CARMEN JONES (1954)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Musical / Romance

Director: Otto Preminger

Cast: Dorothy Dandridge / Harry Belafonte / Olga James

Plot

A young soldier is seduced by the wiles of sultry Carmen Jones, abandoning his life, love, and career to be with her.

What I Liked

After the release of “Carmen Jones” in 1954, Dorothy Dandridge became the first African American to be nominated for a best actress award for her role as the title character.  As the nomination and the title suggest, Dandridge is indeed the centerpiece of this film.  She doesn’t just steal any scene in which she appears (which is almost every one) but outright owns the scene, in the sense that she can’t steal something to which there’s no one to contest her right to it.  Harry Belafonte received top billing and does a fair job as Joe, Carmen’s straight-laced prey, but, just like his character, he’s overmatched against Dandridge’s natural confidence and magnetism.

Based on nineteenth century French composer Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen,” the film adapts the story to a twentieth century American setting.  The orchestrated music is Bizet’s original compositions, while the lyrics have been redone by Oscar Hammerstein, the lyricist behind other classic American musicals as “Carousel,” “The King and I,” and “Oklahoma!” among others.  While it is my opinion that the modern lyrics weaken the original sound, the power of Bizet’s music still rings through in most cases.

What I Disliked

Let me throw in quickly here that, with very few exceptions, I don’t much like the musical genre.  People randomly bursting into song in the middle of their everyday lives with backing music somehow coming out of the sky just doesn’t sit well with me.  However, I recognize that a lot of talent and genius goes into some of these films and many people I respect absolutely love musicals.  So I’ll do my best to keep my personal distate for musicals in general from totally skewing my criticisms about this individual film.

Hammerstein’s lyrics, as I mentioned before, dilute the impact of the movie’s music.  I guess they may be a necessary evil, considering the time and place of the story.  However, they just seem trite and incongruous when matched with the overwhelming majesty of Bizet’s music.  Additionally, they are rife with improper English that not only hurts the ears to hear but are indicative of white Hollywood’s stereotypical portrayal of African Americans.  Words like “dat,” “dis,” and horrible grammar were probably meant by Hammerstein to lend authenticity to the events for the viewing audience (the film was marketed to white audiences despite an all black cast), which today only serves as further evidence of the widespread degrading portrayals of African Americans everywhere in American popular culture back then.  Few people in that day probably thought twice when Pearl Bailey, in the role of a modern American woman, sung about feeling the tribal drums of her African ancestors in her bones.  Indeed, despite the less than complementary lyrics, “Carmen Jones” was viewed as a progressive step forward for blacks in cinema at the time.

Equally disappointing is the fact that the singing by both of the film’s leads, Dandridge and Belafonte, who both enjoyed successful careers as professional singers, were overdubbed by opera singers Marilyn Horne and LeVern Hutcherson respectively.  Horne and Hutcherson provide the melodrama and vocal chops the filmmakers were looking for, but I bet Dandridge and Belafonte would have brought a much more appropriate natural feel to the film’s musical sequences had their voices not been tampered with.

Most Memorable Scene

Thrilled at the prospect of going to Chicago as part of heavyweight boxing contender Husky Miller’s entourage, Carmen’s friends try to convince her to become Miller’s girl and join them.  Together, they and Miller’s managers sing “Whizzin’ Away Along de Track.”  There’s no dance number involved, just the characters huddled around Dorothy Dandridge, who, despite being overdubbed, is emotional, beautiful, and believable.  I’m not a big fan of musicals, but this was one song sequence I found to be moving and gorgeous to behold thanks to Dandridge’s looks, charisma, and talent.

My Rating: 3 out of 5

FISH TANK (2009)

Country: U.K.

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Andrea Arnold

Cast: Katie Jarvis / Michael Fassbender / Kierston Wareing

Plot

A wayward fifteen year old girl develops feelings for her mother’s new boyfriend.  Meanwhile she finds inspiration when her secret love of dance might provide a way out of her lower class surroundings.

What I Liked

Katie Jarvis gives one of, if not the single best debut performance I have seen in a movie, portraying the passionate but unruly Mia in “Fish Tank.”  Apparently having no previous acting experience, Jarvis was approached for the role when a casting agent saw her argue with her boyfriend at a train station.  Despite her lack of a professional background in film, Jarvis is flawlessly convincing in a complicated role that is the focus of an entire two-hour film.  That she was only seventeen years old or so during filming is all the more impressive.

Indeed all of the performances, from Michael Fassbender as the always casual Connor to Kierston Wareing and Rebecca Griffiths as Mia’s mother and sister respectively are terrifically fleshed out and seem powerfully authentic.

That the movie is shot with mostly handheld cameras provides the audience the feeling of an intimacy with the action and emotions on screen.  Like a silent friend or family member, we run, dance, and wander with Mia as she traverses the wilds of tenements, trailer parks, streets, and junk yards.  It is a similar approach as to reality TV or a documentary, bringing a very authentic feel to what the audience sees.  However, the technique never seems contrived or gimmicky, only perfectly natural.  Thus a film about everyday people living in ugly conditions and behaving equally ugly becomes somehow riveting.  Though my original intentions were otherwise, I had no choice but to finish watching this movie in one sitting.

The soundtrack is at key times punctuated by terrific music, including classic hip hop from Gang Starr and Nas, as well as a stunning version of “California Dreamin’” by Bobby Womack.

What I Disliked

I don’t have anything here that I really disliked.  But I will note here that some may find the events and especially the language of this film offensive.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

When Mia finally gets the courage to dance in front of someone else, it is for Connor, her mother’s boyfriend, whom she is beginning to view as something similar to a much needed father figure.  Though her dancing is somewhat stiff and amateurish, the combination of the soundtrack (the aforementioned Womack track) and cinematography turn her rare moment of open vulnerability poetic.  Then it all turns from tender to ugly in a way that seems frighteningly plausible.  This is the real turning point for Mia and her life, setting in motion some more heart-wrenching moments as Mia’s desperation turns to anger and despair.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5

DETOUR (1946)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Crime / Drama

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer

Cast: Tom Neal / Ann Savage / Claudia Drake

Plot

A down-and-out hitchhiker recounts how he went from a New York nightclub pianist to a wanted fugitive.

