as much. Etc.

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And it really hasn't. And that they're bringing Sigourney Weaver back from the dead for the sequels suggests that Cameron knows he's got a star-shortage on his hands.

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Yeah. She just may well have been the best thing in it, and the most remininscent of triumphs past(Aliens.) The villain who got killed was cool too(Stephen Lang.) But nobody HAS to die in movies anymore.

[–] Doghouse-6 7 years ago

Is this a good place to note that Alfred Hitchcock's first assigned production for David Selznick was to be...a film about the Titanic?

I'll never know how that happened to slip my mind...and on this board, of all places!

Titanic would have made a bigger, ahem, splash for Hitchcock's set-piece techniques. Perhaps that's why Foreign Correspondent of 1940(the year of Rebecca) has that plane crash into the sea.

The flooding and escape sequence remains harrowing and impressive, and the little goof therein - a jostled camera revealing a fleeting glimpse of the top of the set and lights - actually adds to the sense of jeopardy, hinting that the actors and crew themselves were undergoing their own ordeal.

And one can't help but remember that Hitch went on to his own sea epic in microcosm a few years later and, 15 years thereafter, abandoned a project incorporating more such elements.

Hitchcock gave some interviews with his ideas for Titanic. Like starting with glasses filled with wine shifting on a tilting table and crashing to the floor.

The possibilities are tempting to consider, not only in terms of his macro/micro approach - making big points with small details - but in the larger context of the Titanic legend itself. Once a story becomes "a Hitchcock property," the association is difficult to escape. Although neither T-97 nor ANTR are "remakes" of T-53, it's easy to imagine that there might have been no T-53 had there been a '40 Hitchcock rendition. We both know there's been only one director who's successfully disregarded the informal rule, Thou Shalt Not Remake Hitchcock. To do that, thou must be Hitchcock.

Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

Is this a good place to note that Alfred Hitchcock's first assigned production for David Selznick was to be...a film about the Titanic?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'll never know how that happened to slip my mind...and on this board, of all places!

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Eh...happens to me all the time.
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Titanic would have made a bigger, ahem, splash for Hitchcock's set-piece techniques. Perhaps that's why Foreign Correspondent of 1940(the year of Rebecca) has that plane crash into the sea.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The flooding and escape sequence remains harrowing and impressive, and the little goof therein - a jostled camera revealing a fleeting glimpse of the top of the set and lights - actually adds to the sense of jeopardy, hinting that the actors and crew themselves were undergoing their own ordeal.

---

Sheesh..I'm no Hitchcock buff I guess...I never SAW that...soon I shall! But yes, I think a few Hitchcock movies show the risks to the actors as you watch the scenes: that plane crash(with the water coming in through the cockpit window); Lifeboat's storm scenes(Hume Cronyn was almost drowned on a set in front of people nearby!), the little man who crawls under the carousel in Strangers on a Train and almost gets his backbone clipped(that guy is in lots of 50's movies by the way, like Harvey -- he was an ACTOR, not a stunt man); Tippi Hedren under attic attack in The Birds, and yes -- Janet Leigh and especially Martin Balsam going through their murders; Balsam reportedly hurt his back, likely when he fell onto the foyer floor.

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And one can't help but remember that Hitch went on to his own sea epic in microcosm a few years later

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Lifeboat...likely ALSO where a few Titanic ideas ended up...

...like that great opening shot on a ship's smokestack...we expect to see the ship, but its just the stack...sinking beneath the waves(I remember the SHOCK to my expectations when I first saw that movie and that shot.)

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and, 15 years thereafter, abandoned a project incorporating more such elements.

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The Wreck of the Mary Deare. We got NXNW instead. I've seen Mary Deare(with macho men Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston, hardly a Hitchcock cast -- no wait, Hitch always wanted to work with the YOUNG Cooper.) Its pretty dull expect for some ship at stormy sea stuff. Hitch was right to drop it.

Funny: Hitchcock abandoned The Wreck of the Mary Deare...so we got NXNW instead.

One year later Hitch abandoned No Bail for the Judge(with Audrey Hepburn and Laurence Harvey starred) and we got Psycho instead.

Thank God for Unmade Movies.

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Hitchcock gave some interviews with his ideas for Titanic. Like starting with glasses filled with wine shifting on a tilting table and crashing to the floor.
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The possibilities are tempting to consider, not only in terms of his macro/micro approach - making big points with small details - but in the larger context of the Titanic legend itself.

