Movies Seen in 2011

[Captain Craig]

Spoiler: Rest of my list

1. The Fighter: B-
2. Batman(90's saga): A-,B-,C-,D
3. Star Wars OT-Special Edition: B+, A, B
4. The Green Hornet: B
5. True Grit(1969): C+
6. Lord of the Rings saga: (A,A,A)
7. The Machinist: A-
8. Season of the Witch: B
9. Frozen: A-
10. Due Date: B+
11. Planet of the Apes(2001): B-
12. Faster: C
13. Romance: D (French film, subtitled)
14. YPF: C- (YPF=Young People F*&^ing)
15. The Beautiful Truth: B-
16. Strictly Sexual: C+
17. DOOM: C
18. Brothers: B+
19. Men In Black II: B-
20. The Crow: Wicked Prayer: C-
21. The Soloist: C
22. Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love: C+
23. I Now Pronounce you Chuck & Larry: B-
24. Battle in Heaven: C+ (Mexican film, subtitled)
25. Legion: B-
26. Battle: LA: B+
27. Righteous Kill: B
28. Dracula II: Ascension: B-
29. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li: D
30. You Don't Mess With the Zohan: C+
31. Finding Bliss: C
32. Dracula III: Legacy: B-
33. Tangled: B+
34. Paul Blart Mall Cop: C-
35. Chloe: B
36. Kung Fu Panda: B-
37. Centurion: B
38. The People I've Slept With: C

39. Grown Ups: B-
40. The Conspirator: A-
41. XXX: State of the Union: C+
42. Fast Five: B+
43. THOR: A-

Great start to summer!!! Really enjoyed it, saw it twice already. See it in 2-D, stay after the credits for the Captain America tie-in although if you don't comics or haven't been following the Cap production you won't realize that's what the post credits is showing you.

 

[tomalak301]

1. Alice in Wonderland (2010) - C-
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) - A
3. Black Swan (2010) - A+
4. The Social Network (2010) - A
5. Cannibal! The Musical (1996) - B
6. Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire (2009) - B
7. Winter's Bone (2010) - C+
8. The Kids are All Right (2010) - A
9. The Lovely Bones (2009) - D
10. 127 Hours (2010) - A
11. Source Code (2011) - B
12. Kick-Ass (2010) - B

In the first half hour of this movie, There was a part of my that didn't want to like it. I mean another super hero movie but this time having so much profanity and just looked really stupid? I've already said I'm getting a little past this super hero fad going on in movies lately. However, as the movie went on, I began to really enjoy it, probably because of Hit Girl and Big Daddy (Played surprisingly by Nick Cage, who has been in some garbage movies lately). These two characters made the movie for me, and if Kick Ass wasn't involved (I found him to be a bit dull mostly), I think the movie would have been better. Still, it was a decent movie overall, but I wouldn't mind seeing a Hit-Girl spin off.

 

[Admiral_Young]

"Thor". I loved this movie. Much better than "Iron Man 2" and I now understand why reviewers are saying this is the best Marvel movie since "Iron Man". That's because it pretty much is. Probably will see it again.

 

[zakkrusz]

Updates (in Bold):

The Adjustment Bureau (8)
Arashi no Yoru ni (One Stormy Night) (7)
Armored Trooper Votoms: Finder (8)
Black Swan (9)
Broken Blade 3: The Mark of the Assassin's Dagger (9)
Broken Blade 4: The Land of Disaster (9)
Drive Angry (7)
Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance (9)
Godkiller (6)
I Am Number Four (8)
Infernal Affairs (7)
Kamui (4)
The Garden of Sinners Movie 8: Epilogue (9)
Loups=Garous (8)
The Mechanic (2011) (9)
Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Awakeening of the Trailblazer (8)
Munto: The Movie (6)
Musashi Miyamoto (6)
Outlander (8)
Source Code (9)
Thor (9)
Time of Eve (10)
Unknown (7)
Versus (6)
Your Highness (3)

 

[CaptainCanada]

