What is Best in Life

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in August.

Stats

• Movies watched – 25
• Movies that were new to me – 21
• Short films to pad my numbers – 2
• Monthly Masterpieces - Rain, All Quiet on the Western Front, City Girl

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I’ve been a little unsure about what to do with the Infrequently Occurring 5th Monday (aka “you are lucky I don’t just make it a double Middle Earth Monday”) whenever it crops up.  Things started off well enough with Diminished Fifth Monday, but by the time I started writing stuff like Fifth Alpini Regiment Monday I realized I could probably do better theme-wise.

So today I’m starting a brand new feature for “Infrequently Occuring 5th Monday”: the top five list.  It’s no secret I love lists, so I should be able to sustain a “Top Five Monday” list for quite a while.  It’s also no secret I love John Wayne, so let’s start things off right! (more…)

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in June.

Stats

• Movies watched – 30
• Movies that were new to me – 25
• Movies about the offspring of royalty – 7
• Monthly Masterpieces - Dazed and Confused, Philadelphia Story

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Welcome back to Internet Meme Monday!  What is a meme you say?  Well, as I understand it, a meme is similar to a gene, except instead of passing on genetic information it passes on cultural ideas.  A meme can take many forms, from a catch phrase to a hand gesture, but the type of memes I’ll be looking at every second Monday of the month are “internet memes”.

On the agenda this month?  I examine the use usefulness of a picture of a couple of dudes looking stoked! (more…)

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in April.

Stats

• Movies watched – 43
• Movies that were new to me – 35
• Remakes reviewed/Franchises Finished – 5/7
• Monthly Masterpieces -  The White Ribbon, Red River, The Old Dark House

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Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in March.

Stats

• Movies watched – 28
• Movies that were new to me – 20
• National Treasure movies watched and mostly enjoyed – 2
• Monthly Masterpieces - Our Hospitality, Le Samourai, The Tarnished Angels, My Darling Clementine, Out of the Past

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I thought I learned my lesson last year after enduring The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but I guess not, because even though they doubled the number of nominees this year, I still decided to watch all the 2009 Oscar nominations.  I mean, everyone knows that an actual academy award win doesn’t mean shit, but it doesn’t stop us from bitching about how laughable the awards are anyway.  And I figured it wasn’t fair to bitch about something like Fargo not winning if I’d never even seen The English Patient.  Though, I might just be a glutton for cinematic punishment: after all, one time I watched Barbie Fairytopia all the way through just to write a funny review.

And honestly, the 2009 list of nominations isn’t that bad.  There were a few great movies and a few more entertaining but flawed movies, and only a couple that I wouldn’t want to watch again (you know, if I had to).  For all the shit I talk on the Oscar nominations, I’d be hard pressed to find many wide release American movies from 2009 that are better than the top 3 (after that it is pretty much just a wash of flawed films of varying quality anyway).  I’m sure there are plenty of semi-wide release “independent” films out there that I haven’t seen that are probably ”as good as” something like An Education, but I have a feeling they would leave me equally non-plussed.

Anyway, this isn’t my list of Oscar “predictions”, and I’m not offering better alternatives (though I’m pretty sure I could find a better choice than The Blind Side at least), this is simply what I thought of the films that did get nominated.  Of course, I also put them in an ordered list based on quality, because, well, that’s just the way I roll. (more…)

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in January.

Stats

• Movies watched – 30
• Movies that were new to me – 23
• Movies from my guilty pleasure bucket list watched and enjoyed – 2
• Monthly Masterpieces - Wages of Fear, Blade Runner (more…)

Every now and then I’m reminded that I really don’t know as much about the bible as I thought I did.  Well, tonight was one of those times: I just finished Nicholas Ray’s 1961 biblical epic King of Kings and boy did I learn a lot!  I mean, I already knew some things, like Pontius Pilate was a meanie and Judas has a heel turn.  Oh, and (spoiler alert) Jesus dies at the end.  But just like in comics, it seems dead doesn’t always mean dead, so I assume, like comics, maybe they had him die to boost sales before they brought him back.  Ok, ok, I’ll try not to make today a day where I say insulting things about the bible, instead, I’ll see if I can focus on all the stuff I learned from watching King of Kings! (more…)

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in January.

Stats

• Movies watched – 33
• Movies that were new to me – 27
• Remakes and Sequels watched – 5 (counting Avatar)
• Monthly Masterpieces - Chloe in the Afternoon, La Collectionneuse, Pauline at the Beach, Viridiana

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There are many directors I admire greatly, but none as much as Eric Rohmer.  With his death yesterday morning, cinema lost a true master whose unique voice has never been (and most likely will never be) matched.

