skimpole

The scene where Lando walks Hans and other others around Cloud city, (beautifully designed by the way) explaining the risk of Imperial control and opening the door to reveal Vader's presence The scene where Han and the others realize that they are not in an asteroid, but in the giant monster who lives inside it. The scene just after Obi-wan Kenobi is killed and Luke sees it from a distance, and for once the Williams score has a genuine emotional weight. Tarkin: Enough of this. Vader, release him! Vader: As you wish. [drops his hand and Motti's head hits the table as he regains his breath] Leia: Governor Tarkin. I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought onboard. Tarkin: Charming to the last. (Cushing is really the most underestimated player here.)

La Belle Noiseuse won a prize at Cannes and Piccoli was my choice for the best actor of 1991. Here's the trailer (probably NSFW): And here's Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of it: Considering how rarely the achievements of art match up with the achievements of commerce, it’s a pleasure to note that Jacques Rivette’s greatest film since 1976 (the end of his most fertile and exciting period, which began in 1968) — winner of the grand prix at last year’s Cannes film festival — also turns out to be the first commercial hit of his career. A few wags have been quick to point out that this is because the beautiful lead actress, Emmanuelle Béart (best known in this country for her part as Manon in Claude Berri’s Manon of the Spring), is nude, posing as a painter’s model, for about half of the film. Maybe they’re partially right, but it also seems to me that, without compromising or diluting his artistry, Rivette has finally hit on a subject — the collective and individual struggles that produce art and the prices that have to be paid for that art — that speaks to a wide audience. The fact that La belle noiseuse is four hours long makes this even more of an achievement — and, incidentally, confirms that in spite of some disapproving guff over the years about Rivette’s long running times being overly self-indulgent, his best films, with very few exceptions, are his longest. Duration and process are central to what his movies are about, and the longer they run the more disciplined and purposeful they usually turn out to be. As it happens, Rivette has also edited a two-hour version of La belle noiseuse for French TV, using completely different takes, and I’m not surprised to hear that there’s been no stateside interest in distributing it. In the two other cases where authorized shorter versions of Rivette films exist — Out 1 (cut from 12 hours to 4 hours) and Love on the Ground (cut from three hours to two) — the superiority of the longer version is indisputable. For spectators unfamiliar with Rivette, La belle noiseuse provides an ideal introduction, requiring no pointers or background material. But it’s also an unusually personal and autobiographical work — even a testament of sorts — from a man whose life is so hermetic that it scarcely seems to exist at all apart from his activities as a filmgoer and filmmaker. In Claire Denis’ excellent two-hour documentary about Rivette made for French TV a couple of years ago, Bulle Ogier, the actress he has worked with most often (in 7 features out of 14) is asked at one point if Rivette regards her as a friend. She replies, quite plausibly, that Rivette has no friends, at least in any ordinary sense. Having met Rivette on numerous occasions — at screenings, festivals, and during the shooting of two of his features — I can only assume she’s right; while one can speak to him for hours about film and other arts, his timidity and his monastic air are so absolute that he calls to mind the ravaged, semimad poet Antonin Artaud. Now in his mid-60s, Rivette seems to have mellowed since the wilder forays of his earlier work as a founding member of the French New Wave, much of which teetered on the edge of madness. The four-hour L’amour fou (1968) alternates between scenes of a theater company rehearsing Racine’s Andromache and glimpses at the tragic relationship between the play’s director and his alienated wife (Ogier), who drops out of the production in the first sequence and begins a gradual descent into madness as she festers in isolation. Like La belle noiseuse, it’s a film about the struggles and choices that have to be made between art and life. Theater and paranoia, insiders and outsiders are also at the roots of Out 1. But in the subsequent Duelle (1975) and Norôit (1976), two parts of an uncompleted fantasy quartet, the madness might be said to be incorporated into the plots and mise en scène — that is to say, into Rivette’s visions of