Favorite five, part 2

As I mentioned during my first entry in this series, I will periodically check in and mention the five films that have most resonated with me of late.  I'm taking in a good number of films at the moment, mostly via Netflix, but among what I've seen in the last month or so, here are the five I've liked the most:

Leo McCarey's Love Affair (Irene Dunne in as moving of a performance as I've seen from her)
Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro (A pretty damn personal film from one of my favorite American filmmakers)
Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (Some interesting spiritual subtext and thematic material)
William Wellman's A Star Is Born (Like the Cukor version, contains some of the most emotional scenes in all of Hollywood)
Ken Burns' Jazz, Disc 1 (For Wynton Marsalis being about as compelling a personality as I've seen in a long time)

It's discoveries like these that make me eager and ready to discover the next five.  Happy viewing to all.

1983: L'argent (Robert Bresson)

1983: L'argent (Robert Bresson)
If you're a Bob Dylan fan (count me among the many), and your introduction to Dylan came by way of his solo work, there is something almost shocking the first time you hear Dylan accompanied by a band. Same with Bresson and his work in color.  By the same I saw this late film in the director's career, I had probably seen six or seven of the director's other films, all in black-and-white.  

With Bresson and color, the formal elements take on a different effect, something slightly more psychedelic than austere.  However, the emotional impact and transcendental qualities are still very much intact.  In fact, along with Pickpocket, my experience with this one was the most powerful of any I have had with Bresson's work.  As always with the French master, the work sneaks up on you, gets under your skin, and leaves you in a different place than any other film work.  

Put this in a small group of Dreyer's Gertrud, Huston's The Dead, Murnau's Tabu, Ford's 7 Women, Becker's Le Trou, and Yang's Yi Yi. In other words, among cinema's greatest of all swan songs.  

Other contenders for 1983: I still have some things to see from this year.  These include: Wim Wenders' Hammett, Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia, Abbas Kiarostami's Fellow Citizen, Charles Burnett's My Brother's Wedding, Bruce Beresford's Tender Mercies, Bill Forsyth's Local Hero, Kon Ichikawa's The Makioka Sisters, Bela Tarr's Almanac of Fall, Andrzej Wajda's Danton, and John Sayles' Baby It's You.  I need to revisit Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy as it's been too long since I've seen it to know where it'd place on this list.  But from this year, I really like Eric Rohmer's Pauline a la plage.  I love Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, Maurice Pialat's A nos amours, Alain Tanner's In the White City, and Jim McBride's Breathless.  And my closest runner-up is Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish.

5/21/11 I watched Bruce Beresford's Tender Mercies.  The film has a wonderful, lived-in look, a very memorable Duvall performance, and a feel for the wide-open Texas countryside that rivals any I've ever seen. But the plotting doesn't always feel organic to me, and there's a lack of regard for any real drama, ultimately leaving the film with a questionable pulse.  

7/7/11 I watched Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy.  A somewhat unusual film in Scorsese's body of work, and a strange, distant look at celebrity.  Might have some interesting things to say but so cold that I really don't care very much.

7/20/11 I watched David Cronenberg's Videodrome.  Incredibly original and confident early flick from the Canadian master. Intriguing, and fairly compelling, but not completely easy to empathize with, very much.  

8/25/11 I watched Bill Forsyth's Local Hero.  Sweet, character study with a lot of heart.  I just wish it had a little more vinegar in it to make its sentimental streak a little more palatable and affecting.

8/28/11 I watched Bela Tarr's Almanac of Fall.  Austere and hermetic.  I never really found my way in.  

10/19/11 I watched Jean-Luc Godard's First Name: Carmen.  There are absolutely some stunning lines and some stunning moments.  And of all the post-sixties work from Godard that I have seen, this is probably my favorite.  However, it still lacks the overall lyricism and vitality of the films of his that I love from the earlier period.  

7/21/12 I watched Tony Silver's Style Wars.  If you grew up with hip-hop like I did, this is one of the great documents of the era.  I first stumbled upon it reading an interview with Michael Rapaport around the release of his Tribe Called Quest doc.  It's a remarkably intimate look at the scene that would, just a year later, receive narrative treatment in the form of Beat Street and Breakin'.  And special mention to that song unspooling over the end credits, a lost gem, Rammellzee and K-Rob's Beat Bop.

