13. Adam's Rib (1949)



Sharp and witty battle of the sexes comedy pitting Spencer Tracy against Katherine Hepburn in a winning combo that produced 9 film. This is the best of the bunch.

Taking in the high theatrics of a court case, husband and wife go head to head as Hepburn defends a woman accused of the attempted murder of her philandering husband. Her sexism argument infuriates her husband to no end and their happy life outside the courtroom begins to wane.

Neither star outshines the other and you can see why this combination carried on into other films. Tracey is excellent as the brow beaten husband and his underplay perfectly compliments Hepburn's over play as this outspoken feminist. There are lots of clever moments in the film when her feminism steps aside to suit her means.

It's the snappy dialogue that is the biggest asset to the movie. Written by husband and wife team, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, the trouser wearing issue is played out completely for laughs.

Big thumbs up from me.

12. An Actor's Revege (1963)

Hukinojo is a female impersonator actor travelling with a kubuki troupe. When performing in Edo, he comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide and he plots their demise. Meanwhile there is a side story of rivalling thieves, who get mixed up in Hukinojo's plans, some helping, others hindering.

Legendary Japanese actor, Kazuo Hasegawa, plays dual roles of Hukinojo and also Yamitaro, a Robin Hood type thief who feels connected to the actor as a brother and vows to help him in his plans.
This dual role had been played by the Hasegaa in the 1935 film Yukinojo Henge and this film was commisioned to mark his 300th appearance in movies.

It's a bit of a departure of styles from the director, Kon Ichikawa, who was made to direct this project after his past few films had failed to make money. Doing so under duress, he allegedly camped things up to the max, but it's this exuberance that makes this film such a sumptuous delight.

Very theatrical, the film opens with an actual kubuki performance, but the film is steeped in it's style throughout. The sets are almost stage scenery. The swordplay is dramatically lit and almost shadow play. Much of  Hukinojo's lines are said aside to the audience. It has no shame to dip into theatrics and is enormously resplendent for it, even going so far as finishing with the stage curtain closing.

I am a bit of a sucker for things Nipon, but it's hard to deny the likeability of this feast.

Dramatically lit Hasegawa as Yukinojo.

11. Open Your Eyes/ Abres Los Ojos (1997)

Cesar is a well-to-do man about town. Rolling in money and devilishly handsome, his perfect life begins to unravel one night. When trying to shake off a recent conquest, Nuria, who is overstaying her welcome, he meets his 'perfect woman', Sofia(Cruz). The next morning, after spending he evening with Sofia at her place, he is offered a lift home by Nuria who 'happens to be driving by'. The idiot accepts and he only has himself o blame as the spurned fruit loop drives them both off a cliff. He survives, but he has suffered horrific facial injuries beyond the help of the finest surgeons. Then reality starts to come undone.

The setting jumps back and forth in time. From Cesar being interviewed in a psychiatric penitentiary, back to the past and forward to a seemingly ideal future. Which is true? Is anything actually happening or is it all another dream? Who is the man on the TV?

This is a wild original ride, with many twists and turns. What starts out as a psychological thriller, turns into fantasy/horror as what is reality is revealed in the final scenes. The Director/co-writer, Alejandro Amenabar, has stated that he set out to tell a horror story with camera angles rather than gore. It certainly didn't disappoint, though I imagine the pointless Tom Cruise vanity remake, Vanilla Sky, will.

I mean, really! He even cast Penelope Cruz again.

10. À nous la liberté

So you should really be careful when purchasing DVDs from Amazon marketplace.I fell once at the wrong region fence. This time a fell at the 'check there are English subtitles' fence! Merde! Bless You Tube though! (They have it in 8 parts easily linked, perfect clarity, with subtitles.)

Absolutely charming film though. Great story. 2 friends in prison hatch a plan to escape. One gets free and makes his way in the world, the other gets caught and does his time. The escapee prospers and they met up in coincidence and become friends again.

It's essentially a story about freedom, hence the title. There is a great deal of machine and routine symbolism in the film and Henri Marchand, as Emile, is the proverbial spanner in the works. Whether it is in the actual factory line, or being the distraction for the director of the factory.

It's certainly film that is a stepping stone from the silent era. It was a good 15 minutes in before I realised I needed subtitles. Not that there is anything wrong with the dialogue. You can just see, that with subtitles, it works functionally well as a silent. The score is the same, though the choral singing by the prisoners/factory workers does add more to the machine symbolism.

I AM considering this my first foray into silents and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Great acting, direction, score at al.

Brava!

9. A Bout de Souffle/Breathless (1960)

Brilliant, trend-setting and beautiful, but also quite forgetable crap. I couldn't even remember if I had seen it before! I had.