rival goddesses (in Duelle) and warring female pirates (in Norôit), and into imaginary universes that are more psychoanalytical projections than worlds with social or historical referents. After suffering a nervous collapse a few days into the shooting of the third feature in the quartet, Rivette resumed his career a little further down on the scale of risk and intensity, at a degree he has maintained ever since. A sort of remake of L’amour fou, but with an alternate ending and with painting employed as a substitute for theater, La belle noiseuse might be said to recapitulate as well as reflect upon the personal history described above. In freely adapting a novella by Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, that I haven’t been able to locate (apparently an English translation is currently available only in England), Rivette once again ponders the choice between life and art. But where in L’amour fou it’s basically art that wins out, this film comes down squarely — if a little sadly — on the side of life. (This apparent philosophical shift is also reflected in the only significant change Rivette made in Out 1 when he recently and belatedly edited the 12-hour version into a serial for French TV: omitting a terrifying and climactic ten-minute take of Jean-Pierre Léaud, alone in his room, going to pieces.) La belle noiseuse begins, as it ends, like a bantering 18th-century French comedy, something along the lines of Marivaux. At a village inn in the south of France, near Montpellier, a young painter (David Bursztein) sits sketching a couple of English tourists at a nearby table. A young woman (Béart) sneaks out of an upstairs room to snap his picture, and then sits down at his table and demands 10,000 francs for the photograph. It soon emerges that they’re lovers, Nicolas and Marianne, playfully pretending to be strangers. They’re awaiting the arrival of Porbus (Gilles Arbona), an art dealer who is about to introduce them to Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli), a once-famous and long-inactive painter whom Nicolas admires and who lives nearby with his wife and former model Liz (Jane Birkin) in a rambling 18th-century chateau. After the visiting trio are welcomed by Liz, Frenhofer emerges, unshaven and unprepared for guests (“I completely forgot”), and shows everyone around his studio — a windowless former barn that reminds Marianne of a church (a significant comparison that she expands upon later). As the visitors poke around some of his old canvases, Liz alludes to his unfinished painting La belle noiseuse – his last attempt at a masterpiece, which she modeled for, abandoned a decade ago. (The title, archaic slang for “the beautiful nutty woman,” refers to Catherine Lescault, a 17th-century courtesan; in contemporary Canadian French, “noiseuse” means a woman who drives men to distraction and causes pain.) Agitated by Liz’s remarks, Frenhofer insists that the painting doesn’t exist. But later that evening, after Porbus suggests that Frenhofer use Marianne as a model and Nicolas gives his assent — Marianne is off with Liz at the time, discussing her career as a writer — he decides to make another stab at the work and asks Marianne to come back the next morning. (Porbus, who has left by this time, has already agreed to buy the painting if Frenhofer finishes it.) Furious with Nicolas for committing her to this project without her consent (“You sold my ****”), Marianne nevertheless keeps the appointment. After an enormous amount of puttering around in his studio –rearranging diverse objects, adjusting his worktable — Frenhofer asks her to sit down and opens his sketchbook. Throughout this leisurely opening, which takes up the film’s first hour, the sense of time and place is palpable; one can almost taste the sunlight and foliage outside and feel the dampness and darkness of the studio. Piccoli’s convincing portrait of an artist in hiding from himself, gradually nudged by himself and others into action, is little short of amazing; his comic prevarications in the studio and evasive conversational manner, showing remarkable powers of observation and synthesis, suggest the weight and complexity of an entire life behind the isolated gestures. For most of the film’s second hour, Frenhofer executes a series of tentative sketches using both pen and brushes. Here’s where Rivette’s focus on duration and process comes in, making all the essential facts of the artist’s work — the scratch of pen against paper, the hesitations and decisions of hand and brush, the progress and revision of a design taking shape — as palpable as the sense of time and place was during the first hour. (Here and throughout the remainder of the film, the hand we see in