June Filmfest

As you may recall, my plan was to work my way up the lists of AFI’s top 100 movies from bottom to top.  Given my spotty luck with DVDs from the local libraries, I decided to start recording films from the list from Turner Classics onto the DVR.  This worked great, to the extent that the DVR started to get very close to full.  So this month I had to change the rules a bit.  In order to clear some space on the machine, I watched movies that I had from bottom to top rather than overall.  So instead of hitting movies 82, 81, 80, 79 and 78, I saw movies 82, 81, 79, 75, 73.  I’ll definitely catch up to the ones I missed this time around once I clear up some more room on the DVR.  Enough said, on to the movies!  As always, from my least favorite of the month to the best.

6) Rocky (1976) – It’s almost as though I can hear your cries of outrage from here.  I know, I know, Rocky is a classic, it’s inspiring, everyone loves it.  Well, sorry to say that’s everyone but me.  And to be sure I don’t hate it – I enjoyed many of the comedic moments, and of course I pulled for Rocky to win the big fight.  I also really liked the music throughout the film, including the well-known “Rocky theme.”  But it’s a movie about boxing.  I have never understood the allure of that sport, and it always kinda creeped me out.  I have a hard time getting behind a character whose motivation is to punch a guy in the head more than he gets punched in the head.  It also felt pretty drawn out, since the primary conflict is so straightforward.  If you don’t mind the boxing stuff, this is probably pretty inspiring, but it just doesn’t do it for me.

5) Giant (1956) – I have some mixed emotions on this movie.  It’s one of those really long films that follows the characters throughout pretty much their entire lives.  I say that suspecting that there are others that do the same, but maybe Giant is pretty much the only one?  Anyway, it’s a fairly interesting story about an East-coast woman who marries a Texas cattle tycoon, and as they grow older we see how their lives and thoughts have changed with the other’s presence.  The woman, played by Liz Taylor, is particularly cool, since she doesn’t take any crap from the less-than-progressive Texans about her role as a wife.  Her husband, on the other hand, is kind of a jerk up until the very end, so I was never too thrilled about them being together.  There’s a good subplot about a character being essentially destroyed by his oil wealth and some stuff about racism.  But with decades of plot to get through, it seems we are too busy being shown events and not as much about the people and how they are affected or feel.  Still an enjoyable movie though.

4) Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) – So last month I decided I pretty much didn’t like silent films.  Then this month there are two more, and they both were pretty darn good.  Sunrise (which is on Youtube for free) centers around an adulterous man and his plot to get rid of his wife so he can be with his mistress.  This makes the guy flat-unlikeable despite the attempts at redemption later in the movie.  A lot of time is spent with him feeling terribly sorry, but given the terrible things he was considering, you are left feeling that he should feel bad.  The emotions are very well delivered though, and you can feel the wife’s betrayal and the husband’s sorrow.  That this was done in a silent movie is particularly remarkable, made even more so by the lack of dialogue cards.  There were almost none of these in the movie, which makes the presentation very impressive.  I liked that a lot, but then the film had to go and wrap everything up very neatly, so I was left with a bit of a bad taste.  It’s a shame, since the middle of the movie was so good.

3) Dances with Wolves (1990) – Believe it or not, I’d not yet seen Kevin Costner’s classic prior to this viewing.  Given his reputation post-Waterworld, I was a bit leery, but I ended up liking this one quite a bit.  The storyline is interesting, but even more importantly most of the main characters were real and complex people.  There were some ancillary roles that were a bit caricaturelike (wagon driver) or stereotypical (wise chief, bigoted soldiers) but for the most part they felt like humans with actual emotions and motivations.  It was neat to see the character development over the course of the movie as both the Lakota and Costner learn from one another.  The end of the film is, I’ll warn you, fairly depressing, but it’s not like the true story of the Native Americans and European settlers isn’t pretty dismal itself.  There’s one scene between Costner and Wind in his Hair near the end that really captures the heart of the film and might leave you a bit misty-eyed.  Fully expecting to not like this movie, I was pleasantly surprised.

2) Modern Times (1936) – Another silent movie, also available on Youtube, this time a Charlie Chaplin entry.  I had previously seen short clips of Chaplin acts and predetermined that they looked very cheesy and were not really my style.  After viewing this movie (which incidentally was also written, directed and produced by Chaplin) I have a newfound liking for his work.  A lot of the physical comedy he does is impressive as a feat or work of choreography, and most of the slapstick stuff is pretty damn funny.  There were several times I found myself laughing out loud, which few modern comedies have been capable of causing.  But in addition to the funny bits, there’s also a lot of social commentary, and some really touching scenes.  The movie shows the struggles of an average worker in, well, Modern Times, and some of the stuff with the factory owners pushing for ridiculous levels of efficiency touched a nerve today.  And after all of that, it’s a very cute love story.  I had a few minor quibbles with some of the plot holes, but not enough to lower my level of enjoyment with the film.  I’m looking forward to the other Chaplin entries on the lists.

1) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) – Proof that I don’t hate Westerns!  Butch and Sundance have made it to the top tier of the movies I’ve seen on this quest with a heartfelt yet comedic and action-packed cowboy story.  Robert Redford and Paul Newman are great as the wise-cracking, bantering pair of bank robbers, totally believable as two really good friends who joke and kid each other through even the most intense of encounters.  Even as they may be robbing a bank, hiding from the authorities, or blowing up a train, they fire off witty one-liners, Sundance totally deadpan and sardonic playing perfectly off the more energetic Butch.  So it’s funny, but beneath it you really get the feeling that these two have a deep sense of camaraderie and care about one another.  It’s hard to watch this without a smile on your face as you see the chemistry.  Just a really fun movie, proof that with excellent writing, even the most expected of plots (it’s a Western, about two bank robber cowboys…) you can create something great.  I really like this one a lot.