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

TM2YC

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Spartacus (1960)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Country: United States
Length: 184 minutes
Type: Epic, War

'Spartacus' would be the crowning jewel in the filmographies of other directors but not Stanley Kubrick, who more or less disowned it. He lacked his usual "total creative control" having been brought in a week into filming after Anthony Mann was fired. Kubrick had disputes with the Cinematographer Russell Metty, writer Dalton Trumbo, star Kirk Douglas (who also produced), was not allowed to shoot it in the format he liked and didn't have final cut (scenes of violence and a homoerotic sequence were removed). It's a shame because it's arguably the film that made Kubrick's reputation. That the 30-year old Director of modest and controversial black & white movies could take the reins on a colossal and troubled Technirama production, turn it around and make it into the biggest hit Universal had ever had financially and critically is arguably one of the main reasons Kubrick had near carte blanche for the rest of his career. Without 'Spartacus', he probably wouldn't have been allowed to make all the other unusual masterpieces that he did have full control of.

It's not perfect, the 3-hour run time does drag a little in the middle after you've seen it 10 or 20 times. Some of the stylised coloured lighting looks very dated, very 1960s, very 'Star Trek: The Original Series'. The interior sets look a bit phony but there is also a lot of dramatic location filming and some incredibly beautiful and seamless matte paintings to balance it out. It's all heavily romanticised but sticks pretty close to the broad historical facts of the slave uprising (if the contemporaneous sources were accurate). The 6K restoration on the 55th Anniversary blu-ray looks incredible, including the addition of the aforementioned deleted homoerotic scene. Laurence Olivier hadn't recorded his dialogue for it, so Antony Hopkins did a note-perfect impersonation, you'd never tell. Without this important scene, it wasn't clear why Antoninus fled from the home of Crassus, or why Crassus was so obsessed with him.

This re-watch re-doubled my appreciation for Peter Ustinov's fantastic performance as Batiatus. I noticed that there is almost nothing in his script which invites us to sympathise, or to like his character. His words and deeds are equally as bad as the other slave-owning characters but when Ustinov is acting them out they become the words of a lovable rogue. Another actor could have played Batiatus with the same script and made him a villain. To have him, Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton, three of the all-time greats on screen together is a real treat, not to mention stars Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. Laughton's wiley fictional politician Gracchus feels modeled on Cicero and Crassus' lust for power seems intended to echo the then recent dictators of the 20th Century.

The horrible irony of the final gladiatorial duel, where two friends fight with every sinew to kill the other, to save their companion from the worse fate of Crucifixion is dramatic genius from writer Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo had been jailed for refusing to "name names" at the notorious HUAC hearings. It's difficult to not see his iconic "I'm Spartacus!" scene as a celebration of those who had the courage to not betray their friends. Kirk Douglas bravely insisted that the blacklisted Trumbo be given full public credit. Anti-communist groups protested the film but once President Kennedy crossed their picket lines to enjoy 'Spartacus', the Hollywood blacklist was effectively ended.



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Gladiator (2000)
Director: Ridley Scott
Country: United States / United Kingdom
Length: 155 minutes
Type: Epic, Historical, Action

'Gladiator' is one of probably only a handful of movies I watched as many as 5 times in it's original theatrical window (also 'Mad Max: Fury Road' and 'Dredd'). The action, drama, scale, immersive power of the soundmix and the thundering majesty of Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard's score (influenced by Holst and Wagner), all demanded to be seen and heard on the big screen. I think Ridley Scott realised 2000 was the perfect time to bring back the old Hollywood "sword & sandals" epic. A moment in time when CGI had progressed to a point that made the full enormity of his vision possible but also a time when 90% of it still had to be achieved with massive sets, real stunts, crowd scenes and location shooting. At the time I remember there was a huge fuss made about the groundbreaking shot that whirls around the arena, with a 360-degree CGI set extension to the roof. It still holds up 100% twenty years later. A few of the big digital matte paintings of Rome show their age but even those still look pretty great.  I watched a Widescreen HDTV open-matte version, rather than my official matted CinemaScope blu-ray, it looks so much bigger and more epic with the expanded field of view.

