AFI 100 Years Series Discussion & Challenges, vol. 2 - Page 6

Eric Emma · 06-26-2006, 10:59 AM

So far I've liked and really loved all the movies on the list but the network is coming in from netflix probably tommorrow. There are a few movies on the list that are kind of meh for me, the two that come to mind are American in Paris(Loved Singing in the Rain but this just felt like a rehash of that formula) and Rebel Without a Cause which is horribly dated and pales in comparison to Blackboard Jungle in my opinion.

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Eric Emma · 06-29-2006, 02:36 PM

The Third Man
Directed by Carol Reed
Rating 5/5

I'm a sucker for Noir, what can I say, one of my favorite movies is "The Big Sleep". I like this because it seems to break free of some the noir formula, one of my problems with the movie Chinatown was it felt just like every other noir movie. First off I love the look of the film, the very depressing look of the whole city, really adds to the atmosphere. It reminded me quite a bit of Fritz Lang's "M" (1933) in turns of the look and style of the film, there very similiar. I like this film also because of the great acting, Joseph Cotton is awesome as always, and the characters. Though the police chief is somewhat two dimensional, I like the complexity of Cotton's character along with the female. Over-all great film, and now one of my favorites :up:

Next 2 Afi Movies I have rented are Network and Amadeus.

Lew Crippen · 07-02-2006, 09:58 AM

Listen, when women go wrong, men go right after them

She Done Him Wrong introduced the world to Mae West’s world ([i]Why don’t you come up sometime and see me? I’m home every night.”) as she blatantly and wantonly uses men for her own purposes—both monetarily and sexually. The movie is filled from beginning to end with wonderful one-liners (almost all containing sexual references: “Have you ever seen a man who could make you happy?” “Sure, lots of times.”).

Cary Grant is the (one of many) boy toy and is mostly as uninteresting as the plot. Watch this one for an over the top Mae West, the dialogue and a couple of the most suggestive songs ever sung on the silver screen.

MatthewLouwrens · 07-02-2006, 08:16 PM

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Steve McQueen stars as the wealthy bored titular character that plans and executes a bank robbery, just for the thrill and fn of it. Faye Dunaway, as the insurance investigator, quickly realises that he was the man behind the caper, and so the two begin to dance around each other, falling for each other while competing to see who will ultimately win and catch who.

A mere trifle of a film, nothing important at al, but it's good fun. McQueen (unsurprisingly) oozes cool in his role, openly taking pleasure in the dance. Dunaway also gives a very good performance. The film does feel terribly dated at times - witness the frequent use of split screen, which sometimes does illuminate aspects, but often is just done just for the cool effect. It's not a film I'll remember in 20 years, but it was definitely enjoyable to watch.

As for the song, "The Windmills of Your Mind", which put the film in the AFI Lists? I didn't like it when I first heard it, but it has stayed with me over the past 24 hours, and the more I think about it, singing it silently in my head, the more I like it.

Shawn Frank · 07-20-2006, 01:52 PM

Well, I started and didn't post anything yet so, here it is. I will rarely make comments because I have so little time as it is to watch movies and thats my main goal. But, feel free to ask me what I thought of a movie. I'll be glad to then discuss it if somebody else would like to.

Cheers.

Movies: 4, last seen: Singin' In The Rain Laughs: 1, last seen: Singin' In The Rain Passions: 2, last seen: Singin' In The Rain Thrills: 1, last seen: High Noon Heroes & Villians: 1, last seen: High Noon(Will Kane) Songs: 5, last seen: Singin' In The Rain(3 songs) Quotes: 1, last seen: Citizen Kane(Rosebud) Scores: 1, last seen: High Noon Cheers: 1, last seen: High Noon Stars: 5, last seen: Singin' In The Rain(Gene Kelly)

MatthewLouwrens · 07-30-2006, 07:12 PM

What's Up, Doc?

Peter Bogdanovich paid tribute to the great screwball comedies with What's Up, Doc? And the end result it pretty damned enjoyable. Sure, it's insanely contrived, even more so than most screwball comedies (and the genre is known for its absurd contrivance), but a nice sparking wit and winning performance by Barbara Streisand (who I have never before liked), along with a well-measured pace that never really allows you time to breathe, made the film an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon. And I have to highlight Madeline Kahn, who really is wonderful here in her film debut. Well deserved inclusion on the Laughs list, although I'm not sure about its inclusion in the Passions list - there just wasn't quite that passionate spark that I felt was needed for that list. Still, a wonderful film, and well worth watching.

Eric Emma · 08-05-2006, 12:52 PM

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:
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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:
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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:
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Adam_S · 08-05-2006, 01:56 PM

Love all about eve, for most of the same reasons and I respect and dislike gone with the wind for the sam reasons, incredible production values (good for William Cameron Menzies) but really loath Scarlett. I need to watch Modern times again as I've had the DVD for years and haven't spun it up.

