Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Nov 11, 2015 19:45:29 GMT -5
80. Munich Year: 2005 Director: Steven Spielberg Writer(s): Tony Kushner and Eric Roth Based on: The book "Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team" by George Jonas Starring: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, and Geoffrey Rush Studio: Dreamworks/Universal Country of Origin: USA Language: English Running Time: 163 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Sometime you’ll think you’ll have a filmmaker pegged only to have them come out of nowhere and surprise you. That’s certainly what happened when Steven Spielberg made his most morally complex film back in 2005. Of course Spielberg had made violent movies for adults in the past like Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, but both of those movies took place during a conflict with fairly clear heroes and villains and there was plenty of room for the director’s signature sentimentality. Munich takes place in a much more difficult conflict with few easy answers and hardly an inch of room for feel good sentiment. This isn’t to say that his drama about Mossad strikes in retaliation of the 1972 Munich massacres is a slog that’s hard to sit through; on the contrary it’s a hell of a thriller with some really tense moments that are expertly staged by Spielberg, but the real takeaway is Steven Spielberg’s conflicted feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and about cycles of violence in general. The message of the film is not clear cut, when it came out people on both sides of the conflict found reasons to come out against it and general audiences were just generally uncomfortable with the whole thing. It’s one of Spielberg’s lowest grossing movies but you can tell it wasn’t his sharp commercial instincts that led him to make it so much as a deep desire to get certain concerns off of his chest in a post-9/11 world.
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Post by PG Cooper on Nov 11, 2015 21:20:37 GMT -5
Great film. You summary as to why is on-point.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Nov 12, 2015 8:05:21 GMT -5
79. The Conformist Year: 1970 Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Writer(s): Bernardo Bertolucci Based On: The novel "The Conformist" by Alberto Moravia Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli Studio: Paramount Country of Origin: Italy Language: Italian Running Time: 111 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 After seeing Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist at the Cannes Film Festival Jean-Luc Godard was reportedly disgusted and expressed this by handing Bertolucci a photograph of Chairman Mao with a note that said simply “You have to fight against individualism and capitalism.” Godard was most likely responding to the film’s relatively conventional narrative structure, stylish cinematography, and thriller elements which he likely viewed as a betrayal of the revolutionary film form that he had developed. I’d argue that Godard perhaps missed the point, The Conformist isn’t about a revolutionary, it’s about (as the title would imply) someone who goes who conforms to the fascist regime that has taken over Italy. The film’s psychology is fascinating but the formal elements (the ones that offended Godard) are even more delicious. The cinematography is slick in a way that moves often weren’t up to that point and the murder scene towards the end is one of cinemas most enticing set-pieces.
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Post by SnoBorderZero on Nov 12, 2015 11:01:11 GMT -5
The Conformist has some of the best cinematography in a film, ever. Really neat wide angle shots and a lavish color design.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Nov 12, 2015 22:26:17 GMT -5
78. Unforgiven Year: 1992 Director: Clint Eastwood Writer(s): David Webb Peoples Starring: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Jaimz Woolvett, Frances Fisher, Anna Levine, Saul Rubinek, and Richard Harris Distributor: Warner Brothers Country of Origin: USA Language: English Running Time: 131 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 If there’s one thing that the film going audience loves more than building a genre up it’s tearing a genre down and no film does genre deconstruction as effectively as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Rather than using cheap snark the way modern genre deconstructions do, Unforgiven takes a tough look at the western genre by examining the genre’s morality and its place in American culture. By 1992 it certainly wasn’t shocking anymore to suggest that the old west was populated by violent jerks and one could imagine a version of Unforgiven that was bathed in bitterness and vitriol. What gives the movie power is that it’s being made by someone who has a long history in the genre and is in many ways questioning his own past and trying to reckon with the good and the bad of that past… something that was going on throughout American culture in the 90s. Beyond any meta level, Unforgiven is still just a damn good story told masterfully. Eastwood really evolved his style when making the film and became not just a solid studio filmmaker but a real master of cinema. He gives the film a beautifully melancholic tone and fills it with incredibly strong scenes.
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Post by Jibbs on Nov 12, 2015 23:04:06 GMT -5
Could never get into that movie.
