75/50/25

2010-11-09T10:29:00.001-08:00

2010-08-13T06:19:00.000-07:00

1935

Alice Adams
The Informer
The Lives of the Bengal Lancer
The Crusades

1960

Classes Tous Risques
Eyes Without a Face
Le Trou
Tunes of Glory
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
The Bad Sleep Weell

1985

Brazil
Ladyhawke

Shoot the Piano Player

2010-07-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

See, now, I think this movie has as much to say about life and cinema and cinema/life as Antonioni's films but is also insanely entertaining. I think it perfect.

2 by Antonioni

2010-07-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

L'avventura (1960) & La Notte (1961)

I promise to watch these again when someone shows them on a big screen. For now, I am claiming ambivalence about them. They leave me cold -- of course. I feel neither like booing them or cheering them. They are hard to watch on a small screen. I like reading about them, though, how L'avventura changed cinema forever. I still think that a capsule description of L'Avventura, especially, makes the movie sound more interesting than it plays.

I'm not trying to be iconoclastic. I respect them.

Mask (1985)

2010-07-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

Somehow I never saw Mask when it came out, or since. It's efficient and straightforward and slick and good. Cher is very very good (and beautiful) , and Eric Stoltz is extraordinarly good. Assuming he would have been considered in the Supporting Actor category, here's who was nominated instead of him -- Klaus Maria Brandauer (Out of Africa), William Hickey (wonderful in Prizzi's Honor), Robert Loggia (effective in The Jagged Edge), Eric Roberts (yes! in Runaway Train, yes!), and the eventual winner, Don Ameche (Cocoon).

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

2010-06-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

Max Reinhardt's legendary Hollywood Bowl production brought to the screen is staggeringly beautiful at times, and often tedious. Cinematographer Hal Mohr is the first and still only person ever to win an Oscar on a write-in vote,and you can see why. (The rules have changed since.) Mickey Rooney, as Puck, gives a brave, inspired, and grating performance. Jimmy Cagney, as Bottom, is tender and funny. A very young Olivia De Havilland makes her screen debut.

I saw it years and years ago on a rep screen. I think I remember the audience swimming delightedly in it for the first 90 minutes or so, and then cramping up and paddling to shore. J. Hoberman calls this movie "a triumph of vulgarity," and that's a good way to think about it.

White Elephant Blogathon

2010-06-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare

This was my draw in the 4th Annual White Elephant Blogathon. I'll supply the link to all the fun as soon as I dredge it up.

I am a serious knucklehead when it comes to Cult Classics. If one is showing nearby, I tend to back out at the last second. I never think to queue on up. I am squeamish about violence, and indifferent to gore. But within the genre, I am partial to movies that were made in earnest. When I can believe that the finished product was something its makers were genuinely proud of, I am on board.

This 1987 is a paradigm example. Written, produced, and starring the Canadian fringe heavy metal musician/entertainer/bodybuilder Jon Mikl Thor. A clip of his national tv debut, on the Merv Griffin Show (oh, Merv) shows a younger, sleeker, pornier version of the Thor in Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare. He's puffier here, a little bloated. But there's something unexpectedly winning about his screen presence -- he's an innocent, and a sweetness comes through.

The plot takes Thor's heavy metal rock band, Triton, and their big-haired wives and girlfriends to a remote Ontario farmhouse, the scene of a long-ago brutal domestic tragedy, which we see in a promisingly effective pre-credit sequence. (The movie often looks great, with good use made of the lonely Canadian dusk.). One of the band-members wears dark sunglasses and is Australian. There is either one other band member or two that look and act so much alike that I never sorted them out. One by one they're picked off, non-scarily, by --- something supernatural. The movie establishes no laws, routine, or logic for the slaughter, and the connection to the old farmhouse family is baffling. In a few cases, a character you thought was dead doesn't seem to be. And at least one character returns from his mangling with improved skills in bed. Still, you never lose confidence that Jon Mikl Thor understands the plot and its logics.

