What is Best in Life

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

February 27

• Thundering Fleas (1926) – Very good Little Rascals short with a lot of great gags and nice cameo turns from random silent comedy stars.  While it obviously still took place in a very different time, within the mixed group of children the racial interactions were surprisingly enlightened as well.
• The Magic Clock (1928) – Amazing stop motion animation full of real fairy tale wonder.  The narrative was a bit lazy with how it connected its various elements, but that was only a minor complaint about a very major work of animation.
• Flaming Fathers (1927) – This was a lot of fun, with plenty of very funny (though hardly original) gags.  It was just too bad that the film was so mean-spirited with its Jewish stereotyping of the lead.
• The Matrimaniac (1916) – Not as funny as the usual silent comedies, nor as exciting as the best Harold Lloyd chase scenes, but still pretty damn entertaining.  Fairbanks did his usual “climb everything in sight” routine, and the movie really didn’t slow down once–a lot of fun.
• Smilin’ Through (1922) - Apparently this was the first of several adaptations of this story, which was surprising since this was such a turgid and unoriginal melodrama.  The final message also managed to push one of the most unpleasant (life-denying) aspects of religion.
• The Unchanging Sea (1910) – Griffith really did have a photographer’s eye, there were some beautiful shots in this early short.  There was a quite a bit of sophistication in the narrative structure as well (though the actual storyline was rather trite).
• The Moony Mariner (1927) – No great film, but amusing enough.  The “hero” was an odd fellow even by silent comedy standards, which lent the film a great deal of its interest.
• The Yankee Clipper (1927) - All the standard seafaring genre tent-poles made an appearance (storm, mutiny, “give her more canvas!”, etc) in this pleasantly entertaining “sea race” movie.  Not one of the silent greats, but still pretty enjoyable.
• Blade Runner (1982) - Brilliant fusion of noir and Science Fiction, the production design alone laid the groundwork for most of the Science fiction (in literature and film) of the last 30 years.  I can think of few films where mood and setting dominated to such impressive effect.

February 26

• Our Hitler (1977) - As far as the masterful way with which it treated “the Hitler problem” for Germany, it made a complex film like Downfall seem shallow in comparison.  It was also 8 hours long and more pretentious than “Bach” pronounced without a hard K, which is to say,  I doubt I’ll be sitting through it again any time soon.

February 23

• Force of Evil (1948) - Great noir with a brutally bleak outlook and some truly virtuoso camerawork.  Really seemed ahead of its time both thematically and in the way it mounted its set pieces.

February 21

• Sahara (2005) - I know this got panned on its release, and there were some problems with tone (not to mention a few ridiculous plot elements…like how the Sahara was supposedly lush river farmlands 150 years ago), but damn if I didn’t enjoy it immensely anyway.  Zahn was a great sidekick, the action scenes were mounted well, and if McConaughey has never equaled the brilliance of his role in Dazed and Confused, he was at least a serviceable leading bimbo.

February 20

• Taste of Cherry (1997) - I won’t deny that Kiarostami possesses impressive filmcraft (and a way with actors), but something left me a little cold with this one–maybe just that I personally don’t find a suicide storyline very interesting.  I was going to bitch about the ending, but as I thought about it more I can see some possible justifications for it.
• WALL-E (2008) - Visually very impressive (though the relatively cartoonish humans seemed out of place), this was pretty well done despite a somewhat simplistic theme.  However, it shared the same problem that most other modern animated fare seems to have: the slapstick of the second half was too often meant to appeal to the instincts of juveniles, as opposed to the slapstick of someone like Chaplin (for instance) who appealed to the juvenile instinct.

February 19

• The Beastmaster (1982) - Because I grew up without cable tv, I had actually never seen this before and was surprised that it wasn’t as bad I as assumed it would be.  It was no Conan (which is itself no masterpiece despite my continual praise of it), but it was better than Red Sonja at least (which is to say, watchable)–also, I like that Charlies Angles chick.

