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

[TM2YC]

Good Bye Lenin! (2003)
Director: Wolfgang Becker
Country: United States
Length: 121 minutes
Type: Comedy, Drama

As this begins just before the Berlin Wall comes down, I was expecting the story to be about that. Instead 'Good Bye Lenin!' takes the more interesting approach of dealing with the fall in a quick montage, then exploring the year that followed, in a warmly satirical way. When Daniel Brühl's Alex's committed communist mum wakes up from a coma having missed it all, he maintains the pretence for her that nothing has changed, in case the shock causes her to have a relapse. That whimsical idea would be enough fun to sustain the film, but there are also clever ways in which Alex seeks to make an idealised version of the false reality. It's like they use it as a grieving process for the communism society they've lived with all their lives, things have gotten better overall now but they still feel nostalgia for the aspects that were okay and familiar about it. 'Good Bye Lenin!' is funny, emotional and culturally fascinating too. The recreation of East Germany in 1990 is impressive and epic in scale. Some of it is just great attention to sets and costumes but there are what must be lots of early CGI (which still holds up 100%) used to create a full Soviet-era city.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^I just watched that last year and fully agree. Great performance by young Bruhl. too.

For more mainstream appeal, Schneider has a companion series of books for Action, Gangsters, Sci-Fi etc

I did not know about those, thanks! They'll be interesting to check out.

"f**king contemptible movies" (1.5 stars and below) were:
Jezebel 1938 (William Wyler)
Winter Light 1963 (Ingmar Bergman)

Good to know. Unlike some of those others, I still hear these routinely talked about in glowing terms, so I had no idea.

Jerry Lewis, a man genetically incapable of being funny

You know, I used to think that too but then I saw him in stuff like The King of Comedy, and he has some great, darkly comic bits! I don't know why he spent so long on his "schtick", because he was definitely a very smart guy and could do other comedy. Listening to Seinfeld talk with/about him in Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee was really illuminating, too.

 

[TM2YC]

I used to think that too but then I saw him in stuff like The King of Comedy

That's the one exception. He's great in that. I think I first saw him in tKoC before I ever saw one of his earlier "comedies".

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Badlands (1973)
Director: Terrence Malick
Country: United States
Length: 93 minutes
Type: Drama, Crime, Romance

'Badlands' is very pretty looking, with a hazy fairytale atmosphere and two fascinating, unusual performances from Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek (in early star making roles). Apart from the obviously referenced James Dean, I felt Sheen was also channelling Robert Mitchum (or playing it like his self-regarding character was). I wasn't really sure what to make of Kit and Holly, not nice enough to be endearing and not nasty enough to be dangerously compelling. Although a lot of the details of the real-life Charles Starkweather killing spree are reproduced, the violence is much toned down from the reality. I had Bruce Springsteen's 'Badlands' in my head due to the title but lyrics to his song 'Nebraska' actually quote from the script. I suspect this is the kind of film that leaves me a little cold on the first viewing but I'll have an irresistible fascination to rewatch again some time.

^ A fantastic vintage trailer!

 

[ArtisDead]

That's the one exception. He's great in that. I think I first saw him in tKoC before I ever saw one of his earlier "comedies".

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Badlands (1973)
Director: Terrence Malick
Country: United States
Length: 93 minutes
Type: Drama, Crime, Romance

'Badlands' is very pretty looking, with a hazy fairytale atmosphere and two fascinating, unusual performances from Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek (in early star making roles). Apart from the obviously referenced James Dean, I felt Sheen was also channelling Robert Mitchum (or playing it like his self-regarding character was). I wasn't really sure what to make of Kit and Holly, not nice enough to be endearing and not nasty enough to be dangerously compelling. Although a lot of the details of the real-life Charles Starkweather killing spree are reproduced, the violence is much toned down from the reality. I had Bruce Springsteen's 'Badlands' in my head due to the title but lyrics to his song 'Nebraska' actually quote from the script. I suspect this is the kind of film that leaves me a little cold on the first viewing but I'll have an irresistible fascination to rewatch again some time.

^ A fantastic vintage trailer!

One if Mallick's greats! On my yearly watch list.

 

[TM2YC]

Oh dear, I've only managed one 1001 film this month.

Gohatto aka Taboo (1999)
Director: Nagisa Oshima
Country: Japan
Length: 100 minutes
Type: Drama

I was expecting this to be about Samurai but not this being an LGBT erotic mystery about the effect a beautiful androgynous new recruit Kano has on the Kyoto Samurai militia. The exclusively male group seem to have lots of strict rules, enforced by Seppuku but being gay isn’t one of them (I don’t know if this is historically accurate for 1860s Japan?). Ryuichi Sakamoto’s atmospheric piano score got worked right into my brain and Nagisa Oshima's direction is so stylish. A masterpiece.

