2014 End of Year Watchlist

I watched 102 films in 2014. Some viewings were repeats, most were first time, almost all were from prior years. Living on the college time + money budget, getting to the theater was difficult, so I relied heavily on Netflix and old DVDs. Here’s the full list of everything I watched, with some comments when warranted.

True Swill

Seven Chances (1925) by Buster Keaton – 20/100

Racist smut.

Awful

Three Ages (1923) by Buster Keaton – 30/100

Triple Trouble (1918) by Charlie Chaplin – 40/100

The Knockout (1914) by Charles Avery – 45/100

 

Bad

Go West (1925) by Buster Keaton – 50/100

Orphans of the Storm (1921) by Buster Keaton – 50/100

The Birth of a Nation (1915) by D.W. Griffith – 50/100

100 for the production, 0 for the overt racism and historical inaccuracy. Averaged out to 50.

Between Showers (1914) by Henry Lehrman – 55/100

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) by Buster Keaton – 60/100

Broken Blossoms (1919) by Buster Keaton – 60/100

Intolerance (1916) by D.W. Griffith – 60/100

 

Probematic

The Pawnshop (1916) by Charlie Chaplin – 65/100

Our Hospitality (1923) by Buster Keaton – 66/100

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) by Steven Spielberg – 69/100

Indian people eating monkey brains and eyeball soup? Oh man, is this movie racist.

Seven (1995) by David Fincher – 70/100

The Lady Vanishes (1938) by Alfred Hitchcock – 70/100

Abraham Lincoln (1930) by D.W. Griffith – 70/100

Sherlock, Jr. (1924) by Buster Keaton – 70/100

Easy Street (1917) by Charlie Chaplin – 70/100

The Artist (2011) by Michel Hazanavicius – 71/100

 

Flawed

Foxcatcher (2014) by Bennett Miller – 72/100

The Fisher King (1991) by Terry Gilliam – 72/100

Behind the Screen (1916) by Charlie Chaplin – 72/100

Dazed and Confused (1994) by Richard Linklater – 74/100

Days of Heaven (1978) by Terrence Malick – 74/100

Gravity (2013) by Alfonso Cuarón – 75/100

Way Down East (1920) by Buster Keaton – 75/100

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) by Frank Capra – 77/100

Frozen (2013) by Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee – 78/100

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) by Rawson Marshall Thurber – 78/100 [rewatch]

American Beauty (1999) by Sam Mendes – 78/100

Casino Royale (2006) by Martin Campbell – 79/100

 

Good

Midnight in Paris (2011) by Woody Allen – 80/100

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) by Terry Gilliam – 80/100

The Usual Suspects (1995) by Bryan Singer – 80/100

Badlands (1973) by Terrence Malick – 80/100

Rashomon (1950) by Akira Kurosawa – 80/100

The General (1926) by Buster Keaton – 80/100

Shanghaied (1915) by Charlie Chaplin – 80/100

Burn After Reading (2008) by Joel & Ethan Coen – 81/100

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) by Wes Anderson – 82/100

Good Will Hunting (1997) by Gus Van Sant – 82/100

Sleeper (1973) by Woody Allen – 83/100

Rope (1948) by Alfred Hitchcock – 83/100

Clerks (1994) by Kevin Smith – 84/100 [rewatch]

Raising Arizona (1987) by Joel & Ethan Coen – 84/100

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) by Steven Spielberg – 84/100

Get Low (2010) by Aaron Schneider – 85/100

The Social Network (2010) by David Fincher – 85/100

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) by James Foley – 85/100

Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924) by Fritz Lang – 85/100

 

Classics

Nightcrawler (2014) by Dan Gilroy – 86/100

Ghostbusters (1984) by Ivan Reitman – 86/100

What’s Up, Tiger Lilly? (1966) by Woody Allen – 86/100

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) by Sergio Leone – 86/100

One A.M. (1916) by Charlie Chaplin – 86/100

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by Wes Anderson – 87/100

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2003) by Wes Anderson – 87/100 [rewatch]

Caddyshack (1980) by Harold Ramis – 87/100 [rewatch]

