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

[TM2YC]

Full-on spoiler review ahead but the movie is nearly 40-years old...

The Natural (1984)
Director: Barry Levinson
Country: United States
Length: 138 minutes
Type: Sports, Drama

Having no interest or understanding of baseball, I wasn't super excited to see this but it was pretty good. I felt sure it was going to turn out to be about baseball ghosts, or have some magical element, like 'Field of Dreams', as it's very much setup that way but it turned out not to be. I also felt there was a religious symbolism to things but I later read it's a loose Arthurian allegory, which is cool to ponder in retrospect. Watching with no knowledge of how baseball works is only occasionally a problem. Like at the very end, where the protagonist team are shown to have consistently scored zero and our hero is shown to have f**ked up every single shot he's taken but because he finally hits the ball once, they have so self evidently won the entire universe of baseball, that Director Barry Levinson more or less cuts straight to the credits with no explanation apparently needed. I had to look on Wikipedia afterwards to confirm my suspicion from the triumphant Randy Newman score and magical slowmo visuals that it was a victory ending. I'm sure it makes sense if you know the sport.

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That's all films from 1984 in the book watched. I'd rank the 11 films in this order:

The Terminator
Ghostbusters
Amadeus
This Is Spinal Tap
The Killing Fields
Beverly Hills Cop
Paris, Texas
The Natural
Stranger Than Paradise
A Passage to India
A Nightmare on Elm Street

But I liked them all, nothing against Elm Street it's just not my favourite out of this bunch.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^How I sometimes feel watching soccer/football tourneys where players get cases of the inexplicable falling-down-in-pains and after chasing a ball back and forth for hours and it not going where they want it, a shot accidentally bounces off the side of a guy's head and lobs into the goal at a random angle and the whole team celebrates as if that was what they'd intended all along. Then sometimes no one wins anyway and they all just decide to pack it up and call the whole thing off.

 

[TM2YC]

^How I sometimes feel watching soccer/football tourneys where players get cases of the inexplicable falling-down-in-pains and after chasing a ball back and forth for hours and it not going where they want it, a shot accidentally bounces off the side of a guy's head and lobs into the goal at a random angle and the whole team celebrates as if that was what they'd intended all along. Then sometimes no one wins anyway and they all just decide to pack it up and call the whole thing off.

I've zero interest in Football as well but you're basically forced to understand it, 24hrs a day in the UK.

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The Jerk (1979)
Director: Carl Reiner
Country: United States
Length: 95 minutes
Type: Comedy

The plot is like a proto-'Forest Gump' but much sillier and with much less of that plot. The jokes only landed sporadically for me but I laughed every time Steve Martin joyfully called his dog "Sh*thead" and the "Cup 'o' Pizza" idea tickled my funny bone.

 

[TM2YC]

Hombre (1967)
Director: Martin Ritt
Country: United States
Length: 111 minutes
Type: Western

I knew almost zilch about 'Hombre' going in but by the time the opening credits had rolled I was pretty excited, as I'd read it was based on an Elmore Leonard novel, the great James Wong Howe was the Cinematographer and I was looking forward to seeing Paul Newman, Martin Balsam and Cameron Mitchell in the cast. The later Red Letter Media superstar, growls a big amazing cynical speech early on but is sadly absent for most of the runtime. The rest of the script is thankfully full of more amazing dialogue for the other actors, no doubt drawn from Leonard's book.

The setup is a fascinating "revisionist" take, playing with the conventions of the Western genre. Newman plays a "white man" who has been raised as an Apache and so wants nothing to do with those who have destroyed his adopted people's way of life. When his stagecoach is held up deep in the desert, with a band of helpless traveller's, he's forced into becoming the traditional Western hero but refuses to operate by the crooked rules of civilised engagement. Like in the scene where the amoral, murderous villain goes out to negotiate with Newman, confidant he's under a white flag of truce but Newman calmly puts a bullet in him anyway. I'm so happy that I'm still discovering old Westerns of this quality to enjoy for the first time. Leaving aside the awkwardness of Balsam pretending to be Mexican, his easy-going character makes a great counterpoint to Newman's. He's content (or at least resigned) to observe the rules of white society and tolerate their racism, to get ahead and to avoid confrontation and he can't quite understand why Newman is not. I'd only seen Diane Cilento in 'The Wicker Man' before but she's incredible, so is Richard Boone.

