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TM2YC's 1001 Movies (Chronological up to page 25/post 481)

Gaith

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For years, I've wanted to paint my face blue à la Braveheart on an American election day... haven't yet gotten around to it, though. :p

 

mnkykungfu

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^It's a boring discussion, but the above argument gets into expectations from art. Actors and filmmakers speak all the time about seeing themselves as trying to get to the "truth" of something, to tell something true to the audience, etc. That doesn't mean that it's factual. If that argument sounds incredibly confusing, then there's no amount of explanation that'll sort it out short of a conversation over some drinks.

Personally, unless I get a title card at the front of a film telling me that everything really happened, I don't assume it's telling me much that's factual. Or in the case of several works by the Coens, even if you get that title card, you shouldn't assume so. But very good films almost always speak to the truth of something, which is what my argument for Braveheart was. (Herzog has an interesting approach like this that he even extends to his documentary filmmaking...)
 

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Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Country: United States
Length: 132 minutes
Type: Sports, Drama

When I watched this back in 2004, younger me was very disappointed that it was not the crowd-pleasing "female Rocky" story that it was marketed as. It fully plays like that up to a point. Clint Eastwood's cantankerous boxing trainer character could not be more like Burgess Meredith's 'Mickey' if he tried. I'd remembered the point at which it becomes something else as being much earlier but it's actually about two thirds through.

On this second viewing I was of course going in without those high, specific and wrong expectations. This time I loved every minute of it! Since the three actual 'Rocky' films made after 'Million Dollar Baby' have explored debilitating and terminal illness, ageing and a more broken down, emotionally raw Rocky, MDB feels like it fits right in with the tone of that franchise now. Maybe Sylvester Stallone took some inspiration from this Best Picture winner? Eastwood directs a quality film on every level. You couldn't ask for three better lead actors than Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and especially Hilary Swank. The scenes between her and her family are so heartbreaking. They do most of the talking but through the pain on Swank's face you instantly understand why her Maggie character is the way she is. The surrogate father/daughter relationship between Swank and Eastwood is played beautifully, it's emotional but unsentimental and jaggedy real.

 

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The Gleaners and I (2000)
Director: Agnes Varda
Country: France
Length: 82 minutes
Type: Documentary

In 'Les glaneurs et la glaneuse' Agnes Varda casts her curious and empathetic eye over the world of French "glaneurs", rural and urban scavengers, foragers and trash-pickers. Varda allows random chance to inform the direction and gaze of the film, the footage itself feels foraged. There is an accidental stray lens-cap "dancing" to jazz, a grand oil canvas depicting glaneurs is taken out of storage and shimmers in the breeze, the visual delight of discarded heart-shaped potatoes and all the unusual, wonderful people she talks to. The bit where we hear the 72-year old Varda doing a rap track on the subject of the film was genuinely great.

 

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Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Country: Japan
Length: 146 minutes
Type: Psychological Horror, Erotic Drama

A school teacher on a short holiday searching for a new insect species is tricked into a sand dune from which he can’t climb out and forced to collect sand with the titular woman who has been trapped there for years. I'm pretty sure it’s supposed to be a cynical metaphor for the drudgery modern life, pushed to nightmare extremes, so you become aware of the illusion of freedom and negotiable happiness. So the woman is effectively his wife, the sand wracked shack he’s trapped in might as well be a claustrophobic city apartment and the endless digging for sand, to literally earn food and water could be a seemingly meaningless office job. That the teacher was trying to trap bugs is the most obvious level of meaning. Just as the potential reward of that scientific hobby once sustained him, he eventually becomes "institutionalised", content with the innovations associated with trying to trap water in this desert, in the hopes of "impressing his new bosses", the village elders who keep him imprisoned. I get it and it made me think but I didn’t particularly enjoy it for all 2.5 hours. The creepy percussive horror score reminded me of ‘Suspiria’.

 

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To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Director: Robert Mulligan
Country: United States
Length: 129 minutes
Type: Courtroom, Coming-of-age, Drama

'To Kill a Mockingbird' is pure class, from Elmer Bernstein's wistful score, to Gregory Peck's towering performance. The child actors, which the film revolves around, are very impressive. The dialogue/script rarely (if ever) feels the need to explain what is really happening at many points, because it sits outside of the perspective of the children, the adult viewer is trusted to understand everything from the assured visual storytelling by Director Robert Mulligan.

