1986: Hoosiers (David Anspaugh)

1986: Hoosiers (David Anspaugh)
My most uncharacteristic choice in this entire countdown, and probably the least impressive artistically.  But when it comes to sports movies (and sports were pretty much my life for the first eighteen years), this is the one that moves me the most. 


I don't want to psychoanalyze myself here, but when Jimmy Chitwood says, "There's one other thing: I play, coach stays, he goes, I go", it brings me to tears every time.  It's one of the screen's greatest moments of someone standing up for the underdog, the unconventional, the person who has dared to go against the grain.


I've always been physically slight, and as an independent filmmaker, you certainly spend a good deal of time as the underdog.  We're all trying to beat the machine on some level, and this is one of those movies that always restores my faith a bit.  


It's a pretty good-looking movie with a couple of solid performances from Hackman and Hershey.  But more important, it's a movie.  I love the art film; in fact, it's my favorite kind of movie.  But there's also a time and place where I just want to turn off my brain and be moved. When it comes to those kinds of experiences, this one does the trick as well as any.




Other contenders for 1986: Maybe my favorite year in all of cinema, and yet I still have some things to see.  These include:  Juzo Itami's Tampopo, Edward Yang's The Terrorizer, Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa, John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married, James Ivory's A Room with a View, Hal Ashby's 8 Million Ways to Die, Pedro Almodovar's Law of Desire, Alain Resnais' Melo, and Stephen Frears' Song of Experience.  I really like Oliver Stone's Salvador, Leos Carax's Bad Blood, Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, Michael Mann's Manhunter, and Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It.  I love Ross McElwee's Sherman's March, Abel Ferrara's Crime Story pilot, Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, Jonathan Demme's Something Wild, Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, and David Lynch's Blue Velvet.  And my closest runner-up is Eric Rohmer's Le rayon vert.


11/29/10 I watched Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married.  A strange outing for sure.  But there are a few wonderful performances, including Cage and Barry Miller.  And John Barry's music combines to provide a few depthful, thoughtful moments.  But all in all, Coppola can't bring it all together to achieve maximum resonance.  

4/28/11 I watched Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa.  I've always been a bit lukewarm on Jordan, and this one's no different.  I find his work often a little broad, and at times lacking some formal discipline.  But Hoskins is really strong here, and the milieu often feels fresh and interesting. Just all in all, not more than a decent experience.  

6/26/11 I watched James Ivory's A Room with a View.  Classy and elegant, and quite beautiful to look at.  But the restrained emotions never really bust all the way out, leaving the whole thing feeling a bit hemmed in.  I also at times doubted whether Sands or Bonham-Carter fully had the chops for these roles.  

9/22/17 I watched Howard Deutch's Pretty in Pink.  I actually had never seen this before in its entirety and sure I'm being sentimental, and sure I'm being overly nostalgic, but I think Hughes captured (or formed?) the zeitgeist of that time better than anyone else in American film.  I felt real chemistry whenever Ringwald or McCarthy was on screen and believed the music, the clothes, the colors, the record stores, and pretty much every other great detail of the Hughes world.  

12/19/21 I watched Edward Yang's The Terrorizers.  A Yang film that I did not love, after thinking very highly of Yi Yi and Taipei Story.  I saw A Brighter Summer Day a long time ago and would need to revisit it to know what I think about it.  I love the way The Terrorizers looks, naturalistic but with a painterly esthetic similar to what Hou Hsiao-hsien did in films like Goodbye South, Goodbye.  I also love the way Yang uses sound, the complete absence of non-diegetic music and sound giving prominent treatment like how Kiarostami or Bresson use it.  All in all though, the film lacks the soft humanism of the Yang films I admire most and seems awash in multiple directions and influences and lacking  a clearness of vision.

12/27/21 I watched Andre Techine's Scene of the Crime.  My relationship with Techine's work spans a wide range of emotions.  There are a couple of his films I love and a couple of his films that I hardly feel lukewarm about.  This one has a major reputation, yet I did not care very much about it from a genre standpoint or from the perspective of character.  