Between the heart-pounding opening battle in the forest, all the various gladiatorial clashes that escalate across the first half and then the ending duel, it has to said that the pace gets a bit slack. Even in the classic original Theatrical Cut which I re-watched today, not to mention the 3-hour Extended Cut (which I've not seen in a long while). Among all the lavish costumes and sets, the one prop that looks rubbish is Maximus' gladiator helmet. I always hated the anachronistic design but up close in HD, it looks so bad, plasticy and impractical. I wonder if Scott made a last minute change to the design on a whim and the poor prop department had like an hour to weather it down and try to make it look believable. Or perhaps Scott noticed the mask in among some set dressing, never intended to be in closeup and swapped it for the original fine detailed prop? The attempt to complete Oliver Reed's scenes after he died mid-production, with a combination of doubles and early CGI head-swapping isn't totally successful but was preferable to recasting such a powerful performance. Considering Scott choose to cast three legendary, 1960s, elderly drinkers in prominent roles, it's a lucky only one of them died during filming. Richard Harris and David Hemmings would follow Reed to "the big pub in the sky" within a couple of years of 'Gladiator'.  I'm glad they were all cast because they're so damn good, not to mention Sir Derek Jacobi, who adds oodles of RSC class. I notice Jacobi's fictional Senator Gracchus shares the same name as Charles Laughton's character from 'Spartacus' and is broadly the same character. A deft populist politician but one who still has some principles he's prepared to die for. Scott's film certainly borrows freely from films like 'Spartacus' and 'Ben-Hur'. 'Gladiator's $300 million profits put Ridley Scott permanently back on the Director A-list after a patchy career filled with as many bombs and misfires, as hits and classics. Although this was hardly his first movie, it made an instant mega-star out of Russell Crowe,while Joaquin Phoenix has had his pick of projects ever since.



 

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I am quite picky about old movies, but I was surprised by how much Spartacus held up when I saw it a few years back.  For anyone holding out because it's not a "real" Kubrick film, I'd urge them to seek it out.  Sometimes having limitations produces better work than having nobody to tell you 'no'.
 

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The Exorcist (1973)
Director: William Friedkin
Country: United States
Length: 121 minutes
Type: Horror

On the first few watches of the 'The Exorcist' it's probably all the mad possession stuff that grabs you but it's the deeper explorations of self doubt, Catholicism, depression, loss of faith, fear of youth, fear of death and heroism that hold your attention. It gets richer with every re-watch. On this viewing I was really appreciating the sound mix. It's very careful to present a baseline of realistic, documentary style sound, with no overt dubbing, exaggerated Foley, or "sweetening" but when the supernatural events happen, that's when the sounds become unreal, bass heavy and weird.  The in-camera FX are still impressive, with objects flying everywhere, seemingly ignoring physics.  All the performances are brilliant but it's Jason Miller's soul shattered Father Karras that dominates. I believe 'The Exorcist' still holds the adjusted-for-inflation record for the highest grossing R-rated film ever, by some margin, well over double 'Joker's receipts. The violent and offensive material is relatively tame by today's standards but was enough for it to be sporadically banned on home-video and TV for 25-years in the UK.



Here is film critic Mark Kermode's introduction to the first ever TV screening of the film in the UK, on Channel 4, 17th March 2001:


It's his favourite film and he's seen it 200 times (as of 2010) :D :


The Fear of God: 25 Years of 'The Exorcist' (1998)
Mark Kermode's BBC documentary manages to get interviews with everybody involved in bringing 'The Exorcist' to the screen, even getting the quarrelsome William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin around the same table. Kermode continues to be an evangelist for the work of both men. The doc unearths mountains of interesting nuggets about the choices, changes and debates that informed the finished version, plus it featured a rough version of the deleted final scene, 2-years before Friedkin put it back in for his 2000 "Version You've Never Seen" re-release. I watched the uncut 81-minute version of 'The Fear of God' on iPlayer.

 

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TM2YC said:
79 years ago...

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Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)
Director: Michael Curtiz
Country: United States
Length: 97 minutes
Type: Gangster, Drama

The oldest movie I have that I still watch!  A lot of aspects of the drama and acting here are surprisingly anchored and gritty.  It's crazy to me how much better this is than a most gangster films made decades later, even today.
 

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TM2YC said:
79 years ago...

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Olympia (1938)
Director: Leni Riefenstahl
Country: Germany
Length: 228 minutes (3 3/4 hours)
Type: Documentary

It's interesting to hear your thoughts on this.  About it being basically propaganda-free, I'd read that one part you described was actually part of a long Nazi narrative tradition:
The opening 18-minutes of Pt1 is a wordless and elegant continuous montage set to triumphant music, taking us from the ruins of ancient Greece, then it's statues, then the statue-like naked bodies of male and female athletes in super slow-mo and finally a fantastical flight across the map of Europe from Greece to Germany, incorporating many effects, animations and paintings.
Hitler had invested a lot of research in twisting historical narratives to create a mythological "Aryan" race that had a long history of great deeds.  This opening section falls right in line with that, subtly (or not so) linking contemporary Germany through the ages to the foundations of athletic excellence in Ancient Greece, the society which once ruled the Western world.  There's a great 3-part podcast on the elaborate mythologizing Hitler and crew engaged in to link Germany to the great empires of the past from "Our Fake History."
 
