95. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Stars:  Tom Hanks (Captain John H. Miller), Tom Sizemore (Technical Sergeant Mike Horvath), Edward Burns (Private First Class Richard Reiben), Matt Damon (Private First Class James Francis Ryan), Jeremy Davies (Technician Fifth Grade Timothy E. Upham), Vin Diesel (Private First Class Adrian Caparzo), Ted Danson (Captain Fred Hamill)

Director:  Steven Spielberg

Awards / Honors

• 5 Oscar wins - Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound
• 6 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Writing (Orginal Screenplay), Best Art Direction, Best Make-up, Best Original Score
• #45 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list (2001)
• #10 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list (2006)
• #71 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)
• #8 on AFI's 10 Top 10 lists - Epic Movies (2008)
• According to Box Office Mojo, Saving Private Ryan is approximately the 102nd highest grossing movie of all time (when accounting for inflation)

Genre:  War Drama

Running Time:  2 Hours, 49 Minutes

Fomrat:  DVD, Blu-ray

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take

OK, let’s cut to the chase with this film.  Saving Private Ryan is an excellent film.  I give it a rating of 5 Stars and it deserved all of the accolades that it received.  I love this film, and can watch it over and over.  Add to that, the Blu-ray transfer is spectacular.  There.  Now that is out of the way, here is what I actually want to talk about: artistic license in historical fiction – when is it OK and when it is not? 

Historical fiction has always been popular in movies.  The problem is filmmakers haven’t always been very concerned about differentiating between what is “historical” and what is “fiction”.  Sometimes it can’t be helped. I get that.  History is complicated, and the more exciting, action-packed, and emotional an historical event seems, the more complicated that event probably was, and complication makes for bad story telling.  Good stories are always very simple at their core.  They have heroes (preferably one or a really small group) overcoming great difficulties or villainous foes (preferably both) – in other words you need conflict and you need to resolve the conflict in simple and direct ways.  So, if a filmmaker needs to modify / omit events or characters a little to make the narrative work a bit smoother, then that is understandable.  It is the definition of “a bit” that seems cause problems.

While there are any number of examples of films where “artistic license” was used a bit too liberally, the one that immediately comes to mind is the film Braveheart.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love this film and I have seen it many times.  However, it is probably one of the most inaccurate historical dramas ever made.  Short of having the story take place in Australia and having William Wallace wielding a light saber, I am not sure it could get any less accurate.  Historian Sharon Krossa described the film thusly:

"The events aren't accurate, the dates aren't accurate, the characters aren't accurate, the names aren't accurate, the clothes aren't accurate—in short, just about nothing is accurate."

Director and star Mel Gibson freely acknowledges the many historical inaccuracies, but has always defended his directorial choices, by saying that the way events are portrayed in the film are much more "cinematically compelling" than the historical fact.  I would certainly agree with the “cinematically compelling” statement.  Like I said, I love this movie.  So do millions of people.  So what is the problem? 

The problem is that we were being sold a lie.  If movie had been marketed as the fictional story of Wally Williams and it took place in some non-specific time in the Middle Ages, well then no harm, no foul.  It wasn’t, however.  It was sold as a being based on real events, but very little in the movie happened the way it was depicted, if at all.  Sorry, artistic license or not, that is just wrong.  How can we learn from the past if our popular forms of media feel that they can just present history any way they like and not be clear about the fact they are doing so? 

Sometimes historical fiction is done well.   The movie I should be talking about, Saving Private Ryan, is an example where it is done well.  It was fictional story, but it didn’t feel the need to completely disregard actual events.  About the most critical thing you could say is that the movie seems to give the impression that Americans took Omaha Beach all by themselves, which wasn’t the case.  For example, Tom Hanks and crew should have been aboard a British landing craft with a British pilot.  Many nations fought and died on those beaches that day, but the movie just shows you Americans and Germans.  Could that have depicted more accurately?  Sure, and it probably should have been.  That being said, the Omaha Landing was depicted far more accurately than say the Battle of Stirling Bridge was in Braveheart.  Which battle was that you ask? It was the “They will never take our Freedom!” battle.  Yes, I know, there is no bridge depicted in the film.  There was one in real life mind you.  And a river.  And an over-extended British army trying to cross the little tiny bridge when they were sneaked attacked by the Scottish.  In other words, where WWII vets were going on record for saying how realistic the D-Day scenes were in Saving Private Ryan, absolutely nothing of the battle you see in Braveheart actually happened. 

Look, Mel Gibson is going through a lot these days and I am not trying to pile on him, but the fact is that he doesn’t let little things like… umm… facts, get in the way of the story he wants to tell (don’t even get me started on The Patriot) and he and other directors do a disservice to everyone when they allow their expressions to run unchecked by reality.  Hollywood seems to think that words “based on” or “inspired by” means “we only have to get some of the names correct”.  Like it or not, the entertainment industry has a measurable effect on how people learn about and view both historical and current events. F ilmmakers should feel free to tell whatever stories they want, but when they get sold as being true when in fact they are not, it is false advertising and people should be held responsible.  

Not only that, it hurts documentary and educational filmmakers as well.  Even when historical fiction is done right, like Saving Private Ryan, there is just no way documentaries and educational movies can compete with multi-million dollar Hollywood productions.  Yes, Saving Private Ryan is a great piece of historical fiction, but regardless of how accurate it may be it shouldn’t be confused with historical fact.  Hollywood should make a much better effort to differentiate between the two.  It would benefit everyone if they did.

John

BETH TAKE:

Let me just start to saying...I love Tom Hanks...he my favorite actor of all time..LOVE HIM...LOVE HIM...LOVE HIM!

Like John, I loved this movie...I gave it 5 stars...so yeah, I loved it! Unlike John, I can not watch this movie over and over. I don't know if there is anyone like me out there, but I can't watch sad and dramatic movies over and over. I can watch it once, and be glad that I did see it...but I can truly go without watching them ever again. I can name two movies that I feel this way about...this one, Saving Private Ryan and The Green Mile...oddly enough, they both have Tom Hanks in them (I just realized that lol). I loved both movies but Saving Private Ryan is a little bit too dramatic for me and The Green Mile is just way too sad.

And unfortunately, at the end of SPR...Tom Hanks dies...WHAT? Tom Hanks can't die in a movie :(

96. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Stars:  Tim Robbins (Andy Dufresne),  Morgan Freeman (Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding), Bob Gunton (Warden Samuel Norton )

Director:  Frank Darabont

Awards / Honors

• 7 Oscar Nominations - Best Picture, Best Actor (Morgan Freeman), Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound Mixing
• #23 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list (2006)
• #72 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)

Genre:  Drama

Running Time:  2 Hours, 22 Minutes

Format:  DVD, Blu-ray

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take

It is easy to forget after being bombarded repeatedly by the same 30 second commercials for movies like Salt, or The Expendables, or Scott Pilgrim vs. The Word that marketing is not just an annoying part of the film industry, but a necessary one.  Every year Hollywood movie distributors spend literally billions of dollars to buy paid advertising – TV commercials, newspaper ads, etc.  Why?  Well, because unless it is a mega-blockbuster, films don’t typically linger in theaters for more than four to six weeks, which means that the movie distributors have a very limited window in which to make as much money as they can.  Theaters just don’t have the ability to wait for a movie to build an audience by word-of-mouth anymore.  Granted, film promotion is definitely a double-edged sword.  The emphasis on focus-group reaction and profitability estimates certainly can impact the artistic quality of film in a negative way.  On the other hand, if no one sees a film, can it be considered art at all?