The denouement is unexpected and legendarily goofy, with memorable special effects creatures.

Another of Thor's movies, Zombie Nightmare, got the MSTK3 treatment.

Trip to Bountiful/Kiss of the Spider Woman

2010-03-26T07:40:00.000-07:00

I hate to think this will go down as Geraldine Page's career Oscar, not given sincerely and legtimately for this beautiful performance. She is great, and with every passing year, Horton Foote looks more and more like a titan. The movie is not directed with any distinction but it looks a lot better than a lot of other movies of this year.

Not a good movie. I think I can make a case for Hurt's performance being the weirdest ever to have won an acting Oscar. Not boring, but so weird, and it's fun to imagine what the movie might have been like if someone had played his character as written.

Barbary Coast

2010-03-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

You can feel all that Hawksian stuff trying to come together. It doesn't but it dies trying. Edgar G. Robison does a far, far better thing. Miriam Hopkins fixes a roulette wheel so nicely for Joel McCrea (who wouldn't) that maybe the Epstein Brothers loved that trick, too, and took it to Casablanca. It's a good trick. And Brian Aherne does a a great panic. Actually, I liked it a lot.

Vein of Iron

2010-02-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

The first book to top the New York Times best-sellers list. In common with other well-read writers of her day, she wrote of a vanishing America and the almost unfathomably rapid changes in society. Here, the Fincastles of Virginia, desdendants of rugged indominitable pioneers, are the transitional generations, a "vein of iron" still in their bodies, even as others around them succumb to easy-credit ripoffs and installment plans. The book's final third, when the family moves from their isolated village of Ironside (not so idyllic) to the city of Queensborough, takes them through the Depression, and Glasgow sets off some effective Socialist bombs. It's a slog, but eventually, it works, and she is most credible when demonstrating the inner lives and intelligence of people who don't appaer to have much of them. The concluding passage of John Fincastle returning to Ironside is moving.

Mutiny on the Bounty

2010-02-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

The Best Picture winner of 1935 was this MGM spectacular which does have plenty of spectacle but scant nuance and even less psychological insight. Of interest for its achievement as a big, effective, and satisfying production, and for Laughton (a big star at the moment). I always wonder if a kid today would even sit through it.

Peeping Tom/The Virgin Spring

2010-01-19T11:49:00.000-08:00

Discovering the films of Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger has been one of my happiest movieloving experiences -- I'm in love with I Know Where I'm Going, 49th Parallel, and especially A Canterbury Tale. They've all been beautifully Criterionized in recent years -- go for them. Then there's this movie, a sick psychological shocker released the same year as Psycho. But this killed Powell's career. (This is what they always say, apparently it's true.) I don't find it all that disturbing, and I definitely have never felt implicated by it (in the way that film scholars love to talk about the gaze.) But it's defnitely very weird and fascinating, and fun to talk about. But I think it makes no sense to see it before you collect up some other Powells.

The Virgin Spring, I learned, is notable in retrospect for closing out one half of Bergman's career. After this, he would turn to his "chamber" movies. I learned that this one, although it won the best foreign film Oscar, was rejected by the New Wave critics and filmmakers and by the hometown Swedish community, too. They were kind of fed up with his costume dramas and with his concerns about Christian faith. I had seen this years ago, and I confess, this time I watched it with commentary on. So I was obviously influenced by the observations above. But I don't think I'll ever see it again anyway, unless it shows up at a revival house. Maybe. I do like when he pulls down this tree.

Captain Blood

2010-01-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

What makes my retrospective method so rewarding is that it compels me to finally watch (or read or listen) to something I've been not exactly avoiding but somehow keep side-stepping. I had never seen an Errol Flynn movie, and Captain Blood was his first starring role. He was, they say, a risky choice, an unknown carrying an expensive movie in a time when stars sold tickets. He is great, and not exactly like anyone else --somewhere in between Clark Gable and Leslie Howard -- he looks like he'd be awesome in bed. Olivia De Havilland is here, too, and they are a surpassingly hot couple. The director is Michael Curtiz, and there's something about his confident style that makes you relax with the movie, and trust it. My favorite moment comes at the halfway point, when the movie shifts radically from an enslavlement story to a pirate adventure. Blood, a slave, is shackled to a post, about to be whipped to pulp, when suddenly pirate ships are heard in the distance. Flynn gets a gorgeous close-up, he says, "This is what I call a timely interruption! Though what'll come of it - the devil himself only knows!"