close-up belongs to a real artist, Bernard Dufour, but the matching is done so well that the effect never looks contrived. One quite sophisticated critic, who missed the reference to Dufour in the credits, was fooled completely and assumed all of the drawing and painting was done by Piccoli.) While Rivette employs real time whenever it’s appropriate to his design, it would be quite wrong to assume that he simply lets the camera run on in the manner of Warhol; jump cuts are as essential to his sense of rhythm as long takes, and he uses both with equal judiciousness. But more than just the artist’s work is being observed and charted. Almost an equal amount of attention is paid to the work of Marianne — tensely holding a pose, changing positions at Frenhofer’s request, improvising certain readjustments (at one point she uses a paintbrush to put back her hair), negotiating her physical discomforts in a variety of ways, and dealing emotionally with the fact that she’s being looked at constantly. After Frenhofer directs her to a dressing gown and she begins posing in the nude, the tensions of their collaboration — and the film constantly makes it clear that it is a collaboration — undergo a quantum leap. Over the course of the film, their sessions become increasingly charged with pain and passion, and it’s clear that Rivette is working from the complex interactions involved in his own art — between screenwriters, cinematographers, other crew members, and, above all, actors. (Much later in the film, a beautiful sequence is created out of Frenhofer’s efforts to find “the right angle” for viewing Marianne as she assumes “the right pose.”) Meanwhile, Nicolas pays a visit to Liz, engaged in her own work in a separate part of the chateau, stuffing birds. She tries to assuage his worries about Marianne by assuring him that her husband is a gentleman, and he remarks that while Marianne was the one who initially needed him when they met three years ago, now he realizes that it’s he who needs her. As painter and model continue their work, Rivette cunningly keeps shifting the film’s emphasis so that sometimes we’re immersed in the sketch in progress and other times the work itself becomes a mere backdrop to the emotional state of Marianne. At the end of the first day, we see both the older and younger couples together: Frenhofer and Liz are quite affectionate, but Marianne and Nicolas are still at loggerheads. By the time Frenhofer starts working with paint on canvas the next day, his conversations with Marianne have become much more intimate and charged — though not so intense that an affair between them seems imminent — and the stakes of this work in progress have become much higher for both of them. For Marianne, an internal struggle has arisen between remaining a slave to Frenhofer’s vision by assuming the contorted positions he requests and striking out on her own. “Let me find my own place, my own way of moving,” she insists somewhat later, during the third hour, but her spirit of rebellion is there virtually from the beginning. Frenhofer’s struggle is a matter of differentiating will from necessity: “When I was a kid, I used to pull my toys to pieces,” he comments after placing her into a particularly difficult pose. But after he declares a little later, “I want the invisible,” he quickly corrects himself: “No, that’s not it. It’s not I who wants it, it’s the work.” Finally, he settles on a kind of mystic compromise: “It’s the line, the stroke. Nobody knows what a stroke is. And I’m after it.” “Before the next pose, a five-minute intermission,” reads a printed title halfway through the film. It would be imprudent to reveal much more of the plot, but a few generalities are worth bringing up: (1) Critics who have faulted the film because they don’t find Frenhofer’s painting sufficiently accomplished or trendy seem to be confusing an overall verisimilitude about artistic process with realism. The film has a great deal to say about the real world — particularly about the roles played by art and life in relationship to one another — but very little to say about “real” painting. We never see all of Frenhofer’s masterpiece in its finished state, but we catch a brief glimpse of its bright red lower portion, enough to know that it “has blood,” as Liz remarked of one of its earlier and unfinished incarnations in which she was the model. We also see the masterpiece in an unfinished state, when it’s already clear that Frenhofer has effected some emotional bloodletting in both his wife and himself by painting Marianne over portions of another unfinished canvas of Liz in order to arrive at a “bloody” synthesis. The idea that real art hurts — and hurts not only its makers but its