Spoiler: The rest of my list

1. In the Heat of the Night (A)
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (B)
3. The Passion of the Christ (A)
4. Mamma Mia! (B)
5. All About Eve (A)
6. Looking for Anne (B-)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (B+)
8. The King's Speech (A)
9. How Green Was My Valley (B-)
10. Black Swan (B+)
11. Made in Dagenham (B)
12. Gentleman's Agreement (A-)
13. Barney's Version (A-)
14. Out of Africa (B)
15. The Social Network (A-)
16. The Sound of Music (B+)
17. Pulp Fiction (A)
18. Forrest Gump (A)
19. The Shawshank Redemption (A+)
20. The Illusionist (B)
21. The French Connection (B+)
22. Network (A+)
23. Incendies (A+)
24. Mrs. Miniver (A)
25. A Fistful of Dollars (B+)
26. For A Few Dollars More (B)
27. WALL-E (A+)
28. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (A)
29. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (B)
30. Gigi (B-)
31. I Love You Phillip Morris (B+)
32. How To Train Your Dragon (A)
33. Tarzan (B+)
34. Oliver! (B+)
35. Gosford Park (A-)
36. The Princess Bride (B+)
37. All the President's Men (A-)
38. Oliver Twist (B+)
39. My Fair Lady (A+)
40. Hanna (A-)
41. The Godfather (A+)
42. The Godfather: Part II (A+)
43. The Godfather: Part III (A-)
44. Dog Day Afternoon (A)
45. Taxi Driver (A-)
46. Great Expectations (B+)
47. The Last Airbender (D-)
48. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (A+)
49. Raging Bull (B+)

50. GoodFellas (A)
51. Spartacus (A+)
52. The Deer Hunter (B+)
53. Reservoir Dogs (A)
54. A Clockwork Orange (A)
55. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (A+)
56. Gone With The Wind (A+)
57. On the Waterfront (A)
58. Thor (A-)

Marvel's latest; not as good as Iron Man, but better than the others. Does a good job of balancing its current story with setup for the future. I hope this leads to more opportunities for Kenneth Branagh in the future (Macbeth, damnit!).

 

[CaptainCanada]

Spoiler: The rest of my list

1. In the Heat of the Night (A)
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (B)
3. The Passion of the Christ (A)
4. Mamma Mia! (B)
5. All About Eve (A)
6. Looking for Anne (B-)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (B+)
8. The King's Speech (A)
9. How Green Was My Valley (B-)
10. Black Swan (B+)
11. Made in Dagenham (B)
12. Gentleman's Agreement (A-)
13. Barney's Version (A-)
14. Out of Africa (B)
15. The Social Network (A-)
16. The Sound of Music (B+)
17. Pulp Fiction (A)
18. Forrest Gump (A)
19. The Shawshank Redemption (A+)
20. The Illusionist (B)
21. The French Connection (B+)
22. Network (A+)
23. Incendies (A+)
24. Mrs. Miniver (A)
25. A Fistful of Dollars (B+)
26. For A Few Dollars More (B)
27. WALL-E (A+)
28. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (A)
29. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (B)
30. Gigi (B-)
31. I Love You Phillip Morris (B+)
32. How To Train Your Dragon (A)
33. Tarzan (B+)
34. Oliver! (B+)
35. Gosford Park (A-)
36. The Princess Bride (B+)
37. All the President's Men (A-)
38. Oliver Twist (B+)
39. My Fair Lady (A+)
40. Hanna (A-)
41. The Godfather (A+)
42. The Godfather: Part II (A+)
43. The Godfather: Part III (A-)
44. Dog Day Afternoon (A)
45. Taxi Driver (A-)
46. Great Expectations (B+)
47. The Last Airbender (D-)
48. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (A+)
49. Raging Bull (B+)

50. GoodFellas (A)
51. Spartacus (A+)
52. The Deer Hunter (B+)
53. Reservoir Dogs (A)
54. A Clockwork Orange (A)
55. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (A+)
56. Gone With The Wind (A+)
57. On the Waterfront (A)
58. Thor (A-)
59. The Seventh Seal (A-)

Closing in on Harvey's total. Awww yeah.

First venture into Ingmar Bergman's realm; been meaning to check out something of his for a while, being one of the two biggest European directors of midcentury along with Fellini; I watched La Dolce Vita a while ago and thought it was dull, and hasn't aged especially well, but The Seventh Seal is a lot more timeless.

Stylistically, it reminds me a lot of an old medieval morality play, mixed with a farce from about the same period. There's a good amount of earthy comedy here, mixed in with some pretty direct philosophical meditation. I don't know that film is really the best medium for the latter, but it works reasonably well. It's more intellectual than emotional as an experience, though, which holds it back a bit (though it has more humanity than a lot of similar stuff I've seen, particularly because of the lighter stuff).