By the way, I thought the "50th Anniversary" Ltd-Ed remastered blu-ray looked stunning 11-years ago but it looks a bit soft compared to newer transfers of 60s films. Time for another remaster of this classic please Universal.

 

TM2YC

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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)
Director: Sergei Parajanov
Country: Ukraine
Length: 97 minutes
Type: Drama

Sergei Parajanov film-making is bold and experimental, using whip pans and extensive handheld to move around the characters in a way that makes the viewer feel like they occupy the same space. The dreamlike, frenetic but slowmo sequences of branches rushing past the actors look amazing. The spell is broken for an instant when I could see an actress swap her intended rapturous smile, for a flicker of terror in her eyes as the branches come close to blinding her. I detected Werner Herzog, 'The Wicker Man' and 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' vibes in the subject and use of sound but it's not a horror film. The story and characterisation were a weak point for me, so it dragged, despite the interesting visuals and startling brass score.

 

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Raging Bull (1980)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Country: United States
Length: 129 minutes
Type: Sports, Drama

I think it's been over a decade since I last saw 'Raging Bull'. The truly iconic opening titles, a single, super-slowmo, black and white shot of Jake LaMotta inside a boxing ring, wreathed in smoke, pacing the confines of the ropes, that may as well be the bars of his cell, soundtracked by Mascagni's 'Cavalleria rusticana Intermezzo' is so sad and beautiful. It's a story of a man's self-destruction, paranoia, jealousy, myopic rage and self-inflicted mental suffering, to the point where he is literally beating his head against a brick wall by the end. It doesn't matter that Robert De Niro's portrayal of LaMotta is fundamentally unlikeable and nasty because his pain is still sympathetic. In one scene Martin Scorsese brilliantly "tunes" us into LaMotta's dysfunctional mental wavelength by making a lingering visual comparison between Jake and the static on the new TV he has failed to make operational.

Thelma Schoonmaker's editing is energetic and inventive, yet so seamless and natural that for a minute, I genuinely didn't notice that the film had switched from b&w to colour during the home movie scenes. I was that engrossed, which doesn't happen too often for me. There are moments that convey the story and derive all their power, from just the way they are shot and edited, moments that could be nothing in anybody else's hands. It's little surprise to me that in 2012 the Editors Guild voted Schoonmaker's work on 'Raging Bull' the greatest of all time. It's more surprising to read that this now classic of cinema had an initially lukewarm reception from some critics at the time it was released. But then again, the late 70s and early 80s had so many great movies coming out.


 
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Dead Man (1995)
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Country: United States
Length: 120 minutes
Type: Western, Psychedelic

I loved every minute of this dark, fantastical, unconventional Western from Jim Jarmusch. It's got Neil Young controlling the ebb and flow of the foreboding atmosphere and attitude with his stark electric guitar score. The soundmix hums with industrial noise and the sounds of nature like a David Lynch soundtrack. Johnny Depp plays a meek accountant who somehow becomes pursued for murder, aided by a strange Native American nomad called "Nobody" because he believes Depp's character is the reincarnation of English poet William Blake. Along their journey they have fleeting encounters with people who frequently end up dead and who have tragic, humorous, or otherwise interesting backstories and personalties. These cameos are filled by a real all-star cast.

Unfortunately the otherwise excellent Soda Pictures blu-ray transfer seemed to have a weird bit in the middle where it was shimmering between B&W and ever-so-slightly pinkish B&W... unless my TV, or my eyes have gone wrong :LOL: .

 

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Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Director: Peter Weir
Country: Australia
Length: 115 minutes
Type: Mystery, Drama, Psychological-Horror

'Picnic at Hanging Rock' is 2-hours long, yet only has one plot element, "let's all sit around and ponder what happened to those disappeared girls?", a question that is never answered (among other unresolved or unexplained elements), so this should be an annoying waste of time. Instead it's a tension filled, erotically charged, psychologically hypnotic, spiritual and intellectual masterpiece. There is something ineffable at play in the atmosphere created by Peter Weir's painterly visuals, the intoxicating sounds of nature, Bruce Smeaton's ominous, gothic synth scoring and Gheorghe Zamfir's panpipes. It sounds wrong to compare something this beautiful to 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' but I got that same vibe, in a odd way. Maybe it's the quasi documentary titlecard at the beginning, or the hum of crickets, or a strange ancient place in the sun-bleached wilderness from which people will not return. The music reminded me a bit of Goblin's 'Suspiria', so I wonder if this was an influence on that. I also thought the nexus of the mystery revolving around the enigmatic Miranda, was like the same around that of Laura Palmer in 'Twin Peaks'. If David Lynch was trying to replicate the same "Miranda effect" in his show, I can understand why he really didn't want that question resolved.