From Russia With Love (1963) by Terence Young – 87/100

Rushmore (1998) by Wes Anderson – 88/100 [rewatch]

Saving Private Ryan (1998) by Steven Spielberg – 88/100

Broadway Danny Rose (1984) by Woody Allen – 88/100

Raging Bull (1980) by Martin Scorsese – 88/100

Dr. No (1962) by Terence Young – 88/100

The Apartment (1960) by Billy Wilder – 88/100

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) by John Huston – 88/100

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) by Martin Scorsese – 89/100 [rewatch]

Bernie (2012) by Richard Linklater – 89/100

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) by Steven Spielberg – 89/100

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) by Woody Allen – 89/100

 

Marvels 

The Maltese Falcon (1941) by John Huston – 90/100

Battleship Potemkin (1925) by Sergei Eisenstein – 90/100

Strike (1925) by Sergei Eisenstein – 90/100

12 Monkeys (1995) by Terry Gilliam – 91/100

Blazing Saddles (1974) by Mel Brooks – 91/100 [rewatch]

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924) by Fritz Lang – 91/100

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) by David O. Russell – 92/100 [rewatch]

Love and Death (1975) by Woody Allen – 92/100

The Last Detail (1973) by Hal Ashby – 92/100 [twice]

Sunset Blvd (1950) by Billy Wilder – 92/100

The Immigrant (1917) by Charlie Chaplin – 92/100

Nebraska (2013) by Alexander Payne – 93/100

Barton Fink (1991) by Joel & Ethan Coen – 93/100

Young Frankenstein (1974) by Mel Brooks – 93/100 [rewatch]

 

True Genius

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) by Wes Anderson – 94/100

Lost in Translation (2003) by Sofia Coppola – 94/100

Boogie Nights (1995) by Paul Thomas Anderson – 95/100

Nosferatu (1922) by F.W. Murnau – 95/100

Boyhood (2014) by Richard Linkater – 96/100

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) by Wes Anderson – 96/100 [rewatch]

Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles – 96/100 [rewatch]

Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang – 96/100

Fargo (1996) by Joel & Ethan Coen – 97/100 [twice]

Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese – 97/100

Paths of Glory (1957) by Stanley Kubrick – 97/100

The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola – 98/100

The Cranes Are Flying (1957) by Mikhail Kalatozov – 99/100

Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock – 99/100 [twice]

There Will Be Blood (2007) by Paul Thomas Anderson – 100/100

Apocalypse Now (1979) by Francis Ford Coppola – 100/100

Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock – 100/100

 

A full list of all of my film ratings can be found here:

http://www.criticker.com/profile/djcrawfo/

 

Here’s to a great 2015 of movie watching!

 

I Disagree: Indiana Jones Edition

This is a new column I’m going to try entitled “I Disagree,” wherein I will take a position on an issue that may be rather unpopular. While the very nature of the column is argumentative and alternative, my goal is not to come across as a hipster doofus taking contrary positions for the sake of self-aggrandizement. Part of the way we understand each other as people is through the processing and discussion of art, and this column is in no way designed to belittle those who hold opinions antithetical to my own.

Raiders of the Lost Ark holds a special place in the annals of untouchable cinema. The world’s introduction to film icon Indiana Jones has a following roughly as voracious in defense as that of Beyoncé Knowles; criticism is not tolerated, and any dissent is taken as a personal attack on the patron. Raiders is surely the best movie in the franchise, right? …

Well, who knows? We could try to assign ‘objective’ qualities to writing, direction, and production and analyze those efforts, but that would be altogether boring. All I can say is that it’s not my favorite; that title goes to The Last Crusade. Let’s get ready to rumble.

Don’t get me wrong- I like Raiders, who couldn’t? Harrison Ford runs through jungles and kills Nazis. Sign me up! The film is a blockbuster classic, and it’s tons of fun, but it just doesn’t speak to me on anything but a superficial level.

I didn’t grow up with Indiana in the way that so many Americans from the previous generation did. Truth be told, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the first Indy film I remember seeing. I don’t break with the mainstream in acknowledging that Crystal Skull is a failure of epic proportions (Really guys? Aliens?), but I bring up the point to emphasize my lack of devout affection for the character. I grew up on George Lucas’ preceding blockbuster trilogy; Harrison Ford is Han Solo to me, not everyone’s favorite whip-slinging archaeologist.