The Shawshank Redemption is a prime example of how film promotion can be both helpful and detrimental to a motion picture.  There is no doubt that Shawshank is one of those films that everyone loves.  For example, it is currently # 1 on IMDb’s list of best reviewed movies.  It is one of Rodger Ebert’s “Great Films”, and while always a film-critic favorite, this film has started to grow more highly regarded than either Forrest Gump or Pulp Fiction, the two most critically acclaimed films the year of Shawshank’s release.  Time is certainly being kind to this film.  With such glowing, nearly-universal praise, it is easy to forget that this film was a box office flop.  After its initial theatrical run, the film was about 15 million dollars in the hole.  35 million to produce and it made only about 20 million or so.  The film was such a box office disappointment that when asked about it later, director Frank Darabont, stated: “We couldn’t beg people to go see this movie when it first came out.”  Why was such a critically acclaimed movie like The Shawshank Redemption (and a surprisingly large number of other films on this list) such a financial failure?

The answer:  the film had a bad marketing campaign.

The number of people I have met over the years, that when discussing this film, tell me that they saw this film in the theater is surprisingly high.  But considering how little money this movie made while in the theaters, I have either been very lucky to have known a large number of sophisticated movie-goers, or some of them were lying – they saw it on cable or on VHS just like the rest of us.  Now, the reason I didn’t see this movie in the theaters is probably the same reason most of you out there didn’t see it in the movie theaters:  we didn’t have any idea what this movie was about and I didn’t like the title.  Go out to Wikipedia and take a look at the theatrical poster for this movie.  Now, combine that image with the rather cryptic sounding title “The Shawshank Redemption” and try to divine what this movie is about.  Not exactly easy is it?  The point of a promotional campaign is to convey to you what genre movie falls into (action, horror, comedy, romance, etc.), and some idea of what the movie is about.  Can you honestly tell me you can derive any idea of what the plot is from the title and the poster alone?

Granted, a title and a movie poster does not an entire film promotion make.  If we take a look at the poster for a movie I mentioned earlier, Salt, it doesn’t exactly portray a great deal of information either.  However, the movie trailers clearly do.  I haven’t seen Salt, but based on what I have learned form the commercials, I could tell you that Angelina Jolie plays a CIA operative that is on the run from her fellow spies because she may or may not be a Russian sleeper agent.  I can tell you that it is an action movie with lots of stunts and explosions, and that Angelina appears scantily-clad in at least one scene.  But then again, I can’t help but know this.  The trailers for this movie have been appearing on my TV every 15 minutes for the last month, so it is OK that poster is simply some sort of simple teaser and the title of the film is rather silly.  Now, in Shawshank’s defense, its trailers do a pretty good job of letting you know what the movie is about as well, but can any of you out there actually remember ever seeing them?  I can’t.  In fact, I went out and specifically searched for the trailers and watched a few.  I can honestly say I don’t remember ever seeing any of them.  Not in the theaters, not on TV, never.

What’s the lesson here?  While you may have to deal with some “backlash” issues if you inundate me with advertisements for your film, I absolutely won’t see it if I don’t know what it is about, so you better make sure your marketing campaign reaches me.  I think that is the case with most people – they won’t go spend money on a movie that they know nothing about.  So with a media campaign that clearly failed to reach anyone, all people had to help them make the decision on whether or not to see this film was the title (cryptic) and the movie poster / newspaper ad (usually the same image).  Considering the resulting box office totals, I suspect that most conversations about seeing this movie went something like – “The Shawshank Redemption? I have no idea what that is about.  Let go see that Tom Hanks movie instead, the previews for that looked great …”

So, what transformed this failure into such a critical success?  The Oscars.  Again, as much as many film snobs like to berate the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as simply a marketing device (sort of like I did back in my Sunrise post), one cannot argue the effect that the “Oscar bump” had on this film.  The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for seven Oscars, but didn’t win one – it, along with Pulp Fiction had a hard time competing with the award-accumulating Forrest Gump juggernaut.  However, with a re-tooled Oscar-centric marketing campaign the movie garnered about another 10 million or so in box office receipts, still not enough to break even on production costs, but the nominations had helped get even more people to see it and that lead to good word-of-mouth, which in turn helped build an audience for the film.  With a quick release into the home video market, along with a heavy rotation on cable television – and Presto! – one of the first classics of the home video age is born.  The Shawshank Redemption, a film that tanked at the box office, in part due to a poor marketing campaign, went on to become profitable and beloved due to a better tuned one.

So, does that mean I think that the ultimate success of this film is due solely to the correction of a bad marketing plan?  Of course not.  Ultimately, this film has become a classic because we all see ourselves as Andy Dufresne.  We all, at times, feel like we are trapped in our own little Shawshank Prisons, so we all root for Andy as he tries to survive in his.  No, marketing didn’t make The Shawshank Redemption a good movie, but bad marketing nearly prevented any of us from seeing it, and that certainly would have been a crime.

The Shawshank Redemption gets a ranking of 5 Stars.

John

BETH'S TAKE:

Morgan Freeman is one of the best actors ever. I can't think of one movie I have watch with him that I did not like. This one included. My one and only complaint about this movie...IT'S WAY TOO LONG!! Once I thought the end was approaching...NOPE, it wasn't!

But overall...very very good movie..highly recommend watching it!

102. Dances with Wolves (1990)

Stars:  Kevin Costner (Lt. John J. Dunbar), Mary McDonnell (Stands With A Fist ), Graham Greene (Kicking Bird), Rodney A. Grant (Wind In His Hair), Floyd Red Crow Westerman (Ten Bears)

Director:  Kevin Costner

Awards / Honors

• 7 Oscars Wins - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Original Score
• 5 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Actor (Kevin Costner), Best Supporting Actor (Graham Greene), Best Supporting Actress (Mary McDonnell), Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• #75 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (1998)
• #59 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list (2006)
• In 2007, Dances with Wolves was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
• Dances with Wolves is approximately the 112th highest grossing movie of all time, accounting for inflation (see Box Office Mojo)

Genre:  Historical Drama

Running Time:  3 Hours, 54 Minutes (Director's Cut)

Format:  DVD (not yest available on Blu-ray)

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth 4- Stars)

John's Take

As I have mentioned in previous posts, sometimes movies don’t age well.  Usually this is taken to mean that one or more elements of the movie seems wrong or odd to a modern audience – say, something like showing a husband and a wife sleeping in separate beds, antiquated special effects, or even something more serious like racial stereotypes.  Despite how critically acclaimed a movie may have been at the time, it always runs the risk of eventually becoming irrelevant.  On a rare occasion, however, it is not any particular element of the movie, but the success and accolades that the movie receives that have a negative impact on its shelf-life.  In other words, it becomes the victim of backlash.  It seems like Dances with Wolves is becoming one of those films.  As the years have past since the movie’s release, it seems like there is a growing desire among people who write about movies to take this movie "down a few pegs" for some reason.  In other words, the film’s reputation is starting to be affected by the backlash it has been subjected to over the years.  That backlash has come in many forms.

