23. May 2008 by admin.

Okay, if you read any of my DVD reviews, you’ve got to wonder how well or badly my tastes might be aligned with yours.

The only way to get a better sense for that–other than by watching some of the movies I recommend and finding out whether

or not you like them–is to see a list of what I consider great films and see if any of them resonate as much with you.

So, here are my favorite films. If you haven’t seen some of them, they might be worth checking out.

I must stress that these are not in any kind of order.  I have seen thousands ((I don’t exaggerate) of movies in my life,

and I couldn’t begin to prioritize my favorite films.  It’s hard enough to list them at all.

1. "2001: A Space Odyssey".  Kubrick, one of my two favorite directors (the  other is Sidney Lumet), directed this.  It’s the

only film I’ve ever seen that truly and completely takes you on an alpha-omega journey.  Plus, if you’ve ever read "The Sentinel", the short

story by Arthur C. Clarke that ‘2001′ is based on (keep in mind, Clarke didn’t write the novel version of "2001: A Space Odyssey"

until after he and Kubrick had written the script for the movie), and you compare it to how the movie was ultimately visualized,

it’s a stunning evolution. 

The film has one of the best edits of all time–after the ape throws the bone up in the air and it comes down and changes into a

space shuttle taking people from Earth to an orbiting satellite, all set to the music of Strauss. There’s not much I can say about

2001 that Pauline Kael or others haven’t said much better.

2.  "Network".  This film, directed by Sidney Lumet, and with a script written by Paddy Chayefsky (one of the all-time great screenwriters), is brilliant from beginning to end.  Starring in the film are William Holden (his last and maybe best performance), Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway (certainly her best performance for which she won Best Actress), Beatrice Straight (who won an Oscar for a five minute performance), and Peter Finch (who won the Best Actor award posthumously) as the mad (and I don’t mean lost-his-temper mad) news anchor Howard Beale. 

To say that this movie presciently captured the advent of reality television, the eventual conversion of network news to entertainment a la Fox Broadcasting, the centralization of mass media into ownership by a handful of major conglomerates is to capture only part of the film’s mastery.

Here are few scenes that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I see them–they’re that good: 1) when William Holden tells his wife of 20+ years that he’s leaving her for his co-worker, Faye Dunaway–it looks and sounds like a real event and is shatteringly emotional; 2) when Holden breaks up with his girlfriend, Faye Dunaway–a great soliloquoy by Holden, which easily could have backfired if it hadn’t been so well acted, scripted and directed; 3) when network executives are sitting down with terrorists and CAA agents in a house in LA, negotiating rights for a reality TV series (keep in mind this was in 1976, fully 25 years or so before reality TV really hit), and having an argument over residuals; 4) Ned Beatty as the network executive explaining the new world order to the crazy anchorman [this is only an extract]:

There are no nations. There are no peoples.
There are no Russians. There are no Arabs.
There are no Third Worlds. There is no West.
There is only one holistic system of systems!
One vast and immense, interwoven, interacting, multi-variant, multinational dominion of dollars!

This is a great film.  Watch it if you haven’t seen it.

3.  "Pulp Fiction": This is a film that polarizes people like almost no other that I know of.  There are the people (like me) who love it and there are other people who can’t stand it.  I don’t know of anyone who has mild feelings about it.  Now, I’m not saying that the film is brilliant from beginning to end or that there aren’t parts that could be edited, because there are.  Nor am I saying that all the performances are great–Bruce Willis’ girlfriend in the film really annoys me.  However, the parts that are great more than make up for the parts that aren’t, and the out-of-order narrative really works and makes several points on a meta-level which are fairly profound.  This, like 2001, was a film that changed the rules for films that followed it, and yet has never been duplicated or exceeded in what it excelled at.

4. "Lion In Winter": Two of the best actors to ever live, Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole give two amazing performances in a great film.  Katherine as Eleanor of Acquitaine, and O’Toole as King Henry II, with a young Anthony Hopkins playing Henry’s son.  This isn’t a film with lots of action; but, if you want to see two actors at the top of their games with a script that does them justice, see this film.