(I watched my own HD "Complete Unabridged" cut combining all material from the Theatrical and Director's Cuts.)





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The Last Wave (1977)
Director: Peter Weir
Country: Australia
Length: 106 minutes
Type: Mystery, Drama

'The Last Wave' seems like Peter Weir was trying to repeat the same sort of unanswerable mystery atmosphere he achieved in 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'. The conflict between the ancient and modern world's of Australia are much more bluntly explored, the setting is duller and more mundane and I just couldn't connect with star Richard Chamberlain's monotonic strained performance. There are a few memorable, trippy dream sequences and a low-key 'The Exorcist' sort of dread but it wasn't for me.

 

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Only the first and last films in the 'Trois Couleurs/Three Colours' trilogy are in the 1001 Movies book but I might as well watch the whole shebang...

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Three Colours: Blue (1993)
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Country: France, Poland, Switzerland
Length: 94 minutes
Type: Drama

Now I can finally say I've seen that there film what is referenced in a February 1999 scene from the TV comedy 'The League of Gentlemen' where two gore-hounds sit down in the wrong cinema playing 'Three Colours: Blue' and ask an annoyed cineaste "Is this 'Candyman 2: Farewell To The Flesh?'" :LOL: . That's my main reason for wanting to see this. But seriously...

An important element of the plot to 'Blue' is a recently bereaved composer's potentially era-defining, half-finished, unpublished opus, so this film wouldn't work anything like as well if it wasn't for Zbigniew Preisner's music. He creates something that instantly sounds like a great work by Beethoven, or Mozart, which we need just moments to recognise whenever it plays. As with the other films in the 'Three Colours' trilogy, the colour blue repeats in the costuming, lighting, key emotionally charged props and through characteristic things like water. Juliette Binoche gives a brilliant portrayal of cold, closed off grief.





Three Colours: White (1994)
Critic Roger Ebert interpreted 'White' as an "anti-comedy" and the other two films in the 'Three Colours' trilogy as an "anti-tragedy" ('Blue') and an "anti-romance" ('Red'). I think he got that bang on, 'White' features recognisable elements of a farce, or a romcom but isn't really supposed to be funny, or romantic, the main character has a Chaplin-esque, clownish bearing but is just pathetically tragic. Beneath it's whimsical surface plot, there is an increasing undercurrent of obsession and desolation. With great sympathy (at least at first) Zbigniew Zamachowski plays a put-upon Polish immigrant to France, divorced by his wife and finding his life in tatters on the streets. Janusz Gajos plays a wonderful friend character, somehow full of warmth and gentle kindness but sad and depressed too. I didn't think this was noticeably weaker than the other two more acclaimed bookends to the trilogy.




Three Colours: Red (1994)
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Country: Switzerland, France, Poland
Length: 99 minutes
Type: Drama

I thought 'Red' topped the first two excellent films in the trilogy. Like the others, it's like an "anti-romance", or at least a twist and subversion of that genre. It's also like a 'Sliding Doors' parallel realities and simultaneous timelines movie (or it isn't), with a character that maybe has god-like powers over dreams, reality and the elements (or doesn't), yet it's more straight forward and grounded than that implies. Irene Jacob plays Valentine, a beautiful young model and Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Joseph, a curmudgeonly old retired judge, who grow close to each in a way that verges on an unrequited love affair. A kind of "if I was 30-years younger, you'd be my soulmate" kind of dynamic. Except that their love possibly will be fulfilled in a strange way because the film also shows us the life of Auguste, a young newly appointed judge who seems to live a life eerily like that of Joseph when he was a younger man. 'Red' has an intricately constructed narrative, full of layers of meaning, visuals metaphors and possible interpretations... or it's just a beautifully acted little story about two lonely souls connecting, nothing more.

 

mnkykungfu

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Been meaning to watch these literally since they came out. Could never get a decent explanation of what they were though, so they've kind of been simmering on the back burner for many years.
 