So, I get the whole jump cut thing started here and I see how stylish it all is and that the camera romances Paris through it's lens (though Truffaut did it better). What I don't get is the trite story and the godawful acting. I don't believe in either of the main characters, let alone like them. Are we supposed to find Jean-Paul Belmondo as Poiccard, attractive, charming and exciting, because he isn't. Did Godard make him chain smoke to look interesting? Jean Seberg's Patricia is equally a paradox. Clearly beautiful, but this intelligent, independent journalist falling for a small-time thief, turned killer? No, I don't think so. Both actors give very wooden performances of these unbelievable characters.

Two for two with disappointing films by Godard. The new wave has better to offer than this. I actually preferred the US remake!

The music is good. I will give it that.

A much more believeable, better and sexier film.



8. 8 1/5 (1963)

This is the first film to really feel like homework, but to be a true cinephile you don't have to like these 'grest' films, just consider them. Well I did consider it and I didn't much care for it.

It tells the story of Guido, a popular Italian film director who is struggling to find inspiration for his next movie which is due to begin shooting. Constant hassles from his wife, his mistress, his leading lady and countless film executives, cause him to escape into his memories and fantasies of the women from his past.

The lines between his fantasies and the reality often blur and it isn't the most cohesive of plots. There is some striking imagery though. The scene when he just imagines that all the women he has wronged forgive him, become his harem and help to bathe him is bonkers par excellence. Especially when it all goes tits up when they learn he sends them 'upstairs' when they get over 40! Bring on the whip! Eddra Gale as Saraghina, performing a rumba for the village kids is a sight. Strictly Come Dancing it ain't!

So no I didn't enjoy watching it, but I'm glad I did. At least Nine had some good songs in it to redeem it's terribleness!

Someone ate Fergie!

7. 42nd Street (1933)

"Jones and Barry are putting on a show!"

is the message relayed around New York in the opening scene of this old Hollywood musical. Indeed they are. 'Pretty Lady' is to star Dorothy Brock and is financed by her sugar daddy, Abner Dillon. Successful director on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Julian Marsh, is hired to ensure it's success, thus begins a calamitous pre-production.

This film is a bit of a mess, but it's shining moments do dazzle, whether it be the snappy wisecracks ("Who can forget Anytime Annie? She only said no once and then she didn't hear the question!") to the startling musical numbers. Some suspension of disbelief is required for the sudden increase in stage area during the show, but Busby Berkeley's dance routines are distracting enough. In fact they are the best thing in it. The 'let's put on a show' format doesn't have the gusto required and is dogged down by sub plots that are barely interesting. Even the overdone main story of the fresh faced new girl, played by Ruby Keeler in her film debut, rising through the ranks is uninteresting. I think this is due to the direction from Lloyd Bacon. The script is fine; moments of light hearted wise cracking banter from the chorus girls is most welcome. Una Merkel and (a pre Astaired) Ginger Rogers delivering some great lines; the dance numbers are spectacular, it's the telling of the story that seems a little lacklustre. Fortunately the actual musical has a good 20 minutes devoted to it's numbers and what numbers! No wonder Berkeley was soon contracted by Warner Brothers.

The Kaleidoscopic images Berkeley puts together are impressive, but probably not so to the show's audience, unless they were hanging from the rafters. That'd be the suspension of disbelief then! (see what I did there?)

6. The 400 Blows/Les Quatre Cent Coups (1959)

After the bucket of pretension I sat through in Godard's debut feature, I began with reluctance to watch Francois Truffaut's. Fortunately, this auteur knows something about plot and storytelling.

Poor Antoine Doinel is a touch hard done by and misunderstood. Unable to concentrate at school and neglected by his less than caring parents, he cuts class, runs away from home and takes to the streets of Paris for a short, half-hearted life of petty theft.

Allegedly his story is loosely based on Truffaut's own childhood. It is certainly told poignantly through a child's eyes and also through a love of Paris. Never have dingy bedsits, salubrious settings and even juvenile detention centres looked so beautiful. This is in part a love letter to Paris and all it's parts. It's opening shots are what Manhatten's are to New York, but after that there is no more Eiffel Tower, and the like, to be seen as he paints a pretty picture of the lesser parts!

Antoine's sad story is broken up by moments of joy. A ride on a centrefuge, a moment of family togetherness at a cinema and even in it's final scenes as he finally gets to see the coast. It's all very touching and you are behind him 100%, even in his moments of delinquence. His friendship with his one confident, Rene, is also rather tender.

It's a charming film. The ending leading to four more films of Antoine on the run. I must say that I am intrigued to know what happens to this charming little cad.