Things were clearly pretty bad in America in the '30s, when they make the Nazi state look less racist.
Yeah, people in the modern US are often not aware of how much headway the eugenics movement made there in the '30s.  The footage of the Nazi party rally in Madison Square Garden is chilling.  That said, it's disappointing as an American to see you feel this way.  As troubled as the US was, Hitler treating a few athletes as exceptional just strikes me as seizing the moment for propaganda.  It doesn't change what they were doing with the "German Hygiene Museum" since '34.  (What would Owens have said if he visited there?)  Or what happened with the German-Jewish athletes and even many Jewish-American athletes.  This article might change your perspective: https://time.com/4432857/hitler-hosted-olympics-1936/

I'd like to think that despite the incredibly troubled history the US has had with race, we can still say we were better than Nazi Germany.  :cry:
 

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mnkykungfu said:
TM2YC said:
79 years ago...

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Olympia (1938)
Director: Leni Riefenstahl
Country: Germany
Length: 228 minutes (3 3/4 hours)
Type: Documentary

It's interesting to hear your thoughts on this.  About it being basically propaganda-free

I said it was "generally" propaganda-free, it's a subtle difference in wording that I think is important. I fully understand who made the film and what messages they would seek to project with it but for the most part, this message is not overt, absent entirely, or contradicted.
mnkykungfu said:
I'd read that one part you described was actually part of a long Nazi narrative tradition:

The opening 18-minutes of Pt1 is a wordless and elegant continuous montage set to triumphant music, taking us from the ruins of ancient Greece, then it's statues, then the statue-like naked bodies of male and female athletes in super slow-mo and finally a fantastical flight across the map of Europe from Greece to Germany, incorporating many effects, animations and paintings.

Connecting the place where the Olympics was first held and the place where it was currently being held, would be difficult to avoid. A sequence with the message of "the Greeks were awesome and we're awesome too" is pretty low key propaganda in my book. I'm sure every Olympic opening ceremony does the same. You could recreate the same sequence shot-for-shot for the host of the next Olympics and nobody would bat an eyelid. It's only knowing who paid for this film to be made and why it was made, that makes it sinister.

mnkykungfu said:
TM2YC said:
Things were clearly pretty bad in America in the '30s, when they make the Nazi state look less racist.

It was in jest and that line was in context of Owen's treatment only e.g.

TM2YC said:
Apparently Owens received a congratulatory wave, handshake and signed-photo from Hitler. Owens stayed in unsegregated hotels in Germany and received the first ever sponsorship for a male African American athlete from German shoe maker Adidas. In contrast, on his return to the USA he was made to use the servant's entrance to his own New York celebration and received no congratulation from the President, or invitation to the White House. Things were clearly pretty bad in America in the '30s, when they make the Nazi state look less racist.

Of course I wasn't saying the US were worse than the Nazis (or anything close), just that in this one case of Jesse Owens the contrast was "not a good look". Owens himself has made this sad comparison.
TM2YC said:
people in the modern US are often not aware of how much headway the eugenics movement made there in the '30s.  The footage of the Nazi party rally in Madison Square Garden is chilling.

You mean the Oscar nominated short film? Yeah that doc is horrifying:


TM2YC said:
it's disappointing as an American to see you feel this way.

Trust me, I don't feel that way.

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Thanks for the interesting discussion as always but if you are going to quote very old posts, would you mind also including a link to where the specific one you are talking about is, like this (you just right click on the post number, hit copy, paste, done):

https://forums.fanedit.org/showthread.php?tid=12356&pid=308210#pid308210

It can take a while to find it otherwise :D .
 

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A couple of movies from the Spielberg/Amblin golden-era...

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Poltergeist (1982)
Director: Tobe Hooper
Country: United States
Length: 114 minutes
Type: Horror, Fantasy

I think if I'd seen 'Poltergeist' when I was a bairn it would've blown my mind and had me hiding behind the sofa but as an adult it just feels like a sanitised, slightly silly riff on 'The Exorcist'. The in-camera FX appearing to show objects moving on their own, a whole stack of chairs switching position in the space of a quick pan and fixed-camera/rotating-sets distorting gravity, still look like magic, the few opticals look far less impressive. I liked the way the family don't follow that annoying trope of absolutely refusing to believe their eyes and trying to rationalise the supernatural, well past the point of credulity and instead just accept the events as the work of a ghost from the get go. I also appreciated the avoidance of spooky horror lighting, it's mostly filmed in a very normal, flat, suburban way, which grounds the situation. The unnecessary double ending made the last half hour drag for me.