spectators — is central to the film. Much of the work favored by the art market — which includes critics and spectators as well as dealers and gallery owners — entails little if any pain for the artist or for anyone else, and the film points out that art that is painful usually isn’t popular. (Indeed, most of Rivette’s own career bears this out; Norôit, perhaps his most daring film, has never received a commercial run anywhere in the world.) (2) Over the course of the film, the identity of every major character becomes redefined by the masterpiece in progress. The only one left out of this process is Nicolas’ sister Julienne (Marianne Denicourt), a character who turns up at the eleventh hour, not, apparently, to effect any significant change in the action but to give Nicolas and Marianne someone besides each other to speak to. If the film has a flaw, it would be the distracting intrusion of Julienne — though she, like each of the other five characters, is an important part of the roundelay of exchanges that concludes the film. (3) The best scene in the film features neither nudity nor painting but a confrontational dialogue between Liz and Frenhofer in their adjoining bedrooms and on a connecting terrace in the early hours of the morning. (The terrace, perhaps not coincidentally, recalls the ramparts where life-and-death struggles are waged in Norôit.) Rivette’s musical sense of mise en scène has never been more masterful or functional in charting both the literal movements of a couple and the various stations of their “passion” (in both the carnal and Christian senses of the word). This is the scene that establishes the reasons for Frenhofer’s choice of life over art. The equivalent scene in L’amour fou showed the theater director fully entering into the madness of his wife by collaborating with her in destroying their apartment — an act conceived and executed as a 60s “art gesture,” and an emblem of the artist despairingly choosing art over life. (4) When I suggested above that Frenhofer and Marianne collaborated in the making of his painting, I didn’t mean to imply that they were the only ones involved. Porbus, who symbolizes the art market (and specifically commissions the work); Nicolas, the disciple (and the one who offers Marianne as model); and Liz, the initial inspiration and literal background are equally instrumental, not only in generating the masterpiece but also in determining its eventual fate. (Only Julienne, the sixth cog in a five-cog machine, seems extraneous to both activities.) “I am accustoming myself to the idea of regarding every sexual act as a process in which four persons are involved,” Freud once wrote in a letter. Similarly, it would be fair to say that Rivette regards the process of making art as one in which many more people are involved than simply artist and model. That idea corresponds, in any case, to his profoundly collaborative notion of his own art. And the playful comic charades that frame Rivette’s dark meditation suggest that the life he is opting for is merely a form of protection and survival — giggles to hold back the maelstrom of nightmarish possibilities that masterpieces, including this one, unleash.

I saw three movies last week. Brewster McCloud has all sorts of interesting themes. But unlike other Altman movies from this time period they do not cohere. Maybe it's because Bud Cort is insufficiently interesting. Maybe it's because the three women who follow him aren't much more than the sum of their sex appeal. Maybe it's because we don't really find out who the serial killer is. (The last John Simon thought it was Jennifer Salt, but nothing on the internet agrees with him.) Later that decade Robert Altman would shake up the themes with more success. The Young Philadelphians is basically a glorified legal soap opera. Robert Vaughan got a supporting actor nomination when more obvious choices from North by Northwest, Rio Bravo and Some Like it Hot were ignored. Clearly it was because this was a more "serious" movie than the other three "genre" movies. Vaughan plays a classic overbait part: he not only has a drinking problem, but he loses an arm in the war and is justifiably afraid of being falsely railroaded to death row. Clearly he didn't deserve it, and Paul Newman's courtroom triumph only shows that Philadelphia inquests are handled by idiots. Captain America: the First Avenger is less successful than its two sequels, particularly with the action sequences. Chris Evans is good at showing Captain America's fundamentally decent: he's brave and principled well before he's turned into a super soldier. But Hugo Weaving is underwhelming as the Red Skull: Toby Jones is more impressive as the amoral scientist Arnim Zola.

