So far she’s shown little interest in any of the fine video content we’ve exposed her to, from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Mildred Pierce to Archer to The Amazing Race. Ah well. On the good side, she seems to enjoy all the music we’ve played, so I’m sure we’ll get there on the visual content when she has the ability to, like, see it.

Here are a few pictures taken throughout the past six weeks. Most were taken by me or Jonathan on our phones or with our Canon Rebel; the hospital ones were taken by our friend and professional photographer Sarah.

Note that this post is the 1000th published post on The Frame. I think that’s appropriate. :)

And now, of course, most of March is gone, taken up by a newborn. :)

What I Loved

Blancanieves

I won’t actually write very much about this one, since I saw it at a press screening and I’ll be posting a full review on Row Three soon, time willing. For now I’ll just say that The Artist (a film I quite enjoyed) wishes it were as excellent an homage to silent cinema as this version of Snow White (set in 1920s Spain with Snow White as a bullfighter) is. I loved every second of its completely unironic take on European cinema of the ’20s.

2012 Spain. Director: Pablo Berger. Starring: Maribel Verdú, Ángela Molina, Macarena García, Inma Cuesta, Pere Ponce.
Seen January 8 at a press screening.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey

Yes, this is a 15-hour documentary originally shown in British TV, but I’m treating it as a single long film, because that’s frankly how it plays if you’re able to marathon it (like you can now on Netflix Instant, so….go do that), and that’s how Mark Cousins prefers to think of it. But whatever format you think it falls into, it’s an incredible accomplishment. Cousins illuminates the history of film from a much more global perspective than we’re used to seeing in the United States anyway – he doesn’t shortchange Hollywood, but he’s quick to point out innovation in other countries all along the way, and show how new techniques spread and echoed around the world. Some have complained about Cousins’ idiosyncratic narration style; his Scottish accent and diction tends to make most of his statements sound like questions and it definitely takes some getting used to, but I think it works, because it also emphasizes how personal an approach to film history this is – it’s comprehensive and informative, but it’s always filtered through Cousins’ own critical perspective, which is a good thing, I think. It keeps 15 hours of film history from ever getting dry or caught up in attempts at objectivity. He also does a great job of connecting films across the globe and across time; even though he goes largely in chronological order, he often takes detours to show how certain elements, whether technical or thematic, developed over time. Part history, part criticism, and all fascinating.

2011 UK. Director: Mark Cousins. Starring: Mark Cousins.
Seen December 26-January 14 on Netflix Instant.

The Muppet Movie

I’ve come at the Muppets almost solely as an adult – I watched Sesame Street some as a kid, but not a lot, and I never saw the original Muppets show. I didn’t see any of the Muppet movies until I was in my twenties, with A Muppet Christmas Carol (which is now one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time). But that hasn’t lessened any of my enjoyment as I start introducing myself to more Muppet stuff – I’m pretty convinced it works just as well for adults as for kids, if not better. The first Muppet Movie is silly as all get-out, but in a very absurdist, wonderful way that’s like the G-rated version of Monty Python. In other words, exactly up my alley. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this, from the “holy crap” cameos to Miss Piggy’s outrageous crush on Kermit to the fourth-wall breaking to the somewhat saccharine but irresistible songs. Can’t wait to see the rest of it. Dear Netflix: Please to put the show on Instant.

1979 USA. Director: James Frawley. Starring: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Dave Goelz, Charles Durning.
Seen January 17 on Netflix Instant.

Rewatches

Fargo (1996; rewatched February 6) – This is the top film in mine and Jonathan’s mutual Flickchart list (the site can calculate weighted favorites based on multiple users individual rankings), and it was about time we revisited it. Still awesome.
The Court Jester (1956; rewatched February 19) – A friend alerted me to the fact that this is available on Amazon Prime Instant, and I jumped at the chance to rewatch it – one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen, and the rewatch didn’t change that opinion.
Clue (1985; rewatched February 19) – This was total comfort food; sometimes you just need a little Clue.
The Untouchables (1987; rewatched January 12) – Watching Gangster Squad put me in mind of The Untouchables, and Jon had never seen it, so we pulled it out. Yeah, Gangster Squad stole whole swaths of stuff from this movie, which remains much much better overall. Still my go-to when people start bagging on Brian DePalma. At least he made this.

