AFI 100 Movies: The Worst of

And now the worst.  Just don’t bother.  You’ll thank me.

Shane:  1953 George Stevens western with Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, and Van Heflin.  Booooooriiiiiiiiing.  The scenery is beautiful, Jack Palance is a total badass, that kid is obnoxious, and the rest of the cast couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag.  Snoozefest.





Wuthering Heights:  1939 William Wyler with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon (isn’t that name awesome?).  2009 PBS Masterpiece Classic version starring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley:  see that instead.

Heathcliffe as portrayed by Tom "Pillow Lips" Hardy

Platoon:  1986 Oliver Stone Vietnam drama with Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, and Forest Whitaker.  I have seen a LOT of war movies, many of them featuring gore and violence and uncomfortable, morally ambiguous situations.  I’ve never had to look away in utter disgust at any of them.  And then Platoon happened.  This movie gave me nightmares.  It made me feel physically ill.  Roger Ebert loves it, it won like a gojillion Academy Awards.  I don’t care.  There are other movies about Vietnam that deal with the same issues in a much less fucked up way.  Watch The Deer Hunter or Full Metal Jacket instead; they’re also violent and disturbing, but they didn’t make me want to vomit up my popcorn.

Bringing Up Baby:  1938 Howard Hawks with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.  “Screwball comedy” is not a genre I generally like.  This would be a key example of why.

Intolerance:  1916 silent film by D.W. Griffith, starring every actor ever.

Dear Mr. Griffith,

So, your career took a nosedive after you released the most racist movie in our culture's collective memory.  Inflicting Intolerance on us to make amends did not help my opinion of you.  I’d like those 27 hours of my life back.

Sincerely,

AJ

p.s. Inform Lillian Gish that she can take that cradle and stick it where the sun don’t shine. 

Blade Runner:  1982 Ridley Scott science fiction.  I KNOW, ok?  Everyone is supposed to love this movie and drool over every iteration released.  It was all right.  Just all right.  It was visually interesting.  I like Rutger Hauer, Harrison Ford (in that era), pre-plastic surgery Darryl Hannah, I’m 50/50 with Ridley Scott, and while Sean Young is totally crazytown I thought she did very well in this.  But all that adds up to is a mildly entertaining movie I’d just as soon catch on the SyFy channel and barely pay attention to while folding my laundry.  My dislike of it is directly proportional to how many times I’ve been told it’s the best sci-fi movie EVAR.  So stop pushing so hard, nerds.

Chinatown:  1974 Roman Polanski “neo-noir” with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.  Meh?  Just not my cup of tea.  I hated the ending, which is apparently what makes it so great.  Polanski and I don’t see eye to eye on a LOT of things.

Maltese Falcon:  1941 John Huston noir with Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Peter Lorre.  If you're going to delve into classic noir for the first time, don't start with this.  Practically turned me off the genre forever.  Watch Laura or The Big Sleep or Double Indemnity instead.  I love Bogey, but this just didn't do it for me.

AFI 100 Movies: The Best of

Last year I finished watching the AFI 100 Movies list.  Yes.  Everything from the original 1997 and reedited 2007 lists.  That’s 123 movies.

To be fair, I’d seen quite a few of these before.  And if I still felt very familiar with the movie (Snow White & The Seven Dwarves, for example), then I skipped watching it again.

The AFI has its detractors, and I agree with most of their criticisms.  But the list seemed like a good place to jump into Movie Nerdery, and I stand by that decision.  I will say that I’ve now started in on Ebert’s Great Movies list, and have liked them much much more.

Some background:  according to Wikipedia, the films were judged according to the criteria listed below.

1. Feature-length: Narrative format, at least 40 minutes long.
2. American film: English language, with significant creative and/or financial production elements from the United States.
3. Critical Recognition: Formal commendation in print.
4. Major Award Winner: Recognition from competitive events including awards from organizations in the film community and major film festivals.
5. Popularity Over Time: Including figures for box office adjusted for inflation, television broadcasts and syndication, and home video sales and rentals.
6. Historical Significance: A film's mark on the history of the moving image through technical innovation, visionary narrative devices or other groundbreaking achievements.
7. Cultural Impact: A film's mark on American society in matters of style and substance.

Of the movies on the list that I’d never seen before, here is my assessment of the Best.  A list of the Worst will follow shortly.  The movies you should absolutely see and the ones you can skip.

Best:

Sunset Blvd:  1950 Billy Wilder noir with William Holden, Gloria Swanson, and Erich von Stroheim.  I named my blog after it.  Watch it, and then read this (especially the "Touches of Authenticity" section).  META.  Swanson’s hands could be a character unto themselves.  Woman could act.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:  1975 Milos Forman drama based on the Ken Kesey novel.  I know that Jack Nicholson gets a lot of crap for playing the character of JACK in like every movie, but there are occasions when that’s totally okay.  Like this one.  And Five Easy Pieces.  And The Shining.  Also, because of the constant caricaturizing references to Nurse Ratched in pop culture I was expecting something way more ridiculous; but Louise Fletcher’s performance is subtly creepy.  Good job.

Dr. Strangelove: 1964 Kubrick comedy with Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Slim Pickens, and James Earl Jones.  Embrace the hilarity of Cold War paranoia.  Peter Sellers plays three characters, all of them brilliantly.  It’s funny, it’s scary, it’s bizarre.

The Best Years of Our Lives:  1946 William Wyler war drama with Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell.  OK, so this won’t appeal to everyone.  It’s a little dated, it’s a little schmaltzy, and there are many more powerful WWII movies.  Do yourself a favor:  don’t read anything about this movie, not a single thing, not even the Netflix summary, and then watch it.  If your mind isn’t blown by the revelation in the first 10 minutes, then don’t bother watching the rest.

