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I don't think I have ever before seen a more powerful, tear-inducing, poignant human drama than KRAMER VS. KRAMER. It is a simple story about a man whose wife walks out on him and his 6 year old son and shows up 18 months later seeking custody. In lesser hands, such a simple film would come across like a LAW & ORDER episode. As it is...it is worthy of virtually all of its Oscar wins (100% behind Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress, and Screenplay...but I could argue Director for Coppolla in APOCALYPSE NOW. Hoffman is terrific and scenes like the infamous Ice Cream scene and when his son recieves stitches made my heart ache at the seriousness and relatability of young Billy's parents' predicament.
Posted by flux883
at 3:42 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 29 October 2010 3:45 PM EDT
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Updated: Friday, 29 October 2010 3:45 PM EDT
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Movies about the lack of knowledge and characters that to not understand their situation are few and far between....because it is hard to tell a story about people who "don't know what happened". Peter Weir's film is a solid example on how to make a movie like this. It follows a trip by a bunch of college girls, in 1900, when 4 of them disappeared without a trace during their picnic at the locally famous geological outcropping. No one knows what happened, no one understands why no one knows, and we never find out. It is an odd approach to the movie....but Weir's cinematography and especially the score, project a sense of mystery that can easily be explained like it was a Twilight Zone episode written by Jane Austen. 
I was just having a conversation about how Stanley Kubrick has historically had the ability to hypnotize me. Think about it. 2001, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, EYES WIDE SHUT, FULL METAL JACKET, THE SHINING...thse are all movies that kind of space you out in a way to get its point across...and they all work beautifully. This film is no exception, even though most people forget about it as one of Kubrick's masterpieces. It has the scope and epicness of any movie ever made. Its cinematography is astounding, the costumes and makeup are flawless, and the art direction is top notch. Into this epically scoped film is as simple a story as one could imagine....and that is sort of the film's brilliance. Amidst the backdrop of some of cinema's all-time greatest beauty...we have a simple man who fell into success and fell out again...and did it without much fanfare. I didn't need any more proof that Kubrick was a master before starting this project...but first PATHS OF GLORY, and now BARRY LYNDON has further solidified that fact. 
Well...I guess I just don't quite get Carl Theodor Dreyer's fame. I wasn't much impressed with his PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and I wasn't too impressed with this spook story either. The man, for the time, had a good eye and projected eerie visuals onto his film...but VAMPYR just seems to meander along without direction or purpose, and the fact that this was his first non-silent film...is obvious. There is hardly any dialogue so the story is told through walking, seeing, and making faces...and it is simply odd. 
I know it has been a long time since I got to one of these movies, and man oh man was I disappointed by the movie I chose to get me back into the swing of things. 1958's DRACULA was terrible. I actually liked Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, but the entire production felt like a choppy greatest hits montage. Here is this classic scene, here is this memorable encounter. We all know the Dracula story...but this version has absolutely no narrative pace and doesn't feel to even TELL a story...just exhibit one. The film seems to know that we are familliar with the subject matter, so it just jumps back and forth to the scenes we expect. The castle? Don't make me laugh. Leslie Nielsen's castle in DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT is far more convincing!! 
It took me a bit after this film was over to really understand what it was about. I was confused because it seemed to be just a young girl, who saw the original Frankenstein movie, who has been told by her sister that the monster's spirit lives in a small farmhouse out in the wilderness. I watched the film as if that was all it was about, and I was a bit bored. It wasn't until post-film reflection that I realized it was kind of a PAN'S LABYRINTH film...only this little girl's horrors that she is trying to escape were not war. I realized this when I remembered how her father was filmed with ominous camera angles and she imagined her father as the monster himself. When it all came together in my brain...it was quite haunting. 
