tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post111717476985093688..comments2024-03-24T13:26:57.317-07:00Comments on Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: CRUISING AND PERUSING THE TIME ALL-TIME 100Dennis Cozzaliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01954848938471883431noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-1118191293162454662005-06-07T17:41:00.000-07:002005-06-07T17:41:00.000-07:00I thought "Hotel Rwanda" was very powerful, a soli...I thought "Hotel Rwanda" was very powerful, a solid piece of work. Memorable characters and fine, detailed performances, especially by Don Cheadle. And his accent seems authentic, unlike the one he did in the "Oceans" movies--sheesh!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-1117935528083855782005-06-04T18:38:00.000-07:002005-06-04T18:38:00.000-07:00Loxjet: I apologize for my rant. I know how you fe...Loxjet: I apologize for my rant. I know how you feel-- I, too, am a sucker for films that play on my emotions and my sense of wounded justice, though sometimes the experience can just be too wrenching (I haven't seen <I>Casualties of War</I> in a long time for that very reason). I just didn't feel like <I>The Killing Fields</I> served its true story very well. I still haven't seen <I>Hotel Rwanda</I>, but I was hoping it would sidestep some of the problems you typically see in a movie like this. Since I like Don Cheadle a lot, I suppose I'll probably still see it. Apparently there's a very good documentary out right now called <I>Shake Hands with the Devil</I> which documents the real-life military officer, played by Nick Nolte in the movie, whose world is still haunted by the killing he couldn't help prevent in Rwanda, and how he's involved with the citizens of the country now. Might be an interesting one to see as a companion piece to <I> Hotel Rwanda</I>. By the way, I never made it to "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking." I gave up on Roger Waters with "The Final Cut," though I still have a real soft spot for "Animals," "Wish You Were Here" and, despite my better instincts, "The Wall." But <I>not</I> the movie...!Dennis Cozzaliohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01954848938471883431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-1117863457458409332005-06-03T22:37:00.000-07:002005-06-03T22:37:00.000-07:00But what about The Big Lebowski, Loxjet? Now, ther...But what about <I>The Big Lebowski</I>, Loxjet? Now, <I>there's</I> one we can agree on!Dennis Cozzaliohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01954848938471883431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-1117860641384584192005-06-03T21:50:00.000-07:002005-06-03T21:50:00.000-07:00Okay, Loxjet, time for some true confessions. I'd ...Okay, Loxjet, time for some true confessions. I'd put <I>The Spongebob Squarepants Movie</I> on my all-time 100 list, and certainly <I>A Hard Day's Night</I>, before <I>The Killing Fields</I>. True, the film is an account of a very important chapter in history, but if that were the only criterion for making a great, or even a good movie, then we'd all be sitting around in 2005 talking about <I>Gandhi</I> or either version of <I>The Alamo</I> (1960, 2004) as enduring classics. And while <I>The Killing Fields</I> is gorgeously shot, I think it actually pays a little too much attention to the lushly picturesque and ends up falling into the trap that so many other American and European movies about "exotic cultures" do-- the balance of the story shifts, none too subtly, from the harrowing journey of translator Dith Pran and his escape from Cambodia to a heavy-handed apologia for the actions of (white) journalist Sidney Schanberg and his overwhelming guilt at having left his friend behind to be swallowed up by the Khmer Rouge. The movie is based on Schanberg's memoirs, so of course its told largely from his point of view, and that's exactly why it got made, and on such a scale. But whereas in real life it's no secret that, by the accounts of those who knew and worked for him, that Schanberg was "difficult" and a bit of an egotist, the movie shows his arrogance but also constantly apologizes for it-- he's an arrogant bastard, but, damn it, he's also right-- or contextualizes it so as to soften the harsh blows of his behavior. By the end, when director Roland Joffe is encouraging us to anguish alongside Schanberg over Dith Pran's fate, the movie starts to resemble a historical drama redone as a therapy session, a big-budget pat on the back to make Sidney Schanberg