Coming into the original trilogy unattached, and watching the three films back-to-back-to-back in the course of one evening, Raiders does not resonate with me the same way that The Last Crusade does. I find Raiders to be devoid of the human connection that I require in order for an action/adventure film to rise above in-the-moment pleasure and reach the level of lasting impact. Raiders is action-heavy and plot driven, which is great for an adventure flick, but I find myself longing for a deeper connection to these characters.

I believe that Marion is supposed to serve as an in-road to the audience’s emotional attachment to the plot. Marion is a beloved female lead, and rightfully so; she’s smart, and crafty, and pretty, and strong. But Harrison Ford, in his typical fashion, plays Indiana as a stoic mirror, and Marion reflects his lack of believable emotions. When we are first introduced to the couple in the Himalayas of Nepal, they yell at each other in such a cold manner that I momentarily check out. I don’t believe for a single second that these two have had a relationship in the past. In a hallmark scene of robotic acting, I am left unmoved. This is emblematic of a greater flaw I find with the film: none of the characters are very well developed. Who IS Indiana Jones? What motivates him? What is his code of ethics?

I posit that we don’t find out until The Last Crusade.

I have heard it mentioned before that one of the great aspects of Raiders is that it sets up the dichotomy of the protagonist wishing to preserve artifacts for the sake of historical integrity while the antagonist is merely after monetary compensation. I completely disagree. Indiana is shown multiple times in this film discussing financial rewards for his findings. In the final scene, Indy and Marcus make the case that the lost ark should be available to researchers for the purpose of study, but his motives for venturing into the field up to this point of the film are not clearly established as being purely academic. In The Last Crusade, however, a young Indiana (played by River Phoenix) steals an artifact from a wealth-driven villain and loudly proclaims that the piece “should be in a museum.” This statement is integral to our understanding of Indiana Jones as a character, in a way that no piece of dialogue is in Raiders.

Another strong point for The Last Crusade, to me, is that the plot feels like it has real, jarring stakes. I understand as an audience member that the Raiders Nazis are evil, but to what end is this battle raging? The ark is shrouded in mystery (in an effort to make a lasting effect on the climax of the film), so we don’t really know what makes the artifact valuable apart from mystical curiosity. The search for the ark is introduced as being the result of Nazi fascination with the occult, and though we know the historical significance of the mythical ark, and the blow to global morale that may take place if Hitler is the one to discover it, its meaning to the fight between good and evil is not fleshed out throughout the film. In The Last Crusade, however, the screenwriter makes it a point to emphasize that the Holy Grail grants eternal life to its possessor. The thought of an immortal Hitler is a concrete danger that compels my emotional investment in the chase. The Nazis in Crusade also feel dramatically more evil than in Raiders, where they are portrayed as quite cartoonish cannon fodder being set up to die visceral deaths. Crusade Nazis burn books, Raiders Nazis just burn.

But perhaps the high point of The Last Crusade is the inclusion of Sean Connery as Indiana’s father Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. The rocky relationship between father and son is what really makes Crusade stand apart from its franchisees (and most blockbuster movies, to be honest). This is a relationship with a visible, believable depth; you can see the conflict that Indiana feels when he is told that his father has disappeared, and the pain that Henry feels when he believes that he has lost his son for good. Henry is a brilliant, yet distant man, a father that teaches but doesn’t really learn. His obvious love for his son is masked by a thick layer of condescension, exemplified by his persistence in referring to Indy as “Junior” against his wishes. When Indiana berates his father for not being a more engaging and honest parent, Henry rightfully points out that his son can’t think of anything to talk about, either. This moment is storytelling genius; a witty commentary on the propensity for children to harbor unreasonable hostilities toward their upbringing that they must quickly abandon once pressed to examine true underlying causes. Indy goes through the trials and tribulations presented by the Grail’s house of rest in order to cure his dying father of his bullet wound, and when Henry in turn saves his son from falling to his death by speaking “Indiana, let it go,” my heart cries. I finally care about these characters.