There has been some controversy and union wrangling over the question of who directed 'Poltergeist'. Some cast and crew insist it was all the credited director Tobe Hooper and some are adamant it was mostly writer/producer Steven Spielberg. I'm sure neither extreme is right but it was certainly a close collaboration and has that trademark Amblin style all over it. It's sad to read that two of the actors playing the kids died in tragic circumstances not long after. 'Poltergeist' was one of the films that led to the creation of the PG-13 rating because Spielberg and Hooper somehow got this downgraded from an R-rating, to a PG on appeal, which is nuts considering the levels of Horror shown.

The 35mm trailer:


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Back to the Future (1985)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Country: United States
Length: 116 minutes
Type: Romanti-Comedy, Sci-Fi, Action, Fantasy

It's really hard to try and pick apart a movie as utterly perfect as 'Back to the Future'. It's almost difficult to believe these are actors standing on sets and not characters that really live. The premise is endlessly fascinating. The Doc is like a reverse surrogate grandfather, teaching Marty to be a better person, lessons Marty passes back as the surrogate father of his own father. I love the home-made details of the time machine visible in HD, rough welds on the exhaust fins, all the embossing-tape instrument labels, exposed wiring, cable-ties and consumer junction boxes. You can totally believe the Doc really built it in his garage using components he bought at a hardware store.  I've only seen a DeLorean in the wild once before (I've seen the prop in a museum too) and everybody in the street just stops and watches it go by, transported for a moment out of their mundane day and into the magic of the movies! I'd love to own one.

After all these years there are moments in the film that can still move me to tears, like when George saves Loraine and asks her "Are you okay?" and when they kiss to 'Earth Angel'. It's one of the best ever romantic-comedies and one of the best Sci-Fi adventures all in one package.  It's testament to the production team's quest for perfection that they were prepared to restart production with a new actor after 3-weeks and $3-million dollars had been spent shooting with Eric Stoltz because they knew Michael J. Fox had to be Marty after all.  Lea Thompson probably gives the best performance, she's so charming, energetic and sexy as young Lorraine but also horribly real, pathetic and depressing as old alcoholic Lorraine. The bit where she is sat at the dinner table recounting her meeting with George is so dark. You can see her eyes light up with the warm memory of her first love and then switching in an instant to a look of almost hatred at the grim realisation of her present. She plays the double meaning of the line "It was then I realized I was going to spend the rest of my life with him" so well.

After watching this movie 50+ times, something I never noticed before was that there isn't a single note of non-diegetic music in the first 18-minutes. Alan Silvestri's lush, memorable and exciting score only begins at the precise moment when Doc Brown and the Delorean roll back out of the truck in a cloud of theatrical smoke. The sound of the DeLorean's engine drowning out the first notes so we aren't even aware it's begun. This serves two purposes, it transitions us subconsciously from the fairly grounded opening family drama of 1985 Hill Valley, into the magical fantasy world of the Doc. The absence of music also stops the viewer from becoming passive, or distracted due to a score telling us what to think and feel, so we concentrate our minds fully on the sights, sounds and exposition-packed dialogue of the opening act, nearly every moment of which will be made reference to and subverted as the movie plays out. It must take real effort to construct a script that feels this effortless. How does all this happen in under 2-hours and not feel rushed! Also, this time I noticed, isn't the chime of the Hill Valley clock tower the same as that of Big Ben?

The 35mm teaser trailer from TeamNegative1:



Ebert is dead-on comparing BttF to 'It's a Wonderful life':

 

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West Side Story (1961)

Director: Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins
Country: United States
Length: 152 minutes
Type: Musical

The opening ballet sequence, set on the real streets of New York's Westside is thrilling. The line between dance choreography and physical violence is almost invisible, to the point where you see a gob of spit arcing though the air in perfect time with the music. Unfortunately the rest of the film takes place inside very artificial looking sets, that never have the same sense of realism and danger. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim seamlessly turn William Shakespeare's 'Romeo & Juliet' into a modern-day (the 60s) Musical. Instead of Montagues and Capulets, we have two young street gangs, the white American gang, the Jets and the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks. You wouldn't get away with casting a white girl in brown-face as your Puerto Rican Juliet these days (quite rightly) but to be fair to Natalie wood, she does it convincingly. I've seen the film once before but this time I was really taking notice of the lyrics, especially the famous number "America". An impassioned discussion of attitudes to Hispanic immigrants in the US, which is still very relevant today. By the way, my goodness can Twin Peak's Russ Tamblyn dance when he was young! It'll be interesting to see Steven Spielberg's remake this Christmas.



