DVD Review: The Father of My Children

The Father of My Children *** ½
Directed by: Mia Hansen-Løve.
Written By: Mia Hansen-Løve.
Starring: Louis-Do de Lencquesaing (Grégoire Canvel), Chiara Caselli (Sylvia Canvel), Alice de Lencquesaing (Clémence Canvel), Alice Gautier (Valentine Canvel), Manelle Driss (Billie Canvel), Eric Elmosnino (Serge), Sandrine Dumas (Valérie), Dominique Frot (Bérénice), Antoine Mathieu (Frédéric), Igor Hansen-Løve (Arthur Malkavian), Elsa Pharaon (Colette), Olivia Ross (Anja).

The Father of My Children tells the story of an essentially good man, who reaches the end of his rope. It tells this story without dipping into melodrama, or becoming a psychological study, but simply presents us this man, and his family, and watches them for a while.

The man is Gregorie Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) and he is the head of a small, indepedant film studio in Paris. If you are an acclaimed director, and no one else wants to make your film, you can go to Gregoire and he’ll somehow find you the money to do it. And that is probably why his studio is failing. He owes money to everyone, his latest production is director by a vain, egotisical Swedish director (obviously based on the Danish director Lars von Trier) whose epic production is running way over schedule and budget, and whose crew is on the verge of mutiny. For years Gregoire has been leveraging everything the studio has – especially the catalogue of films it produced – to get the money to make new ones – but this seems to have reached the end of the line. His creditors want to be paid, and they are tired of waiting. They have cut Gregoire as much slack as they have because they like him so much – everyone likes him. He is the kind of guy who puts his neck on the line for everyone. But sooner or later, it all catches up with him.

In addition to seeing Gregoire at work, we also see him at home. His wife Syliva (Chiara Caselli) loves and supports him – even when she gets sick and tired of him always being on the phone putting out one fire after another. His three daughters, especially the oldest Clemence (Alice de Lencquesaing, who yes, is the daughter of the star) love him as well. His enthusiasm is infectious, and his family and his workers are all willing to cut him more slack than they would with probably anyone else.

The film is strange in that it seems to be cut into two – the shocking end to the first act is where most movies would end. But writer director Mia Hansen-Love is interested in more than most directors. She doesn’t end the film at the point that makes the most sense – but pushes on farther. And its that push that I think makes The Father of My Children a special film. It goes beyond what we expect, and ends in a place that is surprisingly touching.

Gregoire takes the easy way out. It is a selfish act he does half way through the film, and yet there are almost no moments where anyone really gets mad at him. He was too lovable, too committed, too passionate – and he inspired loyalty in people. They may not have shared his vision, but they wanted to help him achieve what he set out to do. I can’t think of another film that quite works the way this one does. The one that comes to mind is Oliver Assayas’ Summer Hours (Hansen-Love got her start as an actress in Assayas’ films, and is now married to him) which was also a strange film about a family, that goes beyond what most films of its sort do. The Father of My Children is a tribute to cinema, to family and to this man, based on a real life producer who helped Hansen-Love early in her directing career, and ended up just like Gregoire.

Movie Review: A Film Unfinished

A Film Unfinished *** ½
Directed By: Yael Hersonki.

There has never been a government who has better understood the power of cinema, and how to exploit, than Nazi Germany. From the beginning, Hitler and Goebbels knew that one way to win everyone over to their side was to use cinema – images burn into your brain much more effectively than words, and they sought to exploit this. They approached Fritz Lang to become the unofficial head of Nazi filmmaking, but he wasn’t interested and ended up fleeing Germany for Hollywood – where he made a number of explicitly anti-Nazi films. The works of Leni Riefenstahl, despite their undeniable evil intentions, have become recognized as propaganda masterpieces.

A Film Unfinished is a documentary about another propaganda movie the Nazis made – although they never finished it. It was discovered in the vault of Nazi films in the middle of a field in the years after the war and was simply entitlted “The Ghetto”. What was inside was a little more than an hour of edited material, with no soundtrack, that stands as a testament at just how much the Germans sought to influence people through cinema.

A Film Unfinished presents this material for the world to see, and offers some interesting background information in the form of a journal by one of the Jewish residents of the Warsaw ghetto forced to participate in the film, reports from the senior Nazi in charge of the ghetto, testimony of one of the cameramen (the only one ever identified) at a war crimes trial in the 1960s, and finally from some of the residents in the ghetto who have survived all these years – who watch the images and cannot believe what they are seeing.

It is clear what the duel purpose of the film was. The first was to show that life in the ghetto was not bad at all – that the Nazis may have confined the Jews to a ghetto, but were still allowing them to live their lives the way they see fit – and that everything is essentially fine. The second was to the paint the Jews as heartless and cruel – which they do by constantly contrasting the lives of those with money, and those without. The rich people celebrate in fine restaurants and parties, dress in their best clothes, arrange flowers in their spacious apartments and completely ignore the suffering of those around them. One of the most heartless scenes in the film shows corpses strewn on the sidewalk, as the Jews walk by them – sometimes even stepping over them – without even realizing or caring that they are there.