A film to see before you die? Certainly. My faith in French New Wave has been reignited. The cinematogrophy here is masterful and every frame is a picture postcard. Jean-Pierre Léaud is splendid in the lead role. Hard to believe he was only 14. Bravo.

You +1'd this publicly. Undo

5. The 39 Steps (1935)

Robert Donat plays a Canadian holidaying in London. One night at a music hall, he meets a mysterious woman who invites herself back to his place. Very forward for the times! Turns out she is a counterespionage agent trying to stop a secret document leaving the country. Before our dapper hero finds out more, the enigmatic Miss Smith is murdered in the night and thus begins a great chase to avoid capture, clear his name and to discover what this secret is and what are the 39 steps.

This is Hitchcock's first breakthrough feature and it displays a number of themes to show up in his later films. A mysterious woman, an innocent man on the run and the introduction of the MacGuffin: a plot device used to carry the story on, but ambiguous in nature, sometimes never even revealed. Here the MacGuffin IS The 39 Steps. It's not important what they are and it's the quest for the knowledge that is the interesting part.

The whole spy plot takes a back seat really and it's the interplay between the 2 main leads that drives the film along. What starts out as a spy mystery turns into a bit of a comic caper with a spot of romance. Donat ends up being handcuffed to Madeline Carroll and their relationship is played out in a mock marriage at an isolated inn. This sparking relationship is the essence of the film and once they leave the inn, Hitchcock wastes no time in drawing the film to a neat ending.

Charles Bennett's screenplay is full of sharp witty dialogue and is perfectly paced. The film is beautifully shot with many a lingering end-scene frame.

This is an excellent movie that has certainly stood the test of time and stands shoulder to shoulder with the best of Hitchcock's oeuvre.

WHERE'S ALFRED?!

making his usual cameo



4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Stanley Kubrick's ground breaking science-fiction groundbreaker is next on the list. It's a long, winding, epic film which is essentially about evolution. It's opening act based during the origins of mankind, the final act ending in a possible next stage of evolution. How we get there is quite an odd journey.

So we start at the dawn of man where prehistoric pimates encounter a myterious black monolith which then triggers them to stop being placcid vegetarians, pick up bones and wield them as weapons. Cue bloodshed and rare steak. A seminal shot of a bone being flung into the air cuts to the future and a satellite/spaceship orbiting the earth and dancing a waltz to The Blue Danube, whilst docking into a space station. Here we meet up with scientists off to an excavation on the moon's surface where a mysterious black monolith has been found buried. As they approach it gives off a high frequency signal. Jump to 18 months later and a spaceship heading towards jupiter on a mysterious mission. Manned by Dave and Frank, with unseen scientists in stasis, the mission is sabotaged by paranoid computer Hal. Sole survivor Dave makes it though to jupiter to discover, yup, a mysterious black monolith floating in space. Cue trippy moments of Dave aging, dying in a hotel suite and then reborn through a gateway into a new stage as a 'star-child' All a bit bonkers!

The film is a big trip, but it's amazingly well thought out. It's surrounded by science fact. The look of space, the design of the craft inside and out, the technology is all highly accurate as the designers and writers worked closely with NASA. Kubrick even predicts skyping! The dawn of man act shows off some impressive make-up worn by actors/dancers who were well studied in the movements of primates. Nothing is done haphazardly.

The star of the film is the disturbed computer HAL, voiced by Douglas Rain. As the 2 concious scientists go about their days in a methodical way, it is HAL who is becoming more human, asking opinion and commenting on Dave's sketchings. This comes to a head when he discovers a plot to decommision him and survival becomes his mission. He does seem to go about it rather clunkily though. There must have been an easier way of doing them all in.

The final act is the biggest head-fuck and I still couldn't tell you what all that was about.

There are many things to enjoy about this film. It is  true spectacle to watch and the soundtrack is superb. It takes a great precident in the film as there isn't a great deal of dialogue. The jupiter mission act is the most satisfying and HAL is greatly quoteable.

I'm not sure, as a grand total of it's parts, I would herald it as a great film, but there is no denying it's influence on modern cinema.

This review can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.



3. 2 ou 3 choses que je sais D'Elle(1967)

The him in the title is Godard and his enduring narration. The Her refers not to the suburban housewife moonlighting as a prostitute, but Paris itself, hence the capitalisation.

Soliloquies aplenty; Close ups of coffee, burning cigarettes and a red mini in a car wash; Excessive breakage of the fourth wall; Constant references to Vietnam, hammering home Godard's anti Americanism, the most laughable example being the woman's child describing a dream he had where he met twins on a cliff precipice. When they became one he realised they represented North and South Vietnam. I mean really!