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An Autumn Afternoon (1962)
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Country: Japan
Length: 113 minutes
Type: Drama

Due to his death a year later, 'An Autumn Afternoon' ( aka 'Sanma no aji' = 'The Taste of Sanma' (a Japanese autumn seasonal fish)) would be Director Yasujiro Ozu's last film. Like the celebrated 'Tokyo Story' (and other Ozu films), this again centers on the serenely wonderful actor Chishu Ryu but I much preferred this film. He plays an ageing widower, wondering if it's time to send his daughter (who cares for him) off to start her own family, knowing he will be left alone. His old school acquaintances join him for regular reunions at a bar and offer him advise, referencing their own mistakes. The colour Cinematography glows with a natural, subtle palette. Ozu's compositions are exquisite, accentuated by the still camera and measured editing.

 

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The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Director: John Frankenheimer
Country: United States
Length: 126 minutes
Type: Thriller

The idea that a whole US platoon from the Korean war could be brainwashed almost perfectly sounds a bit fanciful and the reasons for doing so don't make any sense whatsoever at the end. However, this high-concept premise does allow for some interesting examination of PTSD and McCartyism, within an exciting political thriller. Angela Lansbury is wonderfully monstrous as the Lady Macbeth-like mother of the titular assassin. Just a couple of years after the Hollywood blacklist was broken by films like 'Spartacus', you could now have a hit movie which ends with the good guys winning when a corrupt fascistic fictional politician who is blatantly supposed to be Sen. Joseph McCarthy gets shot in the head :D .



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An Actor's Revenge (1963)
Director: Kon Ichikawa
Country: Japan
Length: 113 minutes
Type: Drama

Kon Ichikawa's 'An Actor's Revenge' ('Yukinojo Henge' = 'Yukinojo the Phantom') is about a Kabuki actor who uses his status as a famed "onnagata" (a female impersonator, both on and off stage) to exact revenge on three powerful men in Edo society, who were once responsible for the deaths of his parents. Kazuo Hasegawa plays the title character and also plays a separate thief... multiple roles being a theatre convention. The use of neutral-coloured lighting, stark bright spotlights which fade in and out, painted backdrops, characters speaking out loud to themselves and wide single-angle tableau compositions further blur the line between the film we are watching and the theatrical world it depicts. I found the extremely washed-out colours on the blu-ray unpleasant to look at, maybe it's supposed to be that way but I boosted the saturation and everything looked much better (Sacrilege? ;) ).

 

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^"The idea that a whole US platoon from the Korean war could be brainwashed almost perfectly sounds a bit fanciful and the reasons for doing so don't make any sense whatsoever at the end."  Yeah, I couldn't get past that when I watched this for the first time this year.  Every since I graduated with a degree in Psychology, a pet peeve of mine has been movies using "psychology" as a magical explanation for whatever fantastical premise they want to create.  This movie was ridiculous sci-fi to me, and depressing that so many people watch it today and still praise it as if it's remotely credible.
 

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mnkykungfu said:
^"The idea that a whole US platoon from the Korean war could be brainwashed almost perfectly sounds a bit fanciful and the reasons for doing so don't make any sense whatsoever at the end."  Yeah, I couldn't get past that when I watched this for the first time this year.  Every since I graduated with a degree in Psychology, a pet peeve of mine has been movies using "psychology" as a magical explanation for whatever fantastical premise they want to create.  This movie was ridiculous sci-fi to me, and depressing that so many people watch it today and still praise it as if it's remotely credible.

It's definitely not a credible concept but I can picture it coming out at the height of pre-'Cuban missile crisis' cold war paranoia and scaring people sh*tless. In that atmosphere, the kind of "out there" wacky schemes that spies (on both sides of the iron curtain e.g. MKUltra) were experimenting with and what they actually could do in reality would've been unknowns. I can see the movie in that heightened context.

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Akira (1988)
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Country: Japan
Length: 124 minutes
Type: Sci-Fi, Horror

When I re-watch 'Akira' it's usually with the subtitled Japanese audio but this time I wanted to view it with the 1989 'Streamline Pictures' English theatrical dub. So I synced up the dub from the Criterion Laserdisc with my UK Manga Entertainment blu-ray. It was was nice to watch the film the way I probably first saw it in the 90s, late night on Channel 4 (but now in widescreen HD). This time I noticed the 'A Clockwork Orange' elements in the way the gang culture is portrayed, their pill pub hangout, is very 'Korova Milkbar'. Having recently watched SKY/HBO's 'Chernobyl' recently, I also saw parallels with the Akira containment efforts and those of the Chernobyl clean up team (the Chernobyl disaster happened during production of 'Akira'). The levels of visual imagination and attention to the detail in every object, building, piece of clothing and vehicle in the world of the movie is rivalled only by films like 'Blade Runner'. Kaneda's blood-red bike is the standout, one of the most iconic and desirable vehicles in sci-fi cinema and that biker gang chase is always a thrill. There are other animated films that could claim to be superior overall to 'Akira' but it's probably the greatest ever hand-drawn feature on a technical and artistic level and likely always will be because studios don't really make them like this any more.



