1998: The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)

1998: The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick) 

What an amazing, unparalleled career to examine, the filmmaking career of Terrence Malick.  Two critically-revered films and then nothing for twenty years.  I'll never forget when I first saw this one.  It was at my single favorite theater in all of Los Angeles, the Mann Village Theatre.  It was the middle of the day, I was up in the balcony, and completely mesmerized.  

I'm in a small, small camp, it seems, that considers this their favorite of all of Malick's films.  Though his style always interests me, I like the way it works best in this one.

When I think about The Thin Red Line, I think about one of the most visually stunning films I've ever seen.   John Toll's colors and Malick's unmatched relationship to nature combine to create an experience that had synapses firing for me that I never knew existed.  

Malick, like David Lynch, has such a liberated style you almost feel like you're in one of their meditation strands as their films unfold.  A brilliant return for an American original.  Malick is a real force, and I'm excited to see where he continues to go.  

Other contenders for 1998:  From this year, I still have some things to see.  These include:  Manoel de Oliveira's  Inquietude, Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema, Jacques Rivette's Secret defense, Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco, John Madden's Shakespeare in Love, and Patrice Chereau's Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train. At some point I'll need to revisit Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration as I struggled it with it the one time I saw it.  But from this year, I really like Warren Beatty's Bulworth, Olivier Assayas' Late August, Early September, Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66, Tony Barbieri's One, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Flowers of Shanghai, The Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski, and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.  I love Erick Zonca's The Dreamlife of Angels, Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters, and Hirokazu Koreeda's After Life. And my closest runner-up is Eric Rohmer's An Autumn Tale.

9/23/11 I watched Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco.  I like Stillman and really love Metropolitan.  But here his characters and their intellectual rants grow tiresome after awhile, and the whole world begins to reek of artifice rather than as some expert, personal style.  

4/19/14 I watched Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: New Boundaries: World Cinema in Africa, Asia & Latin America.  I enjoyed seeing Kiarostami of course and highlights for me were hearing both Tsai Ming-liang and him interviewed. 

10/17/18 I watched Tamara Jenkins' Slums of Beverly Hills.  Some really impressive acting, particularly Tomei, but an indy that feels very much of its time which in this case is not a great thing.

3/21/20 I watched David Gordon Green's Physical Pinball.  Interesting to see Green without Orr.  There is a little bit of poetry here but it is nowhere near what he would achieve two years later with George Washington.  

2/8/21 I watched John Dahl's Rounders.  Every now and then I will see a reconsider film, a movie that forces me to rethink how I feel about an actor, a director or several of its cast or crew.  Although adhering closely to the path set out by The Hustler and countless other films about redemption, and certainly not seeking to be high art, Rounders made me for the first time rate Dahl and Norton, both of whom I have always felt lukewarm about.  It has to be the greatest film yet about poker.  

11/25/21 I watched Julio Medem's Lovers of the Artic Circle.  The romantic sweep hint at some of cienma's greatest stories of romance.  But Medem's style is a bit too heavyhanded to earn all of the genuine beats of the story.

7/11/22 I watched Samira Makhmalbaf's The Apple.  I am still relatively unfamiliar with Makhmalbaf's films and her father's work compared to Kiarostami.  As a debut feature, it is remarkable.  It would be fair to say its approach appears neorealist - natural locations, seemingly non-professional actors, humanistic gestures, very little non-diegetic music and simple stories delivered as parables.  It is heavier on the symbolism than in Kiarostami's work or the early neorealist films from Rossellini, De Sica or Visconti.  It is also darker and engaged with more emotionally disturbing material than any work I can recall from the aforementioned filmmakers.  

9/14/23 I watched Ziad Doueiri's West Beirut.  In its best moments, it gets at the wonderful balance that neorealism struck infusing the heaviness of history's tragic moments with the richness of lives and humanity.  But it lacks neorealism's rigor and I never fully felt the characters' plight.

10/13/23 I watched Cauleen Smith's Drylongso.  Extremely small budget filmmaking that at times rises to impress and move.  But I struggled with the main actress (she just came across as too young to me compared to the others around her) and I was never fully immersed in Smith's world and emotions.

1934: L'atalante (Jean Vigo)

1934: L'atalante (Jean Vigo)

I first saw this at one of my favorite theaters in the world, Cafe des Images in Herouville-Saint-Clair, just outside Caen, France.  When it was over, I knew I'd seen something very special.  Vigo died when he was only 29 -years-old but forever left his mark on the medium -- this film ranks up there for me as one of the two or three most poetic films in the history of cinema.  

I think it's fairly easy to create a poetic moment in a film.  Usually, you just have to use slow-motion and some evocative music, and presto, you've probably created a moment of poetry.  But, sustaining this lyricism and poetry for the entire duration of a narrative film is nearly impossible.  For me, the only other films I can think of that accomplish this are Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, some Tarkovsky, The Thin Red Line, The Night of the Hunter, and maybe McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Without Vigo, I'm not sure we'd have two of my other favorite filmmakers: Leos Carax and Jim Jarmusch (I'm not positive about Carax, but I've read where Jarmusch has cited this film as a major influence.)  Vigo was a master of mood, atmosphere, and creating lasting images.  There's nothing else quite like this film, and it's one I'll continue to re-visit with great enthusiasm as the years pass.