Three from the 1960 Arthouse (kind of)

2010-01-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

Kind of, because in at least one case, the movie wasn't seen over here until years later.

Ozu's Late Autumn wasn't seen in New York until 1973. A reworking of 1959's Late Spring. Again, an adult daughter is living contentedly with her middle-aged widowed parent -- a father in Spring, a mother in autumn. And again, meddlers meddle; again the daughter resists (won't the parent be lonely without me? or is it that she really really wants not to marry?), and again the parent is convinced that the child won't marry until the parent remarries. Setsuko Hara is the daughter in Spring and the mother in Autumn. The earlier one is devastating, the second has more humor and feels much more modern.

Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes didn't get an American debut until 1966, in large part because of its disturbing content. It's something to see, with great shots of Paris at night and such unusual locations as the swimming pool that appears to be a legit singles destination. The unfulfilling days and nights of four coworkers (among them, a young Stephane Audran) are chronicled, not entirely sensibly. A bit of Mike Leigh, a lot of Godard, and a helping of Hitchcock are present. Glad to know it, but I am way behind on Chabrol.

Breathless is super-seminal and essentia, and the more you know about it the more you can appreciate all of what Godard was trying to do. At one point, Belmondo tells Seberg that up close she looks like a Martian -- she does!

Gold Diggers of 1935

2010-01-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

This is the one with "Lullaby of Broadway," which inexplicably won the best song Oscar over "Cheek to Cheek" and "Lovely to Look At," but when you see it, you realize that the award was intended for the best song production, and this one is insane. All of the numbers come late in this movie -- nothing like the big "We're in the Money" number that opened from the 1933 edition. They're worth waiting for, and it's fun to hear John Waters and others comment about it on the DVD's accompanying mini-doc, its darkness and fascistic overtones. I didn't mind the plot so much, enjoyed seeing a young Gloria Stuart, and an overbearing Alice Brady.

Meat is Murder

2010-01-07T13:31:00.000-08:00

I think maybe I bought three albums in the 1980s. I think I bought cassette tapes. I guess.

So, it's embarrassing, but until I just bought this thing last week, if I heard one of these songs playing, I wouldn't have been able to give you the song's title (I probably would have said "How Soon is Now" was called "I'm Only Human") and I might have said the band's name was Human League. Or something.

What a dunce. Probably "How Soon is Now" is not a favorite of a real Smiths fan but I love it so much. It sounds like a decade. Great cover -- still shot from a documentary called Year of the Pig, which I think Eric Hatch showed at his bygone BMA film series.

Top Hat

2010-01-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

The mistaken-identity plot, which really should make no difference, I found so irrititating that I kept wanting to throw my shoe at the tv, or to project myself into the movie so I could clear up what characters who weren't imbeciles could have cleared up for themselves. They're tiresome. They do a 10-second dance-for-joy thing at the end of this movie, kind of like what they do at the end of The Gay Divorcee, which is more fun to watch then all of their other dances.

Watched, January 3, 2010 (first time)

David Copperfield

2010-01-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

You couldn't really ask for it to be much better. It flags just a little in second hour after Freddie Bartholomew turns into Frank Lawton (the turmoil of a Dickens child is pretty irresistible) but a lot of it it close to perfect -- the Edna May Oliver's Aunt Betsey, Roland Young's Uriah Heep, of course W.C. Fields' Micawber, and maybe best of all, Jesse Ralph's Nurse Peggotty, who seems actually real. (And Una O'Connor's Gummidge makes me laugh out loud).