And now for the movies in the top quarter of TSPDT that are also at their highest positions. The top ten has not changed that much over the past 15 years. But what's below that? Taxi Driver #14 Persona #19 The 400 Blows #22 Psycho #23 Rear Window #41 In the Mood for Love #42 Ugetsu Monogotari #46 Stalker #51 Mulholland Dr. #54 Viridiana #63 Goodfellas #70 Pulp Fiction #72 The Shining #91 A Woman Under the Influence #94 Once upon a Time in America #100 Spirit of the Beehive #104 Alien #111 Beau Travail #118 Yi Yi #123 Rosemary’s Baby #134 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly #139 The Piano #162 There will be Blood #166 Spirited Away #172 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre #174 Kes #187 Fargo #190 The Tree of Life #218 My Neighbor Totoro #223 Tropical Malady #229 Paris, Texas #230 Cleo from 5 to 7 #248

Another thing about the TSPDT remembering the highest rank of a movie is that you can list those movies that are currently at their highest position. Not surprisingly, many of these are relatively new movies. But not all of them. Check out those currently in the second quarter of the TSPDT top thousand: The Thing [Carpenter] #254 The Matrix #285 This is Spinal Tap #286 Daisies #291 City of God #303 Stranger than Paradise #311 Quince Tree of the Sun #327 The House is Black #332 Wanda #333 The Tenant #338 Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks #342 The Innocents #344 The Silence of the Lambs #350 Uncle Boonme who can Recall his past Lives #351 Teorema #352 Yellow Earth #353 Suspira #354 Brokeback Mountain #359 Platform #364 The Elephant Man #365 Land Without Bread #366 A Separation #375 Lost in Translation #377 The Turin Horse #378 Wall-E #381 Talk to Her #382 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon #384 The White Ribbon #398 The Death of Mr. Lazarescu #420 Flowers of Shanghai #439 Elephant #443 Naked #450 Melancholia #465 Vagabond #478 A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) #480 Inland Empire #486 Orlando #500

And now for movies that were in the top 500 but who have fallen out of the top 1000 altogether: Bob la Flambeur #429 > #1083 The Tarnished Angels #498 > #1088 Que Viva Mexico #473 > #1100 A Nous la Liberte #474 > #1112 Midnight Run #489 > #1133 The Blood of a Poet #494 > #1156 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls #475 > #1181 The Magnificent Seven #425 > #1196 Leolo #489 > #1216 Princess Yang Kwei Fei #422 > #1243 Out 1: Spectre #435 > #1281 The Barefoot Contessa #467 > #1286 The Devil is a Woman #416 > #1318 Quadrophenia #469 > #1321 I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang #472 > #1332 Lacombe, Lucien #443 > #1340 The Man from Laramie #484 > #1397 There’s Always Tomorrow #340 > #1513 Baby Doll #409 > #1556 The Tingler #474 > #1840

Where is the best Ginger Rogers dance number where she's not with Fred Astaire?

And now for movies that once made the top 500, but are stuck in the bottom quarter of the top 1000: Lolita #460 > #756 Ferris Beuller’s Day Off #430 > #757 The Red Balloon #432 > #758 Thelma and Louise #399 > #759 The Firemen’s Ball #448 > #761 The Last Detail #462 > #762 The Adventures of Robin Hood #355 > #763 Every Man for Himself #497 > #769 Cool Hand Luke #460 > #771 The Navigator #218 > #773 Olympia #443 > #786 Ossessione #497 > #787 Les Maitres Fous #476 > #795 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! #435 > #812 The Right Stuff #431 > #819 Forbidden Games #334 > #823 The Producers #477 > #828 It’a Gift #343 > #832 Sawdust and Tinsel #380 > #847 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon #389 > #848 Fires were Started #430 > #853 Le Million #275 > #855 American