First, there is the fact that Dances with Wolves was Kevin Costner’s directorial debut, and a great number of people thought he was certain to fail.  This is because, as the stories go, Kevin refused to play it safe.  Instead, Costner consciously chose to break all the “rules” that first time directors are supposed to follow: 

• Don’t work with animals – this film is full of difficult to train animals like wolves that needed to perform on cue, not to mention Costner nearly breaking his back during the buffalo hunt.
• Don’t work outside – the entire film takes place outside and South Dakota is not known for predictable weather.
• Don’t work with children – there were several supporting characters that were minors.
• Don’t get too attached to your “vision” – A director can’t always include everything they want in a movie.  The theatrical release of Dances with Wolves is just over 3 hours long.  The Director’s Cut, which seems to be the default home video version, is just under 4 hours long.  Your movie better be really good if you want an audience to sit still for that long.

With information like that in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the film was dubbed “Kevin’s Gate” as the production began to spiral over budget.  Costner even ended up throwing in a few million dollars of his own money to get the movie completed.  There were plenty of Hollywood insiders and pundits that were convinced that film was doomed. I am sure that many of were extremely disappointed that in the end the movie was a huge success.  

Now had Costner taken a step back, thanked his lucky stars, and made a vow to himself not to make the same sort of mistakes again, he probably could have prevented some backlash.  Unfortunately, he didn’t do that.  It seems like the success of Dances with Wolves seem to simply just convince him that he knew precisely what he was doing and he preceded to handle his next two directorial projects – Waterworld and The Postman – more or less the same way.  History has shown that was a mistake.  The critical and / or commercial failure of both those films gave those Hollywood naysayers the ammunition they needed to write off Dances with Wolves as simply a fluke.

A second thing contributing to the backlash is how often Dances with Wolves has been copied or parodied.  In Hollywood, success brings on imitation, and having been very successful, Dances with Wolves has been imitated many times.  There was The Last Samurai (Dances with Katanas), FernGully: The Last Rainforest (Dances with Fairies), and  Avatar (Dances with Smurfs) just to name a few.  A host of movies such as Hot Shots! (“Now I am called Tukachinchilla. -What does it mean? - Fluffy Bunny Feet.” “Dances with Bikers got this for you…”) parody the movie as well.  While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it can also diminish the thing being imitated – especially when those imitators are of lesser quality.  People forget how good the original was because they have grown bored with all the copies.

A third thing that people like to pick on is that Dances with Wolves tends to be a preachy.  The Native Americans are portrayed perhaps just a little too idyllically while the white Calvary men are portrayed perhaps just a little overly cruel.  Is that a bad thing?  Considering how badly America has treated the nation’s indigenous peoples – not to mention how they have traditionally been portrayed in film – I don’t think really think so, however, as a general rule, people don’t go to the movies to be made to feel bad, whether or not it is justified.  Thus, people feel the need to point out inaccuracies in an attempt to feel better.  If you are really successful, like Dances, or say Avatar, eventually the focus on inaccuracies transform into accusations of indirect racism; that the film is nothing but a fantasy where a white guy becomes an irreplaceable member / leader of a culture that is not his own.

Lastly, but related the third point, you have the fact that Dances with Wolves beat out Goodfellas for the Best Picture Oscar because it was a “cause film”.  In fact, Goodfellas never had a chance to win Best Picture.  There was no way that a movie about violent gangsters was going to be beat about a film that tells the story of how white Americans cruelly treated the Sioux because the white-man is too ignorant to see how brave and noble the Sioux are.  Hollywood and the Oscars live for movies like that – at least until another cause-of-day comes along.  Unfortunately it has been quite a few years since Dances was the cause-of-day, and just on its own merit Dances with Wolves was better than Awakenings, or Ghost, or The Godfather, Part III, but it clearly wasn’t better than Goodfellas.

As I said earlier in the post I really don’t agree with a lot of the backlash concerning this movie.  Not that I think that some of it isn’t completely without merit.  The film was indeed a vanity project for Costner.  The film (or it is copies / parodies) was everywhere for a while and it is understandable that people got sick of it.  The film is a little preachy and the fact that it was more “socially conscious” than its competition was ultimately how it ended-up winning the Best Picture Oscar.  All of that is more or less true; however, that is why it is important to re-visit movies from time to time.  It had been about 5 years or so since I had last seen this film, and I had probably seen it maybe 10 or 15 times since it had been released, so I am fairly familiar with it and could have easily written about it without watching it again.  Had I done that, however, my ranking for the film would have been different. I would have probably given the movie 4 Stars.  However, after watching it again, it reminded me that it is still a really great film and deserves to be included on the list of all-time greats and am somewhat confused on why it was excluded from the AFI 2007 list.

Despite that how long it is, and how legitimate some of the other criticisms may be, this movie is beautiful to look at, tells an engaging story, and has a good heart.  I give it a ranking of 5 Stars.

John 

 

 

106. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Stars:  George O'Brien (The Man), Janet Gaynor (The Wife), Margaret Livingston (The Woman from the City)

Director:  F. W. Murnau

Awards / Honors

• 3 Oscar wins - Oustanding Picture (Unique and Artistic Production), Best Actress (Janet Gaynor), Best Cinematography
• 1 Additional Oscar Nomination - Best Art Direction
• #63 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions list (2002)
• #82 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)
• In 1989, Sunrise:  A Song of Two Humans was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.

Genre:  Romantic Drama (Silent)

Running Time:  1 Hour, 35 Minutes

Format:  DVD, Blu-ray (see below)

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take

It wouldn’t surprise me if a large number of you have never heard of this movie.  I didn’t recognize it at first when I started compiling this list.  Once I finally did recognize it, the only thing I would have been able to tell you about it was it is the film that Brad Pitt watches near the end of An Interview with a Vampire.  Considering that the movie is 83 years old, wasn’t a huge box office hit, and despite being one of the first movies with synchronized sound effects and musical soundtrack, was overshadowed historically by the dialog and singing of The Jazz Singer, perhaps it is a bit understandable that it isn’t the most recognizable movie on this list.  That is unfortunate since Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is not only a really excellent movie, but it is historically very important as well.  The following quote is first portion of Robert Ebert’s review of this film:

The camera's freedom to move is taken for granted in these days of the Steadicam, the lightweight digital camera, and even special effects that reproduce camera movement.  A single unbroken shot can seem to begin with an entire city and end with a detail inside a window – consider the opening of "Moulin Rouge!" (2001).  But the camera did not move so easily in the early days.

The cameras employed in the first silent films were lightweight enough to be picked up and carried, but moving them was problematic because they were attached to the cameraman, who was cranking them by hand.  Camera movement was rare; the camera would pan from a fixed position.  Then came tracking shots – the camera literally mounted on rails, so that it could be moved along parallel to the action.  But a camera that was apparently weightless, that could fly, that could move through physical barriers – that kind of dreamlike freedom had to wait until almost the last days of silent films.  And then, when the talkies came and noisy sound cameras had to be sealed in soundproof booths, it was lost again for several years.

F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise" conquered time and gravity with a freedom that was startling to its first audiences.  To see it today is to be astonished by the boldness of its visual experimentation.  Murnau was one of the greatest of the German expressionists; his "Nosferatu" (1922) invented the vampire movie, and his "The Last Laugh" (1924) became famous for doing away altogether with intertitles and telling the story entirely with images.

Summoned to the United States by William Fox to make a film for his new studio, Murnau worked with the cinematographers Charles Rosher and Karl Struss to achieve an extraordinary stylistic breakthrough.  The Murnau admirer Todd Ludy wrote: "The motion picture camera – for so long tethered by sheer bulk and naïveté – had with 'Sunrise' finally learned to fly."

(You can read the entire review here.)