Other contenders for 1934: I'm not without my gaps in this year, as well.  I still need to see Yasujiro Ozu's A Story of Floating Weeds, Ernst Lubitsch's The Merry Widow, Alfred Hitchcock's first The Man Who Knew Too Much, Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress, Raymond Bernard's Les Miserables, Edgar Ulmer's The Black Cat, and Jack Conway, Howard Hawks, and William Wellman's Viva Villa!  I need and plan to re-watch Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century.  For some reason, the first time it didn't have much of an impact.  But there are three other films from this year that did challenge for the top spot. I'm a big fan of the interplay between Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night.  I think Gable's cynicism probably helps offset some of Capra's sentimental tendencies that sometimes rub me the wrong way.  I haven't seen that much of WC Fields, but Norman McLeod's It's a Gift had me laughing as hard as anything I've seen from this period.   And Jean Renoir's Toni is my second favorite film from the director.  But, finally it's L'atalante, with its one of a kind beauty and lyricism, that has the most special place for me this year.

5/30/10 I watched Edgar G Ulmer's The Black Cat.  Features my favorite performance so far from Boris Karloff.  He is just deliciously sinister in it, and it's obvious he's having great fun with the role.  And the film also makes a case for Ulmer being incredibly inventive and having a superb eye.  

6/11/10 I watched Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress.  An epic with a ton of personality and a film with a tremendous reputation. Emotionally, I struggled with it and never fully connected.  But Dietrich is wonderful and von Sternberg pulls out all the stops.  

6/16/10 I watched Raymond Bernard's Les Miserables.  They certainly cut no corners with this 280 minute version of the Hugo novel.  I like some of the characterization we gain in this longer version, when compared to the Richard Boleslawski film of the following year.  But all in all, I felt closer to the characters in the Boleslawski film than in this one.  


6/23/10 I watched Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century.  I had seen it before but couldn't remember it very well.  It's amazing seeing it now to realize how much of a sibling film it is to His Girl Friday.  Both revolve around the male protagonist trying to lure the female lead back into his world through cunning, manipulation, and humor.  Although I prefer Friday (it's one of my all-time favorites), John Barrymore is absolutely incredible here and single-handedly makes it a great film in my book.

7/10/10 I watched Yasujiro Ozu's A Story of Floating Weeds.  It didn't affect me emotionally on the same level as another one of his films I saw recently, I Was Born, But....  However, it still demonstrates Ozu's mastery.  His eye, his feeling for nature, the framing, the cinematography are all otherworldly.  And here, in the final shots, Ozu says so much by saying nothing.   Ozu was still doing silent work when most had moved onto sound.  And his silent films have a poetry about them that is very singular and memorable.  

6/26/11 I watched Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. Some nice, early Hitch touches, and of course Lorre is great.  But some of the plotting feels a little suspect, and doesn't pack the same punch as the remake.  

2/19/17 I watched John Ford's The Lost Patrol.  What I was most struck by, aside from Ford's signature ability to bring out the haunting poetry in natural landscapes, is a certain modern quality to the work.  McLaglen's physicality towards the end does not feel too much different than Pacino in the latter stages of Scarface and the fact that Ford almost never cuts to the opposition gives the film artful restraint that really helps create the effective, ominous atmosphere he sustains throughout.

5/28/18 I rewatched Frank Capra's It Happened One Night.  This film is a marvel.  I loved it the first couple of times I saw it and continue to be astounded by every aspect of it.

1/5/19 I watched Mervyn LeRoy's Heat Lightning.  A noir that stands out the most because it never quite allows you to know what it is or where it is going.  Everything about it just seems a little off, from the gas station location to the actors' faces to the way the camera moves.  I am not sure if it would be considered pre-code but it has a sense of being on the edge and pushing Code boundaries like the other great pre-code cinema I have seen to date.

10/14/19 I watched Ernst Lubitsch's The Merry Widow.  A few great moments like the encounter at Maxim's between Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald but it lacks the overall shape and passion of the greater works by the master filmmaker.

12/27/21 I watched King Vidor's Our Daily Bread.  From a political perspective it was probably an important film, almost propaganda to the American people struggling through The Great Depression.  Visually, it is quite striking as well as is usually the case with Vidor's cinema.

1/9/23 I watched John Ford's Judge Priest.  It's nice to see Ford take on our history, and particularly nice that he's engaged with one of arguably our most shameful moments, our Civil War.  And it's great to see Will Rogers and the strong presence he brought to the screen.  What's less comfortable is what Ford is saying, is he celebrating the Confederacy, challenging our nation's early morals and actions?