New month, folks! Julia's back and everything is as it should be... until tomorrow, when I'll have to leave for a trip home to Cincy, which means I'll be off from posting until next weekend.
Well, a new month means ten more movies for my list of 200 Essential Films:
American Beauty (1999, directed by Sam Mendes)
A film that I think everyone probably had a good time with the first time they saw it. Blackly funny, creepy, a little shocking, pointed, and a good showcase for the tragedian's sadness festering beneath Kevin Spacey's smirk.
Bambi (1942, multiple directors)
Just because it's one of the saddest films of its genre ever made doesn't mean it isn't one of the best of its kind either.
Boogie Nights (1997, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)
A tour-de-force for writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, this epic rise-and-fall of an adult filmmaker (a perfect Burt Reynolds), the young, naive stud he nurtures to stardom (Mark Wahlberg, grandly earnest), and his stock company of actors is ambitious, funny, full of terrific scenes, show-off camerawork, apt period music, and a cast to die for: Julianne Moore, John C.Reilly (who gets some great lines), Philip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle, Philip Baker Hall, Heather Graham, William H. Macy (who has a memorable death), and Alfred Molina, coked-up and explosive in an incredibly tense sequence.
The Cider House Rules (1999, directed by Lasse Halstrom)
A film that's almost impossible to dislike. And if you really stop to think about it, you might even realize that you love it. John Irving adapted his own bestselling novel, so he's to thank for the literate, touching script that never feels like its forcing too much in. Director Lasse Halstrom's films are almost always lovely and smooth, gently affecting - not an easy manner to pull off.
The Hustler (1961, directed by Robert Rossen)
Paul Newman had a lot of great roles in his legendary career, but maybe not one as plum as Fast Eddie Felson, the burnished, sympathetic, hard-shelled, seen-it-all loner out to beat Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) at an endless game of pool. Director Robert Rossen's film is part existentialist drama, part film noir, part love story (between Newman and Piper Laurie) - but always exciting and telling, with outstanding dialogue and great supporting players, led by George C. Scott.
The Incredibles (2004, Brad Bird)
A creative, loving, funny work of art by the gifted Brad Bird, with visual delights in almost every frame, rock-solid storytelling, good voicework, and enough in-jokes, references, and allusions (and sheer wonder, really) for adults too.
Million Dollar Baby (2004, Clint Eastwood)
I've written about this one before, so I won't reiterate why this film is so touching. A few performances of note for film buffs: Margo Martindale's as Swank's mother; Anthony Mackie's as a cocky boxer; and Jay Baruchel's as an insecure, bullied punching bag; all familiar faces to us now but maybe not so at the time.
Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
When almost every scene is a classic, when almost every key performance is the most familiar, recognized, and referenced of said actor or actress's career, when almost every other independent film in the ensuing wake ripped off or referenced you, you're in that territory of... Classic!
Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
No peeking! I like how each apartment Jimmy Stewart spies on offers some visual evidence of what marriage is like. And that's what, really, the film is about - watching life go by without committing to it.
The Searchers (1956, directed by John Ford)
Is there really any argument over this one?
Book Review:
William Boyd was named by Britain's Granta magazine in 1983 as one of the twenty best young British novelists. I don't know who else was on that list, but I'm going to take a leap of faith and say that I would probably rather read Boyd than any of them. His writing is supple and fluid and he has a way of drawing you into the material with his prose, as opposed to many other acclaimed modern writers, who tend to pull you away from the material with their tricks. And he's genuinely funny too, a writer not opposed to some low down dirtiness and scatological guffaws - like in a sequence where our antihero, High Commission secretary (and all-around cranky fuddy dud) Morgan Leafy hides in the shower while a visiting duchess sits on the toilet and unleashes her bowels, Leafy noting that "they" let 'em drop like the rest of us.
Leafy is an underachieving, underworked, bored and unhappy civil servant in a hot west African country, and his voice - ironic, nasty, pampered, racist - is a delightfully vile one to listen to. Boyd has fun ripping new ones for all his characters: Leafy's clueless boss, a thuggish local politician, the politician's wife (whom Leafy has an affair with), and a variety of others who find themselves in the nowhere backwater, where ex-pat Brits go to rot and languish. The plot involves Leafy and the problems that surround him one zany Christmas season, and Boyd has fun with it, showing us the humorous underbelly of colonialism. (****)
Herb Ritts (#21)
L.A. born and bred, Ritts (1952-2002), Ritts logged quite a body of work during a glamorous career: Versace, Armani, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Polo Ralph Lauren, to name but a few. He was eponymous with 1980s celebrity photography.
He liked high-drama, high-contrast, stark beauty reminiscent of Greek forms, strong lines. His subjects were often playful, sometimes nude, self-spoofing.
He also directed a number of music videos, including Madonna's "Cherish," Janet Jackson's "Love Will Never Do (Without You)," 'N Sync's "Gone," and Shakira's "Underneath Your Clothes."
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| Richard Gere, 1978 |
Of Note:
- Kentucky will win the National Championship tomorrow night over Kansas, beating them by 9 points. Hate to say it, but OSU choked.
- The Crazies (2010) is an underrated action/horror/zombie film, with, by my count, at least three great scenes and no bad ones - which was Orson Welles' definition of a good movie
- Let Me In just might be the last vampire film I will see for quite some time, and it's a good one (Chloe Grace Moretz, she of Hugo and Kick-Ass can do no wrong), although it's a film I think that mistakes quiet for mood - why does everyone talk so softly?
- I need a book to listen to on CD for my 10+ hour drive to Ohio! And where will I stop for dinner? Are there any Guy Fieri dives off of 1-75?
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