What I Liked

Wild Strawberries

Watched for my 2013 Blind Spots list. Sort of. I watched it, then decided to make a Blind Spots list after all this year, then decided to stack the deck by including this one. Still, as one of the highest-rated Bergman films I haven’t seen, it probably should’ve been on there anyway. Full post here.

1957 Sweden. Director: Ingmar Bergman. Starring: Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand, Jullan Kindahl, Gunnar Sjöberg, Max von Sydow.
Seen January 21 on HuluPlus.

The Naked City

Faux-documentary-style detective film, going through a homicide investigation in New York City from start to finish. The narrator treats the town almost as a character, and I think this was one of the earliest films to have exteriors shot on location, with areas like the Brooklyn Bridge getting some iconic attention. The film builds its narrative according to fiction rules, but includes a lot of vignette details that give it character (which is good, since very few of the actual characters are fleshed out much), and does a great job of emphasizing how much of police work is the drudgery of walking around seeking leads from, say, every jeweler or pawn shop in town until finally hitting on something. Obviously, much of that can be expedited somewhat now, but I liked the way the film focused on those things, making breakthroughs seem momentous and saving the thrilling excitement we expect from cop stories for the very end. Like I said, not strong on characterization, but enough to go on, and the cops are supposed to be everymen in a way – as the narrator intones, the naked city has 8 million stories and this is just one of them.

1948 USA. Director: Jules Dassin. Starring: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Frank Conroy.
Seen February 27 on HuluPlus.

Gangster Squad

It’s overly glossy and fairly rote (and feels like it’s stealing from both The Untouchables and the video game L.A. Noire), but I still enjoyed watching 1940s LA cops try to take down interloping gangster Mickey Cohen. I’m actually glad it got delayed – I think it plays much better as a January genre release than it would’ve as a September release. Because really, it’s a fun shoot-em-up and not much more, and that’s fine. Pretty people, fancy clothes, blazing guns, and a bravura performance from Sean Penn as Cohen. Really, the film is worth watching to see him going for broke, playing this over-the-top character all the way to eleven, chewing all the scenery as he goes. It’s fun times.

2013 USA. Director: Ruben Fleischer. Starring: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Sean Penn.
Seen January 12 at The Rave.

Bones Brigade: An Autobiography

I know pretty much nothing about skateboarding, other than I would probably kill myself if I tried it, considering I suck at it even in Tony Hawk games. Okay, I’ve played Tony Hawk games, so I know some of the terminology and the name Tony Hawk. Hawk figures fairly prominently in this film, basically a memoir of the skating team put together by Stacy Peralta (who also directs this film) in the 1980s, which included a young Hawk along with lots of other skaters that I’m sure I would’ve known if I knew anything about it. Anyway, the film is quite enjoyable, capturing the exhilaration these kids got (and still get, frankly) out of skating, and the way the Bones Brigade became the social circle that eluded them in regular school life. The fact that all the guys have different styles and approaches as well as different approaches to their outsider status keeps it interesting, and Peralta has gathered a great lot of archival footage from competitions and meets at the time as well as the from the skate videos his company put together starring the Bones Brigade. The one thing I might’ve liked more of would be footage of skaters prior to the Bones Brigade’s formation – they talked a lot about the moves that Bones Brigade members created which are standard now, like the ollie and the 520 McTwist, and had interview clips with older skaters talking about how things changed when the Bones Brigade came along, but for someone like me who doesn’t know hardly anything about the sport, a bit more visual context of what it was like before the Bones Brigade would’ve helped me appreciate their innovations and contributions more.

2012 USA. Director: Stacy Peralta. Starring: Tony Alva, Steve Caballero, Shepard Fairey, Tommy Guerrero, Ben Harper, Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, Mike McGill, Lance Mountain, Rodney Mullen, Stacy Peralta, George Powell.
Seen January 7 on Netflix Instant.

Indie Game: The Movie

Interesting doc following the struggles of the developers of indie games Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Fez. It’s a lot of talking head stuff, but with a lot of insight into both the development process for an indie game, and the different personalities involved. It’s great to know that all three of these games were successful and well-received (Fez was not out yet by the time the movie was finished, but is now and is excellent); on the other hand, one wonders how many dozens of developers go through this and end up with a game that languishes on Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network and nobody ever hears about.

