Top 15 Movies of 2019

 #50-40

#39-16

If this is the first part of the rankings you're reading, you've missed the back end of the rankings, posted above.  This is part three.  No need to have a long intro, let's get right to it.

#15 Luce

This is a thriller disguised as a commentary on race or a commentary on race disguised as a thriller.  Either way, it all hinges on the performance of Kelvin Harrison, a model student who's pretty much the perfect student in every way.  But there are cracks in the foundation and there are moments where you wonder if he's a sociopath.  He has loving and supportive parents, played by Naomi Watts and Eric Roth, who adopted him when he was a child soldier.  An essay earns the concern of a teacher played by Octavia Spencer, who uses the essay as a pretext to search his locker, where she finds something else.

Without spoiling it, it gets into the demands of the seemingly perfect black All-American student who might feel he has to live up to a certain burden given his race and background.  So you're never sure if this kid is seriously deranged or just a poor guy who has impossible demands for himself.  And the reason you are able to question all this is the seriously excellent performance by Harrison.  It wouldn't work without him at all.

#14 Dark Waters

I'm apparently a sucker for dry legal thrillers.  Back in 2016, Nathanial Rich wrote an article about a lawyer "who became DuPont's worst nightmare."  Funny enough this guy started as a corporate defense lawyer, but was just helping out a family friend, when he discovered much more than he bargained for.  He ends up discovering that the supposedly safe DuPont plant is anything but and that they aren't actually regulated by the EPA for certain dangerous chemicals by a loophole essentially.

And well, then he sues the fuck out of them and it takes forever to get results, and he's still suing DuPont today.  A good look at the truly soulless depths some corporations are willing to go to fuck over anyone just to make a profit and the efforts by one man to make them pay just a portion of what they should.  Any legal thriller requires a lead performance to instantly root for and Mark Ruffalo can seemingly play a likable guy in his sleep.  Anne Hathaway plays a thankless role as his wife and Tim Robbins is better than he needs to be as his boss.  Everyone involved seemed to be disgusted with DuPont's actions and wanted to do this right.

#13 A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

This is described as a biographical film, and it's somewhat of a misleading genre.  Because it's not actually a biography of Fred Rogers.  It's not really even a biography of the man who interviewed him.  Because the character as he exists on screen and played by Matthew Rhys is apparently not all that similar to the real life guy.  There are surface similarities as with any "based on a true story" movies, but do not think of this as inside look into Mr. Rogers.

With that said, I think this is about as good a movie as one about Mr. Rogers will ever be (that's not a documentary at least).  The man just does not lend himself well to being a movie character.  He appears to be as close to a saint as you can get, and that kind of lead character in a movie just isn't interesting.  He's not the lead character though, Lloyd Vogel is.  And Vogel is interesting.  If you've ever seen The Americans, you know how capable Rhys is of trying to repress his emotions while on the verge of tears, a thing he does multiple times in this movie.  And I honestly think it's the best look we'll ever see of Mr. Rogers, with the central question of the movie being "Is he really as good as he seems?"

#12 The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao

The first question I'd have to ask of anyone who asks whether they'd like this movie would be "Have you ever seen My Brilliant Friend?"  After they inevitably answer no, I'd struggle to gauge their interests.  If you have seen that show and like it, you'll like this movie.  There are some similarities.  It looks at two young sisters, who through a tragedy of fate, end up separated at a young age.  One sister comes to think her sister abandoned her, the other sister has no idea where she is or if she's even alive.

This movie would not exist if social media were a thing in the 1950s.  In case you think all social media is bad.  The two sisters just have no way of contacting each other or even knowing where they are.  One forms her own life, disconnected from her family.  The other never stops searching.  Invisible Life won the Un Certain Regard from the Cannes Film Festival, which an award for films with unusual styles and non-traditional stories.  It's not only a look at the sisters, it's a look at growing up as a woman in a patriarchal and repressive society.  Like My Brilliant Friend, which I also recommend.

#11 The Nightengale

I could describe the plot of this movie to you and you'll probably go in thinking it's a much more fun movie than it is.  That's because it's essentially a revenge movie.  But unlike Django Unchained or many other revenge movies, revenge does not seem fun.  It's set in the early 1820s in what is now Tasmania, but was then an island for convicts.  This was a time directly preceding the "Black War" which was a war between European colonists and Aboriginal Australians.  And hoo boy.  The film does not shy away from the realities of the racism that it probably brought at the time.

Claire, a convict from stealing, was sold into "indentured servitude" but her time ran out six months ago and the lieutenant makes it clear it's more like slavery, because he needs to actually release her from servitude and he won't.  And well, let's just say the lieutenant is very much the bad guy and kicks the plot in motion.  And this needs to come with a huge, huge warning to know what you're getting into.  Because you'll know what I'm talking about 25 or so minutes in the movie when you'll need to pause, walk around, and maybe even give up watching.  It's not exploitative violence, but it is brutal to watch at times.  Hell of a follow-up to The Babadook from Jennifer Kent (but VERY different).

#10 American Factory 

Guys, I'm sorry if you're a fan of corporations.  But you need to snap out of it.  Watch The American Factory, which looks at a Chinese company who bought out an abandoned General Motors plant in Ohio.  The Chinese company thinks this is a good idea, because American laws are a fucking joke in some places and they can make more money than they would in China.  The filmmakers were granted unprecedented access because this was supposed to be a feel good thing.

Well, it sure wasn't.  Chinese workers, American workers, the theme of this movie was that the working class is the one who gets fucked.  The leaders of the corporation that run the company look very bad in this movie - they would never have approved the access if they saw this coming.  If you think this movie is just a commentary on how Chinese companies are bad, you seriously missed the point of this movie.  The best part is that the documentary doesn't have talking heads explain this to you, they just let the results speak for itself.

#9 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I'm very glad I watched this in theaters.  It was a blast.  I can't honestly say that I would have liked this movie less if I hadn't, but being with the crowd towards the end made the theater experience totally worth it.  The audience reaction was great.  At this point, you either like Quentin Tarantino or you don't.  You're probably familiar with his style, his movies, and you can get a sense of whether or not you're in - or you're out.

When the Sharon Tate murder was announced to be the subject of his next movie, I had serious doubts at how Tarantino would pull it off.  And to my great surprise, he not only pulled it off, I actually think he helped you realize the true extent of the tragedy of what happened through how he did it.  Sharon Tate, for large portions of this movie, seems to just be in it because they cast Margot Robbie.  I do wonder what your reaction to this movie would be without knowing the backstory - someone at some point will experience that movie without knowing the backstory - and I think they're going to be seriously confused, because you NEED that knowledge for her story to make sense.

#8 Jojo Rabbit

I had the pleasure of watching this twice, and it wasn't until my second viewing that this movie really clicked for me.  Wish I had the time to do that for every movie, but at least it happened for a movie I initially under-appreciated.  And I think maybe that's why its Metacritic is only 58?  I don't think my score would be that high after my first viewing if I'm being completely honest, so I wonder if that's part of it.

It was clearly appreciated by the Oscars, which I find interesting because if it wasn't necessarily well-reviewed (though hardly panned), and it wouldn't really seem to be an Oscar type movie.  Nonetheless, I think this movie mashes tones pretty well, with the performances help the comedy land in a terrible situation.  Specifically, Taiki Waititi as Hitler is one part that really helps give the movie it's satirical tone.  In fact, I actually wonder if this movie even works without his performance it's so essential.

#7 Little Women

Little Women is a movie that has been adapted many, many times.  Here's how many times it's been adapted.  It's been a silent film twice, it was adapted as soon as sound came to movies in 1933, and then had a adaptation in color 1949.  Not until 1994 was it adapted again until 2018 with a contemporary re-telling and then finally the Greta Gerwig version on this list.  It will surely keep being adapted until the end of time.  And I confess the Gerwig version is my first here.  I've never even read the book.  So I essentially learned the plot of this for the first time watching the 2019 version.

Did this impact how much I liked it?  Who's to say?  I think I'll have seriously trouble liking the older versions.  The '33, '49, and '94 versions are all on classic film lists and I feel like it's going to be tough jumping from a modern filmmaker who has some sort of pulse on what modern audiences like to older filmmakers who weren't thinking how audiences would respond beyond that specific year.  But that's a worry for the future.

#6 Booksmart

It's seriously hard to avoid the Superbad comparisons.  But I mean that truly as a compliment as Superbad is one of the few comedies from its time to hold up.  And it certainly doesn't help that Beanie Feldstein is Jonah Hill's sister.  I've only watched this once, but like Superbad, I feel like this is a movie that will be endlessly rewatchable.

The plot differs from Superbad slightly.  The two high schoolers are goodie two shoes who realize when they're about to graduate that they haven't really experienced high school - they've never gone to parties or done anything even remotely that they weren't supposed to.  So they have one night to do it.  Joined by Feldstein is Kaitlyn Dever, truly great as a child actress on Justified who seems to have not lost the touch for acting that some child actors do.  Thankfully.