Not to be outdone in terms of entertainment, The Last Crusade has my favorite lines of the whole franchise, including:

“Nazis. I hate these guys.”

“No ticket!”

“He chose… poorly.”

“It tells me that goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of                       BURNING them!

“She talks in her sleep.”

“This is intolerable!”

“I should have mailed it to the Marx Brothers!”

“DON’T call me Junior!”

“Does anyone here speak English? Or even Ancient Greek?”

and of course

“We named the dog Indiana.”

 

In sum, The Last Crusade has less in common with the first two films in its franchise than it does with a James Bond film (appropriate given Connery’s performance). Perhaps my affection for this film is driven mainly by the affection I have for Connery’s 007, of whom I see a great deal in Ford’s Indiana Jones. I recognize that even die-hard fans have differing opinions about the specific mixture of action, humor, and sex that they prefer for their Bond films, and as I cannot begrudge other fans for preferring action hero Daniel Craig to the charm of my beloved Connery, I cannot blame those who hold Raiders of the Lost Ark above The Last Crusade.

At least we can all agree that Temple of Doom sucks.

 

Wrestling with Foxcatcher

December is an extremely busy time for cinephiles. With the coming of the holiday season, studios push Oscar bait out into theaters in order to qualify for the Academy Awards presented in February. We wait and wait for the air to turn cold so that we can view the year’s best films in a dizzying sequence during the happiest time of the year. We desperately hope to receive the great movies we were promised.

Foxcatcher (2014), as with so many high-profile movies subject to early year hype, is a bitter disappointment.

Directed by Bennett Miller (Capote; Moneyball) and based on the true story of the Schultz brothers (American wrestling heroes) and their disturbed benefactor John du Pont (heir to the DuPont chemical fortune), the movie follows Mark (Channing Tatum), the younger of the brothers, on his rocky journey to the 1988 Olympic games in Seoul. Steve Carell, hidden under a prosthetic nose and intense makeup, stars as du Pont, whose sprawling East Pennsylvania estate (Foxcatcher Farms) serves as the living and training quarters for Schultz and his teammates. More a dramatic character study than a sports movie, Foxcatcher often feels aimless and interminable.

In its defense, the film is visually striking, contrasting the power and beauty of the Pennsylvania woodland with the dark and dingy lighting indoors (mirroring the emotional arc of Mark). Du Pont’s mansion is filled with material trinkets, sterile doll house fixtures meant to be seen but not touched. The off-kilter mega-millionaire lives in a massive farm house with his servants and disapproving mother, wallowing away like Charles Foster Kane from lavish excess. Carell wrings out as much mileage as he can from a poorly written character, convincing the audience of du Pont’s desperate loneliness and delusions of grandeur.

Unfortunately, Tatum’s character is not in the least bit compelling. Mark’s relationship with his older and more decorated brother (Mark Ruffalo) is portrayed as a complex rivalry anchored in familial attachment, but the siblings’ obvious love is addressed superficially. Important details of the brothers’ backstories are explained with jarring exposition. Early on, du Pont’s aide privately questions Mark about his family history in a clunky scene- a grilling which serves only to inform the audience that the brothers had an unstable childhood.

Numerous unnecessary scenes of tell-don’t-show expand the film’s criminal runtime (134 minutes), exacerbating the effects of the deliberate pace. Movie magic also makes an appearance when Mark gains 12 pounds from an afternoon’s worth of room service fried chicken and then proceeds to make weight after a 90 minute sweat-a-thon.

The startling climax is at least interesting, but the film does not properly earn the drama of the conclusion. Rather than satisfied with the movie, I left the theater feeling as isolated and cold as Carell’s du Pont.

Score: 72/100.

The Average Film

I’ve reached 400 feature-length movies on my watchlist with yesterday’s viewing of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973). Business school dork that I am, I keep an Excel spreadsheet listing all of my numerical ratings of every film I watch. At the 400 movie mark, I thought it would be interesting to look at the numbers to see what my average, median and most frequent (mode) ratings were.

This process is inherently biased, as I obviously select movies to watch that I think I will enjoy or that others have reviewed positively, so the figures will likely be higher than if I watched every movie ever made and ran the numbers. Selection bias with a limited number of data points. What can I do besides watch more films?