There has been talk of it coming back to cinemas (including IMAX) in 4K this year but we'll see. There's a teaser for the release at least:

 

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The Saragossa Manuscript (1965)
Director: Wojciech Jerzy Has
Country: Poland
Length: 182 minutes
Type: Drama, Historical, Fantasy

A sort of Polish Terry Gilliam-esque collision of 'Alice in Wonderland', 'Barry Lyndon', 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'Inception' set during the Spanish Inquisition. The nominal central character Alfonse is played by Zbigniew Cybulski (star of 'Ashes and Diamonds') but his story is continually interrupted by other characters who he meets on his journeys and they tell their stories and their stories get interrupted by other stories (by the way, Alfonse himself is a character in the titular manuscript read by two other men in the opening framing scene!). I think I counted stories going 5 or 6 layers deep and back out again (hence the reference to 'Inception'). There are tales of Gypsies, Knights, Princesses, love affairs and death. Wojciech Jerzy Has' film is 3-hours long but keeps the attention through the energy and variety of it's story telling. Krzysztof Penderecki's "ahead of it's time" avant-garde score really contributes to the feeling of disquiet.

 

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if.... (1968)
Director: Lindsay Anderson
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 111 minutes
Type: Drama

In his first screen role, star Malcolm McDowell dominates the screen, radiating the same gleeful insolence as schoolboy Travis, that he would soon bring to Alex in Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'. Lindsay Anderson's film is a savage satire of Britain's upper class and ancient public boarding schools (like Eton 1440 and Harrow 1572), so if you're not familiar with that world, I imagine it wouldn't land as well. All the references to "Whips", "The Sweat Room", "Bumf" tutors, first years being officially addressed as "A scum", and the school rule to "Run in the corridor!" sound so ridiculously believable. The editing is playfully anarchic, freely switching between colour and black and white. I first saw 'if....' at a cinema in Manchester about 15 or so years ago. The final scene where Travis and his friends begin shooting their classmates and teachers has a different, more shocking feel now, than it did to me back when such incidents weren't so regularly in the news (Although it's clearly an OTT fantasy sequence). The official 'BFI Top 100 British films' list has 'if....' at number 12, which I'm not sure about but it's certainly very good.

 

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Daisies (1966)
Director: Vera Chytilova
Country: Czechoslovakia
Length: 76 minutes
Type: Experimental,Comedy

'Daisies' ('Sedmikrasky') is a Czech experimental, psychedelic, comedy from Director Vera Chytilova. Two 60s mini-skirt wearing girls rampage through various scenes causing chaos and delight wherever they go. They have a titanic food fight, wear newspapers, dance like flapper girls, wrap each other up like presents, chop each other up with scissors and giggle constantly. Chytilova rapidly switches between film, still photos, black and white, tinted scenes and vibrant colour. It ends with titles saying "This film is dedicated to all those whose sole source of indignation is a trampled-on trifle" and why not!

 

mnkykungfu

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TM2YC said:
78 years ago...

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 I find some of the production stories more entertaining than the film. Like co-star Clark Gable threatening to walk from the picture unless the backstage facilities were desegregated. He was successful in that case but his threat to boycott the Atlanta Premiere when he learned the black cast members were not invited, was sadly ignored. Hattie McDaniel did win the first Oscar for a person of colour as the plantation matron "Mammy".

The racial dimensions of the film itself are still controversial. It's far from the hateful propaganda of something like 'Birth of a Nation' but it is still highly questionable. It paints slavery in the Deep-South plantations as a wonderful idyllic period of happiness for all. The only time we see anybody in chains or being maltreated is later in the picture, when it's a row of white convicts. It's the only time in the whole 4-hours when anybody even questions the morality of slavery but the film concludes it was fine because they were treated well. The very few "Yankee" characters are all shown as uncaring thieves, murderers and (probable) rapists. I can never understand why early Hollywood seemed hell-bent on fermenting another Civil War, mere decades after the last one.

