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

107. Giant (1956)

Stars:  Elizabeth Taylor (Leslie Benedict), Rock Hudson (Jordan "Bick" Benedict Jr.), James Dean (Jett Rink), Mercedes McCambridge (Luz Benedict)

Director:  George Stevens

Awards / Honors

• 1 Oscar win - Best Director
• 9 Additional Nominations - Best Picture, Best Actor (Rock Hudson), Best Actor (James Dean), Best Supporting Actress (Mercedes McCambridge), Best Writing (Adpated Screenplay), Best Art Direction, Best Music (Score), Best Costume Design
• #82 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (1998)
• In 2005, Giant was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Genre:  Romantic Drama

Running Time:  3 Hours, 21 Minutes

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

Odyssey Rating:  3 Stars (John - 3 Stars, Beth - 3 Stars)

John's Take

I was a little apprehensive about watching Giant.  This is because, at first glance, Giant looks a great deal like the movie A Place in the Sun.  Both films are melodramas (i.e., chick flics).  They both star Elizabeth Taylor, and they are both directed by George Stevens.  As I have documented earlier, I really didn’t like A Place in the Sun, so let’s just say that I wasn’t expecting much from Giant.  Toss in the facts that we had just finished watching Yankee Doodle Dandy, which was a bit of a disappointment, and that Giant clocks in at just under 3 ½ hours long, and I was fairly certain that I was going to be on the receiving end of some snarky comments from Beth.  She seems to like to blame me when the movies are not very good – as if I had something to do with making them.  I try pointing that fact out to her, but usually I just get “Well, it was your idea to watch it…” in response.  In other words, if Giant ended up being as bad as or worse than Yankee Doodle Dandy, I was going to have to put with about a week’s worth of “You wasted six hours of my weekend… Six hours I will never get back…”comments. 

Luckily for me, Giant turned out to be pretty good, or at least a lot better than I had expected, and thus I was spared any snarky comments.  However, while I was watching the movie, it felt like there were one or two things tugging at me – distracting me, if you will.  It wasn’t really until I got ready to write this post, that I finally was finally able make sense of distractions.

The first distraction was the “implementation”, of James Dean’s character Jett Rink.  Traditionally in “melodramas”, this character would have the diamond-in-the-rough whose true value as a human being would come to the surface through the love and attention of the female lead, and eventually the female lead ends up with this character.  In other words, if the story in Giant had followed the traditional chick flic formula, then the story should have gone something like this:

1.  Conservative, sexist, bigoted Rock Hudson brings young, liberal, open-minded Elizabeth Taylor – his new bride – home to his cattle ranch after a whirlwind courtship.  There she meets skulking, mumbling James Dean.

2.  James Dean instantly has the hots for Elizabeth Taylor.  Elizabeth Taylor instantly sees through the uneducated, stalker-like exterior of Dean to his heart of gold and is surprised by how attractive she finds him.

3.  Rock Hudson inexplicably senses this and takes steps to separate the two.  Hudson and Taylor’s relationship hits hard times due to their differing world views (i.e., Hudson acts like a jerk).

4.  Elizabeth Taylor can’t quite seem to shake her interest in Dean, however, and seeks him out.  The two talk, and they both feel that there is chemistry between them.

5.  Due in part to the encouragement of Taylor and to a series of convenient and fortunate events, Dean becomes just a wealthy, if not more so, than Hudson. 

6.  Dean arrives during a major fight between Taylor and Hudson.  Dean confronts Hudson; rescues Taylor from his sexist, bigoted clutches and Dean and Taylor live happily ever after.

Except that is not what happens.

Oh, don’t get me wrong Giant is most definitely a chick flic, so bullet points one through five go off without a hitch.  However, at the point of the film where Dean is supposed to come in and win Taylor away from Hudson, he doesn’t.  I mean, he shows up to confront Rock Hudson alright, except he is drunk off his ass and acting even mumbleier, skulkier, and stalker-like than ever before.  He flaunts his new wealth to Hudson and is all “Hey, baby – buy you a drink?” to Taylor.  In other words, the underdog just won, but instead of riding off with the girl, he acts like such an ass that he permanently pushes Taylor back into Hudson’s arms.  This would have never happened if John Cusack had been playing Jett Rink, I assure you. 