Anyway, here’s what the stats say:

Average score- 72.945 (e.g. Forrest Gump, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Tropic Thunder)

Median score- 78 (e.g. The King’s Speech, My Cousin Vinny, The Breakfast Club)

Most frequent score- 78

Score Bin	Frequency
0	2
5	0
10	7
15	1
20	3
25	6
30	3
35	2
40	11
45	7
50	4
55	17
60	14
65	22
70	29
75	42
80	70
85	65
90	50
95	27
More	18

When plotted as a histogram, this data shows the range from 55-100 being of very roughly normal shape with a long left tail of outliers. It feels nice to see that my rankings are usually at least internally consistent.

 

My Top 10 Films

I do not pretend that this list is exhaustive, but merely reflects my feelings about the films I have viewed. If and when another movie enters the ranks of my personal Top 10, this post will be updated and shared. My full rankings of every movie I have watched can be found here (make sure to use the sidebar filter “Film Type.”)

[Previous entries: Annie Hall, 1977 (Woody Allen), Taxi Driver, 1976 (Martin Scorsese)]

10. Casablanca, 1942 (Michael Curtiz)

  9. Fargo, 1996 (Joel & Ethan Coen)

  8. Vertigo, 1958 (Alfred Hitchcock)

  7. The Godfather, 1972 (Francis Ford Coppola)

  6. The Cranes Are Flying, 1957 (Mikhail Kalatozov)

  5. Rear Window, 1954 (Alfred Hitchcock)

  4. There Will Be Blood, 2007 (Paul Thomas Anderson)

3. Apocalypse Now, 1979 (Francis Ford Coppola)

  2. Pulp Fiction, 1994 (Quentin Tarantino)

  1. Psycho, 1960 (Alfred Hitchcock)

The Final Scene of Taxi Driver

(SPOILERS) The ending scene of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) is one of the most hotly contested sequences in cinema. A great many people interpret the conclusion as a literal reality: Travis Bickle survives, is lauded as a hero by the media and regains the respect of his love interest. As the story goes, this is a sardonic critique of the notion of “hero worship” and the ability of the press to turn murderers into saints. I’ve heard tell that some also consider the finale to be an iteration of the Scorsesean theme of urban randomness. I find these interpretations lacking.

For one, the concluding sequence does not make logical sense if taken literally. If by some miracle of modern science Travis managed to survive being shot at point blank range in his neck, he would either be locked in a jail cell or a sanatorium; one cannot simply murder three people and face no legal inquisition. The three police officers standing in the doorway see Travis take responsibility for the events when he mimics pulling a trigger against his head! Even if we play devil’s advocate and accept that somehow a 12 year old girl managed to convince both the entirety of the NYPD and the district attorney that Bickle was acting in self-defense (unlikely given the glops of blood left on the sidewalk from a wounded Sport walking to the other building and the damning suicide note Travis left on his kitchen table…), there still remains the problem that Travis just tried to assassinate a presidential candidate in Columbus Circle… With his face being plastered all over the cover of the New York Times, every FBI agent east of the Mississippi would be converging on Travis’ apartment like pigeons on breadcrumbs in Central Park. There’s simply no way that Bickle could escape this nightmare unharmed and be driving a taxi on the other side.

Having hopefully poked enough holes in the literal interpretation to discredit it, I move on to my interpretation: everything that happens after the shootings is a dying hallucination. This seemed apparent to me on the first viewing, given Scorsese’s choice of camera angle on the withdrawal from the building. The shot points directly down at the ground from quite a high perspective, slowly pulling further and further away from the crime scene, eventually fusing into the disputed final sequence. This directorial choice seems to me to simulate the beginning of Bickle drifting off into the twilight of his death, the slow pan into a morbid dream.

As for the dream sequence itself, everything that transpires fits far too well into Travis’ ideal to effectively gel with a movie about a psychopathic vigilante. Essentially, you could cut this sequence and paste it at the end of the final scene of Breaking Bad. It’s that corny. What does a lowly, bitter creature fantasize about more than fame and glory? For the entire movie, everything occurs in a manner opposed to Travis’ desires: Betsy leaves him, Iris won’t leave with him, he can’t pull out his gun quite quickly enough, etc. etc. Travis never gets his way. That’s the whole point. It seems to make little sense to significantly alter the thematic message of the film in the last five minutes.