It’s easy to think of Rohmer’s films as “all being the same”. After all, “young attractive french couples (often on holiday) endlessly dissecting their relationships” pretty much sums up the bulk of his work.  Yet while his movies all inhabit the same realm of human interaction, upon any close inspection they are as unique as tomorrow will be from today.  The fact that Rohmer has made so many films of such astounding freshness (even when compared to each other) despite their similar premises says volumes for the infinite variability and wonder of life as a member of the human species.

But I’ve discussed my love of Rohmer’s films before, so instead of focusing on his entire body of work in today’s memorial post, I thought I would discuss my personal favorite (as if one could really pick one from so many superlative movies) film of his: Chloe in the Afternoon. (more…)

Top ten lists might be completely subjective affairs that are meaningless to anyone other than their creator, but they also happen to be a hell of a lot of fun to make.  Obviously nobody can really say any one movie is exactly the 7th best movie of the year, the decade, or all time, but the process of deciding for yourself how you would rank your favorite films is a very legitimate method of thinking about cinema.  Which films have the necessary level of mastery to even make your list, what about those films, specifically, appeals to you, specifically, and just what the best movie on your list will actually be are all very valuable questions.  Sure, my 4th favorite movie of a particular decade might shift up, down or ever disappear from any of these lists based on the whims of my fancy at the time, but the fact remains that the act of creating such a list is very helpful in sorting through your thoughts and preferences in the world of cinema.

That said, any list such as this must have criteria and guidelines for its creation. Here are the ones I have decided to use (the choice of guidelines being equally subjective as the ordering of my list):

1. One film per director. A tough choice (and not really in the spirit of things) but a necessary one to keep (for example) a decade like the seventies from being dominated by Altman and Fassbinder films.
2. Find a balance between mastery of the medium and personal preference. For example, Pather Pachali is a true masterwork, but it does not resonate with me enough to quite make my 1950′s list, and yet Rio Bravo, its own kind of masterwork gets the top spot.  Again, I said *balance*, Die Hard, for all its brilliance is simply not even in the same league as something like Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, the #10 spot on my 80s list. And Excalibur, much as I love it, is still enough of a mess to keep it off my 1980′s list as well.
3. You must have seen a movie more than once to include it on your list. I will break all of my rules, and probably this one most of all.  Even someone who watches as many movies as I do can not realistically do this for every film, but when able it is strongly advised as repeat viewings always provide new insight as to a film’s relative position on a list.

With those simple rules for me to try to break, let’s move on to my list of the top ten best films of the 2000s!

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Because today marks the one year anniversary of my Monthly Movie Review segment, I thought I’d spend a bit of time looking back over my year in movies.  And when I say in movies, I mean a lot of movies…like an embarrassing amount.  It’s almost as if I have a bit of free time on my hands.

How many movies did I watch in the last year?  According to my calculations: (more…)

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in December.

Stats

• Movies watched – 35
• Movies that were new to me – 22
• Most movies from the last decade watched in a month ever – 25
• Monthly Masterpieces – The White Ribbon, It’s a Wonderful Life, In the Mood for Love

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Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in November.

Stats

• Movies watched – 27
• Movies that were new to me – 23
• Movies that featured an abusive relationship as a plot element – 14
• Monthly Masterpieces – Killer of Sheep, The Red Shoes, It’s a Gift

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I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not entirely fair in my reviews of movies with a strong message.  It doesn’t matter how delicately the filmmaker has incorporated their “message” into their film, as soon as I get a whiff of proselytizing I immediately find my opinion of the film is lowered.  It is important to keep in mind that I am making the distinction here between the filmmaker showing their view of the world (something every filmmaker should do) as opposed to attempting to change the audience’s view of the world (something I feel should not be overtly attempted).

While discussing this with a friend, the point was made that while the purpose of art should not necessarily be to inform, “the role of art for the artist is self-expression, so objection to their doing so in a political or otherwise partisan way is disingenuous”.  Which is a good point, one that I will look into in greater depth here today to find out just what it is about everything from I was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang to The Lost Weekend that immediately turns me off. (more…)

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in October.

Stats

• Movies watched – 35
• Movies that were new to me – 24
• New record for 80s movies watched – 10
• Monthly Masterpieces - Black Narcissus, Love Me Tonight, Raging Bull

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While talking with my dad about “10 best” lists we realized that for film we were having a lot of trouble coming up with an obvious list for the 1980s.  Now, every decade is full of great films (and despite having said in the past that I give short shrift to any film made post Star Wars, I was mostly joking), but the 1980′s did not seem to contain the wealth of choices that decades like the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1970s did.

Thus, I decided to go back and scour lists of films made in the 1980s to see if the pickings were actually that slim, or if I was just showing my bias against “post Star Wars/post global new wave” cinema.  Though it still proved tricky to find a list of unqualified masterpieces (and a few qualified ones still snuck onto my list), it turned out that the 1980s nevertheless was a decade full of enough great cinema to keep any movie lover busy for quite a while. (more…)