Artwork of the Day

2009-12-27T15:26:00.000-08:00

Marianne Moore, February 1935
Gelatin silver print

George Platt Lynes
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1941

A Night at the Opera

2009-12-27T09:36:00.000-08:00

I never have completely warmed up to the Marx Brothers. The sheer anarchy in Duck Soup unnerves me, but it does make me confront, fleetingly at least, my own anxieties about upheaval and bedlam. So, I at least get to question my resistance. But the scene in which Chico and Harpo torment the lemonade vendor I think is just sadistic. Then, when purists complain that A Night at the Opera, their first film for MGM, dilutes their anarchy, I find myself more comfortable with the production values and the underpinnings of normalcy. But then what are you left with beside antics. The movie doesn't really seem that smart -- the high-society targets are sitting ducks. I watched it with a full audience, on a revival Saturday. There was laughter but not until it hurt; it was self-conscious I thought.

I might be the only human who actually enjoys the reviled romantic plot. I think Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones are sweet, and Groucho is very sweet in his scenes with them.

National Film Registry, 1993

The Charles, Saturday, December 26th

Retrospective Gallery

2009-12-25T19:39:00.000-08:00

Gertrude Stein, New York, Jan. 4, 1935
Van Vechten, Carl, 1880-1964 -- Photographer
The New York Public Library

1959

2009-12-25T13:18:00.000-08:00

Transitional year, last gasps of the old system with real excitement in the art houses.

Rio Bravo

North By Northwest

Hiroshima, Mon Amour

Ballad of a Solider

Il Generale Della Rovere

Also Saw Recently

The 400 Blows

Anatomy of a Murder

The Best of Everything

Black Orpheus

Compulsion

Diary of Anne Frank

Donizetti: L’Elisir D’amore

Equinox Flower

Fires on the Plain

Imitation of Life

Good Morning

The Human Condition

L’il Abner

The Nun’s Story

Our Man in Havana

Pickpocket

Pillow Talk

Shadows

Suddenly, Last Summer

The Sundowners

The Young Philadephians

Wild Strawberries

Saw but not Recently

Ben Hur

Room at the Top

Missing in Action

The Cousins

The Last Angry Man

Really need to see

The Testament of Orpheus

The World of Apu

1984

2009-12-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

Early works by the Coen Brothers, Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, and Stephen Frears. Late work by Cassavettes. A bad year for in the mainstream.

Five Favorites

David Lynch's Dune entertained me so much. I think The Baron (Kevin McMillan) might be my favorite movie villain, next to Addison DeWitt. I loved how the movie hurtles insanely along, not worrying about sense. Great actors giving committed performances. A big discovery for me.

Seen next to the year's other comedies, This is Spinal Tap looks like it was dropped in from another planet. It's as sweet 25 years later.

Paris, Texas

Places in the Heart

The Hit

Also Saw Recently

Against All Odds

Bachelor Party

Beverly Hills Cop

Blood Simple

Body Rock

The Bostonians

Breakin’

Broadway Danny Rose

Country

The Element of Crime

Footloose

Ghostbusters

The Karate Kid

The Last Starfighter

The Lonely Guy

Next of Kin

The Natural

A Passage to India

Police Academy

Purple Rain

Swing Shift

Splash

The River

Romancing the Stone

A Soldier’s Story

Streets of Fire

The Terminator

The Times of Harvey Milk

Under the Volcano

Really Need to See

Birdy

Love Streams

Once Upon a Time in America

Sunday in the Country

Missing in Action

1984

Saw a While Ago

Antonio Gaudi

Full Moon in Paris

Gremlins

Secret Honor

Stranger Than Paradise

1934

2009-12-25T11:24:00.000-08:00

Shirley Temple, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis -- I always used to wipe my mouth. Wipe My Mouth!

The Scarlet Empress

Wickedly fun, with almost nonstop astonishment, and delicious performances, especially by Marie Dresser as Catherine's meddlesome mother-in-law.