Graffiti #401 > #865 Forbidden Planet #493 > #884 They were Expendable #299 > #891 Fellini’s Casanova #350 > #894 Mon Oncle D’Amerique #499 > #899 42nd Street #432 > #900 Ride the High Country #413 > #911 Juliet of the Spirits #491 > #912 Hotel Terminus #395 > #916 Mildred Pierce #495 > #917 The Hart of London #367 > #918 Get Carter #419 > #920 Reds #379 > #924 Ludwig #392 > #925 Odd Man Out #321 > #931 On the Town #459 > #949 The Thing from Another world #462 > #962 Pepe le Moko #442 > #963 The Reckless Moment #471 > #968 The 47 Ronin #438 > #976 Henry V (Olivier version) #364 > #978 The Man who Fell to Earth #377 > #994

Now for the movies that once peaked within the top 500, but are now somewhere in #501-750: Alphaville #391 > #502 Muriel #353 > #503 A Night at the Opera #196 > #509 Masculin Feminin #222 > #511 Steamboat Bill, Jr., #246 > #512 La Terra Trema #409 > #513 Gimme Shelter #410 > #514 Early Summer #393 > #515 The Devil Probably #396 > #516 Top Hat #307 > #518 The Big Heat #362 > #521 Limelight #259 > #523 Lola (Demy version) #329 > #525 Les Vampires #224 > #527 La Region Cenrale #388 > #528 I Viteloni #346 > #534 Marketa Lazarova #292 > #535 The Enigma of Kasper Hauser #357 > #537 Faust #387 > #538 Dr. Zhivago #316 > #539 The Servant #349 > #540 Fellini Satyricon #312 > #543 Miracle in Milan #261 > #544 Deliverance #279 > #546 Ninotchka #229 > #548 Wagon Master #448 > #549 The Rise to Power of Louis XIV #300 > #550 Alice in the Cities #384 > #551 Bigger than Life #338 > #554 Evil Dead II #386 > #555 Being There #447 > #556 Rebel Without a Cause #293 > #559 A Hard Day’s Night #314 > #560 Raising Arizona #460 > #565 The Killing #392 > #566 Trainspotting #447 > #567 Scarface, the Shame of the Nation #453 > #568 Local Hero #332 > #569 Boudu Saved From Drowning #438 > #570 Tale of Tales #402 > #571 Detour #390 > #572 That Obscure Object of Desire #322 > #574 The Manchurian Candidate #294 > #575 Providence #305 > #578 And Life Goes On #480 > #580 Aparajito #277 > #581 Down by Law #433 > #582 The Asphalt Jungle #277 > #583 Rocky #419 > #584 Scorpio Rising #366 > #585 Full Metal Jacket #377 > #588 I Walked with a Zombie #344 > #594 The Devils #418 > #595 Band of Outsiders #406 > #596 The 39 Steps #306 > #597 The Wedding March #322 > #600 The Silence #374 > #601 Love me Tonight #405> #603 The Invasion of the Body Snatchers #364 > #606 The Age of Innocence #423> #607 The Lady Vanishes #381 > #608 Salesman #432 > #609 The Red Circle #441 > #610 Rosetta #472 > #617 Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia #346 > #621 Seven Chances #425 > #622 Un Chant D’Amour #485 > #624 Loves of a Blonde #312 > #625 The Testament of Dr. Mabuse #496 > #626 Les Diabloiques #444 > #627 White Heat #257> #630 Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler #452 > #632 Our Hospitality #359 > #634 Blissfully Yours #406 > #636 The Marriage of Maria Braun #438 > #637 Ben Hur (Wyler version) #321 > #639 An Angel at my Table #490 > #640 A Streetcar Named Desire #356 > #641 Antonio das Mortes #401 > #645 Great Expectations #266 > #646 Fat City #426 > #647 The Round-up #475 > #653 The Great Escape #495 > #654 Monty Python and the Holy Grail #358 > #656 A Place in the Sun #389 > #658 JFK #396 > #659 Xala #441 > #660 Yeelen #486 > #662 Titticut Follies #439 > #663 Young Mr. Lincoln #451 > #664 The Blue Angel #255 > #665 Passion #360 > #667 Gun Crazy #443 > #668 They live by Night #461 > #669 Nouvelle Vague #436 > #670 Rebecca #312 > #673 Edward Scissorhands #468 > #678 Walkabout #389 > #681 My Life as a Dog #387 > #685 The African Queen #296 > #687 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington #330 > #688 The Golden Coach #421 > #692 