Just as when I saw THE THING for the first time, I was horrified, grossed out, and totally enamored with David Cronenberg's THE FLY. I loved how the creation of the "Telepods" were taken for granted and that we realize that this genius scientist worked for years and years before we first meet him at the cocktail party in the beginning of the film. Jeff Goldblum's deterioration throughout this film is a marvel of makeup and atmosphere. The various levels of his decay are definitely the things nightmares are formed around. Not only that, but the themes that Cronenberg brings up in this film (jealousy, abortion, journalistic responsibility, empathy) are all poignant and not at all forced. Loved this film!! 
This was my first foray into the Marx Brothers, and it took me almost 90% of this film to kind of appreciate what was being done. First of all...I never realized that Groucho's moustache was painted on. That made me laugh. However, this film was a nonsensical barrage of bad puns and double entendres. "We should have a standing army! Why? We will save on chairs" is probably the most clever pun in the film...so you can imagine how rapid fire, vaudvillian wordplay can get annoying. The famous "man in the mirror" bit is inspired, but I imagined it a bit more flawless. The final battle sequences are actually very funny...but when the film was over...I felt a bit underwhelmed. The Marx Brothers are comedic royalty in the history of cinema...but I much preferred the genius of Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL when I saw that a few weeks ago. 
If you type "Audition" into Google Images, you will get back a bunch of shots of a pretty little Asian girl holding sinister objects and preparing to torture. This film has been heralded because of said torture scene...and in ways it is utterly brilliant. However, this film is more or less a bit sappy and melodramatic. I know that is kind of the point so as to slap you in the face with those disturbing finale scenes, but I found myself bored, then intrigued, the horrified, then disappointed. Act 1 is a man "auditioning" women for a new wife, in the guise of a new tv show and courting this cutie. Act 2 is showing weird quirks of the girl and makes you a bit uncomfortable. Act 3 is perverse, disgusting outrageousness....and never really explained or understood. Wasn't great. 
This film ruined Michael Powell's career, a career that even Martin Scorsese admired. It is a bit subversive and perverse, the story about a truly disturbed man who films women at the moment of their death, and worships the films and his camera in ways that are totally unnatural. I think the history behind the film is that people were incredibly uncomfortable when they were called out to being just like the killer in the film, enjoying themselves as they are shown fear and death through a video camera, but I see the film just as a dark, interesting work. I didn't quite feel the sort of sociological impact this film is said to have had, historically. But I did enjoy it. 
I was pretty disappointed in this movie, because I love me some badass Eastwood. That iconic "Do you feel lucky, punk?" line really fell flat. It seems that all the parodies I have seen in my life of that line have all delivered the line with more gusto. When you really sit back and think about this film, it is really VERY simple...and Harry Callahan is a pretty lousy cop. How can he be mad at the system when HE is the one that screwed up. Vigilante justice is one thing...but I wasn't quite on board with "Dirty Harry"s methods. They weren't exciting enough to reach any kind of iconic status. 
I absolutely LOVED this film. It is movies like this that remind me of why I started this project in the first place. It is so clever, so exciting, and so well executed that even today, it rivals all other action comedies. Buster Keaton is a genius, and he plays the engineer on a Southern locomotive. When the Union spies steal it, he chases after them to retireve it, only to wind up behind enemy lines and thrust into being a hero. If you thought two trains chasing each other on one rail would get boring, think again. The things this movie comes up with just leaves a perpetual smile on your face. I enjoyed this movie so much in its whimsical simplicty, it is easily now one of my favorite films of all time!!! 
A truly inspired, technical, non-narrative film that really showed what the medium could do, even back in the 1920s. Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov decided to film a day in a Russian city...and that took 4 years. The film consists of shots of the city working, the filmmaker shooting the city, and the filmmakers editing together their film. It is truly groundbreaking and the kinetics of the editing were so far ahead of its time, that it defies logic. There is no story to tell, but it does show us how stories will be told for decades to come. Wonderful piece of work, and truly important to the world of cinema. 
Quite an unnerving piece of work, this animation of George Orwell's classic is pretty powerful. If you held this up, visually, side-by-side with CHARLOTTE'S WEB, it would be hard to tell them apart. However, this film is by no means a children's film. With the story about farm animals rising up to take over the farm they are a part of, it is full of the "Power Corrupts" parable and is rather violent...and the communist allegory is certainly not lost. Most of my enjoyment of this film came from the shock at how grown-up and no less Orwellian it was simply being animated. You will be quite surprised too. 