What I Liked

There are the high quality, impeccable noir films like “Double Indemnity” and “The Killers.”  These are the films that made the film noir era so influential and interesting.  However, most noir was cheap exploitation, containing all the grit but none of the art.  “Detour,” from this perspective, is the quintessential film noir.  A low-budget B-movie thrown together in six days, the movie has since become a cult classic for its stripped-down simplicity and cynical view of fate.  “Detour” is enjoyable as a crime drama in that it serves up all the hallmarks of the genre in a preposterously over-the-top heap: the endlessly cynical amateur philosophy, the bitchy femme fatale, the low-life con artists, and definitely the tragically bad luck.  It may not be groundbreaking or brilliant, but it is certainly as definitive as it is ludicrous.

What I Disliked

The hero of this story is Al Roberts, an unlikable protagonist if there ever was one.  From start to finish, Roberts does nothing but bemoan his status.  Even before a couple of horrible coincidences and his own stupidity destroy his life, he spends his time bitching and whining.  It is true that most of the noirs, high class and low class, had heels for heroes, but Palmer is without a positive quality.  It’s almost a pleasure to watch his life turn to shit.

As with most low-budget films, the weaknesses here are mostly technical.  Unconvincing backdrops to the driving sequences, inconsistent audio quality, and other flaws are easy to spot.  But it still has a enjoyably exaggerated misery to it that can’t help but be dementedly charming.

Most Memorable Scene

The wonderfully absurd climatic death at the end is, well, wonderfully absurd.  It’s the perfect conclusion to all of the tragedy and ugliness that pervade the film as a whole.

My Rating: 3 out of 5

WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964)

A.K.A.: Sunna no onna

Country: Japan

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara

Cast: Eiji Okada / Kyoko Kishida

Plot

A Tokyo schoolteacher becomes the prisoner of a secluded seaside village, trapped at the bottom of a massive sand pit in a rotting house inhabited by a mysterious woman.

What I Liked

“Woman in the Dunes” is based on the novel of the same name by Japanese novelist Kobo Abe.  I have read the novel and the film is probably the closest adaptation of a novel to a film that I have ever seen, which really is not surprising, considering that Abe wrote the script for the film as well.  Both the book and film present a very bizarre plot as an existential or nihilist metaphor for life itself.  Though, like most metaphors, it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, they all lead basically to the same themes: the unimportance of the individual in the modern world; the unimportance of the individual human and individual human actions in the scope of universe; and man’s egotistical desire to ignore the previous two concepts and believe himself the master of his own important fate.

There is of course great irony in the fact that the main character is an entomologist who spends his time watching insects crawl through the sand or watching them try to escape the glass jars in which he traps them.  He essentially becomes one of those very insects, constantly and futilely trying to deny that he is trapped, despite the facts.  He knows as little about his own existence and purpose as do the insects he observes.  Yet he considers his own survival and freedom of utmost importance and nearly kills himself trying to escape.  Eventually it becomes clear that even he is no longer aware of the reason he is trying to escape, and is acting primarily out of some misguided and ignorant instinct (again, just like his insects).

As far as the aesthetic values of the film go, "Woman in the Dunes" is exceptionally well made.  The cinematography movingly captures the co-existing beauty and horror of the sand-filled landscapes.  Meanwhile, director Hiroshi Teshigahara makes sure a very real sense of claustrophobia and desperation seeps into every scene.  Actors Eiji Oakada and Kyoko Kishida play their roles with touching depth and realism, allowing the audience to ignore the illogical plot and become absorbed into the human drama.  But perhaps most important is the sound of the film.  Toru Takemitsu’s score is unorthodox but absolutely quaking with paranoia and agony.  Meanwhile the sounds of the ever-shifting and ever-seeping sand, the heavy breaths of sexual tension, and the frantic rasps of thirst lend a very raw, bestial texture to the entire film.

What I Didn’t Like

To be honest, I never finished the novel.  Though I got pretty far, I found it mostly dull and eventually found something else to read.  The film was less boring, but still overly long.  For all the intellectual and aesthetic strengths, it still lacked enough simple entertainment value to keep finishing it from being a chore.

Most Memorable Scene

The most emotionally powerful moments of this film are actually the extreme close-ups of the actors' bare skin, which is always covered in a layer of sand that gathers as soon as it is wiped off.  This is an effective element of the novel that proves even more effective in the film, driving home the irritation and futility of the predicament in which the characters find themselves.  These are always accompanied by the sand-paper like sound of the sand grating and grinding through the skin.  I can’t say one of these close ups is more important than another, but they are all the most compelling aspect of “Woman in the Dunes.”

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5

ENTER THE DRAGON (1973)

Country: Hong Kong

Genre(s): Action

Director: Michael Allin

Cast: Bruce Lee / John Saxon / Kien Shih

Plot

A Shao Lin monk agrees to enter a martial arts tournament held on a private island controlled by a mysterious drug lord named Han.

What I Liked

“Enter the Dragon” is the “Gone with the Wind” of Hong Kong martial arts films, surpassing all previous conceptions of what was possible in terms of budget, scope, and production values.  As such, it is also the magnum opus of that icon of all icons in the martial arts genre, Bruce Lee, who died before this film was released.

For all its advancements over the standard Hong Kong martial arts flicks of its day, all the enhanced production really just serves as framework for the true source of the movie’s strength, Lee.  I can’t think of a single action hero that can compare with Bruce Lee for either charisma or ability.  He is confidence and cool combined with true physical formidability and an entertainer’s sense of dazzle.  Beyond that he was a master fight choreographer and had a great sense of the camera and its placement in a scene to produce the greatest effect.  No one has really surpassed him for that combination of gifts and talents.  “Enter the Dragon” features him at the peak of his powers, making his death all the more disappointing.

What I Disliked

That it broke the mold in many areas for Hong Kong action flicks doesn’t mean it didn’t still suffer from many of the same weaknesses of other films in the genre.  Most noticeable is the dialogue.  Filled with hokey half-assed philosophy that was probably meant to add some Eastern exoticism to the film that was supposed to be Lee’s major breakthrough with U.S. filmgoing audiences, these lines, with a few exceptions, just seem mostly trite and stereotypical now.

