Thursday Movie Picks - Revenge

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!

Something horrible has happened to you. Someone has betrayed you, double-crossed you, committed an act of unspeakable violence against you and/or your family. You drag yourself out of the mud, effortfully pull yourself to your feet, raise your fists to the sky, and devote the rest of your waking hours in the pursuit of the one thing you yell to the heavens:

REVENGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or, at least, that's what characters in these movies did. I don't know anything about it myself. I SWEAR.

Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004) In the words of Uma Thurman's Bride: "Looked dead, didn't I? But I wasn't. But it wasn't from lack of trying, I can tell you that. Actually, Bill's last bullet put me in a coma. A coma I was to lie in for four years. When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements refer to as a 'roaring rampage of revenge.' I roared. And I rampaged. And I got bloody satisfaction. I've killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point, but I have only one more. The last one. The one I'm driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna KILL BILL." Very few movies make me as giddy from sheer movie-making bravura as Part One of Tarantino's revenge fantasia. If Part Two suffers a bit in comparison, that's only because it focuses more on the characters involved than the action. I still long to see the "Whole Bloody Affair" cut that fuses the two parts into one whole, but it looks like we'll never get it.

Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002) A tale of revenge spun backward: We first see a man getting arrested for killing the wrong man, then watch him brutally beat that man to death, and then slowly learn why. Irréversible is a notoriously difficult film to watch, partially because of the sickening camera swoops and swirls that send the film careening backward in time, and partially because of one particular scene that occurs at the midway point of the film, wherein the murderer's girlfriend (played by the gorgeous Monica Bellucci) gets brutally raped and beaten to within an inch of her life in one unbroken nine-minute shot. This is sick-making cinema, and very much on purpose: There is a background noise with a frequency of 28 Hz (low frequency, almost inaudible), which causes nausea, sickness and vertigo, playing for the first thirty minutes of the film. If you can make it through, Irréversible is a unforgettable cinematic experience with fantastic performances and stunning, inventive camera work.

The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960) Adapted from a 13th Century Swedish ballad, Bergman's masterpiece was the basis for Wes Craven's notorious The Last House on the Left, although the two films couldn't be more different. Bergman's film is, unsurprisingly, focused on the spiritual aspects of the story, and the revenge-seeker's quest not just for revenge, but acceptance in the eyes of God. Max von Sydow gives a typically brilliant performance, but in some ways, this film is almost as difficult to watch as Irréversible - just in a very different, internalized way.

Thursday Movie Picks - Character Name in Title

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Make joining us one of your New Year's Resolutions! All you have to do is pick three movies that fit the week's theme. That's it! It's fun!

A new year, a new round of Thursday Movie Picks categories! I'm very excited to see what this series has in store for us this year. I have to say, I think we're starting off with a pretty good category - movies that have a character name in the title. Sometimes, naming a movie after your main character is the simplest, best thing to do. Especially if your movie is about an historical figure (think Frida, Wilde, The Glenn Miller Story). But I decided to go with movies NOT about real people.

Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007) Michael Clayton is a fixer at a corporate law firm. But when of the senior partners develops a conscience and goes rogue, Michael starts to develop a conscience as well. Which is a bit of a problem for anxiety-prone corporate counsel Karen Crowder. George Clooney gives a great performance in the title role, but the real revelation here is Tilda Swinton, who deservedly won an Oscar for her tremendous performance as Karen. Gilroy, good a director as he is, owes most of the film's tremendous tension to her and her alone.

Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004) Bill likes to train his lovers to be assassins. Or he likes to take his trained assassins as lovers. One of the two. But one of them got away, so he takes his assassins to her wedding to kill her. Except that she only ended up in a coma. And when she wakes up, there's hell to pay. Uma Thurman gives the performance of her career as The Bride, whose mission it is to kill Bill, in what is, for my money, the best film of Tarantino's career (Part One). What I wouldn't give to see the unseparated "The Whole Bloody Affair" cut that Tarantino sometimes brings out.

Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) Dr. Strangelove is the strangest of Peter Sellers's creations in this darkest of pitch-black comedies - a wheelchair-bound former Nazi scientist who can't quite keep his Nazi sympathies in check. If you've somehow never heard of this, the basic idea is that we're going to nuclear war with Russia, but the reason is trumped-up by crazy General Jack Ripper. So it's the war hawks (led by General Buck Turgidson) versus the diplomats (President Merkin Muffley) fighting over the fate of the world. One of my all-time favorite movies, Dr. Strangelove is political satire at its absolute finest. There are few casts more stacked than this - George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, James Earl Hones, Keenan Wynn - and even though director Stanley Kubrick may not have liked the idea, Sellers is BRILLIANT in his three parts here, absolutely nailing each one and, in Strangelove, creating a comic character for the ages.