By the way, if you thought modern CGI blood splatter looked fake, you should see the optically composited blood that is unwisely added to one shot in 'Hombre'. I had to rewind to check I hadn't dreamed it.

 

[TM2YC]

Three Kings (1999)
Director: David O. Russell
Country: United States
Length: 1115 minutes
Type: War, Drama, Comedy

I didn't recall that much about 'Three Kings' from when I first saw it in the early 2000s but know I didn't like it much. Now I remember after seeing it again. The hyper edited style is annoying for a start but it's the way all the characters (every single one) is introduced as offensively amoral and offensively ignorant, then later we're supposed to believe they are the exact opposite. Plus we're expected to find war atrocities funny... but later find them harrowing. Then bolt on a sentimental ending to complete the tonal mismatch. A new viewer who didn't check the date, might assume this was an early 2000s "war on terror" era movie commenting on the 2nd 2003 Iraq War, through the lens of the first 1991 Gulf War. But no, this is one of those weird times when Hollywood accidentally makes a film that seems to dramatising something that is about to happen in real life. It depicts exactly the same kind of clusterf**k situation, which enfolded in the years after the movie came out, where the troops have the men and the firepower, but no idea about the churning political/cultural context into which they have walked, as Francis Ford Coppola once put it, when talking about 'Apocalypse Now', "We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane". Knowing about David O. Russell's behaviour on set, makes me wonder if I'm just projecting him onto this film, about awful people, who think they are good people.

 

[TM2YC]

A Bob Fosse 1001 movies double-bill...

Cabaret (1972)
Director: Bob Fosse
Country: United States
Length: 124 minutes
Type: Drama, Musical, Historical

If you don't like musicals because people spontaneously break into song, then 'Cabaret' might work for you, as the the songs are confined to the 'Kit Kat Klub' Weimar Berlin cabaret venue, although they comment on the scenes around them. I'd either seen this before, or watched quite a bit of it because I remembered a lot of early scenes. Liza Minnelli and Michael York have amazing zingy chemistry. I loved the foreground-silhouette way in which the night club scenes were framed, it makes you feel like you're in the audience. Although this is based on real people (more or less), it feels like Minnelli is channelling Louise Brooks in G.W. Pabst's era-appropriate 1929 film 'Pandora's Box'. For an often fun musical, this leans harder into the horror of the rising Nazi threat than one might expect.

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All That Jazz (1979)
Director: Bob Fosse
Country: United States
Length: 123 minutes
Type: Drama, Musical, Biography

'All That Jazz' is a (very) thinly disguised autobiographical dramatisation of choreographer/film-director Bob Fosse's own life, at a point where he was on the verge of nervous breakdown due to overwork and a cocktail of drink and drugs. This justly won the Oscar for film editing because it takes a lot of risks that pay off, freely and frantically cutting back and forth between Fosse's chaotic life, the editing of a Lenny Bruce biopic movie, ironic footage from a monologue within that film, the staging of a musical and increasingly wild dream sequences and fantasy dance numbers. Roy Scheider puts an incredible amount of energy into the lead performance. The only real problem I had with 'All That Jazz' was it's uncomfortable pre-#metoo depiction of show business. Fosse does a self-inflicted character-assassination on many negative aspects of his personality but his "casting couch" moves on his younger female dancers/employees is one of the things he's not reproaching himself for (other than them being simply infidelities). It's not shown to be behaviour that is anything more than "questionable" but I couldn't help but notice that those questions aren't ever asked. The big Busby Berkeley-style finale perhaps goes on for a couple of minutes too long but wow that ending is a classic of black humour.

