Disorganized thoughts about music and science and film and philosophy and literature and…
After a long hiatus due to massive amounts of schoolwork and worries about the future (NYC, here I come!), I finally had a great day and along with it, the motivation to write very brief blurbs on all of the movies we watched in film class this semester, as well as two others I recently […]
Title: North By Northwest
Grade: A
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
A worthy and exciting opening to the semester, Hitchcock’s non-stop chase story of mistaken identity still packs quite a wollop and shows that explosions are not needed to make taut action movies (although shootouts on top of Mount Rushmore help ;-)). Blending appropriate amounts of comedy (both […]
Title: Blonde Venus
Grade: B-
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
With the exception of Blade Runner, the worst movie of the semester was still not terrible. If ever there was a reason to be angry at Hollywood for self-censorship (and not for violence/sexuality/etc.), this is it. The complete train-wreck of an ending highlights just how much studio interference […]
Title: The Third Man
Grade: A-
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
One of the few standard “Classic” movies that we watched in this class, The Third Man is genuinely a great movie and interesting to watch. Set in post-WW2 Vienna (and filmed there as well), the dynamic between different cultures is accurately represented in this exciting flick, and […]
Title: The Harder They Come
Grade: A
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
Jamaica, mon! Sunny beaches, Bob Marley, and reefers the size of newspapers are most Americans’ first thoughts upon hearing about this island “paradise.” The truth unfortunately is quite far from this image, as Jimmy Cliff’s great portrayal of a struggling singer in Jamaica shows. Called the […]
Title: The Conversation
Grade: A+
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
A standout even compared to the stellar films of my film class, Coppola’s true masterpiece is not one of the Godfathers, but rather this lesser-known film (made between Godfather 1 and 2). Gene Hackman is simply stunning, and it’s a shame to see one of his recent films […]
Title: Harlan County, USA
Grade: A
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
Another thoughtful documentary that defies convetion to some degree by going for the fly-on-the-wall approach. In this case, however, director Barbara Kopple has to fight to not only familiarize people with the struggles of the miners of Harlan County, but also to educate them about the humanity […]
Title: Breathless
Grade: A-
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
This was in some ways, a very aggravating movie to watch, and yet I felt a great sense of satisfaction after the movie. The initiator of the French New Wave of cinema, this movie brought back the idea of movies as entertainment and art, and reminds its viewers not […]
Title: The Thin Blue Line
Grade: A
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
The epitome of documentaries (and I’m sure every documentarian’s wet dream)–the film-maker uncovers a grave injustice in his findings, and is able to do something about it. Errol Morris’s great flick that saved the life of one man on Death Row (who afterwards had the gratitude […]
Title: Do The Right Thing
Grade: B+
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
I wanted to love this film. I really did. But whether it was the completely ambiguous ending or the unnaturalness of many characters, I couldn’t. That’s not to say that I dislike ambiguity–but here I felt something was lost by Spike Lee’s reticence to lay out […]
Title: His Girl Friday
Grade: A
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
Before the moderately innovative dialogue of every “good girl’s” favorite Gilmore Girls, there were drab sitcoms with stale lines. But even before that, there was His Girl Friday, with an average of 240 words-per-minute of dialog (compared to 90ish for conventional movies). Non-stop jokes mixed in with […]
Title: Run Lola Run
Grade: B+
Times Viewed: 2
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
Analysis of this movie improved my opinion of it slightly, if only because it showed that a lot more care went into its making than I had previously thought. Wrapped nicely in flashy covers, I will still however call this is an action movie at heart, with […]
Title: Blade Runner
Grade: C+
Times Viewed: 2
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
What a hatchet job of a movie–after learning about the disaster behind the scenes of making this movie, it’s much clearer to me why, despite two watches, I still dislike this movie. There was no clear sense of what was wanted, and the movie suffers drastically as a […]
Title: Tampopo
Grade: A+
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
Half the class was laughing throughout this entire movie, and the other half was questioning every interlude, every dialog, every sigh the main character made, every shot of food. It just goes to show that people can miss the entire point of the movie if they get hung up […]
Title: Sin City
Grade: A+
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 04/25/05
The first of two movies that I watched within the span of a week that made go “holy shit” because of sheer excitement bordering on maniacal glee at the gorgeous filming of a frighteningly dark movie. As my friend Richard recently said, the comics (and therefore the movie, […]