#5 Honeyland

This is another accidentally great documentary.  It was planned as a short film about a region surrounding a river when they met a lone beekeper who is able to make a living by selling honey.  She has a rule.  She takes half for herself, half for the bees.  Take too much, the bees can't live, it hurts you long-term.  Well while the filmmakers were there, a seemingly nice, crowded family moves next door.  They ignore her advice.

And the unplanned documentary turns into a commentary at large of humans and the planet, who disregard it to make a buck because they have to.  If this wasn't a documentary, this movie would work just about as well - the fact that it's actually a documentary is insane because how well the movie works as a narrative by itself.  And the movie is so, so beautiful.  Just look at the trailer and you'll see what I mean.  It's no wonder they went there to shoot a short film - I'm just glad they ended up with more than that.

#4 1917

I suppose me writing this now is timely, because I'm going to end up watching zero 2020 films in theaters.  And that's a shame, because this movie, along with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, are two movies that I think would have less of an impact on me were I to watch it at home.  Something about the theater experience forces me to get lost in the movie.  The moviemaking magic of 1917 worked completely on me.  At the end, when he's running, I can't even describe the feeling it had on me.

But I don't want to diminish 1917 by saying that.  Because I could have said the same thing about Dunkirk.  Except I watched Dunkirk at home.  And its impact on me was no less effective and I'd find a hard time thinking it would be more effective in theaters.  Sometimes when it works, it works.  And as far as the "gimmick" of following the characters in real time with one, prolonged shot - well I'll put it this way: I watched this with my dad, who didn't even notice that, so it's not distracting to say the least.

#3 Parasite

I've mentioned before in my list that the burden of high expectations sometimes can ruin a movie for me.  Ruin might be a bit strong, but I'm always looking for the thing that will blow me away.  This was not an issue with Parasite, a movie I did have high expectations for, but which managed to still blow me away.  I think, when recommending movies to friends, keep in mind which movies might be hurt by raised expectations and which will live up to them, and keep in mind their tastes, because I am always surprised at how much expectations impact my enjoyment of a film.

This is another movie about our times, which even though it's set in a different country, could just as easily apply to America.  What I especially liked was that the wealthy family wasn't actually mean, they in fact would think of themselves as generous and nice, but that their wealth put them so far out of touch of the poorer family that it's impossible for them to truly see their struggle or their privilege for what it is.

#2 Knives Out

You know what puts this movie over the top for me?  For being a simple murder mystery - well it's not simple actually - but for seemingly being a fun murder mystery, there's a nice message about immigrants.  The moment the Thrombey family turns truly villainous is the moment that Michael Shannon's character threatens deportation to Ana de Armas.  And suddenly, this movie became more than just a complex and fun murder mystery. 

And yet the sense of fun is always there.  Rian Johnson managed something truly difficult.  He managed to say something while making an audience friendly movie that appeals to everyone.  The dense among the moviegoers will not really even pick up on the theme even though it's not exactly in the background, but if you're at all paying attention to the movie beyond a surface level, you see it.  And that's what turns the movie for me from fun to one of the best of 2019.

#1 The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Before I compiled my list, I knew this would be my #1 movie of 2019.  It's the only thing I knew.  I talked about expectations above.  This is the type of movie that, if you were to watch it based on me saying it's the best movie of the year, you'd probably be underwhelmed.  It's not that type of movie.  Some movies can withstand high expectations, I don't think this is one of them.  And I'm speaking for myself too.  I had no expectations going into this movie.  If I did, I don't think it'd be my #1 movie.  I am aware this may not make sense.

That's just a long-winded way of saying: please temper your expectations watching this movie.  I want you to love this movie like I do, but am worried you'll keep waiting for the moment it becomes the #1 movie.  And the longer the movie goes on, the more you wonder why exactly is it that high, and by the time the movie can theoretically deliver on that promise, you're much to disappointed for it to course correct.  This is all in theory anyway.

The soundtrack is my favorite of the year.  In fact, I think the soundtrack is a large reason it's here.  Because the images and the music together can make you emotional by itself.  I'm hesitant to recommend a song before you see the movie, because hearing the song for the first time in the movie is part of the power, but I'd recommend the movie just for the music itself.

In the first half, one thing I'll say is that it's clear the director is somewhat showing his abilities off - he uses every filmmaking trick he has up his sleeve.  By the second half, he's gotten that out of his system and makes only right choices.  But honestly the tricks are still good filmmaking - it's not like too much editing or something truly distracting - you just notice he's trying to direct the hell out of this movie.  There are worse things.

I could tell you the plot, but it truly doesn't do the movie justice.  The plot does not sound like a great movie.  A man tries to reclaim his old house, which is now so ridiculously out of his price range that he could ever afford it.  And when the old tenants move, for a moment, he can live there as a squatter.  A truly great performance from Jonathan Majors, who plays a very different type of character here than he did on Lovecraft Country.

In the future, I'll probably just stick to a top 15 or top 20.  But this was an interesting experiment.

Best Movies of 2019: #39-16

#50-40

If this is the first part of the rankings you're reading, you've missed the back end of the rankings, posted above.  This is part two.  No need to have a long intro, let's get right to it.

#39 Bait

This is an utterly fascinating film to watch, because stylistically, it's filmed like it was made in the 1920s or 1930s.  It's kind of eerie.  Mark Jenkin, writer-director, used an old timey camera to film it and the whole movie feels stuck out of time.  Fair warning, if you're not familiar with what a movie from that time looks like, well you may be seriously off-put by the movie.  So it's not for everyone.

#38 Toy Story 4

This is, in my opinion, clearly the worst of the Toy Story movies but much better than a fourth movie has any right to be at the same time.  So you probably have a sense of your interest in this movie before you've ever seen it, and you'd probably be right.

#37 Atlantics

It is hard to describe this film, because it's both a love story and a ghost story.  But because it features characters of lower socioeconomic background, it's also in some ways a social commentary as well.  It won the Cannes Grand Prix award which is essentially "the second place award."

#36 High Flying Bird

I actually wrote my thoughts on High Flying Bird during my Soderbergh marathon.  I felt it was a good commentary on modern sports and is sort of a sneaky caper movie - the plot is essentially the agent maneuvering things the way he wants and to do so, he has to pull a con of sorts.

#35 Corpus Christi

The Polish selection for the Best International Feature Film, Corpus Christi has a bit of an outlandish premise which apparently isn't as outlandish in Poland.  A man with a criminal past poses as a priest for a small village.  The act works because the fake priest takes it extremely seriously and sincerely, and the lead performance goes a long way towards making this movie work as well as it does.

#34 The Lighthouse

Is there currently a genre or category for a good movie that has essentially no rewatchability?  There should be.  The Lighthouse is kind of like Bait in the sense that it's meant to evoke an earlier time, but unlike Bait, The Lighthouse is clearly filmed in a way where only someone in 2019 could film it - the cinematography could only be modern it's so beautiful looking.

#33 Ford v Ferrari

This movie is too long.  There's no getting around that.  It's not really a premise that supports a 150 minute runtime.  Aside from that, it's a pretty good movie.  Matt Damon and Christian Bale plus some well filmed race sequences keep your attention for most of the story.  But it should seriously be about two hours.

#32 Ad Astra

You know when I started Ad Astra, I was not totally encouraged.  It gave me more of a Terrance Malick vibe than I liked.  Which for the people who don't know, I don't think Malick films very much.  But to my surprise, I ended up liking it and appreciating it.

#31 Give Me Liberty

Full disclosure: I watched this movie without subtitles.  More than half the characters spoke Russian.  Most of them were there purely to annoy and complicate the driver's life, and not actually essential dialogue.  You got the gist of what they were saying because the driver would respond to them in English (or not at all).  You'd be surprised how much you can pick up without subtitles if one side is speaking English.

#30 The Art of Self-Defense

You have to prepare yourself for the fact that this is a black comedy and as such adjust your wavelength of sorts.  Jesse Eisenberg plays essentially a loser who turns to karate after getting beaten up and nearly killed.  Problem is that the karate place he turns to... is run by a truly shining example of toxic masculinity.  I like where this movie ends up if you're one to be worried about that.

#29 The Report

This is positively Soderbergh-esque dealing straight with the facts and dispensing any romance.  Which makes sense because Scott Z Burns has written a few movies directed by Soderbergh.  This movie dispenses with romances or anything extraneous.  It just deals with an FBI agent who tries to investigate the CIA's use of torture after 9/11.  For simply remaining informed, this is a must-watch.  It works as a movie in my opinion too. 

#28 Diego Maradona

I confess: I am not remotely anything close to a soccer fan, so much so that I didn't really know who Diego Maradona was.  I've heard the name, but definitely did not associate him with someone as good as he is.  Anyway, this focuses on his years at S.C.C. Napoli, but it does cover essentially his whole life.  I'm not sure how good this is for people who knew all this shit before, but I found it all compelling.