February 18

• Sense and Sensibility (1995) – Very engaging and well done, I suspect movies like this (rather than the source material) are a lot of the reason for Jane Austin’s continued popularity.  If I had a complaint it was that I didn’t really buy a lot of the love connections, but maybe that was part of the point.

February 17

• The Blind Side (2009) – Though it is true that a homeless black boy from the inner city taken in by a rich white family will have a better chance at success in life, this patronizing film was just as infuriating as Gentleman’s Agreement.  Bullock carries the movie, but why anyone would identify with her self-righteous, ivory-tower, judgemental character (who doesn’t realize the selfish root of her actions) is beyond me.

February 16

• District 9 (2009)- There were flaws, most notably a few too many implausible coincidences and a rather heavy handed portrayal of the “evil” humans (though the apartheid parable was thankfully not as strong as the reviews would have you believe).  However, those are really fairly minor gripes about a movie that was a whole hell of a lot of fun and even managed to stay interesting when it switched to blowing shit up mode in the second half.

February 14

• The Hurt Locker (2009) – Quite well-done, it almost reminded me of a more serious Three Kings (in that it was an intelligent and suspenseful movie built around a series of entertaining set pieces).  I don’t think it was all that deep, but I’m not really complaining: films don’t always have to be profoundly thought provoking especially when they are as full of white knuckle suspense as this one was.

February 11

• Koyaanisqatsi (1982)- Some very nice images and a cool (though overcopied) score, but the message had all the subtlety of a nitroglycerin truck in a china shop.  For movies about the intersection of technology and nature, Louisiana Story is a better bet if you would like to avoid detaching your retinas by rolling your eyes too far back in your head.

February 9

• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) – Pretty well done, but I didn’t really find myself drawn in.  Some interesting characters and situations were presented but mostly left undeveloped in favor of the less interesting journey of redemption storyline.
• In Bruges (2008)- It’s too bad that this seemed to be mostly overlooked when it came out, because the script was really very clever.  The performances were also pretty great, with Colin Farrel’s childlike hitman being particularly amusing.
• Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) – Not only did this prefer to “tell” rather than “show”, it also failed to address the problematic and potentially insulting nature of the central premise that living as another race for a month will tell you all you need to know about racism.  I understand that, like The Lost Weekend, this was ideologically ahead of its time and thus felt like it needed to lay it on thick to make the public understand its message, but that sure didn’t help it age very well.

February 8

• Hoop Dreams (1994)- This epic portrait of growing up black in America (if you think that wasn’t the main issue, imagine how pointless it would have been with white protagonists) managed to live up to the all the massive hype.  I was so drawn in to the narrative that I kept finding myself forgetting it was a documentary.

February 6

• Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) – One of Woody Allen’s best, this was also one of his best attempts at incorporating humor into a deadly serious movie.  The screenplay really was a marvel of interconnected stories and human insight.

February 5

• Doctor Bull (1933) – Pretty weak early John Ford film, which was surprising considering it was made at the same time as the far more assured Judge Priest.  The sound track was especially bad–I had to resort to watching it with subtitles just to hear half of what they were saying.

February 4

• Wages of Fear (1953)- I can’t think of many movies that are more suspenseful than this one, perhaps Clouzot’s most nihilistically cynical film (which is saying a lot).  The only complaint I have is that the white-knuckle-brilliant  final 2/3rds of the movie tends to overshadow the comparatively slow intro.

February 3

• Judge Priest (1934)- Stepin Fetchit was almost as painful to watch as the finale with all the black folk singing Dixie.  Of course, that said, this was a superb movie with a great central performance from Will Rogers: corny sentimentalism has never been so poetic.
• King of Kings (1961) – Though the characters were as one note as their bible counterparts, with few displaying much humanity, the narrative was thankfully free of the overbearing self importance of most biblical epics.  What was left was still a rather engrossing movie filmed with style (a great soundtrack too).

February 2

• Pépé le Moko (1936)- A french gangster movie from before they went all hardcore, thus, it was slightly different from the usual Melvilleian stuff (which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing).  Also, the Algiers atmosphere (at least what I like to imagine Algiers was like back in the day) was captured with impressive effect.