What a theme!:

 

[TM2YC]

Fanny & Alexander (1982)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Swedish
Length: 322 minutes (5.5 hours)
Type: Drama, Comedy

I've had the BFI blu-ray set waiting on my shelves since it came out last February, as I wanted to see this one at Christmas time. It gives you the option of viewing the 3-hour Theatrical Cut but I opted for the original uncut TV-miniseries version which runs for a stocking-stuffed 5.5-hours. 'Fanny & Alexander' has the rep of being the cinéaste's Christmas movie of choice. It does start off like the most Christmas movie that ever Christmassed, for the first 1.5-hours (the 1st chapter/episode). The palatial Ekdahl family house is decorated from floor to ceiling in a glorious "arts and crafts" way, like your dream of what a Christmas dream house looks like, an effect that's only really achievable in reality when you're wealthy and have an army of servants to hang it all up for you. The endearing, bohemian, loving, flawed, theatrical and chaotic Ekdahls flout social convention, openly have affairs and get plastered. The three hours in the middle have little to do with Christmas, other than an echoing, cold, monochromatic, puritan sadness left by the absence of it's warm glow. However the inclusion of ghosts and the suggested intervention of magical/divine forces do echo 'A Christmas Carol', plus the story arc is the classic Christmas movie theme, a family coming apart, then being happily reunited, with a new found appreciation for life and each other.

Jan Malmsjo's smiling Bishop character is one of the most hateable villains I've seen in a good long while. The scene where two of the Ekdahl brothers confront the bishop is one the greatest ever, I wanted to cheer on during the bit where Gustav can't contain himself behind polite words and starts flinging obscene ranting abuse at the sadistic cleric. 'Fanny & Alexander' isn't boring (unlike some other shorter Bergman films that felt interminable to me), I was gripped by the characters but 5.5-hours is a very long time. Perhaps I'll revisit this in the much shorter cut on a future Christmas. It's not saying much from me but this is undoubtedly my favourite Ingmar Bergman so far.

^ I note Kermode recommends the "perfection" of the shorter cut in his review.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^I just watched the shorter cut and I can't call it anything like "perfection". Some of the scenes you loved so much and described above are not in it, for example. On my fanedit ideas thread, I suggested that there's a great short cut to be had, but it would need fanediting from the 5.5 hour version.

 

[TM2YC]

^I just watched the shorter cut and I can't call it anything like "perfection". Some of the scenes you loved so much and described above are not in it, for example. On my fanedit ideas thread, I suggested that there's a great short cut to be had, but it would need fanediting from the 5.5 hour version.

I think there is also a Christmas focused cut to be made.

 

[TM2YC]

Breaking Away (1979)
Director: Peter Yates
Country: United States
Length: 101 minutes
Type: Coming of Age, Comedy, Drama, Sports

'Breaking Away' combines all the best bits from Romcoms, sports movies, underdog stories and coming-of-age dramas, into a crowd-pleasing, hilarious delight. I couldn't imagine anybody not liking it, so I was surprised I'd never heard of it before I hit play. The personality clash between Dennis Christopher's eccentric energetic Dave/Enrico and his curmudgeonly old-fashioned father (Paul Dooley), develops beautifully across the film. The thematic metaphor revealed to us near the end, when we discover the "lower class" boys have been playing in the literal empty void left when the "upper class" university was built, is genius writing.

 

[TM2YC]

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Country: Italy
Length: 116 minutes
Type: Arthouse Horror?

There I watched it! Are you happy longstanding critical consensus? I think you need to read up on what Pasolini was trying to say (beyond "fascists are sadists") to have any idea what he was trying to say. e.g. many shots of people literally eating bowls of sh*t is apparently supposed to say "consumerism = bad". Even colleague Bernardo Bertolucci admits in an interview that I needed to read an article by Pasolini to understand and not hate the film. If you're going to be offended by a fictional film then this will probably do it, but I was more bored than offended. The only part that worked for me is the sort of "intermission" in the exact middle, where the random acts of torture and degradation briefly pause, a melancholy piano plays and for the first time the camera zooms in on two of the poor girl's faces, one saying tearfully "I can't go on Eva" and they silently hug. It's one of the few bits where it felt like watching real humans, instead of unreal in-humans.

^ A trailer that cleverly manages to find enough shots from the film that can actually be shown!

The 2001 Mark Kermode short documentary about 'Salò' is a helpful explainer. I assume this is one of those things that Kermode used to do on Channel 4 to present and contextualise recently un-banned films when they were shown uncut on TV for the first time:

 

[TM2YC]

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Country: Italy
Length: 137 minutes
Type: Biblical, Drama

Pier Paolo Pasolini chooses a stripped down, neo-realist, documentary approach to the gospel. His Jesus is an angry, defiant redeemer modelled after Che Guevara. The use of non-actors didn’t work for me, a problem magnified by Pasolini shooting them with long searching close-ups, where it’s up to the viewer to imagine some emotion in their blank expressions. It also felt like a compilation of “Christ’s greatest hits” in the way it’s often a string of brief scenes of Jesus just delivering a famous line, with little to no context, or characterisation. The walk on water shots do look breathtaking and the use of blues songs like Odetta's 'Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child' on the soundtrack worked very well.