#27 The Mustang

Feel free to read what this movie is about, because it more or less does exactly what you think it will do.  A convict with anger issues engages in a therapy program centered around the rehabilitation of mustangs.  Sometimes, when something is done well, it doesn't matter that it's clichéd.  The performance of Matthias Schoenaerts certainly gives is A game.

#26 Pain and Glory

Another Oscar nominated International Feature Film, this is from acclaimed director Pedro Almodóvar, but this is my first ever movie I've seen from him.  He uses frequent collaborator Antonio Banderas, who got nominated for an Oscar for his performance.  I last saw this in February so my specific memory of the movie is not as good as most of the movies on this list unfortunately.

#25 The Farewell

Another movie that is written and directed by the same person - is this becoming more common or something?  Anyway, this is from Lulu Wang and as I understand it, is partially autobiographical, or at least inspired by her own life.  Which shows in the final product as it feels very real.

#24 Uncut Gems

This movie made me feel exactly what it wanted to feel which was stressed out for two hours.  In fact, my one complain about this movie is that it's too long.  Just speaking personally, a film that is designed to have you stressed the whole time seems like a movie that should be about an hour and a half.  Over two hours is asking a lot.

#23 Midsommar

I watched Midsommar before I watched Hereditary.  I did not like Hereditary.  But I liked Midsommar quite a bit, which is saying something for a guy who doesn't particularly like horror movies (I'm really trying horror fans).  I enjoyed how this could be framed as a woman moving on from a terrible boyfriend to find her sense of self if you ignore all the horror trappings.

#22 The Peanut Butter Falcon

This is the feel good movie of feel good movies.  It would be higher but I did not care for the ending all that much.  There's a specific thing I don't like about it where the movie goes from realism to fantasy, but otherwise the movie will put a smile on your face.

#21 The Vast of the Night

This is the epitome of why execution is so much more important than the premise.  Because this premise is not all that spectacular or original.  But hell if Andrew Patterson doesn't direct the hell out of it.  There's a few long takes that are incredible.  Some people are put off by the long stretches where nothing necessarily happens - speaking specifically of the beginning which is one of those long takes, but it helps set the mood and give a sense of place.

#20 Marriage Story 

Another movie where - sorry just watched it a while ago and don't have as much to say.  I watched most of the Oscar nominated stuff back in February and early March.  I'm sure you've seen this.  Well maybe the premise doesn't appeal to you and I'm not here to convince you because it's really about how divorce is ugly no matter the intentions.

#19 The Cave

Now this is confusing.  There were two movies called The Cave in 2019.  I'm speaking of the documentary, which is a look at a female physician in a makeshift hospital during the Syrian Civil War.  If you want a personal look at the Syrian Civil War to see both innocent victims and people preserving in the face of impossible odds, this is a necessary watch.

#18 The Irishman

This is too long.  I'm sorry.  This is insanely long.  It's a story that should be long.  It just shouldn't be three hours and thirty minutes.  But hey it's Martin Scorsese and who am I to tell him he's doing his movie wrong.  People that are mad that there are some internet users who are giving advice on how to watch this as a miniseries of sorts - please fuck off.  There is absolutely no reason you need to watch this entire movie in one sitting - I think it would benefit from multiple sittings in fact, because there are in fact points in the movie where you can obviously stop. 

#17 Portrait of a Lady on Fire

I think in my viewing of a Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I had the unfortunate situation where my expectations were expecting it to blow me away.  That is never a good place for a movie to be for me.  It places an impossible burden on the movie.  Nonetheless, at the end, I was really impressed with the writing of the movie.  Maybe you'll understand when you reach the end.  And I'd like to rewatch it with a proper set of expectations.

#16 Wild Rose

I did not expect to like this movie that much.  A Glaswegian woman wants to be a country singer and believes she belongs in Nashville.  These musical dramas where someone is trying to make it - they're not my favorite type of movie.  But god damn.  Jessie Buckley won me over.  She's a genuinely great singer, and the message of the movie is quite heartwarming.

I wasn't sure if I was going to go Top 15 or Top 10 tomorrow, but the clock is ticking and I think it's time to stop.  There's at least one movie outside the Top 10 where I think I'll have a lot to say about it.  Little worried I won't have a lot to say about all the movies though, which again - some of them were watched a while ago.  But nevertheless, I finish my rankings tomorrow.

Best Movies of the 2019: #50-40

Yes, you are correctly reading that I am posting a best movies of 2019 in late 2020.  The simplest answer I can give as to why is that I just finished watching all the 2019 movies I thought might make a list such as this.  I had more or less ignored movies in the actual year of 2019 and didn't get the train moving on watching 2019 movies until the pandemic hit.

I watched every conceivable movie I could with the exception of two movies.  I think one of them was rather unlikely to make my list and the other had a better shot, but I don't think it would have ranked that highly.  I made my list by looking at every movie that had pretty good reviews and/or was nominated in relevant categories at the major award shows, which included the Oscars, the BAFTAs, and the Independent Spirit Film Awards.  

I still probably missed movies, even aside from the movies I knowingly skipped, that probably could have made such a list as this, but I wanted to get these rankings in before Christmas of 2020.  With all of that said, let's start with the honorable mentions.

Honorable Mention 

Burning Cane - No less a filmmaker than Ava DuVernay gives a glowing review to this film made by a literal teenager - Phillip Youmans, born in 2000, who wrote, directed, and edited this movie.  (Full disclosure: it was distributed by her company)   But ultimately, it's a very slow movie that can barely sustain it's very short 77 minute length.

Blow the Man Down - A movie about two young sisters who have to cover up a crime and while it's ostensibly about them, the movie ends up being stolen by Margo Martindale, June Squibb, and Annette O'Toole.  Entertaining enough to watch.

Colewell - Another short movie that nonetheless is very slow.  Tom Quinn wrote and directed this movie and thankfully for my self-respect, he is not a teenager.  This is a good look at growing old and the death of small towns with a great performance from Karen Allen.

The Great Hack - This is a good primer movie for learning how data mining companies, specifically Cambridge Analytica, helped target ads as propaganda to unsuspecting internet users.  There is stuff in it that you probably know, but it's a fairly easy watch for being a documentary about the destruction of democracy!

Honey Boy - I honestly thought I was going to like this more than I did.  If you're at all interested in why Shia LeBeouf is the way he is, this is a movie to watch.  I was, and yet, I can't help but feel something is missing from this movie.

Missing Link - If you're someone who will end up watching movies with small children, whether that be your own or someone you have to watch, this is the type of movie you should put on.  Enjoyable and family friendly.

Rocketman - As far as biopics of legendary singers is concerned, this is vastly superior to Bohemian Rhapsody.  It does not rely on playing Elton John's greatest hits and actually manages to separate itself somewhat from the cliche biopic that many fall prey to with some interesting choices.

#50 Avengers: Endgame

When I did my Marvel rankings, one thing I should probably have done is ranked Endgame lower than I did.  I have a higher Marvel movie on this very list, and it was below Endgame on my original Marvel list.  When I paired the two movies together, I just wanted to watch one more than the other.  My feelings on this film are conflicted and I might think differently about this movie in a year.

#49 Klaus

Fun fact: this is currently the #176th best movie on IMDB.  I... would not have predicted that.  So long as you significantly lower your expectations from that, this is another fun animated, family friendly film.  And hey Christmas is around the corner and this is a Christmas film.

#48 Greener Grass

I'm not sure I've ever actually watched a cult film that wasn't a cult film yet.  This is one weird ass movie.  I watched this sober, but I'm pretty sure I should have watched it high.  This is the type of movie where the two main leads have braces for reasons that are never explained.  It's a surreal comedy skewering suburbia.

#47 Dolemite is My Name

Some movies on my list I would never recommend to anybody, because I know it's not a movie that appeals to everyone.  Greener Grass is one such movie.  Dolemite is My Name is the opposite, a movie that I think just about everyone would enjoy.  I do think this movie got a bit more praise than it otherwise would have because it was the first thing Eddie Murphy has done in forever that was good.  Wesley Snipes steals the movie though, not Murphy.

#46 Spiderman: Far From Home

Like I said above, I actually ranked Endgame higher on my Marvel rankings, but I couldn't bring myself to put Far From Home below it.  I think it was just the scale of Endgame felt so massive that I had to rank it above other movies I'd rather watch.  In any case, Far From Home purposefully goes smaller scale and is a "you get what you came for" type of movie and nothing more.

#45 Apollo 11

Your interest in space and specifically Apollo 11 could drive your level of interest in this film.  I'm not particularly into space, but I was pretty captivated by the newly uncovered footage on the moon.  Not all of it, unfortunately is quite as gripping as the beginning, but if you're at all into space, watch this.

#44 Shazam

This is the highest ranked superhero movie mostly because it's fun and it's an original take on the superhero movie.  I have not a whole lot else to say about Shazam, which is weird because I watched it last week.

#43 Hustlers

I'm oversimplifying, but the structure and story of Hustlers is pretty much like every mob movie ever made.  Except with strippers.  A slight change to a formula that is done well is usually worth watching though and this is no exception.

