2001: A Space Odyssey – Em’s Opinion

I have now seen 2001: A Space Odyssey(#15) twice and I still have no idea what the hell it’s about. This does not mean that I don’t enjoy the film immensely. In fact, the conversations I have had after this film are some of the most interesting I have ever had pertaining to a film. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a film with many different stories. First, we see the dawn of man. In this portion, a group of chimps find a strange black monolith which gives them the ability to use tools. Next, we see the TMA-1 mission, where man has found another monolith on the moon. This portion stars William Sylvester as Dr. Heywood Floyd, a scientist from Earth sent to the moon to investigate the monolith. The third and fourth portions both star Gary Lockwood as Dr. Francis “Frank” Poole. He is on a mission to Jupiter with four other scientists and, of course, HAL 9000, the ship’s onboard computer. IT’s way more interesting if you don’t know what happens after that, so I’ll just say that the movie gets very surreal after that.

Stanley Kubrick never gave away exactly what 2001 was supposed to be about, preferring to allow the audience to make their own conclusions. This is a very cool way of doing it, because so many people these days are impatient and require answers to the movies they see. Being a LOST fan, I totally understand this need and I can understand why some people get frustrated watching this film. However, I believe it is way more interesting to talk about a film and come to your own conclusions as to what it’s about. I believe that the monoliths were sent by some sort of more intelligent being to assist mankind in their evolution. The monoliths are not meant to advance everyone, only the ones that feel they are ready. This explains why only some of the chimps advance and it also explains the trippy ending.

One my favorite things about this movie is the fact that it starts and ends with at least 20 minutes of no dialogue. Who these days has the guts to do that? Kubrick is great. He doesn’t do what’s obvious or popular and that’s amazing. Although my favorite Kubrick film is probably The Shining, all of them are worth a watch or two. In fact, it’s probably better to see 2001 at least twice, probably more than that if you want to make some good theories of your own. It definitely deserves at least two viewings.

Gone With The Wind (Brendan’s Rant… I Mean, Opinion)

So.  Gone With the Wind.  I have been told (mostly by middle-aged Jane Austen enthusiasts and elderly Southerners) that this movie is a triumph of cinema and one of the most important films ever made.  Well, alright, I thought, looks a bit like a Jane Austen novel in film form, and I don’t really care for Jane Austen that much, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.  Oooooh god was I wrong.  The worst movie I had seen ever used to be a stupid live adaptation of Peter Pan I watched at age 13, but that has now been dethroned, to be replaced by this bloated, self-absorbed, 4 hour extravaganza on how to make a movie blatantly offensive, racist, slow as all hell, annoying, and just plain bad.  Honestly, even with the other films on the list I didn’t like, I could at least understand their historical significance and why the AFI chose them to grace this list.  I don’t understand why Gone With the Wind is on this list at all, much less why it gets to be #6.  I thought Blade Runner (#98) a much better film than this.  This film’s “historical significance” has been done by other films better.  Why is it here?

The film nominally follows the life of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) as the Civil War breaks out in Georgia, and everything about her life goes to hell all around her.  Vivien Leigh again demonstrates her ability to act her characters in the most annoying, self-absorbed way possible.  I thought Scarlett was supposed to be the heroine of this story, but she just runs around being an immature, self-absorbed brat.  Example: her husband dies of illness while away fighting the war.  Rather than being upset because, y’know, her husband is DEAD, Scarlett is upset because she doesn’t get to dance or do anything fun during the mourning period.  This and more showcase how Scarlett is a terrible heroine, completely impossible for me to sympathize with.  Clark Gable as Rhett Butler is actually watchable – he doesn’t take any BS, does whatever he wants, and generally acts like he knows he’s in a place where everything is stupid, so he might as well inject a bit of crazy into the proceedings.  Beyond that, most of the acting ranges from halfway competent to hilariously bad to unsettling – having all the black actors act like they love slavery and everything is just swell the way it is so they’re gonna help the South beat back those damn Yanks, yessir they will is ridiculous.

Which brings me, I suppose, to the main reason Gone With the Wind is “historically significant” – it had black actors I mean real black actors seriously guys look they’re not white people in blackface they’re real black actors that means the film isn’t racist right guys?  The fact they had black actors is pretty cool for the time, I guess.  What’s not so cool are a variety of other things.  The actors all play slaves, obviously, but they play slaves as the Southern caricature of slaves – stupid, subserviant, slightly lazy and prone to lying, but totally happy with the way things are, and they sure want to keep being slaves forever.  The way the film had black people portrayed is just straight up offensive, and the fact that black actors played black people does absolutely nothing to assuage that.  Couple that with the film’s hero-worship of the “Old South”.  It’s like a Jane Austen novel, except for the fact that Jane Austen is actually a competent writer.  The film is so absorbed in it’s own the-South-shall-rise-again mentality that it kind of forgets that there are people outside the South who like watching movies too.  The film was recieved in Georgia with it’s day of release being declared a state holiday, a parade complete with Confederate flags all over the place, and the black actors being kicked out of the premiere for being, well, black.  The sheer amount of racism in the film completely removes any benefit having black actors might have given the equal rights movement, and to add insult to injury, when one of the black actors won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, she wasn’t given a statuette, but a plaque.  Great.