I thought the depiction of Death himself was interesting compared to a lot of similar stories; rather than showing up when people die of occurrences in our world, he's actively the cause of people dying (the actor, for instance, has no cause of death at all until Death chops the tree down; and we're never told why the knight and his party die; adds to the arbitrariness of it). Though all the nihilist talk seems a little odd from people who are interacting with the literal personification of Death.

 

[Lowdarzz]

Mysterious Island (1961)

A very loose adaptation of the novel by Jules Verne, the special creature effects were provided by Ray Harryhausen. This includes a giant crab, a giant walking bird, giant honey bee's and an octopod. The filmakers also seemed to go out of their way to make this film seem like a sequel to the 1954 Disney film, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, both in Captain Nemo's portrayal and the design of the Nautilus.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Based on the book by Cornelius Ryan, the film tells the story of the disastrous allied campaign Operation Market Garden in September of 1944. Like the adaptation of one of Ryan's other books, The Longest Day, this film attempts to make the actual event the star rather than the large and impressive cast. It was interesting seeing so many well known U.K. and American actors playing what amounted to bit parts.

 

[Harvey]

Closing in on Harvey's total. Awww yeah.

My count is actually at 71, but I've just been too lazy to post responses this quarter.

64. Sleep Dealer (A-)
65. Trading Places (B-)

Sleep Dealer: It's so rare that a science fiction film is produced that isn't centered around English-speaking principals in an American or Western European setting that a film like Sleep Dealer is just a delight. The main characters are Mexican (with supporting characters that are Mexican-American) and most of the film takes place in Mexico. As a result, we get to see a decidedly different perspective on the future than we might otherwise glimpse in a movie.

In the near-future depicted, the borders of the United States are closed. There's still immigrant labor, but technology has found a way for it to be done without the immigrants. An army of low-paid, overworked foreign service workers remotely take control of a robotic workforce and do all the terrible jobs that they do now. The only difference is that the immigrants are out of sight and out of mind. Made for a low budget, the film boasts rather impressive visual effects for so little money, and has a number of fascinating things to say about the future of Mexico.

Trading Places: It takes a while for this 80s comedy starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd to get going. In the first 40 minutes, it's really only intermittently funny, but once the premise is set in motion the comedy comes together. I couldn't help but be put off by Jamie Lee Curtis' character, though. As the hooker with a heart of gold (tm) she's a complete filmic construction who has one purpose: to keep the plot moving. If she didn't exist, Akryod's character would have probably ended up in a homeless shelter -- or worse. But she never once feels like a real human being.

And at the heart of it is a pretty subversive little premise. Namely, that a homeless hustler and a commodities trader share so much in common that one could replace the other almost immediately. It is, of course, a little bit of a fantasy -- the tip Eddie Murphy acts on that impresses his employers is something that any commodity trader should have known -- but in the last act it's so funny that who cares?

 

[Captain Craig]

Closing in on Harvey's total. Awww yeah.

My count is actually at 71, but I've just been too lazy to post responses this quarter.

I've gotten behind but should see some catch up now that summer season is here!

Going to #44 tonight, sneak of Priest and I've had #45 Fourth Kind sitting atop the TV from Netflix for over a week now. Just been so busy.

 

[Harvey]

66. The King of New York (C-)
67. Up (A)

The King of New York: Reviews of this gangster film from the early 1990s have tended to skew positive since it was released, and I can't fathom why. I'll admit, Christopher Walken delivers a decent central performance in the title role, and the supporting cast is full of names that would go on to bigger and better things ("Larry" Fishburne, Wesley Snipes, a surprisingly tolerable David Caruso, Giancarlo Esposito, and for about five seconds, Steve Buscemi). But the movie itself is just so over-the-top that it's impossible to take seriously for more than a few seconds at a time.

The violence is positively orgiastic -- people are being mowed down by a hailstorm of bullets so constantly that what's happening in the story is completely lost more than once. Everyone in the story turns to extreme violence at some point (at the end, even the one good cop in the story decides he'd like to shoot Walken's caracter, a move that is entirely out of character but perfectly in line with the movie's warped logic). It's not even clear how Walken's character ever rose to the position he holds in the movie. His entire strategy seems to hinge on setting up deals with drug wholesalers, but instead of paying he just kills everyone and steals the drugs. This happens multiple times in the movie. You would think that, at a certain point, drug wholesalers would be smart and just not deal with the guy!

