Post by caucasoididiot on Sept 23, 2011 22:04:03 GMT -5
Putting something on the "short list" is a standard device for depicting it as a personal favourite, but how often do we really make such? How long is it, and just where does the cut fall? Ya' got me, but I was moved to try it with movies.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Kubrick must be on any such list made by me, but which of his many classics? Perhaps 2001 is a conventional answer, but probably the only one for a boy who grew up with Apollo coverage as his favourite show. It shows how neither technical plausibility nor grand themes are really so hard if you give a rat's ass about anything other than commercial safety.
I remember Larry King once saying that what he took from the film was that HAL symbolized technology, which is inherently evil. I also remember thinking what a curious statement that was from a man who worked in the mass electronic media, but whatever. I remember taking away from HAL the answer to the question of how you know you've created consciousness . . . by building something that pleads with you not to kill it. Is there something a bit 1984 in that? "How does one man assert his power over another . . . . By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation."
Or perhaps not. One reason this movie makes my list is by adhering to the dictum: "Pose enigmas, not solutions."
Vital
Similarly so with Tsukamoto Shinya's masterpiece, the story of an amnesiac medical student who realizes that the body he is dissecting in class is that of his dead lover, and how through that he reconnects with her, both sets of parents and ultimately himself. I love how this movie doesn't content itself with a simple interpretation. Is it a ghost story? Science fiction? Repressed memory? No two characters in the film would agree.
This movie also makes my short list through Tsukamoto's ability to invert emotions. His previous specialty through the likes of the Tetsuo films were sort of screen nightmares, furthermore populated by archetypes (the cast of Tetsuo is billed as "The Man," "The Woman," "The Guy," etc.). But in this film he portrays a far more personal story of Hiroshi Takagi dissecting his lover, an inherently nightmarish proposal, and not only convincing us that he sees it as a beautiful experience but convincing us to share his view.
Bubba Ho-tep
The movie I just watched and the inspiration for this post. The story of Elvis Presley, who had successfully traded places with an Elvis impersonator to escape the trap of fame, as an old man in a grotty East Texas convalescent hospital being preyed upon by a soul-sucking mummy, teaming up with Jack Kennedy (played by Ossie Davis) to defeat same.
I think this one makes my short list because it takes a concept which cries out for a campy treatment and instead treats it with a great deal of sensitivity. Elvis' first-person narration asks very real questions about just what life is and what a person should ask from it, and perhaps more importantly what it asks from him. Despite a very few false notes, the film is also quite funny. I would not call it dark humor . . . perhaps deep humor? "Ask not what your rest home can do for you, Jack, . . . "
There are also stellar performances from Davis, Bruce Campbell as Elvis and the woman who plays his nurse. Speaking as someone who pulled many a shift in such a place, she hits the perfect balance between concern and condescension. "Yes, Mr. Haff, I mean ELvis." A lot of their scenes together are simply magnificent.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
OK, strictly speaking this is a BBC miniseries rather than a movie (though I gather it's been redone just this year, though I doubt I care), but the two media do bleed into each other. This adaptation of the John le Carré novel is the story of forcibly retired MI5 deputy chief George Smiley (Alec Guiness) being recalled to investigate which of his very old friends is actually a Soviet mole (the story is largely based on the true story of the Cambridge Ring, recruited by Soviet intelligence while they were still university students).
Again, it's probably the fine performances of well-drawn characters that cause this one to make my list (Patrick Stewart, by the way, has a single scene with no dialogue, and aside from his similar reappearance in the sequel and his portrayal of Lenin in Fall of Eagles, it is far my favorite of his performances). I'm also drawn by the "anti-Bond" character of Smiley, far more aged schoolboy than action hero. As an aside, English public schools figure prominently, particularly a crucial subplot of an agent retired due to wounds working as a teacher and grooming a pudgy kid in glasses for the Queen's Service.
It is also telling that the mole is unmasked well before the end, and considerable time given to Smiley's interrogation of him. "Why did I do it? You can ask that?!"
The opening credits with the matrushka dolls are also one of my favourite credit sequences ever.