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Post by Doomsday on Nov 12, 2015 23:42:03 GMT -5
Could never get into that movie.  |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Nov 13, 2015 6:34:14 GMT -5
77. There Will Be Blood Year: 2007 Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Writer(s): Paul Thomas Anderson Based On: The novel "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O'Connor, Ciarán Hinds, and Dillon Freasier Studio: Paramount Vantage Country of Origin: USA Language: English Running Time: 158 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Paul Thomas Anderson earned a really strong reputation as a filmmaker when he emerged in the late 90s but accusations of unoriginality dogged him. His early triumphs like Boogie Nights and Magnolia were indeed pretty openly influenced by Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman respectively, but as the 2000s passed he started to find his own original voice and in 2007 he finally made an epic all his own in the form of There Will Be Blood. The film is about weighty issues like the intersection of business and religion and about the power structures involved in oil (it is no coincidence that this was made smack in the middle of the Bush administration) but it’s made with a degree of subtlety and it is far more stylistically adventurous than most movies of this scale are these days. Daniel Day-Lewis delivers one of the great screen performances and Johnny Greenwood’s unconventional score gives the film a really off-beat feeling that you wouldn’t normally get from a period epic like this. It’s been over eight years since the film came out and honestly I’m still not sure we’re quite done comprehending just what Anderson has accomplished with this one.
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Post by PG Cooper on Nov 13, 2015 10:16:25 GMT -5
Two phenomenal movies. I'd argue There Will Be Blood probably deserves to be higher.
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Post by Dracula on Nov 13, 2015 19:00:49 GMT -5
76. Ran Year: 1985 Director: Akira Kurosawa Writer(s): Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, and Masato Ide Based on: The play "King Lear" by Shakespeare Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Masayuki Yui, and Kazuo Katō Studio: Toho Country of Origin: Japan Language: Japanese Running Time: 160 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Akira Kurosawa went through a rough patch from the late 60s through the 70s due to changing tastes and a general lack of ambition in the Japanese film industry and by all accounts there was s new generation of Japanese directors who viewed him as the old guard and were kind of glad to see him on the outs. He remained a hero amongst a generation of international filmmakers though and their support allowed him to make two final samurai epics in the 80s including this final masterpiece adapted from Shakespeare’s King Lear. One can surmise that Kurosawa saw something of himself in Lear, an aging man who isn’t respected by scheming youngers and whose life's work seems to be falling apart. It has been argued that Kurosawa actually managed to improve in some ways on Shakespeare’s play by making the king a more ambiguous character and by making the conflict between him and his one most loyal son a bit more complex. What certainly remains of the play is its nihilistic outlook and tragedy and the film has a somber gloom to it that’s hard to shake. Interestingly, this bleak outlook does not pervade into the film’s look, which is lush and colorful. The film had “a cast of thousands” each wearing elaborate armored costumes. It’s certainly a movie that lives up to his reputation as a maker of epic action films, but the outlook is much changed. He’d make three more films after Ran, but they’re more of an epilogue than a climax, for all intents an purposes this is his swan song.
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Post by Jibbs on Nov 13, 2015 19:13:29 GMT -5
Ran was pretty cool.
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Post by PG Cooper on Nov 14, 2015 10:40:47 GMT -5
I love Ran.
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Post by Dracula on Nov 14, 2015 12:57:20 GMT -5
75. Strangers on a Train Year: 1951 Director: Alfred Hitchcock Writer(s): Raymond Chandler, Whitfield Cook, and Czenzi Ormonde Based on: The novel "Strangers on a Train" by Patricia Highsmith Starring: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, and Robert Walker Studio: Warner Brothers Country of Origin: USA Language: English Running Time: 101 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 Strangers on a Train is not necessarily one of the more famous Hitchcock titles with the general public, but it probably should be. It has a really potent high concept (courtesty of Patricia Highsmith mystery novel upon which it's based) about a man who suddenly finds himself in a hellish situation brought on by someone who is essentially a psychotic stalker. That crazy person, played by Farley Granger, is probably the best villain that Hitchcock ever created (except of course for Norman Bates) and Granger’s performance is extremely creepy. Hitchcock’s visual style is also in top form here, it’s probably the closest that the filmmaker ever came to making a full-on film noir and it makes some of the suspense sequences, particularly the ones set at an amusement park, particularly potent. There is a sexual subtext to the movie which with modern eyes could be seen as homophobic but which I charitably think was meant more to be subversive more than anything. The movie in many ways seems to stand outside a lot of the trends in Hitchcock’s career. It doesn’t feel like one of the films from his color era exactly but it also doesn’t quite feel like one of the films he made in the 40s either, but it certainly feels very Hitchcock all the same.
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Post by PG Cooper on Nov 14, 2015 13:05:47 GMT -5
Another classic. I'd probably swap it and Ran but both are great.