Up: What's left that can be said about this perfect animated movie? For some reason, I didn't see it when it came out, but my roommate owns it on Blu-Ray so I've finally taken care of that oversight. I think the opening ten-fifteen minutes showing the couple grow old together were the most honest and moving sequence I've ever seen in an animated children's movie. And, unlike Wall-E, it's not mucked up by an out-of-left-field third act. It's perfect.

And I'm up to 75 movies now. So far behind on these things...

 

[CaptainCanada]

Spoiler: The rest of my list

1. In the Heat of the Night (A)
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (B)
3. The Passion of the Christ (A)
4. Mamma Mia! (B)
5. All About Eve (A)
6. Looking for Anne (B-)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (B+)
8. The King's Speech (A)
9. How Green Was My Valley (B-)
10. Black Swan (B+)
11. Made in Dagenham (B)
12. Gentleman's Agreement (A-)
13. Barney's Version (A-)
14. Out of Africa (B)
15. The Social Network (A-)
16. The Sound of Music (B+)
17. Pulp Fiction (A)
18. Forrest Gump (A)
19. The Shawshank Redemption (A+)
20. The Illusionist (B)
21. The French Connection (B+)
22. Network (A+)
23. Incendies (A+)
24. Mrs. Miniver (A)
25. A Fistful of Dollars (B+)
26. For A Few Dollars More (B)
27. WALL-E (A+)
28. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (A)
29. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (B)
30. Gigi (B-)
31. I Love You Phillip Morris (B+)
32. How To Train Your Dragon (A)
33. Tarzan (B+)
34. Oliver! (B+)
35. Gosford Park (A-)
36. The Princess Bride (B+)
37. All the President's Men (A-)
38. Oliver Twist (B+)
39. My Fair Lady (A+)
40. Hanna (A-)
41. The Godfather (A+)
42. The Godfather: Part II (A+)
43. The Godfather: Part III (A-)
44. Dog Day Afternoon (A)
45. Taxi Driver (A-)
46. Great Expectations (B+)
47. The Last Airbender (D-)
48. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (A+)
49. Raging Bull (B+)
50. GoodFellas (A)
51. Spartacus (A+)
52. The Deer Hunter (B+)
53. Reservoir Dogs (A)
54. A Clockwork Orange (A)
55. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (A+)
56. Gone With The Wind (A+)
57. On the Waterfront (A)
58. Thor (A-)
59. The Seventh Seal (A-)

60. Hamlet (A)

This is the third major film adaptation of Shakespeare's first- or second-most famous play that I've seen, the first two being Franco Zefferelli's 1990 version starring Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh's 1966 four-hour epic. Lord Olivier's 1948 Best Picture winner (the only Shakespeare film to take that honour) is notable for its length; he fits the whole thing into two and a half hours, shaving an hour and a half from the text. And it's quite an effective job, overall; the meat of the story is all here. Branagh's version is also wonderful (and possibly superior), but both it and the play itself have numerous slower stretches.

Olivier won the Oscar for the lead role, and it's a very good performance; some of his acting (and a lot of early Shakespearean acting) is overly stagey, but Olivier almost totally avoids that here, though his cadence could still often be said to be a bit unnaturally even (this is more evident in some of the supporting characters). Jean Simmons (the third early film of hers I've watched in the last month) is great as Ophelia. The supporting cast includes a few interesting minor figures, such as a young Peter Cushing as Osric the courtier (here played as an effeminate fop; how very against Cushing's later type) and Stanley Holloway (Eliza's dad in My Fair Lady) as the gravedigger. Probably the most obvious deficiency vis a vis Branagh's version is Claudius - Basil Sydney doesn't hold a candle to Sir Derek Jacobi.

The camerawork caught my eye in many places. Rather than just park the camera, as tended to be done with early films (particularly early versions of Shakespeare), Olivier keeps shots moving, and likes to follow characters around the impressive sets.

 

[Harvey]

68. Specter of the Rose (C)

This movie is out of print on home video, but it's not hard to understand why. Despite the talents of those involved, including frequent Alfred Hitchcock collaborator Ben Hecht, who writes and directs, it's a mess. In many ways a predecessor to the recent Black Swan (the film's back story, in fact, includes a female ballerina named Nina who died at the end of an incredible performance due to being stabbed!) the film falls apart at almost every level.