So, how does such an important, award winning, and critically acclaimed movie end up becoming relatively obscure?  I partially blame The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for this.  Despite being, to quote their website, “dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures”, occasionally it does fall victim to its most common criticism:  that the Academy and the Awards exist to simply stroke Hollywood egos and that the results reflect how well each studio manipulated the voting more than a real effort to reward great artistic merit.  How the Academy has handled Sunrise bears that out a bit.

To illustrate this, we need a little history lesson concerning the Oscars. T he very first Academy Awards were presented 81 years ago, on May 16th, 1929.  It was not nearly the extravagant a production we are now accustomed to.  The very first event was actually just a private dinner.  The award ceremony itself was only about 15 minutes long and it wasn’t broadcast in any fashion.  In fact, the winners had been announced months before.  Since it was the very first award ceremony, films released during the two pervious years were eligible, unlike the modern awards which are only given to movies released the previous year.  Thus, despite being released in 1927, Sunrise was eligible for the very first Academy Awards.

There were a number of other differences as well, but the one that applies to this film was the fact that there were not one, but two “Best Picture” awards – Outstanding Picture (Production) and Outstanding Picture (Unique and Artistic Production).  Outstanding Picture (Production) was won by the film Wings and the Outstanding Picture (Unique and Artistic Production) award was given to Sunrise.  But if you go look at Wikipedia or any number of other sources you will find that only Wings is listed as the winner of Best Picture.  Why is that?  It seems that even the first Academy Awards were not immune to Hollywood hubris. 

You see, the producers and studio heads were far more interested in who won the Outstanding Picture (Production) award.  That was the award they would receive.  It was the award that said “Mr. Producer, you did the best job this year”.  The powers-that-be really didn’t care that much who won the award for the most “artistic” film.  In fact, MGM head Louis B. Mayer (who helped found the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences by the way), disliked his studio’s nominee for the Unique and Artistic Production award, King Vidor's The Crowd, and cared so little about the award itself that he pressured the judges not to honor his own studio's film, and to select Sunrise instead. 

Due in part to the extreme interest in the Production award and the lack of interest in the Unique and Artistic Production award by the movers-and-shakers of the day, the next year a single “Best Picture” award was instituted.  It was decided retroactively that the award won by Wings had been the equivalent of that award.  Thus, Wings almost always listed as the winner of a sole Best Picture award.  Even the Academy’s own website lists only Wings.  In other words, the organization that claims to promote the artistic merits of film doesn’t openly acknowledge the only time they gave a “Best Picture” award that was supposedly based only on artistic merit.  Something is wrong with this.

Sunrise just seems to forever be the perpetual runner-up.  It was runner-up historically to The Jazz Singer on technical merits. I t was runner-up to Wings as far as the Oscars are concerned.  It even tends to be runner-up to its director’s other films like Nosferatu.  Forever destined to languish in “art house film” purgatory – a fate it doesn’t deserve.

Its story is rather simple – fable-like would be a better description – and it is a definitely a “chick flic”.  That being said, it is one of those rare occurrences in Hollywood where entertainment and art combine to form something really outstanding.  The film is currently only available in the U.S. on DVD, however, if you want to check it out on Blu-ray, it was released in that format in the UK and you can buy it on Amazon.uk.  The British Blu-ray disc was produced unregionalized so it will work in most American Blu-ray players (check your player’s documentation to be sure).  I own it, and I am very happy with it.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is currently running neck and neck with A Night at the Opera for “surprise hit” of the list so far and it receives a ranking of 5 Stars from me.

John

109. Fargo (1996)

Stars:  Frances McDormand (Marge Gunderson), William H. Macy (Jerry Lundegaard), Steve Buscemi (Carl Showalter), Peter Stormare (Gaear Grimsrud)

Director(s):  Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Awards / Honors

• 2 Oscar wins - Best Actress (Frances McDormand), Best Wrtining (Original Screenplay - Joel and Ethan Coen)
• 5 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Picture, Best Director (Joel Coen), Best Supporting Actor(William H. Macy), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing
• #84 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (1998)
• #93 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list (2000)
• #33 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villians list - Marge Gunderson, Hero (2003)
• In 2006, Fargo was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Genre:  Comedy

Running Time:  1 Hour, 38 Minutes

Format:  DVD, Blu-ray

Odyssey Rating:  4 Stars (John - 4 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars, Jon - 4 Stars, Becky - 4 Stars)

John's Take

Again Beth and I we were happy to have Official Friends of Beth and John’s Movie Odyssey, Jon and his wife Becky, join us during our screening of Fargo.  As you might guess we watched both Fargo and The Sixth Sense the same evening.  I believe that Jon and Becky had both seen the movie before, but Beth and I had not.

Fargo is a strange little movie.  That is not to say that it isn’t a good movie.  It is a very good movie, just a little odd.  It is a little difficult to classify what kind of genre and style that Fargo falls under.  For example, most sources just simply list the film’s genre as a “black comedy” and leave it at that.  I guess that works.  However, the standard definition of black comedy states the story be an ironic, satirical take on a rather dark, even morbid subject.  A classic example would be Dr. Strangelove (# 30 on our list).  In that movie, the subject of all-out nuclear war is played for laughs (the satire), and it is happening because the very fail-safes that are supposed to prevent nuclear war are now enabling it (the irony).  Fargo certainly uses a morbid subject (murder) for humorous effect, I am not exactly sure what precisely is being satirized (murder stories, Minnesota, both?) and where is the irony exactly?  I am not saying it isn’t there; it is just not obvious to me.  I would like to think that my level of “movie sophistication” is slightly above average.  However, I am probably not as savvy as I would like to think I am.

For example, while watching the film I was a little confused on what the purpose of the restaurant scene where Marge meets up with her old acquaintance, Mike.  It didn't seem to have a purpose, nor did it seem advance plot.  Despite being confused, I was really enjoying the story, and since the movie kind of kept chugging along, I didn’t give it much thought and kept enjoying the ride.  A few days after watching the film, I found myself thinking about that scene, so I got busy on the internet and tried to find more about the movie and hopefully that scene in particular.  Apparently, I was not the only one with questions about this scene and a number of movie sights had references to it in their FAQ sections.  If you think you know the importance of that scene, go ahead and leave a comment detailing what you think it is.  I have read three different explanations, and they are all basically the same.  I will let you know if you are correct.  However, I never would have come up with the reason of why that scene was important on my own.  Not in a million years.  I am sure many of you got it right away, but sometimes I need to get wonked upside the head before I notice things. 

The confusion I felt over which genre applied to Fargo also applies to its cinematic style.  Fargo has been called a good example of the neo-noir style.  What does neo-noir mean?  Well, the term film noir (“black film”) was coined in the mid 1940’s but didn’t come into common use until much later – the 70’s and 80’s.  It is generally used to describe American crime dramas and psychological thrillers made during the 40’s and 50’s (The Maltese Falcon – #25 on our list – is the quintessential example).  Noir films have a number of common themes, plot devices, and distinctive visual elements.  Characters were often conflicted and flawed.  They usually find themselves in difficult situations and making choices out of desperation or for self-centered reasons.  The visual elements of these films included low-key lighting, unusual camera placement, and use of shadow to establish mood.  Despite the fact that they stopped making these films by the late 50’s, the style of filmmaking and story telling had big influences on later filmmakers.  Films such as Chinatown (#19 on our list), Taxi Driver (# 49 on our list), and Pulp Fiction (#101 on our list) borrowed / were heavily influenced by those classic noir films but added their own specific variations to the established noir themes.  Since they were not classic film noir, but were clearly noir-like (for lack of a better term), these films and others often get lumped together under the heading of “new (neo) noir”.

