Number 9: Seven Samurai (1954)

The Original Jedi

I don’t know what the fascination with Ninjas is. Samurai are infinitely cooler than Ninjas. If you don’t believe me, think about this: Jedi are Samurai with lightsabers. Jedi are not Ninjas with lightsabers. Why? Because Ninjas simply aren’t cool enough to get lightsabers.

In all seriousness, though, Seven Samurai did more than provide a blueprint for George Lucas’ robed, sword-wielding heroes. Star Wars simply screams Kurosawa, from the warriors to the story to the erasure cuts and beyond. Without Seven Samurai, there is no Star Wars, or at least not in its well known form. There is also no Magnificent Seven, obviously, although that isn’t quite as important.

Japanese Filmmakers

Why is it that some countries are just good at making movies? Obviously, America would have to be at the top of all reasonable lists. I suppose one could make an argument that we simply make so many freaking movies that we’re bound to make amazing films as we go along, but to that I have to say… yeah. We make so many freaking movies we are bound to make amazing films as we go along. Movies in America are practically like national defense. We seem to spend as much and make as much as the rest of the world combined.

But after America, other countries have plenty to offer, though certainly not every country. For instance, France seems to be very good at it. Sure, they had the French New Wave and that’s what everyone remembers, and you could make the argument that they haven’t been spectacular since then (has anyone?), but even if so, how’d they do that? How did Truffaut and Godard just pop up in the same country that produced Renoir (even if I find his films to be… opaque)? And how did Japan get so bloody good at it? Kurosawa and Ozu alone produced a list of films that would challenge most other countries. Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Rashomon, Tokyo Story…

The list, needless to say, goes on. And then there is Italy, they of the neo-realism but also they of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by the wildly underrated Sergio Leone.

And at this point, I would like to point out: Britain sucks at making movies. BBC mini-series? They literally own the territory. TV shows? I’d rather watch them than just about anything else (save for Battlestar Galactica, The West Wing and Arrested Development), but movies? Look up a list of British movies sometime. You’ll laugh. Really, you will. I’m not saying they have never made a good movie (A Man For All Seasons, Bridge on the River Kwai) but for a country that size, they get the living daylights knocked out of them by their rivals to the south, ze Fronch! (It is actually kind of funny how much better we are at movies and how much better they are at Rock n’ Roll. Look up a list of best American rock bands and you’ll laugh at that, too).

Why is it that Japan, as a country, is so fine with regards to filmmaking? I don’t know. I just thought I’d ask.

The Foreign Film Inherent Advantage/Disadvantage

When watching foreign films, I am at a disadvantage, so when appraising them, I give them a bit of an advantage. After watching Tokyo Story with a friend of mine who can actually speak Japanese (more or less) it became exceedingly obvious that many nuances of the dialogue were lost on me. Thankfully, that particular film was all the richer for my having sat next to a translator, but most of the time that does not happen. So in evaluating films with subtitles, I tend to bump them up just a bit on the Right Thumb Scale™.

With Seven Samurai, I did not have to do that. For one thing, it does what any movie worth its salt has to do, which is to tell a story with images. For another, it does it freaking well. Finally, it does it so well that the dialogue seems to come to reside in a land of necessity but not in one of importance. Watch the movie without subtitles, and you’ll still probably understand everything that is going on.

Confession To Make

I put this film on the list a few months back, before I had actually finished watching the movie. Yep. I put this movie on my favorite movies list before I had even finished watching it. The first two hours were so good, I simply assumed the next hour and a half must be as well. And for about an hour, my expectations were met.

Then it rained.

It poured.

It stormed.

In one of the most astonishing battle scenes I have ever seen put to film, it rains it pours and my goodness does it all look gorgeous. I have no idea how they convinced God to send forth heavy showers for so long (there is simply no way they did it artificially. If they did, it was an inhuman feat), but the result is an unparalleled climax to an unparalleled movie, which managed to blow up my expectations even after three hours of viewing.


Next Up: Detective Fiction Matters Again

~Right Thumb~

Number 10: Blade Runner (1982)

Just look at that picture. How can a movie with that image not be great?

Harrison Ford.