As directed, scenes run on far too long to be taken seriously. In the finale, for example, a male dancer prances around his high-rise apartment for what seems like an eternity before finally jumping through a window to his death. What could be moving quickly becomes silly as the character hugs every surface in the small room over and over again. The writing is equally flat-footed. An early seduction scene, for example, includes such humdingers as, "I want to hold you so tight you become tattooed on my body" (over this, the camera lingers on hilariously over-the-top extreme close-ups on the two peoples' eyes). And the actors aren't so much acting as working themselves up trying to spit out as many ham-fisted lines of dialogue as they can (seriously, it's like Hecht has included every rejected line of dialogue from everything he's ever written; even Aaron Sorkin writes more languid verbal exchanges than can be found in this movie).

 

[Starbreaker]

33. The Graduate ✭✭

I watched a "new" movie for the first time in over a month on Wednesday. The Graduate is a pretty bad movie. I bet it was interesting at the time it was released, but it just seems stupid now.

 

[Harvey]

No love for The Graduate? I still think it's a classic. In any event, it is well performed and photographed (Tarantino stole the opening credits for Jackie Brown, and he's not alone when it comes to homages to the movie).

69. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (B)

I've never seen Police Squad! -- although I'd like to at some point -- but that didn't seem to matter here. The film is an uneven spoof with a few great sequences (the driver's ed car chase is brilliant, for example), some jokes that are still hilarious (when the happy couple laughs their way out of Platoon I nearly died laughing), and some that are less effective. Plus, Ricardo Montalban!

I've now seen 77 films this year, so I'm only 8 behind!

 

[zakkrusz]

Updates (in Bold):

The Adjustment Bureau (8)
Arashi no Yoru ni (One Stormy Night) (7)
Armored Trooper Votoms: Finder (8)
Black Swan (9)
Broken Blade 3: The Mark of the Assassin's Dagger (9)
Broken Blade 4: The Land of Disaster (9)
Drive Angry (7)
Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance (9)
Godkiller (6)
I Am Number Four (8)
Infernal Affairs (7)
Kamui (4)
The Garden of Sinners Movie 8: Epilogue (9)
Loups=Garous (8)
The Mechanic (2011) (9)
Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Awakeening of the Trailblazer (8)
Munto: The Movie (6)
Musashi Miyamoto (6)
Outlander (8)
Priest (5)
Source Code (9)
Thor (9)
Time of Eve (10)
Unknown (7)
Versus (6)
Your Highness (3)

 

[Captain Craig]

Spoiler: Rest of my list

1. The Fighter: B-
2. Batman(90's saga): A-,B-,C-,D
3. Star Wars OT-Special Edition: B+, A, B
4. The Green Hornet: B
5. True Grit(1969): C+
6. Lord of the Rings saga: (A,A,A)
7. The Machinist: A-
8. Season of the Witch: B
9. Frozen: A-
10. Due Date: B+
11. Planet of the Apes(2001): B-
12. Faster: C
13. Romance: D (French film, subtitled)
14. YPF: C- (YPF=Young People F*&^ing)
15. The Beautiful Truth: B-
16. Strictly Sexual: C+
17. DOOM: C
18. Brothers: B+
19. Men In Black II: B-
20. The Crow: Wicked Prayer: C-
21. The Soloist: C
22. Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love: C+
23. I Now Pronounce you Chuck & Larry: B-
24. Battle in Heaven: C+ (Mexican film, subtitled)
25. Legion: B-
26. Battle: LA: B+
27. Righteous Kill: B
28. Dracula II: Ascension: B-
29. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li: D
30. You Don't Mess With the Zohan: C+
31. Finding Bliss: C
32. Dracula III: Legacy: B-
33. Tangled: B+
34. Paul Blart Mall Cop: C-
35. Chloe: B
36. Kung Fu Panda: B-
37. Centurion: B
38. The People I've Slept With: C
39. Grown Ups: B-

40. The Conspirator: A-
41. XXX: State of the Union: C+
42. Fast Five: B+
43. THOR: A-
44. Priest: D+

Bad. Overall really bad. A few decent action moment but BAD. I noticed there is no Grading Discussion Thread probably best.