#42 Richard Jewell

This movie has one huge flaw that is holding it back and that is in its depiction of real life reporter Kathy Scruggs, who is shown trading sex for information, which is objectionable in its own right, but is also just lazy and cliché.  Good performances help make this movie better than it probably should be.

#41 John Wick: Chapter 3

I'll confess: I'm getting a little burnt out by the John Wick action formula.  I liked Chapter 3 better than I liked Chapter 2, but at this point I feel like I'm getting diminishing returns.  I'm still ranking it here, so I still liked it.

#40 Just Mercy

Another movie where performances make all the difference.  The story isn't really anything new and Michael B Jordan's character is a fairly boring movie character (though awesome person in real life).  But good performances help elevate the material.

I'm not going to only do ten rankings at a time.  Depending on length, tomorrow I will write up the next 25 or 30 spots, and finish the rankings on Wednesday.  Theoretically, I'll have more to say about the top 10 (or 15), which is why I'll cover more tomorrow. 

Welles Marathon Conclusion

The Orson Welles marathon has finally come to an end.  It took longer than I thought.  My first post was on August 4th, writing about the classic Citizen Kane.  And it ended Monday earlier this week, which means that it took me nearly four months to watch and write about every Orson Welles movie I picked.  I only posted twice a week, sometimes talked about other movies, and skipped some weeks, but still: I wasn't expecting to finally be able to move onto my next marathon in December.

I can't speak to Orson Welles personal motivations, but after having watched both the movies he directed and the movies he starred in, it seems like he was just unnaturally gifted.   I come away especially impressed with his acting.  It seems like he could act in his sleep.  And I mean that.  Some movies, it seems like he was barely trying and it legitimately did not matter, he was still the most compelling part of a movie.

The popular perception of Welles was that he was a wunderkind who ultimately blew his potential by being unreliable and never quite having enough money to make his projects happen.  A lot of his older movies were reevaluated later and praised as classics, but they weren't at the time.

Citizen Kane, immediately a flop, was received as the best movie of all time within two decades.  And every movie he made after Kane was compared to Kane, and the reception of the vast majority of his movies suffered for it.  Modern critics have responded to the mostly lukewarm receptions of the time by praising some of his movies as classics.

I compared Orson Welles to another artist at the top of his game in one of my Welles marathon posts, and I'll do it again here.  But fair warning: if you're not a fan of hip hop, you might find this jarring and not understand my comparison. 

Orson Welles is Nas.  I can already hear you groaning.  Both were impossibly young prodigies who produced their best work first.  Nas was 17 and 18 when he recorded Ilmmatic.  Welles was 25 when he did Citizen Kane.  Both have their subsequent works compared to their first work, which caused their later works to be under-appreciated for their time.  Later appraisal of those works have elevated those works to masterpieces. 

It's not a perfect comparison.  Illmatic was nearly immediately recognized as the best while Citizen Kane was not.  Nas has not had the equivalent of Welles struggling to make movies after Citizen Kane, or anything close to it.  And to say the least, hip hop did not evolve like film did, making Illmatic sound boring in comparison (I don't find Citizen Kane boring, but it's a popular criticism nowadays)

In any case, the movies that more or less hold up from Welles catalogue are The Magnificent Ambersons, made immediately after Citizen Kane; The Stranger, made immediately after World War II, The Trial, and Chimes at Midnight.  And Citizen Kane of course. Which is why I think modern critics overcompensate by calling too many of Welles movies classics.

But I'm aware my opinion of Touch of Evil is not with the hivemind.  I almost can't speak to either Macbeth or Othello, where I completely acknowledge my opinion of both is influenced by the fact that I find Shakespeare movies difficult to like.  Didn't stop me from liking Chimes at Midnight.  And I stand by the fact that Othello does not stand the test of time, thanks to shoddy sound and what certain critics call "bronzeface" which still leaves me with a queasy stomach watching.

Both The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil, to me, suffer from style over subtance.  Really cool shots, story makes no sense.  Even reviews, such as Roger Ebert, who love the movie, say that the story makes no sense.  And his only truly bad film that he directed was Confidential Report, or Mr. Arkadin, which mainly suffers from some truly bad acting from the lead (not Welles.)

And like I said, as strange as it may sound, I come away most impressed by his acting.  Well most impressed isn't how I would define it.  Most surprised maybe.  A lot of acting from around his time period simply doesn't hold up.  And no matter the movie surrounding him, he is always good, even when he's seemingly not on his 'A' game.

I will continue with my director marathon in 2021.  I'm going to leave my next director in suspense, but just know, I already know who I'm covering.  It may be a bit before I start though.  I like to get a head start on the posts before I actually release to them to the public, because I may very well be unable to watch the movies at a two-a-week pace every week and a head start eases that burden.

But in the meantime, I am going to be posting my favorite posts of 2020 next week on my twitter.  That will be followed with a ranking of my favorite movies of 2019, yes 2019.  Took me a long time to get through that list, and I'm probably going to post my favorite movies of 2020 pretty late in 2021 too (though ideally before December).  Then it's the week of my favorite shows of 2020.  And then, well, then I'll probably figure some random movies I want to write about until I have a few marathon posts written and then I'll start the marathon.

I'm excited, and I hope you'll like my next director pick.

Note: If you're interested in reading my thoughts on specific Welles movies, I have a link inserted onto the names of the movies mentioned above.  So just click the movie and it should take you to a new page.  And of the movies not mentioned above, I'll post the rest below.

Jane Eyre 

The Other Side of the Wind

A Man for All Seasons, Waterloo, and Catch 22 were all covered in one post here.

Compulsion

Prince of Foxes

The Third Man

The Long Hot Summer

F for Fake

Welles Marathon: F for Fake (1973)

 Well this is a strange movie.  Between this and unreleased The Other Side of the Wind (until 2018 that is), Welles clearly was in an experimental stage of his career by the 1970s.  He wanted to push the limits of what a film was.  As such, it is best to go in with an open mind.

I honestly thought F for Fake was a fake documentary.  Like completely made up.  And, well, that's not a wrong impression, per sé.  You truly don't know what to believe.  But to my surprise, despite seeming like a fake person, Elmyr de Hory is in fact real, and him being an art forger is real.

Okay, so the backstory to this movie is pretty interesting, as all backstories to Welles movies seem to be.  The accepted story is that Francois Reichenbach filmed a documentary about Hory, which featured his biographer Clifford Irving.  He then handed it to Welles to edit.  

Sometime in this process, Irving was revealed to be a fraud himself.  He claimed to have had interviews with famous recluse Howard Hughes, and wrote a biography on him.  Only trouble was that it was not real.  He made it up.  And this news broke sometime in the editing process.

For Welles, this was too good to be true.  Suddenly, it was not just a documentary on Hory, but a documentary on something larger.  No, he was going to comment on fraud itself, and compare making a movie to fraud.  A filmmaker's ability to fool the audience with trickery.

And actually, the way he did this was quite clever.  Like almost too clever for its own good.  Because he purposefully makes you question if what you're watching even really happened.  Which is directly commenting on a movie fooling you.  In this instance, how the framing of a documentary can mislead you.  But also just a normal movie.  And he used the art forgery of Hory, and the fraud of a skilled writer as a backdrop to make these points.

He references his own career.  His famous War of the Worlds broadcast, the story of which seems mostly apocryphal, no doubt egged on by Welles himself.  Were people really in a panic over his broadcast?  It may have happened, but it has definitely taken a life of its own and has been overstated to an insane degree.  Most people were not stupid.  But he eggs this myth on.  He reads from the War of the Worlds broadcast, but doesn't say the same words as the original broadcast.  But the way its filmed, you think it is.

In another lucky twist of fate, the fact that Irving was a fake biographer of Howard Hughes worked out quite nicely because the original subject of Citizen Kane was going to be Hughes.  Or at least that's what this movie tells me.  It could very well be bullshit.  Welles said he was going to tell the true for the first hour.  This information was in that hour.

This is all pretty brilliant, but there is one weakness in this movie: the Oja Kador sequences.  I get her place in the movie.  It's adding to the unreliability of the whole thing.  But it's just not interesting.  The fact that everything about her story ends up being fake makes it even less interesting than it already was.

I don't have a solution for this problem.  Kador herself just isn't that compelling.  You need something like her, a fake story to help with the movie's themes.  And I hate to say it but the fact that she's his mistress in real life makes it seem like she's just in this movie because she's his mistress.  Which is pretty much true.  And it seems like that too!  

Her presence in The Other Side of the Wind works better, because she's just walking around in an experimental art movie making fun of experimental art movies while an entirely different movie is happening and she has basically no impact on the final product.

I do wish I found the Kador scenes more compelling, because I think I'd find this to be a masterpiece otherwise.  But 25 or so minutes of a short movie weigh it down enough that it's not particularly close to a masterpiece.  It's still a good movie though.

3/4 stars

Welles Marathon: The Long Hot Summer (1958)

In this marathon, we hit the last movie that Orson Welles was only an actor in and we only have one more movie period left.  A movie I have purposefully not watched yet.  Because the last few posts, including this one, have been me writing about movies I saw roughly a month or so ago, which is not ideal from my perspective.