The lackluster character development is also characteristic of the genre.  Jim Kelly plays a black man who can’t help but run into problems with the law, has a big mouth, and a voracious sexual appetite.  He walks around with a big, perfectly round afro and any time he’s on screen some funky bass and wa-wa guitar start playing.  It’s exploitation at its worse.  But even Williams can’t believe how one-dimensional the villain, Han, is.  Complete with widows peak hair, a missing hand, a pet cat, and hundreds of incompetent minions, Han is indeed “straight out of a comic book,” as Williams mocks at one point.

Most Memorable Scene

Bruce Lee was a master of physical movement, whether he was fighting or not.  So the whole film is like a highlight reel of sorts, but never more so than when he is trapped in a maze of mirrors in his final showdown with Han.  Here the cool factor jumps a few notches as Han and Lee (and the filmmakers) use many disorienting tricks to great effect on each other (and the audience).  It’s probably the most famous sequence of Lee’s entire career, beautiful and brutal all at once.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5

SHE DONE HIM WRONG (1933)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Comedy / Drama

Director: Lowell Sherman

Cast: Mae West / Cary Grant / Dewey Robinson

Plot

Singer Lady Lou is the queen of the New York Bowery, with several men vying for her affections.  Things threaten to go wrong, however, when jealousy bubbles over into violence.

What I Liked

Mae West turned the moral watchdogs of America rabid with her bawdy sexuality and dialogue in “She Done Him Wrong.”  She is sex incarnate, swaying her hips in skin tight dresses shimmering with diamonds and mesmerizing her many suitors with innuendos she never bothers to veil, thinly or otherwise.  The best moments are when she not only throws out suggestive insinuations but uses them to decorate a terrific put-down that most of her beaus fail to even recognize before it’s too late.  In terms of physique and the modern standard for beauty, West would not be able to compete with today’s leading female sex symbols.  However, for sheer erotic charisma, she would rate among the most potent women to ever grace a movie screen.  That her infamous dialogue, complete with one-liners scathing enough to put Groucho Marx to shame, was co-written by West herself is all the more impressive.

What I Didn’t Like

Some films are classics less for their quality or artfulness than for their historic relevance.  “She Done Him Wrong” seems to me to be such a case.  In terms of originality or talent, this is a quality film, but not a truly great one.  What does make it great, as I indicated earlier, is West’s physical and verbal voluptuousness, which was downright scandalous in the early 1930s.  With lines like “Why don’t you come up sometime; see me” (cooed to a young Cary Grant), this film was almost singlehandedly responsible for the rise to prominence of the Motion Picture Code that would control and censor film content for decades to come.  It was one of the last and most salacious products of an era of freedom in American filmmaking that was soon to come to an end.  For that, “She Done Him Wrong” is an interesting piece of motion picture history.  However, without Mae West to give this film it’s raison d’etre, this film would have really been a below average bore.

Most Memorable Scene

The oft-repeated invitation to Cary Grant mentioned before is certainly the most enduring piece of this film’s scandalous legacy.  Personally, I prefer when morals-minded Grant later asks her, “Haven’t you ever met a man that can make you happy?”  And West replies, “Sure,” and then gets a half-cocked smile on her face before continuing, “Lots of times.”  But the truth is any scene where Lady Lou is working her magic over the lovesick criminals of New York makes this movie sizzle.

My Rating: 3 out of 5

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / Sci-Fi

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger / Edward Furlong / Linda Hamilton

Plot

Two more Terminators are sent back in time.  One, a newer, more dangerous model, is sent to kill the young John Connor; the other, the same model as the one from the original film, is sent to protect him.  Meanwhile, Sarah Connor is on a quest to stop the coming apocalypse.

What I Liked

In the original “The Terminator,” the biggest, most eye-popping explosion was a tractor trailer explosion as the film approached its end climax.  In the sequel, the filmmakers throw in an almost identical explosion, only this time it happens somewhere around thirty minutes in, just to show us that they’re fully prepared to blow our expectations away.

With the first film, James Cameron was a unproven director given a relatively miniscule budget that resulted in his having to do more with less.  Yet he still managed to create a heart-pounding action flick out of an unimpressive script and limited financial means.  By the time production began on a sequel, Cameron was responsible not only for the surprisingly successful original, but hits like “Aliens” and “The Abyss” as well.  Thus he was given an estimated $94 million budget (making it the most expensive film ever made up to that point by a gap of $24 million) to make a follow up that surpassed the considerable expectations for a thrilling special effects shock to the senses.

The most groundbreaking effects for this one are obviously related to the new T-1000 Terminator, which is constructed of liquid metal, allowing for the use of computer-based graphics the likes of which had only previously been seen in Cameron’s previous outing, “The Abyss.”  The technology allows this new villain to morph into various shapes and people, walk through barred doors, and reconstruct himself from being blown to bits; if the previous Terminator was hard to kill, this one seems downright unstoppable.

Some of the effects that seemed so mind-blowing do now seem dated or obsolete.  However, most of it still holds up.  And it is to the credit of the filmmakers that the film as a whole still makes for terrifically satisfying viewing more than twenty years later.  This is because there’s still plenty of good, old-fashioned shoot ‘em ups, chase scenes, and exploding vehicles to satisfy the most jaded twenty-first century action junkie.

What I Didn’t Like

In those rare moments when the action slows down and the film is stripped to its script and acting, it can sometimes be hard to watch.  Also the screenwriter, Cameron tries to lace in more character development for his main characters, even with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.  The results are mixed, but luckily a riveting fire fight is never too far down the road to keep the hokey dialogue and unconvincing performances from ruining the experience.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

When the original Terminator rose out of the flames of that burning truck to reveal his menacing metal endoskeleton and keep marching straight at Sarah Connor, “The Terminator” became an instant classic in just a matter of seconds.  For the sequel, that moment comes at an almost identical moment.  The T-1000, frozen in liquid nitrogen and blasted to bits, is able to reform from shards to a puddle and back into a fully operational Terminator while his potential victims look on in disbelief.  For those who haven’t seen it before, the moment will leave them wondering how the hell anyone, even a Predator-killing Conan like Schwarzenegger, can stop this killing machine.  Scenes like this define what is enjoyable about a James Cameron film; they never get old.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

THE TERMINATOR (1984)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / Sci-Fi

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger / Linda Hamilton / Michael Biehn

Plot

An unstoppable cyborg killer from the future travels back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, a waitress who will one day give birth to the leader of the human resistance against machine rule in the 21^st century.