Twentieth Century

Carole Lombard does one of the funniest takes I've ever seen. I prefer this movie so much to It Happened One Night.

L'Atalante

It's a Gift

I mean I really laughed out loud. That scene when he's trying to sleep on the back porch...still laughing.

Bright Eyes

Jane Withers is my hero. Shirley is adorable.

Also Recently Watched

The Black Cat

Cleopatra

The Gay Divorcee

Of Human Bondage

Imitation of Life

It Happened One NIght

Judge Priest

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Manhattan Melodrama

Little Miss Marker

The Lost Patrol

Of Human Bondage

She Done Him Wrong

A Story of Floating Weeds

Tarzan and His Mate

The Thin Man
Treasure Island
The World Moves On

Missing in Action

The Affairs of Cellni

The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Flirtation Walk

Here Comes the Navy

The House of Rothschld

One Night of Love

The White Parade

Some other Time

I discovered belatedly that many of these are components of Criterion boxed sets -- they weren't showing up on the site's main list.

Angele

Bad Blood

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Crossroads of Youth

Everybody's Woman

The Goddess

Les Miserables (Bernard)

Man of Aran

The Merry Widow

Our Daily Bread

The Private Life of Don Juan

Pubic Affairs

The Rise of Catherine the Greatt

Waltzes from Vienna

1983

2009-12-14T14:31:00.000-08:00

Ralph Macchio, Sandrine Bonnaire, Meryl Streep, Debra Winger, Linda Hunt -- acting saves the movies in 1983

Favorites

The Outsiders

Missed at the time. I now adore it, maybe beyond reason. But it sustains its mood and its energy and its concern for all of its characters. The romantic world it creates feels more real than the realistic one other movies strive for.

A Nos Amours

Not much innocence here, and it nails the central father-daughter relationship. Frank, and never exploitative.

Terms of Endearment

I make no apologies. I love this movie. If it's manipulative, I'd happy being manipulated by professionals. Debra Winger's charcacter -- a normal person -- doesn't show up in too many movies. The scene where MacLaine returns to the hideous hotel she's staying to discover the astonaut has arrived, is one the decentest tear-jerker scene of all time.

Rumble Fish

They set out to make an art film for teenagers, and teenagers didn't want it. It looks great now.

Silkwood

It's all about Diana Scarwid.

Others

L'Argent -- A downer, but necessary

Ballad of Narayama -- Vivid fable

The Big Chill -- Frozen over

Carlos Saura's Carmen -- Too much of a good thing

Cross Creek -- It has many good moments

Daniel -- Deservedly obscure

The Dead Zone -- Walken is creepy before he's supposed to be

The Dresser -- What people back then went to see. Finney is great

Educating Rita -- What people back then went to see

Fanny & Alexander -- All of it magical

Heart Like a Wheel -- Not bad

Never Cry Wolf -- Fangless

Never Say Never Again -- Title is a punch line

Octopussy -- Lame villains

The Return of the Jedi -- Stinky

The Right Stuff -- That cast

Scarface -- Once is enough

Tender Mercies -- Oscar winner for Duvall

Testament -- Believable, with superb acting

Trading Places -- It works in its slovenly way

Videodrome -- Cronenberg excess

The Year of Living Dangerously -- Linda Hunt is amazing

WarGames -- Not that good really

Yentl -- um, no.

1958

2009-11-29T21:23:00.000-08:00

Favorites

Touch of Evil -- I think Charlton Heston's performance, as a man caught between cultures, makes perfect sense.

The Cranes are Flying -- Gorgeous and moving account of Russian lovers separated by WWII

Mon oncle -- Tati classic never disappoints

Elevator to the Gallows -- Jeanne Moreau, caught on the nighttime Paris streets, to Miles Davis.

Some Came Running -- Not the masterpiece it's held up as but worth knowing and MacLaine is amazing.