2012 USA. Director: Lisanne Pajot, James Swirsky. Starring: Jonathan Blow, Phil Fish,, Edmund McMillen, Tommy Refenes.
Seen January 4 on Netflix Instant.

Samsara

A dialogue-free documentary showing nature and culture from around the world – kind of like Koyaanisqatsi except less polemical (and though the score is lovely, it’s hardly Philip Glass’s unforgettable Qatsi score). I’m not sure what, if anything, I was really supposed to take away from this film or its juxtapositions, but I did get lost in watching it purely thanks to some of the most gorgeous cinematography I’ve seen in any film. For that alone, I would’ve liked to have seen it on the big screen, but it was still pretty breathtaking at home.

2012 USA. Director: Ron Fricke.
Seen January 28 on Netflix DVD.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

I don’t know what critics were expecting from this film to pan it the way most of them seemed to. It’s a January genre release, with a gleefully splattery red-band trailer about a grown-up Hansel and Gretel fighting evil witches. I went in expecting some gory over-the-top fun, and I wasn’t disappointed – in fact, I found it a good bit funnier than I expected, thanks to little touches like a jaded Hansel pulling an eager kid in front of him to avoid the splatter as a cursed messenger explodes all over everything. Renner is obviously capable of much more than this role asks for, but he and everyone else embrace the low-hanging genre fun here with exactly the lack of seriousness/care that it needs. Meanwhile, Janssen throws herself into the evil shapeshifting witch role wholeheartedly, and was great fun to watch. Plus I was pleased to note that most of the effects were done with makeup and prosthetics, a rare thing in today’s CGI-driven world, and I think that tactility worked really well. The final collection of witches was great to watch, just to see what kind of crazy designs would show up. I was entertained. I’m cool with that.

2013 USA. Director: Tommy Wirkola. Starring: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare.
Seen January 26 at the Rave.

The Queen of Versailles

This doc takes as its subject one of the richest families in the US (owner of the largest time-share company in the world, the Westgate properties) and their plans to build the largest home in the country – plans halted by the bottom dropping out of the economy, leaving them unable to continue their business model, which was highly dependent on mortgages. It’s interesting because the family has to get used to having something less than all the money in the world, which is still a gazillion times more money than most people have – this is a first-world problem movie to the nth degree – and yet somehow you both feel kinda bad for them and not at the same time. It’s all just a matter of scale, isn’t it? But on the other hand, both husband and wife came from much more humble backgrounds and it’s frustrating to watch them unable to figure out how to return to a more modest standard of living. It’s the American Dream gone sour, and yet, the interviews with their Filipino nannies and the shots of empty call centers previously filled with Westgate employees (now laid off) provide a stark contrast. So yeah, I’ll stick with “interesting” yet again, because I did rather enjoy the conflicting reactions I had to this family and their problems, and yet the documentary as a whole didn’t feel particularly focused or anything, so I kind of felt unsatisfied at the conclusion.

2012 USA. Director: Lauren Greenfield. Starring: Jackie Siegel, David Siegel.
Seen January 20 on Netflix Instant.

Rewatches

The Secret of NIMH (1982; rewatched February 18) – I remember seeing this as a kid, but had forgotten most of it. It’s really quite scary, huh? I like that. :) The animal rights message is a bit heavy-handed, but by and large, a nice alternative to ’80s Disney.

There are so many Ingmar Bergman films I haven’t seen (and most all of them are considered essentials by cinephiles) that there will likely be a Bergman film on every one of my Blindspot lists for years to come. Last year it was The Virgin Spring; this year I opted for Wild Strawberries, which generally comes near the top of lists of greatest Bergman films but I’ve been avoiding because, really, “after living a life marked by coldness, an aging professor is forced to confront the emptiness of his existence” doesn’t sound like that interesting or compelling a story (that’s the IMDb description). But, of course, Bergman’s genius is in how he tells his stories and the depth of humanity he instills in them more than the plot details themselves.