What I Liked

The first important movie directed by James Cameron, “The Terminator” is an excellent example of the triumph of simplicity and technique over pretention and style.  Some would argue that the plot’s convoluted time-travel backstory is evidence of complexity on the part of Cameron (who was also the screenwriter), while others call the plot clumsy and artless.  The argument is really moot because, despite what some geeks might think, this movie’s impact isn’t in the post-apocalyptic mythology explaining the Terminator’s existence; it’s in the Terminator itself.  The suspense of this film boils down to the fact that a huge, menacing, and well-armed Arnold Schwarzenegger, regardless of his motive, is fixated on killing little innocent Linda Hamilton.  Truth be told, everything else is just incidental, because somehow the film works amazingly well just with that basic premise.

The reason it works is Cameron’s precision at creating mesmerizing action sequences.  The Terminator (Schwarzenegger) may be a machine, but Cameron makes it feel more like a force of nature, a walking natural disaster.  He keeps the hulking cyborg moving at all times, always pressing forward (through walls, shotgun blasts, and fires) like a tornado.  Meanwhile, everyone and everything else has to keep moving with him just to stay out of his way, resulting in one riveting chase scene after another.  Bodies fly through the air, vehicles careen out of control, and explosions erupt everywhere; yet the Terminator keeps on coming.  Cameron brilliantly accentuates this in every scene.  For all of the film’s many special effects, it is the effect of the Terminator’s unrelenting pursuit that is truly behind the palpable tension in this movie.

What I Disliked

That James Cameron considers himself a screenwriter before anything else is just amusing.  Of course, in the strictest sense, he is a screenwriter.  He wrote this and many other classic movies.  But his skill is in doing exactly what he did with "The Terminator": writing pathetically rudimentary stories and dialogue and then using his special effects and directing talents to build surprisingly successful films around them.  In particular, the dialogue in this movie is pathetic, somewhere on the level of the poorest written science fiction comics of the 1950s.  Say all you want about the handful of lines that became part of the popular lexicon (“I’ll be back,” for example); most of those lines are so well remembered because they have so often been parodied for their stupidity and for Schwarzenegger’s heavily accented delivery of them.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

Too often filmmakers try to do the fake-death for the villain at the wrong time, when the audience knows it is happening far too early in the plot for the climax to have happened.  Cameron times his just right and even gets the falling action music playing in the background before pulling the fast one on us.

The reveal of the Terminator in all of its red-eyed, skull-faced metal glory is, for me, what allows this movie to truly transcend the B-movie status the plot deserves and enter the realm of classic action cinema.  Like the shark in “Jaws” finally rearing its big ugly head out of the water for the first time, this scene really drives home what’s at stake for both the characters and the audience.  Once all that inflated muscle is burned away to uncover one of the most wicked looking robots in movie history rising up out of a massive explosion to continue marching straight ahead like nothing happened, the intensity immediately ratchets up a few levels.

My Rating: 3 out of 5

THE LADY EVE (1941)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Comedy / Romance

Director: Preston Sturges

Cast: Barbara Stanwyck / Henry Fonda / Charles Coburn

Plot

Con artist Jean Harrington seduces wealthy innocent Charles Pike on a cruise ship with the intent to fleece him of his money, but soon finds she has actually fallen in love with him.

What I Liked

From the opening credits on, “The Lady Eve” plays around with the Garden of Eden myth here and there.  Once the plot gets going, it’s clear that the lead female, Barbara Stanwyck as Jean Harrington, is not at all the innocent tempted by the snake.  She is the temptress, long ago corrupted by her father, out to con Charles “Hopsy” Pike out of his cash.  Even when she later adopts the actual name of Eve in another ruse, she ends up revealing a great deal about just how very un-innocent she is.

In fact, perhaps the most amazing facet of this film is just how suggestive Stanwyck is allowed to get with her dialogue.  The entire film, but particularly the beginning, is full of sexual innuendos and euphemisms that must have been down-right staggering right in the middle of the Motion Picture Production Code era of Hollywood.  When her looks, charisma, and fun dialogue are all working at once, Stanwyck is definitely the source of vivacity for this picture, which I found otherwise lackluster.

What I Didn’t Like

Most importantly, it’s just not funny.  Billed and produced as a screwball comedy, very little of the dialogue is all that funny and none of the physical comedy evokes the slightest giggle.  The slapstick gags in particular feel contrived, lifeless, and laughless.  Henry Fonda, although convincing as honest-to-a-fault Hopsy, doesn’t seem to have a knack for comedy.

Most Memorable Scene

When the Harringtons get Hopsy at the card table and start playing poker, this movie absolutely earns its placement on the 1001 movie list.  Each actor and their characters are boiled down to their quintessential essence as they set about their tricks, mis-directions, seductions, double-crosses, and gambles.  One of these scenes in particular, where Jean Harrington must use all her guile to save Hopsy from the cheating ways of her father without Hopsy even realizing what she’s done, has to rank among the most satisfying and ingenious poker scenes ever filmed.

My Rating: 2.5/5

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919)

A.K.A.: Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari

Country: Germany

Genre(s): Art Film / Horror

Director: Robert Wiene

Cast: Werner Krauss / Friedrich Feher / Conrad Veidt

Plot

A mental institution inmate relates the tale of a disturbed psychiatrist who uses a comatose patient to commit sleepwalking murders.

What I Liked

Best known for a surrealistic set design that is matched for aesthetic brilliance only by George Melies in the silent era, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” is an indispensable contribution to the early history of horror films.  However, its influence reaches beyond the obvious effect on the Universal horror films of the 1930s and 1940s, as it is evident also in the film noir pictures of the 1940s and in some of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers as well.  Instead of using the standard techniques for creating a sense of paranoia and eeriness, director Wiene and crew painted shadows where there were none, constructed disorienting sets, and applied exaggeratedly gloomy makeup to the players.  The camera, by comparison, captures all the action from a centered, straight-ahead perspective, allowing the other effects to do their job.