I'll keep you all in suspense over what exactly that movie is, and focus on the movie today: The Long Hot Summer.  This movie gets off to a great start with what is a fantastic theme song by Jimmie Rodgers.

And the movie that follows it... is actually pretty good.  I was not aware of this movie's existence before researching what Orson Welles movies to watch (because he made a few just to get a paycheck that... do not hold up).  So my expectations were nill.

It helps that the lead role is played by Paul Newman, not exactly playing against type here.  Probably because this movie, and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof the same year, helped define his "type."  He's a smooth talking,con man who ingratiates himself into a rich family and finds love well the love changes him.  Fairly typical stuff here.

But it is probably helped by what was a real life love story behind the scenes.  Newman played opposite Joanne Woodward, still alive by the way, and they fell in love off screen and were married until Newman died.  You can get a sense of that when watching this movie.

It's a fairly stacked cast.  Angela Lansbury, also still alive, is in the movie for a comic little sideplot that doesn't really work.  Not her fault.  It was probably funny in 1958.  Anthony Franciosa was fresh off an Oscar nomination when he did this movie, and plays Woodward's brother, while Lee Remick plays her sister.

And then there's Orson Welles.  He adds to the entertainment with his Southern accent.  With his bellowing voice and big frame, he does not really try to make sure people understand what he's saying.  You need subtitles to understand him.  It doesn't really matter, because it's seriously entertaining as hell.  Honestly, I don't know that I would be that interested in the movie if Welles didn't keep my interest.

3/4 stars

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Because I don't have much to say, and I don't feel like making a whole post about this movie, I'll quickly explain my thoughts on the other movie Newman made in 1958.  I'm not a fan.

If I could sum up why, it's that the director did not take advantage of the fact that he was making a movie.  He might as well just filmed the play and released it that way.  Bewilderingly, the screenplay changed a lot of the play's dialogue and less bewilderingly because of the time, removed the gay element of the play.  So you're not even getting the best version of the play in this version.

When I say Richard Brooks, the director, didn't take advantage of this being a movie, I mean there are two settings in the entire movie: the house and in the first few minutes when Brick injures himself.  That's it.  When we go to the house, we are there for the rest of the movie and the rest of the movie is pure melodrama turned to 11 for the entire freaking movie.

Give me flashbacks of Brick being his normal self.  Don't need to reveal what actually happened.  Do something interesting instead of just regurgitating the play, which you have changed so much that Tennessee Williams didn't like it.  I don't know.  There are lot of words spoken and the everyone is just talking in circles for most of the runtime.  Don't really get the love for this movie.

Also, if you play a drinking game for every time Big Daddy is said, you would die before the movie was over.  Good lord did that get annoying.  Acting is good though.  Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Burl Ives.

2/4 stars

Welles Marathon: Touch of Evil (1958)

Touch of Evil was one of the few Orson Welles movies I had seen before I started this marathon, but I was excited to re-watch considering I haven't seen it in a long time.  But appropriately enough, I'm pretty sure I watched a different version.  It's Orson Welles, so of course there are more versions than just one.  Couldn't be easy!

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I think critics have a tendency to overrate movies based on the technical skill of how the movie was made.  And I think this is especially true of older movies analyzed retroactively, because we can see the influence they made.  And I'm all for putting the movie's accomplishments into context to better appreciate it.

But there's a difference, I think, between appreciating what the movie did and looking at how good the movie actually is.  I can appreciate that what a movie did was impressive while also thinking that for whatever reason the movie hasn't necessarily aged well, and I don't even mean in terms of political correctness or the sort.  

The version I watched this time is evidently much more clear in terms of plotting than the version I think I watched the first time, but it has a wide swath of time given to what I think is a black hole.  And that's when Susan Vargas is threatened by a gang in the motel in the middle of nowhere.  

None of this part of the movie works in my opinion.  I do not remember this part being quite as prominent in the first version I watched, like significantly less screen time was dedicated to it.  I don't know what the fuck Dennis Weaver is doing in this movie, but his performance as the hotel manager is quite terrible.  Like these motel scenes alone drag this movie down.

I think there a couple of scenes in this movie that made this movie a classic to most.  The opening scene is the clearest example.  It's a memorable and impressive way to begin a movie.  And I believe there's another unbroken take in an interrogation scene later in the movie. 

I began my review noting that I think certain critics overrate movies because of how they're shot, and the reason I did that was to provide to following anecdote.  In Roger Ebert's "Great Movies," he says that Peter Bogdanovich once told Orson that he didn't notice the story until he had already saw it four or five times, because he was focused on the direction.

Ebert follows that up with saying "That might be the best approach for anyone seeing the film for the first time: to set aside the labyrinthine plot, and simply admire what is on the screen."  That's all well and good, but this feels like a backhanded compliment to me, or at least not as much of a compliment as intended.  What's great about the movie are the shots, but as a story, well go ahead and ignore that to really enjoy it.

But between the disastrous motel scenes, Charlton Heston playing a Mexican, and that it's better enjoyed if you ignore the story, well these are a little too much for me to accept personally.  I'm not saying it's a bad film.  It's actually mostly a good film.  But I don't think it's a classic and I think it's probably one of Welles' more overrated movies.

3/4 stars

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

After skipping another week - my job was annoyingly and perfectly calibrated to cause posting any of these at night to be either impractical or literally impossible - I'm back this week.  And I'll have to delay my Orson Welles marathon once again, because I have once again watched an older movie that has inspired me to write about it.

In this case, it's an acknowledged classic, The Best Years of Our Lives.  Unlike Freaks, which went unappreciated in its time, The Best Years of Our Lives could literally have not been more appreciated.  It won seven Oscars and was the highest grossing film of the 1940s.  Critical and commercial success does not even begin to describe this film's reception.

Does it hold up is the question.  It was made 74 years ago - I doubt anyone reading this actually watched it in theaters when it first came out.  And it tackles what was then not really that well-known.  That veterans have a lot of trouble when they return home from war.

And the answer is yes and no.  I'll say this for the movie: given the time period and what the movie is tackling not to mention the Hays Code, I don't actually think it was possible for this movie to hold up completely no matter what they did, given how much more knowledge we have about veterans.  Like I think it holds up as well as you can reasonably expect.

I'll share my specific gripe, and while I say gripe, I don't actually know if the movie had a choice in this respect.  But first, the good parts: Harold Russell.  Just like Freaks, this movie benefits heavily from some serious realism and casting a man who had his hands blown off and has to function with hooks is one of the movie's greatest benefits.  What's it like to come back to war with literally a part of your body missing?  That's Harold Russell and the character he plays here's story.

Also, Fredric March plays Al Stephenson, and in his case, I actually think it benefits from being in 1946.  Because a more modern movie would make a much bigger deal about his alcoholism.  This movie just has it be a thing.  It doesn't comment on it.  He's just heavily drinking in just about every scene.  His wife is a goddamn saint, and given that the movie doesn't cover that much time, it's reasonable to think she will have put up with it for that long - but it won't be forever.

Then there's Captain Fred Derry, played by Dana Andrews.  He impulsively marries a woman 20 days before he has to leave for the war and he pays the consequences.  He barely knows the woman and they run into issues pretty much immediately.  And while they don't exactly make the wife particularly likable, I will say that her comment that he came back a different person is probably true and a reason for their struggles.

However, to my gripe.  The romance with Stephenson's daughter, Peggy, as played by Virginia Mayo.  First off, for me anyway, it gets off to a rough start.  Derry is immediately aggressively pursuing her, and yes he's drunk, but he hasn't even seen his wife yet.  When he's sober, he's more reticent, so you can safely blame the booze, but uh, I can tell you that if booze will so easily have him attempt to cheat on his wife, he's definitely going to cheat on Virginia Mayo at some point.

Secondly, it's very much not clear how old Peggy is supposed to be.  She lives with her parents and it's at least somewhat of a surprise she's not married yet, but since this is 1946, that could very well be "she's 20."  Dana Andrews looks 40, although I think he was in the late 30s and is meant to playing someone younger than that.  So I spent a good portion of the movie wondering if this movie was being creepier than intended.  I think this might just be a weird convergence of "Dana Andrews doesn't look young, Virginia Mayo looks young, and also I'm very used to people in Hollywood at 24 playing teenagers."

The age thing, whatever, that comes with the territory with older movies and I acknowledge I'm reading too much into it.  My problem is that this movie is trying to reflect reality - and it accomplishes that with the alcoholic and Harold Russell.  With Andrews, it's Hollywood.  A true reflection of his story is more bleak.  He impulsively married someone he didn't know, that should absolutely not have a happy ending.  The romance is there purely because he needs a happy ending and for some reason, having her be Al's daughter is the most convenient for plot-reasons.