This film is bad.  I don’t mean just plain bad, I mean exceptionally bad.  It made me feel sick to watch it.  I do not think this should be anywhere on the AFI’s list, and I don’t think it should have been made.  Ever.

Score: 0/5 (Do I really need to explain what a zero is?  Don’t watch this movie.  Do humanity a favor, go buy all the copies from your local video store, and then burn them so nobody has to experience this tripe.)

Some Like It Hot (Brendan’s Opinion)

A confession:  I’ve never seen a Marilyn Monroe movie before watching this one.  Yes, I know she’s supposed to be the most beautiful actress ever, but I just had never gotten around to it.  And yes, she looks absolutely stunning in this movie as Sugar Kane, but did this movie really live up to it’s reputation as the “greatest American comedy of all time”?  Not really, but it’s still a funny movie, one that people should see, and one that I enjoyed seeing.

Two hard-luck musicians are forced to disguise themselves as women to avoid being killed by the local mob, and it just so happens that they join the same musical troupe that Monroe is in.  Naturally, both men end up falling for her (I mean, she’s Marilyn Monroe), but sadly, they can’t shed their disguises or they will be caught by the mob, so awkwardness (and hilarity) ensues.  One of the men tries disguising himself as a millionare to woo her, but the other guy is not so lucky, and he ends up getting wooed by an actual millionare.  The film’s conclusion has one of the funnier lines in history (“Well… Nobody’s Perfect”), but at the same time feels a bit like it’s lacking something.  The movie definitely could have gone on another 10 minutes or so, just to completely tie up all the plot points, but instead the director made the artistic decision to end on that line.  I suppose it’s more personally annoying to me than it is harmful to the movie, but it feels a little bit like a cop-out.

That said, this movie is funny, doesn’t take itself seriously, has some great music and costumes, and is worth seeing at least once.

Score: 4/5 (A 4 is a movie that I really really liked, and would definitely see again, but some very minor issues kept me from rating it as one of my favorite movies ever.  It does come with my completely unqualified recommendation unless you really don’t like that particular genre of movie.)

Taxi Driver (Brendan’s Opinion)

Taxi Driver was Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese’s first film together, and probably De Niro’s breakout performance.  His presentation of the psychopathic cab driver Travis Bickle is one of the best performances I have seen, period.  De Niro really demonstrated his ability to get inside a character’s head, and he plays Travis’ disgust with humanity and descent into obsession and mania with perfection.

Spoilers ahead, so beware:  Taxi Driver is more of a character study than an actual movie, showing off the entire life, thought process, psyche, and nuances of the main character, Travis.  Travis becomes a cab driver at the beginning of the movie, and after a brief infatuation with a woman working on a political campaign, devotes his entire life to rescuing a 12-year-old prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster).  The movie is somewhat of a mind trip, especially the end sequence which (spoilers) may or may not take place in Travis’ head as he lies on a couch/hospital bed dying. (end spoilers) Regardless of whether or not Travis Bickle actually survives his attempt at rescuing Iris, DeNiro’s portrayal of one of cinema’s greatest anti-heroes, Scorsese’s excellent directorial style, and a plot that actually makes you think make this one of my favorite movies.

Score: 5/5 (A 5 is a movie I absolutely loved, would see again many times, and would recommend to absolutely everybody.  I probably think it should be rated higher on the list than it currently is.)

Schindler’s List – Em’s Opinion

I absolutely love Schindler’s List(#8), I really do. Yes, I realize it is one of the most depressing movies ever, but it’s also one of the most moving films I have ever seen. Schindler’s List tells the story of Oskar Schindler(Liam Neeson) , a war profiteer who has a change of heart and manages to save over 1000 Jews during the holocaust to work in his factory. Also in this film is Ben Kingsley as Schindler’s Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern and Ralph Fiennes as SS officer Amon Göth.

I have to say, this movie means a lot to me as an actress as well as a film buff. Whenever my old acting teacher would talk about Schindler’s List. He’d tell us to listen to the accent or lack or accent that all of the characters in this movie use. Some, like Ralph Fiennes, use very strong German accents, whereas Liam Neeson uses little to no German accent. Despite this discontinuity, no one notices the problem because the acting in this movie is so damn good. This is the key to accents.  Spielberg was smart when he told the actors in this movie to only use an accent if it helps them better understand who they are as a character. Instead of putting on a fake accent to seem more believable, the actors in this movie become so immersed in their characters that it doesn’t matter at all whether they speak with enough of a German accent. Spectacular.