TM2YC

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Been meaning to watch these literally since they came out. Could never get a decent explanation of what they were though, so they've kind of been simmering on the back burner for many years.

All three are about 90-minutes so they're a pretty easy watch. More and more I'm appreciating the ability to tell a story in just 90-mins, in an age where 2-hours is the standard movie length (or 3-hours for a simple Batman reboot).

It's best to watch the three together and in order because although they are three separate stories, in three different countries, the characters appear in the background of the other movies a couple of times.
 

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Babette's Feast (1987)
Director: Gabriel Axel
Country: Denmark
Length: 102 minutes
Type: Drama, Comedy

This being set in a bleak, windswept Scandi fishing village I was thinking it would be a brooding, dour affair like Ingmar Bergman's 'Hour of the Wolf', or Carl Theodor Dreyer's 'Ordet' but although 'Babette's Feast' is about a grey, austere, puritanical religious community, the film is full of subtle, dry humour and ultimately vibrant with the joys of life. Unusually for me, I didn't suspect the powerful revelation at the end for even a second, even when I was given all the clues, so it really hit me in the heartstrings. A couple of the courses in the titular feast did make me want to hurl, rather than salivate as intended but I can put that down to personal taste and ethics. The climatic dinner scene is a masterpiece of acting, the characters promise to not discuss the food (and they don't) but their feelings are written across the tiniest movements of their faces and eyes.

 

mnkykungfu

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It's best to watch the three together and in order because although they are three separate stories, in three different countries, the characters appear in the background of the other movies a couple of times.
Oooh, good to know! Thanks.
 

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Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Country: France
Length: 99 minutes
Type: Noir, Sci-Fi

Removed from the Parisian Marxist political and social context in which it was made, removed from it's position as a surprising satirical subversion of the then apparently popular 'Lemmy Caution' series of detective films ('Alphaville' was the 7th that Eddie Constantine had starred in), removed 57-years from when it was released, when it's architectural settings and technology looked futurist and brutalist (instead of a different kind of old-fashioned) and finally removed a couple more decades from the 'Film noir' genre cliches it's following, it becomes quite hard to comprehend exactly what it's trying to say, beyond it's obviously stylish visuals and Noirish atmosphere. It's notionally a "science fiction" film but barely, there's an all-powerful computer in it and it's said to be set in a dystopian future but that's it. It feels closer to an attempt to reproduce the effect of Orson Welles' 1962 film 'The Trial' (which also featured Akim Tamiroff), also a story of an outsider character lost in an absurdist, paranoid, dystopian world but not necessarily a future, Sci-Fi world. Jean-Luc Godard had surely seen 'The Trial', as Welles was a French New Wave icon and 'The Trial' had just been voted the film of the year in France.

 

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Project A (1983)
As I was wanting to watch the Eureka! blu-ray of 'Project A Part II', I thought I might as well rewatch the first film's blu-ray too (in the same boxset). The scattershot plot doesn't seem any less of a mess than last time but the stunts still impress and much of the humour is tons of fun. It hadn't occurred to me before but this has a bit of a 'Police Academy' vibe (which came out just 4-months later).

Given the long ignoble history of Hong Hong "home video" releases it's fantastic to see this colourful 2K restoration but it's disappointing that a reputable company like Eureka! didn't put a touch more care into the English subtitles. Most are fine but some are not smooth, natural translations, so my brain was sometimes half a second behind trying to digest the meaning of one sub, as it was reading the next. I'd struggle to believe that somebody who speaks English as their first language had given this blu-ray just one quick watch before shipping it out to customers. I watched with the original Cantonese mono track (5.1 mixes and dubs are on the disc too).




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Project A Part II (1987)
Director: Jackie Chan
Country: Hong Kong
Length: 106 minutes
Type: Action, Martial Arts

'Project A Part II' is far less silly than the first and although the plot is still a bit too convoluted (the good-cop/bad-cop angle would've been enough, without 17 other competing factions), it all hangs together. Everything looks a lot slicker, bigger, more expensive and with richer historical detail to the costumes and sets. There is also a noticeable shift in the politics between the two films, the first is "Yay Her Majesty!", the second is "Yay Revolution!". The quality and the density of the stunt work is fantastic. The action scenes are so packed with invention and spectacle that the viewer is in danger of missing or not appreciating some brilliant stunts because there are 50 stunts before and after even better. There was not enough Rosamund Kwan for my liking!

