This isn’t meant to be a formal review of American Sniper. There are plenty of those around. Having seen the movie a week ago, however, and after making a few comments about it on Facebook, I did want to clarify a few things around where I stand on the picture (which has weirdly – but not surprisingly – become a major cultural lightning rod and a box office juggernaught) with the goal of hopefully adding a couple of things to the discussion.
A Hard Day’s Night (1964) is so many things – joyous, silly, endearing, and riotously funny, to name a few – that it’s easy to miss just how heart-stoppingly beautiful it is. I’m not kidding. There are images in this movie, which is shot through in glorious black and white, that are as mesmerizing as anything the movies have ever given us. To me, it’s most evident in the sequence where The Beatles, preparing for a live TV event (a la their Ed Sullivan Show performance), perform “And I Love Her” in the under-lit, empty TV theater. As Paul sings the melody, his youthful, boyish face is captured on distorted video monitors in the control room show, eventually dissolving into a silhouetted image of his real face. The effect is hypnotic, almost otherworldly, like all of time has frozen just so Paul can sing his song. Time didn’t freeze, of course, and the beauty of that sequence, and of A Hard Day’s Night, would eventually give way to the tumult of the ‘60s. Eventually, the Beatles would break up. But what they created with this film was some kind of magic, and no matter how many times you watch it, that magic is still there.
I’ve been wrestling with this realization for a while now, so I think I need to just come out and admit it.
The Best Years of Our Lives is my favorite movie.
It wasn’t always this way, which is why this confession is so difficult. For the last decade or so, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) has held the top spot, and for that time it’s been pretty much immovable. But no more. After re-watching Best Years afresh last a couple of weeks ago, I’m ready to come to terms with the idea that Wilder’s romantic dramedy – which, make no mistake, is a magnificent movie and should be seen by everybody – has been usurped. Times change, people change, and I guess I’ve changed. All things must pass away.
I’m not really sure how this happened. The first time I saw William Wyler’s 1947 masterpiece (also about a decade ago) it didn’t make much of an impression. It was just after I had gotten hooked on classic movies (somewhere in my late teens/early 20s) and I was trying to fill as many gaps in my knowledge of the established Hollywood canon as possible. This was a Best Picture Oscar winner and highly regarded, so I figured I should see it sooner or later, but at just under three hours and with no real action to speak of it felt like something to be endured rather than enjoyed. And sure enough, this story of World War II veterans struggling to adjust to life at home didn’t grab me immediately like some of my favorite classics – say, the Hitchcocks or the Wilders – and never spurred the kind of passion they did.
And then something funny happened. Years passed and something about it stayed with me, something I could never quite put my finger on, and whenever I remembered it I felt a kind of warm affection. So I watched it again, and again, probably three or four more times over the years. And every time it grew deeper and more resonant, to the point where just thinking about it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Watching it again recently on blu-ray, it finally dawned on me. This is my favorite movie and I’m not ashamed of it. The truth has set me free.
With this year’s Oscars upon us, I thought I might use the opportunity to take another look at Best Years and examine why I consider it to be one of the Academy’s best-ever choices for its highest distinction. While so many other Best Picture choices now look curious if not downright head-scratching (especially more recent ones like Gladiator and The Artist), The Best Years of Our Lives is a jewel that just won’t tarnish, and feels as fresh and alive as it ever has.
“But you damned idiot, war starts at midnight!”
I can’t think of a happier time in my movie-watching life than when I first found Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. It was late – I was around 26. The film was Black Narcissus and, frankly speaking, it blew my mind. A weird and transfixing story of sexual repression in a Himalayan convent shot in glorious British Technicolor (in 1948!), it was unlike anything I had seen before, and when it was over I knew I had to devour every film of theirs I could get my hands on. Once I did, I knew I was hooked for life. There are undoubtedly more celebrated British directors (David Lean) and more popular ones with the masses (Hitchcock), but when it comes down to it, for me, few directors’ films inspire more giddy love for cinema than those of the Archers.
Is Pixar in creative trouble? It seems silly to ask, and three years ago such a question would have been unthinkable. Yet here we are, the studio having just delivered Monsters University, its fourth franchise continuation (after Cars 2 and the two Toy Story sequels), and its third film in a row that’s failed to elicit shrieks of elation from the critical masses (currently it stands at a 78% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes). It seems absurd to raise concern over a movie doesn’t score unanimous accolades – 78% is a respectable figure by RT standards – but when you’re talking about a studio with a history as cherished as Pixar’s, it feels like it’s worth at least considering whether it doesn’t point to a larger issue.
So Man of Steel made $125 million this past weekend. Not a shock by any standard, but the film has nonetheless inspired a passionate online debate among the geek community and several critics – some catering to the geeks, some to a more traditional film audience – over its overall quality worthiness as well as specific plot elements. Points of discussion include: whether or not Superman would or would not take certain moral steps, whether he’d make an effort to avoid the amount of devastation caused by his battles with the film’s villain, Zod (Michael Shannon), whether the film itself is too dour for a comic book movie, and so forth.
I haven’t been blogging as frequently as I’d hoped when I started this thing, and I’ve got no one to blame but myself. I’m still sorting out exactly what I want this look like, and whether I’ll be focusing on more infrequent, longer-form pieces or more frequent short posts. But clearly greater frequency of either is a goal.
Whether that happens remains to be seen, and in the meantime, since my last post, I’ve been devoting a good chunk of time to watching a bunch of really terrific movies, so I figured I’d throw together a movie-vomit recap sampling of what I’ve been viewing lately. Posts that follow will (ideally) be much more focused than this one.
Recently, IndieWire’s Matt Singer, in the site’s weekly critics’ poll, asked online journalists to name their picks for the best film of the last 25 years. It’s an entirely arbitrary question (25 years takes us back to 1988 – why not go back to 1980? Or just settle on 1990?), but it got me thinking about this (entirely arbitrary) period of cinema, and what films from the last quarter century would qualify for such a list. I mean, of course “Greatest Movies” lists are stupid, and I gave up trying to take them seriously a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean the exercise itself can’t be intriguing. And when the goal is to celebrate quality movies, where’s the harm?
Jurassic Park is one of those moviegoing experiences that holds a special place in my heart. Now, that’s not necessarily saying much. I’m a nostalgic fellow by nature, so there are a lot of films that spark strong memories for me, and I can relate most films back, fondly, to certain points in my life. But, even so, this one stands out.
“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.” – Roger Ebert, Salon.com, Sept. 15, 2011
This is one of the most popular passages Roger Ebert wrote in his later years, and it’s been invoked in more than a few obituaries and tributes since his death last Thursday. There are few things he said that I disagree with more completely. In fact, there are few public figures with whose political or philosophical beliefs I disagreed more completely than Ebert’s. So it’s perhaps a little odd for me to say that there are also few people, living or dead, who have had a more profound influence on the way I view the world than Roger Ebert. I like to think he would have gotten a kick out of the irony.
Southern Fried Cinema 