5. "Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense": This film unlike any other or live performance I’ve seen made me sad that I would never be a major live performer on stage in front of lots of people, because it captured–for me–the joy of coming together with other people to be more than a group of individuals.  The film is considered one of the best concert films ever done.  It was directed by Jonathan Demme. 

The film captures the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense tour. It starts out with the lead singer and songwriter, David Byrne alone on stage with a boombox and guitar, and each song adds another performer and another piece of stage equipment, until, finally, the whole group is assembled for ‘Slippery People’.

There are some groups I’ve seen in concert films whose music I loved more than Talking Heads, but I’ve not seen a better capturing of a musical performance on film.

6. "Full Metal Jacket": Another Kubrick film. The first 2/3 of this film are especially amazing.  The first segment in basic training camp, is so good it’s hypnotic.  I have rarely seen more communicated by the camera to the viewer without dialog than is done here (2001 may be one example that accomplishes the feat better.  The marine sergeant in the film was an actual former marine sergeant in the military.  He went on to act in other films.

7. "Fight Club": A great script, perfect for the first 30 minutes especially.  A plot that never gets dull or ceases to surprise.  A great group of actors–certainly Brad Pitt’s and Helena Bonham Carter’s best roles, and one of Ed Norton’s best, not to mention a great supporting cast–Meatloaf, Jared Leto, etc.  Finally, a great direction job by David Fincher–much better than "Se7en".  What else needs to be said?

8.  "Pink Panther" films:  one of the greatest comedians to act in films, Peter Sellers, playing a character, Chief Inspector Jacques Closeau,  that he and Blake Edwards tailor made to show off Sellers’ talents.  There are some parts of these films that I cannot see (no matter how many times I’ve seen them) without laughing hard–"Do you have a license for your monkey", "Butler: That was a priceless Steinway!  Closeau: Not anymore.", the scene where Closeau has disguised himself as a sea captain and has an inflatable parrot on his shoulder that has sprung a leak; he has to keep inflating it by pumping his arm against his side–I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it, etc.

9.  "Paper Moon": The greatest film by Peter Bogdanovich filmed in beautiful black and white, and starring 3 great actors (at least great in this movie): Ryan O’Neal, who deserved a Best Actor award for this part, Tatum O’Neal, who deserved and received a best actress award for her role (she was the youngest actor ever to get an academy award), and Madeline Kahn, who also played memorable parts in such Mel Brooks films as "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein".  Incredible cinematography that convinced you you were in the Great Depression watching events as they unfolded.

10.  "Unforgiven": Maybe the best western that has ever been done.  People may argue and say that some of Sergio Leone’s films were better or John Huston’s films with John Wayne were better.  It’s a tough call, but I think that Eastwood really nailed not only the spirit of Westeerns but the whole American ethos with this film. 

    There’s one scene, where he talks about killing someone:  "When you kill a man, you rob him of everything that he has, and everything he’s ever gonna have."  That’s a great line and not just a great line: it’s a statement about America’s martial spirit.  The shot of William Munny, Eastwood’s character, as he says this line is searing and unforgettable. 

I think it’s the greatest film of its genre, and certainly the best film directed by Eastwood.

11. "Dr. Strangelove": I don’t have to say much about this one–another Kubrick film and one of the greatest political satires/comedies ever created.

I will do another list sometime soon to finish off my top films.  This should give you some idea of how to calibrate your preferences relative to mine, though.

Powered by Qumana

Posted in My all-time top films, Recommended DVDs | Print | 1 Comment »

22. May 2008 by admin.

Here are some TV shows I think are pretty good. If you get a chance, check them out–they should all be on DVD at this point. 1. "The IT crowd": This is a British series about people who work in the IT Department at a company in the UK. It’s pretty funny, and the three leads are all very good. One example of the show’s humor: the lead woman in the show is a smoker. She and the other smokers (who are all Russian) are increasingly exiled further and further from the building in which they work. This whole sequence about her smoking is presented as a bleak foreign film–pretty funny on a couple of levels. You can find it at Amazon or Netflix for rent.

