Jan/Feb Filmfest

Naturally you all remember this, but back in December I began a quest to watch all of the movies on the AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Movies lists (both original and 10^th anniversary editions).  In that month, I made it through five movies and gave a small review of each.  Since I was gone from blogging through all of January, there was no movie review then, so this set of five is from Jan/Feb, and starting in March we’ll get back to five per month.  Again, these are ranked from my least favorite to most.

5) The Searchers (1956) – Two months in a row with Westerns at the bottom might actually indicate that I just don’t care for this genre.  It’s now been one each with the two big names of Westerns, Clint Eastwood and now John Wayne, and I didn’t like either.  As little sense as this might make, every time John Wayne spoke, he sounded like Ryan Stiles’ John Wayne impersonation from Whose Line is it Anyway, which I always assumed was exaggerated and cheesy.  Well, it kind of was, but apparently that was also how John Wayne acted, and it just made me laugh.  Plot-wise, pretty simple: John Wayne is out searching for his niece that was kidnapped by Comanches.  Aside from the whole Cowboys vs. Indians stereotypes, it was pretty long and drawn out, and it seemed that almost every problem was solved by John Wayne’s character having a lot of money and buying his way out of trouble.  On the plus side, the desert scenery was fairly pretty.

4) Bringing Up Baby (1938) – If they made this movie today, I have the awful feeling it would star Ben Stiller.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Stiller (in small doses) but he does have an almost trademarked style of movie: every thing that can possibly go wrong does go wrong for the bumbling protagonist.  It ends up being a lot of screaming and running around and not much real story or depth.  Cary Grant stars this time as more meek than bumbling, per se, but he runs into Katherine Hepburn and all sorts of crazy things start happening, mostly centered around a “tame” leopard.  There are funny parts and clever lines, but there are a lot of groaners too.  I really wanted to like it, since I like Hepburn and Grant, but it was just kind of tiring.  I shouldn’t give this movie too hard a time, since it was probably a pioneer in the genre of “screwball comedy” but a lot of the material seems a bit tired now.  It’s okay, but definitely not a favorite.

3) Do the Right Thing (1989) – On the flip side, this one surprised me.  Clicking over to the Wikipedia page shows the very corny looking movie poster, which for some reason reminded me of all sorts of bad comedy covers.  However, aside from some minor characters for comic relief, this is actually a serious movie, about serious issues.  It’s set in a multi-ethnic neighborhood in Brooklyn, and explores racial conflict during a summer heat wave.  Spike Lee wrote and directed the movie, and I think he does well balancing the different viewpoints – there aren’t really “good guys” or “bad guys” (except the police, who seem a bit caricaturelike to me, but may have been accurate for that time and place), there are just the residents trying to go about their lives, as tensions simmer up to a boiling point.  I liked the pacing as things built up, I liked the filming and the unique color effects used to convey the heat.  Some of the characters were a bit cartoony or one-dimensional, and I really wish Lee had not cast himself as the main character.  As good a director as he may be, he doesn’t seem to be a great actor.  It’s a good movie, but probably would have been better with some minor tweaks.

2) Blade Runner (1982) – Here’s another one that I thought for sure I’d like, but it ended up not fully living up to its potential.  Blade Runner combines so many things I like, a film noir feel, a science fiction setting, ethical ambiguities, impressive visuals, and an almost antihero reluctant protagonist.  The downfall for Blade Runner was the extreme length and need to draw everything out.  Granted, we’re talking about Ridley Scott here, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that it ran long, but I felt this could have been a great movie if he’d livened things up a bit or added more convolution to the plot.  Most of the developments of the story were pretty transparent, so we weren’t puzzling over what would happen next, simply waiting.  That said, I did like this movie, so the pacing wasn’t a fatal flaw, just something I wish had been done better.  It was beautifully filmed, and raised some interesting questions about what it is to be human.  And at the end, you’ve got a movie featuring a young Harrison Ford hunting rogue androids while contemplating the morality of it all – hard to go too wrong there.

1) Pulp Fiction (1994) – I made a bit of a mistake watching this one, but I’ve seen it enough times that it didn’t bias my judgment.  I recorded this off of AMC, which meant a lot of editing.  It’s not like it makes my day to hear 50 F-bombs in the course of two hours, but clumsily removing them really messes with the flow of the movie.  But like I said, I’ve probably seen this a dozen times, so I knew what was going on.  Pulp Fiction is Quentin Tarantino’s only great movie, and has allowed him IMO to pass off a lot of junk as quality filmmaking.  This one is full of brutal violence, like all his films, but it’s balanced with a witty script that makes me laugh aloud even today, knowing the lines that are coming.  Weird as it might sound to say for a movie about gangsters, hitmen, drug dealers and users, this is actually a lot of fun.  I’m not sure there’s enough depth of character or story to really count as a great film, but if it’s on I’ll probably watch for at least a while.

Next month I get back on track with the following five movies.

95(2) – The Last Picture Show (1971)

94(1) – Goodfellas (1990)

93(1) – The Apartment (1960)

93(2) – The French Connection (1971)

92(1) – A Place in the Sun (1951)