So when I say it does age well and it doesn't, that's what I mean.  I think a bleaker ending for Andrews' character would have made this movie absolutely perfect.  You have the purely happy ending, the marriage, the not really but seems like a happy ending with the alcoholism, and then the not so good ending.  Instead the scale is off.  And I get why.  It was made in 1946 and I'm not even sure if director William Wyler was allowed to make a sad ending about World War II veterans because of the Hays Code.

Speaking of Wyler, he absolutely earned that Best Director win.  It's a very long movie that deserves its length.  He made the decision to cast non-actor, Russell, in a part for authenticity.  Russell rewarded him by winning an honorary Oscar, because the Academy thought he had no shot to win, and then he won for Best Supporting Actor too, making him the only person to win two Oscars for the same movie.  It's well-paced and he is able to utilize access to an abandoned strip of fighter jets late in the movie.

Gregg Toland was the cinematographer, who might be one of the greatest of all time in his field.  He unfortunately died very young two years later, but he had built up quite the resume even before this movie, such as Citizen Kane and The Grapes of Wrath.  He was nominated for six Oscars, winning one, but he didn't even get nominated for his work here.

All in all, like I said, I wish one of the stories got a sad ending and the most obvious route is the guy who knew his wife for two seconds before he got married, but I don't think it's realistic to expect that given the time period so it's stupid to blame them for that.  And otherwise, it holds up, which is an incredible achievement by itself.

3.5/4 stars

Freaks (1932)

I have recently discovered I have access to Turner Classic Movie online, which has the added effect of making me watch many, many older movies as of late.  I was under the mistaken impression that the TCM channel was full of old movies with no discernment of quality, but I have found that actually there are something like 20 good movies on that channel at any given time.

It has opened me up to a wonderful list of movies that may have taken me years to get to, if at all.  One of these such movies was Freaks, the 1932 horror classic that was reportedly so scary that it was banned in the UK for over 30 years after its release.

That's a great tagline, but I did not find this movie scary.  It doesn't even really seem like it's supposed to be a horror movie.  It's an everyday slice of life film that turns into a revenge flick.  And I fucking loved it.

Yeah, if you're wondering why I'm taking the time to write about this specific movie instead of the other TCM movies, it's because I loved this movie.  I mean I loved this movie so much that it might legitimately be one of my favorite movies ever.

The "freaks" in question seem to refer to the carnival sideshow performers, who range from dwarf siblings, conjoined twins, a legless man, a limbless man, and microcephalic characters.  For the first half of this movie, the movie just chronicles their everyday lives, and shows how they're just as normal as you and me.

As far as the plot is concerned, it's minimal.  A woman in the sideshow named Cleopatra, who is "normal," wants to seduce one of the dwarves, marry him, and steal his money.  She schemes with Hercules, a strongman.  Cleopatra played by Russian actress Olga Baclanova, forgets she's not in silent movies anymore and plays her way over the top, but it works anyway, because she's more or less meant to be cartoonishly evil.

The movie benefits greatly from the fact that all the performers are really genetic anomalies.  They're the real deal.  We are really watching a limbless man light a cigarette with just his mouth.  We are really watching a man with no legs getting around with only his arms and hands.  No movie trickery.  

Browning was also the real deal.  Before he was a film director, he was in a traveling circus much like the one featured in the movie.  That comes through in the final product.  It feels like what it would be like to travel with sideshow performers during the Great Depression.

Speaking of, another added layer to this movie is when it was made.  Right in the heart of the Great Depression.  And right at the absolute height of the eugenics movement.  At least retrospectively, it is seen as a rejection of that movement, a celebration of people with differences.  Perhaps not quite as necessary today, but the normal, every day interactions of the "freaks" serves to normalize them to everyone else.

Which absolutely did not work at the time.  Freaks had a test screening in late 1931 that apparently made people literally run, and I mean run, out of the theater halfway through the movie.  The movie studio cut THIRTY minutes off the movie, and the version we see today is the reduced 64 minute version.  Wikipedia features an absolutely shocking review, which makes me think audiences at the time didn't like the movie for a very... unfortunate reason.

does not thrill and at the same time does not please, since it is impossible for the normal man or woman to sympathize with the aspiring midget. And only in such a case will the story appeal

What the fuck??  So yeah my suspicion is that people simply didn't want to look at the "freaks" and that's why it was not appreciated at its time and not for any other reason.  It was reevaluated during the 1960s by European audiences, being shown at the 1962 Venice Film Festival and that eventually spread its way to America.

I don't consider this a horror movie to be honest.  The ending is, to be fair, filmed like a horror movie.  The rest of the movie isn't at all.  But at that point, I'm full on rooting for these guys.  It's like me rooting for Django to kill slave owners.  Are they brutal?  Yes.  Do the villains of the piece deserve it?  Fuck yeah do.

This movie was banned in the UK for 30 years, and for anyone expecting a justification of that, it's literally just because they didn't want to look at people with disabilities.  That's it.  In the original cut of the movie, Hercules was castrated, so yeah I could see it there.  But it was cut and there is no such implication of that happening.

The one flaw of the movie is a flaw I completely forgive: the ending is very abrupt.  It's clear it was bungled by cutting thirty freaking minutes of the movie.  Even so, that hardly impacts the final product.  Freaks is a great movie and dare I say one of my favorite movies ever.

4/4 stars

Welles Marathon: The Stranger (1946)

After a slight hiatus caused partially due to the fact that the MLB playoffs were happening and I think I just forgot about this last week, this feature is back.  I have just four more Orson Welles movies to cover.  Unfortunately, I haven't seen three of those movies in about a month, so my shoddy memory is going to have to be relied upon.  I'll make sure to put this disclaimer for each of the three where it applies.

I had certain expectations for most Welles movies - he has a ton of movies that he's either made or been in that are part of lists that I follow to determine classic movies to watch.  This is a double-edged sword.  Expectations are not necessarily the greatest thing to have when watching a movie, at least not in my case, because they tend to influence my opinion of the film for better or worse.  

If you go in expecting a classic, and the movie has some flaws, you are disappointed.  And it is very rare to find an older movie - from around Welles time - that is without flaws.  If you can watch a movie blind, which is a different type of risk, you and the movie are on neutral ground.

I bring all that up because I had never heard of The Stranger.  The Stranger, by all accounts, is a run-of-the-mill film noir, or so I was guessing.  It's not on any "Best of" lists whether that be all-time, the specific year it was made, or even within its own genre of film noir.  I had no real reason to expect much when I started this film.

So maybe it was that, but this is probably the film that surprised me the most in this marathon.  I liked this better than The Lady from Shanghai and I liked it better than The Touch of Evil.  I will not deny that both of those films are perhaps better from a filmmaking perspective - more innovative and whatnot.

But the brass tacks of actually making a good movie?  I think this is more effective.  The Stranger, on the heels of the end of World War II, is about an investigator who follows a famous Nazi into a small town in Connecticut to arrest him for war crimes.

It's not a chase movie despite the beginning premise.  The Nazi blends into the small town, and the investigator needs to learn who it is.  We learn who it is immediately.  That's how simple the premise is.  The investigator is played by Edward G Robinson, usually more well-known as a gangster tough guy.  He does what's needed for role, which is simply to be invested in him catching the Nazi, played by Welles.  

Welles has the harder part and he steps up to the challenge.  He needs to convince us how he's able to infiltrate the town - he does so by seeming to be normal, but there is just enough off about his performance that he's never completely lost the Nazi side of him.  And when he takes off the mask, so to speak, it's not completely disconnected from the rest of his performance.

The cast is rounded out by Loretta Young, Welles new bride, Phillip Mervale, a judge and the father of the bride, and Richard Long, the bride's brother.  But the real stars of the movie are Robinson and Welles, and the others are just there to support them.  (Young does get a bit more to do than I'm suggesting)

The Stranger is notable for two reasons.  The first is that it was the first film to feature footage of Nazi concentration camps following World War II, which maybe doesn't seem as shocking to us as it did at the time, but just for that fact alone, I'm surprised this movie isn't more well-known.  The second is that it's the only movie of Welles to show a profit in its original release.  So it was a fairly popular movie at the time.

If you're looking for a good film noir, you can't do much worse than The Stranger.  Hopefully, I haven't built up your expectations too much so that you don't suffer the same fate as I have with other Welles' projects.

4/4 stars

Welles Marathon: The Third Man (1949)

 I wish I could have watched this movie in a different context.  As you can tell by the title, I am doing an Orson Welles marathon.  Orson Welles' appearance in this movie is supposed to be a surprise.  Me, being on an Orson Welles marathon, was waiting for him to appear and it became fairly obvious what role he would be playing when the movie continued without his presence.

Now, it must be said that most people who watch this movie know Orson Welles is in it.  But I think there's a difference between that and specifically watching a movie because of Orson Welles.  Which is to say, you can forget he's even in the movie if you're just picking this movie because it's a great movie.  And then when he appears, you're genuinely surprised. 