Dumbo #448 > #695 Strike #236 > #696 Foolish Wives #370 > #697 L.A. Confidential #431 > #698 The Circus #371 > #700 Casque D’or #314 > #701 Spartacus #326 > #702 Edvard Munch #490 > #708 Breakfast at Tiffany’s #401 > #711 The Man who Would be King #429 > #713 By the Bluest of Seas #493 > #716 The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On #339 > #721 A Short Film About Killing #485 > #723 Claire’s Knee #385 > #724 Lancelot du Lac #318 > #725 The Wild Child #467 > #727 Van Gogh #457 > #728 The Tiger of Eschanpur #455 > #731 All Quiet on the Western Front #274 > #732 The Thief of Bagdad #306n > #735 Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne #382 > #738 Blow Out #452 > #741 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning #409 > #742

And here are the movies in the #251-500 that have passed their peak: Freaks #163 > #251 The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums #168 > #260 Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 #128 > #261 Mean Streets #114 > #263 Broken Blossoms #100 > #267 Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau version) #175 > #270 The Maltese Falcon #152 > #271 Throne of Blood #187 > #273 The Wages of Fear #176 > #276 Monsieur Verdoux #160 > #278 Pandora’s Box #189 > #287 Crimes and Misdemeanors #188 > #288 The Birth of a Nation #111 > #289 Weekend #184 > #299 Touki Bouki #201 > #300 The Music Room #171 > #305 The World of Apu #162 > #312 Bride of Frankenstein #196 > #313 It Happened One Night #194 > #322 The Philadelphia Story #142 > #329 Berlin Alexanderplatz #192 > #331 To Kill a Mockinbird #335 > #437 Orpheus #176 > #339 Marnie #244 > #357 Written on the Wind #199 > #358 High Noon #255 > #361 Lola Montes #256 > #362 Werckmeister Harmonies #260 > #367 Last Tango in Paris #203 > #371 The Young Girls of Rochefort #257 > #372 The Palm Beach Story #164 > #376 The Crime of Monsieur Lange #190 > #385 The Bridge over the River Kwai #176 > #386 October #276 > #387 Network #267 > #389 Don’t Look Back #301 > #392 The King of Comedy #294 > #393 Army of Shadows #289 > #394 Voyage to the Moon #273 > #395 Tristana #281 > #399 All that Heaven Allows #245 > #401 Yojimbo #273 > #404 The Double Life of Veronique #289 > #405 1900 #250 > #407 Shoot the Piano Player #219 > #412 The Awful Truth #236 > #414 In a Year with 13 Moons #312 > #415 The Scarlet Empress #291 > #417 Charulata #264 > #418 Man of Aran #311 > #422 Opening Night #315 > #423 Day for Night #263 > #424 The Cloud-Capped Star #332 > #425 A Star is Born #195 > #427 Repulsion #307 > #429 Halloween #285 > #430 Five Easy Pieces #286 > #432 Dead Ringers #333 > #433 Scenes from a Marriage #323 > #434 The Hustler #311 > #436 Shadows #271 > #437 The Terminator #259 > #438 Easy Rider #280 > #445 Accatone #341 > #446 The Cameraman #305 > #447 Senso #249 > #449 Out 1, Noli me Tangere #279 > #451 The Hour of the Furnaces #338 > #454 Le Plaisir #298 > #455 All the President’s Men #325 > #457 Closely Watched Trains #340 > #461 The Cranes are Flying #377 > #462 Fantasia #244 > #463 Frankenstein #313 > #464 Shane #241 > #466 Pyassa #321 > #468 Chelsea Girls #302 > #470 The Road Warrior #347 > #471 The Tree of Wooden Clogs #231 > #474 Point Blank #339 > #476 Grey Gardens #379 > #479 The Wind #287 > #481 Laura #288 > #482 The Triumph of the Will #253 > #483 Tootsie #338 > #484 The Hour of the Wolf #299 > #485 Chronicle of a Summer #356 > #487 To Have and Have Not #258 > #488 The Sound of Music #353 > #489 Alexander Nevsky #174 > #492 Shadow of a Doubt #263 > #495 Koyaanisqatsi #351 > #497 Strangers on a Train #232 > #498 The Wind Will Carry Us #395 > #499

He's certainly the one good thing about The Girl Can't Help it.