Adam

Eric Emma · 08-06-2006, 09:37 AM

I really like Chaplin because he's just that kind of loveable charactere who gets into all types of mischief, I think I like City Lights more out of the two films I've seen. As for Scarlett she is a dispicable character but I love how it shows when people are push to the limits things that could happen, I mean her father goes insane and Ashley becomes a self-depricating loser

2001: Space Odyssey
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Rating: 4/5

After watching "2001: A Space Odyssey", I was like "WTF", then I went online to find out what the monoliths were. Then I learned they were devices that helped man evolve and I was like, holy **** the entire movie make sense now! THAT WAS AWESOME! This movie is proclaimed by a lot of people as the most boring movie ever made, I disagree, once you get use to the episodic nature, and that it's working a much larger, more grander storyline, that doesn't involve one single character, it flows better. Don't get me wrong I'm too much a child of my time to be tottally engaged the entire time. Half my reviews read... "This was really slow" because I come from a generation of video games and movies that make a **** load of cuts so it harder to focus, but over-all I was entertained and engaged. But it's a fasinating movie and I think it'll end up being like Brazil and Citizen Kane for me, the first time I watched it I thought cool but some parts were boring, and the next time will be like "wham!". To be honest I can't go any deeper than that on this film, it's just one of those movies you either like or don't like

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Philadelphia Story
Directed by George Cukor
Rating: 3.5/5

What a let-down, you think with a cast like George Stewart, Kathrine Hepburn, and Cary Grant you'd be let in for a treat but a disjointed script and misogynistic 40s values, makes this clunker that deserves to stay in the past. The plot is as follows, "Philadelphia heiress Tracy Lord throws out her playboy husband C.K. Dexter Haven shortly after their marriage. Two years later, Tracy is about to marry respectable George Kittredge whilst Dexter has been working for "Spy" magazine. Dexter arrives at the Lord's mansion the day before the wedding with writer Mike Connor and photographer Liz Imbrie, determined to spoil things." I dig the plot-line actually and it's not like I don't like romance or love stories, so that's not the case here.

The problem lies in the script and it set-ups and pay-offs. For example a sub-plot is that Hepburn father was off having an affair with a dancer in New York so Hepburn had her mother throw him out, her mother lonely now. All right there's a lot going on in this subplot such as that Hepburn motivation for marrying someone respectable like Kitridge stems from issues she has with her father and not wanting to end up with someone like that, and of course we want to see her mother happy. How is this tied up? He just shows up, her mother takes him in with open arms, and apparently women should just accept it as nothing more than men having a mid-life crisis, and it leads to a condemnation of Kathrine Hepburn's character, WTF? That has got to be the worst pay-off ever, I can see how it could fly with audiences of the 50s since women were suppose to be home-makers and all that jazz but I just thought it was sickening.

Then it has a disjointed plot and I didn't like the balance of characters. For example Kitridge enters in the beginning as a nice guy, then disappears for the entire movie, returning as a bad guy, there was no subtle change. Then there's James Stewart's character, the entire movie builds to Kathrine Hepburn and him falling in love, but apparently James Stewart's news partner is in love with him and he's in love with her(so it says). You see the implication is something that would only work with a 40s audience, because it's as if just because they work together, they have to love each other, as if that woman was destine to just be with Stewart character, there was no build up to it so I didn't feel for this relationship. The Stewart and Hepburn relationship pay-off is that, apparently because of there relationship, she calls off her relationship with Kitridge, but then because he belongs to his partner, she goes with Cary Grant. The entire movie is set against 40s ideals.

But the move isn't without it's charms. Hell the entire cast is just charming, Cary Grant gives a really great performance that I absolutely loved, he played his role so great as a person in love but in the end just wanted to see Kathrine Hepburn happy. Stewart's usual innocent guy routine never fails. Hepburn playing the strong woman is great too. The movie in the end succedes because of strong performances/strong characters so with that I begrudgely give it a 7. Because under all of the 40s ideals, these are complex characters, and I love the web that is constructed binding all of them together, and how it undoes itself by the end.
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Watched Mutiny on the Bounty (1933) and Yankee Doodle Dandy also I'll post thoughts up in a minute...

Adam_S · 08-06-2006, 03:00 PM

If you ever get a chance to watch 2001 in 35mm or 70mm, take it, you'll like it even better and it really makes an enormous difference.

I always forget about the father in Philadelphia Story but it is a bit of a problem to modern sensibilities. However by that time I'm having so much fun with this drunken mess of a family that I don't care. there is a definite relationship between Mike and Liz, but it's a subtle piece of acting on both their parts, I think you'd pick it up better on a second viewing.

There's an interesting 1939 film, also directed by George Cukor, called the Women. there are no men in the film at all, and a big part of the plot revolves aroun adultury and divorce and the conflict between the earlier generation of women that's forgive and forget and the new generation of women that want him to get what he deserves (ie divorce him because he's a bastard). Naturally, there is a suggestion of reunification at the end but you find that in modern comedies about divorce as well. So in that context it seems more understandable that the mother would take her husband back because that's what people of her generation (and class/position) did, while Katherine Hepburn would be furious at the thought of her mother taking him back, because that's an ideal women of her generation were fighting against. They wanted the right and social acceptance to be able to divorce an unfaithful man/unfit husband.