Of course, this is all lies. It was all staged – as “outtakes” on one of the reels shows us quite clearly as we see multiple takes of the same scenes to get them to be more believable. The journals of the man forced to participate paint a picture of almost a professional film being made – with actors and sets, etc. The survivors watch in horror as they see the scenes painted on the screen in front of them – this didn’t reflect the reality of life in the ghetto at all.

A Film Unfinished is a wonderful documentary, that is about cinema – about its manipulations, and how because of its primal power, it can be used for either good, or in this case, complete evil. The film was never finished probably because they didn’t have time to finish it – it was filmed in May 1942, and a few months later they started to liquidate the ghetto and send all the Jews to concentration camps. Their propaganda about life in the ghettos was therefore useless to them, and as they weren’t even pretending to treat them fairly anymore. The film is a valuable document of how cinema can be manipulated – and how you have to question everything you see.

Movie Review: Monsters

Monsters ***
Directed by: Gareth Edwards.
Written By: Gareth Edwards.
Starring: Whitney Able (Samantha Wynden), Scoot McNairy (Andrew Kaulder).

Monsters is a different kind of movie about giant monsters invading the earth. The film was shot on the fly in Mexico for around $25,000 – but you would never know it by watching the film. Yes, the film certainly does have an on the ground, do it yourself feel to it – but the special effects when they come are hugely impressive. It just goes to show you that you don’t need millions of dollars to make your film look good.

We are informed by the opening titles that 6 years ago, a NASA Spaceship returning for space with alien life forms crashed in Mexico. Now, giant creatures roam the infected area in Mexico. The US bombs the creatures trying to wipe them out, but they are only so effective. The creatures are dangerous – and fight back.

Monsters though is essentially a road movie with two characters. Andrew (Scoot McNairy) is a photographer looking to get great shots of the creatures so he can make some money. Samantha (Whitney Able) is the rich daughter of McNairy’s boss in Mexico to do missionary work before returning home to get married. After an attack, Andrew is assigned to escort Samantha to the coast where she can board a ferry back home – but things don’t go as planned, and when they miss the last ferry for six months – they decide to hire some experienced guides and go by land – through the infected area.

The movies story is pretty much what you would expect it to be. The two characters don’t much like each other first – in fact they kind of resent each other – but they grow closer as the trip continues. It is a testament to the performances by McNairy and Wynden that they keep things interesting even though the film is not overly original. These seem like real characters trapped in this nightmare scenario – not just carbon copies from other movies of the same ilk.

Written and directed by Gareth Edwards, who has worked in special effects for years, the movie does an excellent job of slowly building up the tension – and there are a few scenes that are truly gripping and wonderfully directed. For a long time, we don’t see much of the creatures themselves – they are mostly hiding or captured in quick shots. But Edwards does show you the monsters at certain points – and at those times, the special effects are truly impressive. The creatures glow, and have the same sort of wispy quality of deep sea creatures. Edwards did all of the special effects himself on his computer but you wouldn’t be able to tell if you didn’t know that. They are as effective, if not more so, than effects costing millions of dollars more in other high profile movies. They may not be quite as impressive, but for this movie they are just about perfect.

The movie drifts at times, and I’m not sure the end of the movie quite works – although I did appreciate the fact that the film does degenerate into non stop action sequences, and kept its dreamy tone intact throughout. Also since the end of the movie isn’t really the end of the story, perhaps it works better than I thought it did at the time. Monsters is one of the better do it yourself movies I have seen in recent years.

Movie Review: Unstoppable

Unstoppable *** ½
Directed by: Tony Scott.
Written By: Mark Bomback.
Starring: Denzel Washington (Frank), Chris Pine (Will), Rosario Dawson (Connie), Ethan Suplee (Dewey), Kevin Dunn (Galvin), Kevin Corrigan (Inspector Werner), Kevin Chapman (Bunny), Lew Temple (Ned).

Unstoppable moves at breakneck speed pretty much from its opening frame to the closing one. The storyline is simple – lovable loser Dewey (Ethan Suplee) is supposed to move a train off the tracks, but screws up. They don’t put the air brakes on, and when he gets close to the switching point, he realizes that it hasn’t been moved over yet. He has 39 cars, and backing it up would take too long. So he gets out of the cab, leaving the train unmanned to, to pull the switch. But then, the train speeds up, and he can’t get back in. He was supposed to set it in a position where the train wouldn’t speed up, but that didn’t happen either. Essentially, what he has done and put the pedal to the metal of an unmanned train, caring toxic chemicals that could wipe out an entire small town, and then let it get away from him. The train, no unmanned and picking up speed cannot be stopped.

Frank (Denzel Washington) and Will (Chris Pine) are on another train. He is the wily veteran close to retirement, he is a trainee, learning the ropes from him. When they hear about the train, and the ill advised efforts to stop it, they are mystified by how it could happen. Yet Frank also has an idea on how to stop the train. If he can catch up with the train, he can latch onto its last car, and gun his engine in the opposite direction – which may or may not stop the train, but may slow it down enough to allow someone to get on it.