Oh and for the record, that main character gliding toward the camera thing that Spike Lee does at the end of near every movie, he copied it 100% from this. As seen at 10.25 into this clip from the end of 'All That Jazz' (so spoilers):

 

[TM2YC]

Being John Malkovich (1999)
Director: Spike Jonze
Country: United States
Length: 113 minutes
Type: Drama, Fantasy, Comedy

I remember this being a mega word-of-mouth hit on home video when it came out. I watched it loads of times but I hadn't revisited it in years. Boy has it held up, the jokes are even funnier, the emotional drama is even more powerful and the script is just a work of precisely structured and tonally fine-tuned genius. Somehow it succeeds equally as a wilfully weird art-house oddity for cineasts and a thoroughly entertaining, easily digestible, mainstream caper, without feeling like it's needing to make any compromises. This now feels like the OG 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'. The "Ma-sheen!... Mal-catraz!" bit at the end is still one of all-time favourite movie gags. It's difficult to decide which of the all-star cast is the best, they all take their characters to such extremes but remain completely believable damaged people. I only worry that 24-years later, younger new viewers might not know who John Malkovich is, or appreciate his specific place and public image within movie culture in the late 90s. But again the perfect script has a self-deprecating "get out clause" for that, as the characters within the film are frequently mildly disappointed that it's Malkovich, or don't know who he is. I wonder which 40-something actor you'd cast now? 'Being Joaquin Phoenix'? 'Being Michael Shannon'?, 'Being Benedict Cumberbatch'?

^ I see what they did there in the trailer using that 'Brazil' music.

 

[mnkykungfu]

"Being Michael Shannon" would be a fascinating movie to watch!

 

[TM2YC]

Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Country: United States
Length: 126 minutes
Type: Prison Drama

In short this is "One Flew Over the Shawshank Redemption" and while it isn't quite as good as either of those two later films, it's still pretty damned good, plus it did this thing first. Paul Newman plays this film's inmate who changes the lives and outlook of his fellow detainees. Christ imagery abounds and I reckon you could make this a movie about plantation slavery with minimal re-writes, so it works as an allegory for that too. I had no idea that George Kennedy was such a fine actor, having only seen him before goofing off in 'The Naked Gun' movies, where he's just a poor-man's Alan North. Lalo Schifrin's score seems pretty low key at first but it's guitar tune works it's way into your brain by the end. So this is where the "Failure to communicate" sample came from on Guns N' Roses' 'Civil War'. I loved the visual symbolism of the mirror aviator shades, I've seen other movies after this one do those same shots.

^ I don't think I've seen a trailer include a Rotten Tomatoes meter before (like this new 4K trailer). It felt weird to see.

 

[TM2YC]

Spoiler review:

Story of Women (1988)
Director: Claude Chabrol
Country: France
Length: 108 minutes
Type: Drama

A thought provoking, sensitively directed and powerfully acted dramatisation of the life of Marie-Louise Giraud. A woman who was guillotined by the Vichy regime in WW2 occupied France for performing abortions. It never ceases to amaze me to see that something bloody like the guillotine, which I'd associate with the Napoleon-era "reign of terror" was still in use in the 1940s and on into the late 70s.

 

[mnkykungfu]

It never ceases to amaze me to see that something bloody like the guillotine, which I'd associate with the Napoleon-era "reign of terror" was still in use in the 1940s and on into the late 70s.

I don't know that I have a personal opinion on it, but there are a fair few people who still argue that it's the most humane way of carrying out a death sentence, if you're going to do it. It's the association with the French Revolution that "ruined" it.

 

[TM2YC]

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Director: Arthur Penn
Country: United States
Length: 111 minutes
Type: Drama, Crime

I watched this once sometime in the 90s but it must have had an impact because I remembered every scene like it was yesterday. Only this time, after having viewed many 60s French New Wave films, I could recognise this was Hollywood trying to emulate that energetic style, although utilising it to tell a story well. It's interesting how little effort is expended on making Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway's characters likeable, or admirable and yet you do feel empathy for them. They might be violent foxes who have raided the chicken coop but when you see them pursued to their inevitable deaths by a pack of ravening hounds, it seems unfair. Like animals, Bonnie and Clyde, appear to act on instinct and aren't troubled by the amorality of their actions but they have no morals, it's an almost childlike innocence. I hadn't appreciated before how closely the (in)famous death scene is recreated in 1972's 'The Godfather'.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^Could make an interesting double bill with The Highwaymen.