I'm sure it's all very clever, deep and abstract, but it smacks of pretension to me and I could have quite easily lived a happy life not seeing it.

Avant Garde. Sans intrigue. Sans point. Beaucoup ennui. Only 90 minutes, but '1900' went by quicker! I quite impressed myself that I watched it all.



2. Novocento/1900 (1976)

Well it took some time trying to find a spare 5+ hour slot to watch this film, but it was definitely worth it.



The second film in the marathon is Bernardo Bertolucci's political sprawling epic, Novocento(renamed 1900 on release in the US). Set in the Italian countryside, it is a multi-layered yarn that centres around the lives of 2 friends separated by class who were born on the same day in 1900. Alfredo is the grandson of a wealthy landowner, Olmo the grandson of his top worker. Despite being poles apart, peasant and heir become friends.

Spanning 1900-45, this film is also a history of  the Italian politics of the time. The two leads representing the social classes and the estate, Italy itself. When Alfredo marries a sophisticated French woman, the workers believe that the downward spiral of their situation is to change, but it only gets worse under the spiteful hand of the fascist farm manager (Attila) who suppresses the landowner, steering things in his way.

It's not a cheery film by any means. Any hope of happiness is quickly quelled by tragedy. The joy in the film is through the performances and the picturesque setting. Robert De Niro and a dashingly ripped Gerard Depardieu turn out shining performances as the landowner and peasant worker respectfully. Dominique Sanda is outstanding as the slightly bonkers wife of Alfredo, but it is Laura Betti as Regina and Donald Pleasance as Attila, who steal the show as a despicably malevolent fascist couple. Portrayed at the opening as an old couple being chased down by the village women with pitchforks; by the end of the film you see why and you're cheering for the mob!

Provocatively shocking in parts, it is a sumptuous piece that sweeps you up in it's storytelling. The friendship protrayed is very touching and the political analogy of the rise and fall of Italian fascism is cleverly told, without being preachy. Didn't seem like 5 hours at all.

Some light relief!



1. 12 Angry Men (1957)

And so it begins in style with Sidney Lumet's debut feature.

Set in a jury room during a heatwave, it depicts Henry Fonda's Juror Number 8, trying to convince the rest of the jury of reasonable doubt in a murder case, after the defendant's lawyer has failed to.

The tension between characters, claustrophobic setting and the heat all work together to make a gripping drama as each piece of evidence is discussed and pulled apart.

There is a great balance of characters who are nameless (apart from 2 in the final scene), but far from featureless Reginald Rose's play demands theatrics from everyone whether calm and collected like Fonda and EG Marshall, uncomfortable with their roles like Jury Foreman Martin Balsam or ad man Robert Webber, to the belligerence of Lee J Cobb ad Ed Begley. The latter character's prejudices erupting in one scene brilliantly played out to his defeat.

The melodrama is never overplayed and the cinematography from Boris Kaufman superbly renders the heat and claustrophobia of the situation. The heat levels correlate with the tension cleverly as more jurors change their mind, so the fan starts working and a storm breaks.

In all, a great start to this epic marathon in both quality and (at 96 minutes) length.

Next up is Bernado Bertolucci's Novocento coming in at 320 minutes. Oy!

1001 Movies: The reasoning.

I have decided to 'educate' myself in films. I do consider myself a cinephile. I love watching films, invest a considerable amount of time and money watching them and I talk about them a lot.

I used to consider myself well-versed, but I'm not. Well not to the extent I wish to be, where you actually know the references Mark Kermode makes on the 5live film review show.

 I've also recently subscribed to the Filmspotting podcast. It's a more cinephillic audio blog from Chicago radio where they discuss films of the past as well as from the modern day. The presenters are educating themselves, often setting marathon tasks like watching and discussing the movies of a particular director. It gave me inspiration and I'm going one step further.

A couple of years ago I received a book for my birthday. '1001 movies you must see before you die.' Cheery. I don't plan on dying soon, but I do plan on working my way through this book. It covers 1902 - 2008 and it's a fairly mixed bag. I've decided to tackle them alphabetically as this is how the checklist is made out at the start. I figure it would mix things up a bit rather than watching chronologically and it also means I don't have to start with a load of silent flicks.  I have seen a number of them already, but will re watch for the purposes of the task.  It will also dissuade me from the current wave of terrible fare my local multiplex has to offer. 'Films you must see before you die' does ring of promise and I doubt they will be in 3D!

By the time I'm done, I'll be a proper film wanker! Best get on with it...

First up, 12 Angry Men.



http://www.filmspotting.net/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/