Unlike many of the horror films that would follow in the coming decades that relied primarily on well-known literature for subject matter, “Caligari” comes from an original script by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, but it is a fabulous tale worthy of a classic scary tale.  Much like “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” or “Frankenstein,” the story takes into account the old world’s skepticism and fear regarding the scientific advancements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  In the case of “Caligari,” the science is represented by the titular character and his use of psychology to manipulate another into committing terrible crimes.  Then we have the virginal beauty being accosted at night and carried away by the killer, not unlike “Dracula” or countless other followers.

Although it would take a bit of a stretch in both cases, one could even argue that this is the first slasher film and the first zombie film.  There can be no debate whatsoever, though, that “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” is a spookily imaginative transference of nightmare onto celluloid.

What I Didn’t Like

Melodramatic acting was typical of the silent era, as the only way to effectively convey the needed emotion to the audience without audio.  Still, the acting in “Caligari” is notoriously histrionic, with any unhappy event being treated as though history’s greatest tragedy has struck.  The film has been associated with the German Expressionist movement because of its unusual sets.  However, it is the acting, intentionally or not, that most reflects Munch’s famous painting “The Scream,” even in the more subdued moments of the film.  With modern eyes, most of the performances come off as more cartoonish than frightening.

Most Memorable Scene

For all of it’s bizarre set pieces, it is ironic that the most chilling moment of the film occurs without any background.  There is simply a close-up of the face of Conrad Veidt as the murderous sleepwalker as he opens his eyes at his master’s command.  The grainy black-and-white, matched with the cold silence, the morose makeup, and Veidt’s supernatural stare are swirled together in a cauldron to produce a haunting spell.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

DELICATESSEN (1991)

Country: France

Genre(s): Comedy / Romance

Director: Marc Caro / Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Cast: Dominique Pinon / Marie-Laure Dougnac  / Jean-Claude Dreyfus

Plot

A butcher who serves up human flesh finds his next victim when his daughter falls for the newest tenant in their apartment building.

What I Liked

With dazzling cinematography, distinctive set design, painterly color schemes, and a quirky story, “Delicatessen” is as vibrant as motion pictures get.  A peculiar movie about even more peculiar characters doing still more peculiar things, the film is soaked through with idiosyncratic style yet never lets flash get in the way of the charming heart of its characters.  Laced delicately between all the menacing cleavers, bug-eyed close-ups, and kooky gags are moments of elegance, romance, and beauty. 

Though each apartment contains some of the strangest characters I’ve ever seen, they are portrayed so well by the actors that one suspends disbelief without knowing it.  That each character’s apartment seems its own insular world with its own natural, physical, and psychological laws endows the film with a sense of the fantastic, where the audience wonders what sort of realm they will enter as the camera jumps through doors and windows to spy on these terrifically eccentric tenants.

Flirting with and yet also breaking several genre molds at once, “Delicatessen” is a hard film to categorize.  Ultimately it is an unorthodox presentation of a very human romance, but nearly every scene has the twisted deviousness of the best dark comedies as well.  Interspersed throughout all this are very recognizable elements of fantasy, science fiction, and horror films.  The filmmakers never commit to a genre, instead preferring to carve out their own very distinctive niche to make their film always surprising.

What I Disliked

Nothing.  However, dark foreign comedies that don’t easily fit into easily recognizable conventions may not be something for everyone.  So those of you who like your movies no other way but straight forward have been warned.

Most Memorable Scene

In case I didn't make it clear enough, this entire movie is so unconventional that pretty much every scene, from it’s totally bizarre opening to its hilariously chaotic closing, brands itself on the brain.  I also mentioned earlier that at times charm and elegance punctuate the eye-popping style of the overall piece.  One of those moments is when naïve good guy Louison attempts to fix the springs of a buxom female tenant’s bed.  The pair wind up sitting on the bed side-by-side for a moment that not only perfectly characterizes the childlike innocence of Louison but is so enchantingly well-choreographed that it deserves equal regard with even Charlie Chaplin’s best moments.

My Rating: 5 out of 5

LOUISIANA STORY (1948)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Propaganda

Director: Robert J. Flaherty

Cast: Joseph Bordeaux / Lionel Le Blanc / E. Bienvenu

Plot

A Cajun boy is fascinated by the arrival of an oil rig on his family’s land.

What I Liked

Hired by Standard Oil to create a film depicting a beneficial relationship between the oil company and the Louisiana swamplands, director Robert Flaherty intended to capture the unique beauties of both machine and nature in “Louisiana Story,” but succeeded much more successfully at the nature portion than he did at the machine portion.  From the opening shot forward, Flaherty successfully imbues the swamps with an otherworldly lushness, capturing a sort of dark wonderland promising adventure, danger, and fantasy around every bend.

The impact of the enchanted marshes is most impressive in the film’s beginning (though it never goes away completely) and is greatly accentuated by Virgil Thompson’s Pulitzer Prize winning score.  Of course it is typically the case that the score lends mood to a film; that’s why the score is there.  However the music in “Louisiana Story” endows many of the animals and machinery alike with unique personalities.  Because these personifications are indispensable to both the intentions and the beauty of the film and because that beauty substitutes for the lack of a conventional storyline, the film’s score is really as much the story as the pictures.  Without it, “Louisiana Story” would have been an incredibly ineffective film.

What I Disliked

Flaherty is often referred to as the father of documentary filmmaking.  However, looking back at this film from the vantage point of more than sixty years, there is clearly no alternative but to really consider “Louisiana Story,” his last significant work, as propaganda.  Funded by Standard Oil and giving a ridiculously biased and romanticized portrayal of oil drilling’s effects on the environment; the movie is certainly not historically or scientifically accurate.

Nor is it factually accurate concerning the family it claims to depict.  As was the case with most of his productions, Flaherty created a fictional story and passed it off as documentary.  The Cajuns depicted in the film were indeed local people, but were cast in fictional roles.  They were strangers, not members of the same family, and did not own the land on which the oil rig was built.  Flaherty hired them to portray a version of Cajun life he imagined would play well to his audience and set them up in staged sequences to tell his story.

Most Memorable Scene

Staged or not, one of the scenes in the film is frightfully dramatic.  When the main character believes an alligator has eaten his pet raccoon, he sets out after the beast, subsequently trapping it and trying to pull it up onto the muddy banks.  At least portions of this scene were shot with a real alligator, and the tug-of-war that ensues definitely makes for some white-knuckle suspense.