Others

Auntie Mame --Too long for what it is

Bell, Book, and Candle -- Sweet and Novak is ideal

The Big Country -- With an epic fistfight

The Blob -- Ridiculous

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof -- Judith Anderson has the best moments

The Defiant Ones -- Obvious but efficient

Gigi -- Hardly ever as charming as it thinks it is

The Horse’s Mouth -- Alec Guinness in top form

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness -- Effortful

I Want to Live! -- Exemplary Oscar bait

The Lovers -- Tiresome and schematic

Separate Tables -- Suffocatingly classy but Deborah Kerr is fine

South Pacific -- Mostly wasteful
Teacher’s Pet -- Never credible

Vertigo -- Over-analyzed.-- audinces still laugh in the wrong places
Knighty Knight Bugs -- Weakish Bugs Bunny Oscar winner

Available but Avoiding (for whatever reason)

The Old Man and the Sea

Missing in Action

Lonelyhearts, The Goddess, Ashes and Diamonds, Une Vie, Man of the West, White Wilderness

Revisionism

Best Picture -- Touch of Evil
Best Director -- Orson Welles, Touch of Evil
Best Actor -- Alec Guinness -- The Horse's Mouth
Best Actress -- Jean Moreau, Elevator to the Gallows
Best Supporting Actress -- Shirley MacLaine, Some Came Running
Best Supporting Actor -- Akim Tamiroff, Touch of Evil

1933

2009-11-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

King Kong, Busby Berkeley, and Katharine Hepburn. Further emergence of Capra, Ford, and Wyler. Generally known as the last year before the enforcement of the Production Code.

Favorites

Counsellor at Law -- inconceivably satisfying adaptation of Elmer Rice's play by William Wyler. Engaging from start to finish, with bits of genuine weirdness.

Footlight Parade -- great all around, but a few of the big numbers, and especially "Shanghai Lil" are mind-blowingly fine.

King Kong -- with a sterling companion DVD, which makes the production seem heroic.

Little Women -- a model literary adaptation, perfect in every way

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse -- Effective Fritz Lang

Others

42nd Street -- the title production number is sublime -- "...you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!"
Baby Face -- Wonderfully nasty for a while but then not so much. For Barbara Stanwyck's satisfied expression as her father burns alive.
Bombshell -- fast paced, uneven, and a good introduction to Harlow. From the undervalued Victor Fleming,. Screening introduced by his worthy biographer, Michael Sragow.
Dancing Lady -- Joan Crawford, with great effort. But hot sparks between her and Clark Gable
Design for Living -- sunk by a miscast Gary Cooper
Dinner at Eight -- less than perfect, it turns out, but that's all right. The John Barrymore plot is tiresome.
Duck Soup -- Just don't get it. Some of it, but not most of it.
Emperor Jones -- faithful O'Neill adaptation, worthwhile for Robeson
Gold Diggers of 1933 -- great, with Ginger Rogers singing "We're in the Money" in pig latin.
His Double Life -- a nice one with a credible Helen Hayes
The Invisible Man -- odd, no first act
Lady for a Day -- unsatisfying Capra
Morning Glory -- Brittle
Passing Fancy -- Early Ozu bears little resemblance to late fully formed Ozu
The Private Life of Henry VIII -- When it's working, great
She Done Him Wrong -- Essential Mae West
The Three Little Pigs

Long time since seeing

Cavalcade -- an Oscar winner with no partisans

Missing in Action

The Island of Lost Souls, Sons of the Desert, State Fair, When Ladies Meet, Gabriel Over the White House, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Outskirts

Available but Avoiding (for whatever reason)

Queen Christina, Flying Down to Rio, I'm No Angel, Exstase

Revisionism

Best picture -- King Kong
Best actor -- Jimmy Cagney, charming in Footlight Parade
Best actress -- Katharine Hepburn, heartbreaking in Little Women
Best supporting actor -- lending perfect support as Prof. Bhaer in Little Women
Best supporting actress -- Marie Dressler, for a single, enduringly loved reaction shot in Dinner at Eight