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I expect with the special effects/budgets tightnesses of 1940, Hitchcock would have had to do a LOT of that macro/micro. But I'm sure he would have come up with a good model ship and a good sinking -- Foreign Correspondent shows us what could have been.

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Once a story becomes "a Hitchcock property," the association is difficult to escape. Although neither T-97 nor ANTR are "remakes" of T-53, it's easy to imagine that there might have been no T-53 had there been a '40 Hitchcock rendition.

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A great point. I suppose the inverse is that Hitchcock rarely (ever?) tackled a big historical subject that might lend itself to a remake.

Which reminds me: after Psycho, Hitchcock was actually offered the Liz Taylor Cleopatra! They were between directors and desperate. I expect he would have given us a pretty gory stabbing of Caesar.

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We both know there's been only one director who's successfully disregarded the informal rule, Thou Shalt Not Remake Hitchcock. To do that, thou must be Hitchcock.

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Truly, he was The Man Who Knew Too Much.

[–] Doghouse-6 7 years ago

Sheesh..I'm no Hitchcock buff I guess...I never SAW that...soon I shall!

If you can stream video on whatever device you use, you'll see it at 3:02 in this clip:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/79462960-157.html

Otherwise, look for it about two seconds after the cut from the water-crashing-through-the-cockpit shot when you next watch the film.

...like that great opening shot on a ship's smokestack...we expect to see the ship, but its just the stack...sinking beneath the waves(I remember the SHOCK to my expectations when I first saw that movie and that shot.)

Speaking of Stacks and ships, there's a really quite well done disaster-at-sea film called The Last Voyage, in which an explosion pins passenger Dorothy Malone under wreckage in her cabin, and husband Robert Stack races against time, rising water and all manner of obstacles in his attempts to free her as the ship's being abandoned, enlisting along the way assistance from crewmen Edmond O'Brien and Woody Strode (George Sanders is aboard as well, as the captain). IMDB trivia states that Stuart Whitman, the coulda-been-Sam Loomis, was orignally intended for the Stack role.

It's from 1960 (there we are again), color and widescreen, and the producers went to the trouble of partially sinking the Île de France, aboard which a great deal of it was shot (you'll recall it was that ship that rescued Strangers On A Train player Ruth Roman and others from the Andrea Doria). Some of the most effective footage is in the final moments, as waters submerging the slanting decks are literally at the heels of our stars as they stumble toward a rescue boat.

And after all that, the last shot purporting to be the doomed ship is that very smokestack shot from Lifeboat, cropped and tinted blue to lend it whatever continuity was possible. The Last Voyage wasn't even a 20th-Fox picture, and I'd wager that the MGM film editors got it from one of the many stock libraries around town, with no awareness of its original source.

And if you've seen it, you know all that, so skip it.

The Wreck of the Mary Deare. We got NXNW instead. I've seen Mary Deare(with macho men Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston, hardly a Hitchcock cast -- no wait, Hitch always wanted to work with the YOUNG Cooper.) Its pretty dull expect for some ship at stormy sea stuff. Hitch was right to drop it.

As grateful as I am for NXNW, I've always been rather fond of The Wreck of the Mary Deare, especially considering I've never been a great fan of either Cooper or Heston. I think I can see what might have initially appealed to Hitchcock: teasing the audience at the start with "clues" to Cooper's guilt, then milking the suspense of his efforts to clear himself while the real baddies work against him (à la Frenzy). But as part courtroom drama/investigative thriller, it incorporates elements for which I'm a sucker.

And it's got Michael Redgrave and Cecil Parker (The Lady Vanishes), actor/writer Emlyn Williams (Jamaica Inn and script contributions to TLV), along with Alexander Knox, whom I've always liked, but who was largely wasted here and generally underused in films.

Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] ecarle 7 years ago

eesh..I'm no Hitchcock buff I guess...I never SAW that...soon I shall!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you can stream video on whatever device you use, you'll see it at 3:02 in this clip:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/79462960-157.html

Otherwise, look for it about two seconds after the cut from the water-crashing-through-the-cockpit shot when you next watch the film.

--

The link worked clear as a bell for me. Thanks

And...WHAT A SEQUENCE...