MASH:  1970 Robert Altman war satire with Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, and Robert Duvall.  I hated the TV show, loved the movie.  It’s hilarious. 

Network:  1976 Sidney Lumet satire with Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, and Robert Duvall.  Just when I think television can’t get any worse, it does.  SISTER WIVES.  But at least this phenomenon is nothing new.  Bloodsucking TV executives have been around for a while.  This movie is darkly funny, interesting, and feels surprisingly modern.

The Manchurian Candidate:  1962 Cold War thriller with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury.  This movie is the jam.  I’ll be giving it a more thorough write-up in the near future.

Rocky:  1976, yes THAT Rocky.  I avoided this movie like the plague.  Sylvester Stallone, FIVE sequels, about boxing; I thought it would be terrible.  Talia Shire and Burgess Meredith are adorable.  It’s sweet, it’s endearing, the ending is totally appropriate (if you can get past the whole “Adrian!” thing).  Ladies, I promise:  it’s totally worth seeing.

A Place in the Sun:  1951 George Stevens drama with Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelley Winters.  Clift and Taylor are okay, but Winters is on FI-yah!  She does neediness and desperation so well that at moments you almost forgive Clift’s character for feeling so trapped by her.  And there’s a reason Raymond Burr could never quite get from under the Awesome Lawyer typecasting:  he’s freaking brilliant at it.

Dr. Zhivago:  1965 David Lean EPIC with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie.  It’s really long, takes place over roughly a 10-year period that included World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Russian Civil War.  That’s a lot of stuff to cover.  But it’s okay, because just look at Omar Sharif’s eyes.  So pretty.

Rebel Without A Cause:  1955 Nicholas Ray drama with James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo.  I’m one of those people who thought James Dean was overrated without ever having seen one of his movies.  Yes, he was quite attractive.  So are a lot of crappy actors who die young.  But then I watched this and had to admit that yes, dude was very talented.  I was slightly annoyed by that whole instantly-fall-in-love thing that used to be so common in movies.  “My boyfriend just bit it in a Dead Man’s Curve situation but you’re cute so let’s make out.”  Not likely.  But it was still pretty good.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?:  1966 Mike Nichols drama based on the Edward Albee play, with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis.  Freaking dynamite.  The back and forth between Taylor and Burton is a joy to watch, even as they’re tearing each other to pieces.  Definitely not a happy movie.  Good to watch if you’re feeling mean.

The Searchers:  1956 John Ford western with John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, and Natalie Wood.  I don’t care for westerns, as a rule.  John Wayne’s niece is kidnapped by Injuns (and yes, I feel the use of that word is appropriate because this is one of those movies where Native Americans aren’t portrayed by Native Americans); wild, years-long chase ensues.  Basically it’s about Wayne’s character’s total obsession with revenge and racism.  Best western I’ve ever seen.

Awesome Movies You Might Have Missed: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

When the movie begins, the Northfield robbery that led to the end of the original James gang has already happened.  As a kind of last hurrah, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) and his brother Frank (Sam Shepard) hire a new gang to pull off a train robbery.  The group includes Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), a man who Frank admits gives him “the willies,” and who from the very beginning is desperate to prove his mettle, to show that he’s reliable and worth keeping in the gang permanently.

After the success of the robbery, Frank leaves the gang and Jesse becomes increasingly paranoid about the other members, convinced that at any moment one of them will turn him over to the authorities for the sizeable reward on his head.  Most of the movie is about the deterioration of the gang and the downswing of James’s career, including his eventual death at the hands of Ford.  That’s not a spoiler.  It’s in the title.

The acting is superb all around:  Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, Jeremy Renner, Paul Schneider; and Garrett Dillahunt (who you may know from Fox’s Raising Hope or as Deputy Wendell from No Country for Old Men) is outstanding in the minor role of Ed Miller.  He plays this totally dim character flawlessly (I mean that as a high compliment, I swear).  Playing sympathetically stupid this well has to be harder than it looks. 

And Brad Pitt does a fine job; exactly what you’d expect from him.  Nothing beyond what you’d see in his other major roles.

But Casey Affleck blows the whole thing out of the water.  He nails it.  He kills it (no pun intended).  Robert Ford vacillates between creepy, desperate, funny, kind, brave, cowardly, simpering, decisive, indecisive—and Affleck transitions through each of these effortlessly.  I sympathized with Ford, I felt sorry for him.  Throughout the film he’s bullied, ignored, talked down to.  But he’s also a total creeper.  Affleck simultaneously inspires feelings of disgust and empathy.

Casey Affleck was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar in the Supporting Actor category, and lost both to Javier Bardem for his portrayal of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men.  I love that movie, I love Javier, but honestly that would have been a toss-up for me.

While I'm crazy about the movie, I did have a few very minor quibbles with it.  After the shooting, in the course of a single day the Ford brothers were indicted, found guilty, sentenced to death by hanging, and two hours later pardoned by Governor Crittendon (played by James Carville in the movie with sinister excellence).  While this is largely considered to be the most historically accurate depiction of Jesse James on film, this part of the story is omitted.  I think it would have been amazing to see Affleck’s portrayal of how Ford would have handled that kind of rollercoaster stress.  Alas.  It was 2 ½ hours long anyway, adding all that would have pushed it into Epic territory.

The music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is fantastic, but when Cave makes a cameo at the end of the film to sing “The Ballad of Jesse James” the song seemed a bit too modern even though it was apparently written shortly after James’s death.  And while the cinematography is beautiful, some of the camera affects got annoying after a while.

But all in all, a must-see.