And that’s it. That’s the movie. A very simple set-up and story, no real character development to speak of, no real memorable dialogue. The movie is essentially a chase between these two trains, and damn if if it isn’t one of the most entertaining action films you will see this year.

I have had a love hate relationship with the recent films of Tony Scott. He has gone wildly over the top stylistically in films like Man on Fire, Domino, Déjà vu and The Taking of Pelham 123. His films call attention to themselves, but not always in a good way. And yet, when they work, as this one does, they are also adrenaline rushes that few, if any, other action filmmakers in America can match right now. You may not call them intelligent movies – they really aren’t – but they are entertaining as hell.

I’m not sure if Unstoppable is the best of his recent work – I know a lot of people hated both Man on Fire and Domino, but I highly enjoyed both of them as well. But what Unstopplable does have what those other films don’t, is a stripped to the bone storyline, and that suits Scott well. He doesn’t have to spend time on what he doesn’t do very well – character development – and instead gets to go balls out into action filmmaking, and that he does amazingly well. The film is full of exciting setpieces – chases and crashes and people screaming at each other. Scott does do a good job at showing us how this happened, and what is being done to stop it. Washington, Pine and Rosario Dawson, as the woman at mission control talking them through it are actually quite good in their roles – or as good as they possibly can be anyway, given what they are required to do.

Unstoppable is one of those action movies where you simply kick back, relax, turn your brain off and go for the ride. If you can do that – and the movie moves so quickly it makes that fairly easy to do – you will most likely be entertained by the film. If you can’t, you won’t. You already know which category you fall into.

Movie Review: Morning Glory

Morning Glory *** ½
Directed by: Roger Michell.
Written By: Aline Brosh McKenna.
Starring: Rachel McAdams (Becky), Harrison Ford (Mike Pomeroy), Diane Keaton (Colleen Peck), Patrick Wilson (Adam Bennett), Jeff Goldblum (Jerry Barnes), Ty Burrell (Paul McVee), John Pankow (Lenny Bergman), J. Elaine Marcos (Lisa Bartlett), Matt Malloy (Ernie Appleby).

Rachel McAdams is so sweet and lovable in Morning Glory that you cannot help but root for her. When we first meet her, she is working as a producer on a morning show in New Jersey, and hoping for a promotion – instead she gets fired because of cutbacks. She tries everywhere else she can find, eventually landing the job of executive producer on Daybreak – which is a national, Network show. But this isn’t all good news – the ratings are terrible, the morale is the staff is horrible and the show is essentially a joke. But McAdams’ Becky is determined to improve the show by any means necessary. Her first act is to fire the sexist co-host, and replace him with Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), who used to be the network news anchor, but got canned from that job for being too boring. He is still under contract to the network, and if he wants his millions of dollars, he has to work for them. But he views Daybreak, and all shows like it, as the antichrist of news – it isn’t real news, it doesn’t matter, and since his contract gives him a lot of control, he makes it miserable for everyone there.

The situation is kind of the reverse of James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News (1987). In that film, Holly Hunter is a producer who cared about the “real news” and she was saddled with William Hurt’s idiot new anchor, who was very good at the theatricality of news, but not at the real stuff. Back in 1987, there was a real debate about “news” vs. “entertainment”, and that added some resonace to that movie – but as Becky points out of Mike in this movie “They have been debating news vs. entertainment for years and guess what? Your side lost”. She isn’t wrong, and while many may not like this trend, she’s right, and the movie fully embraces her viewpoint.

Morning Glory adds in other characters besides Becky and Mike, but it really does remain their movies. Patrick Wilson is fine as Becky’s obligatory love interest, another producer on a different show who calls Mike the “third worst person in the world”, but it really is a throwaway role. I was quite impressed with Diane Keaton as Collen Peck, the veteran anchor of Daybreak who is resistant to both Becky and Mike when they come aboard – but a professional in that she will try anything. Jeff Goldblum even gets some nice scenes as a network executive.

But as I said, the heart of the movie is McAdams and Ford, and because they are both so great, the movie works probably much better than it has any right to. McAdams is lovable – she has a wide open face and the giddy optimism of a school girl, that is just infectous. Yet, she also does a good job at projecting an air of professionalism. You believe her as a executive producer on this type of show – she knows what she is doing. When I see Harrison Ford in interviews he always comes across as somehow who just doesn’t care – and wishes he was somewhere else. In movies, he has pretty much coasted on his charm for the last 20 years or so, rarely challenging himself. I’m not sure if this role was much of a challenge for him either, but he certainly does seem to have fun with it. Perhaps he did it because, for once, he gets to act like an asshole for most of the movie. We know eventually that Becky will wear him down – she is too nice not to – but I really liked Ford when he was in full blown asshole mode here. It is one of the few times in recent years where I can say I genuinely liked him in a movie.