It seems hard to forget that Travis is the epitome of an unreliable narrator. Bickle is a mentally ill insomniac starved for attention, living on a steady diet of alcohol and junk food, fueled by coffee and unmarked pills. Why should we believe anything he depicts as being factual?

Go back and listen to Iris’ father reading aloud the letter he supposedly wrote to Travis: the staggered meter of the delivery almost perfectly resembles the pacing of Travis’ stuttered internal monologue. It’s also fitting that we never see the father on screen; he is merely a written creation, just like the persona Travis adopts when writing to his parents. Mr. Steensma can’t afford to come to New York and Travis can’t disclose his address to his parents. If Bickle were ever physically confronted with either party, his psychotic worldview would crumble. Keeping his admirers at arm’s length allows him to continue the fantasy that such admirers even exist to begin with.

I will take my interpretation one step further: Travis hallucinates his entire relationship with Betsy. When we are first introduced to Betsy at the campaign headquarters, we observe a bizarre conversation between the woman and her coworker; the dialogue is sterile, awkward, robotic. Suddenly, in an acute manner, we see Betsy identify the voyeur in the taxi cab. What explains the discomfort of this scene?

I posit that the conversation is a creation of Travis’ imagination; the entire scene is merely a fantasy wherein Bickle dubs over a muted interaction viewed from his visual perspective. I find the most compelling support of this interpretation to be Betsy’s rapid head turn: Bickle overemphasizes the drama of the moment in the visual because he knows he has been caught and is thus on high alert. From Travis’ perspective, Betsy reacts as suddenly as a guard dog to a midnight knock. Bickle fills the silence of the conversation with what he imagines people would be discussing in a campaign office, similar to the way that television’s Dexter meanders through life attempting to mirror the behavior of people he simply doesn’t understand.

Throughout the entire movie, but particularly at the finale, Betsy has a slight aura surrounding her that makes her appear fictionalized. We never see Betsy unless Travis is within eyesight and her feelings for him mimic his feelings about himself and the state of the world. At first, Travis’ self-esteem is very high and he views himself as a righteous, conscientious objector to the grime of his surroundings; Betsy views him as charming and charismatic, unlike anyone whom she has ever met. In the middle, Travis begins to detest himself for delving into what he sees as the moral vacuity of New York’s seedy underbelly; Besty leaves Travis for taking her to a pornographic movie. Bickle uses the created Besty persona as a masochistic tool for self-flagellation. At the end, Travis, dying, views himself as a redeemed hero, having rescued an endangered girl from a child prostitution ring; Betsy has regained respect for him, but Travis drives off proud, leaving Besty behind as he enters his eternal peace.

He has no use for her anymore.

 

Rating: 97/100.

The Glaring Plot Hole of Saving Private Ryan

(SPOILERS) Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic Saving Private Ryan is likely the director’s masterpiece. The movie is a truly visceral depiction of the storming of Omaha Beach at Normandy, a frightening portrayal of wartime violence unlike anything I’ve ever seen. However, there is one huge plot hole that almost ruins the conclusion of the movie for me.

At the beginning of the film, we see an aged man walking toward a memorial ground for fallen soldiers with several generations of his family behind him. Naturally, as Tom Hanks was the main star of the movie, I assumed that this man was Hanks’ character decades after the events that were about to unfold. The main twist ending of this movie is the death of Hanks’ Captain Miller, shot in the chest by a Nazi POW he had released earlier in the film. It turns out that the old man from the opening sequence is actually Private James Ryan (played by Matt Damon as a youth and Harrison Young as an elder), the namesake of the film.