At this point you are probably thinking the same thing that I was thinking – “Ah, this must be the event that triggers a change in Hudson’s ways.”  Nope.  Rock Hudson pretty much spends the next two hours of the movie being just as sexist and bigoted as he was at the beginning of the movie.  Oh, sure he sort of gets over his anti-Mexican stance once his son marries a Mexican woman and she gives birth to his grandson, but you sort of get the feeling that this change of heart more applies to just Hudson / Benedict’s immediate family in a no-one-messes-with-a-Benedict sort of way than to Mexicans in general.  The daughter-in-law and grandson are more than welcome at the house at Thanksgiving, but I suspect that Uncle Pedro showing up might be a different matter.  All the while, James Dean’s character just continues to get creepier and more pathetic as the film goes on.  And what of Taylor’s character?  She just seems resigned to the fact that she is never going to change Hudson and will just take whatever small victories come her way.  In short, the film starts off traveling down the well-traveled chick flic highway, only to suddenly swerve off the road into the underbrush of what-the-heck-is-going-here?

Then there was the second thought / distraction that kept buzzing around in my head.  Have you ever seen the “Mirror, Mirror” episode of original Star Trek series?  It is the one where, due to a transporter malfunction, evil duplicates of Spock, etc. are brought to the Enterprise from a parallel universe.  Well, that is what Giant is.  It is the Mirror Universe version of Gone with the Wind.  Yes, I know that it will take you a moment to wrap your head around that concept.  It took me a little while to work through it as well.  Let me run through some of the evidence and I think you will see that I am right.

Take Scarlet O’Hara and Leslie Benedict, for example.  Both are the female leads of their respective movies, and both come from rich families, but where Scarlet is self-centered, greedy, and culturally insensitive; Leslie is kind-hearted, generous, and concerned for the well-being of those around her.  Scarlet marries for gain, all the while pining away for the man she can’t have.  Leslie, while perhaps a bit hasty in her choice of husbands, works hard to make family work and never spends much time worrying about “what if”.  Put a goatee on Vivian Leigh and you definitely have “Evil Leslie”.

Then you have Rhett Butler and Jordan "Bick" Benedict.  Rhett is devil-may-care roguish charmer, where Bick is the uptight stuffed-shirt.  Rhett has a reputation for being a bit of a womanizer, where Bick would always be a perfect gentleman.  Rhett was the black sheep of the family where Bick was always the heir-apparent.  Rhett was usually kind to those less fortunate than himself.  Bick would have a hard time even seeing them.  Rhett leaves Scarlet.  Leslie leaves Bick.

Now let’s compare Jett Rink and Ashley Wilkes.  It is safe to assume that Ashley was educated at the best schools, while Jett is self-educated.  Ashley is noble and gentlemanly.  Jett is, well, creepy.  Jett wasn’t afraid of hard work, while Ashley never worked a day in his life.  Ashley started out life rich but ended up relatively poor.  Jett started out poor but ended up ridiculously rich.  Ashley couldn’t get Scarlet to leave him alone, and Jett can’t get enough of Leslie’s attention.

I could go on and on.  One movie takes place in the green, relatively fertile lands of Georgia while the other takes place in dry, dusty lands of Texas.  One movie has a happy ending, the other one doesn’t.  It is as if someone sat down with a copy of Gone with the Wind and proceeded to write a second story by making all of the characters and situations nearly the exact opposite of those in the original work.  I am not crazy here.  If you think about it some, I am sure you will come up with even more parallels.  I think Giant may in fact be physical proof of parallel universes and it has been sitting right here under our noses for over fifty years now. 

So, are all these things bad things?  No, not really.  They did upset my concept of how chick flics are supposed unfold, however.  The characters end-up acting a little sort of like real people – attitudes are not changed, just tempered; the underdog doesn’t get the girl; being poor doesn’t necessarily make you the good guy and being rich doesn’t necessarily make you the bad guy; etc..  I expected something very cliché and ended up watching something just slightly different.  As ridiculous as it may sound, however, those moments of “realism” did prevent me from enjoying the movie as much as I would like.  I found the tiny, tiny bits of reality mixed into a stereotypical Hollywood melodrama to be a bit distracting at times.