6/23/16 I watched Paul Brickman's Risky Business.  Not sure I had ever seen the iconic film in its entirety.  Interesting to see the stylistic similarities to Thief (neon colors, Chicago setting and score courtesy of Tangerine Dream) and some of its thematic likenesses to The Graduate.  Entertaining and slightly more artful than most films of its kind even if not terribly deep or fully satisfying.

8/19/17 I watched Irvin Kershner's Never Say Never Again.  It's pretty tedious Bond even if Connery still looks amazing twenty years later and Basinger is as beautiful as the more beautiful Bond girls.  

2/19/18 I watched Charles Burnett's My Brother's Wedding.  In its subject matter, it could be looked at as an African-American Mean Streets, Pierce resembling Keitel's character and Soldier that of De Niro.  As different as Burnett is from Scorsese, both filmmakers have a special talent at bringing an over photographed city to life in ways we have never seen.  In fact, I would go so far as to call the combination of Burnett's first two features the most singular vision of Los Angeles the cinema has yet produced.  With rhythms as  unusual as Hal Hartley and nonprofessional acting as steadfastly noncommercial as Rossellini, Burnett represents a key stage in the neorealist timeline that history should do its best to remember.  

11/3/18 I watched FJ Ossang's Zona inquinata.  About as great of a mix as I could ever imagine of Boy Meets Girl, Repo Man, and Permanent Vacation.  Absolutely blew my mind with its formal beauty and uninhibited cinematic boldness.  

12/27/21 I watched David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone.  One of the stronger Cronenberg films I have seen where his directorial control is on full display (the atmosphere, the precise framing, the heightened use of music) while retaining a couple of characters we genuinely care for.

12/29/21 I watched John Sayles' Lianna.  It has been a while since I have watched one of Sayles' films.  I forgot how great he is with his actors and how lived-in his scenes look and feel.  What's most remarkable in this entry is Sayles' exploration of lesbianism in the early eighties, a time known in our country for being unusually conservative.

1/5/22 I watched James L Brooks' Terms of Endearment.  The most glaring problem for me is that the film is way overscored.  There are some terrific scenes and the final minutes can't help but move you but I found it far less impressive than Broadcast News.  

2/3/22 I watched Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.  I am still fairly new to Oshima's work, this being only the third or fourth film of his I have seen.  There's an intensity and anger in the films of his I have seen that are visceral and in your face.  Although not the most comfortable viewing experience, it does seem as though Oshima gives us an honest look at the depth of cruelty in war as well as some of the more humanistic experiences that would periodically take place.    

3/29/22 I rewatched Bill Forsyth's Local Hero.  Sweet but ultimately thin and unaffecting character piece.  .

9/30/23 I watched Bob Fosse's Star 80.  Roberts is surprisingly effective as the creepy, controlling boyfriend.  The movie is dark and uncomfortable and aside from Cabaret I continue to have a lukewarm relationship with Fosse as a director.

10/10/23 I watched Victor Erice's El Sur.  It is Erice's most accessible film I have seen to date.  A poetic and beautiful film that primarily explores the relationship between a daughter and her father and the views and feelings the young have for the older generation as they discover their flaws and their humanity.  

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.  

11/17/13 I watched Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career.  Armstrong demonstrates great poetry of feeling and image in this restrained, challenging story.  The chemistry that comes off the screen from Davis and Neill is intoxicating, and although Davis' decisions run counter to where we want the story to go, Armstrong delivers a wonderful statement on artistic sacrifice.  In fact, it must rank up there with the greatest of all filmed illustrations of the life one must lead at times to be true to one's self at the expense of all else including the longing for physical and emotional connection.  

1/9/14 I watched Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: American Cinema of the 70s.  Never as exciting as I want something to be about perhaps my favorite period of all in film.  But I did particularly like hearing Schrader talk about those elements that got lost as postmodern cinema took over - balance, harmony, beauty.

1/9/14 I watched Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: Movies to Change the World.  Of course I loved the section about Wenders.  And I enjoyed his treatment of Ken Russell, Performance, and Walkabout.  New names for me were Mambety, Gerima, and Goren. 

5/17/17 I watched William Richert's Winter Kills.  A New Hollywood film that I had heard about for years features interesting performances from Jeff Bridges and John Huston.  It pretty well sustains its tone of paranoia throughout and contains a couple of interesting scenes including the introduction of Sterling Hayden and the final set piece.  