Hmmm . . . no Kurosawa? No Seventh Seal? Blade Runner? Any version of The Trial? No Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, no Orson Welles or Sono Sion? Four seems to be my limit today. Catch me on some other. Anyway, that's my rambling. Read or not, as you please. Post, if you're moved. Don't, if you're not.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Kubrick must be on any such list made by me, but which of his many classics? Perhaps 2001 is a conventional answer, but probably the only one for a boy who grew up with Apollo coverage as his favourite show. It shows how neither technical plausibility nor grand themes are really so hard if you give a rat's ass about anything other than commercial safety.
I remember Larry King once saying that what he took from the film was that HAL symbolized technology, which is inherently evil. I also remember thinking what a curious statement that was from a man who worked in the mass electronic media, but whatever. I remember taking away from HAL the answer to the question of how you know you've created consciousness . . . by building something that pleads with you not to kill it. Is there something a bit 1984 in that? "How does one man assert his power over another . . . . By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation."
Or perhaps not. One reason this movie makes my list is by adhering to the dictum: "Pose enigmas, not solutions."
Vital
Similarly so with Tsukamoto Shinya's masterpiece, the story of an amnesiac medical student who realizes that the body he is dissecting in class is that of his dead lover, and how through that he reconnects with her, both sets of parents and ultimately himself. I love how this movie doesn't content itself with a simple interpretation. Is it a ghost story? Science fiction? Repressed memory? No two characters in the film would agree.
This movie also makes my short list through Tsukamoto's ability to invert emotions. His previous specialty through the likes of the Tetsuo films were sort of screen nightmares, furthermore populated by archetypes (the cast of Tetsuo is billed as "The Man," "The Woman," "The Guy," etc.). But in this film he portrays a far more personal story of Hiroshi Takagi dissecting his lover, an inherently nightmarish proposal, and not only convincing us that he sees it as a beautiful experience but convincing us to share his view.
Bubba Ho-tep
The movie I just watched and the inspiration for this post. The story of Elvis Presley, who had successfully traded places with an Elvis impersonator to escape the trap of fame, as an old man in a grotty East Texas convalescent hospital being preyed upon by a soul-sucking mummy, teaming up with Jack Kennedy (played by Ossie Davis) to defeat same.
I think this one makes my short list because it takes a concept which cries out for a campy treatment and instead treats it with a great deal of sensitivity. Elvis' first-person narration asks very real questions about just what life is and what a person should ask from it, and perhaps more importantly what it asks from him. Despite a very few false notes, the film is also quite funny. I would not call it dark humor . . . perhaps deep humor? "Ask not what your rest home can do for you, Jack, . . . "
There are also stellar performances from Davis, Bruce Campbell as Elvis and the woman who plays his nurse. Speaking as someone who pulled many a shift in such a place, she hits the perfect balance between concern and condescension. "Yes, Mr. Haff, I mean ELvis." A lot of their scenes together are simply magnificent.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
OK, strictly speaking this is a BBC miniseries rather than a movie (though I gather it's been redone just this year, though I doubt I care), but the two media do bleed into each other. This adaptation of the John le Carré novel is the story of forcibly retired MI5 deputy chief George Smiley (Alec Guiness) being recalled to investigate which of his very old friends is actually a Soviet mole (the story is largely based on the true story of the Cambridge Ring, recruited by Soviet intelligence while they were still university students).
Again, it's probably the fine performances of well-drawn characters that cause this one to make my list (Patrick Stewart, by the way, has a single scene with no dialogue, and aside from his similar reappearance in the sequel and his portrayal of Lenin in Fall of Eagles, it is far my favorite of his performances). I'm also drawn by the "anti-Bond" character of Smiley, far more aged schoolboy than action hero. As an aside, English public schools figure prominently, particularly a crucial subplot of an agent retired due to wounds working as a teacher and grooming a pudgy kid in glasses for the Queen's Service.
It is also telling that the mole is unmasked well before the end, and considerable time given to Smiley's interrogation of him. "Why did I do it? You can ask that?!"
The opening credits with the matrushka dolls are also one of my favourite credit sequences ever.
Hmmm . . . no Kurosawa? No Seventh Seal? Blade Runner? Any version of The Trial? No Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, no Orson Welles or Sono Sion? Four seems to be my limit today. Catch me on some other. Anyway, that's my rambling. Read or not, as you please. Post, if you're moved. Don't, if you're not.