I oftimes will bunch the Foreign Correspondent plane crash into the sea along with the berserk carousel, Mount Rushmore, and the bird attacks among great Hitchcock set-pieces. But it is REALLY great, perhaps lacking the exhilarating romantic perfection of Rushmore(my favorite Hitchcock set-piece) but about as VISCERAL a sequence as Hitchcock ever created.

In 1940 yet.

The sense of:

Being way high up in the sky, looking down on the ship firing upwards.

The plane shifting to and fro, up and down, in mid-air. This is no "smooth plane ride." This is a roller coaster and YOU ARE THERE.

The panic and organization of all the passengers, suiting up with life jackets.

The one snooty woman who refuses a life jacket, opines she will complain to the authorities, and is shot dead by a stray something(bullet? shrapnel?) just like that. So much for ignoring reality.

The diagonal tilt downwards as people move upwards

And the CRASH...water right through the cockpit window and then knocking people over the seats as THE CAMERA MOVES.

In 2000, the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away had a helluva visceral plane crash into the sea that was quite exciting with all the CGI money could buy...but...

...I can't say the Cast Away crash was much BETTER than what Hitchcock had done 60 YEARS EARLIER.

Truly amazing. Probably single-handedly got FC its Best Picture nomination(it was beaten by Rebecca!)

And oh, about those soundstage lights -- I saw 'em, but...blink and you miss 'em. Maybe they make more of an impact on the big screen.

---
---

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...like that great opening shot on a ship's smokestack...we expect to see the ship, but its just the stack...sinking beneath the waves(I remember the SHOCK to my expectations when I first saw that movie and that shot.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of Stacks and ships, there's a really quite well done disaster-at-sea film called The Last Voyage, in which an explosion pins passenger Dorothy Malone under wreckage in her cabin, and husband Robert Stack races against time, rising water and all manner of obstacles in his attempts to free her as the ship's being abandoned, enlisting along the way assistance from crewmen Edmond O'Brien and Woody Strode (George Sanders is aboard as well, as the captain). IMDB trivia states that Stuart Whitman, the coulda-been-Sam Loomis, was orignally intended for the Stack role.

---

Poor Stuart Whitman. Kept losing those roles. But he GOT roles so I guess it turned out even. His role in "The Commancheros" was originally set for...Anthony Perkins!

---

It's from 1960 (there we are again),

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Yep. Interesting year for movies, and they all have that "Eisenhower's going out, JFK's coming in" sense of time and place.

-

color and widescreen, and the producers went to the trouble of partially sinking the Île de France, aboard which a great deal of it was shot (you'll recall it was that ship that rescued Strangers On A Train player Ruth Roman and others from the Andrea Doria). Some of the most effective footage is in the final moments, as waters submerging the slanting decks are literally at the heels of our stars as they stumble toward a rescue boat.

---

I've seen the film, some time ago, and it WAS thrilling how an actual ship was put in some jeopardy to make things real. Good cast, too.

I did not know that Ruth Roman information...so you have educated me a second time in two posts...

--

And after all that, the last shot purporting to be the doomed ship is that very smokestack shot from Lifeboat, cropped and tinted blue to lend it whatever continuity was possible. The Last Voyage wasn't even a 20th-Fox picture, and I'd wager that the MGM film editors got it from one of the many stock libraries around town, with no awareness of its original source.

--

Ha! I did not know THAT! Either.

Which reminds me: Robert Walker only completed one film after Strangers on a Train -- except he didn't. It was "My Son John" (1952) and he died (young at 33 from a Dr. Feelgood injecting him with a tranquilizer when he was drunk) before they could film his death scene in the film. So..."My Son John" director Leo McCarey -- working with ALFRED HITCHCOCK, cobbled together Walker's death scene from his death scene in Strangers on a Train!

I've only read this, I've never seen "My Son John," I don't know how they did it..I think they optically printed an ultra close-up of Walker's dying face from Strangers and then "dubbed a double from behind."

I must go see that sometime.

--

And if you've seen it, you know all that, so skip it.

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Saw it, didn't know all that...hey, I'm not THAT much of a buff. I hope you get to the new boards where we can keep learning from you.

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The Wreck of the Mary Deare. We got NXNW instead. I've seen Mary Deare(with macho men Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston, hardly a Hitchcock cast -- no wait, Hitch always wanted to work with the YOUNG Cooper.) Its pretty dull expect for some ship at stormy sea stuff. Hitch was right to drop it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As grateful as I am for NXNW, I've always been rather fond of The Wreck of the Mary Deare, especially considering I've never been a great fan of either Cooper or Heston.