5/21/17 I watched John Sayles' Return of the Secaucus Seven.  Sayles has never really been my thing and from his first feature here his approach is already pretty well formed.  He has very little cinema style and his films are loose, soft, and even slackerish.  He is not that far from Linklater although Linklater has a better feel for music and a better sense of humor. 

10/28/18 I watched Jeff Stein's The Kids Are Alright.  A fascinating, loose doc on The Who that captures their talent, their members and most important their personality. 

1/16/20 I watched Paul Schrader's Hardcore.  Schrader is tough for me and this one I liked but didn't love.  I deeply admire his intelligence and really like a couple of films.  At this point I would have to say Affliction is my favorite.  His films are always personal and never feel compromised.  But maybe it is their complete lack of humor that I find a little off-putting or perhaps it is some of his stylistic choices that seem curious, like his choice of music here.  

7/26/20 I watched Albert Brooks' Real Life.  Maybe interesting in how prescient it is with regards to reality TV but otherwise I got weary pretty quickly watching it.

3/7/21 I watched Paul Vecchiali's Corps a Coeur.  The main actor Nicolas Silberg bears an uncanny resemblance to early Brando.  He is perfectly cast and dressed in wonderful clothes throughout.  This was my first Vecchiali film and it all feels like it has a bit of a fever.  It is keyed up and the logic often scattered like the way one thinks when one is suffering in bed with a high temperature.  The direction reminded me a bit of Pialat's hard-nosed naturalism - it is intimate and raw yet seen with the eye of a painter.   

10/31/21 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's First Case, Second Case.  From a standpoint of morals and ethics, it got me thinking about Rohmer.  But it is far more political than the type of films the French filmmaker tended to make.  The whole film is a metaphor for the state of Iran at the time.  I just wish I better understood the situation to fully appreciate Kiarostami's setup.  

12/12/21 I watched Robert Altman's A Perfect Couple.  Altman's effort at a new type of musical fell flat for me as the music was grating and never moved me.  

12/12/22 I watched Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack.  Reminds me of other films that play more as two halves than one whole - films like The Passenger, Tropical Melody and Mulholland Drive.  While the first half does a good enough job setting our world and the cast of characters surrounding Jack, it is the second part where Bogdanovich really impresses.  He uses silence and several inspired set pieces - the scheme to take down the senator, William's death, the kidnapping of Jack - to masterfully stretch time and remind us he could in moments rise to the level of the great filmmakers of his generation. 

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.  

8/17/13 I watched Mike Hodges' Pulp.  Like a French New Wave noir without the beauty or the genius.  Not my thing at all.  

10/5/13 I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy.  There is a lurid, unhinged brutality on display that seemed restrained during the Hays period.  The effect of this blunt approach is of interest in its raw, primal effect, but it also seems to diminish some of the feelings that come from the best Hitch when he was forced to be more suggestive and subversive.

8/3/14 I watched Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris.  Ambitious and impressive but an elusive as much as a moving experience for me.  Tarkovsky is heady and seems to prefer symbolism and opaqueness over any kind of even somewhat easily readable viewer relationship.  

11/2/15 I watched Maurice Pialat's Nous ne viellirons pas ensemble.  One of the last of the Pialat features I had never seen, Pialat impresses again by his strong, uncompromising approach to the medium.  A French friend of mine once mentioned how revered Pialat was for his editing.  I had never paid real attention to the editing until now but here it is remarkable - forceful, edgy, propulsive and completely a piece with the rest of Pialat's form. Also Pialat draws Jean as a character with such unpredictable rage that the final minutes simmer and vibrate with such potential violence.  But Pialat runs counter to the catharsis Scorsese offers Bickle and through great restraint trails off instead into a soft and wistful coda of an equal but different power.  

11/16/16 I watched Herbert Ross' Play It Again, Sam.  Feels like a very good, early Allen film even though he did not direct.  What was most impressive to me here was how great Allen was as a physical comedian.    

5/18/17 I watched Robert Culp's Hickey & Boggs.  It feels like a more sensitive Walter Hill film with pretty good Hill-esque set pieces and that buddy thing that Hill really excelled at.  Cosby certainly proves he could have been a strong dramatic movie actor if he continued on that path and Culp makes some very interesting choices that add a moral and emotional weight to what could have been shallow genre fare.  