Morning Glory doesn’t really do anything new – and for that matter it doesn’t do what Broadcast News did 23 years ago as well as that film did. Yet, what it sets out to do, it accomplishes. This time of year, I spend most of my time catching documentaries and heavy hitting dramas that are trying to get into the Oscar race. Morning Glory is pretty much the perfect antedote for that. This is a movie that just makes you feel good. Its made with wit and intelligence by director Roger Michell (who alternates between projects like this and Notting Hill, and darker British dramas like Enduring Love and The Mother), and the screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna is clever and funny. The cast gives it there all. In short, while Morning Glory may be exactly the movie you expect it to be from the previews, it is a hell of a lot of fun.

Year in Review: 1971

1971 is one of my favorite movie years for many reasons – one is that any of the top 3 films could easily be the number one film of the year, it really is that close. But there is a lot of great work throughout this year.

10. The Hospital (Arthur Hiller)
The Hospital is a very strange film indeed. It starts out as a farce, with George C. Scott as the Chief of Staff of a hospital where his staff start dying because of the incompetence of the other staff, and the only person who seems to take their job seriously is the woman who has to collect all the insurance information from the patients. Scott hardly cares – he’s left his wife, hates his son, and is planning on committing suicide as soon as he sobers up enough to actually go through with it. The film starts out at such a madcap pace, you wonder how it can possibly sustain it – and of course it doesn’t. Halfway through the film Diana Rigg shows up – an eccentric younger woman who is there with her father, but she wants to check him out so they can return to the desert. The sequence that makes the film so good is the long, dark, lonely night the two of them spend together, telling each other their stories which contains some of Paddy Chayevsky’s best writing. Yes, the film is admittedly uneven, and the ending, although kind of inspired and unexpected, doesn’t quite work, but The Hospital is a daring little film and one of the more interesting ones of this year.

9. Little Murders (Alan Arkin)
Little Murders is a pretty much forgotten film – I would never have even heard of it if Roger Ebert had not featured it on his website as an “Overlooked DVD of the Week”. It is a sad, tragic, violent little film about people driven to insanity simply because they live in New York. Elliot Gould gives one of his best performances as a photographer who gets beat up a lot. He meets and marries Marcia Rodd, the woman who saves him from muggers, and is introduced to her eccentric family. The film is a satire, but a dark one – one that never really lets loose, but remains contained, trapping its characters, and by extension the audience, in its insular, violent little world. Eventually, the film will erupt into violence, but most of its movie is low key mayhem. The acting is inspired – not just by the leads but by the entire cast, including Donald Sutherland’s hilarious cameo as a new age preacher, and Arkin’s own cameo as a cop. Little Murders is a one of a kind film – entirely self contained, and sad, tragic and hilarious.

8. Dirty Harry (Don Siegal)
Dirty Harry was heavily criticized when it came out as being a fascist film. Led by Pauline Kael, many critics deplored what the film stood for – essentially that it is a film that glamorized a violent, perhaps even sociopathic cop, who tortures criminals to get a confession, all wrapped up in a thriller package to satisfy the public’s bloodlust. I’m not really going to argue against that (she did kind of have a point), but I will say that I love Dirty Harry just the same. It is one of Clint Eastwood’s most iconic roles – and set the standard for cop movies (and later TV shows, especially something like The Shield) for decades to come. The film reflects a certain attitude in America – that the Bill of Rights is used by the most sick, twisted individuals to get away with anything and people are tired of it. That’s why we admire Dirty Harry – even if he is a violent sociopath – because on a certain level we agree with him. This is intense, gritty filmmaking, exciting as a thriller, and thought provoking as a film about violence.

7. Klute (Alan J. Pakula)
Klute is a thriller, but what I admire about it isn’t so much of the thriller elements, but the performance and the character that Jane Fonda plays. In fact, I’m not sure I could outline the plot in any detail, but I will never forget her performance. It is tough, cynical, intelligent performance where Fonda plays Bree, a prostitute who is being targeted by some sort of madman. Donald Sutherland plays the cop who is trying to solve the case. Fonda’s Bree does not have a heart of gold, and she is not really portrayed as a victim either – she is, in fact, very proud of the work she does meeting the needs of her clients. The relationship between Fonda and Sutherland, who plays a square, suburban cop, out of his depth, and yet caring towards her, is what makes the film as good as it is. Sure, the thriller elements are there, but it is Sutherland, and especially Fonda that make Klute a classic.

6. Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols)
Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge is about two men who find that the real women in their lives cannot match the fantasy women who exist only in their heads. I think many men, and women for that matter, go through this early in their life – they have an idealized version of the opposite sex in their heads, and when the person that they’re with turns out to be, well human, they are disappointed. The tragedy of the movie is that unlike many people, the two men at the center of this movie never outgrow this. They continue trying to find the woman they have in their head. Jack Nicholson gives one of his great performances here as one of the men – the smoother of the two, who can talk women into anything. His scenes with Ann-Margaret, which at times verges on downright cruelty on his part, are the best in the film. He ends up impotent, trying in vein with a prostitute (Rita Moreno). Art Garfunkel is not quite up to his level – how could he be – but he is quite good as well, and a man who deludes himself well into middle age (when he starts dating a 17 year old, and says “in many ways, she’s older than me”, he’s not wrong, but that’s only because he still acts like a teenager). Candice Bergen gives the other fine performance in the film – of Garnfunkel’s first wife, who finally has enough of him. Carnal Knowledge is a painful film, but that pain comes from a place that is all too real.