So with all of that stated, is Fargo a good example of neo-noir style?  If forced to answer I would say no, but actually I have no idea.  It certainly doesn’t seem to share much, if any, of the classic film noir attributes – Marge isn’t a nihilistic gumshoe, for example, nor is the film particularly dark and shadowy.  About the only noir-like attributes I can think of are the facts that the film features a “detective” and a crime.  In fact, the Coen brothers seem to take great pains to be the exactly the opposite of classic film noir.  Something being the exact opposite of a particular style doesn’t seem to be a good reason to include that something in a sub-type of said style, but then again, I may be missing the obvious.

What is the point of all this babbling about genre and style?  The point is that it ultimately doesn’t really matter what genre or cinematic style a film belongs to.  Fargo is just a bit of an enigma, and one just needs to get comfortable with that.  Heck, even its the film's title really doesn't make much sense since the city that the movie gets it name from only appears in the film's open scene, has nothing to do with the plot and rest of the movie takes place in Minnesota, not North Dakota.  What is important, however, is whether or not the film is good.  And Fargo is a very good film, whether it is a neo-noir black comedy or not.

I give Fargo a ranking of 4 Stars.

John

110. The Sixth Sense (1999)

Stars:  Bruce Willis (Dr. Malcolm Crowe), Haley Joel Osment (Cole Sear), Toni Collette  (Lynn Sear), Olivia Williams (Anna Crowe)

Director:   M. Night Shyamalan

Awards / Honors

• 6 Oscar Nominations - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment), Best Supporting Actress (Toni Collette), Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Best Film Editing
• #60 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list (2001)
• #44 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list - "I see dead people." (2005)
• #89 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)

Genre:  Suspense / Horror

Running Time:  1 Hour, 47 Minutes

Format:  DVD, Blu-Ray

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/4 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars, Jon - 4 Stars, Becky - 4 Stars)

John's Take

We were happy to have Official Friends of Beth and John’s Movie Odyssey, Jon and his wife Becky join us during our screening of The Sixth Sense.  The four of us had all seen the movie before, but as with most things, sharing the event with friends always makes things more fun.

The Sixth Sense is a “twist” movie.  As I have said before, I don’t think that it is necessary to post “spoiler warnings” on a film that is over 10 years old.  That being said, there is no point in giving things away needless either.  So, hopefully without spoiling the story, here are the things I liked about the movie:

1. Bruce Willis

He absolutely nails the role of Dr. Malcolm Crowe.  Sure, occasionally delivers the his lines as if he is John McClane - Child Psychologist, and he looks a wee bit old to be married to Olivia Williams (who is about 14 years his junior), but it the fact that Bruce has mastered the “everyday-guy-who-is-in-a-little-over-his-head-but stays-calm-and figures-out-what-to-do” role that makes everything work.  All the things that had happened to Willis up until this point – a bit of a career slump, marital problems (he and Demi Moore would divorce almost exactly a year after the movie was released), tagged as an “action film star” – actually help him here.  As the story is unfolding, you completely buy him as a guy that was on top of the world, but it all fell apart and now is desperate to find a way to make it all right.  Well, that was Willis then, wasn’t it?

Is there any other actor that could pull off this role?  I don’t think so.  The whole film relies on our pre-conceived notions of what to expect from a Bruce Willis film (i.e., Die Hard) to help hide the twist.  Then when the twist occurs, Bruce’s mastery of playing the “every-man” totally makes us believe that he didn’t realize what was going on the whole time.  What major star at the time could pull that off?  Costner?  Cage?  Travolta?  Not really seeing it.

I am going to go on record right now and saying that as an actor, Bruce Willis is an under-appreciated national treasure.  I would go on to say that he is this generation’s John Wayne.  Yes, you read that right.  Like Wayne, not every film he has been in has been great, but every film he has been in has been better because of his involvement.  Who else plays that role in Pulp Fiction, the various Die Hard films, The Fifth Element, or Armageddon?  And don’t bother bring up Hudson Hawk. First, that movie isn’t nearly as bad as people like harp about.  Second, even John Wayne made the mistake of playing Genghis Khan once so everyone deserves a mulligan now and then.

2. The Scary Scenes

As I mentioned in the Frankenstein post, I am pretty much a wuss when it comes to horror movies, so I may not be good at commenting on a horror movie, but overall I felt that the scary scenes were pretty good.  I sure a great number of horror movie aficionados out there might find the scenes a little tame, but I found them to be sufficiently scary to make me jump.  In particular, the kitchen scene early on with Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette is surprisingly scary for scene in which basically you see nothing happen.  My only beef was the car accident scene near the end where Collette finally starts to grasp what is going on.  It just came off a little too pat for me – she just goes from being skeptical and having no clue to complete and utter acceptance too quickly.  It is was a by-product of the rest of the movie I know – needing to keep the twist under wraps for as long as possible, the need to re-establish the mother / son bond for the happy ending, etc., etc.  It just gave off a “the movie is ending and we need to wrap this up quickly” feel for me, however.

3. The Supporting Cast

Everyone was great; everybody worked well and blah, blah, blah.  You don't need a laundry list; there wasn't a subpar performance in the movie (Toni Collette was particularly believable as the mother).  We even had a cameo appearance of director M. Night.  On a side note, a director appearing in their own film is sort of a cute touch but lately there is way too much of it. M. Night is in all of his films; Jon Favreau is many of his films (such as Happy Hogan in the Iron Man films); Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez show up on screen a great deal, usually in each other’s films but it is the same concept.  Guys, please, just because Hitchcock did it, doesn’t mean you have to do it too – just saying. 

Of course, the one real standout that everyone remembers the first time they see the film is Haley Joel Osment as the little boy, Cole.  He was very good, and despite the fact that he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, now that 10+ yeas have past, and since I started to re-think about this movie, a few things have come to mind that is making me reexamine his performance somewhat. 

First, all child actors are cute and articulate.  Think about it.  The whole point of casting departments is to spend their time weeding out everyone but the best and the brightest children to be in television and movies.  Only the best of the best, ever appear on screen, and add in the fact that as human beings we are genetically and anthropologically predisposed to like and want to care for children, it comes as no surprise that we are drawn to the performance of child actors.

Second, take a hard look at the other performances, such as A.I., Secondhand Lions, or Pay it Forward.  His job, simply make the audiences feel for his character, which he does to some degree with his acting, but largely pulls off because he is cute kid.  Don’t think so?  Have you ever gone “ohh, ahh” at a baby before?  If you have, then re-think your opinion of Osment’s performance because the baby is evoking an emotional response from you and it just lying there.  Again, as a species we are predisposed to like children.

Lastly, what has he done since he has stopped being a cute little kid?  He is 22 years-old or so now, and the last thing I heard about him was getting busted for drunk driving and drug possession, back in 2006.  I am sure he went to school, went on dates, etc., during this down time, and maybe he isn’t even interested in acting anymore, I don’t know, but I think if I was him I would be desperately trying to wake my agent out of his coma.

It may sound like I am picking on Osment a little bit, and maybe I am.  After all, he is great in this film.  However, I also think that it illustrates why it is important to go back and re-visit films from time to time.  For a period of about three years or so, Haley Joel Osment was one of the biggest stars around.  My hero in the film watching business, Roger Ebert, even claimed once that: Osment was “one of the best actors now working".  Would he write that now, 10 years later?  I am not so sure.