5/27/17 I watched Sydney Pollack's Jeremiah Johnson.  It feels of the era of New Hollywood, loose, a bit elliptical, and all somewhat hazy.  Pollack really has no rigor or style but the film has a nice connection to the mountains.  As a fable or myth, it works and as a film about the white man and the Indian it has a place of value in the Western genre.

7/18/17 I watched Michael Ritchie's The Candidate.  Further proof of the Ritchie style being similar to Altman and his loose, freewheeling 70s work.  Redford puts in another confident, affecting low-key performance and the surrounding cast, particularly Boyle and Garfield, are unusually strong.  Ritchie surely deserves a much larger reputation.

11/26/17 I watched Billy Wilder's Avanti!  It is the work of a great artist, later in career, working at a time when a youth style has taken over that is so different and foreign it threatens to immediately render the director archaic or a fake depending on the approach he chooses.  Aside from his nod to 8 1/2 (and perhaps to all of the new generation's emphasis on style) in the film's prelude, Wilder confidently and intelligently chooses to stay "classic" and the film derives its power by this bold stance.  It is like Dreyer post Nouvelle Vague giving us the UFO that is Gertrud or Bresson adding color but perhaps nothing else that is stylistically new to his oeuvre in 1983.  Of course, also giving Avanti! its charge is the effect of classic elements in the hands of a master - deeply felt acting (I can't remember liking Lemmon better), intricately designed narrative and long scenes, built and captured slowly, eloquently and artfully.

12/2/17 I watched Michael Ritchie's Prime Cut.  A pretty good Lee Marvin performance can't really save this lazy, uneven noir from Ritchie.  Of all Ritchie's films I have seen so far, this is my least favorite.

12/3/18 I watched Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid.  My second experience with May's work after watching A New Leaf a couple of days ago.  Richer and deeper in its study of character than May's debut, it proves again the bold and unique place she occupied within American cinema in the seventies.  Her style, though not entirely lacking, definitely seems much less important to her than the words, the acting and the opportunity to burrow deep inside the skin of her cast.  May's power of observation and ability to capture small details is remarkable, whether it's the egg salad on Lila's face or the way Kelly absorbs the conversation when Lenny first confesses to her father that he's married.    

3/26/20 I watched Blake Edwards' Julie.  Interesting as a look at a celebrity, mid-life, trying to balance family and career goals.  

4/3/20 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's Breaktime.  What jumped out at me the most was Kiarostami's beautiful framing, camera placement and camera movement.  There are elegant tracking shots, zooms and pans and already, with his second film, Kiarostami's naturalism and poetic eye are clear.  

7/5/20 I watched Christopher St. John's Top of the Heap.  An inventive and substantive film that deserves to be more a part of the dialogue.  I was not always fully engaged but I appreciated St. John's acting, creativity and occasional burst of brilliance.

8/15/20 I watched Robert Frank's Cocksucker Blues.  An interesting, behind the scenes look at The Rolling Stones.  I'm not sure the version I saw is as good as it gets (sound was not good and visuals were pretty fuzzy) so it's hard for me to know if it's as special as its reputation.

1/2/21 I watched Liane Brandon's Betty Tells Her Story.  It is an interesting cinematic work.  In less than twenty minutes, Brandon says a lot about our inability to tell the same story the same way twice and, more important, to feel the same way about something from one hour to the next.   

12/30/21 I watched Joseph Mankiewicz's Sleuth.  The performances are sublime and the choice of material assures it as one of the most idiosyncratic final films in the history of cinema. 

Some of My Favorite Endings

Inspired by Greg Ferrara's wonderful post this morning over at Cinema Styles (http://cinemastyles.blogspot.com/2010/01/monday-morning-mumbles.html), I've decided to put together a list of my favorite endings. Someone I was sitting with on a panel once said, "You really write a movie for the final five minutes.  And if those moments work, then everything else just kinda falls into place."  I never really articulated it in that way.  But I do have to admit, the final five minutes of a movie are more important to me than everything else.  