While on the subject of amazing performances, Ralph Fiennes gives one of the greatest performances that I have ever seen in any movie in Schindler’s List. His Amon Göth is one of the most terrifying and evil characters that I have seen in any movie. One of the reasons he’s so terrifying is because you can’t even see the actor behind the performance; all you see is Amon Göth. His speech when the concentration camp is so intense and captivating that I had to watch it again when I first saw this movie. Also, his accent is spot on, which I think is wonderful as accents were my specialty in high school drama.

Spielberg’s decision to use black and white on this movie was a very good choice. It makes the movie seem so much more real, as footage of the holocaust was in black and white. It also allows for more intense lighting to be showcased, which is fantastic. Also, the idea of using selective color on things like the candles and the girl with the red jacket is super effective when showing the changes that Schindler goes through over the course of the movie.

No matter what I say I cannot do justice to this spectacular movie. In a strange way, it is one of my favorite movies of all time. The amount of emotion I feel when watching this movie is incredible. Also, from an acting standpoint this movie blows me away. Everyone gave their absolute all on this picture and it shows. Out of all the films I have seen on this list, this is the one that has moved me the most. It’s a depressing watch, but it also gives you hope for the future. If anything, I think this movie should be even higher up on the list then it is.

Silence of the Lambs – Em’s Opinion

Silence of the Lambs is probably the scariest movie that I’ve ever seen. Starring Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling as an FBI trainee who is pulled out of the academy to speak with Hannibal Lecter(Anthony Hopkins) about potential leads on a serial killer nicknamed “Buffalo Bill”. Hannibal, a former psychiatrist, is ridiculously smart and can read almost anybody. His one weakness: human flesh, which is what ultimately put him in the insane asylum. As the investigation proceeds, Hannibal agrees to give information about the serial killer in exchange for personal information about Clarice, something she was told not to do. As more clues as to the identity of “buffalo bill” emerge, the relationship between Clarice and Hannibal becomes deeper and more complex.

This film has probably the most beautiful lighting that I have ever seen in a film. The way Jonathan Demme has light streaming through windows and casting shadows in this film is spectacular. As Brendan and I watched it, we had to stop at some points and just look at how beautifully everything was lit. It is also very interesting that, although he was only onscreen for less than a half an hour, that Anthony Hopkins won the best actor Oscar. In fact, Silence of the Lambs is only one of three movies to win all five big categories at the Oscars (Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay). Quite impressive for a horror movie, as it is rare for them to be honored at the Academy Awards.

I have to say, i usually really do not like horror movies. Most of the ones I have seen have been too gory or just plain stupid. Silence of the Lambs is completely the opposite. It’s smart and psychological and bloody, but not to excess. It’s truly a remarkable film. If you haven’t seen it, I’d highly recommend you do, just maybe not at night or in a dark basement.

Goodfellas (Brendan’s Opinion)

Martin Scorsese happens to be one of my favorite directors, and this was one of his movies I hadn’t seen.  Anytime Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro get together, however, the result is bound to be pretty awesome.  This was no exception.  Goodfellas is a mobster movie, similar to the Godfather movies, but it has it’s own unique flavor and feel.  Goodfellas follows the actions of Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta) who was a gangster for the local mob throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s.  Hill had wanted to be a gangster his whole life, but as happens in most mob movies, the gangster lifestyle doesn’t exactly work out for Hill and his associates, Conway (De Niro) and DeVito (Joe Pesci).  The film chronicles Hill’s descent into the criminal world, until at the end of the film he is broken, jailed, addicted to cocaine, and forced to enroll in the Witness Protection Program to get away from his former life.

Goodfellas evokes The Godfather quite a bit, but has it’s own unique flavor.  The casting is top-notch, as every single actor puts in a wonderful performance, although the highlight for me has to be De Niro.  The plot is obviously Goodfellas’ strongest point, however – the movie kept me interested from start to finish.  The only (minor) critiques I have about the film are kind of out of it’s control – basically, this film is good, but The Godfather is better.  That said, if you want a quality gangster movie and have seen the Godfather one too many times already, Goodfellas is certainly a wonderful movie, and you will definitely enjoy it.

Score: 4/5 (A 4 is a movie that I really really liked, and would definitely see again, but some very minor issues kept me from rating it as one of my favorite movies ever.  It does come with my completely unqualified recommendation unless you really don’t like that particular genre of movie.)