I may need to see this movie again to really determine exactly what my “final ranking” for this movie is.  However, since I went to see Letters to Juliet recently and there is a small possibility that Beth is going to force me to see Sex and the City 2, I will probably hold off on that lest all my testosterone be completely drained from my body.  In the meantime, Giant will just have to settle for a ranking of 3 Stars from me. 

John

 

 

 

108. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Stars:  James Cagney (George M. Cohan), Joan Leslie (Mary Cohan), Walter Huston (Jerry Cohan), Richard Whorf (Sam Harris)

Director:  Michael Curtiz

Awards / Honors

• 3 Oscar Wins - Best Actor (James Cagney), Best Music (Score), Best Sound Mixing
• 5 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Walter Huston), Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Best Film Editing
• #100 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (1998)
• #71 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs list - "Yankee Doodle Boy" (2004)
• #97 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list - "My mother thanks you.  My father thanks you.  My sister thanks you.  And I thank you." (2005)
• #18 on AFI's 100 Years of Musicals list (2006)
• #88 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list (2006)
• #98 on AFI's 100 Years.. 100 Movies list (2007)
• In 1993, Yankee Doodle Dandy 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

Running Time:  2 Hours, 6 Minutes

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

Odyssey Rating:  3 Stars (John - 3 Stars, Beth - 3 Stars)

John's Take

Neither Beth nor I had seen this movie before, so we were kind of interested in seeing whether or not this movie lived up to all the hype.  The idea that Yankee Doodle Dandy, the story of legendary Broadway producer / writer / performer George M. Cohan, is a true classic is near universal in its acceptance.  As it says above, this movie is on 6 AFI movie lists (including being on both of the 100 Years… 100 Movies lists), won three Oscars and was nominated for 5 more.  It was one of James Cagney’s favorite movies, and as I understand it, this movie became the first colorized film because it was Ted Turner’s favorite.  After watching it, I can tell you that I am not necessarily in agreement with James and Ted.

That is not to say I don’t like the movie at all.  It wasn’t horrible.  I didn’t hate it.  I sort of liked it a little actually.  If I wasn’t doing anything, and someone said, “Hey, let’s watch Yankee Doodle Dandy.”, I wouldn’t say no.  However, I certainly didn’t love the film either.

The term “a perfect storm” has become something of a cliché.  Everything from the economical meltdown to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seems to be characterized as a “perfect storm” lately.  This movie, however, begs the question:  What is the term for something that should have become a “perfect storm”, but somehow didn’t quite become one?  An Imperfect Downpour?  A Flawed Tempest?  A Marred Cyclone?  Personally, I think I like “A Reproachable Squall”.  That’s what I am going with – Reproachable Squall. Yankee Doodle Dandy should have been a perfect storm of a movie, but it kind of just turned into a reproachable squall.  How so?  Well, let’s take a look… 

The first element of the potential storm front would be the film’s star James Cagney.  He was just one of those people that the camera loves.  To me, he is undoubtedly a film legend (the American Film Institute agrees, listing him #8 on their list of male screen legends, for example).  I can watch Cagney films such as The Public Enemy, White Heat, and Angles with Dirty Faces all day long.  In other words, I love me some James Cagney.  Throw in the fact that Cagney was himself an old stage / vaudeville performer with the same half-sing / half-talk style that Cohan had, and his performance should just knock my socks off. 

The second element in this potential brew-up would be the film’s director Michael Curtiz.  Not exactly a household name like Steven Spielberg, I grant you, but Curtiz was probably one of the prolific film directors in Hollywood, directing 100 or so films.  Heard of a little movie called Casablanca?  He directed that.  How about Errol Flynn classics like The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk?  He directed those too.  All you Rocky Horror fans out there might have heard of a little horror movie called Doctor X (… will build a creature…).  He directed that as well.  He directed the James Cagney classic Angles with Dirty Faces, White Christmas with Bing Crosby and King Creole with Elvis Presley.  His directorial debut was the 1912 Hungarian movie, The Last Bohemian and his final film was The Comancheros starring John Wayne in 1961.  Curtiz’s career spanned silent, black & white dramas to Technicolor musicals and touched on everything in-between.  In other words, the man knew how to direct a movie.  Definitely sounds like someone capable of putting together a classic to me.