The film is much more subtle than the description above suggests, with the professor’s coldness mostly demonstrated by his terse treatment of his long-time housekeeper and somewhat estranged daughter-in-law (and son, by extension). He’s bitter and unsympathetic without being necessarily outright cruel. The night before he’s to head off to accept an honorary degree, he has a surreal dream culminating in a vision of his own death, which sets him on a journey of memory the following day as he detours by places of childhood and youthful significance and interacts with the young people he finds there now.

Seeing one’s own death as an impetus for self-reflection might be a common trope, but Bergman keeps it feeling fresh both by the evocative strangeness of the dream (a precursor, perhaps, to the nightmarish weirdness of Persona) and the rather opaque interactions that follow. It’s clear that the resurrected memories of lost loves and family reunions, as well as his conversations with his daughter-in-law and the trio of young people affect the professor greatly, but it’s far from the pat lesson-learning that you’d likely find in an American film.

The professor is played by Swedish director Victor Sjostrom, best known for silent films like The Wind and The Phantom Carriage, and he’s pretty great, surrounded by Bergman stock figures like Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, and Ingrid Thulin. Some of them are in pretty small parts (like von Sydow), but they leave their mark on the film nonetheless. That plus the surprisingly surreal bits elevated the film far beyond what I expected. It didn’t quite reach the top of my Bergman list, which is still occupied by Persona and The Virgin Spring, but I’m definitely pleased to cross it off my Blind Spot list.

Anyway, I figured I could post it here as well, now that it’s had time to run both the other places for a bit. I should stress that this is hardly an objective list, were such a thing even possible – it’s just what I liked the best and felt most desirous to share out of my first-time watches this year, excluding 2012 releases.

What older films did you love the best in 2012?

GIRL SHY (1924)
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE (1926)
WHY WORRY (1923)

I’d seen Harold Lloyd’s best-known film Safety Last before, but I really consider 2012 my crash course in his comedy, with a trio of films I saw in close succession and really convinced me for sure that he belongs in the silent comedian pantheon. Girl Shy is, in fact, my favorite new-to-me film I’ve seen all year, and thanks to its sweet romance and breathtaking final chase scene, I actually liked it more than I do Safety Last. For Heaven’s Sake, with Lloyd as a millionaire bringing in street thugs and miscreants to fill up an inner-city mission’s pews to impress the preacher’s lovely daughter, is a ton of fun, too, full of insane gags and stunts. I liked Why Worry, with Lloyd as a hypochondriac who gets mixed up in the Mexican Civil War, the least of the three, but it’s still a solid film and a whole lot of fun. With these three under my belt, chalk me up a definite Lloyd fan.

THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960)

Sometimes Ingmar Bergman films are a bit tough for me to get into – I can appreciate their austere humanism, but they often feel remote and uninvolving to me. The Virgin Spring grabbed me immediately and didn’t let me go until I collapsed at the end breathless, like the grieving father in the story. A young girl is violated by a group of men who later unknowingly seek shelter in her father’s home, whereupon he finds out what happened and exacts retribution. But nothing is so simple in Bergman’s world, and this is a deeply thoughtful and starkly beautiful film, questioning a God who allows tragedy to happen and yet also accepting that personal vengeance may not be the best way either.

THE DRIVER (1978)

Clearly a prototype for 2011′s Drive (a recent favorite of mine), The Driver stars Ryan O’Neal as a laconic getaway driver who’s being hunted by an arrogant cop (Bruce Dern) who wants to collar him simply because he’s never been caught. In between them are a gambling woman who may be playing both sides and a bunch of thugs who are no match for the Driver. It’s a mystery to me why this film isn’t always mentioned in the same breath with great car chase movies like Bullitt and The French Connection, because the chases here are every bit as good. Mix in the Le Samourai-esque lead character, and this film was made for me.

SOLARIS (1972)

First of all, it took me several days to get through this meditative sci-fi film musing on love and loss. I’m not proud of that, but it can certainly be blamed on my pregnancy-related tiredness at the time rather than the film itself, although the film itself is definitely on the slow side. I actually liked the pacing and though it worked well for the kind of heady, evocative sci-fi this is. That said, because of the viewing conditions, I had difficulty holding it all in my head at once or feeling like I had a solid grasp of it by the end. I’m already looking forward to a rewatch, upon which time I think I will appreciate it even more.