My Rating: 2 out of 5

SHANE (1953)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / Western

Director: George Stevens

Cast: Alan Ladd / Brandon De Wilde / Van Heflin

Plot

A drifter is taken in by a family of farmers and finds he must protect them from a gang headed by the neighboring rancher.

What I Liked

The first half of “Shane” feels like a term paper on the idealized American West as portrayed in films in the first half of the twentieth century.  From the immaculately clean-clothed, clean shaven, golden-haired gun-slinger to the humble but rugged farmer and his happily domesticated blonde wife, the film perfects the myths created by its predecessors.

These conventions are somewhat challenged by the film’s second half, which questions the nature of heroism in a way rarely explored in westerns of the period.  Where the traditional western film had easily discernible meanings and differences for right and wrong, strong and weak, hero and villain, “Shane” ever so subtly blurs those meanings and differences.  These changes are most easily perceptible in the coming-of-age sub-plot surrounding little Joey Starrett, the cherub-faced boy who idolizes the title character but soon finds his child’s views of morality challenged by the actions of his hero.

Even ignoring these more progressive themes to the film, there’s plenty to enjoy.  The cinematography takes in the vast and gorgeous landscapes which need no mythologizing or effects to convey the perfect majesty of the mountains, the jaw-dropping open ranges, or the glowing purple night sky.  Also unforgettable is a young Jack Palance as the ever-menacing mercenary Jack Wilson.  Towering, dark, and with a soulless voice, Palance makes Wilson a Grim Reaper for the West.  All the man has to do is walk into a room and dogs slink away for safety with their tails between their legs.  With few lines but plenty of scariness, he’s really one of the baddest bad-asses in the history of Western cinema.

What I Didn’t Like

It may have been slightly unconventional in its day, but for the most part “Shane” still relies a great deal on an ideal that is neither historically accurate nor particularly creative.  Overall, it definitely feels antiquated thanks to the changes it helped to precipitate.  Everything from Alan Ladd’s hair to Jean Arthur’s freshly cooked apple pie to the father’s unwavering morals are all so immaculate they are downright preposterous.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert!*

What else? The film’s iconic closing promises to tug at the heart strings of even non-Western fans.  Shane cannot ignore his true nature, the farmer is denied his chance at glory, and little Joey’s innocence is forever lost.  Thus, as Joey calls out desperately for Shane to “Come back!” he is not calling only to the lonely gunfighter heading up into the mountains but to the simplicity of a childhood lost.  It is perhaps the most famous ending to a Western ever and doubtless one of the most moving.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

AVATAR (2009)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Epic / Sci-Fi

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington / Zoe Saldana / Stephen Lang

Plot

When a Marine is recruited to aid in the exploitation of the resources on a far off moon called Pandora, he finds himself defending the native population against his own kind.

What I Liked

“Avatar” has some of the elements to make a great science fiction film.  Namely, it effectively transports the audience to another world that feels exotically foreign yet at the same time familiar enough to give the audience a point of reference.  This is done through creative design and state-of-the-art animation, both of which were obviously executed with painstaking detail.  There are several scenes that produce a real sense of wonder, particularly those devoted to the beauty of the natural scenery and wildlife on Pandora.

Nearly as visually impressive as the scenery are the actions scenes.  As is usually the case with James Cameron’s films, they are executed with a technical flair that makes it impossible to look away during the film’s most eventful and violent sequences.  Even as the final scene turns from an epic battle to a ridiculous one-on-one fist fight (through even more ridiculous circumstances), it is impossible to look away.

What I Didn’t Like

For something that was supposedly ten years in the making, “Avatar” has a pathetically poor story and characters.  This film drags out the already well decayed carcass of the “soulless white imperialists bent on subjugating the indigenous populations and raping paradise” plot and wraps it in bright colors and big explosions in a failed attempt to make it seem fresh.  It basically presents a simpleton’s misguided metaphor for the European exploitation of the Native Americans and other indigenous populations throughout the world.  Instead of a profound or thought-provoking musing on the dangers of mankind’s predatory side, we end up with an overblown version of the children's film “Fern Gully.”

As is sadly the case with too many big-budget action films, the characters are about as flat as can be.  Main character Jake Sully is a heroic man of few words with just the right kind of vulnerability to make him sympathetic to the audience; then there’s the goofy but lovable sidekick; the ultra-macho, violence-glorifying Colonel; the tree hugging environmental scientists; the ballsy tough girl who knows her way around  a gun; and the entire population of Na’vi people who are of course the proud but innocent people who live as one with nature and knew nothing of corruption until Americans showed up.

In short, Avatar is lots of admittedly dazzling flash with minimal substance underneath.  It has been hailed as a masterpiece by some, but history has shown that films that rely solely on special effects wizardry don’t age well.

Most Memorable Scene

As I mentioned earlier, all of the scenes that focus on the beauty of the flora and fauna of Pandora are highlights.  None more so than when Jake Sully soars through the skies for the first time on the back of one of the winged creatures the Na’vi people use to fly.  Everything about the scene is gorgeous and fun, perfect for a movie devoted to whisking the audience away into careless escapism.

My Rating: 3 out of 5

AN ANDALUSIAN DOG (1929)

A.K.A.: Un Chien Andalou

Country: France

Genre(s): Art Film

Director: Luis Bunuel

Cast: Simone Mareuil / Pierre Batcheff

Plot

A series of surreal, often nightmarish, images and events happen between a man and a woman.

What I Liked

Director Luis Bunuel collaborated with the most famous surrealist artist, Salvador Dali, on the writing and conception of this disturbing film.  Much of Dali’s work is inspired by dream and is fascinated with taking universally recognized objects and warping in some way into being only faintly familiar.  “An Andalusian Dog” reflects a similar approach to the art of filmmaking.  Despite the unquestionably bizarre and seemingly juxtaposed nature of the images that Brunel brings to the screen, there is undoubtedly a linear storyline recognizable through the use of scenes familiar to moviegoers, for example something resembling a romantic happy ending on the seashore.

Dali’s artwork can also sometimes have a twisted sort of humor, which also comes across in this movie.  At times its use of the familiar imagery mentioned before can feel like parody.  This is especially the case when the scenes are divided by seemingly arbitrary notifications of a jump in time.