feel better. Of course, we get the big moment when the two are reunited, and at that point the movie has irrevocably become mostly about Schanberg's reaction to that reunion and, of course, Dith Pran's desire to return to the comfort of his white friend/benefactor/master's arms. <I>The Killing Fields</I> is not without its emotionally effective moments, but they are generally of the bash-you-over-the-head variety favored by director Roland Joffe (the ones that are not are almost exclusively provided by Dr. Haing S. Ngor's extraordinarily direct and vivid portrayal of Dith Pran). The movie equates having endured its horrors with having had your sensibilities raised about those horrors, even when it presents them in the most shamelessly manipulative ways. I haven't seen <I>The Killing Fields</I> since it came out 20 years ago-- this reaction is the one that I had when I first saw it. I've never sought it out again, and I wouldn't avoid it if I had the chance to see it one more time. But, as grueling an experience as it is, I'd much rather revisit Brian de Palma's <I>Casualties of War</I>, an almost unbearably painful movie about the horrors of war that stays true to its sense of outrage without dressing up cardboard sentimentality in docudrama "realism."Dennis Cozzaliohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01954848938471883431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-1117827457427750132005-06-03T12:37:00.000-07:002005-06-03T12:37:00.000-07:00Thom McGregor, after reading your comments, and ju...Thom McGregor, after reading your comments, and just having been thinking what a grouch I am lately, and agreeing heartily that a fun time often bests an "important" film like "Goodfellas," I'm inspired to give "A Hard Day's Night" another chance. Thanks for a heartfelt and well-stated defense. (More concise than mine tend to be nowadays, too).<BR/>BruceAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-1117559443902252622005-05-31T10:10:00.000-07:002005-05-31T10:10:00.000-07:00I've always had trouble with these lists. I was d...I've always had trouble with these lists. I was driven mad back in the '80s & '90s by my subscription to Rolling Stone magazine, with their unending series of "100 Greatest Albums of All Time," "Greatest Singles of All Time," etc., etc., and I finally convinced them to let me cancel the subscription (they kept begging me to extend it, and how could I refuse their offer of minus 3 cents per issue, or whatever it came to). And as Woody Allen said about awards in "Annie Hall" (paraphrasing): "All they do is give awards in this town...Greatest Fascist Dictator: Adolph Hitler". Anyway, for Time magazine's list, I agree about "A Hard Day's Night" (we bought the Criterion DVD, and couldn't sit through it anymore, sadly), "Goodfellas"(Dennis, you gave the best description I've seen of how it falls apart as it drags on), and "Raging Bull." I thought it was great when I first saw it, too, but it just doesn't hold up for me on repeated viewings. As for my own choice to take off the list, I'm afraid I'd grab my usual whipping boy, "Pulp Fiction," and replace it with "Days of Heaven." Ha! Take that, mean-spirited, ironic world! (I almost chose "The Fly" (1986) to remove, but then I thought maybe I owed it another look, since it is now, incredibly, almost 20 years old and my tastes have changed).<BR/>Oh, and I want to see "The Killing Fields" at last, thanks to Loxjet.<BR/>The Old GrumbletonianAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-1117431295349186362005-05-29T22:34:00.000-07:002005-05-29T22:34:00.000-07:00A Hard Day's Night, eh? Well, I completely underst...<I>A Hard Day's Night</I>, eh? Well, I completely understand your reasoning, and as entertaining and as groundbreaking as that movie was, I too could probably think of several other movies I'd put on my own list before considering that one. <BR/><BR/>But as far as deleting a movie from <I>Time</I>'s list, my first instinct was to root out Wong Kar-wai's <I>Chungking Express</I>, which I thought was one of the most overrated movies of the '90s, a mere slip of a thing inflated to some sort of artistic gravitas by the ineffable new-wave cool of its director's style. <BR/><BR/>I considered <I>Star Wars</I> for a while, but I think enough has been said about that whole phenomenon, especially in the last few weeks, to make that particular fish not worth the effort of baiting a hook. It pretends to be nothing more than it is (unlike its bloated prequels, one and all), and for its lack of delusions of grandeur alone I decided to let it stand.