It’s a good movie and has some scenes that just hit so hard.
I think everyone has movie gaps. I’ve never seen:
Gone With The Wind
Maltese Falcon
Casablanca? <–I believe I saw this once but have no memory
On the Waterfront
I presume you mean this list:
I believe I’ve seen all except two of them.
Yeah, missing a few now. They move stuff around and add and subtract every year so I am not sure I would call it any kind of definitive list.
Still, I needed a goal and I saw loads of great films. The crap I saw was at least well known crap so that was worth something as well. I recommend doing this to others looking for a sorta ‘Film Education 101’.
When I watched Citizen Kane I thought it was one of the most boring films I had ever seen.
But I can still recognize its technical breakthroughs and acknowledge its place in cinema history, so I’m glad I saw it.
I think you meant to write, “…easier to kill him in the car and drive his body somewhere to be dumped than carry it out the door.”
Big difference. (My apologies in advance if I’m miscorrecting you.)
I must have seen The Godfather 20 times or more, and there’s always been a detail I hadn’t noticed. One thing nobody seems to mention is the film’s phenomenal lighting. I see no such credit in the IMDB or Wikipedia entries, so I assume director Francis Ford Coppola and cinematographer Gordon Willis worked it out as filming progressed. For example, consider the rich ambience evoked by the lighting in such diverse scenes as Tom Hagen’s abduction (shadowy underworld) and Vito Corleone’s viewing of Sonny’s cadaver (dazzlingly harsh reality). And the most striking of all, IMO, is that scene just before the car bomb goes off, when one of Michael’s bodyguards is shown sitting and eating near a red lamp on the right side of the screen, while the outdoor light streams through an open door on the left. There are so many more examples of unusual lighting in the film that, in my uninformed opinion, it can’t just be a happy accident. Someone must have gone to an awful lot of trouble, proposing unusual situations and working hard to get every detail right. In that sense, much of the film’s ambience has to do with things other than lighting, and I can more easily imagine them being spontaneous solutions or happy accidents: Michael lighting a cigarette with his broken jaw and puffy face or McCluskey eating while Michael and Sollozo are talking (makes him look like even more of an ill-mannered brute). Those are just examples of thoughtful use of simple props. Similarly, the music and sound effects are used brilliantly but I can imagine someone coming up with those ideas on the spot: the creepy atmosphere at the hospital where Michael finds his father unattended (something unsettling and incoherent like a broken record is heard briefly in the background) and, of course, the noise of the elevated train which reflects and accentuates Michael’s growing dread at his meeting with Sollozo and McCluskey. But some of the camerawork (Sonny leaving the table and returning after answering the phone at the end of the hall) and lighting still confound me. Given the studio’s initial opposition and subsequent skepticism, the constellation of stellar talents and the dire consequences of failure, it seems like a hell of a time to be taking chances with weird ideas.
I spent a day at the Academy Museum in LA last month (an absolutely must-see for any movie buff). After seeing the exhibits on lighting, cinematography, hair and make-up my takeaway was that there is so much planning that goes into movie-making before the cameras roll, it’s a miracle anything ever gets done.
I believe this to be related to the difference between an art, a science, and a set of random choices. In a science there can be a definitive list of things. If things were randomly selected from all the things in a field, it would be a random choice. In an art, it’s neither. If you compare lists of the best things in an artistic field, they would have a lot of similar choices but not nearly be the same.
Incidentally, for the past 24 years I’ve been combining various lists of great/unappreciated/favorite movies. I’ve combined all those lists (that I’ve combined so far, but I find new lists faster than I can combine them into my list) into a single list of about 11,000 films that someone has recommended. I’ve probably seen somewhat less than 4,000 movies in my life. Most of those I saw at a movie theater. I’ve probably been a movie buff for the last 50 years.
I do this too, unfortunately I forget WHY it’s on the list. “Serpico huh? Did I put this on my list because I was into Pacino awhile back, or is this one of the recommendations for good soundtracks from the 70’s I gathered? Was I supposed to watch this with my wife, or when she goes on a trip because she hates these types of movies?”
I’ve started a notebook/journal kept near the couch for whenever I see a good trailer and then I put in the WHY for Future Sitnam so that poor dumb bastard doesn’t have to figure it out years down the road.
It’s on my list. I used to spend a lot of time in that area, so it’ll seem like old times. Now, that Max is gone, we both can leave the house together for more than an hour.
@Mahaloth , I think you’d enjoy The Maltese Falcon. Quintessential film noir. Just make sure to watch the Bogey version. The previous 2 or 3 versions were crap.
I didn’t care for it, but I think it was a Seinfeld’s Not Funny situation, where all the tropes seem played out because that movie helped define the tropes.
I rather like noir, too. Brick and LA Confidential rank pretty highly for me. And Blade Runner of course.
For what it’s worth, see post 103 here: 2001: A Space Odyssey
I liked it OK. The guy who played the young Harrison Ford character is a dead ringer for him, though - a little surprised he hasn’t gotten more work doing that.
Yes! I love Harold Lloyd. A great physical comedian, and he could really act, unlike a lot of actors and actresses back then.
So Like It Hot was the low-budget 2011 Latvian remake (they couldn’t afford the two extra letters in the title). You really should see the original.
Brick was good, but it played on the tropes in a rather cliched way, I thought. Though I thought Lucas Haas was really good playing a villain. L.A. Confidential is one I quite like, but it is also very stylized and a bit over-exaggerated. There was more a feeling of reality in The Maltese Falcon without pandering to the sex-and-violence fetishism of Confidential.
To tie this offshoot back to the other offshoot…the Museum currently has major exhibits on both Casablanca and The Godfather. I was looking at the actual pianos Sam played (both at Rick’s and in Paris) and it felt like I was looking at the Shroud of Turin.
Btw: the pianos are tiny little things, with only 54 keys. I’d never noticed before.
The local cinematheque is showing a series of IMAX shorts, adapted for the smaller screen. My latest five:
To Fly!
This is the film that’s been shown for many years at the National Air and Space Museum. A bit dated now, but still worth seeing, with some exhilarating moments.
Great Barrier Reef
An interesting underwater tour of the huge natural wonder off the eastern Australian coast, with some encouraging info on what’s being done to save it.
Great Bear Rainforest
Ryan Reynolds, of all people, narrates this short film about a wildlife preserve on the western coast of Canada, with quite a bit about the bears and fish there.
Living Sea
Meryl Streep narrates and Sting provides the music for this lush, beautiful film about the ocean and all its teeming life.
Everest
The IMAX film crew intended this to be about several spunky climbers of the tallest mountain, but they got caught up in the 1996 disaster in which eight other climbers died when they were caught in a blizzard, too high to be rescued. They helped out, bless them, and still gathered enough footage for a remarkable film.
Interesting. There were great dramatic camera angles in that movie. I’ll bet that’s what created the illusion it was a full sized piano.
That’s my favorite part!
Violent Night. Predictable fun, but fun indeed.
Around here that would be a hate crime. As in “I fucking HATE It’s a Wonderful Life!” To me it’s right there with Showgirls and Highlander 2 in sheer suckitude.
YMMV.
Is that the one where the camera gets in the rope basket from the top of the space shuttle(?) and goes 3 miles in 20 seconds? Fell out of my seat when it hit the backstop.
Yeah, what he said!! V your M at a better picture!