What I Disliked

Intellectually interesting though it may be, “An Andalusian Dog” is not particularly entertaining.  It relies primarily on shock value, strangeness, experimentation, and possibly parody.  Approaches such as this don’t always lend themselves well to multiple viewings and I don’t see why anyone other than those obsessed with Bunuel or Dali, or those in art or film class, would be interested in watching this one more than once.

Most Memorable Scene

Much of the film’s brief length features elements similar to those found in horror films.  In particular, the uncontrollable madness of it all, the everyday objects taking on threatening aspects, the combination of sexuality and violence, and the multiple scenes of viciousness against women.  Indeed the film reaches a sort of climax in the first minute or so (another hint of subversive playfulness from Bunuel and Dali?), when we watch a straight razor slice open a woman’s eyeball.  It’s is a frightfully well executed effect for 1929 and definitely has enough realism to make most anyone grit their teeth and want to look away.  Unforgettable, to say the least.

My Rating: 2 out of 5

THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / Adventure / War

Director: John Sturges

Cast: Steve McQueen / James Garner / Richard Attenborough

Plot
British and American prisoners plot an escape from a Nazi camp during World War II.


What I Liked

*spoiler alert*

With big names filling the screen in every scene, “The Great Escape” is part of a series of excellent Hollywood action and war pictures made during this period to feature a star-studded male ensemble (“The Longest Day,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Dirty Dozen,” “Kelly’s Heroes”).  Like those others, it is a rousing adventure with likeable heroes, a few-against-many conflict, a memorable score, and exciting action sequences.  Also like those some of those others it was written, produced, and advertised as simple escapist fun.  In many scenes it succeeds at this goal better than its peers.  Yet, as the plot draws toward its conclusion, one realizes that “The Great Escape” also carries a certain realist weight, thanks to a script that breaks out of the mold of simple, unquestioning idealism common to most of the American war films that preceded it.

A year previous, another World War II film based loosely on fact was released called “The Longest Day.”  A classic in its own right, this movie featured some of the biggest names in the business, but these were the living legends of the old guard in Hollywood: John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Peter Lawford.  By comparison, “The Great Escape” featured a cast of relative upstarts who, instead of representing the past, would dominate the action films to come in the future: Steve McQueen (in his breakout performance), James Garner, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn.  Young and hungry, these actors bring a youthful enthusiasm and rebelliousness to their characters.  It is precisely this pugnacity which defines the movie’s overall appeal.

Though its basis on the facts concerning the escape from the German prison camp Stalag Luft III is decidedly loose, the filmmakers make an interesting choice in not altering the most tragic facts of the event, namely the capture of almost all of the escapees and the execution of fifty.  It is a disturbingly dark closing to a movie that until this point had been mostly upbeat and optimistic.  I suppose the facts are the facts, but the filmmakers did a good job in not sugar coating the less idealistic truths and yet still never letting go of the stick-it-to-‘em spirit of the film as a whole.

What I Didn’t Like

At just under three hours long, “The Great Escape” is a bit overlong for a straight-forward action flick for my taste.  Others may disagree and it is to the film’s credit that I still enjoyed most of the movie despite the length, largely due to the sense of adventure generated by the production and acting.  It just would have been that much better had some of the fat been shaved off.

The length would have been more bearable had the characters been more realistic and relateable.  The script for this film was written in part by a novelist whose work I have enjoyed, James Clavell (who was himself a POW in the Second World War).  It is therefore disappointing that Clavell and his co-writers chose to write such poorly developed characters.  You’ve got the rebellious one, the brainy one, the gregarious one, and so on.  As they are written, the characters never develop much further than these simple descriptions. Thankfully, they are portrayed by capable actors who, as I mentioned before, are able to dig up some soulfulness out of nothing.

And what is it with movies made prior to the 1970s that have characters in desperate, physically trying situations and yet there’s rarely a hair out of place on the star’s head or a stain on their perfectly pressed suits and uniforms?

Most Memorable Scene

If one had to crown an actor as king of the chase scenes, I can’t imagine any other candidate but Steve McQueen.  “Bullitt,” also starring McQueen, may feature the most influential car chase scene in history, but as motorcycle chases go, few are as iconic as his rip roaring tear through the European countryside in “The Great Escape.”  It’s the most exciting and eye-catching scene of a film full of intense moments.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5

GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1946)

Country: U.K.

Genre(s): Drama / Romance

Director: David Lean

Cast: John Mills / Tony Wagner / Jean Simmons

Plot

Pip, a poor boy from the moors, is raised to a station of wealth by a mysterious benefactor and pursues the lovely but seemingly uninterested Estella.

What I Liked

David Lean is revered as the master of British epic film.  But decades before the grandeur of “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” or “Doctor Zhivago” he made “Great Expectations,” a film that may not traverse continents or take on sweeping battle scenes, but still features impressive visuals and larger-than-life characters. The various characters that the always earnest Pip encounters, from honest and simple Joe to disturbed and bitter Miss Havisham to robust and ever-serious Mr. Jaggers, are the real story and power behind the film.

If the movie lacks the wide-lens outdoor cinematography of Lean’s later films (with the exception of the moors and graveyards early on), he still brings a unique majesty to the mostly indoor settings of “Great Expectations.”  Interestingly, each is closely associated with one of the film’s monumentally unique characters.  This is most notable in Miss Havisham’s rotting mansion, as haunted and darkly fascinating as the woman herself.  There is also, Mr. Jaggers’ stuffy office, Mr. Pocket’s fancy apartment, and the elegant ballrooms inhabited by the unattainable Estella.  

That each important role is played as close to perfection (including perfectly cast child actors Tony Wagner and Jean Simmons) as possible doesn't hurt either.  Keep an eye out for a startlingly young Alec Guinness as  Pip's rambunctious chum, Mr. Pocket.

“Great Expectations” may not be as flagrantly epic as “Zhivago” and the others, but it is nonetheless a majestic adaptation of a classic Dickens story, making its characters the centerpiece of a timeless drama.