Harrison is probably my favorite actor of all time. And not just because he has two last names. He is a modern day Bogey who managed to carve out his own persona somewhere in there. What is that persona? I dunno. It is unique, thus difficult to describe relative to other known quantities. He is Indiana, he is a drag racer, he is Rick Deckard, and yet somehow these are all very much Harrison Ford.

As Rick Deckard, he is a rarity: a somewhat mediocre character. It isn’t that Rick has no talent or nothing to say, but he isn't brilliant. He is working; here he does something well, there he does something kind of stupid, then he is just plain outwitted by the superior intellect of Roy Batty.

Replicants are supposedly smarter than humans, but instead of experiencing awe, we mostly wonder how it could be otherwise—humanity, ostensibly represented by Rick Deckard, doesn’t seem so great (or so bad). Outwitting us shouldn’t be hard. But then, does Rick represent humanity? Unicorns seem to indicate otherwise.

And Harrison channels all this complexity with the dry, wiseacre act of a tough-guy hawkshaw, ready to get beat up at a moment’s notice. Could anyone else have played this role?

It Seems Real.

What must have seemed marvelously futuristic in 1982 seems eerily realistic today. The dark, rainy, cramped sets contrasted with dark, rainy, empty sets seem anything but futuristic. We wonder how a society could be unable to move its elbows while broken down, empty apartment buildings persist, but isn’t that our experience far too often? Luxurious pyramids of the rich overlook dank locales which, it seems, were abandoned by most of humanity as it went “off-world”.

There are flying cars, of course. But outside of that poetic license, Blade Runner could very well be… today. Our climate hasn’t quite reached such drastic levels of decay (and we still appear to have sunny days, though in Pittsburgh, that is always questionable), but the dueling diseases of abandonment and overcrowding, so seemingly contradictory yet so coexistent, are as evident in our society as they are in Blade Runner.

Edward James Olmos

The movies gets points just for casting him, and double points for putting him into such a felicitous role.

Up Next: Seven is Nine

(Note, I am going to starting putting these out bi-weekly [Sunday and Wednesday], as it has to occurred to me that a) they are all written, so why go slowly and b) otherwise I'll be publishing them from Amsterdam.)

~Right Thumb~

Number 11: Vertigo (1958)

Masterpiece.

Back in the day, “masterpiece” did not actually refer to a particularly awe-inspiring work of art. It was simply the work which was required to elevate you to the level of master in your trade. You could have barrels that were masterpieces as easily as paintings or sculptures. Obviously, you had to make something that demonstrated your worthiness for promotion, and so masterpieces were often quite something. But the notion that everything a master made was a masterpiece is nonsense. Maybe they were, in the now colloquial sense of the word, maybe not. But you need a piece to deem you a master, and that is your master-piece.

Why do I mention this? Because I can’t stand Alfred Hitchcock. I almost didn’t put this movie on here because I was worried that if I watched it too many times, I would start hating it. But no, Vertigo is too good for that. Still, I am most decidedly unimpressed by Hitchcock. Rear Window? Bah. North by Northwest? Wake me up when that marathon ends. Psycho? Okay, whatever. The Birds? Good, but not the second coming. Suspicion? Could have been good. Wasn’t. As far as I am concerned, Hitchcock had a tenuous grasp on the title of “master” (or its cinematic equivalent: auteur), and that title is almost entirely beholden to one movie: Vertigo.

It is his masterpiece in both the colloquial and historical sense. All of Hitchcock’s stupid little quirks—painfully slow pacing, mediocre acting, unsubtle camera motion, suspense for the sake of suspense and nothing else, etc.—are either strengths of Vertigo or simply not there. For instance: Jimmy Stewart invented overacting. Seriously, I don’t think there has ever been a scene where he didn’t pull out every trick, facial expression and decibel change in his bag to evince how important that particular scene was. In Vertigo, this makes sense. He is obsessed. Psychotically so. His over the top act is a boon, not a wrecking ball aimed at our suspension of disbelief.