 

[TM2YC]

^Could make an interesting double bill with The Highwaymen.

It would. I liked The Highwaymen but I can't remember how it compared.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Well, certainly it doesn't have anywhere near the reputation (though I think B&C isn't nearly so impactful if you grew up on the kind of cinema that it birthed) but it's interesting in that it's essentially the reverse. You point out, rightly I think, that B&C are sympathetic but not particularly moral in their film. And I'd say that it's basically the same point about the Rangers chasing them in The Highwaymen. They're supposed to be better than the people they're after, and they (at least some of them) struggle with the knowledge that maybe they're not. You don't really see much of B&C in the film, just as you don't see much of the Rangers in theirs...both are kind of an examination of what the situation forces people to become. Or at least that's the feeling of them...that it's a road that eventually runs out, no matter which side you're driving on.

 

[TM2YC]

My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
Director: Jim Sheridan
Country: Ireland / United Kingdom
Length: 103 minutes
Type: Drama, Comedy

I was expecting the "kitchen sink" grit of the drama, given this is a story of deprivation and adversity but I didn't think it would be this funny. The father and mother could've been a cliche but there is a fascinating complexity to their relationship, with each other and with the kids. I reckon if you've got some Irish ancestry, you might enjoy and understand spending time with the Brown family that extra bit more. I did feel that the "crowd-pleasing" romance angle crowded out the more important and dramatic story of the painting a bit too much toward the end for my taste but that's a nitpick.

 

[TM2YC]

The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)
Director: Ermanno Olmi
Country: Italy
Length: 186 minutes (3 hours)
Type: Drama

I notice this is included on the "Vatican's 45 Great Films" list (from 1995) and the scene where the mother prays desperately for God to save the life of the poverty-stricken family's cow is very powerful. Ermanno Olmi acted as Director, Writer, Cinematographer and Editor and was working with a cast of non-actors from Lombardy. Unlike other films, these are genuinely great performances, just minimal and realistic. There is no particular overarching story, we just observe the lives of peasant families struggling to survive in the late 19th century. It's similar to Bernardo Bertolucci's '1900' in it's setting but these characters have no interest in politics, although there are stirrings seen in the background. So this would serve as a semi-prequel to '1900' in a double-bill, as that film dramatises what happened to this kind of farming community in the decades afterwards. 'The Tree of Wooden Clogs' is a quality film but it is 3-hours long and is in no hurry to get anywhere, at any point.

That's all films from 1978 watched, or re-watched and reviewed. I'd rank them as follows:

1. Dawn of the Dead
2. The Marriage of Maria Braun
3. The Deer Hunter
4. Halloween
5. Days of Heaven
6. Grease
7. The Tree of Wooden Clogs
8. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
9. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
10. Five Deadly Venoms
11. Up in Smoke

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Note to self: As of 23/05/23, I've watched 841 of 1003 (including 2-parters), leaving 162. So to complete the list by 08/09/05 (the 20th anniversary of my 2005 edition book), I'll need to watch more than 1 a week. I've got 2 years, 3 months, 17 days / 27 months, 17 days / or about 118 weeks left. 162 minus 52 is 110. So if I can aim to get it down to near 52 by next year on the 08/09/04 (in 66 weeks time) I'll be well on track to complete my goal. So that's just less than 2 films a week.

Also 22nd July 2015 was the day I started this endeavour, so the 10-year anniversary of that is not much more than 2-years away.