What I Didn’t Like

*spoiler alert*

A very well executed movie by any standard, “Great Expectations” still has some flaws common to films of that day and age.  Most conspicuous is the quick ending.  With multiple sub-plots starting and stopping throughout the film’s length, and with the complicated relationship between Pip and Estella, it is disorienting how easily and abruptly the pair get together in the very final moments.  And then, immediately after the pair embrace, the credits roll.  No falling action, no explanation, nothing.  The end.

Also disrupting is the age of lead John Mills, who does an adept job portraying the adult Pip.  The problem is Pip is supposed to be in his late teens and early twenties during the latter half of the film and Mills was nearing his forties.  The crows’ feet around his eyes, lines in his forehead, and other signs of age can disorient, or at the very least distract, the viewer.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

The visual tone of the film changes ever so briefly when one of the central characters dies painfully in a sudden fire.  Instead of the soft, smoothly flowing camera movement of the rest of the movie, here the angles are elongated and warped, the cutting frenetic, and the entire visual aspect of the film distorted to horrific proportions, as befits the moment.  This is a shocking moment in the plot that needs to stand out and it does so thanks to the visceral edge the filmmakers create.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5

NETWORK (1976)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: William Holden / Faye Dunaway / Peter Finch

Plot

When an aging TV News anchor has a nervous breakdown, the station gives him his own show, exploiting his bizarre behavior and illness as entertainment for the masses.

What I Liked

“Less than three percent of you read books… less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers… the only truth you know is what you get over this tube.  Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube!  This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation.  This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime minsters,” says Howard Beale, the so-called “mad prophet of the airwaves” in “Network.”  The frightening thing is, he makes a lot of sense and those characters in the film who are considered sane and successful are in fact immoral, illogical, and vicious.  It’s all part of the film’s none too subtle portrait of a world turned upside down by the triumphs of entertainment over fact, image over substance, and money over compassion.

Just as was the case with “Dog Day Afternoon,” a film he made a year prior, director Sidney Lumet again presents us with a film where the lines between the media, the public, entertainment, and reality are not just blurred but completely dissolved.  There was no way that the filmmakers could have known completely about the coming of trash talk television, so-called reality TV, and the hijacking of legitimate news for sensational scandal that now permeate American popular culture in the twenty-first century, and yet “Network” seems to outright predict all of these.

The movie strikes an effective balance between personal drama and satire.  However, the film is never funny.  The absurdities and grotesqueries no longer seem far-fetched, but familiar.  Viewed with hindsight, “Network” feels disturbingly like a warning that should have been heeded and was not.

What I Didn’t Like

When I wrote about the aspects of Lumet’s “Dog Day Afternoon” that I found less than enjoyable, I said, “Part of [the film’s] immediacy involved incessant shouting and screaming, which can certainly wear on the nerves.  But it’s all part of the intended atmosphere.  There’s not much to complain about here for those looking for this type of movie.  Just keep in mind the film, like it’s subject, is not a pleasant experience.”  The same things, word for word, could be said of “Network,” which of course lends further credence to the feeling that all the noise and chaos is part of the filmmakers’ intentions.

Most Memorable Scene

Any of the scenes where the disturbed Howard Beale (in an Oscar winning performance by Peter Finch) gives one of his daily televised sermons against the death of democracy in America are enthralling.  This is of course where the iconic line, “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” originated.  For me, the one I quoted above was the most poignant, as the biting dialogue, devastating performance, and attention-grabbing production all come together in a tour-de-force scene.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Crime / Drama

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Cary Grant / Eva Marie Saint / James Mason

Plot

A case of mistaken identity leads to a cat-and-mouse chase with international spies across the country for New York ad man Roger Thornhill.

What I Liked

I first saw “North By Northwest” when I was probably eleven or twelve, and it remains one of my favorite films of the pre-1960s era of film.  A colorful and fast-paced thriller that sends the audience on a winding trek across the United States, this movie is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most action-packed and widely accessible masterpieces.

Cary Grant, one of Hitchcock’s most oft used leading men, was perfectly cast as handsome and sharp-witted New York advertising executive Roger Thornhill.  Rewatching it for the first time in a couple of years last week, I got the feeling that the writers of TV’s “Mad Men” had Grant’s Thornhill in mind when they created the character of Roger Sterling.  Equally well cast is Eva Marie Saint, whose seductive sensuality is never in question, even if her loyalties are.  Her character’s sexual confidence and aggressiveness, bypassing innuendo for straight-up sexual invitations, is downright shocking for a film made in the 1950s.

Miss Saint’s risqué dialogue isn’t the only facet of the film that was ahead of its time.  “North by Northwest” also plays around with the concepts of identity, individualism, and privacy in a way that one would expect from a movie coming out today.  Thornhill loses his own identity as he becomes a pawn in a game of deception played between the U.S. government and a foreign spy.  His individual rights and safety compromised by powers outside of his control, Thornhill at times embraces his anonymity to disappear among the nameless crowds in train stations, hotels, and other public places, going “off the grid” in modern parlance.  Deep down, this is a very paranoid vision of one person’s helplessness in an increasingly impersonal world, but it is disguised in the identity of an exciting and entertaining thrill ride.

What I Didn’t Like

Made in 1959, “North by Northwest” at times feels like an awkward juxtaposition of two different eras of filmmaking.  Cary Grant was already a living legend by this point, an icon of the silver screen whose career stretched decades into the past to the heyday of the studio era.  Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier, the film’s sexual dialogue and paranoid themes reflect trends common to films made much later.  The jaunty quips written for Grant come straight out of old school Hollywood and sometimes feel a bit out of place amidst the very modern, very serious events happening around him.  Still, if “North by Northwest” feels like a film stuck between two eras, that’s because it was.  The coming 1960s would be a period of great change in American cinema, and director Alfred Hitchcock was one of those visionaries who helped lead filmmaking out of the old and into the new.

Most Memorable Scene

This movie is filled with some iconic action sequences that remain eye-catching and electrifying all these years later.  Their influence on the later adventure epics by the likes of Lucas, Spielberg, and Cameron are easy to recognize.  None more so than the scene where Grant is chased through corn fields by a dive-bombing crop duster plane.  The scene is fraught with tension and suspense, leaving you wondering “How the hell is he getting out of this one?”  Even if the conclusion of the sequence is a bit silly, it will always be the most famous moment of a very famous film.

My Rating: 5 out of 5