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27 dresses is a conventional romantic comedy about a woman who after being the bridesmaid of 27 of her girlfriends is getting ready for becoming a bride herself. She has to go through some hurdles, including standing up against her own sister, who happens to go after the same guy, and the fear of recognition of her own emotions. We watched it mostly because of Katherine Heigl, who was one of my wife’s favorite actresses from the Grey’s anatomy TV series. Fr my taste it was a bit too predictable and too slow and not funny enough. As a romantic comedy it could have used more comedy, i.e. better writing. As usual for this kind of movies, the preview had all the good moments, built up some slight expectations (not much though) and then left you hanging, waiting for something extra that never arrived. Oh well, the dresses and the people were cute if that counts.

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Finally I saw Kirk Douglas at his top. He is/was a great actor; something I always suspected but didn’t have the opportunity to confirm for myself until I saw Ace in the hole. I also think that the role he had to play–a big-city journalist, who gets stuck in a small-town (which Albuquerque was at the time) and blows up a non-story to a big event for his own gains—provided the opportunity for him to shine. I rarely see nowadays stories focusing on morals as intently as this 1951 epic. The writing was great both in its details and overall. By this I mean that the story and the tension developed at an even pace. Of course the atmosphere only got tenser and tenser if you share the moral value, that it is wrong to exploit others, particularly if their lives depend on it for your own personal fortune. Throughout the movie we, the viewers, were worried whether the guy—who gets trapped in a cave and whose rescue has to last a week so our journalist could make a headliner story out of it— in survives or not.

The writing was exceptional not just in the grand theme, but in the details as well. Lines like these capture the cynicism of journalists; at least the way Billy Wilder, who wrote and directed the movie, wanted us to think of it:

Play along with me and you’ll get re-elected. Don’t, and I’ll crucify you.
It’s a good story today. Tomorrow, they’ll wrap a fish in it.
Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news.
I can handle big news and little news. And if there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog.

The movie’s working title was “The big carnival.” This reminds me that the fictional story in the movie would not have been able to grow big, if we, members of the not-so-smart mob-were not interested and jumping on stories. From his point of view, the mob is the second single most important character in the movie. The second after the journalist, who creates the story and even before the third, the trapped man, because he can be replaced with anything the journalist declares newsworthy. This mob behaves exactly as in ancient Roman times, when their primary need for circus and bread was easily satisfied. That is exactly what was craved for here, and sold at a low price.

There are two similarities that need to be pointed out. The movie was a financial failure; Wilder’s only. I think that the film’s potential audience did not like to be compared to the audience in the movie. If they see stupid, sensation hungry people as the viewers of a morally wrong story, they might have thought that it is about them. Nobody likes to be called stupid. The other parallel is between the journalist and the man in the old mine. They are both stuck in their situation; both as a a result of their actions. The journalist kept getting fired from various papers around the country for his unreliable and obnoxious performance. The man in the cave went where he was told not to go. SPOILER ALERT!!! They both pay for their mistakes. The big difference is that one of them exploits the other. But their similar fate decreases the value of the movie’s lesson—”do the right thing” or more precisely in this case “don’t do the wrong thing”–. If we all end the same way, why bother. For the answer watch the movie and compare their deathbed confessions.

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This is a top 1000 movie.

My expectations were more than met with Hancock. Based on the preview I thought it would be a superhero movie with comic elements and I was right on both account. I knew that Will Smith as a clochard with an array of un-, under- and misused superpowers would find the way back to decency. That he did dropping plenty of one-liner jokes and multi-ton trucks along the way. What I had no idea was that it would be a family drama as well, with an unconventional love triangle, where true love in its various forms would win. As such it ended up having a positive message. It involves what Charlize Theron’s character says at one point, “fate doesn’t decide everything. People get to choose.” I cannot say much more about this action-packed, light Hollywood extravaganza without spoiling it.

But as I recalled that I heard the main character’s name (John Hancock) so I had to check upon him. Turns out (and I should have known) that he was one of the founding father’s of the US. Beyond that and his contribution to contemporary politics he is known for his signature on the Declaration of Independence, which is the largest and clearest on the document. According to his biographer “his is a synonym for the word ’signature’.” In the light of this information I wonder why this movie was named after him. It has to be more than a superhero being a signature of our times. I think it is an emphasis of the free will concept. The original Hancock stood up against the British rule of the colonies. The modern Hancock first stood up for his ex-wife life (literally, when he was beaten down) and later for the good of the whole planet. But I am aware that I might have compared the incomparable and this analogy speaks more about me than about the movie.