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Uh oh. Well...I can back pedal with the best of them. I think Hitchcock's remarks to Truffaut biased me against it. Hitchcock said the movie started with such powerful mystery that the explanation could only be a letdown. It kinda was...but there WAS an ending...and villains trying to spear Heston and Cooper underwater. (The rigorous underwater filming took a toll on Cooper, who would die from cancer only two years later, and probably had the illness then.)

-
I think I can see what might have initially appealed to Hitchcock: teasing the audience at the start with "clues" to Cooper's guilt, then milking the suspense of his efforts to clear himself while the real baddies work against him (à la Frenzy). But as part courtroom drama/investigative thriller, it incorporates elements for which I'm a sucker.

---

That's true. And at that time there were many precedents in Hitchcock's films for trial scenes: The Paradine Case, I Confess, The Wrong Man, a bit of Dial M.

---

And it's got Michael Redgrave and Cecil Parker (The Lady Vanishes), actor/writer Emlyn Williams (Jamaica Inn and script contributions to TLV), along with Alexander Knox, whom I've always liked, but who was largely wasted here and generally underused in films.

---

I hear you on Knox; he LOOKED interesting to me. And Redgrave..yeah, that's right.

Well, I guess I'd better go see Mary Deare again. I'm now a fan!

[–] Doghouse-6 7 years ago

The diagonal tilt downwards as people move upwards

I remember thinking of this the first time I saw Cameron's Titanic, in which he does the same thing on a larger scale.

One great detail during that "nosedive" sequence: the quick insert of the window suddenly splattered with oil, conveying both the mechanical damage and velocity; another of those "macro/micro approach" examples that so effectively put viewers in the moment, and are among the little things people notice and remember amid larger-scale calamity (like those glasses of wine on a tilting table).

My mother's Chevy Caprice had a built-in, swing-out kleenex dispenser mounted under the glove box, and when I was 17, a truck running a red light sent me spinning across Ventura Blvd in that car into a utility pole. When I came to rest after about 3 seconds of sound and fury, the very last bit of motion as all became quiet was that dispenser swinging out from the impact, and it's always the first thing I remember when that event pops into my head.

It's the little things.

And the CRASH...water right through the cockpit window

Hitchcock seemed proud of that, and of describing how it was accomplished. Now, however, I'm gonna get really nit-picky about one aspect of it: physics. The pilot and co-pilot are scrambling aft as the plane hits, and seem to be propelled even further in that direction by the water crashing through, when they would actually have been catapulted forward toward the nose as the plane hit the water. Like I said: really nit-picky.

The one snooty woman who refuses a life jacket, opines she will complain to the authorities, and is shot dead by a stray something(bullet? shrapnel?) just like that. So much for ignoring reality.

That's a great device, albeit one that became cliche in later films (there are such characters in The High and the Mighty and Airport, for instance), but Hitchcock's the only one I can think of who used it to its fullest advantage: in one second, she's a comic annoyance for whom we feel no sympathy; in the next, her sudden demise hammers home the gravity of the situation as equally sudden shock and a bit of guilt set in with the viewer for having been annoyed by her a moment before. The two examples I cited fail to exploit it, merely having the cranky and self-centered passengers getting told off or slapped.

And oh, about those soundstage lights -- I saw 'em, but...blink and you miss 'em.

Yes, it's a literal split second. I'd seen the film probably a dozen times before I ever noticed it.

I've only read this, I've never seen "My Son John," I don't know how they did it..I think they optically printed an ultra close-up of Walker's dying face from Strangers and then "dubbed a double from behind."

Me too. Interesting you should bring it up, as there's a still-active thread about McCarey films on the Classic Film board, and My Son John stirred up some strong feelings, most of them negative, among some commenters. I'll have to catch up with it one of these days.

Uh oh. Well...I can back pedal with the best of them. I think Hitchcock's remarks to Truffaut biased me against it.

You never need concern yourself with my feelings about a given film vis a vis any opposing ones you might have, and I never try to talk anyone into liking one they don't. All I can do is state why I do, and if it moves you to reconsider, that's both generous and flattering.