2. "In Treatment": This show, which ran every week night for months on HBO, tracks 4 indivduals and one couple through a weekly therapy session.  There are several outstanding performances in the show, I think, including Gabriel Byrne as the psychotherapist, a young woman who plays a teenage gymnast who purposely caused herself to be in an auto accident months before Olympic tryouts, and Blair Underwood as a navy pilot who is having issues after having bombed people in Iraq.

Each episode is 30 minutes long and the episodes are generally very well written and directed.

3. "The Worst Week of My Life": Another British series, the first 6 episodes of which have to be some of the funniest TV I have seen in a long time. There are 3 6 episode seasons (each season is called a ’series’ in Britain), and the first details an about-to-be-married couple’s preparations for their wedding.  Everything that can go wrong does, but in ways that are so excruciatingly embarrassing for the couple and esp. the man, that you almost can’t bear to watch. 

Very funny.  The second and third series are also very funny (esp. compared to most American sit-coms), but don’t match the first series.  You definitely need to watch this.

4. "Carrier": A PBS series about life on the state-of-the-art Nimitz Aircraft Carrier, a floating city.  Though the naval personnel aren’t always that interesting individually, learning about what life is like onboard such an amazing ship is certainly interesting.

I think you can watch the whole series streaming off of the PBS website.

"The IT Crowd" and "Worst Week" are available on DVD for purchase and rental; "In Treatment" hasn’t yet been released on DVD but soon will be.

Posted in Recommended DVDs | Print | 1 Comment »

22. May 2008 by admin.

Here are some DVDs that were a waste of my time and probably yours, too:

1. "Lions for Lambs": A serious political film that purports to examine the issues underlying our current foreign policy with respect to Iraq.  Meryl Streep gives the worst performance I can remember in the last 10 years.  Robert Redford acts stilted and looks like he’s on drugs (perhaps it’s his botox injections or face-lift), and the dialog he gives himself (he’s also the director) sounds like it came out of a college freshman’s writing class.  To cap it off, Tom Cruise delivers the coup de grace in the acting department, playing a self-satisfied super-patriotic senator, who has come up with a new strategy for winning the war in Iraq.

I left the film thinking that it failed on all accounts: despite trying to be a film like (the much-better) "Syriana" or "Traffic", that asks penetrating questions about our place in the world and delivers performances that infuse these questions with poignancy, it wound up taking rote Q&A dialog and trying to elevate it to a higher plane than it , the script, deserved.

See "Syriana", "Traffic" or "Babel".

2. "Sleuth" (the 2007 remake): At first blush, this film, directed by Kenneth Branagh, starring Michael Caine–who was also in the original, but playing the other lead role–and Jude Law, seems like a ‘can’t-miss’ line-up.  If you thought that, you’d be wrong.  Caine does okay, but Law looks like he’s a couple of testosterone shots short of qualifying as male; I know women, including my wife, find Law to be irresistible, but here he seems like a real ponce.

The set design of Caine’s designer home is so bad, so distractingly awful,  that I spent most of the time, during the scenes set there, marvelling at how anybody could/would want to live in such a trainwreck of a contemporary super-upscale house.  It looks like it was designed by art-school grads who had suffered macular degeneration.

Finally, you walk away from the movie saying "I spent hours of my life on this?"

Watch the original with Olivier and Caine.

3. "Brothers Solomon": A ‘comedy’ (I put this in quotes because that’s what it claims to be, but doesn’t turn out that way) with two funny guys who manage not to be funny in this movie: Will Arnett (from "Blades of Glory", "30 Rock", etc.)  and Will Forte (from "Saturday Night Live") are brothers who want to find women to impregnate so they can give their comatose father a grandchild. Now you might blame me (probably rightly) for watching this piece of  crap film in the first place and say, "Joe, it doesn’t even SOUND like a good film in the first place, and I haven’t even watched it yet".  To this I would say, "it had good comedians including the two I mentioned and Jenna Fischer from ‘The Office’ tv series, and was directed by a writer for ‘The Simpsons’"–surely it could have had some decent scenes and laughs?"

Anyway, it’s bad–real bad. We’ve already spent too much time writing about it and reading about it.