The readability issues with the English subtitles from the Eureka! 'Project A' blu-ray aren't a problem here. However, on the first movie transfer Jackie Chan's character is generally called "Dragon Ma", or just "Dragon" in the subs, on the second film's disc the subs call him "Ma Yu Lung". 'Yu Lung' being a small/fast sea dragon, a very appropriate name for Chan's character. It's nice to understand that small but important cultural detail (thanks to some Googling), but this meant that for half of Part II, I didn't realise the pirate characters were actually talking about Chan from the first movie. I watched with the original Cantonese mono track again but there is a pleasingly cheesy sounding dubbed shorter "Export" cut included on the bonus features that I might watch next time.

 

mnkykungfu

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I confess, I probably have a disproportionate love for the first Project A. The second film is undeniably a better-made movie, and far more beloved in film critic circles, maybe Chan's most-respected. The martial arts take a backseat in it compared to his other films of the time, and he really uses the movie as his tribute to the Silent Film Era and to Buster Keaton in particular. That said, the story ending always bothered me, and I missed the crazy fights of the first movie. The original Project A is like a really great B-grade kung fu film, made with maximum silliness and craziness. Part of me just thinks if you're making a story about Her Majesty vs Asian pirates, you've just got to lean into that vibe! :ROFLMAO:
 

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Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Country: France
Length: 87 minutes
Type: Experimental

Jean-Luc Godard makes "Blah blah Vietnam blah blah consumerism blah blah Vietnam" the movie. I think when people are doing parodies of the French New Wave, this is the specific movie they are referencing. It's some kind of deconstructed, deeply pretentious, experiment in film making, where bad editing is a clever comment on bad editing and bad sound mixing is a clever comment on bad sound mixing. There's also an undercurrent of lazy sexism. The scene in the garage was alright I suppose.




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Week-end (1967)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Country: France
Length: 105 minutes
Type: Comedy, Satire, road-movie

Jean-Luc Godard's 'Week-end' follows an awful, violent, self-obsessed couple, as they attempt to drive from the city to the country, somehow arguing and attacking everyone along the way. The 8-minute dolly shot, from left to right, following the progress of our character's car creeping through a traffic jam, and the angry, irrational, or resigned drivers they pass by is hugely impressive on a technical and logistical level. At points I found it very funny but the constant blaring horn sound grated (probably intentionally) and the inevitable "punchline" at the end of the jam was some bloodied corpses of children lining the road. Ha ha? The couple's encounters along the journey become increasingly surreal, until it became almost meaningless. I think it's supposed to be about urban alienation and the 18th century "Reign of Terror"? At one point Godard films a pig being hit in the head with a hammer, oh f*ck off Godard.

 

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Platoon (1986)
Director: Oliver Stone
Country: United States
Length: 120 minutes
Type: War, Drama

This was maybe my 3rd, or 4th time watching 'Platoon' but the last time was about 10-years back. My 2011 MGM blu-ray transfer is looking a bit ropey now but I believe the film had a remaster a couple of years ago. Oliver Stone's film is still powerful and packed with enough drama, tension and story telling to make 2-hours fly by. It's not without flaws though. The all-star cast of young actors (some new, some reliable character players) is never less than perfect, with one exception, Charlie Sheen as the main protagonist. He's not actually bad but all the rest of the actors are operating on such a high level, that he looks inexperienced and slightly wooden by comparison. I also don't care for his narration but that's more about Stone's writing. That kind of poetic, philosophical voice-over worked for Sheen's dad in the phantasmagorical 'Apocalypse Now' but in the otherwise serious drama of 'Platoon' it sounds a bit phoney. I just don't believe a young guy would write things like "Hell is the impossibility of reason" in a letter home to his grandma. This time I really noticed the limitations of the small $6 million budget, a few times we only hear something happening off screen because showing it would be too expensive (mostly shots of planes). The killing of civilians in a Vietnamese village by US Infantry (surely intended as an echo of the infamous "My Lai" massacre) was no doubt strong and controversial stuff to show to audiences just a decade after the Vietnam War ended but re-reading the events of the real massacre, today it might be argued that Stone's depiction of such atrocities gives the impression that they were a hundred times less serious than they actually were (literally).

 
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