Here's something I don't know if I can properly articulate, but I'll try. There's something inexplicably appealing to me about U.S. actors in British films. I don't know if it's down to cross-cultural aspects, or if the atmosphere somehow seems to elevate the American players or what. It does seem to me that British productions were some years ahead of U.S. ones in terms of putting a more gritty realism onscreen, and I feel that TWOTMD benefits from it.

However different we can imagine it being in other ways, I'm assuming that, had Hitchcock gone ahead with it, it would have been a Culver City-based production, and I have no idea how it came to be transferred to MGM's U.K. facilities.

Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

125 The Court Jester Norman Panama, Melvin Frank, 1955

Convoluted, occasionally quite funny musical-comedy-burlesque-of-Robin-Hood-ish movies (e.g., The Flame and the Arrow (1951) as much as Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) - so broad Hollywood Medieval types really). Danny Kaye stars as the titular Jester... and at least occasionally you get some glimpses from him of a proto-Woody Allen and a proto-Mel Brooks and also of Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride. Still, for the most part, the whole thing feels like a bit of an exercise. There are large patches of verbal schtick that aren't funny exacty and so feel like padding, all of the songs are bad, none of Kaye's romantic involvements are at all credible, and most of the supporting actors not named Basil Rathbone (who could do this sort of thing in his sleep) make little impression. The use of a squad of 'little people' at both the beginning and the end of the film is so loopy that it's actually rather fun, and does provoke the 'I can't believe what I'm seeing' response once or twice.

The Court Jester (1955) was expensive to make for some reason and it bombed on first release. It appears to have acquired a following since on TV. Maybe it's the sort of film that gets funnier with repeat viewings, and maybe too it has a special appeal for kids or to people who encountered it first as a kid (I suspect that Wright is one of those). Meeting it cold as an adult, TCJ just isn't good enough to be seriously recommendable except to Hollywood completists.

P.s., TCJ is shot in VistaVision, but completely wastes it. Hitch shoots To Catch A Thief in Vista the same year (not on Wright's list!) and with Robert Burks as DP gets *amazing* image-quality. The two films come from completely different universes of cinematic skill and achievement.

[–] Mr_K_Pratt 8 years ago

Thanks for posting this, it's the most impressive list I've ever seen with literally hundreds of my favourite films mentioned, including "Nuts in May". 

I'll definitely be referring to this in the future for the ones I haven't seen.

YOU SHOULDN'T BE EATING SAUSAGES!!

[–] swanstep 8 years ago

Thanks for posting this, it's the most impressive list I've ever seen with literally hundreds of my favourite films mentioned, including "Nuts in May".

You're welcome. While I've now voiced many criticisms of Wright's list it *does* 'ring true' in a lot of ways by surefootedly identifying numerous films (even those made for TV like Nuts In May and Threads) that have absolutely stuck with anyone who ever saw them yet that in many cases get overlooked in standard critics lists. From The Incredible Shrinking Man to Ferris Beuller to Dark Of The Sun to Wake in Fright to Little Big Man to The Stunt Man to Throw Mamma From the Train to Starship Troopers to Run Lola Run to Ms 45 to Master And Commander:Far Side of the World to The LEGO Movie...that whole alternative 'why we go to the movies in the first place' (to have a good time!) history of peak pleasure is all here.

[–] CharlesTheBold 7 years ago

On closer inspection Wright's list has way too much genre trash for me
====================
"Genre" is just a synonym for "category". Why do people like swanstep use it to mean a PARTICULAR category, presumably sci/fi and fantasy?

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

On closer inspection Wright's list has way too much genre trash for me
====================
"Genre" is just a synonym for "category". Why do people like swanstep use it to mean a PARTICULAR category, presumably sci/fi and fantasy?

I agree that I, like many other people, tend to use 'genre' in a fairly slippery way. I guess in context I could have said 'grindhouse', and I seem to recall that various types of horror and martial arts movies were the particular sources for my exasperation at the time.

Pick any year from Wright's list and you'll see that it's full of films that are plot-driven and lurid-premise-driven and are the 20th+ iteration of some particular formula (often aimed at teenagers) that nonetheless became notorious or exemplary for some reason. And this is to say that, like Tarantino, he's got at least as much time for trash/the grindhouse/fleapit and also for the multiplex as the arthouse.