5. The French Connection (William Friedkin)
Along with Dirty Harry, The French Connection really did set the modern standard for cop movies. Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) is a little like Dirty Harry – on that he is capable of great violence, becomes obsessed with his case, and is perhaps a little crazy himself. He is also what centers this movie – as he really is the only three dimensional character in it. It is a great performance by Hackman – gritty, realistic, intense, violent, a man of action who will do whatever it takes to win. The storyline about a drug dealer (Fernando Rey) is almost besides the point – what matters is the action, masterfully filmed by William Friedkin, including one of the best car chases of all time – and Hackman’s intensity in the lead role. To a certain extent, time has dulled some of the impact the film must have had at the time – after all, isn’t Andy Sipowitz from NYPD Blue at least a little like Doyle – but the film remains an exciting, tense action thriller with just a little bit more going on than we normally see.

4. Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs was incredibly controversial when it was released, and remains so today. It is, to me anyway, along with The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, one of the three movies that makes Peckinpah a master filmmaker dealing with violence. The film stars Dustin Hoffman as an American intellectual who moves with his new wife (Susan George) to her small, British hometown. They have a house out in the country, and Hoffman immediately runs afoul of the more rough men in town – including his wife’s ex-boyfriend. The most controversial scene in the film, is also one of the best – most complex. In it, George’s ex breaks into the house with the intention of raping her – she puts up resistance, but as the scene progresses, it really does seem like she’s enjoying it. It is mark of how great George’s performance is that she is able to convey such complex emotions during a rape sequence – which is the films hardest scene to watch, even harder than the orgy of blood that ends the film. I don’t necessarily agree with much of what the film is saying about violence, but the film works because it forces the audience to confront that violence head on – in a way to participate in the violence in a way that left me shaken and disturbed. Straw Dogs is certainly not an easy move to watch – but to me it is a vital, courageous and endlessly thought provoking one.

3. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is a violent masterpiece – a film that presents us with a teenager named Alex (Malcolm McDowell) who is pretty much pure evil and leaves us with no hope that he’ll ever get any better. When we first meet him, he is beating and raping his way through a futuristic London along with his droogs. But he’s soon captured and sent to prison – where he undergoes a new brainwashing technique meant to “cure” him. But he can’t really be cured and still be human – or as human as Alex is at any rate. This is exciting, visual, visceral filmmaking by Kubrick – one of his most daring accomplishments. In eliminating the original ending of the Anthony Burgress novel (much to the author’s dismay), Kubrick has ultimately made a bleak, perhaps even nihilistic film. While to some, that nihilism is deplorable, to me it fits the material. This is a masterpiece by one of the greatest filmmakers in history.

2. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich)
Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show is a sad movie, about a small Texas town that is pretty much dead, and its inhabitants who will be if they do not get out. The adults in the movie all seem beaten down by life – the look back fondly at their previous lives (like in the unforgettable scene where Ben Johnson recalls how he was once in love), which was probably not that great, but sure beats the hell out of life now. But the film doesn’t much concentrate on the adults, but rather on the teenagers. Sam Bottoms and Jeff Bridges are both excellent as high school kids curious, and somewhat desperate, about sex. Bottoms fumbles his way into an affair with the football coach’s wife (Cloris Leachman), while Bridges struggles with the town beauty (Cybil Sheppard). All the characters in the film are sharply drawn – Bottoms as kid who wants more, but can’t get it, Bridges trying to live up to the pressure of his girlfriend, Sheppard, coldly using sex to get what she wants, Ellen Burstyn as her callous mother, hating life beside her TV zombielike husband, Leachman, who provides just a little warmth, Johnson as the last standard bearer left in town. The film is all about tone and mood – about a town that is dying right alongside its movie theater. It is a sad, tragic film, brilliantly filmed in black and white. It breaks your heart to watch it, and remains one of the most timeless films of the 1970s.

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is perhaps Robert Altman’s most influential and best film. It is about a gambler named McCabe (Warren Beatty) who rides into the small town of Presbyterian Church, wins some quick money and invests it in starting his own brothel. Then Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) arrives and quickly talks him into letting her be his partner – they will do better together than apart. And they do. Whatever happened to these characters in the years before they entered this town doesn’t matter – they are here now, and that’s all that does. McCabe is a dreamer who believes he “has poetry” in him, and Mrs. Miller is a strict business women – she charges even McCabe for her services. The town is a sad little place, where is constantly cold, the town remains half built, and once the sun goes down everyone huddles together into dark, little rooms drinking by lantern light. The film is a Western, but not a classically structure one – but one that is much sadder in its tone. The rules of the Western don’t apply in this film – Beatty hardly makes a Western hero, and Christie is hardly the hooker with a heart of gold. The ending of the film is inevitable – we know it before the characters do, but they suspect it as well. Life doesn’t end well in Presbyterian Church for men like McCabe. This truly is a masterpiece.

