Synopsis: A couple of resistance fighters try to figure out what to do next after realizing that they’ve botched an assassination attempt on a communist politician.

Well, that was a pleasant surprise. Not that I was expecting this to be bad, but I was unfamiliar with director Andrzej Wajda, and so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

As it turns out, Wajda’s impressive direction was probably the highlight of the film; stylish and filled with intricately-composed, Citizen Kane-esque low angle shots, you can definitely see the influence Wajda has had on directors over the years. I won’t go into spoilers, but there’s a moment towards the end of the film that was as memorable and as visually striking as anything I’ve seen in quite a while. You’ll know it when you see it.

Of course, this wouldn’t have added up to all that much if the film itself hadn’t been up to snuff — the protagonist’s realization, over one long night, that he can’t necessarily do his duty and live a normal life was deftly handled, and though the film wasn’t perfect (it drags slightly in parts) it was definitely quite memorable.

Buy the movie at Amazon

Synopsis: A grizzled, normally-solitary steamship captain in WWII-era Africa takes on a passenger who convinces him to help the war effort.

I’ve been a fan of John Huston’s for a while now, so the African Queen has definitely been on my to-see list (I’m also a fan of Humphrey Bogart’s, but that just goes without saying. There are only two types of people in the world: Humphrey Bogart fans, and people who have never seen a Bogart movie). Up until a few months ago, thanks to some legal shenanigans involving rights issues, trying to see this movie on home video has been surprisingly difficult. But I’m glad that I never made the effort to get my hands on a dodgy import, because the recently-released Blu-ray looks pretty stunning. It’s sharp, vibrant and without a hint of age.

But what about the movie itself? While I wouldn’t quite put it up there with stuff like the Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the Asphalt Jungle (which I will be watching again pretty soon, as it’s on the list), this is definitely a justified classic. A movie like this, which is really just about the interactions between two characters, lives and dies by its performances. Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn… well, do I really need to finish that sentence? They’re both legendary actors, and their performances here are certainly commensurate with their stature. They also have really great chemistry together, so by the end of the film you’re definitely rooting for them to make it. You’d think that the film might be a bit stagy, but Huston manages to keep things abundantly cinematic, including a few sequences which are surprisingly tense. Good stuff.

Buy the movie on Amazon

Synopsis: A documentary about a filmmaker’s interactions with Aileen Wuornos’ adoptive mother and her less-than-competent lawyer as he attempts to gain access to Wuornos herself.

Well, this is a bit of a puzzlement. The list isn’t exactly doc-heavy (this is the first documentary I’ve watched for this blog thus far), so this seems like kind of an odd choice — it’s interesting enough, I guess, but it’s kind of low-rent and not exactly a shining example of what the medium is capable of. Not that I’m a huge documentary guy; I’ll admit that my interest as a filmgoer lies more with fiction than non-fiction. But even as an unseasoned documentary viewer, it’s pretty clear that this just isn’t all that great.

In fact, I had to consult the book itself to see why this mostly unremarkable doc warranted inclusion on a list of essential films. Apparently, it “[sheds] a piercing light on the underbelly of the American character” and is a “riveting, hop-scotching documentary.” Fair enough on the first count, I suppose, though personally I would disagree that this is anywhere near riveting.

I think the main problem here is that the film is never entirely sure about what it wants to be — is it about Arlene Pralle, a woman who bizarrely adopted Wuornos after she had already been arrested for seven murders? Is it about Wuornos herself? Or is it about director Nick Broomfield’s attempts to get access to Wuornos? The film doesn’t really have a clear focus, which prevents it from being quite as effective as it could have been. Pralle is probably the film’s most interesting figure (well, aside from Wuornos herself, but the film seems to have no interest in exploring her crimes in a meaningful way), but Broomfield sort of meanders around, spending just as much time with Wuornos’ incompetent, guitar-playing lawyer, a thread which doesn’t particularly go anywhere. Ultimately, it’s this lack of any kind of unifying thesis that really prevents this doc from being particularly effective.

Buy the movie on Amazon

Synopsis: Behind the scenes as a veteran Broadway director puts on one last show.

This is the second musical I’ve watched for this blog, with the first one being All That Jazz. Boy, they could not be more different. Where Jazz was torpid, dull and pretentious, 42nd Street was fun, fast-paced and immensely memorable. It’s funny, because both films have a fairly similar plot and structure (a play being prepared, followed by an extended sequence of musical numbers). But 42nd Street just does it so much better.

One of the hallmarks of a good musical is that it leaves you humming the songs to yourself — I definitely have at least one of the songs stuck in my head pretty conclusively, so the film certainly succeeded on that count.

The film essentially breaks up into two parts: the first hour, with all the behind the scenes stuff, followed by the musical itself. The whole thing was well made and engaging, though it’s the last 20 minutes or so (which features some really visually dazzling musical sequences choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley) in which the film really comes alive.

Really, this is just a movie that puts a big smile on your face. It’s quite enjoyable throughout, and definitely one of the better musicals I’ve seen in a while.

