AFI 100 Years Series Discussion & Challenges, vol. 2 - Page 8

Adam_S · 08-04-2007, 02:28 AM

Last Tango in Paris - 10 of 10
Passions list
OARDVD
08/03/07

more thoughts later, but for now:

Wow.

buttmunker · 08-04-2007, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam_S

Last Tango in Paris - 10 of 10
Passions list
OARDVD
08/03/07

more thoughts later, but for now:

Wow.

lol. I have yet to see this movie - I will soon - but I remember watching All In The Family, which had Archie and Edith returning home from the movies, and Mike or Gloria asks what they saw. They reply that they saw The Last Tango In Paris, and Archie said he felt like he just came from a pornographic picture.

Adam_S · 08-10-2007, 12:59 PM

Barefoot in the Park - 9 of 10
Passions List

Brilliant script and wonderful performances from Redford and Fonda. Charles Boyer does a lovely job of hamming it up. Stage but charming, overall this is a tremendous, wonderful, romantic and fabulous film. It should be rated much higher.

Cabaret - 6 of 10
Songs list - Cabaret
Musicals list
10th anniversary movie list

I don't get what all the fuss is about. The songs are terrific, the performances are good except for Michael York, who I could never believe is ever interested in women or Liza Minelli in the slightest bit. The movie sort of picks up after York says "So do I" to Liza Minelli when their lover skips out on them, but it's also sort of self important and calculated because of it's setting and time period when it's set and they include the story of the rich jewess and the gigolo with a heart of gold as a sideplot. And the emcee facepaint dude won an oscar? really? over al pacino for the godfather?

That one shot of Minelli and rich lover dancing where drunk York approaches them and they get pulled in together into an almost threeway kiss was fantastic, though.

In a lot of ways this strikes me as the Chicago of the 70s, lots of style but the substance is kinda over the top, sledgehammer to the head type of story. Definitely wouldn't include it on the 100 movies list.

Adam

george kaplan · 08-10-2007, 07:34 PM

I agree with you Adam about Barefoot in the Park.

I sort of agree with you on Cabaret (I think the Chicago analogy is a good one), but I still rate it considerably lower than you do.

Adam_S · 08-12-2007, 06:47 AM

The Goodbye Girl - 7 of 10
Passions list

Another Neil Simon script, and while this is a better movie, the dialogue isn't as sharp, it's not as stagey, it's much more naturalized but I liked the hyperreality of barefoot in the park more. Richard Dreyfuss is brilliant, but overall the film wasn't hugely compelling, but again, definitely worth it for Dreyfuss alone.

The American President - 7 of 10
Passions list

I have definitely seen this film before but it's been more than decade. The film really is charming and quite strong, and a highly enjoyable romance. A bit preachy in some respects, but it's good natured preachiness with tongue firmly in cheek.

Adam_S · 08-26-2007, 07:05 PM

Driving Miss Daisy - 9 of 10
Cheers list

For all that Morgan Freeman's portrayal is offensive it is also probably searingly accurate, and by the end of the film I had been completely won over by the film. I think it manages to say quite alot about racism and how its most insidious elements exist, and what sort of chilling effect it has even on decent people (Dan Akroyd's monologue about why he can't go to the MLK speech comes to mind) who are more racist than they realize by being complicit in the culture and environment that allows racist attitudes to continue. At the same time, Miss Daisy never really sheds that attitude completely, even though she intellectually wants to, she can't let go of it, at least not until dementia begins to take effect. And I think that is both accurate and very sad and actually says quite a lot towards the complexity of the characters here, that they much more shades of gray in their beliefs and their arcs than I believe is often given credit to in this film.

And somethign should be said for the very powerful ending scene, with morgan Freeman helping her eat some pie, a tremendous and powerful earned emotional moment that you almost don't notice just how superb the acting is in that scene.

Outstanding.

DVDManiac · 08-27-2007, 08:48 AM

I'm still working my way through these lists. Hopefully I can get them organized sometime soon.

Adam_S · 08-30-2007, 10:25 PM

Working Girl - 7 of 10
Passions list
Cheers list
Songs list - "let the river run"

To a certain extent, watching some of the first films about women in the white collar workforce are always a little horrifying. It's a little disconcerting to remember that the era of eighties Power Women was not so long ago, and by no means have these problems been eradicated. But at least now we have 90s Soccer Moms giving away to a new generation of Alpha Moms that really have found a much more healthy way to cause the system of employment to adapt to a diversified workforce.

