AFI Lists - the new challenges - Page 5

Adam_S · 07-19-2003, 10:34 PM

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner -

Movies list
Passions list
Stars list - Sidney Pottier
OAR DVD - home theater

This movie just flew by. There are so many good things about it that it'd be hard to list them all. The performances were positively strataspheric Spencer Tracy, the Katherines, and especially Sidney Pottier and the marvelous actress playing his mother all did outstanding jobs (as did the other father as well). The direction was beautifully done restrained and artistic so that the method the camera captured the story served that story instead of serving the camera. The cinematography was not eye popping colors or exotically designed but a unfiltered portrait of life that found it's own moments to shine in just playing to the characters and story. The script was positively perfect. I have a few slight reservations on the film, but they are only minor quibbles. I'm glad this film IS on the list though (the 100 movies) because I think it would be easy to dismiss over flashier favorites. I think it belongs some where in the forties or fifties, but that it is on the list is fantastic in it's own right.

I look forward with great joy to watching the other Pottier films on the stars list, as shockingly enough, I"ve not seen any of those until now.

Adam

Holadem · 07-19-2003, 11:24 PM

Funny story about Hepburn, I went into the movie thinking that the daughter was Hepburn (I knew she starred in this movie, I naturally thought she had a main rather than a supporting role). Additionally, I had no way of knowing that the mother, who visibly wasn't getting any younger, would still be alive until 2 weeks ago.

As the movie went on, I found the young lady utterly forgettable, and started to wonder what the big deal was, while I was mesmerised by the mother's most charismatic (if a little too teary-eyes-happy) performance. It was therefore no surprise to me when I realised my error while checking on IMDB - my reaction: No freaking wonder!

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I received Birth of Nation today, and am bracing myself for a screening. Perhaps a Heineken six pack might make it go down easier...

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Holadem

george kaplan · 07-20-2003, 03:02 PM

Misery

Very good horror film. Not top tier (e.g., Psycho, Jaws), but much, much better than the vast majority of horror films.

Heroes/Villians - 11 left

Adam_S · 07-21-2003, 02:01 AM

The Deer Hunter -

½
Movies list
Thrills list
OAR DVD - home theater

It would be so easy to rate this four stars. I finally understood in the final minutes of the film why so much time was taken with the marraige in the beginning. However I still think that it took too much time, it works but it didn't.

This film is very seventies. It's daring work that expects an intelligent audience that doesn't need to be spoon fed every transition and cut in traditional means. The editing is very well done, but it drew attention to itself instead of really serving the story. Stylish over functional. And the many time jump edits are interesting, but make the pace of the opening sequences all the more frustrating. OVerall the pace of the film is pretty consistent, but I think that consistency could have been maintained with some more editing. But I also couldn't think of anything to cut, so this is a complicated movie for me to decide on. The way the story is being told at times annoys me, but I also like it, and I love the story they're telling.

Overall the film experience was for me quite uneven, and this would have been a solid three stars or even 2.5 had it not been for Walken's final scene and the final scene in the bar. Those are utter perfection and exhibit perfectly how an ending that is exactly right can change your entire perception and reception of the film without a big reveal, twist or surprise.

Meryl Streep was adequete, but not fantastic. DeNiro was fantastic, and Walken's performance blew him away, IMO. The supporting cast was excellent. The deer were horribly unrealistic, because anyone that sees two bucks like that on consecutive hunting trips is a liar.

Not to mention their method of hunting is so horrible and ridiculous I'm still amazed that they didn't all shoot each other on their first trip years and years ago, from sheer incompetance.

Adam

Lew Crippen · 07-21-2003, 10:59 AM

The Night of the Hunter, the only film directed by Charles Laughton has just about everything for those who like their villains bad and their heroes good. Robert Mitchum is well cast as the evil ‘Reverend Harry Powell’ (in fact it is alleged that he told Laughton it was he wouldn’t have to act to play the part) and Lillian Gish terrific as the old maid, taking homeless children in under her wing.

Don’t miss the terrific duet between the two stars as they sing late into the night: he is waiting for her guard to fall and she is in the rocking chair with her shotgun.

oignant and terrifying you can hear their basic character in their voices.

One more thing this film is misidentified in our (or at least my) villain listing as In the Heat of the Night.

Lew Crippen · 07-21-2003, 11:37 AM

Now that was when people knew how to be in love. They knew it. Time, distance, nothing could separate them because they knew. It was right. It was real.

A movie! That's your problem! You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.

And don’t we all know that this film of the 90s, Slepless in Seattle is a move of the 40s or 50s. So much so that we forgive the plot, forgive that we know how it will end and sit back and enjoy the film. And just in case we forget and don’t know our movie history, we are treated to several film clips of An Affair to Remember along the way to the inevitable meeting of the couple on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day.

Fun, but not so much so as the originals on which it is based.

Lew Crippen · 07-21-2003, 11:45 AM

Some may say that I’ve had a bad break; but today … today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

Gary Cooper repeats Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech at Yankee Stadium in The Pride of the Yankees, one that is so well known that it is hard to realize that they were uttered by a real person, not a movie actor.

The film has some fine moments and good enough acting, but if this were not based on the ballplayer’s life, it would today be forgotten.

george kaplan · 07-21-2003, 11:49 AM

Lew,

Not everyone may figure out you're talking about Sleepless in Seattle.

Adam_S · 07-21-2003, 11:59 AM

I fixed the villian listing Lew, I got it from the AFI website, so they must have had it wrong then. :p

Adam

Lew Crippen · 07-21-2003, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Not everyone may figure out you're talking about Sleepless in Seattle.

:b Thanks George—at least you were not confused. I edited my post to include the title.

Adam_S · 07-21-2003, 02:29 PM

Midnight Cowboy -

Movies list
Songs list - Everybody's Talkin'
OAR DVD - home theater

This film is well executed and very solid. Good performances all around, but not my type of film at all. Very avantgarde with it's use of montage and flashback structure, the creepiest thing in the film was the enema giving grandma. Very iconic and influential, it was interesting for me to see how many famous moments are from this film that have been quoted in other films. Amazed that this won the academy award, even more amazed this garnered an X when released, it's a perfect example of a film children have no business seeing but that doesn't have titalating gratuity of sex or violence that seems to necessitate an NC17 nowadays. Tis film could practically be PG13 today because most of the nudity is extremely brief flashes in montages, and would probably be clipped, I'm unsurprised, but disapointed the rating was downgraded to R, but that just shows how the ratings are no longer about content and context but simply about the number of frames of forbidden subject matter. What was competing against this film in 69?

Adam