Just Missed The Top 10: Bananas (Woody Allen), The Garden of the Fitzi-Continis (Vittorio DeSica), MacBeth (Roman Polanski), Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood), Shaft (Gordon Parks), Sunday, Bloody, Sunday (John Scheslinger), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles), THX 1138 (George Lucas),Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart).

Notable Films Missed: The Ceremony (Nagisa Oshima), Claire's Knee (Erich Rohmer), Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti), The Devils (Ken Russell), Fiddler on the Roof (Norman Jewison), Get Carter (Mike Hodges), Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo), Nicholas and Alexandra (Franklin Scaffner), La Région centrale (Michael Snow),Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman),Walkabout (Nicholas Roeg), W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture & Director: The French Connection (William Friedkin)
William Friedkin’s The French Connection is perhaps best remembered now for the car chase, and little else. Watching the film today, you could be forgiven for thinking it is very much like dozens if not hundreds of other cop movies and TV shows of the past four decades. Yet, without The French Connection, those other movies would be different. Everything about this movie remains a little tougher, a little rougher, and better than what has come in its wake – and Hackman’s performance elevates the entire film. It would not have been my choice, but it’s a fine one.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: Gene Hackman, The French Connection
Gene Hackman was due an Oscar by 1971. He had already been nominated for two very different performances in Bonnie and Clyde and I Never Sang for My Father. The French Connection was yet another completely different performance – although it is one that is probably more associated with Hackman today than the others. He nails the tough cop, utterly obsessed with cracking the case and bringing the bad guys to justice. He does a remarkable job of keeping his character even in the midst of action sequences, and there are some excellent moments when he seems to have lost his mind (“Did you ever pick your toes in Poughkeepsie?”). This isn’t Hackman’s best performance, but it’s damn close.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Jane Fonda, Klute
Most movie hookers have a heart of gold – they really are nice girls just waiting for the right man to come along and save them from themselves. Jane Fonda’s Bree in Klute then breaks the mold – she doesn’t want or need anyone to save her. She is a hooker, and proud of what she does. She views it more as acting, and likes that she can be different things to different people. Fonda makes the movie work, even with its creaky thriller plot, because we cannot take our eyes off of her – and its not just because in 1971 she was at the height of her beauty. This is one of the best performances ever to win the Best Actress Oscar.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: Ben Johnson, The Last Picture Show
Ben Johnson spent much of his career as stock player in John Ford Westerns, which pretty much made him the perfect actor to play Sam the Lion in Peter Bogdanovich’s sad masterpiece. He embodied the old Texas. He won his Oscar mainly, I think, for his long, sad monologue about lost love that he tells to the boys out by the reservoir. And it is a masterful performance. I have always been torn between who should have won – Johnson or his co-star Jeff Bridges who embodies the young stud just as perfectly, but I will not complain.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Cloris Leachman, The Last Picture Show
Like her co-star Johnson, Leachman won her Oscar pretty much for one scene, although her whole performance is wonderful. After her young lover, Sam Bottoms, comes back to her after his brief fling with Cybil Shepard, she flings a coffee pot across the room in a scene that is unforgettable – and she did it in one take, no rehearsals. Leachman is the kindest character, and she really does a great job with the role. Much like in Supporting Actor, I am torn between her, and the much harsher performance by the great Ellen Burstyn who cynically informs her daughter to sleep with Jeff Bridges so she will stop thinking sex is going to be so fantastic.

Year in Review: 1949

1949 is a ridiculously good year for movies. One of the reasons why I waited until near the end to do this year is because I am constantly changing my mind about what order films 2 through 8 should be in. But the best of the year is clearly the best – one of the best films ever made.

10. The Small Back Room (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger may just be the best filmmaking team in history, and from one film to the next, you are never sure of what they are going to do. How did they follow up the massive success of the colorful, ballet epic The Red Shoes? By making this small, black and white film about a British scientist during WWII, who is frustrated by his superiors, and has become an alcoholic to dull the pain in his artificial foot. I admired the scenes featuring David Farrer as the scientist early in the film, and although I didn’t find the films climax – where he has to defuse a bomb – as interesting, it has to be noted that it is made with breathtaking skill by the filmmakers. The Small Back Room may not be Powell and Pressburger’s greatest achievement – but it is an excellent film nonetheless.

9. Late Spring (Yashijiro Ozu)
Yashijiro Ozu’s films all have a similar story about the tension between the generations, and how the most important things are what is not said, not what is said. Late Spring is one of his best films – and one of his best known. It tells the story of Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the only daughter of a widowed professor (Chishu Ryu). They live happily together, with Noriko taking care of her father. But she is of marrying age, and her Aunt convinces her father it is time for her to get married. Even though both she and her father are happy with the current arrangement, they go along with the Aunt’s plans – which ends up with both of them married to people they don’t love and miserable. All of this could be avoided if they simply told each other the truth – and that is the one thing they just cannot do. Late Spring is a sad, almost tragic, movie and one of Ozu’s greatest achievements.