The three movies i saw this week all left something to be desired. Penelope, despite being made in 1966, feels like a film that wishes it was ten years older. It appears trivial in the context of its time. One thinks that if it was made a little later, something more could have been made of its frustrated heroine that just to admire Wood's prettiness. One also thinks that Ian Bannen, who got a supporting actor nomination for The Flight of the Phoenix the year before despite giving perhaps the seventh most impressive performance in that movie, is not the right person to play her husband. Strike up the Band is the sort of movie that emphasizes that Mickey Rooney is really considerate and mature, when you wish it would focus more on Judy Garland. Her Smell is directed by Alex Ross Perry. And it wouldn't be an Alex Ross Perry if it didn't have an unlikeable protagonist making herself and everyone around her miserable. After lasting the length of a feature, we find there's a whole redemptive third act to go through. This is actually handled pretty well, but many viewers will have long last their patience with Elizabeth Moss' protagonist. I also rewatched Key Largo for the first time in about a quarter of a century. Robinson is good as the villain, and Lionel Barrymore gives a better performance than one might expect from him. But Claire Trevor's award winning role is pure oscarbait: the miserable lush who tries to do the right thing. It's not surprising I forgot her big scene, and i don't regret at all choosing someone else for best supporting actress of 1948.

This website still exists, and it still produces annual updates. One interesting feature is that as you look at each entry you can see the highest position it ever reached. So it would be interesting to look at those movies that have clearly dropped over the fifteen years or so that the website has existed. Let's look at movies currently in the top 250 that have noticeably lost ground. The Gold Rush #27 > #76 The Magnificent Ambersons #36 > #77 Jules et Jim #33 > #83 The Wizard of Oz #57 > #105 Intolerance #44 > #106 Sherlock Jr. #66 > #113 The Earrrings of Madame De… #65 > #122 All About Eve #68 > #124 Bringing up Baby #79 > #125 Letter from an Unknown Woman #74 > #126 My Darling Clementine #80 > #128 Notorious #75 > #135 Stagecoach #81 > #136 L’Age D’Or #72 > #140 His Girl Friday #90 > #142 Duck Soup #98 > #145 Double Indemnity #89 > #148 On the Waterfront #80 > #153 Historie(s) du Cinema #106 > #156 Chimes at Midnight #102 > #160 King Kong #96 > #163 Earth #110 > #169 Napoleon #101 > #176 The Grapes of Wrath #119 > #178 Dekalog #92 > #181 Out of the Past #117 > #185 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp #123 > #186 Umberto D #114 > #189 Close Encounters of the Third Kind #128 > #193 Belle de Jour #126 > #196 Celine and Julie Go Boating #124 > #199 Red River #127 > #200 Paisan #118 > #202 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari #129 > #204 The Best Years of our Lives #109 > #209 McCabe & Mrs. Miller #120 > #212 Ran #116 > #213 Ashes and Diamonds #118 > #215 Kind Hearts and Coronets #137 > #224 Ivan the Terrible, Part II #128 > #228 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre #96 > #235 Sullivan’s Travels #128 > #237 Two or Three Things I Know About Her #135 > #239 Meet me in St. Louis #170 > #242 The Crowd #150 > #243 La Notte #152 > #244 Bonnie and Clyde #136 > #245 The Band Wagon #150 > #247 The Color of Pomegranates #177 > #249