Theoretically anyway.  I bring this up because of what Roger Ebert wrote about the film in one of his Great Movies entries, because it was absolutely not true for me:

"As for Harry Lime: He allows Orson Welles to make the most famous entrance in the history of the movies, and one of the most famous speeches. By the time Lime finally appears we have almost forgotten Welles is even *in* the movie. "

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Welles hasn't been in the movie yet and he probably isn't in a bit part, so Welles is Harry Lime, so Harry Lime is actually alive.  Which does not ruin the movie - a movie ruined by knowing the twist is not a good movie - but I think it did take something away from the experience of watching The Third Man.

One thing is clear: it would absolutely suck to direct a movie with Orson Welles in it.  No matter what his involvement, rumors persisted that he actually directed the movie.  And that's to say nothing of his, shall we say, prima donna tendencies.  I don't believe he had any issues with the latter on this movie, but there was rampant speculation that Carol Reed did not direct this movie. 

Basically, Reed did such a good job directing this movie - and taking a significant amount of influence form Welles - that Welles just had to have actually direct this movie.  Or so goes the theory.  The fact that it could have been directed by Welles is used as proof that it was directed by him.  I am not making this up, this is an actual theory.

Despite my suggestion that watching this blind about the casting would have been better, I think I'll enjoy this movie more on rewatches.  It just feels like a movie where I can focus less on the plot, and just get lost in the movie.

One thing that I'm not really sure I liked is the score.  Which I think is sacrilege to say and maybe I'll appreciate it more on subsequent viewings, but I was thrown for a loop at the famous score.  I'll reference Ebert again who said there has never been a more perfect score for a movie, but I don't think I agree. 

Maybe I'll change my opinion of course, but the music doesn't really fit the tone of a film noir.  Part of me respects that the score is very original and different and hell, I actually don't like most music scores from 1940 movies.  Too over the top, too loud.  That's not a problem here at all.  But I don't know, it just felt out of place at times.

There's not much new I can add to what has to be a wealth of film criticism on The Third Man.  The cinematography is great and adds to the atmosphere of the movie.  The atmosphere and sense of place is maybe the greatest thing about this movie.  It feels like a very specific place and time and the movie could not be set anytime else.  You can't say that about many movies.

It's a little surprising the writer of the movie wanted a different ending (and he wrote a different ending in the book).   This is not a movie that should have a happy ending.  Absolutely the right choice from Reed, and even writer Graham Greene has said Reed has been proven "triumphantly right."

And even though Welles did not direct it, it wouldn't be a Welles movie without some studio fuckery.  Apparently eleven minutes were replaced in the American version, although I'm pretty sured I watched the version with those eleven minutes.

I'm excited to watch this again soon and I genuinely think I'll gain an even greater appreciation for it.  I have two more Welles movies to cover and both are I believe considered classics.

Welles Marathon: Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Throughout his career on the stage and behind the camera, Orson Welles returned to Shakespeare numerous times.  It makes sense.  One of the first things he did as a professional was direct a stage adaptation of Macbeth with an all African-American cast.  He directed it at just 20-years-old.  A couple years later, Welles intended to stage The Five Kings, which was taken from several Shakespeare plays.  Welles blew it off, went drinking, and never went to rehearsals so the play was a disaster and scrapped soon.

Elements from that original play formulated into a reworked Chimes at Midnight 20 years later.  He didn't really seem to treat the revamped play any more seriously than he did the Five Kings, ending the play's run prematurely because he was bored with it and always intended it for it to be a rehearsal for the movie.  He scrambled to find funding for this, eventually finding it but only with the promise of making A Treasure Island as well.  He never made it and never intended to make it, lying to the producer to get A Chimes at Midnight made.

Of the three Shakespeare films that Welles made, Chimes at Midnight is easily my favorite.  For one thing, the production value is better than the previous two.  He clearly got more money to make this than Othello and while Hamlet had a good and comparable budget, technology presumably improved a lot from 1948 to 1965.  

But I think the bigger reason that I like it more is that it just feels much more original.  I've seen a few movie adaptations of Hamlet.  I don't believe I've seen any movie adaptations of the Shakespeare works he takes to make this movie.  According to Wikipedia, he takes from five different Shakespeare plays.  

And really, it doesn't matter if I had seen a movie adaptation from any one of those movies.  Because the play is a combination of texts from those plays, but it's not in chronological order and he inserts scenes from one play into another play.  It would have felt original even if I had been intimately familiar with Shakespeare's works.

Despite the fact that taking scenes from one play and combining them into scenes from another play  could make the story incoherent and hard to follow, it has a clear story on its own.  Because every line of dialogue is directly lifted from Shakespeare, you could in fact mistake this movie as an adaptation of the nonexistent "Chimes at Midnight," but of course Shakespeare never wrote such a play.

At its core, Shakespeare stories are effective, because amidst all the plot, the story is simple.  And that's the case here.  This is the relationship between Falstaff, previously a joke in Shakespeare productions, and Prince Hal.  And the story seems engineered to make the climax of the movie the rejection of Falstaff by Hal.

And it's effective!  Welles is very good at Falstaff.  One thing I've learned from the Welles movies I've watched is that Welles is good even when he's not trying.  He's trying here.  He's able to gain you sympathy for him even while you understand that really, Hal is doing the right thing by rejecting him.  Keith Baxter is good, although I admit when I found out that Anthony Perkins wanted to do this role, I couldn't help but think it'd be better with him.  But alas, that's unfair to Baxter.

Apparently, and I say apparently, because I am reading about it, but the lengthy battle sequence was very influential.  And it's well filmed.  But I'll admit that had I not read about it, I would not really have thought twice about the battle scene.  It's sometimes really hard to put your mind in 1965 and understand that nobody was filming battle sequences like that.  

Usually, I think if a film is the first to do something, even if films copy it to death, that shines through in the material.  My best example is It Happened One Night, which despite the fact that every romcom in existence copies this movie, it doesn't really feel cliché because it did it so well, and yes first.  So I confess, I was impressed by the filmmaking but didn't really recognize it as the influential scene it apparently is.

Orson Welles thought Chimes at Midnight was his best work, and along with The Magnificent Ambersons, his most personal film.  I disagree with him on that.  I still think Citizen Kane was the best, however, I will not argue with Vincent Camby of the New York Times that it may very well by the greatest Shakespeare movie ever.  Which, to be completely fair, is not necessarily saying much coming from me, person who has trouble with Shakespeare movies. 

But I will say this: it's the rare Shakespeare movie to feel wholly original to me, because well it's hard to be original when adapting someone else's work.  And Shakespeare has been adapted more than anyone in history.  While Hamlet and Othello certainly have great critical reputations, I have no desire to see them again.  But I will want to watch Chimes at Midnight again.

4/4 stars

Queen and Slim Review

I was excited for Queen & Slim.  I really was.  The reviews were pretty good, but that's not why I was excited.  This is a great premise.  A law abiding black couple find themselves on the wrong side of the law after killing a police officer in self defense.  The movie is the chase and escape.  I was pretty sure I was going to like it.

And then I watched it.  Five minutes into the movie, the scene where they kill a police officer in self-defense happens.  I was surprised that the movie did that so quickly, and realized that the next two hours - the movie is 132 minutes long - needed to be spent on them avoiding the police.  That's when I was first worried.  That is a lot of time.  Bonnie and Clyde is just 111 minutes.  Thelma and Louise is a similar length, but the killing doesn't actually happen until 20 minutes in.

And my worries were largely correct.  This is not a movie that supports its length.  It could easily be shorter and it would be a better movie if it were.  This movie seems completely unconcerned with time.  It is not clear how far they go, how long time has passed, anything.  In one scene, I was completely surprised that they were evidently in Kentucky.  When did they leave Ohio?  Simple scenes were they pass "Leaving Ohio" on the highway or something to that effect would have helped.  Also even an attempt at establishing a timeline.  The movie is concerned with neither geography nor time.

The characters also seem remarkably unconcerned with getting caught, seeing as they make a million stops along the way.  They stop at a fast food place, accidentally hit a guy, take him to the hospital (a completely ridiculous scene in my opinion).  They go to a bar for a couple hours.  They visit a grave.  They stop in the middle of the completely empty highway to ride a horse.  They playfully stick their head out the window on the highway, because again there are no cars around them.  On the highway.  In the middle of the day.

When they visit "Queen's" cousin, there's very little tension when the police show up, which... feels like they did something wrong there.  He asks for a warrant, he says he'll get it, and then they just easily leave.  Wouldn't a cop, with a person being as suspicious as the cousin, call for a warrant and just stay at the property while someone else gets it?  Also, the couple at this point is extremely famous and he's her cousin.  This information hasn't been passed to the New Orleans police?

But, the main issue, the thing that would forgive all other things, is that Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith have no chemistry.  At the beginning of the movie, neither character likes each other and they are apparently so convincing at that that when they do start to fall in love, it feels forced as hell.  This is the soul of the movie.  If you buy into the romance, the plot problems dissipate.  If you don't, the plot problems amplify.