8. House of Strangers (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
King Lear as a film noir. Edward G. Robinson gives one of his best performances as an Italian American banker, who is also involved with many criminal activities. Three of his four sons hate their father – and refuse to help when he is arrested and may end up in jail. The fourth son, a lawyer, agrees to help – and ends up going to jail for his trouble. The film is a complex look at this family in crisis – with Robinson towering over all of them in a magnificent performance. I have often felt that Mankiewicz is a director who is comfortable with complex screenplays – but that he is not the most innovative visual filmmaker. But here, he has crafted perhaps his best looking film – dark and mysterious, with great art direction and cinematography. A wonderful noir, from a filmmaker you wouldn’t expect capable of pulling it off.

7. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford)
The second, and far and away the best, of John Ford’s Calvary Trilogy, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is one of the most breathtaking color Westerns ever made. John Wayne is excellent as an aging officer of a remote outpost, who is approaching retirement and is given two final jobs – to deliver the wife and daughter of his commanding officer to an Eastbound stagecoach, and to quell the Indian uprising on a reservation not far away – and avoid another bloody Indian war like the one that has just killed General Custer. He fails at both, and retires, but cannot leave until he puts things right. Wayne is the center of the movie – giving one of his most subtle performances as a man who cannot let go. He is surrounded by Ford’s stock company including Ben Johnson, Victor McLagen. Harry Carey Jr., John Agar and Joanne Dru, and they are all fine. But it is Wayne who stands above them all. The cinematography is brilliant, and Ford shows once again why he is the best director to ever make a Western.

6. The Heiress (William Wyler)
William Wyler’s The Heiress takes Henry James’ Washington Square, and makes it into a terrific movie about lust, love, jealously and revenge – and gives Olivia De Havilland perhaps the best role of her career. She stars as a rather plain (yeah right, but it works here) woman who is still single – and getting old. Her father (Ralph Richardson) is cruel in the way he observes her and talks about her – both behind her back and sometimes straight to her face. But he has a lot of money, and she is his only child – meaning one day she’ll be rich. And that’s when Montgomery Clift enters the picture. He comes from a good family, but is completely broke. They two fall in love – but Richardson wants the relationship to end, and says he’ll cut her out of the will if she doesn’t give him up. The Heiress features great work by De Havilland, who is utterly heartbreaking in the film’s final scenes, Richardson who is cold and cruel, and Clift who it takes quite some time to get a read on. The films last scene is brilliant, but everything up until then works as well. A great film by Wyler.

5. All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen)
Robert Rossen’s All the King’s Men represents one of the only times I can think of when a Pulitizer Prize winning novel was brought to screen, and the result was a great movie in its own right. Robert Warren Penn’s novel was a thinly veiled story based on the life of Governor Huey Long, here embodied by Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, as a largely than life “man of the people”. His goals are enviable, but the means in which he goes about achieving them are deplorable. Crawford, in undoubtedly his best screen role, nails the contradictions in the character, making his hateful and yet somewhat sympathetic. Mercedes McCambridge is also excellent as his mistress. The film is one of the seminal films on American politics ever made – in all its nasty, dirty glory.

4. Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa)
An early Kurosawa masterpiece. This film is about a young cop (Toshiro Mifune) who is shamed when his gun is pick pocketed from him on the bus. He tries in vain to find the gun, but when it is used in a murder, things become more heated. He is taken under the wing of an older cop (Takashi Shimura). The film functions not just as a police movie, but also as social commentary – it’s style owes something to the neorealists as well, and the characterizations, especially by Mifune, is much better, more complex than in most thrillers. Stray Dog represented a huge leap forward in Kurosawa’s career – it is infinitely better structured, better written and more complex than Drunken Angel, the film he made in the year prior to this one. It shows, as much as Rashomon a year later, that Kurosawa was coming of age – and finding his true voice as a filmmaker.

3. White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
James Cagney may have not liked being typecast as a gangster – but he played them better than just about any other actor in history. His work here as Cody Jarrett, ruthless criminal leader, is among the best performances of his career – and that the genre ever had. He is a gangster with a serious Mom complex – feeling that only his mother (Margaret Wycherly) truly understands him. Their scenes together are perhaps the best in the movie – and certainly have a creepy, sexual undertone to them. The film is interesting stylistically – it functions as a throwback to the gangster films of the 1930s, contains semi-documentary elements popular at the time, has elements of film noir (the femme fatale played by Virginia Mayo, the dark cinematography, the psyche of the killer) and was a forerunner to the heist films of the 1950s. How director Raoul Walsh was able to cram all of that in, and still make a wonderfully entertaining film, with one of the most memorable closing scenes of all time, is quite simply remarkable.

2. Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis)
Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy is a film noir just oozing sexuality. Apparently Lewis told star John Dall that “your cock has never been this hard” and female star Peggy Cummins “you’re a female dog in heat, and you want him. But don’t let him have it too soon”. And I can’t think of a better way to describe their performances. Gun Crazy is undeniably an influential film – they are certainly echoes of Bonnie and Clyde in the film, and not just because this is a “lovers on the run” film, but also because of the link that the film draws between sex and violence. Dall is a man obsessed with guns – even turned on by them – and meets his match in Cummins, a sharpshooter. Soon they are in love, or perhaps just lust, and are running from the cops. The film isn’t as explicit as it Lewis would have liked it to be – but there is no mistaking the sexuality on display in every scene in this film.

1. The Third Man (Carol Reed)
The Third Man is a pretty much perfect film. The film plunges us into postwar Vienna, a city destroyed and divided up among the victors. Into this murk comes Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) who has come because his friend Henry Lime has invited him. But when he gets there, he finds Lime is dead. He is informed that Lime was a criminal, an evil man, and he should leave. But he won’t – he wants to get to the bottom of this, and turns to Lime’s girl (Ailda Valli) for answers. The film is Reed’s greatest directorial achievement – he gives the film a skewed look, hardly ever shooting the action head on, but rather from strange angles. He concentrates on the faces of the actors – the innocent, naïve Cotton contrasted with the wizened, corrupt faces of almost everyone else. We all know that Lime is really alive – and when he finally enters, and we discover its Orson Welles, it is perhaps the most famous entrance in cinema history. Welles turns Lime into one of the great villains of all time, which is hard to do with such limited screen time. He gives a famous speech – one apparently he wrote – about the cuckoo clock, which is unforgettable. The chase scene, threw the sewers of Vienna, is one of the most famous ever shot – and for good reason. And the final scene in devastating. All of this is set to the wonderful zither score by Anton Karas. The Third Man is a perfect film in every respect.

Just Missed The Top 10: Adam’s Rib (George Cukor), A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), The Setup (Robert Wise), Thieves Highway (Jules Dassin).

Notable Films Missed: Battleground (William Wellman), Les Enfants Terribles (Jean Pierre Melville), The Fountainhead (King Vidor), Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer), On the Town (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen), Orpheus (Jean Cocteau), The Reckless Moment (Max Ophuls), Samson and Deliah (Cecil B. DeMille), Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini), 12 O’clock High (Henry King).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture & Director: All the King’s Men
The Academy Awards have always been political – but for some reason, they have often shied away from movies that directly address politics – this is actually the only best picture winner in history about American politics. It is a big, sprawling movie, based on an even bigger novel, that the filmmakers wisely thinned out to bring to the big screen. It is a nasty little movie, but also an extraordinarily entertaining one. It may not be the best winner in history, but it’s damn good.

Oscar Winner – Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives
Joseph L. Mankiewicz is one of only two directors ever to win back to back Oscars – starting with this film, and continuing the following year for All About Eve. Eve is a masterpiece, pure and simple, but A Letter to Three Wives is merely a very good one. It is an interesting film where an identical letter arrives at the homes of three women, supposedly from their friend, who tells them that she is running away with one of their husbands – and then flashing back to show us how they all got there. It is a fine film, with good performances and an interesting structure – but to me, it is hardly worthy of a directing Oscar.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: Broderick Crawford, All the King’s Men
Broderick Crawford’s great, larger than life performance is everything that you could want it to be – and the exact opposite of the poor performance Sean Penn delivered in the ill advised remake more than 50 years later. He really does tower over the other characters in the movie, and you cannot help but be won over by him to at least a certain extent – he does not make Stark into a one dimensional villain, but something much more complex and even sympathetic. It is a great performance, by an actor who rarely got to grab the lead role like this.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress
Since they were never going to consider someone as sexually provocative as Cummins for this award, De Havilland’s win for The Heiress is well deserved. She is in practically every scene in the film, and carries it off effortlessly. It is heartbreaking to watch her put up with the abuse of her father, and then when she smiles in Clift’s presence it lifts you up – before finally, she has a cruel streak of her own in the film’s final scene. This movie asks a lot of De Havilland, who delivers this complex performance pretty much perfectly.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: Dean Jagger, 12 O’clock High
Time for another embarrassing confession – I have never seen 12 O’clock High, despite my love for Gregory Peck. It is said to be an excellent movie WWII fighter pilots, and Jagger acts as our entrance into the world. I have always meant to see the film, yet somehow never have. Regardless, we all know Orson Welles should have won for The Third Man, but since it wasn’t even eligible until 1950, I guess we can’t fault them on that one (at least not this year, since they didn’t even nominate him the year after).

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Mercedes McCambridge, All the King’s Men
Mercedes McCambridge got her start in radio, and did many excellent vocal performances over the years – undoubtedly most memorably as the demonic voice of little Regan in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. But she was also an excellent actress, and here in her breakthrough role, she does a marvelous job at playing Willie Stark’s sympathetic mistress. She knows who he is, and goes along for the ride anyway. Even though she died years ago, I am still hoping to see one final great performance from her – if they ever do get together and finish editing Orson Welles’ unreleased The Other Side of the Wind.