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I kept watching Frank Capra’s Arsenic and old lace as an original situational comedy, but kept getting disturbed by some of the deeper in themes in it. On the surface the comedy is built around three items with built-in comic elements. First the good-spirited aging aunts, who everybody loves and thought of as the pillars of the community, are quietly serial killers. Second, the man in their house is a harmless, albeit not always quiet, crazy person. Third, in this twisted word drops their freshly married cousin, who earlier finished a book about the folly of marriage. He, played by Cary Grant, is supposed to bring the normal outside world into the old house, where everyone is genetically predisposed to madness. There are two other characters worthy of mention, the returning lost cousin, who looks like a crossover between Frankenstein and Boris Karloff and appropriately enough also a serial killer. And his wimp friend, a failed drunkard, doctor who did the plastic surgery on him.

Watching the dynamic movie as one situation and clever play with words led from one funny disaster to the other was fun. However I am convinced that the choices for two of the characters’ name was more than intentional. The crazy uncle thought of himself as Teddy Roosevelt and everyone went along with it, thinking that it is better for him this way. Considering that the movie was made when the other Roosevelt was the president (1944) the jokes might have been on him in an indirect way. My knowledge of history is not sharp enough to decipher all the jokes they had put in this cousin’s mouth, who was literally depicted as a raving lunatic, but I did get the sense that they had strong and direct references and criticism to current events (for the time) I missed.

Second, the complacent, unmanly, alcoholic doctor was named Einstein. He shaped a man’s face to the ugliest the public could imagine or associate with. I was wondering whether this operation referred to only one person or the whole of humankind. By his theory of relativity the original Einstein made our world more complex, harder to comprehend. I imagine an early reaction to Giordano Bruno’s heliocentric view was similar, although it eventually led to his execution. The movie’s Einstein is discarded as weak character, no matter how significant change he brought. In logics that would be an ad hominem attack. In a comedy though it just serves as a butt of jokes.

There is no acknowledgement or direct reference to the fact that the movie was made during wartime. On the other hand at least a major and a minor solution for the problems of the world are shown. I think they are intended answers or more like coping mechanisms to any and all crisis. The major way is escaping to madness. Mental illnesses were thought of the time as running away from seemingly unsolvable issues. Here, we see the development of even the sanest character developing signs of madness both voluntary and involuntary. War is social madness, but he opts for personal madness to come out alive from the evolving family and legal situation. This is a main theme in the movie.

More interesting for me was the idea of stopping or even resetting time. Every time the crazy cousin slams the door the arms of the standing grandfather clock needs to be readjusted. Instead of making sure it shows the correct time though, the various people tending time always set it back to the same place. Don’t forget this was happening in a quaint old house. In many ways they wished to stop time and were successful for decades. This wish of avoiding progress and the passage of time is another way of not dealing with the presence. On the long term, i.e. by the end of the movie, it proved to be just as pointless as the other method.

Despite prompting these substantial thoughts it is perfectly possible to watch Arsenic and old lace as a simple yet great comedy, because it is. Either way I recommend it.

This is a top 1000 movie.

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I would watch almost anything with Morgan Freeman. His deep voice can be funny, scary, and mysterious at the same time or in any combination. His solid, slow demeanor often suggests coldmindedness and that was exactly the idea in The contract. I would watch almost anything with John Cusack. He managed to get over being an 80s teen sensation, even if he was never exactly a hearththrob. A main characteristic of his lovable characters both in independent movies and in some big budget Hollywood productions is his loving nature. Just like here, where he cared so much about his teenage son who is having a hard time grieving about his mother’s death.

Daddy gets the idea that they might be able to get over their bonding difficulties with a hike. But early on they stumble onto Freeman’s character, who is a criminal mastermind running away from the police. His men and the police are after the three of them as they are hiking through beautiful terrain. I won’t bother you with the rest of the story as its twists and building tension are the main attractions, beyond the stars. As you might guess it is much as about the bonding between the criminal and the “normal” people(, who under extraordinary circumstances commit heroic acts) as much about the chase and uncovering what Freeman’s person did in the past. In the end various versions of honor is preserved. It is a treat two watch the two main actors and the rolling mountains. As for the story, it was simple enough, but nothing special.