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928)

Even Top Five placement is probably not high enough for this film, but I’m being honest, and that’s where it is at least on first viewing. The movie is an intriguing combination of austerity (sparse set design) and raw emotion (Marie Falconetti’s extraordinary face, usually seen in close-ups). I’ve seen a couple of other Dreyer films, and I generally find them a bit difficult to relate to stylistically, and I have to say I felt kind of the same tension here. I do think some rewatches will move it much higher on my list, though – it feels like the kind of film I will grow into. Also, the print on HuluPlus does not have a music track with it, and I don’t think that helped my experience.

THE LOVE TRAP (1929)

I loved this film more than it probably deserves, but sometimes we can’t help what we love. A silent-talkie transitional film directed by William Wyler, this one starts off totally silent as we meet showgirl Laura LaPlante, watch her struggle after being fired from the chorus line, and end up falling for a rich guy who marries her much to the disdain of his family. Then it shifts to fully talking about two-thirds the way through, and I’m not going to pretend there aren’t some awkward bits as it sorts itself out, but by the end, LaPlante’s bubbly mischievousness wins the day and the film ends up being quite a charmer.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

This one’s been on my to-watch list for quite a while, and it ended up being much tougher to watch than I expected. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are downright vicious, as the source play calls for, and there were times that I felt Taylor went too grandiose for what the scene required. But there was always Burton to bring it back down again, and it’s really he that grounds the film. Time spent away from the film, remembering scenes and bits of dialogue and images of Haskell Wexler’s harsh yet often beautiful cinematography, has warmed me up to it considerably, hence its high placement on my favorites of the year list.

PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (1930)

As much a time capsule as a film, People on Sunday captures that fleeting moment in Germany’s history right at the end of the Weimar Republic, just before the Nazi party came to power. It is on the cusp of fiction and documentary, with real people with ordinary jobs essentially playing themselves in a loosely scripted scenario of two men and two women meeting for a holiday at the beach. There’s a spontaneity here that feels utterly real, and it makes for quite a fascinating bit of cinema.

LONESOME (1928)

Like The Love Trap, Lonesome is a silent-sound transitional film, this time with a few sound sequences interspersed into the silent majority. Like People on Sunday, it’s about young people vacationing for a day and falling in love. Its attempt to integrate sound is pretty unsuccessful, with the poetic beauty of the film, which rivals that of Sunrise, suddenly shackled by the need to record sound and the two leads, formerly exhuberant, reduced to the most awkward and unbelievable dialogue readings I’ve heard in a while. And yet…the silent portions of this film are so lovely and so moving in their simplicity that I can’t get it out of my mind. The film has been largely forgotten up until this year, when the TCM Classic Film Festival programmed it and Criterion released it, and it certainly deserves the renewed interest.

THE BREAKING POINT (1950)

Most classic Hollywood film buffs know the story of Howard Hawks making what he called Ernest Hemingway’s worst book, To Have and Have Not, into a great movie, largely by changing most of the plot and casting soon-to-be couple Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Less well-known is the fact that the book was adapted relatively faithfully as The Breaking Point in 1950 (at least, I didn’t know it until I saw the film). Here John Garfield is a down-on-his-luck cargo shipper whose life, career, and marriage are going on the rocks as he struggles to make enough to keep his boat. A smuggling job comes through, and he gets drawn into an inevitable web of complications and corruption. It’s a much less glossy and less romantic film than Hawks’, but it’s a great noir and ought to be better known.

RAW DEAL (1948)

A solidly B-level noir from Anthony Mann about a convict (Dennis O’Keefe) breaking out of jail and ending up on the run from both cops and his former boss (who intended that he’d get killed in the escape attempt, thus tying up a loose end). But it’s made quite interesting by a few unusual touches – a voiceover from O’Keefe’s girlfriend Claire Trevor which tends to be both flat and poetic, and the triangle dynamic between O’Keefe, Trevor, and the upstanding Marsha Hunt, his lawyer’s assistant who ends up on the run with them. There’s a moral battle played out here quite overtly, yet not always in the way you’d expect, and the potential femme fatales end up shifting roles in unusual and interesting ways. As a noir fan, I found this one quite refreshing.