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Post by IanTheCool on Nov 14, 2015 13:48:38 GMT -5
I... was disappointed with how the high concept played out.
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Post by Dracula on Nov 14, 2015 21:46:09 GMT -5
74. City of God Year: 2002 Director: Fernando Meirelles Writer(s): Bráulio Mantovani Based on: The novel "City of God" by Paulo Lins Starring: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Phellipe Haagensen, Douglas Silva, Jonathan Haagensen, Matheus Nachtergaele, and Seu Jorge Distributor: 02 Filmes/VideoFilmes Country of Origin: Brazil Language: Portuguese Running Time: 130 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Five years ago I ventured to make a list of my top 100 movies of the 2000s and the movie I selected my number one choice was Fernando Meirelles’ City of God. I guess I still think that’s true because, spoiler alert, there will not be another movie from that decade higher up on the list. I don’t know that it’s going to stay there forever, There Will Be Blood is nipping at its heels and the fact that Meirelles’ later career has turned out to be something of a dud is not helping its legacy but what keeps coming back to me was that initial feeling of discovery I got from watching this movie for the first time. To see all the energy and talent on the screen as the film goes through multiple decades of Brazilian street life, seeing street kids grow into hardened gangsters, seeing the way the street conditions changed over the years. It was wonderfully realized and yet still highly accessible world cinema and there was and is something positively intoxicating about it. The movie has been influential (the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire more or less borrowed its entire aesthetic from the movie) and who knows how deep it’s influence is going to go once a new generation of filmmakers start borrowing from it.
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Post by Neverending on Nov 14, 2015 22:19:41 GMT -5
The fact that Meirelles’ later career has turned out to be something of a dud is not helping its legacy I loved this movie when it was released in 2003. I'm still mildly disappointed it lost Best Editing to LOTR. But I don't think anyone under 21 has seen, or even heard, of this movie. It kind of... went away. I see it pop up on Starz Cinema from time to time, but that's about it. And I think it's on Netflix, but I'm not sure. Slumdog Millionaire has also, sort of, gone away but that movie will have that Best Picture Oscar to keep it in the conversation. And I suspect Fernando Meirelles' lackluster career may be the culprit. We live in an era where A LOT of shit gets released, so the reputation of filmmakers are becoming more and more important. People who weren't around in 2003 and see Fernando Meirelles' name either think, "who the fuck is that", or "isn't that the guy who did the boring ass Constant Gardener". I think a lot of movies from the early 21st century will live or die depending on who made them - unless the film community makes an effort to preserve and expose them. |
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Post by Dracula on Nov 15, 2015 11:52:35 GMT -5
73. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Year: 1943 Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Writer(s): Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Starring: Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, and Deborah Kerr Studio: The Archers Country of Origin: UK Language: English Running Time: 163 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 The filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are perhaps best known for two things: glorious Technicolor photography and creative ways to work around the propaganda requirements of the times they worked in. Their 1943 film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp has both of these things, it looks beautiful and it also found a very interesting way to make a patriotic movie about Britain going to war with the Nazis. The film is ultimately about fostering respect for the old guard officers in the British army, the ones that were probably easy for young officers to giggle at for being anachronisms, and it does this by simply playing out what their experiences over the course of the last thirty-some years of British exploits. It also cannily avoids jingoism by focusing in on a friendship between the central officer and a German soldier over the course of many years and in one of the most memorable scenes this officer tearfully explains how his country went down such a destructive path, indicting the Nazi regime without demonizing the German people.
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Post by PG Cooper on Nov 15, 2015 12:28:06 GMT -5
It's definitely disappointing that Meirelles has been floundering as of late. Personally I really like The Constant Gardener but everything since seems to have barely even been a blip on anyone's radar. I hope he makes some sort of comeback one day because City of God really is fantastic.
I also love The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It's a great film which walks a very tightrope.