Working Girl is a very entertaining film. Tess is a secretary, she's hauling ass to get up just one more rung on the career ladder. She does a lot of self improvement, erasing her Brooklyn accent with lessons and improving her speaking voice. She's also very practical, she wears tennis shoes to work, and switches to work shoes once there, why try to dash through manhattan in nice shoes, or heels, for that matter. She's got her degree, she's ambitious, innovative and a good thinker. There's just two things that bar her path. She's a woman, she's a secretary.

Tess gets fired from her job when she responds quite rationally to a filthy prank by some idiot coworkers. her next job is her first working for a woman, a woman a few days younger than herself. Katherine is a Dartmouth educated Power Woman, she gives Tess a few pointers and is willing to listen to her ideas. She's also willing to steal those ideas and deny Tess the credit.

But when Katherine breaks her leg on a ski trip, Tess discovers Katherine has been betraying her. In revenge she decides to essentially take over Katherine's life while she's laid up. She sets up and negotiates a major merger and acquisition. She's a complete novice, but she's got the panache to pull it off.

She meets up with Jack Trainer who will negotiate the hard parts of the deal, and she falls in love with him.

Sharp dialogue, excellent chemistry elevate this above a generic rom com. The performances are excellent as well. And you can definitely see how it is inspiring in how Melanie Griffith refuses to be beaten and thoroughly transforms herself. A lovely little gem of a movie.

---

the Way We Were - 5 of 10
Passions list
Songs list "The Way We Were"

The best part of this film is Striesand singing the title song, damn but she can sing better than just about anyone. The Way we Were also has superb chemistry between Streisand and Redford, and the first half of the film, when they're falling in love or making sparks of conflict fly in college are really outstanding. It's beautifully shot and very well constructed. And the first half is a genuinely powerful romance.

Then it fizzles out because the characters just have nothing to do without the plot helping them along. And it's hard to believe that these characters would stay together, Streisand is a needy, abrasive, wet blanket bitch of a woman in this film, and it's hard to see why an easy-going party on dude like Redford stays with her. The film is pretty clear in the end that he doesn't have many residual feelings towards either his daughter or his ex wife, and it didn't take him more than a second to have the affair, so it's hard to believe he ever really loved her at all, rather I think the only way his character works is if you assume that he merely liked (or loved) the idea of someone else loving him that much. And in some respects I think he loved the idea of rebelling against his 'Everything comes too easy' life and lifestyle, I think he wanted love to be hard, that he didn't deserve an equal relationship because his life had been too easy.But that's a little too complex for a vietnam movie whose screenwriter got mixed up with the dates, because the other big problem with the film was Striesand's character felt completely out of place in the 30s and 40s and even the 50s, she only felt real in the film's coda. This is a case of 'write what you know' gone bad, because the whole character just seems off from the beginning, a little too much Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court in her character.

Adam_S · 09-01-2007, 02:45 AM

The Sheik - 6 of 10
Passions list

A very good silent movie, with interesting characters and a fun story. I'd watch it again.

Adam_S · 09-03-2007, 01:09 AM

Beyond the Forest - 7 of 10
Quotes list

I honestly have no idea why the AFI thinks this is the movie that made the phrase 'what a dump' a famous line. It's completely in passing comment that you'd miss if you weren't listening for it. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which was what the special used for the entire segment on what a dump, other than a brief look at the two seconds of the clip itself) made the phrase famous.

Bette Davis is pretty good as an 'evil' woman who engineers her own destruction by trying to sleep her way up and out of the small Wisconsin town she's native to. And as the opening narration tells us, she's on trial for murder, most of the rest of the film will be about telling the story leading into that murder. Again we know she's 'evil' because the opening title card says, "This is a story about evil..." as it justifies the scandalous material of infidelity, divorce, prostitution, murder and abortion.

The dialogue is fairly sharp and the story is interesting, but the film never really grabs you. It's a sort of an 'of the moment' film from the late forties, but still mired in the production code era of filmmaking can't break free of the heavy constraints it places on making the story and characters as powerful as they could be. In a way it's a perfect movie for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf to reference, because Elizabeth Taylor's character is very much like Bette Davis, and that film went a long way to shattering the codes that held back the film of Beyond the Forest from greatness.

An interesting and well made curiosity but not a great film.

Finished the quotes list.