This has recently come back in the news in the US, and it's been pulled from a lot of viewing services.  I caught it on a theatrical re-release shortly after high-school, and I was surprised at how impressive it seemed to me.  I don't love many old films, but this one won over both me and my date.  You're right, the production value was insane, it was gorgeous, and the performances had a lot of power to them.  I'm sure I have a much more nuanced view of the issues now, but at the time I was fine just accepting it as "We're in the South, this is how the characters thought.  It's a portrayal, not an endorsement."  Giving black characters much screen time or significant roles at all was pretty progressive for the time.  I'd be hard-pressed to find another film from the decade that does better.  I think we appreciate now it would've been better to portray the viewpoints of the enslaved people as well, but I remember there being many levels within the film of how comfortable the characters were with the whole system.  It seemed enough to me to make the film simply disappointing in that area, not outright vile as some people are calling it.
TM2YC said:
This is an oldskool 4-hour Epic, so it's got an Overture, Entr'acte, Exit-Music and an Intermission, which neatly breaks the story in half. Just before the fall of the Confederacy and just after. Main character Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) is introduced to us as a selfish, spiteful and petulant Southern debutante who wants anything as long as she can't have it. The lead being so unlikable is one of the factors that makes 'Gone With the Wind' hard to fully enjoy. After the Intermission Scarlett has lost everything and the grit and determination she shows clawing it all back at least gives us a spark of admiration for her, even if we still think she is a horrid person. One could almost see this as a feminist tale, out of the ashes of the fall, it's the women who rebuild the families. The men (with the exception of Rhett) have all become senile, depressed, war-wounded, or generally ineffectual. That said, there is a troubling part where it's implied Rhett intends to rape Scarlett and we cross-fade to her in bed the next morning beaming with satisfied joy.
 
The part I really had trouble with was the rape scene. Scarlett is flat out forcibly taken to the bedroom while objecting and fighting to escape.  Applying the same metric of judging how progressive this was for the time, I wouldn't expect men to show much respect or equality to women.  But that next morning scene is as ringing an endorsement of rape as you're going to get for the time.  As if to say, 'All a stuck-up women needs is a good screw'.  And yet I know so many women (usually older than I) who think the whole scene is terribly sexy and romantic... Perhaps a rewatch would change their minds nowadays?

I'm normally super sensitive to having to follow unlikable characters, so your criticisms of Scarlett pricked my ears.  I think why it didn't trouble me here was that there are lots of other characters constantly telling her how much of a pain she is.  And (spoilers?) she gets her comeuppance.  She does eventually have to grow and become a better, wiser, stronger person.  I think films that just make you follow a jerk and just identify with that protagonist instead of having other main characters call them out (off the top of my head: Ghost World, many Baumbach characters, most Safdie characters) are tough for me to follow.  I've already tuned out by halfway through the film, because I don't care if the character gets what they want.  I may even actively be rooting against them.  Somehow, GWTW had enough nuance in the first half to keep me on the hook and see Scarlett through.

I'd agree with you that everyone should watch this at least once.  It's a shame there's so much pressure to "Cancel" it.
 

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mnkykungfu said:
I'm normally super sensitive to having to follow unlikable characters, so your criticisms of Scarlett pricked my ears.

I think films that just make you follow a jerk and just identify with that protagonist instead of having other main characters call them out (... most Safdie characters) are tough for me to follow.

I've discussed the Safdie films before but the difference for me between them and Scarlet is that the Safdie characters are typically deeply flawed people making mistakes because of their flaws and their lack of self-realization about those flaws. Which at least elicits pity for me, where as Scarlet is a bitch (for lack of a more nuanced word) to everybody and she knows it and enjoys it, yet we're assumed to be on her side for some reason.

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Kes (1969)
Director: Ken Loach
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 112 minutes
Type: Drama

'Kes' is 7th in the BFI's 'Top 100 British films' list.  Ken Loach's 2nd theatrical film cemented his reputation internationally, although some of the thick Barnsley accents and local dialect of the cast had to be re-dubbed for the US market.  The book 'A Kestrel for a Knave' and the film are about Billy Casper, a delightfully cheeky but sad little 15-year old growing up in a bleak mining town, dealing with an abusive older brother, an indifferent mother and teachers who have written him off. He finds respite in rearing and training a kestrel and pouring over a book on falconry. It's heart-warming and heart-breaking. John Cameron's soaring, magical folk/string score stands in contrast to the grim and harrowing world Billy is escaping from. Loach was working with locals and non-actors for the background parts which gives the whole thing a documentary realism. David/Dai Bradley is sensational as Billy Casper, one of the all-time great child actors.

This was the first time I'd watched 'Kes' since seeing Comedian Greg Davies' thoughtful BBC documentary 'Looking for Kes' about the book and film. As a former English teacher he talked about the piece from that perspective and I can now appreciate how strongly teachers feature in the story. Brian Glover as the hilariously pompous PE teacher Mr Sugden, Bob Bowes as the authoritarian, ignorant and cruel Mr Gryce and Colin Welland as the lovely Mr Farthing, who genuinely cares about Billy and devotes time to encouraging him. Plus the typical career's advisor who is just ticking the kids off a list and not actually interested in their futures. It shows how fiercely political the film is, raging at education systems that ignore obvious potential in troubled kids like Billy.