 

[TM2YC]

The Ballad of Narayama (1983)
Director: Shohei Imamura
Country: Japan
Length: 130 minutes
Type: Drama

A year in the lives of an isolated mountain village community in 19th century Japan, where every decision is weighed in terms of survival and management of resources. Where babies, the elderly and thieves are killed to keep the rest from starvation. At 130-minutes this feels a tad long, mostly down to the wordless ending and introduction of all the villagers at the start. Once you get to know the characters in the village, the bawdy and cruel soap-opera of their poverty stricken lives becomes highly engrossing. At times poetic, mysterious and tragic, at other times it's a smelly loser trying to have sex with his neighbour's dog.

 

[TM2YC]

The Crying Game (1992)
Director: Neil Jordan
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 111 minutes
Type: Drama, Romance

I only watched this once back in the 90s (possibly with my parents?) but parts of the film really lingered in the memory. Not just the famous reveal, but the wonderful build up of the complex and warm relationship between Stephen Rea and Forest Whitaker's characters in the first act, then it's shocking and sudden end, as the film moves into an entirely different 2nd and 3rd act. Fortunately I didn't remember much of how the last act plays out in the last 25 years, so I could enjoy the tension and satisfying emotional resolution again. I had also forgotten how dryly funny the script is and how beautifully romantic, in a Romeo & Juliet sort of way it becomes.

 

[asterixsmeagol]

I can't believe the trajectory of Jaye Davidson's career. He came out of nowhere, knocked it out of the park with this performance that got him a best supporting actor Oscar nomination, followed it up with a great otherwordly performance as Ra in Stargate, and then he quit acting.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Well, "quit" sounds quite voluntary, whereas there's certainly question about how many doors would've remained open to Jaye. Reportedly, Jaye was so doped up and out-of-sorts on the set of Stargate that large sections of performance were deemed unsalvageable. The whole role of the Pharaoh God was truncated and the decision was made to redub almost all the lines with another actor in post. Thus ended Jaye's short Hollywood career.

 

[TM2YC]

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
Director: Elaine May
Country: United States
Length: 106 minutes
Type: Comedy

I had a few good chuckles with this one, mostly watching the little smirk on Cybill Shepherd's face, as she repeatedly makes the love-sick and/or horny Charles Grodin act like an ass. Shepherd is perfectly cast because she is drop-dead-gorgeous enough to make it 100% believable that a man would lose his god-damn mind the second she starts flirting with him. My only big laugh out loud moment was the smash-cut/zoom onto Grodin standing dumbfounded as his wife innocently asks "Did you meet anyone at the bar?". Eddie Albert looking perpetually furious was funny too. But the dry character comedy probably isn't helped by watching a blurry old VHS-level transfer I found on YouTube because the film hasn't been released on home video for more than 20-years. I'd like to give this another go in HD sometime.

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That's all films from 1972 on the list watched/re-watched. I'd rank them as follows (no surprise what comes top!):

1. The Godfather (1972)
2. Fat City (1972)
3. High Plains Drifter (1972)
4. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972)
5. Cabaret (1972)
6. Sleuth (1972)
7. Deliverance (1972)
8. Super Fly (1972)
9. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
10. Pink Flamingos (1972)
11. The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
12. Frenzy (1972)
13. Solaris (1972)
14. Last Tango in Paris (1972)
15. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
16. Cries and Whispers (1972)

 

[TM2YC]

A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
Director: Edward Yang
Country: Taiwan
Length: 237 minutes (4 hours)
Type: Drama

The overriding take-away from this for me was "It's 4-hours!". It was an absolute slog to get through. It's not helped that it's got loads of characters who are all boys with crew cuts, wearing khaki trousers, sneakers and white t-shirts, so I was often confused as who was in which gang, or who was the ex-boyfriend of who and which brothers/sisters and parents belonged to which boy. Then Director Edward Yang shoots a lot of things indirectly, obscured, off screen, or at such a distance that you can't easily tell who is the focus of the shot until a minute into the scene. The promise of a Katana wielding rampage half way through woke me up but Yang goes the arty route and shoots the whole scene in total darkness. With my experience of the films of Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, I'm starting to think I might hate the whole 'Taiwanese New Wave' (not as much as the 'French New Wave' though). On the plus side 'A Brighter Summer Day' looks beautifully composed and there are some terrific performances, such as the beaten down weariness of the father played by Chang Kuo-chu.