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS (1999)

Believe it or not, my husband Jonathan had to introduce me to this film. I had written it off as a dumb late ’90s teen comedy, but I did not realize it was actually a bitingly hilarious satire of beauty pageants with an incredible cast of people who would become much more famous over the next few years. The humor is perfectly tuned to my frequency, and so, yeah. I pretty much loved this from start to finish.

BEGGARS OF LIFE (1928)

This may have been my first Louise Brooks film, but it certainly won’t be my last. A young drifter (Richard Arlen, best known from Wings) begs for food at a house, but finds a dead guy instead – killed by Brooks in defense against his unwanted advances. Arlen and Brooks head out on the road together to escape the law and fall in with a gang led by Wallace Beery. There’s a good bit of melodrama in this late silent, but also a lot to enjoy, from Brooks’ impish waif to Beery’s heavy.

HOUSE BY THE RIVER (1950)

A Fritz Lang noir that flies under the radar compared to many of his efforts like Scarlet Street or The Big Heat, but has a lot to offer, especially in the Expressionistically atmospheric arena. A failing writer accidentally murders his maid and tries to cover it up with the help of his brother by throwing her body in the bloated, driftwood-infested river behind his house, but circumstances lead to both success and paranoia before long. This one definitely earns its noir title if only based on the utter darkness of the house itself, a cluttered, oppressive, dimly lit Victorian affair.

CALL HER SAVAGE (1932)

One of Clara Bow’s few talkies, and a sort of up-yours to the people intent on bringing rumor and scandal to her door in the early ’30s, this is truly one of the more bizarre Pre-Code films I’ve seen. It jumps from naughty comedy to tragic melodrama in the blink of an eye, following Bow’s character from wild ranch girl to big city society dame to tenement mother and back again. It’s gotta be seen to be believed. Is it good? I’m not honestly sure. But I watched the whole thing in amazement and it’s certainly stuck with me, and that’s worth a lot.

POSSESSED (1947)

Joan Crawford centers this noir melodrama of a woman dealing with not only unrequited love (from basically an homme fatale, an interesting twist on the usual noir formula) but conflict with her stepdaughter and the woman she nurses, an accusation of murder, schizophrenia, and more. The film tries to do too much plotwise, but the fun of noir is in the details, and this has plenty of juicy ones, plus some attention-grabbing cinematography and camerawork.

CUL-DE-SAC (1966)

This early Roman Polanski film (one of his first English-language ones) is a typically strange piece, with a pair of criminals on the run holing up at a remote English estate – but even hardened criminals may be no match for the unpredictable and possibly unhinged Françoise Dorleac and her husband Donald Pleasance. The pervading sense of disquiet and unease in the film is difficult to shake off, even after it’s over, and there are plenty of layers here to unpack in the deceptively simple plot.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM (1962)

The opportunity to see this in actual Cinerama gave it an extra boost, but frankly, even aside from the presentation, I really quite enjoyed this fictionalized look at Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Three Grimm stories are visualized (with help from George Pal stop-motion), tied together with a biographical frame story. Frankly, I expected the frame story to be a dull affair to put up with in between the dramatization of the fairy tales, but it was fairly engaging as well.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1990)

I remember when the Ninja Turtles were all the rage, but I was never into them myself as a kid. Jonathan’s a different story – this is one of the first movies he can remember seeing in a theatre, and I decided I would indulge him and watch it with him. And you know what? I enjoyed it far more than I had any right to do. Sure, it’s cheesy and over-the-top and ridiculous, but it plays to that, and I had a great time watching it.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986)

I’ve been meaning to watch this (and/or its 1960 Corman original) for quite a while, but once again, it was Jonathan who pushed me into it, as one of the few musicals he really enjoys. It was…not what I expected at all. I guess I knew it was a Broadway show first, but this movie is EXTREMELY Broadway in style and execution. Also, when Audrey II started singing, well, let’s just say it’s pretty much the opposite of what I thought it would be. I did think it would be scarier, but it went for a campier, sillier tone, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Definitely a fun time.