4. The Little Nuances

This movie was full of them. I won’t spend a lot of time harping about them since you can find plenty of other “reviews” that do.  Things like the deliberate use of the color red to depict when the world of the living and the world of the dead are crossing over are the sort of little touches that really push this film into the “classic” category.  It is unfortunate that M. Night never quite managed to put it all together in any of his films that follow this one, but it all works for this film at least. 

In conclusion, Cole may have seen dead people, but I see The Sixth Sense getting a rating of 5 Stars from me.

John

113. 12 Angry Men (1957)

Stars:  Henry Fonda (Juror # 8 - "Davis"), Joseph Sweeney (Juror # 9 - "McArdle"), Martin Balsam (Juror #1), John Fiedler (Juror #2 ), Lee J. Cobb (Juror #3), E. G. Marshall (Juror # 4), Jack Klugman (Juror # 5), Edward Binns (Juror # 6), Jack Warden (Juror # 7), Ed Begley (Juror # 10), George Voskovec (Juror # 11), Robert Webber (Juror # 12)

Director:  Sidney Lumet

Awards / Honors

• 3 Oscar Nominations - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing (Adpated Screenplay)
• #88 on AFI's 100 Years...  100 Thrills list (2001)
• #28 on AFI's 100 Years...  100 Heroes and Villians list - Juror #8, Hero (2003)
• #42 on AFI's 100 Years...  100 Cheers list (2006)
• #87 on AFI's 100 Years...  100 Movies list (2007)
• # 2 on  AFI's 10 Top 10 List - Courtroom Drama (2008)
• In 2007, 12 Angry Men was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Genre:  Courtroom Drama

Running Time:  1 Hour, 36 minutes

Format:  DVD (not yet available on Blu-ray)

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars  (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take

12 Angry Men may in fact be the first “grown-up” drama movie I ever watched.  I was probably around 10 or 11 when I first saw it on television at my grandparent’s house.  Don’t misunderstand; I certainly wasn’t a sophisticated child.  If a show wasn’t animated, or if it didn’t have a laugh-track you probably couldn’t get me to watch it.  Despite lacking both of these elements, there were two reasons why I ended up watching the film anyway.  The first reason was because I recognized Jack Klugman from re-runs of The Odd Couple, so I assumed he was going do something funny at some point.  The second reason was because there was literally nothing else to do.

For those of you under the age of 40, you have to keep in mind that at the time there was no such thing as DirectTV, iPods, the Internet, Nintendo DSs, or DVDs.  Heck at that time Cable TV was a new concept, the Atari 2600 was technological breakthrough, Sony hadn’t introduced the Walkman yet, and only the very well-to-do had a VCR.  Even if you did have a VCR, you were still limited in what you could watch since the concept of ‘movie rentals’ was still about 5 to 8 years away.  My grandparents lived on a dairy farm in northeastern Illinois, maybe an hour or two from both the Iowa and Wisconsin borders.  In other words, they lived in the middle of nowhere and from such a location, it was possible to receive only five, that’s correct, only five channels on my grandparent’s television – 1 ABC station, 2 CBS stations, and 2 NBC stations. All six stations came out of either Rockford, IL or Madison WI.

As “unplugged” as that sounds by today’s standards, and quite frankly even by the standards of my childhood, just fifteen years earlier, the “multi-media set-up” that my grandparent’s had was probably the envy of the county.  They had this extra tall antenna on the side of the house and it had a motorized aerial on top. You could control the direction the aerial was pointing by turning this large dial that sat on top of my grandparents TV.  The outside ring of the dial had a mark on it and the interior part of the dial had a matching mark.  You would turn the outside ring, and the center of the dial would slowly turn while making a sound similar to that of a small electric motor makes being just slightly overworked until both the red marks had re-aligned.  So, if you wanted to watch the stations coming out of Rockford, you would turn the dial to the east and the aerial would turn to the east allowing those stations to come in more clearly.  If you wanted to watch the stations coming out of Madison you turned the dial to a more northerly direction.  On a really clear day, you might get lucky and be able to pick up a station out of Dubuque, IA if you turned the dial to a more westerly heading.  Needless to say this made channel flipping a little problematic.  You would have to manually turn the channel – no remote control – through the Rockford channels, with the requisite static showing up on screen as you moved through the channels with no signal.  You then had to stand up, change move the big aerial dial on the top of the TV, and then flip though the dial again to see what was on the Madison channels.  That much exertion might just kill me nowadays.  Even as primitive as all of that sounds, I still remember my grandparents neighbors coming over and commenting how great it must be to get so many television channels.

Thus, it probably would come as no surprise that despite the large number of fond memories I have about my grandparent’s farm, very few of those memories involve television.  In fact, I only have five of them. They are:

1. Watching Lawrence Welk on Sunday nights

2. Watching Hee-Haw on Sunday nights immediately following Lawrence Welk

3. Watching The Carol Burnett Show.

4. Watching the original series of Star Trek for the first time (The Devil in the Dark was the episode in case you wanted to know)

5. Watching 12 Angry Men for the first time.

The first 3 memories are due to the near fanatical devotion that my grandparent’s had to those three shows – woe to the grandchild that suggested watching something else!  The last two are due largely to the fact that it was a hassle to keep changing the channel.

So, on a rainy summer afternoon, facing the prospect of having to choose between messing with the aerial / changing the channel or turning off the TV and having nothing to do at all, I elected to take a risk on this old black-and-white movie and hope that Jack Klugman did something Oscar Madison-like. At the time, black-and-white programming was a hit-or-miss proposition in my book. Sometimes it was good (such as The Lone Ranger or Abbott and Costello movies) and sometimes it wasn’t (say something like A Place in the Sun).  But since my mind at the time operated on the concept that nurses were always nurses, firemen always were firemen, and actors known for a comedic role always played comedic roles, I was fairly certain that something funny would happen if I just sat their long enough. 

Needless to say, nothing funny happen.  Yet, for some reason, I remained transfixed on the movie.  I suspect it was how the movie keeps re-explaining and re-examining each little detail of the case; it made it easy for me to follow the story.  By the time the movie was over, and considering my exposure to suspense drama was, up to that point, limited to Scooby-Doo, it shouldn’t be a shock to you all that I believed I had just witnessed the most brilliant movie ever produced!  I actually felt smarter, as if I was now prepared to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. Henry Fonda (although at the time I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what his name was and for a few more years Mr. Fonda would be referred to simply as The-Guy-From-12-Angry-Men) had just taught me everything I needed to know about the American justice system.  I wanted to show off my new found knowledge.  Neither my grandparents nor my mother was overly impressed.  A simple, “That’s nice dear”, was about the best response that information concerning the miracle that is the trial-by-jury system could muster.  Apparently, they hadn’t seen the movie.  If they had, they would be just as impressive and worldly as I now was…

And that ladies and gentlemen, is the secret magic benefit of watching this movie.  There will be times in your life – usually at a dinner / cocktail party or business-related function – you will find yourself being forced to make conversation with one or more people that are trying really hard to show off how cultured and sophisticated they are.  They aren’t of course, because actual cultured and intellectual people usually don’t feel the need to prove that to anyone, but rarely are you free to point that out because it isn’t nice to tell your spouse’s co-workers or supervisor that they are pompous windbags. Fortunately for you, the members of the pseudo-intellectual set all love 12 Angry Men.  It is to them what Network is to Glenn Beck and his fans – which, oddly enough was also directed by Sidney Lumet.  Have these people seen 12 Angry Men?  Not usually, but they have all heard of it.  If you can manage to work 12 Angry Men into the conversation, the people you are talking to will start to gush over you thinking they have discovered a kindred spirit.  Their gushing gives them the opportunity to take back control of the conversation and allows you to continue to stand quietly and enjoy cocktail while you pretend to listen. 