 

[Lowdarzz]

Big Jake (1971)

Another western courtesy of The Duke, this one could not decided whether it was going to be serious or a comedy. The acting was uneven and the concluding fight was surprisingly bloody considering the majority of the film's tone. I also was disapointed by the completely abrupt ending. That said, The Duke was excellent as usual.

Event Horizon (1997)

The last time I saw this film was back when it was in theaters. The effects work and production design were excellent. The tense atmosphere maintained by the film was well done and some of the scares were effective. Gotta love all those empty eye sockets. I've heard that the original cut was over two hours long but I guess we'll never get to see it as the film apparently tanked at the box office.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Spoiler: The rest of my list

1. In the Heat of the Night (A)
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (B)
3. The Passion of the Christ (A)
4. Mamma Mia! (B)
5. All About Eve (A)
6. Looking for Anne (B-)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (B+)
8. The King's Speech (A)
9. How Green Was My Valley (B-)
10. Black Swan (B+)
11. Made in Dagenham (B)
12. Gentleman's Agreement (A-)
13. Barney's Version (A-)
14. Out of Africa (B)
15. The Social Network (A-)
16. The Sound of Music (B+)
17. Pulp Fiction (A)
18. Forrest Gump (A)
19. The Shawshank Redemption (A+)
20. The Illusionist (B)
21. The French Connection (B+)
22. Network (A+)
23. Incendies (A+)
24. Mrs. Miniver (A)
25. A Fistful of Dollars (B+)
26. For A Few Dollars More (B)
27. WALL-E (A+)
28. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (A)
29. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (B)
30. Gigi (B-)
31. I Love You Phillip Morris (B+)
32. How To Train Your Dragon (A)
33. Tarzan (B+)
34. Oliver! (B+)
35. Gosford Park (A-)
36. The Princess Bride (B+)
37. All the President's Men (A-)
38. Oliver Twist (B+)
39. My Fair Lady (A+)
40. Hanna (A-)
41. The Godfather (A+)
42. The Godfather: Part II (A+)
43. The Godfather: Part III (A-)
44. Dog Day Afternoon (A)
45. Taxi Driver (A-)
46. Great Expectations (B+)
47. The Last Airbender (D-)
48. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (A+)
49. Raging Bull (B+)
50. GoodFellas (A)
51. Spartacus (A+)
52. The Deer Hunter (B+)
53. Reservoir Dogs (A)
54. A Clockwork Orange (A)
55. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (A+)
56. Gone With The Wind (A+)
57. On the Waterfront (A)
58. Thor (A-)
59. The Seventh Seal (A-)

60. Hamlet (A)
61. All the King's Men (A)

The prequel to All the President's Men.

Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-winning novel has been filmed twice; this, the first one, won Best Picture in 1949. The story is (despite Penn Warren's denial) a pretty obvious roman a clef about the life of Huey Long - in this case, Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), an illiterate rural hick who becomes a reformist candidate for governor of his unnamed state as a stooge for the party machine, until he gets out of control. It's a pretty basic story about the transition from idealism to corruption, as told from the viewpoint of his righthand man Jack (John Ireland) - in a lot of respects, it reminds me of The Last King of Scotland (though obviously less extreme than that one), which shows how often these sorts of things can happen in the real world.

The film starts off rather shakily. Based on the first half hour or so, I thought it would be in the B/B+ range; the early scenes are somewhat choppy in their narrative, and the characters seem kind of flat. But things get moving, appropriately, at the time where Stark stops being a stooge and becomes a real candidate (the transition between these two mindsets is a bit abrupt). Crawford gives a powerhouse performance, chewing the scenery like Peter Finch in Network. Ireland remains kind of bland, but the storyline gets appropriately seedy. Mercedes McCambridge won the film's other acting Oscar as Stark's campaign manager (initially sent to sabotage him), and she's immensely entertaining (sort of a darker version of one of those zippy Girl Friday type characters).

Minor niggle is that the film continues the novel's device of not naming the state that the story takes place in. That sort of thing is a lot easier to do on the page than on film, and at times the way the characters and the media keep talking about "this state" and stuff like that becomes comical.

 

[barnaclelapse]

Before Sunrise: 4/5
Before Sunset: 4/5
Pick-up on South Street: 5/5
All The President's Men: 5/5
In The Mood for Love: 5/5.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Before Sunrise: 4/5
Before Sunset: 4/5

Two personal favourites. I hope Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy get around to a third one.