The elder Private Ryan falls to the ground in anguish as the camera pans to US Army Ranger boats (carrying Captain Miller) preparing to land at Omaha Beach. After taking the perimeter at the shed of gobs of blood, Miller receives a mission to fetch a Private James Ryan. After Private Ryan loses his three brothers in combat, the military higher-ups decide to pull him out of battle and send him home safely to his mother, who has lost all but one of her children. Captain Miller and his group of soldiers have to trek through treacherous fields of Nazi soldiers, venturing from town to town in coastal France searching for Private Ryan, a paratrooper who went missing after his plane missed its drop zone. Once Captain Miller is killed attempting to prevent the Nazis from taking control of an extremely valuable bridge, the camera fades the young Private Ryan’s face into that of the old Private Ryan, at which point Harrison Young gives a speech at Captain Miller’s adopted grave, hoping he has lived up to Miller’s final advice to take advantage of the blessing of life that he has received.

This is all well and good; twists and turns and surprises are fairly pedestrian filmmaking tactics. But wait- wasn’t this supposed to be a flashback? After all, we are given the impression that the elderly man from the beginning of the film falls to the ground due to something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder; the memories have come racing back to him and he is overtaken with grief, causing him to lose control. This is the logical conclusion given the temporal structure of the film; after all, at the finale of the story, we return to the elder Private Ryan, who has regained his senses and is preparing for his one-sided conversation with Captain Miller. But how can Private Ryan vividly recall the journey of Miller’s soldiers when he doesn’t appear until halfway through the movie? He can’t possibly flashback to events he didn’t witness!

I suppose it is possible that Spielberg did not intend for the story to be a flashback, but if this were the case, he should not have set up the film in such a way that heavily insinuates this to be the case. The better structure would have been to simply open with the storming of Normandy and not show the old man until the conclusion. Spielberg even could have kept the face fusion of young and old with the same dramatic effect! It’s clear then that this was just a logistical oversight in the hopes of surprising the audience. The director can have either the twist ending or a proper time continuum, but not both.

Rating: 88/100.

Boyhood: A Modern Marvel

Let’s get this out of the way at the front: Boyhood is not Pulp Fiction or Psycho or the Godfather. This movie is not quite in the pantheon, but it is damn close.

Boyhood is Richard Linklater’s endearing look at the physical and emotional maturation of a young boy through adolescence and early adulthood. Shot with a static cast over the course of 12 years, the movie is certainly an incredible feat of production. Ellar Coltrane, my early pick for this year’s Best Actor Oscar, shines in the titular role as Mason Jr., fusing his own real life development with that of his character. Patricia Arquette is masterful in her portrayal of Mason’s single mother Olivia, a character meant to symbolize the redemptive flexibility of the human spirit, overcoming abusive husbands, financial ruin and several cross-state moves en route to a Master’s degree and two successful children. Mason’s dynamic elder sister Samantha, played by Linklater’s daughter Lorelei, acts as the perfect counterweight to Mason: hypercompetitive, energetic, reactive. Ethan Hawke rounds out the cast as Mason Sr., the children’s deadbeat-turned-attentive super dad.

The greatest accomplishment of this film, aside from the sheer technical difficulties of such a long-term project, is the consistent growth of every character. The years go by in a flash, seamlessly advancing with simple cuts, with each scene acting as a snapshot, a time capsule. Mason develops from a misbehaving 6 year old craving a father figure to an accomplished photographer, ever-mellow with a realistically cynical worldview. Samantha mellows as well, replacing adversarial, pre-teen temper tantrums with long-term relationships and a prideful mentorship of her younger brother. The emotional turmoil of their parents’ relationship subsides with the aging wisdom both acquire: Olivia joins elite academic social circles and struggles to find happiness in the vague vanity of her surroundings, while Mason Sr. opts for a simpler life, remarrying into a religious family and abandoning his rabid liberalism for a more conservative life outlook. Linklater’s screenplay effortlessly gels the development of these characters; no change seems out of place, every relationship is symbiotic.

There are, of course, minor flaws with the movie. Interspersed among truly amazing scenes there are a few inorganic lines, one or two editorial miscues and a symbolic foreshadowing that is either brilliant or ham-fisted, but nothing in between. The scene that sticks with me the most is Mason’s discovery of his mother crying on the floor of the garage. Without giving too much away, the emotion of the scene overwhelms and Linklater’s decision to leave the garage door down halfway, so that only young Mason could see underneath at eye level, is beyond fitting. I would have ended the movie 3 minutes sooner, with Mason walking into his college dorm room. The natural resting point of the movie for me would have been for Mason to kick the door shut behind him, placing a definitive end to the childhood that gives the film its name. However, Linklater thankfully manages to find another fitting end to the movie, which I will not spoil.

