Part of the weekly blogathon hosted by the lovely blog Wandering Through the Shelves. To participate, just pick three movies based around the week's given theme. Come join us!
This week's theme is pretty self-explanatory. Black & White can be extremely effective when used well, and indeed is usually used to make a point. Arguably all of my picks this week are throwbacks to an older style of filmmaking, which is why they went for B&W instead of color. I love them all for very different reasons.
Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974) "It's FRAHNK-un-shteen!" "Roll, roll, roll in ze hay!" "What hump?" "Put. Ze candle. BACK." "It's pronounced
eye-gore." "SAY IT! He... vas... my... BOYFRIEND!" "Could be worse. Could be raining." I could quote this film from here to eternity. Mel Brooks's delightful horror spoof is utter perfection from first frame to last, with Gene Wilder as Frederick, the grandson of the famous Dr. Victor Frankenstein, lured back to his family castle in Transylvania, which he has inherited after the death of his great-grandfather. Despite trying to distance himself from his family name and history, he finds his grandfather's lab - along with a book helpfully titled "How I Did It" - and decides to recreate his grandfather's experiment. Wilder is at his crazed. manic best here, and ultimate Mel Brooks sidekick Marty Feldman is priceless as his assistant Igor. The rest of the cast (Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Peter Boyle, and of course Madeline Kahn) are also their usual brilliant selves. As with any Brooks film, the gags are fast, furious, and flawlessly funny.
The Artist (Michel Hazanavicious, 2011) The first movie about movies to win the Oscar for Best Picture, and a most deserving winner. Yes, it looks and feels just like a silent film, and that's a great enough feat in this day and age, but it's also very sly in the way it uses its soundtrack, first noticeable in one early scene where film star George Valentin (the effortlessly charming and charismatic Jean Dujardin) and up-and-coming extra Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo, the most interesting new face in movies) are shooting a scene for a film where they bump into each other on the dance floor, and they keep making mistakes or breaking character, and as they reshoot and reshoot the scene, the score ever so slowly drops out, until we're just watching them dance together, falling in love at first sight. Hazanavicious has made a film that condenses virtually all of film history into one delightful package.
The Artist is why I love movies.
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2013) Greta
Gerwig's performance here is one of the greatest female lead
performances of the last ten years. But, as with my other two picks, the entire ensemble is
just perfection (although special shout-out to Mickey Summer, who is just as brilliant as Gerwig in the role of Frances's best friend). And even though the film revolves around Gerwig's
awkward Frances, each ensemble member gets a chance to shine, even if
it's just one quick reaction shot. Blisteringly funny, beautifully painful, and
acutely observed, this is the finest film about... whatever this
generation that just graduated from college is called. I can't praise it enough.
BONUS PICK
Sin City (Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, 2005) One of the most distinctive and visually stunning films of the new millennium, I didn't feel I could in good conscience pick
Sin City because it technically does have color. But goddamn do I love this movie. The images, largely pulled almost directly from Frank Miller's singular graphic novels, sear themselves into your brain after just one viewing. It may be almost too hard-boiled for its own good, but what a vision it is to behold.