A perfect marriage of Oliver Stone's controversy-filled-morality-tale style and Quentin Tarantino's shock-filled-twisted-narrative style, NATURAL BORN KILLERS is quite a unique experience. Woody Harrelson & Juliette Lewis are great as the couple on a cross-country kill spree but Robert Downy Jr. as the fame-obsessed trash-tv host and Tommy Lee Jones as the smarmy warden steal the show. At times, I found the weirdness of the constant changing cinematography and animation a bit grating, but it is a great original. I found myself easily slipping from the "this kind of media frenzy would never happen" to "this is EXACTLY what would happen"...even though the whole premise is grossy over-exaggerated. Wonderful film!! 
Quite a simple film, but thrilling in its simplicity...with a climax that absolutely kept me at the edge of my seat. I guess it is fitting that Charles Laughton, who created such a spectacular, iconic villain in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, creats yet another iconic villain with Robert Mitchum's portrayal of Reverend Harry Powell. The story is about two young children, how their father entrusted them with a secret about his bank robbery stash, and their father's cellmate who is hellbent on discovering the loot. Reverend Powell encroaches on the children's life in EVERY way. He is as relentless as the shark in Jaws, and he is so flippant while doing it. The movie is beautifully shot and I really loved Mitchum's performance. 
This film isn't really about anything. You have no idea who the 5 victims are, you have no idea who the killers are, and you have no idea what the motivation is behind such disgusting, brutal slayings. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is just an violent, exhibitionist film that shows some really terrible, inexplicable ways to die. That all being said...there is a raw fear that is inevitable while watching it. Sure, Leatherface is a bit cheesy looking, and he runs with the chainsaw like a doofus, but when everything climaxes to that scene at the dinner table...I could feel the nightmares begin to conform inside my brain. Nothing really to this movie, but the rattle of the chainsaw will bother you much more after experiencing this film. 
I have a very specific problem with SINGIN IN THE RAIN. I thought the story was very fun (about a studio trying to make their own "talkie" in the wake of THE JAZZ SINGER) and Gene Kelly looks like he is walking on air when he starts to dance...but here is my problem. There are 3 reasons for anyone to be singing in a movie musical. They should be melodically telling a part of the story, singing about their feelings & emotions, or performing in a show within the show (a la 42nd STREET). SINGIN IN THE RAIN all too often has people dancing and singing for no reason whatsoever, and it is annoying. "Make 'em Laugh"? Absolutley no reason for that song. "Good Morning"? Who are the three leads dancing for? Us? They are characters in a movie...not performers on a stage. The title song sequence got it right, but the rest of the movie felt very awkward and choppy. No one will EVER convince me that this movie is a better musical then the likes of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, or even CHICAGO....and it has been hailed as the best movie musical ever....WRONG!!!! 
It was a pleasnt surprise to see that this film was NOT a documentary about what Aileen Wuornos did (I GREATLY enjoyed that dramatic account in the film, MONSTER) but rather a documentary about how her newly adoptive mother and lawyer seemingly pimped out her story to the highest bidder, all the while preaching forgiveness, innocence, and love. Of course, what Wuornos did was worse, but to see the british documentarians given the runaround because they haven't paid sufficiently for the Aileen Wuornos story, its pretty damn disturbing. If nothing else, the film shows how brilliant Charlize Theron was in portraying Wuornos in 2004. Solid Documentary!! 
A terribly simple movie, but manages to be very interesting and ultimately pretty sorrowful. The movie follows a man who has to explain to the adption agency investigator why he was found in another's house taking care of an infant son. It is a story of boredom, longing, and necessity for companionship. I didn't quite think Harry would be able to squeeze any sympathy out of me (since at the outset we KNOW he is a Bigamist), but he manages to. Nothing too groundbreaking, but you will want to see how things turn out.