As I left the theater, I found myself discussing with a friend the seeming impossibility that this film had not yet been made. This is the best compliment I can give the director: for a concept that feels like it should have been made decades ago, Linklater executes the film masterfully.

 

Rating: 96/100

For a breakdown of my judging criteria, visit: https://crawford2632.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/what-makes-a-movie-great/

Dazed And Confused By This Movie

With twenty minutes left in Dazed and Confused, drunken teenagers tap their keg in the middle of the woods on the outskirts of their small Texas town. This scene is really symbolic of the whole movie.

My question for Richard Linklater: what is the point? Quentin Tarantino, my favorite director, considers this one of his 20 favorite films of all-time. I tried to enjoy it, I really did, but I just cannot figure it out. The ensemble cast of would-be stars is disjointed, with far too many unmemorable names and faces to keep track of. Ben Affleck, as confusingly inconsistent as Nicholas Cage, cannot act his way out of a paper bag in this performance.

I’m not really sure who the protagonist is supposed to be. The freshmen tortured by the seniors? The nerds tortured by the jocks? Troubled footballer Randy “Pink” Floyd? Linklater is not clear about this point, but even if he were, would it matter? I have no emotional investment in these characters, all of them are flat.

The biggest problem I have with this movie is that it doesn’t hold my suspension of disbelief. The famous scenes of paddling and air-raid drills make me cringe; I refuse to believe that people behave this way. The shtick of organized, mass class warfare appears unrealistic. Maybe I’m too urban to understand this movie. I am from the suburbs, as the characters in this film are supposed to be, but it seems I have more of a connection to city life than any of these characters. Maybe I escaped my blue collar, low-class white enclave in time to avoid these social situations. Maybe I was too distant, both in terms of physical and metaphorical miles, from my high school classmates to tap into the supposed teenage truths unearthed here. Maybe I grew up in an age of excess instant entertainment. I’ve never been bored enough to break a mailbox with a trashcan or throw a bowling ball through the rear window of an unsuspecting resident’s car. If this movie accurately portrays the amorality and vacuity of small town America in 1976, it certainly explains something about the current state of adult Baby Boomer culture. Rather than a reminiscent time piece, Dazed and Confused reads more like an historical tragedy.

Highlighting an otherwise dead cast, Matthew McConaughey shines in his breakout role as a pathetic twenty-something stoner who frantically clings on to his disappearing youth. The soundtrack continually steals scenes, countering the lifeless characters with romping, upbeat 70’s rock. In the end, not even Alice Cooper and Foghat can salvage a film with no substance. This is That 70’s Show, but without humor.

The movie does indeed feel like the 1970’s, with perfect wardrobe design and the grainy film texture of stoner hangout classics like Animal House. It’s too bad the technical achievements are overshadowed by such a depressing screenplay.

Rating: 74/100.

What Makes A Movie Great?

I’m going to be blogging movie reviews, so in order to keep my ratings consistent, I have taken it upon myself to delineate my criteria for great movies. These five categories are not exhaustive, but paint an accurate-enough picture of my thought process when viewing and judging a movie.

Screenwriting: Do I believe the dialogue? Does it sound organic? Do I find myself realizing in the moment that this is a script? Is the premise even worth a movie? Does the movie know what it is?

Acting: Does the actor bring the character to life? Does the actor lift the quality of the screenwriting, or vice versa?

Directing: Is the tempo of the dialogue natural? Do scenes flow with ease? Does the setting enhance the visual effect of the movie? Are there glaring changes I would make?

Technical: Does the film, for lack of a more prestigious term, look good? Does the audio quality fit with the theme of the movie? Do attempts at complex editing pay off?

Impact: Do I ever want to watch this movie again? If not, is it momentous enough to only need one viewing? Did the movie break new ground in cinema? Is it wildly influential?