Thursday Movie Picks - World War II

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and saying a bit about them! 
A rather big topic for this week's Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar's favorite war, World War II.

I'm generally not a huge fan of war movies, to be honest. But there are some really good ones made with WWII as backdrop, so here we go!

Forbidden Games (René Clément, 1950) The horrors of war, as seen through a child's perspective. This uniquely moving film tells the story of a young girl (Brigitte Fossey, in an incredible performance) whose parents are killed in a air raid while she saves the family dog. When the dog dies as well, she meets a young boy in the countryside, and the two of them start a cemetery for animals, and steal crosses from church cemeteries. Alternately darkly funny and poignant, Forbidden Games is a classic that everyone should see.

The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) The most beautiful war film ever made. Taking the Battle of Guadalcanal and refracting it through a diverse (ridiculously starry) cast of men of different backgrounds and beliefs, Malick confronts the terrible psychological cost of war in a way that only he can. The result is the best war film of 1998 (I SAID IT), and possibly ever.

Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) World War II as only Quentin Tarantino could film it, Inglorious Basterds is ridiculously entertaining, and not just in a revenge fantasy way. Each scene is so marvelously constructed (the bar! the movie theater!), and each one is better than the next. Fantastic performances from Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger, and Mélanie Laurent anchor the film, it's Christoph Waltz, as renowned "Jew Hunter" Col. Hans Landa that steals the show, in a flat-out brilliant Oscar-winning performance. It may be too violent for some, but I love every second of this, and agree with the famous last line: "This may just be my [read: Tarantino's] masterpiece."

Thursday Movie Picks - Crime Gone Wrong

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us a bit about them!

Well, what a week to forget what day it was last night! "Crime Gone Wrong" is the theme for this week, and my first thought this morning as I logged into my email and sat and stared in shock horror at the day of the week and proceeded to Wanderer's sight to get the theme was "....doesn't that describe MOST crime movies?" I'm sure it doesn't, but having to think quickly before the work day technically starts and I have to jump on a conference call it certainly felt that way! Because where's the drama if the crime doesn't go wrong? AH, but there are OH SO MANY WAYS a crime can go wrong that each film feels so different. Let's start with...

Four Lions (Christopher Morris, 2010) ...incompetency. You wouldn't think it would be possible to make a comedy about terrorism in the post-9/11 world, but leave it to Brit genius Chris Morris to prove you wrong. Four Lions is about a group of British jihadists who probably couldn't find their way out of a paper bag if they had to, let alone carry off a massive-scale bombing. The film is deeply, DEEPLY funny despite being about such a nauseating subject, but doesn't completely shy away from that nauseating aspect either, and therein lies its genius. It also features Riz Ahmed, so if you're really enjoying The Night Of, you definitely owe it to yourself to check this out.

Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992) Well, what doesn't go wrong with this crime? Although it probably all starts with the undercover cop right in the middle of the merry band of pop-culturally savvy robbers. Tarantino's first film features nearly all the stylistic flourishes he would return to and refine over the years: a gleefully anarchic pop soundtrack, chapter divisions, deliriously smart and quotable dialogue, tension-building long takes, and of course, bursts of hard-to-stomach violence. It almost feels like he arrived fully formed as a filmmaker, except we know he only got better and better from here on out.

Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) Moving on now to that other old chestnut, "the dead body that may not be so dead after all." Christine and Nicole are the wife and mistress, respectively, of the headmaster of a second-rate boarding school. He treats both women awfully, in addition to the children, so the women conspire to murder him. Except when the body doesn't stay where they left it to be found by the police. And what follows is a film so perfectly taut and thrilling that no less a personage than Alfred Hitchcock was jealous of it. So jealous of it, in fact, that he pre-bought the movie rights to the next book by the authors of the book that inspired this movie, before it was even written. Which turned out to be a pretty good thing, because that movie turned out to be his masterpiece: Vertigo.

Thursday Movie Picks - Female Ensembles

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Come along and join us by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and saying a little something about them!

I'll get straight to the point. There is only one film with a female ensemble that matters, really. Every single one since is just a pale imitation. So let it be known that if you love movies at all, and especially if you love actresses, then you owe it to yourself to watch my first pick.