I‘m joining the Blind Spots folks (seems like most bloggers I know are doing it!) this year, but that’s because I’d nearly decided not to even make a list this year. I mean, it’s pretty foolish of me to try, for two major reasons. One, I did terribly on last year’s Blind Spots list. I only managed to watch four of my twelve, and I only managed to write full posts about two of them. Two, I’m having a baby in five weeks, and if I thought I had little time to watch movies LAST year, this year finding time promises to be even more challenging. But I ultimately decided it never hurts to at least have a list of films I’d like to watch ever-present in my head, so when I do have time to sit down for a movie (whether it be a nice two-hour block when my baby actually does decide to sleep or in 20-minute chunks while feeding her at 2:00am), I don’t have to cast about for what to watch. So that’s what we’ll call this list. It would make sense to just carry over the eight films I didn’t watch last year, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to make this easier on myself by only choosing films that are available on HuluPlus or Netflix Instant (or that I own) so availability is never an excuse, and by choosing films that I expect to be entertaining and not too heavy. In other words, this is not the year for 4-hour epics about the human condition.

The List

Our Hospitality / The Navigator

1923/1924 USA. Director: Buster Keaton/John G. Blystone, Buster Keaton/Donald Crisp. Starring: Buster Keaton.
Truth be told, I’ll probably try to get through a bunch of the Buster Keaton Blu-ray set Jonathan got me for Christmas, but these are the two main features I haven’t seen and definitely want to.

Pandora’s Box

1929 Germany. Director: G.W. Pabst. Starring: Louise Brooks.
I’ve only managed to see one Louise Brooks film ever, and not one of her more acclaimed ones. Time to fix that.

Vampyr

1932 Germany. Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer. Starring: Julian West, Maurice Schultz.
This one’s been on my horror list for several Octobers now. I started watching it on my lunch break a while back and was captivated by the imagery within a few minutes, so I decided to put it off until I could watch it at home on a larger screen.

Island of Lost Souls

1932 USA. Director: Erle C. Kenton. Starring: Charles Laughton, Bela Lugosi, Richard Arlen.
I own this one one Criterion Blu-ray, even, and didn’t manage to watch it last October. I’ll get to it sometime this year.

Zero de Conduite / L’Atalante

1933/1934 France. Director: Jean Vigo. Starring Jean Dasté, Robert le Flon/Dito Parlo, Jean Dasté.
I’ve never seen any Vigo films, but I was highly intrigued reading about them when Criterion released The Complete Jean Vigo disc. Since both films together barely top two hours, I’ll try to get to both of these.

The Stranger

1946 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young.
I’ve a long way to go before I catch up with all of Orson Welles’ directorial projects, but knocking a noir film also featuring Edward G. Robinson in the cast seems like an easy place to start.

Wild Strawberries

1957 Sweden. Director: Ingmar Bergman. Starring: Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin.
I can’t say the synopsis of this Bergman film grabs me all that much, but intricate plots is not exactly what Bergman is about, and this one always ends up high on everybody else’s Bergman lists.

Sanjuro

1962 Japan. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Toshiro Mifune.
Kurosawa can be a surprisingly tough nut to crack for me, and there are literally dozens of his films I haven’t seen. But I really enjoyed Yojimbo, so I’m hoping Sanjuro will be an equally easy one to knock off my lengthy Kurosawa to-see list.

El Dorado

1966 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Caan.
Rio Bravo is one of my all-time favorite westerns, so a reteaming of Hawks and Wayne sounds right up my alley.

Cool Hand Luke

1967 USA. Director: Stuart Rosenberg. Starring: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, Strother Martin.
According to Flickchart, this is the most highly-ranked film that neither I nor Jonathan has seen. It was on my list last year as well, but this year we’ve got the disc out from Netflix RIGHT NOW – we just have to watch it.

Serpico

1973 USA. Director: Sidney Lumet. Starring: Al Pacino, John Randolph, Jack Kehoe.
Sidney Lumet has been steadily growing on me as a filmmaker, knocking it out of the park with Dog Day Afternoon, which I watched for a New Hollywood marathon a while back. Time to get to some more Lumet.

Days of Heaven

1978 USA. Director: Terrence Malick. Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard.
I should be able to 100% Terrence Malick’s filmography without too much difficulty, and once I finish this one (which I own on Criterion Blu-ray), I’ve only got The Thin Red Line left. And the umpteen films he’s got in his suddenly prolific production schedule, of course.