And I just didn't think the script or the actors sold their growing feelings for each other at all.  Considering the climax of the movie requires you to have an investment of them as a couple, no investment means the whole movie fails for you.  I think it's really that simple.  If you buy into them as a couple, the movie probably works.  If you don't, well there's really not much else to connect to on this movie.

Waithe and director Melina Matsoukas wanted to make an important movie.  This is very obvious.  I don't even think they would deny that.  But they were so concerned with making an important movie, they forgot the most important thing about movies: make it good.

Here's the ironic thing.  By emphasizing how important it was, the movie stopped being a movie and started being a message.  This is no clearer than the scene where the two characters finally hook up and they intercut that with... a protest.  Which was a very strange decision.  Honestly they could have scrapped the whole protest scene and what that entailed (you'll know what I'm referring to if you've seen it).  The kid wasn't given enough screen time for that to feel like anything but the movie delivering a message.  I guess they felt like they needed it to be intercut with a sex scene is because the movie is otherwise completely from Queen & Slim's perspective.  But it was a strange choice.

Queen & Slim is a deeply disappointing movie.  There's not much tension and the plot is ridiculous, but not in an entertaining way, just in a way that doesn't resemble how real life works.  The central couple lacks chemistry and the movie is boring.  It's here where I note that this movie got good reviews, so I am just one opinion of many.  But I truly don't think it's a good movie.

1.5/4 stars

Welles Marathon: The Trial (1962)

I'll be honest.  I was not expecting a parallel with Steven Soderbergh at all in this marathon.  In my Soderbergh marathon, I covered Kafka, which was Soderbergh's second movie.  Part of that movie was based on The Trial, one of Kafka's most well-known novels.  And of course, this movie, which came further into Welles career, was based entirely on the novel The Trial.

In both cases, I feel not entirely qualified to judge the movie.  Because both movies seem largely to depend on mood, and that mood is Kafkaesque, a mood I'm not necessarily in tune to, being mostly unfamiliar with the author's work.  I suppose I should read The Trial and watch these movies again and then maybe I'll feel more qualified.

But... that's not what movies are about!  The vast majority of people will never have read the novel, short story, or comic book that a movie is based on, and they're forced to judge the movie on its own merits, not with a preexisting knowledge.  So I can't take that cop-out and just be done with this movie.

Of the two, I think Orson Welles is the more successful movie.  I think it helps that he is just adapting the novel straight while Soderbergh is sort of crafting an original narrative.  There's more of a singular purpose that propels the movie forward, which is Josef K. trying to figure out what crime he's being accused of so he can defend himself.

If there's a weakness in this movie, I think it's inherent in the material.  Which is to say, it's the point.  The movie is almost incoherent about what exactly is happening, but well I feel like that's what the movie is trying to do.  Josef K. has no idea what's going on, and we're just thrust into his world and the absolute insanity of what's happening to him.

Basically, the movie is a mostly faithful adaptation of the novel.  I mean I imagine.  I haven't read it.  But I can see how it'd be easier to portray confusion when you're reading about the perspective of Josef K as opposed to seeing it on screen.  So I think Welles did about the best he could with putting us in the mind of someone who is rightfully paranoid and lost.

I don't really understand the women though.  I know it's in the novel.  But he encounters three separate women who appear to want to fuck him.  Why?  I'm sure there's a reason.  He had some sort of platonic or otherwise relationship with his neighbor, so that one is easy enough to explain.  The others?  Kafka appears to be saying something here but what I do not know.  I had a similar problem with Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, where everyone wanted to fuck Tom Cruise.

You can tell this is well-directed.  Not that the narrative really needed the push, but the camera angles add to the uneasy feeling of the movie.  Lots and lots of disorienting camera angles to let you know something's not right.  It certainly adds to the tension of the film.

As for Welles performance, it's about as expected.  At this point in his career, he could be menacing in a bed, and that's exactly what he is.  He had that kind of presence and voice that he didn't really need to do much but be there and talk and you were afraid of him.  Which reportedly transferred to real life whenever he was on set with certain actors, so clearly he just had an intimidating presence about him.  Which was used quite effectively in his movies.

But the real star in the movie is Anthony Perkins, a couple years after Pyscho pigeonholed his career.  He plays a twitchy, nervous guy - nothing like Norman Bates - and he's very good.  I know he was not happy about the way his career developed post-Pyscho, but he also said this role was one of the highlights of his career.

The interesting thing about The Trial is that at first, it basically looks like a filmed stage play.  The first scene is quite long.  He spends time asking the cops what he's being charged with, and then he talks to his two neighbors, and the whole thing lasts like 20 minutes and it appears the 20 minutes is meant to be roughly 20 minutes on screen too.  And as he starts going to new locations, the camera angles start being disorienting.

Anyway, I wish I could say I loved watching this more, but without a specific connection to the novel it's based on, I did not.  I just thought it was a well-made film that I believe was essentially true to the novel, and I think that's all you can ask for in an adaptation.

3.5/4 stars

Welles Marathon: The Magnificent Ambersons

The making of Citizen Kane is a fairy tale.  Orson Welles, having reached the top of his game in the theater and on the radio, was given unlimited control and a huge budget to make Citizen Kane at 25-years-old.  He never experienced anything like that again in his career, starting with his second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons.

Things started well enough, but the biggest problem was that he conceded control over the final cut, which he did not do for Citizen Kane.  So when he had to leave the country to make a film as a part of the Good Neighbor Policy, RKO Radio Pictures took control from him.  His original 135 minute cut of the movie turned into an 88 minute movie with a different ending.

Here's the kicker: it was probably a better movie than Welles' original movie.  There is of course no way to tell for sure.  After the film was received poorly, editor Robert Wise cut 7 minutes from the movie and it was shown again to a poor response.  RKO took over editing at this point, asked Robert Wise and the assistant director to do reshoots, including a new ending, and it ended up as the 88 minute version available now.

Wise, who himself was a pretty good director in his own right (which happened after this movie), says the original cut was not better than the newly edited version.  It seems to me that the biggest beef people have with the edited version is a happy ending.  Welles did not have a happy ending.  The book the movie is based on, however, did have a happy ending.

As it stands, you can't really tell that this movie was supposed to be over two hours long, which is astonishing to me.  If I had no idea of the backstory, I would have thought this was Welles' vision.  There truly is no disconnect here.  Okay maybe the ending is a little weird, since it's heavily foreshadowed it won't be a happy one.  

Okay, so since this review may be for people who've never seen it, I'll explain the plot.  A wealthy family sees its fortunes decline during the time of the advent of the automobile.  You see a boy and girl loved each other, but the boy made a fool of himself one time, and then she decided to never see him again and she married someone she didn't love.  Certainly not a plot that you could really make nowadays that's for sure.

So roughly 20 years later, George Amberson, the only child of the loveless marriage, is spoiled and generally unpleasant.  At a huge party, the boy who loved the girl had since married, had a kid, and had his wife die.  George instantly takes to his daugher, Lucy, but hates her father, Eugene.  Eventually, George's father dies, and Eugene and his mother look like they might get together, with both being available, but George is a spoiled brat and lets it be known he does not approve.  Which is a thing that mattered then.

So that's what happens.  And it's foreshadowed, hell outright stated, that George will "get his comeuppance" which largely seems to happen until the surprise happy ending.  Here's the thing: I think that A) the happy ending isn't really that happy and B) is plausible.

So spoilers, but this is an 88-year-old movie, so I feel like the window has passed for you to be mad about spoilers.  So the mother dies as a result of George's petulance, and this causes him to change.  He didn't see the point of working, now he wants to work for a good cause.  He then seriously injures himself in an automobile accident.

Eugene, who truly loved his mother, decides to take after the boy, because well that's what a man who loves someone would do.  Also Lucy and George are implied to have reconciled and eventually gotten together.  But the evidence for this is: she visits him in the hospital.  We don't even see their reunion scene. 

If this were a more modern movie, there would be doubt about the fate of Lucy and George's relationship, no question.  And I don't mean if it were filmed differently, I mean if it were filmed exactly the same way.  She visits him in the hospital.  That's the entire basis for imagining a relationship when there previously was none.  Only in the context of happy endings always happening in 1942 is there no doubt.  And the music.  But you could have sweeping, romantic music in 2020 and there would still be doubt about their future.

Anyway, my only point is that since George does change and has a comeuppance of sorts, the happy-ish ending doesn't feel cheap.  So whether or not this is the vision Welles had, doesn't matter to me.  The movie still works.

Aside from that, the one huge Welles influence is the amazing party scene where George and Lucy first chat, and the camera follows them as they walk throughout the party.  In the background, while they're chatting, the party still happens.  And actually, I was under the mistaken impression their conversation was one long shot, and I think that's a testament to how effectively he inserts us into that scene.

I'm actually glad I visited this after I had already seen most of Welles' filmography.  Because it wouldn't be immediately apparent how much of an aberration this movie is in his resume.  It's really nothing like anything else he's ever done.  And I wouldn't have quite appreciated that if I had watched this after Citizen Kane, in order of when they were made.  This is no Citizen Kane, but it's one of his best movies.

3.5/4 stars