The third element would the subject of the movie, George M. Cohan himself. Known as “The Man Who Owns Broadway”, Cohan had an incredibly interesting life, the kind of up-by-your-boot-straps, rags-to-riches, story that everyone loves.  He did everything there was to do in theatre.  He was an actor, a singer, a dancer, a writer, a producer, a director, and a choreographer.  He created songs like “The Yankee Doodle Boy", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "Harrigan", "Mary's a Grand Old Name", "You're a Grand Old Flag" and the World War I classic "Over There".  He even owned his own theatres.

So we have three “high pressure systems” (great star, great director, great subject) all converging on an area of “low pressure” – the start of World War II.  Production on this film started in late November / early December, 1941.  In other words, just a few days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.  In response, the cast and crew resolve to make the most uplifting and patriotic film they possibly could.

So, you have the talent, you the subject, and you have the leadership all coming together in a time of fear and uncertainty.  The result of such unique confluence of motion picture conditions must have produced one of the most perfect cinematic storms of all time, and most film experts would agree that it did...

In my case, however, it simply seemed to rain just a little.

I know that I am flying in the face of commonly held belief, but I don’t think this is really a great movie.  Cagney’s performance was just OK, not great to me.  Despite Curtiz having a flair making films that have a quick pace, the movie seems to just plod along.  The film is two hours and 6 minutes long, but it felt much longer than that.  In addition, as with most bio-pics, the film takes a few liberties with the facts of Cohan’s life.  Throw in a short, but completely unnecessary blackface scene and I just ended up being radically underwhelmed.  Ultimately, the film has a hard time getting past my “for-its-time” caveat test.  Thus, I am left with no choice but to declare Yankee Doodle Dandy a reproachable squall of a movie.  Not completely without merit, but certainly not living up to what it could have been and most people seem to think it is.  It gets a very weak ranking of 3 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

Movie List for March, 2010

We are slowly getting the blog caught up to real life. Yay!  Hopefully, we won’t have to continue our little temporary fiction that our blogging and our movie viewing are all happening simultaneously for much longer.   In the mean time, however, here are the movies will be “watching” in the month of March, 2010.  We encourage those of you who want to, to “watch along with us".  The movies are:

110. The Sixth Sense (1999)

109. Fargo (1996)

108. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

107. Giant (1956)

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

105. Spartacus (1960)

104. All the President’s Men (1976)

103. Pulp Fiction (1994)

John

111. A Night at the Opera (1935)

Stars:  Groucho Marx (Otis B. Driftwood), Chico Marx (Fiorello), Harpo Marx (Tomasso), Kitty Carlisle (Rosa Castaldi), Allan Jones (Ricardo Baroni), Margaret Dumont (Mrs. Claypool)

Director:  Sam Wood

Awards / Honors

• #12 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list (2000)
• #85 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)
• In 1993, A Night at the Opera was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Genre:  Comedy

Running Time:  1 Hour, 33 Minutes

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

Odyssey Rating:  5 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 5 Stars)

John's Take

You have to respect comedy film that even 40+ years after its release, still inspires two rock bands to name albums after it (Queen and the German heavy metal band Blind Guardian).  Neither Beth nor I had seen this movie before our little Odyssey began.  It has since become the “surprise hit” of the list.  This movie, considered one of the best of the Marx Brothers movies (along with Duck Soup -- # 66 on our list), is truly hilarious.

I feel sort of bad since I am now entering my second short post in a row, and both posts are for movies that I really liked, but I think this is just a case where the movie speaks for itself and anything I say is extraneous.  Jokes come fast and furious in this film.  Beth and I found ourselves having to pause and rewind the movie a bit to hear the jokes that we missed because we were laughing. 

I have said in earlier posts that if one has to use the “for-its-time” caveat to describe a movie, then perhaps it wasn’t really a great movie to start out with.  I think his movie drives that point home.  The spiritual predecessor of Airplane!, Naked Gun, and all the other Zucker & Abrahams comedies, it hasn’t missed a beat despite being 75-years old. 

In the movie, Groucho Marx's and Margaret Dumont's characters are boarding an ocean liner, Dumont asks Groucho, "Have you got everything?" Groucho replies "I've never had any complaints."  You won’t hear any from me either, Groucho.  A Night at the Opera gets a standing ovation and a rating of 5 Stars.

John