The rest are good, too, but they're not at all a patch on...

The Women (George Cukor, 1939) Yes, from Hollywood's annus mirabilis comes the greatest all-female ensemble ever assembled, getting to act one of its wittiest screenplays. When Norma Shearer's husband starts sleeping around with that hussy Joan Crawford, she goes out to a ranch in Reno so they can get a divorce.... and once that's done, she comes back to get revenge! The Women is an utter delight from start to finish. The only bad part is picking a favorite: Crawford, whose haughtiness makes it clear she's never anything but the lead in anything? Shearer, the all-too-human anchor who sends all her feelings straight through the screen directly to us? Paulette Goddard, the spitfire Shearer meets in Reno who could go toe-to-toe with any man? Mary Boland, delightful as the many-times divorced Countess who ALMOST puts over that she really does believe in "l'amour! l'amour"? Or the queen bee of fast-talkers, Rosalind Russell, whose gossipy gadfly may just be the true villain of the picture? I can't possibly choose. Can you?

8 Women (François Ozon, 2002) Only some of the greatest actresses in the world come from France, and somehow 90% of those are in this movie (the only biggie I can think of that's missing? Isabelle Adjani). Ozon's classic murder mystery setup (a man is murdered by someone he knows in his mansion in the middle of a snowstorm, everyone else tries to figure out which one of them did it) gets two twists: The first is that all the suspects are women. And what women! Deneuve! Ardant! Huppert! Béart! Darrieux! All cast perfectly to type and clearly having a blast with it. 8 Women is such a blast if only to get to watch these great actresses play off each other. What's that? The other twist? OH. It's a musical. Each of the titular eight women gets a character song to sing when the spotlight of the investigation falls on them. Not all of the ladies are good singers, but it doesn't matter; they know how to cover for their lesser abilities and perform the heck out of them anyway. It's stuff like that that make 8 Women such a joy.

Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007) BEFORE YOU START! Technically, this is NOT cheating. Yes, Death Proof was originally released as one-half of the Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez collaboration Grindhouse, but it also received a berth of its own at the Cannes Film Festival and was released on DVD as a solo feature (albeit both in a longer cut than in Grindhouse). And I'll be honest, the shorter Grindhouse cut is INFINITELY better than the longer "Director's Cut" version. But either way, Death Proof still has one of the greatest car chases ever committed to film, thanks to the brilliant casting of the great stuntwoman Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman's stuntwoman on Kill Bill) as one of a group of ladies who fall into the clutches of Kurt Russell's maniacal Stuntman Mike, who likes to crash his "death proof" stunt car into cars full of pretty ladies. Russell is at his magnetic best in the role, but it's really all about the two groups of women who fall victim to Mike (including the scorching hot Sidney Tamiia Poitier and Vanessa Ferlito) and who fight back (Bell, Tracie Thoms, and Rosario Dawson). The car chase that takes up almost an entire third of Death Proof is killer, but what's even better is what the ladies do once they catch up to the twisted Mike, the most cleverly edited scene of Tarantino's career, culminating in one of cinema's greatest finale freeze-frames.

Thursday Movie Picks - May/December Romance

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves.

Ah, romance is in the air this month for Thursday Movie Picks! This week, we're taking a look at the May/December romance: A relationship where there is a large age difference between partners, usually with one in their twilight years (hence the "December" part). Confession time: I spent the better part of the last decade in what some might describe as a May/December Romance - the gap between our ages was just over twenty years. He was still relatively young, though (it wasn't until towards the end of our relationship that he turned 50, so I wouldn't classify it as a May/December, although some might. That doesn't have an effect on my feelings towards May/December romances, though. Sometimes they're played for laughs, sometimes they're played straight, and I think that's true to how these types of relationships are in real life, too: Some are true love, and some are... well...

Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933) Yes, it's a trope nearly as old as the screen: younger girl falls (or "falls") for much older, much wealthier man. Now, I'm not saying Trixie Lorraine's a gold digger, but she sure as hell ain't messin' with no broke... OH WHO AM I KIDDING. They get married after ONE DATE. OF COURSE she's a gold digger! The plot of this pre-code musical doesn't really matter (a depression-era producer is trying to mount a show but doesn't have money, enter a secretly independently wealthy piano player whose family naturally comes to try and stop him), because it's all really an excuse to have some Busby Berkeley musical numbers. The most famous, justly, is "We're In The Money", the opening number sung by Ginger Rogers. I also love "The Shadow Waltz", which features some of the most ridiculous costumes ever created, just for ONE SHOT where the girls are shot from above to look like a flower. That Busby Berkeley. What a fucking genius.

Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003/2004) The May/December Romance gone deadly. Beatrix (Uma Thurman) was very young when she first met the much-older Bill (David Carradine) and he took her under his wing, into his league of assassins, and somewhere along the way, into his bed. But after she became pregnant she decided she had to get out of the deadly assassin's life. To say Bill didn't take kindly to that is, well, putting it too kindly. Quentin Tarantino's fourth film was chopped in two for its release, and somewhere there supposedly is a cut that puts the whole thing together into one movie. I'd watch that in a heartbeat. Part One is an action-packed samurai extravaganza and Part Two is a bit quieter and more character-based. They balance each other out nicely (or at least, I imagine they do when put together). The saga of "The Bride" is probably Tarantino's best film, more than making up for its (relative) lack of ambition with stellar editing, cinematography, casting, and music (that trailer ALONE). And also pure awesomeness.

Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008) THAT'S RIGHT, BITCHES. Let's be clear: Edward Cullen may be in the body of a teenager, but in reality he is 104 years old. ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR. Sweet, mopey Bella is a teenager. That's one hell of an age difference. Twilight may be the wettest blanket of a romance ever put on screen, taking the soggy weather of the Northwest a bit too much to heart. Pity poor Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who have proven since that they really CAN act, when they're given actual characters to play.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Jackie Brown

I've missed the past couple of weeks of Nathaniel's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series over at The Film Experience because I've been too busy to do it, but Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite directors and Jackie Brown is one of his best, so I forced myself to stay up late and do this one.

Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino, but whatever else he says or does, one thing is always true above all else: The man loves movies. Any and all kinds, especially maligned genres. It's this love that guides pretty much everything he does. At his best (Kill Bill, Vol. 1, if you ask me), this leads to some deliriously fun, often subversively smart films. At his worst (the "Director's Cut" version of Death Proof), this leads to some serious cinematic masturbation and sprawling, messy films. Jackie Brown, his third feature, is definitely one of his best. I remember at the time, the standard line on it was that it was just a repeat of his prior success, Pulp Fiction - resurrecting a fallen star from the 70s (Pam Grier taking over for John Travolta) while playing on their history and revealing previously hidden depths to their talent, hyper-literate gangsters in a catchphrase heavy underworld, a pleasingly obscure anachronistic soundtrack, and even Samuel L. Jackson coming in to steal the whole damn thing out from under the purported leads.

It's hard to be a woman in Hollywood, much less a woman of a certain age, much less a woman of color of a certain age. Pam Grier had worked pretty steadily since her heyday as Coffy and Foxxy Brown, but hadn't had a real lead role worthy of her talents until Jackie Brown (of course the name harkens back to her previous success). But it's more than just a great part, written with her in mind. Jackie would be the role of a lifetime for any actress, but for Grier, it's one of those parts that takes not just her well-known screen persona but her whole life and adds extra resonance. Like Darren Aronofsky did with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler as a more recent example, Tarantino uses Grier to allow us to have an instant connection to Jackie, and to make her final triumph all the sweeter.

It should have netted her an Oscar nomination, and most likely would have if she had been a man.

But enough with all that. This is Hit Me With Your Best Shot, after all. And, as is typical for a Tarantino film, Jackie Brown has a surplus of wonderful shots, so many that picking one seems unfair. So I'm going to do what I hate to do with these kind of things and go with the very first shot of the film.

It's such a sweet moment for an actress to reemerge onto the screen decades after her last big triumph, blow everyone else off the screen, and not only own but earn that opening "above the title" credit. So few women even get the chance to headline at all, much less take top billing when the likes of Robert DeNiro, Samuel L. Jackson, and Michael Keaton are also in the movie, and even less in a film like this one: A crime thriller directed by a young upstart auteur who is coming off of a Palme d'Or-winning, Oscar-nominated, standard-setting instant classic.

Of course, that introduction wouldn't be complete without its sister shot, the last shot of the film.

The same music is playing, and it's another long take, but she's fully in control now. She's behind the wheel, not being moved by an unseen conveyor belt. And she's singing along, taking in the lyrics along with all that's happened, feeling the simultaneous joy and sorrow that come from finally breaking free.

You go, girl.