Of course, you always run the risk that the person you are talking to has actually seen the film.  So, if you want to use 12 Angry Men as part of your arsenal of small-talk weaponry, you should actually sit down and watch it yourself.  Luckily for you, that is a good thing.  The story is a little simplistic (remember a 10-11 year-old version of me could follow it), but otherwise the film is outstanding. I could drone on about the acting and cinematography, but since we are not at a cocktail party, suffice it to say that that after 30+ years and countless numbers of viewings, the film is still one of my favorite movies of all time.  I may not think it is as brilliant as I did as a child, but 12 Angry Men still warrants a rating of 5 Stars.

John

115. Patton (1970)

Stars:  George C. Scott (Gen. George S Patton), Karl Malden (Gen. Omar Bradley), Michael Bates (Field Marshal Montgomery), Karl Michael Vogler (Field Marshal Erwin Rommel)

Director:  Franklin J. Schaffner

Awards / Honors

• 7 Oscar Wins - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (George C. Scott), Best Writing (Original Screenplay - Francis Ford Coppola), Best Art Dircection, Best Film Editing, Best Sound
• 3 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Music (Orginal Score)
• #89 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (1997)
• #29 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villians list - Gen. George S Patton, Hero (2003)
• In 2003, Patton was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Genre:  War / Drama

Running Time:  2 Hours, 50 Minutes

Format:  DVD, Blu-ray

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 4Stars)

John's Take

I love this movie.  I mean I really, really love it.  I first say this movie on television back when I was around 12-years old or so, and I seen this film a 100 times or more.  At one point in time I could recite the entire opening monologue from memory.  Patton is one of my all-time favorite movies.

This is why the AFI and I now have a little problem.

First, as you can tell if you have been reading any of the entries on our little blog, the American Film Institute as part of their “100 Years...” series, have put together a number of lists of films over the last 13 years; the 100 best American romantic movies (100 Passions), the 100 best American comedies (100 Laughs), etc..  One of these lists, which they published in 2005, was AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes.  My problem?  The powers-that-be at the AFI decided that Patton – a movie just chock full of memorable dialogue – did not warrant a spot upon this list.  What’s up with that?  You mean the movie that gave us –

Patton:  Thirty years from now, when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you, "What did you do in the great World War II," you won't have to say, "Well... I shoveled shit in Louisiana."

-- doesn’t deserve a spot on a list of great movie quotes?  Blasphemy I say!!

Effectively the AFI are saying that quotes like:

"Hello gorgeous." – Funny Girl

"La-dee-da, la-dee-da." – Annie Hall

"We rob banks." – Bonnie and Clyde

are better than quotes, such as:

Patton:  Now there's another thing I want you to remember.  I don't want to get any messages saying that "we are holding our position."  We're not holding anything.  Let the Hun do that.  We are advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy.  We're going to hold onto him by the nose and we're going to kick him in the ass.  We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we're going to go through him like crap through a goose!!!

Really? “…crap through a goose” looses out to “La-dee-da”? Something is wrong here.

Here is what it should say on that list:

#55 – The entire opening monologue – George S Patton – George C. Scott – Patton

Why at the number 55 spot?  Well, it probably deserves to be higher on the list, but the inclusion of "La-dee-da, la-dee-da" on the list (they aren’t even words after all) is so lame that it is just easier to knock Annie Hall off the list and replace it with Patton – at least until they pick a better line from Annie Hall, such as “That sex was the most fun I've ever had without laughing.”  I mean, Annie Hall has great lines too and the line that the AFI thought was the best and most memorable was "La-dee-da, la-dee-da."?  Lame with extra weak-sause.

The second thing that really has me steamed with AFI is the fact that they removed Patton from the 2007 version of the 100 greatest American movies of all time list! Wha, wha, wha…?!?!  Say, it isn’t so!  How come?  I will overlook the fact that it was only #89 on the original 1997 list, I mean sure everything is relative, yada, yada, yada.  But, for the film to get bumped from the list altogether in ’07?  Were these people high?

Patton has everything – acting, writing, beautiful cinematography.  Have you seen the blu-ray version?  It is GORGEOUS!  Sure the movie is a little on the long side but hey a lot happened during World War II.  What movie deserved to be on the list more than Patton did? Swing Time? All the President’s Men? Nashville? All good movies, but none of them deserve to be on the list more than Patton does.

I am very upset about this. I want somebody from the AFI to explain this to me.

Well, even if it didn’t make 2007 list, I say on to you that Patton is one of the American greatest movies of all time! And I would be proud, and it would be my honor to watch this movie with you all… anytime, anywhere.  Patton is a 5-Star general of a movie.

John

116. Swing Time (1936)

Stars:  Fred Astaire (Lucky Garnett), Ginger Rogers (Penny Carrol), Victor Moore ("Pop"), Helen Broderick (Mabel Anderson)
Director:  George Stevens

Awards / Honors

• 1 Oscar Win - Best Orginal Song ("The Way You Look Tonight")
• 1 Additional Oscar Nomination - Best Dance Direction
• #30 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions list (2002)
• #43 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs list - "The Way You Look Tonight" (2004)
• #90 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)
• In 2004, Swing Time was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Genre:  Musical / Comedy
Running Time:  1 Hour, 43 Minutes
Format:  DVD (not yet available on Blu-ray)
Odyssey Rating:  4 Stars (John - 4 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take
OK, so let me get this straight.  In 1997 The Jazz Singer was ranked #90 on AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies list.  In 2007, AFI published a new list and announced that it would do so every ten years thereafter “to mark changing cultural perspectives”.  This resulted in the removal of The Jazz Singer from the list presumably – and while this is simply speculation on my part, I can’t imagine how it didn’t play a role – because of the significant amount of performance in blackface by Al Jolson.  Yet the powers-that-be at AFI decided to replace The Jazz Singer at # 90 with another movie that contains a questionable blackface performance by the movie’s star…?

Exactly what “changes in cultural perspectives” are we talking about here?  The fact that in 2007 people were more likely to rent Swing Time than The Jazz Singer?  Was it that the questionable element of The Jazz Singer was more well know?  Regardless, the whole thing strikes me as a little odd and not very well thought out.

Swing Time was a movie that neither Beth nor I had seen before we had started our Odyssey.  Other than being aware that it was “Fred and Ginger” movie, we didn’t know anything about it.  So there we are, minding our own business, enjoying the film immensely, when – BAM! – we get blindsided by the “Bojangles of Harlem” number.  We both turned and looked at each other and Beth said “Who in their right mind thought that this was a good idea?”  It was a good question.

And it was a shame too because the dancing done by Astaire in that routine is just incredible! I mean the whole number took something like three days to shoot. I know, I know – Astaire meant the routine to be a homage to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and to his tap-dancing teacher John W. Bubbles, but it really doesn’t come across that way in 2010.  For me, the scene just came across as offensive.

In The Jazz Singer post, I said that I found Jolson’s performance much less offensive than I found Astaire’s. I am still not a 100% sure why, but I have a few thoughts.