Buy the movie at Amazon

Synopsis: A man who lives his life in other people’s homes falls in love with an equally damaged woman.

It’s a rare pleasure to go into a movie knowing nothing about what it is about, and then to slowly let the plot unfold. It’s an experience that you really don’t get to have all too often (the internet has made that nearly impossible), at least outside of a film festival. But it’s how I got to watch 3-Iron, so I wasn’t even aware that the film was a love story, and I was completely unaware of its central gimmick — that the two main characters never speak a word to one another (in fact, the man never speaks at all, and the woman has maybe three lines of dialogue). It’s an odd concept for a love story, but it works. Basically.

For the first twenty minutes or so, I kept thinking “oh, okay, now they’re going to start talking to each other… oh, okay, they were waiting to leave the house, now they’ll start talking.” Eventually it became fairly clear that the two characters were never going to speak, which is kind of neat. I mean, it feels a bit contrived at times, but it’s such a unique premise for a film that I was willing to cut it some slack. And it really does work; there’s definitely a palpable chemistry between the two characters, with brief looks and sideways glances many times saying more than words ever could. It is kind of odd that they absolutely never speak to each other, but you don’t think about it as much as you’d think you would.

Aside from that, director Ki-duk Kim shoots the film with an austere, minimalist style that suits the story perfectly. The acting is pretty great, with both actors admirably rising to the challenge of creating memorable characters without saying a word. It’s a movie that easily could have been disastrous, but all involved definitely rise to the challenge.

Buy the movie at Amazon

Synopsis: A year in the life of a small town in Italy in the 1930s, focusing mainly on one family.

Hmmm… I guess I just don’t like Fellini very much. Of the handful of his films that I’ve seen up to this point, I don’t think I’ve really liked any of them (I do remember liking Satyricon, but that was a while back, and is far from being one of the man’s most revered films). It comes as a bit of a surprise to me, because Fellini is one of those directors you’re supposed to like pretty much by default, at least as a film geek. And yet I don’t seem to particularly enjoy his movies.

I mentioned in my 8½ post that I remembered liking Amarcord — but I can’t say that I was particularly enthralled this time around. My first viewing was probably around ten years ago, and I’m pretty sure that I liked it. I don’t know why my opinion has seemingly changed; I guess I used to have a higher tolerance for handsomely made, meandering and egregiously slow-paced films.

Like 8½, I was definitely able to appreciate this film on a technical level, but I just didn’t derive all that much enjoyment from it. The movie was essentially a series of vignettes revolving around the inhabitants of a small Italian town; it kind of had a laid-back charm — and Nino Rota’s jaunty, memorable score was a perfect accompaniment to the visuals — but to be perfectly honest, after about fifteen minutes or so, I was sick of it. Almost none of the segments stood out to me as being anything other than a mild diversion. I’m sure they all had some kind of special significance to Fellini (the film is loosely based on his own childhood memories), but to me, watching them wasn’t much more interesting than going through somebody else’s old photo album (albeit an album presented with a fairly high level of visual flair).

Buy the movie on Amazon

Synopsis: A quirky young girl in Paris interacts with her quirky friends, her quirky neighbours, and her quirky love interest. Did I mention that the movie is quirky?

This was not a film that I was particularly looking forward to revisiting. Not that I hated it, but it’s just not something that I felt any kind of desire to ever watch again. But hey, it’s been almost ten years, and obviously this movie has its fans (it currently stands at number 44 on the imdb’s top 250). I thought I might be able to appreciate Amelie a bit better this time around. Nope.

Like I said, I don’t hate this movie. I think that probably, as a fifteen or twenty minute short, I’d find it enjoyable enough. It does have its charms, and for a while it’s kind of endearing in an oddball kind of way. But it’s just so consistently, relentlessly hyper-stylized and insufferably quirky — and there’s really not much to it other than its style and its quirk. So if you find yourself ambivalent towards (or downright annoyed by) the film’s in-your-face aesthetic, then you’re really not going to be in for a good time, because the movie revels in its own exaggerated sense of style.

Plus, I just don’t think that Amelie herself is a particularly compelling central character — she is just far too outrageously quirky to ever really relate to on an emotional level. She makes Mr. Bean look like Jimmy Stewart (and at least we’re never supposed to identify with Mr. Bean as anything other than a clown, which isn’t the case with Amelie). She’s surrounded by other characters who are all equally quirky in their own bizarre ways, and certainly, I can see what Jean-Pierre Jeunet was going for here, but it just did not work for me. I found it pretty grating at times.

It occurred to me while I was watching (and not enjoying) this film, that my feelings about it must be how some people feel about The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which is pretty darn quirky in its own way, but which I think is a masterpiece (yeah, that’s right, I said it — I think it’s Anderson’s best film, and easily one of the best films of the aughts). I’m not sure why I’m okay with Anderson’s hyper-stylized universe, but annoyed by Amelie’s. It’s just a matter of taste, I guess.

Buy the movie at Amazon

Synopsis: A beleaguered director starts pre-production on his latest film while going through a mid-life crisis of sorts.