Here's my list, as I can best remember them (not in any specific order):

The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)
The Soft Skin (Francois Truffaut, 1964) 
Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975)
King of New York (Abel Ferrara, 1990)
La chienne (Jean Renoir, 1931)
Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma, 1993)
The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983)
Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994)
Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970) 
Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)
The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)
Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)

Favorites Update and A Little More Lullaby

A week ago, I started a new series entitled "Favorites of My Favorites" where I list, in preferential order, the films of my favorite filmmakers. So far, I've done an entry on Jean Renoir, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Mann, and Leos Carax.  Next up are Brian De Palma, David Lynch, Abel Ferrara (I already can't wait for the comments on that one), and Jim Jarmusch.  Others as I look ahead will be Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Bresson, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Francois Truffaut, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, George Cukor, Jacques Becker, Orson Welles, Michael Cimino, Maurice Pialat, Wim Wenders, Abbas Kiarostami, Jonathan Demme, Sam Peckinpah, Alfred Hitchcock, Kenji Mizoguchi, Roberto Rossellini, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ernst Lubitsch, Robert Altman, William Friedkin, and Fritz Lang.

I expect the next few entries up in the next couple of weeks.  And then the others will follow throughout the rest of the year.

Also, just in, another really nice piece on The Last Lullaby:

http://dvdlateshow.blogspot.com/2010/01/last-lullaby.html

Favorites of My Favorites #4 -- Leos Carax

The complicated case of Leos Carax.  And how someone this talented could only churn out four features in the last twenty-six years.  In that way, he reminds me a little of Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Cimino, two guys that have perhaps slipped from the level at which they were once working.

How does this happen?  We really didn't see it during the Golden Age. As they got older, Hawks, Ford, Walsh, and Cukor all continued to make films at a pretty good clip and at a very high level.

But for Coppola, Cimino, and then Carax, it was different.  They didn't have the old studio system to reign them in.  They could risk it all on one project, and each one of them did -- Coppola (Apocalypse Now), Cimino (Heaven's Gate), and Carax (The Lovers on the Bridge). And I'm not sure any of them has fully recovered.

Carax was only 24 when he made Boy Meets Girl.  It's rare for someone so young to have the opportunity to make a film at this level.  The result, a film that captures the early, angst-filled twenties as well as any I've ever seen.

Carax's work is challenging, at times abstract in a way that can frustrate audiences looking for a more conventional narrative.  But he has a special gift for being lyrical, taking the heavy machinery of moviemaking and making it feel like it's floating at times.  He's still one of our greatest descendants of Godard.  And I sure hope we'll at least get another four features from him before he decides to hang up the gloves.

LEOS CARAX (in preferential order)
1.  Boy Meets Girl
2.  Mauvais Sang
3.  The Lovers on the Bridge
4.  Pola X
5.  Tokyo!  (Merde) watched 1/12/10

Never seen:
Tokyo! (short)
Strangulations blues (short)
Sans titre (short)

Coppola, Zoetrope, and The Black Stallion

I'm sure there are many of us.  But I'm definitely one of those that wishes Francis Ford Coppola made more movies and (maybe even more important) that his dreams for his Zoetrope Studios were still very much alive and well.  He desperately wanted to bottle that potent seventies concoction -- personal filmmmaking with Hollywood-size budgets.  But instead, after a few budget overruns and box office disappointments, One from the Heart being the worst, his dreams fizzled out pretty quickly.

Yet, at least we're still left with a few signs of what Coppola might have produced if someone had reigned him in a bit more.  And one of the best examples of this, I think, is The Black Stallion.  I saw the film as a kid and could clearly remember sections here and there.  But this is the first time I've watched it again in twenty-five years, owing the re-visit to David Thomson and his excellent book "Have You Seen...?"

The Black Stallion is everything you probably remember -- a feel-good fable with a beautiful horse and a kid you wish you could be.  But there are also some things you might not remember.  It sports some very brave cinematography by Caleb Deschanel.  He's not afraid to go deep into the blacks (for instance, the scene when they show off the horse hoping to land a spot in the big race).  And, as a result, Deschanel pulls off this unusually hazy, magic quality that I would imagine is exactly what he was hoping to achieve.  Also backing Stallion is one of the greatest sound technicians in the history of the medium, Alan Splet.  Splet was David Lynch's regular collaborator before passing away in the early nineties.  All you have to do is listen to the symphony of sounds he creates in the final race to get a sense of Splet's special talent. 

I even felt a part of Coppola here.  He's produced many films throughout his career.  But this is the first one where I could really feel his directorial hand, too (in a good way).  I'm not even sure what it is exactly.  But in the final race, once the flashbacks kick in, I entered that Apocalypse Now trance-like state that Coppola pulls off so well in his own 1979 film.

Zoetrope might not have lasted.  But I have to give it to Coppola.  He bet it all more than once in his career.  And our 114 year-old medium is so much better because of it.