<BR/><BR/>Martin Scorsese's <I>GoodFellas</I> is almost always mentioned as a great film, and while agree that it's perhaps 1/2 or 2/3 a great film, it suffers from having a cipher (Ray Liotta's Henry Hill) at its center, and when the movie becomes about his decline into cocaine-fueled paranoia, <I>GoodFellas</I> itself devolves into a rattled, shrill and uninteresting shell of its former self.<BR/><BR/>But for me, the movie that least deserves its reputation as an all-time classic, on the <I>Time</I> list anyway, has to be Scorsese's <I><B>Raging Bull</B></I>. It's interesting as an intellectual problem-- can a movie about a man who sees himself as a brutal animal itself find the essence of that brutality and transcribe it to the screen in a meaningful way? As one who was quite taken with the movie in 1980 and rapidly became less and less enthralled in the passing years, the movie's dissection of La Motta's misanthropy hasn't enough distance to become enlightening-- it's so busy immersing you in La Motta's stunted worldview-- his jealousies, his grunting, jabbing, violent impulses-- that it becomes monotonous, something I don't think it would have been had Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader not been so interested in identifying with the boxer's brutality and singlemindedness. (Schrader may have overidentified, too, with Travis Bickle, but the jolt of talent Scorsese brought to <I>Taxi Driver</I> lifted it out of its antihero's morose, navel-gazing psychosis to present a portrait of a city, and a man adrift in a city, and what happens when that man "just cannot take it anymore." <I>Raging Bull</I> has spectacular fight sequences, but Scorsese shows remarkably little interest in La Motta as a character, except in how the man's brute force became a signal cry from his soul. Instead, he buys whole-hog into the man's wounded vision of himself. Only LaMotta's brother Tommy, played by Joe Pesci, sparks the film with an appreciable energy, but the concept of his character too is limited by the director and writer's obsessive fascination with the grunting inarticulate power of these men, who, more than any others in the Scorsese filmography, come to resemble the kind of stereotypical slobbering, dead-eyed brutes that would get the Italian Anti-Defamation League in a lather.<BR/><BR/>I'm tempted to say I'd replace <I>Raging Bull</I> with <I>My Cousin Vinny</I>, but I won't, even though I'd rather see that comedy in a minute over <I>Raging Bull</I>. And I'd probably say <I>Nashville</I> 719 out of 720 minutes in a typical day. But this is the 720th minute, so I'll stand up for <I><B>Blow Out</B></I>, one of the many stylistic and emotional peaks in the career of satirist, provocateur and master filmmaker Brian DePalma. As Pauline Kael said when the movie came out, <I>Blow Out</I> seems like a kind of artistic summing up of his career up to that point. A sound man, frantically piecing together the circumstances of a political murder through his own sound recordings made at the scene, finds that his own overreaching paranoia may not be sufficient to encompass the magnitude of the situation in which he finds himself-- it was a story for which De Palma could expand the technique he'd mastered in <I>Carrie</I> and <I>Dressed to Kill</I> and enrich it with emotional gravitas as well as potent characters and political satire dark enough to make <I>The Parallax View</I> look positively rosy and flush with the promise of the future. That he would still have masterpieces like <I>Casualties of War</I> and <I>Femme Fatale</I> in him in the two decades following <I>Blow Out</I> is amazing in itself. But De Palma proves in <I>Blow Out</I> that the carping about his cribbing influences from Hitchcock (or, in this case, Antonioni) isn't an indicator of his creative bankruptcy as much as the refusal of his detractors to see past the obvious influences and recognize how the synthesis of those elements (a method not exactly unique to DePalma in film history, or to any artist in any medium) is joined with the sensibility that is uniquely his. Whether you believe that sensibility includes rampant misogyny and sadism is another question (I would disagree with both charges), but <I>Blow Out</I> remains, I think, important as the first major statement by a master filmmaker.<BR/><BR/>Now to the important question: what have you got against <I>The Spongebob Squarepants Movie</I>?Dennis Cozzaliohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01954848938471883431noreply@blogger.com