Hitchcock’s indulgent need to drag the simplest gimmick out over interminable periods of time (paranoia for an hour and a half in the Birds, helpless voyeurism for two hours in Rear Window, mistaken identity for two and a half hours in North by Northwest) works in Vertigo, because obsession benefits from an interminable length of time, and in fact probably requires it. The mediocre acting of the woman (women) in the movie makes sense, since she (they) are acting. And the suspense isn’t really there, per se. You are left wondering what is going on more often than you are left on the edge of your seat (though the movie does deliver in that area as well with a few superb scenes in the bell tower).

The herky-jerky camera zooms still bother me. Watch the “vertigo effect” (zooming in while tracking out) in Vertigo, and then watch it in The Lord of the Rings—that’s right, a Peter Jackson film. One of them is subtle and creepy. I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t Vertigo, where the effect looks more like a jump into Warp Drive than an anxiety disorder. But still, these minor baubles aside, Hitchcock was made for this movie. You could almost say that Alfred Hitchcock was Vertigo’s masterpiece.

Next Week: Cramped and Empty, all at the same time.

~Right Thumb~

The Eleven (give or take a few)

(Editor’s Note: Throughout this little project, I refer to “people thinking this…” or “some critics have said that...” etc. Normally, I detest such vague allusions to ethereal, semi-real “people.” But because this has taken longer to write than expected, I am no longer in the mood to find examples of what I claim. I absolutely could provide examples, and I guess you will just have to trust me on that point. Tough to do, I know, with a guy who doesn’t like the Sound of Music, but it’s either that or I fail a few classes…)


People are always asking me what my favorite movie is. When I tell them I can’t pick one, they ask me for a top five. I am unsure why they believe that after having failed to produce one, I could then produce five. Why so many people care about my favorite movie also baffles me. It does wonders for my ego but that particular abstract entity needs no foreign aid.

The essence of the question—what kind of movies do you like—is a valid query, one that I often pose to my own acquaintances. But even more important than what is why. For instance, if I divulge only that The Big Lebowksi is one of my favorite movies, you have as much evidence that I am a stoned hippie as that I enjoy film noir, neo-noir, homage to film noir, reflections on modern noir and the eclectic filmography of the Coens.

Maybe I just like bathrobes.

If I were to say that I love Manhattan, you might only think that I enjoy the complicated “modern” relationships portrayed, and in some way approve of the insecurities and uncertainties that the movie seems to suggest are inherent in a world where divorce is a necessity, commitment is passé, and so forth. In actuality, I enjoy the unabashedly esoteric humor and the utterly gorgeous depiction of New York. But you wouldn’t know that if I told you I liked Manhattan.

So in an effort to clear this up (in less than 15,000 words), I have compiled a list of my eleven favorite movies, as well as an honorable mention. Why eleven? Why not. What are the criteria? They are simple. If I were only allowed to watch a single movie for the rest of my life, which would it be? That is #1. If I were only allowed to watch two, which would the second be? That is #2, and so on.

Now, what exactly this list comprises, I am not sure. These are not the eleven movies I deem to be the “best”, although certainly many of those do find themselves on the list, and none of these movies are anything less than “great” in my not-so-humble estimation. Yet Citizen Kane and M are nowhere to be found, my lavish respect for them notwithstanding. As for favorite—I do not consider “replay value” to be a facet of favor, yet in this case some small attention must be paid to the worth of watching a movie repeatedly, since these are the only movies I am ever watching again.

So on each Sunday I will reveal the next spot in the order, with an explanation (ranging from a few paragraphs to a novella) as to why that particular film finds so much favor with me. If you don’t care about my particular cinematic pontification, you don’t have to read. But then stop asking me what my favorite films are. In all seriousness, I understand how little interest my favorite films might hold for you--so these little vignettes are supposed to be more interesting than simply why I like them. Maybe I fail, maybe I don't, but they combine what I like with what I see with what I have read and some historical context whenever I can throw it in there.

To start things off, a quickie...

Honorable Mention: Smultronstället (1957) (Wild Strawberries)

Had to Pick One

Choosing between Ingmar Bergman films is tantamount to choosing between a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and a Bugatti. One is the fastest, one is the prettiest, and one has the coolest name, but you can’t lose. This could have easily been the Seventh Seal or Fanny and Alexander. Persona is quite the film also, although it would probably not be one which I chose to watch more than five or six times. Given that I’ll be watching only these movies for the rest of my life, that is a bit of a handicap.

Regardless, every Bergman film I have seen is a masterful work. I can’t even say that about Stanley. Of course, I have seen every Kubrick film; I haven’t seen every Bergman film. What keeps Smultronstället from getting onto my main list is that as awe-inspiring as a Bergman film is, they are too profound for their own good. They rarely let you learn because they seem convinced that they need to teach. They do it well enough that Bergman is one of my favorite directors, his sometimes suffocating profundity notwithstanding.

Wild Strawberries is no exception to the rule that all Bergman films must be Biblical in their gravitas. But it has a heart that Seventh Seal would die for, characters that Persona doesn’t, and a relevance that Fanny and Alexander sometimes loses a hold on. As for all his other films… this is my list and I haven’t seen them, so too bad.


Next Week: We begin in earnest; at the top.

~Right Thumb~

I Am Considering...

...firing Left Thumb. I mean, this is a bit ridiculous.

~Right Thumb~

Best 8 of 12: As Seen from the Left

Ah, so now it is time for my side of the equation. I am sure that in the first installment of this segment you were treated to an eclectic mix of cinema—running the gamut from space romance to neo noir, or something like that. Knowing Right Thumb, you may have even been treated to a lecture on the value of postmodern non-diegetic editing. I’m sure the word “postmodern” came up at some point, anyway. If it didn’t, I’m a monkey’s uncle.

I did not view his post before selecting my films, as a disclaimer. If we are synchronized at the least, chalk it up to the synergetic motion of minds at high IQ levels.

AI: Artificial Intelligence

This one is obvious to anyone who’s seen it. It’s the closest thing to a Stanley Kubrick film in the past twelve years, and that alone is enough to guarantee its place here.

War of the Worlds

No, I am not a Spielberg fanboy. (To prove that, I need only mention that I regard Minority Report as one of the worst films of the past twelve years. This is a bone of some contention with Right Thumb.) But War of the Worlds is just so, so well done. The special effects are, quite simply, the best of the past twelve years. There might be movies that are on par in the effects department, but nothing beats this. Period.

The Insider

Every facet of this movie is executed perfectly. The acting is stupendous even for its already-stupendous actors. The writing is superb. The direction is virtually flawless. The music is beyond fantastic. Of course, any music director that acknowledges the genius of Arvo Pärt is a made-man in my book.*

All the same, I anticipate a few gripes about this. A great movie, yes, but come on, best of the past twelve years? Well, it has been a barren twelve years, firstly, but this movie stands up notwithstanding. (If that’s possible.) It is frighteningly close to a perfect film. Perhaps it doesn’t try to climb as high on the rocky mountain of philosophical and aesthetic brilliance as, say, a 2001, but where it does go it goes quickly, smoothly, without a hitch.

Into Great Silence

Quite simply the most effective monk-smut I’ve ever seen. I was perfectly incapable of thinking straight when I first viewed this film, but now that I’ve had time to reflect upon the atrocities it lays bare, I cannot but admire the audacity of the director. There’s something to be said for a documentarian that tells the whole truth. This is heroic cinematic journalism at its finest. I will never, never revisit this film, nor will I recommend it to anyone whom I do not wish to irreversibly corrupt—and indeed, I wish that I myself had never seen those first fifty minutes at all. But what’s done is done and now, with only a minor shudder, I can acknowledge (at least intellectually) the relevance of this chilling, haunting, daunting, brutal, dirty, and altogether demonic documentary.

Battlestar Galactica

You knew it would be here. You’ll probably complain. Save yourself the bother and actually watch it. (Preferably without so many preconceptions and ill-conceived prejudices that you can’t see straight while you watch it.)

Wall-E

This is really a composite entry on my list. It is a stand-in for nearly every Pixar film made in the past twelve years. My summers now feel empty if I don’t get to see a Pixar movie.

Why Wall-E? Of all the choices, Wall-E reaches the farthest. Its execution is second to none, and if it drags a little at times, we can chalk it up to the film’s cinematic self-awareness. I wouldn’t argue with someone if they take Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. or even Up over this one. It’s kind of like picking between episodes of the previous entry. They are all so fantastic that eventually it can come down to personal choice. (Now, granted, there are about ten times as many viable Galactica episodes. This casts no aspersion on Pixar, however, and cannot be construed as such.)

The Passion of the Christ

This is one film that I am very interested to see how it ages. It could be something still watched many decades from now, or it could not. It most certainly should be. Cinematically speaking, I know of no other depiction of the death of Christ that approaches the artistry, craft and effectiveness of this film. It is both a movie and a meditation. It recognizes that a religious film is much, much more than a simple retelling—it must be as intensely personal as the events it depicts. Yes, so the director drives me nuts. Mozart would probably drive me nuts.

Children of Men

I have a confession to make. I delayed the writing of this post by about half a week. (Much to the chagrin of Right Thumb, who seems to think that prose as charming, idiosyncratic and erudite as mine can be hammered out in an hour like some paper on the commutative properties of Higgs boson particles at extreme conditions.) I am now exceedingly glad I did so. For in this interval I have watched a movie that would have been simply tragic to omit from this list. About as tragic as Peter Jackson’s King Kong.**

We have had a number of movies in the past twelve years about how terrible the future could be. All of them, however, seem to do it just for its own sake. “Hey, look at my movie, yeah, see how terrible and dark and depressing the future is? Yeah, uh-huh? Now nominate me for an Oscar, yeah? I’m so depressing!!” Children of Men does no such thing. It manages to make a world that is even more terrible than any of these others, and still have a larger point. It manages to have some of the best cinematography in recent history. It manages to make you actually think, and not just expect you to drop your jaw mindlessly and say, “Well this movie clinched it. Now I’ll be a better person because if I’m not then robots will take over the world.”

And so it was ensured a place here. Be thankful for my laziness—it might save the world someday.

> Left Thumb <


* It’s not a very long book.

** Every time I remember that Kong was actually produced, I weep uncontrollably.

Best 8 of 12

In honor of something (but certainly not the arbitrary end of the decade), we at Two Thumbs Sideways are attempting an experiment. We will independently determine which eight movies were the best of the past twelve years. Why eight? Why twelve? Because they are arbitrary and obviously so, as opposed to being arbitrary and not so obviously so (i.e. best ten of the decade lists). Why independently? We want to see the differences in what we come up with. (I just ended that sentence with two prepositions. That takes talent…) Then, after posting our separate lists and explanations, we will post together, explaining the differences and similarities. It goes without saying that Battlestar Galactica will adorn both lists, even though it isn’t a movie. This is a “best of” list. It belongs.


Battlestar Galactica

What is there left to say? 73 hours of visual euphoria.

The Insider

My man-crush on Russell Crowe notwithstanding, it is hard to deny the guy’s talent. He can play a macho gladiator, a nuanced cop, a Napoleonic-era ship captain, a neo-Nazi, and apparently, a chemist-turned whistleblower with startling skill. If he isn’t the best actor of his generation, his generation is spoiled with two transcendent actors.

Of course, Al Pacino is hardly a lightweight, and when thrown together behind Michael Mann’s direction (yeah, the same Michael Mann who almost rescued Public Enemies from the abyss of one of the most sterile scripts ever written), you get a thriller so thrilling that I would have found it outrageously compelling even without its being a true story.

Then, with about twenty seconds left in the film, it dawned on me that it is in fact the true story. If a movie can keep me interested for that long before I realize it is all (mostly) real… It deserves a place on this list.

Children of Men

When Clive Owen walks out of a restaurant, and then it blows up, the tone for the whole movie is set. Stuff just happens. It isn’t dramatized or aided by the crescendo of a John Williams score. It just happens. Later, one of the most startling and best executed long takes of all time continues this mantra by taking you through an entire battle-ridden neighborhood—without slowing down to appreciate anything that is going on. Sometimes, a movie needs to slow down. But Children of Men wants you to experience life without children. And without children, our lives would never slow down, and the dramatic crescendos would never come. It is rare for a movie to even appreciate what it is trying to do—actually executing it is rarer still.

Wall-E

Science Fiction is the world of ideas. The greatest Sci-Fi movie ever made, Stanley’s magnum opus, the wonder of wonders that is 2001: A Space Odyssey, understood this by asking all of the big questions. All of them. Wall-E understands this by asking all of the little questions. All of them.

Never, in a movie ostensibly dealing with robots and global warming, have the importance and wonder of the little things been more important or wondrous. Wall-E’s affection for all things with hinges (while ignoring a diamond ring), the gorgeous but barren landscape which exaggerates every small bit of color, the ship with everything but a soul—Wall-E appreciates the little things in life. Few movies, animated or otherwise, have ever shown a greater appreciation for these details than Wall-E.

In Bruges

I could say In Bruges is funny; it is. I could say it is haunting; it is. I could say it is touching; it is. I could say it is clever; it is. I could say it is a bit manipulative, and made for smart guys. I don’t know if it was. But if it was, they did a good job. Colin Farrell (yeah, this guy) is not exactly what I would call a character actor. But he creates a character here who is somehow both of these things: 1) an assassin, 2) believably naive. It seems absurd, but he pulls it off so well that you don’t come to the end of the movie and suddenly realize you have been fooled. I still think of him and I still think of the movie as if the footage continues to roll.

The Passion of the Christ

Before we get to the big two—the two movies, without which, the last twelve years would have been more or less lacking in sheer greatness—we must mention a film which does something pretty amazing.

Nothing can truly capture the significance, power and divinity of the crucifixion. But as Truffaut said, and as I firmly believe, cinema is “the most beautiful fraud in the world”. Movies can’t actually be real—but they can seem so real as to cause us to react in real ways. In much the same way that we more or less trick our muscles into growing larger by lifting weights, we trick our minds into growing by watching movies. And the Passion of the Christ more completely envelops you in the story of redemption than any other film has ever managed to do. From beginning to end, it seems like the world is at stake. It just so happens that the world actually was.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Great science fiction is hard to find. In an era that has been quite the high mark for good science fiction (Dark City, Gattaca, Minority Report, Primer, War of the Worlds, etc.) we have only seen one truly great Sci-Fi film (outside of the aforementioned animated world). This is not hard to explain—film and Sci-Fi do not necessarily mix so easily. The world of ideas and the world of images are hard to reconcile at times. When it works, it is the height of art and intellection (Blade Runner). When it doesn’t work, it is a bit painful to watch (the Fountain).

A.I. works. It isn’t quite a modern 2001, but it asks questions that are relevant to our time while still big enough to endure through time. You might call it 2001 for kids, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. A.I. deals with issues surrounding childhood that don’t disappear just because our own childhood did. We shouldn’t lose our sense of wonder and our love for our mothers—and a little robot child doesn’t. But often, we do. What the heck is going on there? A.I. wonders. It does so vividly, intensely, and, lest it scare people off, intelligently.

In an ending that annoyed some people and depressed others, I see a bit of Spielberg’s optimism shining through (though clearly not blatantly, as evinced by the fact that most people think the ending was cynical). Maybe it seems out of place for a shot of optimism in a nearly apocalyptic film, but I think it works. We should always hope. And the child-robot that remains attached to his mother also remains attached to that hope. And we gave him that. If we could instill that into a “mecha”, we must still have it in ourselves.

No Country for Old Men

The perfect movie. Such a moniker does not always imply greatness—sometimes it means the filmmakers didn’t try to do anything, so they managed to do very little… perfectly. But when the Coens construct a perfect film, it means something. The Coens never shortchange themselves on goals. Their somewhat (Read: drastically) uneven filmography is the result of always aiming for the stars and a willingness to take risks. When it all works, you get classics such as Blood Simple or Miller’s Crossing; when it doesn’t, you get refuse such as Intolerable Cruelty or Burn After Reading. Then, you have No Country for Old Men. They didn’t aim too high. All they tried to do was explore the nature of guilt, evil, courage, the passage of time, and do it all in a visually resplendent manner while keeping you on the proverbial edge of your proverbial seat.

And they did. The Coens, quite simply, fit more onto the screen than other modern filmmakers. No Country is two hours long (almost exactly) but doesn’t waste a second or a pixel of screen. So it seems like you have had many years worth of images thrown at you. And you have. Two years later, I am still marveling at it. And I think I will be many years from now. And that is why it is the Best Film of the Past Twelve Years.