I’m about to say something that you’re probably not going to agree with. No point in beating around the bush, so here goes: I don’t like 8½. That’s not to say that I hate it; there are some classic films where the appeal just completely eludes me, and that’s certainly not the case here — this is an exceptionally well made movie, and I can definitely see why someone might love it. But it just didn’t connect with me. I don’t know why. I won’t say I was bored, but I wasn’t exactly riveted.

One thing that I can unequivocally say about this film, despite my feelings on the movie as a whole, is that Federico Fellini’s direction is really top-notch. This is an amazingly good-looking film, and almost every frame looks great. Even when I wasn’t necessarily enthralled by the film itself, I was at least able to appreciate what Fellini had achieved on a visual level.

But… I don’t know, the movie itself I just found kind of dull, despite Fellini’s striking direction, and despite the presence of Marcello Mastroianni, who is one of those actors who can liven up a scene without even saying a word. I’ve liked some of Fellini’s other movies (in fact I’ll soon be revisiting Amarcord, which is a film I remembered enjoying), and this is, by most accounts, his masterpiece. Many call it one of the best movies of all time. And yet it just doesn’t do much for me. Oh well. I’m sure there will be a third viewing at some point in my future. Maybe I’ll like it better then.

Buy the movie on Amazon

Synopsis: The animals at a farm rise up against their oppressive master, only to see their ideal of a collectively-run farm slowly crumble.

Well, this is the second time that I’ve seen Animal Farm, and I definitely liked it a bit better this time around. I still don’t think it’s a classic on the same level of some of the movies I’ve already watched for this blog, but certainly, it is a good film. The first time I watched it, I had just read George Orwell’s classic book, and some of the liberties that Halas and Bachelor took with their adaptation kind of irked me (most notably, the choice to make most of the animals mute, and the tacked-on happy ending). It’s been a few years since I’ve read the book, and now that it’s not particularly fresh in my mind, I was able to appreciate the film on its own merits.

It was actually kind of interesting to watch this so soon after 1900, which had a pretty strong pro-communist message. Obviously, Animal Farm is pretty much the opposite, as it’s well known to be an anti-communist allegory (and in fact, rumour has it that the film was partially funded by the CIA to act as a piece of anti-communist propaganda).

Just speaking as a fan of classic animation, you have to appreciate this movie just based on the visuals alone. The fluid, stylish animation is right up there with the best stuff of the era, and an iffy DVD transfer notwithstanding, this is a must-see for anyone who has any kind of interest in animated film. As for the story, it’s fairly compelling, if not quite on par with the book. The movie does a good job of making us care about the animals, and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in their plight, especially towards the end of the film when things start to really go sour for the embattled denizens of the farm.

The movie certainly has its flaws, but I can’t deny that it’s worth watching.

Buy the movie at Amazon

Synopsis: Following the lives of two men in Italy — one rich, one poor — from their childhood in the early years of the 1900s to the fall of the Fascist party at the end of WWII.

I’m going to admit that I actually received this movie from Zip.ca way back in January, and it has been sitting on my desk ever since, collecting dust and just waiting to be watched. I’ve seen this movie once before, and I remembered liking it a lot, but how often do you feel like sitting down and watching a five hour Italian epic (five hours and fifteen minutes, to be precise)? Of course, the obvious solution would be to watch it over two nights — it’s even broken up over two discs, which would make deciding when to stop watching remarkably easy. But that just feels like cheating to me, and so the movie sat around unwatched for months, waiting for me to be in the right mood.

The sad thing about my reticence is that this is a really good movie, and I knew that since I’d seen it before — though the only thing I really remembered from my first viewing was the scene in which Donald Sutherland kills a cat by headbutting it (with a running start, no less), in order to illustrate the proper way to deal with the perils of communism. It’s kind of hard to forget something like that.

Yes, the movie is super long. Almost absurdly long. And yet it somehow justifies its length far better than American Graffiti, which was under two hours and still felt way longer than it needed to be. The length allows you to spend such a long time with the characters — from their childhood all they way through to their middle age and beyond — that you really get a sense of knowing them that would simply be impossible from a shorter film. Many of the characters, De Niro’s in particular, undergo transformations that could have easily seemed forced in a shorter movie, but seems completely natural given the scope that Bertolucci chose to work with.

Bertolucci, working with famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, creates a film that is really beautiful to look at. And of course, the performances are all quite good; De Niro in particular does a really great job of making his character subtly change as he grows older. Really, I don’t have many complaints about this film. Some of the characters tend to be a bit simplistic, either being clearly good or clearly evil, without many shades of gray (ie. Donald Sutherland’s cat-headbutting Fascist). Also, the actors in this film all spoke their own languages (Depardieu spoke French, De Niro spoke English, etc.) and were dubbed over in post. The DVD has an English track, an Italian track and a French track, which means that it’s impossible to watch the film and hear all the actors speak with their own voices. I chose English because I wanted to hear De Niro speak since he’s the main character, but it wasn’t exactly ideal.

Buy the movie at Amazon