12/10/23 I watched Sara Driver's Sleepwalk.  In the look of early eighties NYC, it reminded me most of Jarmusch's Permanent Vacation but I never could fully penetrate it.

6/8/24 I watched Hal Ashby's 8 Million Ways to Die.  A late Ashby with some great performances by Bridges, Garcia and Arquette even if at times it feels unshaped and needlessly meandering.

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. 

4/20/17 I watched Stanley Donen's Two for the Road.  Unfortunately probably my least favorite movie I have ever seen from a director I greatly admire.  Donen is under the influence of the Nouvelle Vague but this time none of it really seems to work.  

7/25/17 I watched Lewis Gilbert's You Only Live Twice.  A fun, Connery Bond film that really benefits from Asian scenery, a tremendous score and a terrific performance by Pleasance as Blofeld.  

3/11/18 I watched Gordon Douglas' Tony Rome.  I was interested after seeing Douglas' The Detective but found this far inferior.  The most memorable aspect was probably Jill St. John but otherwise pretty messy and unsophisticated.

6/4/18 I watched Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies.  Not for the faint of heart, this edgy, unflinching documentary is the debut from the master documentarian Wiseman.  It is more raw, still to this day, than most anything coming out of the American independent cinema.  Wiseman may not be unheralded, but with each of his films, for me his import only grows.  His films get inside their subjects, no less than a Bresson or a Dreyer.  

10/27/18 I watched Jean Rouch's Jaguar.  This one covers very similar territory to Moi, un noir.  The post-dub soundtrack makes for an interesting and unique artifact but was not as impactful for me as some of Rouch's other work.  

6/13/20 I watched Jerzy Skolimowski's Le Depart.  This freewheeling, Nouvelle Vague-type entry with Leaud did very little to keep my attention.  But it did translate the mood of the Nouvelle Vague and its playfulness and youthful drifting.

12/26/21 I watched Mikio Naruse's Scattered Clouds.  It is Naruse's final film and only the third one of his works I have seen.  Naruse continues to intrigue me even though I have yet to fall in love with one of his films.  This one at times reminded me of Sirk's color melodramas and In the Mood for Love with its repetition around a relationship.  Naruse's filmmaking is mostly exquisite, particularly his work with actors and his visual work around wardrobe, framing and set design.  

1/23/22 I watched Jacques Rivette's Jean Renoir le patron.  Not as interesting as some of the other Cineastes de notre temps episodes I have seen.  Most moving is the 2nd part with Michel Simon.  

2/20/22 I watched Lee Man-hui's Homebound.  Not only my first experience with a film by Man-hui but also probably the first Korean film I have seen that came out before 2000.  To summarize it in broad strokes, it feels like a Sirkian melodrama filmed in a more natural New Wave manner.  Yet, Man-hui gives it certain touches that make it distinctive and take it into territory that is neither Sirk nor New Wavish.  I am thinking about some of the ways Man-hui uses sound and music to draw the character of the military husband.  And, the institutional pressures, marriage in this case, feel even more oppressive than we typically experience in one of Sirk's films.          

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

Eric Rohmer

Eric Rohmer passed away today, and I miss him already.  I started making movies because of the French New Wave.  And I continue, to this day, to derive inspiration from the passion and intelligence of this group of filmmakers.

Each filmmaker had their own particular style.  Rohmer was the oldest and acted as the most responsible of all.  He had a very controlled system of working.  He kept his budgets in line with the size of his audiences.  And, as a result, he was able to make movies, so it seemed, whenever he wanted.

Never seen one of his films?  I'd probably start you with Summer (1986) or My Night at Maud's (1969).  Rohmer's films are dialogue-heavy, sophisticated, sensual (in a restrained kinda way), and powerfully observant about the way we act and the way we are.

The history of cinema has lost one of its truly great practitioners today. But he also lived until he was 89 and made films until he was 87. Monsieur Rohmer, really, we should celebrate.   The cinema has been lucky to have you.