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It’s amazing how much office culture and workplace ethics have changed since the 1950’s. In The Apartment, Jack Lemmon’s character can move up on the corporate ladder, because he lets the higher ups use his apartment for trysts. Hence the title. The sad thing is that he is actually good at his real work, would be worthy of advancement based on merits, but nobody notices it. Most of the love affairs shown are between coworkers. No, scratch that, they are between male bosses and younger female subordinates. Today the unbalanced power relations (and their effects on the relationships) has been revealed, so again, this would unimaginable in an ethically ran company.

The apartment shows the Christmas season of 1959, an era when the corporation was a different kind of fixture in the economy. The “organization man” was still considered a somewhat positive concept. The rows of identical desks at the office are a scary view for me having seen them taken to the extreme in Brazil and 1984. As I learned from a review the image was first used in a 1928 silent movie The Crowd. From a work-ergonomic point of view it suggests decreasing work activity for me, but here the workers seemed to busy bees in the rows. But our anti-hero, manages to get his won office, due to his willingness of sharing his place for extra-marital affairs. Which, by the way were following the (expected) norms back then according to this picture.

But beyond the social criticism the movie (and the era it shows) deserves, it is a healthy combination comedy, a drama and realism. Lemmon is fighting with a cold coming, his neighbors–who are disturbed with the frequent noises from his place–, his loneliness, but most importantly with the conflict between career and morals. Don’t get me wrong he has nothing against the affairs on a moral ground, up to the point when it involves his potential girl, the lovely elevator girl, played by Shirley MacLaine.

I know that I have seen her in movies in the past (e.g. In Her Shoes, Bewitched, Steel Magnolias, Terms of Endearment, Being There), but never as a young actress. My oldest memory of her is that both of my late grandmothers were keen reading her autobiography when it came out in the 1980’s in Hungarian. I was a teenager at a time, and thought that if they are into something or somebody that means I should not be, as it would not be “cool”. So., I promptly put MacLaine out of my mind. But now, having seen her as a twentysomething, prompted me to reevaluate and my existing prejudice.

There is one image from the movie that keeps popping in my mind. When MacLaine talks on the phone with her lover in Lemmon’s apartment and her feelings get a blow there is little statue behind her head. It is a female figurine in a rocking chair with her eyes blindfolded. It is an interesting symbol of love is blindness notion. Interesting because Maclaine is not just lovestruck, but also realist. She is fully aware in her more sober moments that the guy only used her as a summer fling, while his wife and family was away on vacation. She had burnt herself in the past. But then she gives him another chance and another one again. The blindfolded lady gets rocked back and forth into this unhealthy liaison.

I want to close this review with a short quote from the movie that touches on a lot of the themes I mentioned above. Lemmon (Baxter) and MacLaine (Kubelik) are heading towards the office Christmas party:

C.C. Baxter: Shall we join the natives?
Fran Kubelik: Why not? They seem friendly enough.
C.C. Baxter: Don’t you believe it. After a while there will be human sacrfices. White collar workes tossed into their computing machines and punched with one of those square holes.
Fran Kubelik: How many drinks did you have?
C.C. Baxter: Only three [showing 4 fingers]

This is a top 1000 movie.

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I noticed that most of my reviews are of US made movies from the last three years. I want to change this trend and I want to watch good movies, including more older and foreign ones. In the first round, which may last years, I am following the Guardian’s “1000 films to watch before you die” list. I have seen about a third of them already in the past. I am not interested in approximately a fourth of them, because this particular list contains more sexual, horror and violent movies than I prefer. A small portion of the movies are not available for borrowing on DVD or VHS. Which leaves about 250-300 movies I still can and plan to check out. Not to mention that I may re-view some of the movies on the list I have seen 10-20-25 years ago. When/if I am done with this 1000 I will go and look whether a similar list, published in a book titled “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die,” has anything that the Guardian missed. Then I move onto the films from the book Movie Lust that I got as a gift from my wife a few years ago.