 

[TM2YC]

Out of Africa (1985) 3.5
Director: Sydney Pollack
Country: United States
Length: 161 minutes
Type: Romance, Drama

'Out of Africa' feels rather dated 4-decades later but I suspect it was a bit dated even in 1985. Back in 1962, David Lean's (who Director Sydney Pollack is presumably trying to emulate) 'Lawrence of Arabia' knew that to do a film about a colonial European falling in love with the people and the land of a far away country, they needed to have a few "natives" be important central characters who express their culture themselves and vocalise criticism of the colonial interlopers. Here it's just Robert Redford "whitesplaining" Africa to Meryl Streep . Also, despite Streep being in virtually every scene of this 2.5-hour movie about a determined independent real-life woman, it still fails the purposefully low-bar of the Bechdel Test, by only featuring one scene where two women have a conversation but it's about men. Although the film is told from her perspective and Redford is definitely the rugged totty for her to look at, not the other way around. It was weird that Redford is playing the Eton & Oxford educated son of an English Earl but just uses his American accent (I later read this was Pollack's choice, not Redford's). There are a few green-screen shots (although it's 99.99% impressive location footage) that look so phony, you start to wonder if they are supposed to be psychedelic dream sequences? Having said all that, John Barry's score is glorious, Redford and Streep have winning romantic chemistry, it's a slice of true history to further explore and the landscapes of Kenya are beautifully photographed. 'Out of Africa' is a pleasantly enjoyable "Lazy Sunday afternoon" type of movie. It's major Oscars wins over such films as 'Ran', 'Brazil' and 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' look rather indefensible.

 

[TM2YC]

The Dead (1987)
Director: John Huston
Country: United Kingdom / United States
Length: 83 minutes
Type: Drama, Comedy

Set at a 1904 Dublin 'Epiphany' dinner party, this James Joyce adaptation is almost a Christmas movie. As the dancing, food and alcohol flows the various characters chatter warmly but as the drink settles in and the evening draws to a close it becomes increasingly melancholy, musing on life and death, the warmth inside and the cold snow falling outside. John Huston's Direction (his final film, overseen from his wheelchair and oxygen tank) is unobtrusive but this simplicity allows the actor's performances to shine. 'Robocop's Dan O'Herlihy and 'The Godfather Part III's Donal Donnelly do some particularly fine "drunk acting" which had me giggling. Anjelica Huston and Donal McCann's scene in the bedroom at the end is beautifully poetic. Hopefully this gets an HD remaster some day.

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My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Director: Gus Van Sant
Country: United States
Length: 102 minutes
Type: Drama

At first I was totally loving 'My Own Private Idaho', for the atmosphere, the style, and the performances. The in-camera gay porn mag scene is genius and I was initially enthusiastic when I instantly recognised it was referencing Shakespeare's Falstaff when the Bob Pigeon character turns up early on. But then it takes the Falstaff stuff too far, so the previously naturalistic 90s street kids start speaking in faux Shakespeare dialogue and acting out whole recognisable scenes from the "Henriad". Once you realise it's doing that, you know exactly where the film will end and what the arcs of the characters will be, so for the second half there are few surprises and you're just waiting for Scott to say "I know thee not, old man". It would've worked better if Gus Van Sant had moved further away from the Shakespeare, ditched the one-for-one Falstaff character (as brilliant as William Richert is in the role) and made River Phoenix's Mike the Falstaff, to Keanu Reeves' Prince Hal. The idea that the film is a little reminiscent of 'Withnail & I' got into my brain too and it's nowhere near as good. That all sounds quite critical but I actually thoroughly enjoyed 'My Own Private Idaho' and I'd watch it again. The campfire scene where Phoenix is trying to express his feelings for Reeves' character is delicately emotional. I can see why his death soon after this film came out was seen as such a loss to acting. The bit where Udo Kier dances and sings is a total delight and any film that plays 'The Old Main Drag' by The Pogues over the credits is a good one in my book.

 

[TM2YC]

My Brilliant Career (1979)
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Country: Australia
Length: 100 minutes
Type: Period-Drama

'My Brilliant Career' is almost like a time-travel movie, where a modern (1979) feminist girl is transported back to rural 1897 Australia and quite reasonably still wants to decide the course of her own life and pursue a "brilliant" career. But no Sybylla is just born into a time when the most she is told she can hope for is to avoid abject poverty by marrying a nice man with money, who might allow her some independence. The various kindly older women of her family try to offer her practical advice and guidance but it all boils down to how to conform. The trajectory of the Jane Austen-style period romance is upturned, as Sybylla doesn't necessarily want either of the potential suitors.... even if it is young Sam Neill doing a full-on sexy Mr. Darcy performance. 'My Brilliant Career' still feels refreshingly different and I don't think people would guess it was not a current movie if they didn't already know.