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Post by Dracula on Nov 15, 2015 21:15:09 GMT -5
72. Sullivan's Travels Year: 1941 Director: Preston Sturges Writer(s): Preston Sturges Starring: Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake Studio: Paramount Country of Origin: USA Language: English Running Time: 90 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 When film directors make movies about film directors the results can often be a bit… pretentious. Not so with Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, a movie that in many ways sets out to lightly skewer pretension and act as an oddly agreeable defense of what Hollywood does. The film depicts an odyssey of sorts taken on by a musical comedy director as he tries to experience some of the pain of the Great Depression in preparation for the making of a serious drama meant to tackle social issues. The mentality of this director is not unlike what I see a lot of privileged people going through shortly after they leave college as they attempt to see how “the other half” lives, often with grand plans to singlehandedly save the world somehow. Preston Sturges was always interested in finding humor in difficult material and here he manages to make a comedy out of traveling in poverty stricken areas without ever really coming off as insensitive or out of touch. The film’s ending is a defense of the value of escapism and perhaps in defense of Stuges’ own career. It’s not really a message I personally agree with necessarily, but by the time it comes up I do think it’s well argued and earned.
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Post by Dracula on Nov 16, 2015 7:49:14 GMT -5
71. Nosferatu Year: 1922 Director: F.W. Murnau Writer(s): Henrik Galeen Based on: The novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker Starring: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach, Ruth Landshoff, and Wolfgang Heinz Distributor: Jofa-Atelier Berlin-Johannisthal and Prana-Film GmbH Country of Origin: Germany Language: German Running Time: 81 Minutes The first and in many ways best adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” was F.W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu. A part of the German Expressionist movement, the film used a number of very unconventional camera tricks in order to create a gothic tone while still coming off a little more naturalistic than some other examples of that movement. The bald and animalistic Count Orlock is distinct from the other sexier takes on the Dracula character that would come later and remains a template for a certain kind of screen vampire even today. The film also makes excellent use of shadows and of course Murnau’s signature camera movements in order to create some really iconic horror movie imagery. The movie was nearly lost to time after Murnau lost a copyright lawsuit with the Stoker estate, which is interesting because this is hardly a faithful adaptation of “Dracula.” Hell, the film more or less omits the final third of that novel, but what it does include is incredibly moody and interesting.
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Post by Dracula on Nov 16, 2015 21:24:37 GMT -5
70. To Be or Not to Be Year: 1942 Director: Ernst Lubitsch Writer(s): Melchior Lengyel and Edwin Justus Mayer Starring: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, and Sig Ruman Distributor: United Artists Country of Origin: USA Language: English Running Time: 99 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 Ernst Lubitch’s To Be or Not to Be certainly wasn’t the first movie to get humor out of the Nazi regime during World War II. Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was probably the most famous movie to do it, and given that that movie was made and released before America entered the war it was arguably bolder, but that movie had some issues (namely Caplin’s rocky transition into the talkies). To me it was Lubitch’s movie that did it the best, in part because of the film’s rather curious blend of straightforward thriller moments and out and out farce. Even without the topical boldness, the film would work great as a fast-paced screwball comedy of sorts with characters impersonating one another and getting into hijinx. The movie is also notable for being pretty much the only film to properly utilize the radio host and comedian Jack Benny, who creates a perfectly smarmy but likable screen presence.
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Post by Neverending on Nov 16, 2015 21:50:50 GMT -5
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Post by Dracula on Nov 17, 2015 6:27:38 GMT -5
69. Raiders of the Lost Ark Year: 1981 Director: Steven Spielberg Writer(s): Lawrence Kasdan Starring: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey, John Rhys-Davies, and Denholm Elliott Distributor: Paramount Country of Origin: USA Language: English Running Time: 115 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 In the 90s Quentin Tarentino made an art out of taking elements from his favorite genre movies, improving on them, and then sort of remixing them into a newly relevant work for a new generation. It seemed like something of a fringe idea but oddly enough Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the most commercial of all filmmakers, had been doing the same thing for years and the most prominent example is probably Raiders of the Lost Ark. In creating the film Lucas and Spielberg drew from a long history of pulp B-movies that had remained in the pop culture ether and brought it back to the forefront by executing on the material with 80s action movie production standards. That idea alone wouldn’t have been enough to propel the movie to greatness but everything just seemed to click into place so well on this one. The film almost certainly passes the “three great scenes and no bad ones” test for greatness, hell it could pass the “five or six great scenes and no bad ones” test. Indiana Jones remains one of the most iconic characters in film and Harrison Ford really brings him to life as no one else could have. The action scenes still completely stand up today and are in many ways the standard bearer for modern western stuntwork. Of course there were no shortage of action movies in the 1980s but there’s a reason why this one feels so much more special than the rest of them and that’s the sincere joy that Spielberg brings to these action scenes. The guy just “got it” and the results show on screen.
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Post by PG Cooper on Nov 17, 2015 9:09:47 GMT -5
Awesome movies. Interestingly enough, both prominently feature Nazis.
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