Eric Emma

Re: AFI 100 Years Series Discussion & Challenges, vol. 2

All About Eve
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Rating: 5/5
What an amazingly sweet movie! So I'm hitting the homestretch when it comes to AFI best 100 movies, and so I'm hitting all those movies I put off, I thought this was going suck but it turned out to be just dandy. All About Eve tells the story of a star-struck fan, Eve Harrigton(Anne Baxter), getting to meet her idol, Actress Margo Channing(Bette Davis), and then having to chance to work for her, it then shows her descention of morals and her rise to the top.
First off this is a writer's movie much akin to last years hit, "Crash" (2005), which means the focus is on the writing and the performances, nothing really amazing caught my eye cinematically. The writing in this movie is sharp, the characters are poignant, real, and complex. I like the way the movie is told, it's told through various perspectives but narriation is never used as a crutch but more as a way to give an inside look into complex characters. I like how every character has a certain charatistic they play to, and none of the characters are the same, there all different, and play off each other.

The writing truely is sharp, it sets up the story with an innocent girl, and seems to villainize Margo Channing, but it simply playing with our prejudices and our love for the underdog, but soon as the movie turns we understand Margo better, and realize that brute and downright rude outer appearance is nothing more than a husk for the fragile yet volatile creature that lurks beneath. And the opposite is true for Eve. And then the pay-off/climax scene is perhaps now one of my favorite scenes ever because the script perfectly built up to it and when Eve gets her comeuppance, I was literally cheering at the screen.

Another strong point is the cast, the cast in this movie is excellent. The best complement I think you can give an actor is when they've seamlessly become that person on the screen and have brought him/her to life. And George Sanders gives a performance that ranks up there for me with Alex Gueiness's in "Bridge on the River Kwai". All in all excellent film :up:
---
Gone with the Wind
Directed by Victor Fleming
Rating:4/5

This movie is perhaps one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen, some of the visuals are just beautiful, and the two most striking visuals would be. The end of act 2, right before the intermission, the famous line is said "God as my witness I'll never starve again", the silhouette of her set against the setting sun and then the scene of all the dead/injured men of the confederacy with the confederate flag in the foreground is a great shot. The grandeur of the movie is simply stunning from the elaborate costumes to the multitudes of sets and landscapes. So let me say that the biggest strength of the movie is its beauty of the “glorious south”.

The movie tells the tale of the death of the south due to the civil war, it tells it through the eyes of naïve daughter of the south, the belle of the ball, and a girl who’s got frivolous ideas of love and romance, and how all that is set asunder by the war. One of the things I like about the movie is its very contained cast of characters; mostly everyone in the movie is introduced within the first thirty minutes, and there arcs are followed throughout the rest of the movie. The leading lady does a damn fine job, and her character is very compelling, her story of torment and anguish is compelling partly because as you see her fall, you’re saying to yourself it’s her own damn fault, hence making the last line of the movie very impact. As for the four hour run-time it’s an entertaining movie that manages to hold one’s attention for the entire four hour run, and the entire four hours is used very wisely since it shows in detail the fall from grace of a once belle of the south.

Is this on my favorite list of movies now? No. Was I disappointed considering all the hype and ranking it gets? No. Any movie that successfully holds your interest for four hours, and doesn’t waste any time or feel like it could be shorter, is a damn good movie in my book. It’s a great story with beautiful visuals, the reason I’d rank it at only an eight is for two reasons. Some parts are far too “Hollywood” and hokey for my tastes and two for such a long movie with complex characters, it doesn’t have the depth I feel it should, I wish it had packed a little more into it. Other than that it’s a solid flick :up:
---
Modern Times
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Rating: 4/5

This is the second Chaplin film I've seen, the first being City Lights (1931). One of the most enduring traits of the film is that it's a silent film produce nearly a decade after sound had been introduced to the movies, Jazz Singer (1927), but the film itself uses a syncronized audio track. It's much akin to the Silly Syphonies cartoon short "Skeleton Dance" (1929), in which sound is used more for atmosphere and jokes, rather than to push the plot forward. There are a few actual parts where character speak but these are few and far in between.

First off the comedy still holds up after all these years though it's most likely lost that edge that all comedy has of breaking boundaries, though the coke scene is hilarious. Also being a child of this add ridden culture doesn't help when most shots the same and the editing style is slighty boring so it ends up being a very slow down pace. But other than the very slow pace of the film it's great.

The sets are awesome, the sets of the factory's equipment is very cool indeed. And some of the jokes of the culture at the time is very interesting to watch, and to boot the plot is good too. All in all, solid film and a must see :up:
---