 

mnkykungfu

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TM2YC said:
I've discussed the Safdie films before but the difference for me between them and Scarlet is that the Safdie characters are typically deeply flawed people making mistakes because of their flaws and their lack of self-realization about those flaws. Which at least elicits pity for me, where as Scarlet is a bitch (for lack of a more nuanced word) to everybody and she knows it and enjoys it, yet we're assumed to be on her side for some reason.

For me your two descriptions are interchangeable here.  I could easily argue that Pattinson's character knows he's being a dick in Good Time for example, or that Scarlett is a deeply flawed person who can't help herself.  But regardless, I won't accuse somebody of disliking a character they should bear with... I've complained about it often enough in critically-regarded dramas.  There must be a fine line that's a bit different for each viewer in each case.
 

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The Muppet Movie (1979)
Director: James Frawley
Country: United Kingdom / United States
Length: 97 minutes
Type: Comedy

I've mostly just watched (and re-watched) the two classic 90s Muppets literary adaptations ('The Muppet Christmas Carol' and 'Muppet Treasure Island'), so this was my first time seeing the 1970 debut. I found the humour to be very Marx Brothers (the puns and 4th wall breaking in particular) and if those two other movies are their narratively focused 'Night at the Opera' and 'Day at the Races', then 'The Muppet Movie' is their anarchic 'Duck Soup'. The plot is a loose deconstruction of a "road movie", an imagined origin story in which Kermit leaves his quiet swamp to pursue a career in show business, meeting the other Muppets along the way.  The highlight is definitely Steve Martin's turn as a flagrantly sarcastic waiter, one of a large number of mostly fun cameos.  I think this is the kind of comedy movie that rewards repeat viewings, so I'm maybe not getting the best of it on my first watch. I look forward to next time.


 

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Rocco and His Brothers (1960)
Director: Luchino Visconti
Country: Italy
Length: 177 minutes
Type: Drama

Rightly or wrongly, I associate Luchino Visconti with epic-length, lavish, colourful, period, upper-class costume-dramas and while 'Rocco and His Brothers' ('Rocco e i suoi fratelli') is 3-hours long, it's a gritty, grimy, street-level black & white film about the working class.  Alain Delon is brilliantly moody as the titular Rocco, the sensitive middle brother of five rural southerners who we meet all arriving in the big northern city of Milan in search of work, along with their feisty traditional mother.  Although she plays the quintessential Italian "mamma" to comedic perfection, actress Katina Paxinou was actually Greek and of course Delon was French.  The main focus of the story is a love/hate triangle between Rocco, his older chaotic brother Simone (Renato Salvatori) and Nadia (Annie Girardot), a prostitute who they both become obsessed with. The two brothers get drawn into Milan's boxing scene, which becomes symbolic of their fight with each other and against themselves.  The tone and content reminded me of the long-running UK soap 'Eastenders' but certainly at a much higher artistic level... it's got cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno capturing the images and Nino Rota composing the score. Every performance is incredibly powerful and the material gets progressively bleaker and more depressing as it goes on.  Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation partly funded the beautiful 4K restoration on the blu-ray, which put me in mind of his own boxing movie 'Raging Bull'.


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La Dolce Vita (1960)
Director: Federico Fellini
Country: Italy
Length: 180 minutes
Type: Drama

Federico Fellini directs Marcello Mastroianni as 'Marcello' a gossip writer, looking every inch an introspective Italian James Bond (this was 2-years before 'Dr. No'), wearing sharp suits and stylish shades, driving a sexy Triumph TR3 sports car. The episodic structure plays like seven days and nights from his playboy life in Rome, although they aren't necessarily concurrent. I found the episodes when he's hanging with a series of pretentious socialites to be a tad tiresome but some episodes are very memorable. Particularly the evening spent with the voluptuous Anita Ekberg, a little black dress struggling to contain her as she frolics in a fountain. I also loved the episode he spends with a visiting father, who he clearly loves despite some distance.

Marcello romances so many brunettes in black cocktail dresses that I got a bit confused as to which one was which at times. In some parts you really like him and in some parts you think he's a real a***hole, which is what makes the film interesting. However, with no real overarching plot, just a mosaic of events that make up Marcello's personality, did it really need every minute of it's 3-hours? I suspect it might grow in my estimation with repeat viewings. By the way, Nico (of 'The Velvet Underground &...' fame) has a cameo as herself and the term "Paparazzi" is named after a character in the film (an unscrupulous celebrity photographer).


 
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