 

[TM2YC]

Wanda (1970)
Director: Barbara Loden
Country: United States
Length: 103 minutes
Type: Drama

Barbara Loden directs, writes, produces and stars, doing each with minimalist precision. ‘Wanda’ is an oddly compelling film considering how little dialogue, plot, action and heightened drama and music there is. It almost appears to be a hand held 16mm documentary. Loden and Michael Higgins play two dysfunctional characters, unable to operate in society, a downbeat pathetic Bonnie and Clyde. Wanda passive, directionless, absent minded and quiet, while Norman is abrasive, obsessive-compulsive and volatile, but they seem to be able to function together on some level. The film ends with a sad freeze frame of Wanda’s crestfallen face, alone in a packed throng of joyful tavern revellers.

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Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
Director: Russ Meyer
Country: United States
Length: 83 minutes
Type: Exploitation, Action, Thriller

Russ Meyer makes up for obviously limited resources with a few fast cars, sexy powerful women, a script full of quotable badass dialogue and stylish camera work. The sexual politics of this "exploitation" film keep you fascinated, even if the slim and often improbable story and slightly drippy romantic couple don’t. Meyer’s lead femme fatale Varla has gravity defying boobs stuck out so far it feels less like "male gaze" objectification and more like her pointing them at the camera like weapons. The male characters in the film are mentally, or physically disabled in some way, or just generally too weak and scared to stand up to the go-go dancing, race car driving, killer babes. The girls stray onto the ranch of a family of three men who a hint of Norman Bates, or Texas Chainsaw but it’s them who end up being terrorised. During the finale Varla is shown metaphorically assaulting a guy with her car. The influence on the style and writing of Quentin Tarantino is clear, 'Death Proof' being his most overt homage. A line like "Here’s where our screenplay unfolds right now" (instead of the more cliched "Here’s where the plot thickens") would slot right into one of his scripts.

Here's a Fury Road trailer cut like Faster, Pussycat :

 

[mnkykungfu]

Is Faster Pussycat in the 1,001 book?? Wow, the rare case where Schneider recommends something that an audience might actually have fun watching!

 

[TM2YC]

Reversal of Fortune (1990)
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Country: United States
Length: 111 minutes
Type: Drama, Legal-Thriller

Jeremy Irons does a similarly creepy performance to the one he did in David Cronenberg’s ‘Dead Ringers’, except this time it’s a real guy and quite possibly he's perfectly innocent. I’d heard the name Klaus von Beulo before (and Alan Dershowitz of course) but luckily I didn’t know many details of this real case. The film portrays a world of wealthy weirdos that might as well be from another planet to the rest of us plebs. But again just because they're eccentric and huge sums of money are involved, doesn't mean they are guilty. It’s an utterly absorbing legal thriller, one of the very best.

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Roger & Me (1989)
Director: Michael Moore
Country: United States
Length: 90 minutes
Type: Documentary, Comedy

This first Michael Moore documentary has lost some of it's impact since I first saw it in the 90s. Firstly due to it discussing 34-year old problems and shouting loudly into the deaf ears of a man who has been dead for 16-years, but some of those issues are still very relevant (see Netflix’s 2019 Academy Award winning doc ‘American Factory’). Secondly Moore’s style has been comprehensively adopted by everybody who tries to cover US politics/news via comedy. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the points Moore is putting across, you’ll still laugh at the way he manages to capture ordinary people saying and doing absurd things. Like the prison guard cheerfully telling Moore how pleasant his new job is, compared to when he worked at the car plant but is slowly drowned out by a prisoner somewhere in the background screaming. He includes footage you couldn’t make up, like when a national TV report covering the unemployment due to the plant closures, is interrupted when their broadcast van is stolen by a former plant employee. Intercutting GM CEO Roger Smith’s Christmas speech where he obliviously quotes Scrooge, against one of his laid-off workers being evicted onto the street 2-days before Christmas, makes his final point very well. Because it’s very hard to watch their little kid (a “tiny Tim”) looking up as his wrapped presents are chucked into bin bags and put out in the road and the viewer didn’t even cause it. It’s Moore’s compassion for his fellow man’s troubles that still resonate so many years after this particular situation is far into the past.

The whole thing is on youtube: