1979: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)

1979: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
Count me among the group that is in absolute awe of Coppola in the seventies.  Four films, four masterpieces in my book, and a run that has maybe never been matched in American cinema.  Best analogy I can make, Michael Jordan scoring over fifty points in four straight games.  

Apocalypse Now is a film that makes as great of an argument as any for the preservation of the theater experience.  You watch it at home, and it feels like it's about to overwhelm the television.  It's that grand.  

Walter Murch did the sound design, and it may very well have the most expressive, effective sound of any movie ever made.  Wow, that's a bold statement!  But Murch's work here is that mind-blowing.  And like a game of chicken, Vittorio Storaro is working at the same level as Murch.  The visuals here are staggering -- hallucinatory, brain-poppingly colorful, and heavy in grandeur and effect.  

I won't even mention the cast here.  Let's just say they're perfect, too. Just like in the two Godfather films and The Conversation.

Making movies is a risky business.  And whenever the risk gets me a little intimidated, I think about Coppola and all he went through to get this on screen.  He's a great filmmaker, a great dreamer, but most of all (and it's a quality that's often undervalued in our business), he had great courage.

Other contenders for 1979: I still have several titles to see from this year.  These include: Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni, Volker Schlondorff's The Tin Drum, Terry Jones' Life of Brian, Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, John Huston's Wise Blood, David Cronenberg's The Brood, Catherine Breillat's Trouble at Night, Stephen Frears' Bloody Kids, Jean Eustache's La Rosiere de Pessac, Maurice Pialat's Graduate First, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine.  I need to revisit Steven Spielberg's 1941 and George Miller's Mad Max as it's been too long since I've seen either of them to know where they'd place on this list.  But from this year I really like Carroll Ballard's The Black Stallion. I love Jeff Margolis' Richard Pryor: Live in Concert and Woody Allen's Manhattan.  And my closest runner-up is Ridley Scott's Alien.


6/27/11 I watched Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun.  Absurd, dark, and a little under the influence of Godard.   I'm still fairly new to the cinema of Fassbinder and am not totally sure what to make of it all. But this one has a good bit to say on monogamous love and the loss of humanity that can come at the price of wealth.  


8/12/11 I watched Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine.  Artful but incredibly disturbing tale of a serial killer.  Imamura proves quite the ambitious storyteller, balancing many tones and linear shifts.  But this one is cold as can be and ultimately didn't leave feeling much other than dirty.  


8/24/11 I watched Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni.  Perhaps one of the best examples ever of opera on film.  But in spite of its strong execution, I could not keep interest.  Simply not my thing.  

1978: Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard)

1978: Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard)
One of these small-scale crime movies from the seventies that I absolutely love.  Great production value (incredible cinematography by The French Connection's Owen Roizman), great cast (Dustin Hoffman, Harry Dean Stanton, M Emmet Walsh, and Gary Busey), and a grit and grime that recall some of the early great B noir films.  


It also boasts one of the greatest heist scenes ever put on film.  In fact, I rank it right up there with the famous ones from Rififi and Heat.


It's so cliche but I'll go ahead and say it, they don't make movies like this one anymore.  It has a mainstream-level cast and crew but a dark, indy mindset.  And it's not post-modern and not ironic, it's earnest, hard-hitting stuff.  Give me this, give me Night Moves, give me The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.  Honesty and artistry, a certain pedestrian quality, these are among my favorite of all crime films.  

Other contenders for 1978:  There are still some titles I need to see from this year.  These include: Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois, Errol Morris' Gates of Heaven, Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata,  Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman, Claude Chabrol's Violette, Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In a Year of 13 Moons, Nagisa Oshima's Empire of Passion, Hal Ashby's Coming Home, Alan Parker's Midnight Express, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Karel Reisz's Who'll Stop The Rain, and Orson Welles' Filming Othello.  And, at some point, I need to revisit Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven as it's one I've struggled with in the past.  Meanwhile, from this year, I really like Francois Truffaut's La chambre verte.  I love John Carpenter's Halloween.  And my closest runner-up is Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter.


7/1/11 I watched Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In a Year of 13 Moons. Very intimate, raw, and clearly personal.  The production design and haziness of some of the scenes are extraordinary.  But overall the whole thing's also a bit of a slog.  

7/4/11 I watched Errol Morris' Gates of Heaven.  Quirky in typical Morris fashion, and curious as I almost always feel Morris just on the side laughing a bit at his subject and characters. 


7/21/11 I watched Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs.  It's an incredibly ambitious venture that is acutely observed and warmly rendered.  Ambles and captures the countryside in ways that remind of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, sans Altman's quirky stylings.  Never have I seen the rural parts of Italy look so alive.  Olmi asks for patience, but his eye is as natural and unobtrusive as the glory days of Kiarostami in Iran.  

9/29/11 I watched Paul Schrader's Blue Collar.  A Schrader with a big reputation, but I found it a bit too meandering.  It tightens up near the end and finds some nice dramatic moments.  But overall, I would say it's a little underwhelming to me compared to Mishima, Affliction, or even American Gigolo. 


10/18/11 I watched Maurice Pialat's Passe ton bac d'abord.  The young actors are all universally fantastic, but this one lacks the rigor of some of the best Pialat.  An interesting watch, if slightly underwhelming.  

1977: Annie Hall (Woody Allen)

1977: Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
I really don't know this film that well.  In fact, I think I've only seen it once.  As is probably clear by now, I usually privilege dramas over comedies.  They're the type of films that affect me most and the kinds of films I'm interested in making right now.  All this to say, please excuse me for writing a less detailed piece for this year.  


What I can say though about Annie Hall is that it certainly features one of Allen's sharpest scripts, some of his most memorable characters, and a certain breeziness to the depth that keeps it all running forward at a great clip.  I mentioned awhile back while writing on Allen's film, Broadway Danny Rose, that he deserves more credit for his formal experimentation.  Although his reputation might be mostly as a simple comic filmmaker, his movies are always of a certain narrative complexity and feature bold formal experiments.  Here these come mostly in the form of flashbacks where Allen inserts himself in frame as he analyzes the events that lead to later dysfunction.


Allen continues to be a major source of inspiration for me, less as a filmmaker, more as a craftsman.  He's been able to create the most liberated system of working of anyone in American cinema.  He can make movies whenever he'd like, and it seems with whomever he'd like to do them.  Any day watching one of his films is a good day.  And I look forward to many more moments with this one.  

Other contenders for 1977:  I still have some titles I need to see from this year.  These include:  Fred Zinnemann's Julia, Martin Scorsese's New York, New York, Wim Wenders' The American Friend, Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble, Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange, Sidney Lumet's Equus, Alain Resnais' Providence, Ridley Scott's The Duellists, Robert Altman's 3 Women, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's Hitler, A Film from Germany, Jean Eustache's Une Sale Histoire, and Robert Bresson's The Devil, Probably.  I really like Luis Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire.  And my closest runner-up is Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep.


7/8/11 I watched Martin Scorsese's New York, New York.  I'm not sure Minnelli is properly cast, and Scorsese definitely could have gained by cutting this one down.  But there are some very fine De Niro moments, and Minnelli's "But The World Goes 'Round" is quite memorable.  


10/27/11 I watched John Badham's Saturday Night Fever.  Iconic but also much more than most people remember. Incredibly exuberant whenever someone is dancing, also troubling, disturbing, and challenging in ways that Hollywood no longer dares to be.  And Travolta is simply fantastic.  

10/20/12 I watched George Roy Hill's Slap Shot.  A messy, irreverent sports film very much of the seventies.  Lacks the incredible footage and dramatic arc of the very best sports movies but that isn't its ambition either.  The Hanson brothers are one of cinema's great creations and spark the screen whenever they are around.  Otherwise though I just found it an okay document from its era.

10/22/12 I watched Michael Ritchie's Semi-Tough.  Just a mess, in my opinion.  A nice snapshot of the era, but so meandering, ironic, and uncommitted to any kind of narrative drive that it ends up unraveling more than anything.

1976: Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders)

1976: Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders)
Why Robby Muller isn't more of a household name is beyond me?  He's responsible for five or six of the most beautiful films ever made:  Dead Man, Alice in the Cities, Paris, Texas, Down by Law, Breaking the Waves, The American Friend, and Kings of the Road.  Okay, make that eight or nine!


I find that Muller has as great a sensitivity and relationship to nature as any cameraman that has ever worked in the medium.  There's a poetry to the way that he frames the outdoors and a lyricism to the way he lets his camera slowly absorb images that is deep and elemental.   And nowhere is his special gift so apparent, so affecting, as in this early Wenders road epic.  


This one demands patience, but if you can get hooked on its rhythms, it's an incredibly moving tale of friendship, love, and cinema.  It's also a definite desert island choice in these parts.  

Other contenders for 1976:  This is yet another strong year, in my opinion, even though there are a number of titles I still need to see.  These include:  Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot, Alan Rudolph's Welcome to L.A., Eric Rohmer's The Marquise of O..., Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, Jacques Rivette's Noroit and Duelle, Joseph Losey's Mr. Klein, Francois Truffaut's Small Change, Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent, Ingmar Bergman's Face to Face, Luchino Visconti's L'innocente, Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, Dario Argento's Suspiria, Carlos Saura's Cria Cuervos, Don Siegel's The Shootist, and Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon.  I need to revisit Sidney Lumet's Network as it's a film I've struggled with in the past.  From this year though, I really like Roman Polanski's The Tenant, Brian De Palma's Carrie and Obsession, David Lynch's Eraserhead, and John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13.  I love Alan Pakula's All the President's Men.  And my closest runner-up is Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.


4/11/11 I watched Francois Truffaut's Small Change.  A strange film. Sweet, and at times Truffaut amazes at how he's able to remember and capture some of the aspects and feelings of childhood.  But it seems as awkward and distracted as most young children, and this meandering quality starts to take away after awhile.  


5/13/11 I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot.  An unusual final film from a master.  It's fun, light in many ways, and still maintains much of the great Hitch touch.  Dern is perfectly cast, as is Barbara Harris and Ed Lauter.  


7/22/11 I watched Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses.  The ultimate film on co-dependency.  Incredibly intense and disturbing. Oshima proves himself one of the ultimate "cruel" filmmakers but also one who is unflinching and unafraid to take his subject into every single, possible realm, no matter the risk or daring involved.  Cold and not totally my thing, but I respect the achievement.


8/11/11 I watched Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent.  Incredibly visual, in the way a Tarkovsky film can be.  And particularly affecting when it comes to depicting torture and death.  Ultimately hard for me though to find a real window into it emotionally.  


8/19/11 I watched Luchino Visconti's L'innocente.  Another psychological and claustrophic chamber piece from Visconti.  Not my thing at all, but well done for what it is.  

1975: Night Moves (Arthur Penn)

1975: Night Moves (Arthur Penn)
For what it's worth, I guess this is one of the most flawed films to top my list.  By no means would I tout it as being perfect, and I'm not even sure it's great.  But I love it more than any other film I've seen from 1975.  

I put Night Moves in the same category as The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Straight Time, films that are all substantially lower in budget than the Coppola and Polanski crime epics.  And I only mention budget because there's a grit and casualness to Night Moves that immediately announces its relative lack of ambition.  In fact, its this lack of ambition that accounts for much of its likeability.  Like a close friend that puts no expectations on you, it's always easy and a pleasure being in its company.

I say all this, but there's still much to boast about in this one.  Gene Hackman delivers one of his finest performances, Melanie Griffith is criminally sexy, Michael Small proves once again that he's a master when it comes to subtle, minimal scores, and the serpentine plot is an absolute delight.

I miss Arthur Penn.  I love this film, and I love The Chase, and I admire the hell out of Bonnie and Clyde.  Like Cimino and even Coppola, if the system had worked better, we'd probably have another handful of incredible Penn films to love and discuss.

Other contenders for 1975:  Even with some gaps, I already know this is a really great year.  I still need to see: Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger, Richard Fleischer's Mandingo, Theo Angelopoulos' The Travelling Players, Abbas Kiarostami's Two Solutions for One Problem, Jean-Luc Godard's Numero deux, Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Fox and His Friends, and Francois Truffaut's The Story of Adele H.  At some point, I'll need to revisit Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock as these are all titles I've struggled with in the past.  From this year, I really like Woody Allen's Love and Death.  I love Steven Spielberg's Jaws, Akira Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala, John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King.  And my closest runner-up is Hal Ashby's Shampoo.


7/14/11 I watched Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger. Antonioni's incredible talents are all over -- his meticulous framing, his daring yet languid camerawork, and his feel for spaces that the medium has yet to capture.  Still very slow and cerebral like almost all his work, but The Passenger gains some warmth from its summer exteriors and more rustic locations.  One of the cinema's great road movies, and in the same family as Wenders' Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road. 


8/14/11 I watched Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.  Artful and careful. But also distancing and painfully boring for me.  Plus Kubrick's almost wall-to-wall music wore on me quickly.     


8/17/11 I watched Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Fox and His Friends. Decadent and defeatist as it seems most of Fassbinder's films are.  This one feels slightly more intimate though with Fassbinder himself playing the lead.


4/13/12 I watched Robert Aldrich's Hustle.  There's something ambitious about the emotional scope that doesn't quite click or fully come together.  But this Aldrich remains of interest by refusing to steer clear of the personal, no matter how uncomfortable or how telling.  An interesting role for Reynolds while a questionable choice for Deneuve.  

1974: Chinatown (Roman Polanski)

1974: Chinatown (Roman Polanski)
I'm not a writer.  I probably will never be a writer.  But if I were, I would want my movies to sound like Robert Towne.  During his run from Bonnie and Clyde to Shampoo, Towne operated in a zone of moviespeak nirvana.  Working somewhere between the literary and spoken word, his dialogue was sharper than the way we speak yet close enough to our rhythms and words as to be utterly recognizable.   


Don't get me wrong, I think Roman Polanski is an extraordinary filmmaker.  But when I'm honest about why I like Chinatown so much, I have to give just as much credit to Towne.  Not only does he manage to create one of the very best of all the noir stories, but somehow he's able to work in a history of Los Angeles at the same time.  


The look of the film actually doesn't blow me away.  The magic for me, aside from Towne's work, is in the casting (the choice of John Huston has to rival the genius of Brando in The Godfather), the locations, Jerry Goldsmith's incredible score, and Nicholson's dead-on performance. And the ending.  Probably my favorite in the history of the medium.


As someone who loves noir and will probably make more of them in his career, this one is a bit of a thorn.  I just feel like no matter what I or anyone else does, you can't really top it.  

Other contenders for 1974:  I still have quite a few titles to see.  These include: Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us, Jean Eustache's Mes Petites Amoureuses, Werner Herzog's The Mystery of Kasper Hauser, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Maurice Pialat's La gueule ouverte, Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac, John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence, Monte Hellman's Cockfighter, Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien, Abbas Kiarostami's The Traveller, Alain Resnais' Stavisky..., Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and Peter Watkins' Edvard Munch.  I need to revisit both Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein and Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating as it's been too long since I've seen either of them to know where they'd place on this list.  From this year though, I really like Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Orson Welles' F for Fake, and Karel Reisz's The Gambler.  I love Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and The Godfather: Part II, as well as Robert Altman's California Split and Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise.  And my closest runner-up is Wim Wenders' Alice in the Cities.  

6/12/11 I watched Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. At times, the most sexual of all the Altman pics I've seen and certainly one of the most interesting. Feels like a movie that Altman really cares about; it's extremely unconventional stylistically, just like McCabe, and in a strange way it almost feels like a precursor to the free-form style Michael Mann would take on with Collateral, Miami Vice, and especially Public Enemies. An Altman film I would need to re-visit as it feels extraordinarily complex. And if it's such a cliche at this point that Hollywood doesn't make 'em like they once did during that special period in the seventies then this film is as much an example as any.


10/16/11 I watched Maurice Pialat's La gueule ouverte.  Who is Maurice Pialat and what makes him special as a filmmaker?  Some have called him the French Cassavetes.  But I think that tag is a bit misleading.  Pialat, like Bresson, was a painter first before trying his hand at film, and his work is much more visually striking than that of Cassavetes.  Where their paths converge is in their raw approach, lack of music, and predilection for loose, extremely natural performances.  Pialat only made ten features in his career, and this is the sixth that I have seen.  It's the one time he collaborated with the masterful cameraman, Nestor Almendros, and the partnership lends poetry and lyricism to Pialat's heavy, uncompromising cinema.  I think this is one of (if not) the strongest film(s) of Pialat that I have seen.  And I hardly ever throw the word out there, but I think this film is a masterpiece.  

1973: The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)

1973: The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
Seeing this was one of the high points of my cinephile experience so far. I can't remember the name of the theater, but it was right around the corner from the Pantheon, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.  In other words, the same exact neighborhood where all the action takes place in the film.   


The Mother and the Whore is one of these films that makes its own rules when it comes to time.  The movie is 217 minutes long.  You enter from one world and exit from another.  It manipulates the world that much.  


Aside from its unique temporal relationship, this Eustache film takes a very special approach to drama.  In fact, if the film weren't in black-and-white, it would feel more like a four hour documentary than a narrative film.  The film has no traditional structure and the scenes stubbornly, and somewhat arbitrarily, unfold with no regard for past precedent.


Eustache took his own life in 1981.  But he left us with this incredible achievement, one of the most personal films I have ever seen and my favorite French film, post Pierrot le fou.  Some of Eustache's other work is hard to find, but he has a major reputation in France, and if this one is any indication, I can't wait to fill in the gaps.




Other contenders for 1973: I still have some titles to see.  From this year, these include:  Federico Fellini's Amarcord, Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive, Jacques Rozier's Du cote d'Orouet, Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon, Jacques Tati's Parade, Roman Polanski's What?, and Marco Ferreri's La grande bouffe.  I need to revisit Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and George Roy Hill's The Sting.  It's been too long since I've seen either of them to know where they'd place on this list.  From this year, however, I really like Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, Woody Allen's Sleeper, Orson Welles' F for Fake, and William Friedkin's The Exorcist.  I love Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, and Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.  And my closest runner-up is Hal Ashby's The Last Detail.

8/29/10 I watched Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon.  It's got tons of heart and is full of intelligence.  Ryan and Tatum have great chemistry on screen, and Tatum really delivers a strong performance.  Bogdanovich imbues it with a nice sense of Fordian nostalgia and melancholy, and the black-and-white imagery gives it all an added dimension.  A very strong outing from Bogdanovich.

1/30/11 I watched George Roy Hill's The Sting.  Smart and smooth storytelling from Hollywood in a way that we hardly ever see anymore.  Keeps you guessing, is fun, and never really overstays its welcome.  Artsy, not at all, but a good, entertaining ride. 


7/18/11 I watched Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive.  An elusive, yet lyrical look at childhood and the power of fantasy and the impressionable, young mind.  Beautiful to watch but never really felt for me.  


7/29/11 I watched Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle.  Some great, early seventies naturalism and Yates proves once again that he's really skillful at bringing a city to life (this time it's Boston).  But at times it's almost so subdued and cool as to feel a little lacking.  


7/31/11 I watched Marco Ferreri's La grande bouffe.  Death by decadence is the subject here.  And even though there is a droll spirit at work, there's also an aura of melancholy that surrounds everything.  Somewhat amusing but a bit tiresome.  


8/10/11 I watched Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.  A loose, mournful western from one of the late masters.  Peckinpah meanders, ponders loyalty and lost ideals, and delivers what might be the most personal of all his works.  The loss of a lifestyle, the onset of civilization, a western about not fitting in, that doesn't really fit into anything that's come before or since.  


10/16/11 I watched Abel Ferrara's Could This Be Love.  A pretty boring, messy early short from Ferrara, my least favorite of his three shorts.  


12/4/11 I watched Roberto Rossellini's The Age of the Medici.  The clearest and most penetrating expression I've seen of Rossellini's late period.  Difficult, cerebral cinema with a groping, yet elusive style. No one has ever quite made films like this, and Rossellini's late period certainly deserves much greater exposure and discussion, if nothing else for us to know these ramblings of a master into uncharted territories.

8/11/12 I watched Joe Boyd's Jimi Hendrix.  A fairly intimate look at Hendrix with some great performance footage.  I still wish one of these docs would go deeper on him as he was clearly something of a genius and something special.  

12/16/12 I watched Charles Burnett's The Horse.  An early short that feels like a workshop of quirks before Burnett would find the right vehicle in Killer of Sheep.  

4/27/13 I watched Jerry Schatzberg's Scarecrow.  Zsigmond gives it great space and brings a real strength to much of the framing.  Its assets - its looseness, authenticity, and the freewheeling nature Schatzberg is able to capture quite often - also sometimes leave the engine running a little cold.  But there's a depth and heaviness of feeling that put it comfortably in the group of great character studies that came out of the American cinema in the seventies.  

1972: The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)

1972: The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
I read once where Steven Spielberg said that he would never make a movie as perfect as The Godfather.  I never understood why he would make that statement, but I can't argue against the greatness of Coppola's film.  It simply does so many things right.  


It has tremendous performances.  Pacino, Duvall, Brando, Caan, Cazale, Shire are all at the top of their game.  It has a perfect score, perfect lighting scheme, seemingly perfect editing, shot selection, camera movement, and production design.  It has some of the most memorable lines and scenes in the history of the medium.  And it seems perfectly scaled to fit its themes, desired effect, and wonderfully crafted story.  


Pauline Kael used the term "movie art" to describe it in her 1972 review, and I've always felt the film to be as great a hybrid as we've ever had of depth and entertainment.  It's a tremendous achievement and model for all of us that hope to reach audiences in more than just NY and LA, but hope to say something, too.  




Other contenders for 1972: I still have a few titles from this year I need to see.  These include:  Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, Jacques Rivette's Out 1: Spectre, Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid, Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Billy Wilder's Avanti!, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Merchant of Four Seasons, Bill L Norton's Cisco Pike, and Maurice Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together.  I need to revisit Bob Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens, John Boorman's Delivrance, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.  It's been too long since I've seen any of them to know where they'd place on this list. From this year, I really like Eric Rohmer's Chloe in the Afternoon.  I love Bob Fosse's Cabaret.  And Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God is my closest runner-up.  

8/31/10 I watched Bob Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens.  It's a deep film, but one that I've now seen twice and can't warm to quite yet.  It's so dark and drab and is almost completely devoid of fun.  I love Five Easy Pieces and know that this Rafelson also enjoys a huge reputation, but I can't quite connect to it yet. 


4/10/11 I watched Jean-Pierre Melville's Un Flic.  Melville's final film is not at the same level of his two previous and, in my opinion, two strongest films, Army of Shadows and Le Cercle Rouge.  But it still shows off the director's ability for bringing an incredibly unique approach and attitude to the crime film.  Zooms abound, while also on display are the director's uncanny interest in the human gaze and most minute details of a crime.  Of particular interest, the entire sequence where a helicopter helps with the heist of a moving train.    


7/30/11 I watched Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers.  A Bergman rumination on humanity's superficial responses to death.  As is typical in his work, he's able to draw incredibly carnal and deeply primal performances from his female actors.  But as is often my response to Bergman, I'm left more in admiration than in great empathy and connection.  


10/15/11 I watched Abel Ferrara's The Hold Up.  Ferrara's second short film is decently interesting with a wonderful, elliptical ending. 


11/20/11 I watched Roberto Rossellini's Blaise Pascal.  No one made movies like Rossellini, and this statement is particularly true of his later period.  These zoom-heavy (in and out) films of historical figures feel like they're in cursive, with a bunch of commas, long, lovely phrases that we find curious but are unsure to really understand.  Probing and cerebral like later Godard but more linear and less blatantly rebellious.  


2/12/12 I watched Stuart Rosenberg's Pocket Money.  Based on a script written by all people, "Terry Malick", this offbeat road movie has some interest.  But it's too lax for my taste and just seems to amble along, so loose as to fall apart at any minute.  Great collaborators all around, just wish it had a stronger formal approach or a more discernible pulse.  

1971: The French Connection (William Friedkin)

1971: The French Connection (William Friedkin)
Easily the biggest influence on my first feature, The Last Lullaby.  I love the way this Friedkin film looks, and I love the way it sounds.  


Let's start with the look.  The cinematographer, Owen Roizman, has a pretty impressive body of work.  Aside from this marvel, he was also responsible for the look of The Exorcist, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Three Days of the Condor, Network, and Straight Time. What I love most about his work here is that it is both raw and painterly at the same time.  Usually I find movies that are gritty and raw not terribly pleasing on an aesthetic level.  And the films that I consider extremely refined on a visual level can often be a little distancing.  But here Friedkin and Roizman are able to combine, in a unique way, intimacy and painterly.  


As for its sound, the film mostly relies on ambient noises to propel it forward.  There is very little music.  And when music is used, it's usually between rather than during scenes.


I also love Friedkin's use of the zoom in the film.  And both the extended, wordless opening and abrupt ending continue to be references for me.  I still think this stands as one of the high points of Hollywood naturalism, and a tremendous hybrid of art and entertainment.  I would argue that much of Michael Mann's early style comes from this film.  And I would say that Friedkin's formal achievements here still tend to be a little undervalued.   




Other contenders for 1971: I still have several things I need to see from this year.  These include:  Roman Polanski's Macbeth, Grigori Kozintsev's King Lear, Claude Jutra's Mon oncle Antoine, Ken Russell's The Devils, Robert Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer, Jacques Rivette's Out 1, Jan Troell's The Emigrants, Jean Rouch's Petit a petit, Jacques Tati's Trafic, Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, and Barbara Loden's Wanda.  I need to re-watch Don Siegel's Dirty Harry as it's been to long since I've seen it to know where it'd place on this list. Meanwhile, from this year, I really like Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Francois Truffaut's Two English Girls.  I love Alan Pakula's Klute. And my closest runner-up (and one of my other favorite films of all time) is Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller.  


7/27/11 I watched Claude Jutra's Mon oncle Antoine.  A strange, atonal coming of age flick that never fully connected with me.  


10/15/11 I watched Abel Ferrara's earliest short film, Nicky's Film.  It reminded me of a surreal recreation of the finale of Shoot the Piano Player.  Short and interesting.  

1970: The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci)

1970: The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci)
I really can't say I fully understand the story of the movie.  Nor can I really say that I fully care.  If someone forced me to choose the color film that I think is the most beautiful in the history of the medium, this would be my choice.


It seems that this movie, more than any other, influenced the great look of The Godfather.  And the way that Bertolucci and Vittorio Storaro film murder - slowly, carefully, and with rapt attention - certainly recalls Coppola's approach a couple years later.


A complete filmmaking marvel, and one of cinema's most staggering, hallucinatory achievements.




Other contenders for 1970:  There are a good number of titles I still need to see.  These are: Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End, Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock, Franklin J Schaffner's Patton, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin's Gimme Shelter, Gilbert Cates' I Never Sang for My Father, Vittorio De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Claude Chabrol's La rupture, Jean Eustache and Jean-Michel Barjol's Le Cochon, Francois Truffaut's L'enfant sauvage, Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana, Luis Bunuel's Tristana, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's Performance, and Jean Renoir's Le petit theatre de Jean Renoir.  From this year, I really like Robert Altman's MASH and Eric Rohmer's Claire's Knee.  I love Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le cercle rouge.  And my closest runner-up is Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue.  


10/23/11 I watched Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point.  Hints at some fairly large ideas but never quite coheres into anything memorable.  Seems to be a lazy and hazy A.  Far from his great works.  

Short Break

I will be taking a very short break from the countdown.  I will be back with a new post on Monday morning.  Hope everyone is having a great weekend.  I look forward to being back up next week. 

Jeffrey

1969: The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)

1969: The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
I'll never forget when I first saw this.  It was 1995 in St. Louis at the Tivoli Theatre.  I must have gone to something like the 8:00 showing.  I remember going alone, and when it was over, seriously considering staying for the 10:40 show.  I was that blown away.  


The desire to see something immediately for a second time had never happened to me before nor has it happened since.  I guess it's safe to say that the action sequences, particularly the first and the last, were the most exciting pieces of action filmmaking I had ever seen.  They literally showed me another way of doing things.  Peckinpah's combination of different film speeds and offbeat, elliptical editing style were a revelation.  Of course, John Woo, and even Takeshi Kitano and Wong Kar-Wai, have gone on to reference Peckinpah's inventions here, but the original still packs the greatest punch for me.


I also think its syncopated opening is one of the strongest in the history of the medium.  I find myself moved by its themes of friendship.  And the movie looks so real, I feel like I can almost smell it.  


And what can I say about Robert Ryan and William Holden?  The movie almost serves as an argument to cast more of our legends at later stages in their career.  There's simply a depth and effect that come from their presence that the younger guys can never provide.  


Other contenders for 1969: I still have quite a number of titles to see.  These include:  Costa-Gavras' Z, Frederick Wiseman's High School, Robert Bresson's Une femme douce, Frank Perry's Last Summer, Ken Russell's Women in Love, David Lynch's The Grandmother, Nagisa Oshima's Boy, Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates, Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest, Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Budd Boetticher's A Time for Dying, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Katzelmacher, Robert Kramer's Ice, Claude Chabrol's La femme infidele, Andy Warhol's Blue Movie, Richard Lester's The Bed Sitting Room, and Jacques Rivette's L'amour fou.  I need to revisit George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  It's been too long since I've seen it to know where it'd place on this list.  I really like Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.  I love Eric Rohmer's Ma nuit chez Maud and Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows.  And my closest runner-up is Ken Loach's Kes.


7/15/12 I watched Andre De Toth's Play Dirty.  There have been many movies depicting the absurdity of war.  But few ring as truthful as this late film by De Toth.  It's gritty, bleak, and one of these films coming at the end of the Hays Code, where you can smell the feeling of liberation.  A cerebral "man on a mission" with some very intelligent direction from De Toth.

Fun News!

I have two things to report:

1.  Our first, in-person PERIL event is coming up. It will be in Shreveport on Tuesday, March 23rd at 7PM, Starbucks on Line Avenue. I look forward to seeing many of you there.  It will be extremely informal but very fun.

2.  My other blog, "Adventures in Self-Releasing", was just chosen as one of the 50 Best Filmmaker blogs. I thought this was a very cool honor, especially being mentioned along with some of my other favorite blogs.

1968: L'enfance nue (Maurice Pialat)

1968: L'enfance nue (Maurice Pialat)
Maurice Pialat has never really caught on in this country.  Certain of his titles, and he didn't make that many films, remain without distribution in the States.  But according to French cinephiles I know, he is considered the most important French director to emerge post-Nouvelle Vague.  Along with Leos Carax, he's certainly been the most important to me.  


L'enfance nue, Pialat's debut feature, is one of his titles that's not terribly easy to find.  In fact, I've only seen it once and that was at the old Cinematheque, Palais de Chaillot (the namesake of my production company).  With Ken Loach's Kes, it's my favorite film about the vulnerabilities and dangers of childhood.  In typical Pialat fashion, this one's emotionally raw and unsentimental, formally natural and unobtrusive.


Pialat might be too tame formally for the general American public, or his lack of sentimentality might be the turn-off.  Whatever it is, in my book he remains one of the giants of the last fifty years.  An honest, deep, keen filmmaker, a certain Bressonian purity coupled with Nicholas Ray's emotionality.  I can only hope that Pialat will soon get his due stateside.  We've been deprived long enough of this truly great body of work.




Other contenders for 1968: A good number of titles I still need to see.  These include:  Nagisa Oshima's Death by Hanging, John Cassevetes' Faces, Alain Resnais' Je t'aime, je t'aime, Mel Brooks' The Producers, Jean Eustache's La rosiere de pessac, Ingmar Bergman's Shame, Richard Lester's Petulia, Lindsay Anderson's If..., Tomas Gutierrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment, and Orson Welles' The Immortal Story.  Although I have no runners-up this year, I need to revisit Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in the West, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and Stanley Kubrick's 2001. It's been too long since I've seen any of them to know where they'd place on this list.  


5/8/11 I watched Mel Brooks' The Producers.  I loved Gene Wilder in this, and really liked a scene or two.  But otherwise, I didn't find it all that funny and just a little tiresome after awhile.  


5/9/11 I watched John Cassavetes' Faces.  A touch go, for sure.  But Cassavetes definitely is up to some interesting stuff in terms of framing and editing, and he pushes through some cinematic artifice that most people can never completely overcome.  


6/13/11 I watched Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet.  Although the most famous romance ever, it didn't grab me like some other movie romances.  Zeffirelli actually proved most effective for me during a couple of the fight sequences.  His collaboration with the great Nino Rota is also memorable.  

1967: La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer)

1967: La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer)
The funny thing about a list like this is that it somewhat misrepresents my favorite films.  Some years contain three of my all time favorites while others are simply my favorite film from that particular year.  For instance, this Rohmer is not even my favorite film from the director. His 1986 film Summer is.  In fact, it's not even in my top three; my next two favorites are My Night at Maud's and Full Moon in Paris.  Yet, I still really love this film and am happy to see it at the top of my list.  I just wanted to clarify before going on.  


I was so sad to hear of Eric Rohmer's passing a couple of months ago. He represented a certain sophistication, elegance, and consistency of output that is becoming more of a rarity with each passing year.  Many people focus on Rohmer's writing and the natural, real quality of the way his characters speak.  I certainly share in that admiration, but what's always most impressed me is Rohmer's ability with actors.  He's simply able to make them seem more real than everyone else.  Sure, much of this stems from the writing, but Rohmer must also create an environment that makes them feel comfortable, then film them in a way that maximizes his goal of dramatizing real life.   


I'm now two paragraphs in and have yet to mention this year's film. Call it a cop out, but I think as much any director that has ever worked in the medium, there's a great similarity to most of Rohmer's films, so much so that it can be hard to remember one from the other.  The things that stand out to me though about this work are the sexiness of Haydee Politoff, the way that Rohmer handles the beautiful countryside location, and most of all, its wonderful, abrupt ending.   


In highlighting the French New Wave, I've already mentioned the playfulness and beauty of many of the films.  One other aspect that I think is somewhat forgotten is the way these directors were able to create some of the best endings in the history of film.  As opposed to many films nowadays, most of the French New Wave films end five minutes earlier than expected and in completely abrupt and unresolved fashion.  La Collectionneuse is no exception and... 




Other contenders for 1967:  I still need to see several titles.  These include:  Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary, Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort, Marco Bellocchio's China is Near, Dusan Makavejev's Love Affair; or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator, Miklos Jancso's The Red and the White, and Frantisek Vlacil's Marketa Lazarova.  I need to revisit Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour, and Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke as it's been too long since I've seen any of them to know where they'd place on this list.  From this year, I really like Monte Hellman's The Shooting, John Boorman's Point Blank, and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde.  I love Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend, DA Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, and Robert Bresson's Mouchette.  And my closest runner-up is Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise.  


6/9/11 I watched Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort.  Demy definitely has a Technicolor style, wonderful with colors, clothes, sets, and lyrical crane and tracking shots.  But Legrand's music doesn't really do it for me here, and without it, it was hard for me to be completely absorbed by it all.  


6/20/11 I watched Dusan Makavejev's Love Affair; or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator.  Inventive and quite unique in its blending of genres and extreme non-linear narrative.  And some of its sexiness is quite effective.  Overall though more experimental and interesting than fully felt.  

8/26/11 I watched Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary.  A few very memorable scenes like the conversation with the sex-crazed woman.  But overall, just a little too much ambling and mumbling and not enough lyricism or weight.