First, some modern reviewers of The Jazz Singer have expressed the idea of the blackface performance as a visual cue that the son of immigrants is embracing the cultural aspects of their new home.  Personally, that sounds like revisionist hogwash to me; those reviewers are simply trying to make palatable something that isn’t.  I would agree, however, that the blackface performance does, in a small way, feels like it belongs in the story.  Jakie Rabinowitz wants to grow up to become a blackface vaudeville singer.  Is that a good thing for him to want to be?  No, of course not, but at least it sort of fits within the context of the story.  Astaire’s performance in the “Bojangles of Harlem” routine, on the other hand, doesn’t have any sort of “narrative license” to fall back on.  It isn’t “necessary to the story” that Lucky do a number for the club wearing blackface and a “minstrel-suit”.  The powers-that-be in the production crew just thought it was good idea.  They were wrong.

Second, and more importantly, I think I just expected better from the likes of a Fred Astaire.  Whether it is finding out that Mark McGuire was taking steroids or that David Letterman was cheating on his wife, no one like it when their “heroes” let them down.  Hollywood spends a great deal of time and effort perpetuating the idea of Film Legends; people that we, the general public, are supposed to look up to.  So when Legends like Bing Crosby (Holiday Inn), Mickey Rooney (Babes in Arms, Breakfast at Tiffany’s), or Fred Astaire hit such a sour note, it is all the more noticeable.  Astaire had input into this performance.  He didn’t have to do it that way if he didn’t want to.  Maybe it isn’t right to be more offended because Astaire is more famous than Jolson, but there it is none the less.  If Hollywood wants to hold people up as examples of excellence then it should be OK to point out when those people made conscious, artistic choices that are clearly in bad taste.

So, is Swing Time a good film?  Yes it is. Is it a great film?  Aside from the “Bojangles of Harlem” number, yes it is.  As one might expect from a musical comedy, the story isn’t particularly deep, but the acting is superb.  Astaire and Rodgers play off each other perfectly and from this performance it easy to see why RKO would want them to make so many pictures together.  And as one might expect from the legendary pair, the dancing is amazing.  Even the “Bojangles of Harlem” number – looking at it on a purely technical level – is top notch.

So what is the final score?  Well, it would have been a resounding 5-Star rating without the “Harlem” number.  With it, Swing Time gets a very weak rating of 4-Stars.  However, do not be surprised if this film goes the way of The Jazz Singer and does not appear on the 2017 AFI list of films.

John

119. My Fair Lady (1964)

Stars:  Audrey Hepburn (Eliza Doolittle), Rex Harrison (Henry Higgins), Wilfrid Hyde-White (Colonel Hugh Pickering), Stanley Holloway (Alfred P. Doolittle), Gladys Cooper (Mrs. Higgins)

Director:  George Cukor 

 

Awards / Honors

• 8 Oscar wins - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Rex Harrison), Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Music (Orginal Score), Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• 4 Additional Nominations - Best Supporting Actor (Stanley Holloway), Best Supporting Actress (Gladys Cooper), Best Writing (Adpated Screenplay), Best Film Editing
• #91 on AFI's 100 Years...  100 Movies list (1997)
• #12 on AFI's 100 Years...  100 Pasions list (2002)
• #17 on AFI's 100 Years...  100 Songs list -"I Could Have Danced All Night" (2004)
• #  8 on AFI's 100 Years of Musicals list (2006)

Genre:  Musical

Running Time:  2 Hours, 51 minutes

Format:  DVD (Not yet available on Blu-ray)

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 4 Stars, Beth - 5 Stars)

 

John's Take

I am staging a little protest this post. As Official Friends of Beth and John’s Odyssey might be able to tell, I have been doing most of the blogging so far.  In fact, Beth has hardly been doing any blogging at all.  What you all may not realize, however, is that this blog is in fact Beth’s idea – and so far I have been doing all the heavy lifting.

So, since Beth LOVES this movie, I am going to forego my usual 1,000+ words post in a sign of protest.  If you want to read something meaningful and witty or at least something that the blogger in question thinks is meaningful and witty, about My Fair Lady you will all just have to wait for Beth to write it. I am simply saying the following:

1. It is a good movie.

2. It is way, way, way too long

3. I give it 4 Stars

I will be back for the next post.

John

 

122. Do The Right Thing (1989)

Stars:  Spike Lee (Mookie), Danny Aiello (Sal), Ossie Davis (Da Mayor), Giancarlo Esposito (Buggin' Out), John Turturro (Pino), Samuel L. Jackson (Señor Love Daddy), Rosie Perez (Tina), Martin Lawerence (Cee)

Director:  Spike Lee

Awards / Honors

• 2 Oscar Nominations -- Best Supporting Actor (Danny Aiello), Best Wrting (Orginal Screenplay -- Spike Lee)
• #96 on AFI's 100 Years...  100 Movies list (2007)
• In 1999, Do The Right Thing was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". 

Genre: Drama
Running Time: 2 hours
Format:  DVD, Blu-ray
Odyssey Rating:  4 Stars (John - 4 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take

This movie is really good. Over the years I have seen the whole movie in bits and pieces on cable – first 40 minutes in one sitting, the last 40 minutes in another sitting, etc., so while I had seen the whole movie, I had, up to this point, not watch the entire movie all at once. That was a mistake on my part. Seeing it piecemeal, I had always thought it was fairly good movie – but I was doing it an injustice. This movie is really a great movie.

I have read lots of interpretations of this movie over the years. Do the Right Thing is generally lumped into the category of “message movie”, and while Spike Lee certainly took an opportunity to say some things in the movie (‘Tawana told the truth’ sprayed prominently on a wall in one scene, chants of “Howard Beach” from the rioters, etc.). I am not so sure that that isn’t more of a “question movie” than it is a “message movie”.

As I was getting to ready to write this, I was trying to go back through all of the characters and whether I thought they in fact did the right thing or not – I thought it would make for an interesting ‘angle’ to write. However, upon reflection, I realized that every character in the film thinks they are doing the ‘right thing’. Buggin', Smiley, and Raheem, all think they are doing the right thing when they storm Sal’s.  Pino thinks he is doing the right thing by trying to keep his brother from having interracial friendships. The policemen think they are doing the right thing by forcibly restraining Raheem. Every single character in the movie doesn’t do anything they don’t think is right or justified. The question, however, is anything that anyone is doing ‘the right thing’?

The fact that they all think they are doing the right thing, doesn’t necessarily justify what they are doing or make all of the characters correct in their thinking. Pino and the policemen are racists – but they don’t see themselves as such. Buggin’ spends his time tilting at windmills and making mountains out of molehills – but he thinks he is speaking out on great social injustice. Da Mayor has wisdom to provide – but undermines his own creditability by being the neighborhood drunk. Vito just want everyone to get along – but is too naïve to understand why they don’t. Every character’s preconceptions effect what they believe the ‘right thing’ to do is.

In the final confrontation, I don’t think either Sal or Mookie have a choice. They must do what they believe is the right thing, because their very natures won’t let them do otherwise. Sal tries to defend his pizzeria. Mookie elects to purposely to start the riot. Does Sal deserve what happens to him? No, but then Raheem doesn’t deserve to die either.

It has been said that the ending of the movie is ambiguous. Personally I don’t find it so. It ends with two quotations. The first, from Dr. King, stating that violence is never justified under any circumstances. The second quote is from Malcolm X, and states that violence is justified when it is used in self-defense. Like I said earlier, for me, that ending simply sums up the question that I believe the movie is asking. What actually is the ‘right thing’?

So I end this post as I started it… this is a really good movie. It isn’t perfect, but it is really very good. If Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was the fairy-tale of what race relations could be like, then Do the Right Thing is a more realistic look on how things actually are – the good and the bad. I give this movie a strong 4 Stars 

John