4. "Suburban Girl": This would be a watchable movie with someone other than Sarah Michelle Gellar (she played Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the TV series).  However, she is not a good actress in my opinion and, to top it off, she had a bad nose job, which is almost as big a distraction as the set design in Michael Caine’s house in "Sleuth" (see above review of "Sleuth").  Alec Baldwin, who’s never bad in anything–he could make a cough syrup commercial compelling–does all he can here, but it’s not enough to save the picture from Gellar.

Rejoice in the time I’m saving you and see some good movies…

Powered by Qumana

Posted in Recommended DVDs | Print | 1 Comment »

22. May 2008 by admin.

Here are some more DVDs I recommend:

1. "Atonement": Many of you have probably already seen this film either in theaters or on DVD.  If you haven’t, you should.  The main reason is the cinematography.  The director of photography on this film, Seamus McGarvey, does an outstanding job. 

The acting is solid, esp. two of the lesser roles in the film, Romola Garai, who plays the grown-up sister of Keira Knightley’s role, and Lynn Redgrave, who plays an even older version of Keira Knightley’s sister.  The editing and script could be better. 

As a big fan of David Lean’s cinematographer, Freddie Young, I have to say that McGarvey comes close to matching the heights achieved by Young in Lawrence of Arabia.  Simply stunning film visually.

2. "Jesus Camp": A documentary about a camp for fundamentalist Christian children.  The woman who runs the camp likens her philosophy to that of Muslims who train children to become suicide bombers;  her viewpoint is, ‘if Muslims can be inspired to be that zealous in their beliefs, why shouldn’t we inspire equal zealousness in our children’?

Very interesting view on what some kids do on their Summer Vacations.

3.  "Nine Queens": An Argentinian film, since re-made (not nearly as well-done) in the U.S., that is like a David Mamet heist-within-a-heist story.  Very well-done and entertaining as long as you don’t mind sub-titles.

4. "DiG": A documentary chronicling two bands, "The Dandy Warhols" and "The Brian Jonestown Massacre" from their initiation to one of the band’s ultimate success and the other’s plunge into obscurity.  The leaders of both bands are considered by many as the ‘ next big things’ in popular music. The story of how they fulfill or don’t fulfill these expectations over 7 years was very interesting, at least to me.  I am now a big fan of the Dandy Warhols, and became introduced to them through this documentary.

That’s all for now

Powered by Qumana

Posted in Recommended DVDs | Print | 1 Comment »

21. May 2008 by admin.

Here are some more movie recommendations:

1. “My kid could paint that”: A real-life whodunnit involving a very young child prodigy abstract painter. The central question of the documentary is this: did the young girl actually paint the paintings she is getting acclaim for, or did her father paint them?

2. “Remember that Night Live at the Royal Albert Hall” (David Gilmour live): One of my favorite all-time musicians, David Gilmour, gives an amazing performance in this DVD chronicling his 2006 world tour. He is accompanied by Ray Manzarek from Roxy Music, Richard Wright (keyboardist from Pink Floyd), and joined for some songs by Crosby & Nash and by David Bowie.

His solo work is pretty good, but the highlights are his versions of classic Pink Floyd tunes. He performs my favorite song, “Echoes”, live for the first time in 20 years and it is stunning. When you see/hear him perform it, you’ll understand what an amazing accomplishment it is.

The camera work is great as is the audio mastering. If you can see it in Blu-ray, you should.

3. “Angel-A”: This film really worked for me. It’s a love story between an angel, played by former Supermodel Rie Rasmussen, and a man who is about to kill himself. It is directed by Luc Besson, the man behind “La Femme Nikita”, “Fifth Element” and “Leon the Professional”. You wouldn’t think that the guy who did those films could also pull off an interesting love story, but there you have it.

It is shot beautifully by Thierry Arbogast (the same cinematographer who did “Fifth Element”) in black and white. Not only is it a romantic fantasy but also an ode to Paris.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Rie Rasmussen’s performance. When I first saw her onscreen, I had no expectation that she would do as good a job acting as she did. Compare her performance here to any romantic comedy performance by Scarlett Johanssen, and see who you think comes out on top.