Reviews of the top 1000 movies will be appearing here slowly in more or less alphabateical and chronological order; i.e. I start with the movies, titles starting with A, and go frmo the oldest to the newest within them. But there are at least 40-50 movies I have seen and not review yet, so the top 1000 movie reviews will be interspersed with those. But they are coming and will contain a link back to this to show, that they are from the quality list of movies and not just from the recent movies list.

The biggest challenge with Cloverfield was to avoid getting it spoiled for me. Considering all the marketing and hype surrounding it, this was not small treat. It came out in January and I managed to watch it in September without anyone online, in real life or in an article would tell me what was destroying Manhattan in it. So let me ruin it for you, in case you have not seen it. Just kidding, won’t do that.

It was an effectively wrote, shot, acted, and CGI-ed movie. The writing was good enough to start care for the characters, even when their interrelations were not entirely clear yet. The handheld shooting, all mimicking homemade videos was the most valuable in creating a documentary feel. But I could not resist thinking that this method was inspired by the European dogma filmmaking school, where it was used differently to tell personal stories in a more intimate, natural manner. Here the purpose might have been the same, but the fact that it is a catastrophe movie created a whole new meaning. From a purist point of view it was confusing. I liked though that I was not familiar with any of the actors. That again contributed to the home-movie feel: I did not associate any fo the faces to the actors’ previous roles. The CGI effect started of subtle and distorted and in the distance, to be scary enough and they were a bit of a disappointment, when we got to see the cause of the destruction up close.

This was a fun movie, with new ideas, execution and people. I would not watch it again though. Having watched it once the tension in me built up probably exactly the way its creators envisioned. It would just not work the same way again.

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I had three reasons to check Anamorph out. First the description at IMDB sounded fascinating, “A psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.” Second Willem Dafoe is always a treat, albeit sometimes a sour one at that. Finally I noticed Clea DuVall in the Carnivàle series, but has seen her in other movies, so I was looking forward for more of her.

Sadly I was disappointed in all of these areas. First, somehow when I read the movie’s plot I missed the “thriller” part and focused on the anamorphosis section. But this is a harsh psychological thriller, which is not my favorite genre. Particularly when torture is involved, think of Silence of the Lambs category, but different execution.

The attempt at making an anamorph film was not successful. An occasional filter to make the movie sepia tone, a look or partial overexposure does not make it anamorph. The way the crimes under investigation were committed did include anamorph effects, but that was the topic and not the style of the movie. And even those were not universally anamorph; they involved other artistic techniques. Nevertheless killings in my eyes are still killings, no matter how artfully done. Others might enjoy the detective story, but that part was not special.

Dafoe was boring and probably bored too. I blame it in Henry Miller who directed and co-wrote the movie. It should have been a half an hour short or better yet an art exhibition only. DuVall did not have enough on-screen scenes to make a big enough impression. And even in those she was undergoing treatment for being a victim and at the same time being prepped up as the next victim. She had no opportunity to go beyond these set limits.

To sum it up, the movie was not just slow, had misguided art segments, underused thespian talents, botched storyline, but also depressive. What a waste of talent and opportunity.

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Roland Emmerich, the director of 10,000 BC sure likes to make epics with fantastic tints. After all he directed The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day, Stargate and is now working on 2012. This movie fits in the epical series as it depicts big, sweeping historical events and is full of imagined, recreated vivid images. These details and some of the actors’ work I enjoyed. But I also kept shaking my head as I was remembering the little history I know of the period. Well, that is exactly the problem, it was showing not one period, but combined different eras (and geographic areas) that were far part in history. This disturbed me, but as soon as I replaced the idea that I was watching a history film with the notion that it is an adventure film I calmed down. I just wish every viewer would know this and would not think of this film as fit for the History channel.

I mentioned the actor’s work. I have to start with Omar Sharif, the narrator, whose voice by now sounds as timeless as needed for such an out-of-time movie. Camille Belle was beautiful, but did not have the chance to show off her acting capabilities; like she superbly did in the two movies I have seen (The Chumscrubber and The Ballad of Jack and Rose). Steven Strait delivers the role of the hero with a heart and minds (besides muscles) adequately enough, but not particularly convincing. I think the movie would have been much better 10-20 minutes shorter, as even with the spectacular visuals it did not manage to keep my attention; i.e. I was bored every once in a while. My advice: read a good paleontology book, watch Belle’s other movies for her acting, and flip through a picture book. Combined together you would have a better (spent) time.

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