I like the anti-snobbery of Wright's list but year after year (both those I was around for and remember exactly how the flow of importance and buzz went at the time, and those for which I wasn't) films with a highly-iterated character get on Wright's list seemingly at the expense of anything less plot- or premise- or action-driven or less categorizable, or less formulaic. It's been an interesting experience to gap-fill with Wright as a guide, to expose myself to a bunch of, as we'd ordinarily say 'genre films' and find some gems but also a bunch of films barely-worth-the-time-taken-to-watch-'em.

[–] Doghouse-6 7 years ago

Just want to take this opportunity to express thanks and admiration, swanstep, for your adventurous spirit and ever-inquisitive outlook on all things film. As a lurker on this board for some time before jumping in, you and ecarle seemed to me The Two Musketeers of the Psycho board, and your observations alone have provided more rewarding reading than I can possibly quantify.



Poe! You are...avenged!

[–] swanstep 7 years ago

@Doghouse-6. Thanks very much! When I started posting here (around 2007 I think) there were 5 or 6 mega-posters who were founts of knowledge and experience. Ecarle was one of those of course, whereas the others, telegenous, eric_barker, arthicus, a woman in Brisbane whose screen-name I've forgotten, and a few others... have mostly moved on (telegenous still posts occasionally and very welcomely).

Both ecarle and I do worry sometimes that we post too much and too tangentially, but I know at least in my own case that I'm really just trying to continue the learned but congenial and undogmatic, focused but not *too* focused spirit that the board had when I originally joined it. I'd been using IMDb and posting on the odd message-board for at least 4 years before I stumbled across the Psycho board. It was instantly clear to me that Psycho and Hitchcock's special centrality to film history and to the history of the film business had inspired a very special kind of community to form, which I wanted to be part of. Happily that community made me feel very welcome.

Anyhow, I've appreciated all of your comments Doghouse-6. I've got hold of a copy of Titanic 1953 finally and will get around to watching it sometime in the next few weeks, and that's certainly mostly because of you (and ecarle). Thanks!

[–] swanstep (2616) 7 years ago

Mwahaha, we're back!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Alright!!!!

Looking forward to as many of the 1000 as you can keep covering.

What a project!

[–] swanstep (2616) 7 years ago

Here are the movies from Wright's list that I've seen post-IMDb together with a basic score:
The Doom Generation (1995) 3/10
Cop Car (2015) 6/10
Road To Morocco (1942) 3/10
Cheap Thrills (2013) 6/10
Roaring Twenties (1939) 9/10
Bitter Harvest (1963) 5/10
Violent Cop (1989) 7/10
Ghosts….of the Civil Dead (1988) 8/10
Retroactive (1997) 5.5/10

Sadly I don't have energy or detailed enough memory to write capsule reviews for all these now. (Particularly when I really *don't* like something I start to forget about it almost immediately unless I write something down, and without the prompt of that IMDb thread I haven't except for these scores.)

By my lights, however, Roaring Twenties is the real find in this bunch: a thrilling film by Raoul Walsh at the height of his powers, RT was evidently a massive influence on Citizen Kane (Welles officially claimed that Ford was his only prior film-making influence, but RT reveals that as a lot of hooey - although to be fair it's the structure of scenes and beats from RT that CK most clearly replicates and presumably that's down in large part to Herman Mankiewiscz's script. I'd bet a large sum that HMank saw RT a bunch of times and that he made damn sure that Orson saw it at least once!) and on Scorsese quite generally from Mean Streets through to Goodfellas and Casino.

RT obviously came out in one of the greatest of all movie years, and at the end of the '30s gangster movie cycle, and just before Bogart finally became iconic with Maltese Falcon. For all these reasons, RT has been overlooked a little I believe (except by some of the very best filmmakers). Good job by Wright to bring some attention to it.

Violent Cop (1989) and Ghosts---of the Civil Dead (1988) are the other good 'uns according to me. Both are fairly brutal and are strongly redolent of various '70s (at least) near-masterpieces: VC draws on Dirty Harry and GOTCD draws on both Alan Clarke's Scum and Lucas's THX-1138. Both VC and GOTCD are incredibly cynical and nihilistic, and GOTCD is assaultive and disturbing. The '80s has a well-deserved reputation for being a populist, cheesy decade for film, but both VC and GOTCD remind us that there was a lot of tension building up outside Hollywood (here in Japan and Australia) throughout that decade.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Bump