4. “The Hoax”: A very entertaining film with Richard Gere, based on a true story, about a reporter who faked a series of interviews with Howard Hughes. Well worth seeing.

5. “The Future We Will Create: The World inside of TED”: This is a documentary about the TED conference which takes place every year in Monterey. Aside from making me sick with envy of the people who get invited to attend this conference, the film was a very compelling insight into a diverse set of thinkers/artists/scientists. So much so, that I went to the TED site to download the full lectures that the film draws upon, so that I could watch them in their entirety. Very interesting and entertaining film because of the subject matter and not because of the talent of the film-makers per se.

You can access all of the TED lectures, many more than are covered in the DVD documentary, at www.TED.com. It’s worth checking out in its own right.

Posted in Recommended DVDs | Print | 1 Comment »

20. May 2008 by admin.

Another highly recommended DVD–

“The End of Suburbia”. This is a documentary

about how our oil-dependent lifestyles are about to change

for obvious reasons. It talks about the evolution of American

society based on the assumption that oil would always be plentiful

and fairly inexpensive, including the heavy dependence of agriculture

on petroleum-based products.

I think you will find this documentary worth your time.

Posted in Recommended DVDs | Print | 1 Comment »

19. May 2008 by admin.

Periodically, I will list movies here that I see on DVD and recommend that readers watch. I will post a list of my favorite films so you can calibrate my recommendations with your own preferences–or not.

Here’s my first list of recommendations:

1. “Diving Bell and the Butterfly”. Great cinematography–when I first heard about this movie’s cinematography, I thought ‘how exciting can it be to visualize a story about a man who can only move one eyelid?’ However, after watching Schnabel’s movie, I have to say that the cinematography was truly outstanding. The narrative was also well-written and well-spoken.

The only I had to the movie, from a casting perspective, was that all the actresses attending to the paralyzed man ‘Jean-Do’, the protagonist of the film, were attractive. My experience in health care institutions is that you’re lucky if you have even one good-looking health care person, much less three.

2. “Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride”: A documentary about Hunter S. Thompson. Primarily a series of reminiscences and observances about Thompson as a person and ‘Gonzo’ journalist. Reminiscences and observations about Thompson from Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Tom Wolfe and–very oddly, Bill Buckley. William F. Buckley was one of the last people I would have thought to interview about Thompson, but there you have it.

3. “The Business of Being Born”: Another documentary, this one about how we have been conditioned to believe that all women have to give birth in hospitals, attended to by doctors. In the U.S., it turns out, only 1% of births occur outside hospitals, vs. >70% in many Western countries. The kicker is that the U.S. has a higher rate of infant mortality and complications WITH universal hospital deliveries, than other countries do with close-to-universal midwife-assisted births.

4. “Charlie Wilson’s War”: This was another well-done Mike Nichols film, based on a true story about a Texas congressman, Charlie Wilson, who drove Congress to fund a covert war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Tom Hanks & Philip Seymour Hoffman, especially, did very good jobs. The script was very good and surprisingly (at least for me) funny. Editing was also very good–the film moved along, but at the same time, didn’t feel too rushed.

If you want to see a stunningly good documentary which touches on this subject, check out “The Power of Nightmares”. This documentary, one of the best I’ve ever seen, details the evolution of the Neo-Conservatives and Al-Qaeda, and traces both back to a common view of American societal immorality in the 1940s.

5. “Wristcutters: A Love Story”: A small film that I didn’t expect to like as much as I did. Great premise for a love story: a young man, Zia, played by the actor Patrick Fugit, from “Almost Famous”, kills himself and goes to a place that’s only, as he puts it, slightly worse than Earth in life. It’s kind of like purgatory, and is inhabited only by people who kill themselves. Zia meets a woman, played by the actress Shannon Sossamon, who believes she is there mistakenly, and falls in love with her, while looking for his girlfriend from his past life (she killed herself out of sorrow as a result of him killing himself). The film has a cameo from Tom Waits, among others. Well-acted and a good script, though a little slow in places.

That’s all for now.

Posted in Recommended DVDs | Print | 1 Comment »