Movies I Must Watch

I've decided that it's time to post my list of movies that I must see in my lifetime.  Obviously, I'm going to try (and by all means hopefully succeed) in watching every single film on this list, and I hope to have many of them reviewed as soon as I can:

2001, a Space Odyssey

A Beautiful Mind

Absence of Malice

Adaptation

A History of Violence

Ali

Alien

Aliens

Alive

All Quiet on the Western Front

Amadeus

A Passage to India

Apocalypse Now

Badlands

The Big Red One

Bonnie and Clyde

Blade Runner

Casino

Changeling

Chariots of Fire

Citizen Kane

City Lights

The Color Purple

Cool Hand Luke

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Cross of Iron

Das Boot

Days of Heaven

The Decalogue

The Deer Hunter

The Departed

Dirty Harry

Donnie Brasco

Drive

The English Patient

The Fall of the Roman Empire

Fargo

The French Connection

Full Metal Jacket

Gallipoli

Goodfellas

Gorillas in the Mist

The Graduate

The Grapes of Wrath

The Grizzly Man

High Noon

King of Kings

The Insider

JFK

The Last Temptation of Christ

The Leopard

Life is Beautiful

Malcolm X

Man on Fire

The Man who shot Liberty Valance

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Metropolis

Million Dollar Baby

The Mission

Munich

My Darling Clementine

The New World

Of Gods and Men

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Once Upon a Time in America

Once Upon a Time in the West

Ordinary People

Out of Africa

Platoon

The Pianist

Pork Chop Hill

Pulp Fiction

Raging Bull

Rain Man

Ran

Rear Window

Red River

Rescue Dawn

Reservoir Dogs

The Road

Scarface

Schindler’s List

The Seventh Seal

Shakespeare in Love

The Shawshank Redemption

The Silence of the Lambs

Stand By Me

Seven Samurai

Solaris

Taxi Driver

Three Colors: Blue

Three Colors: White

Three Colors: Red

Titanic

The Towering Inferno

The Tree of Life

Troy

United 93

Vertigo

W.

Wall Street

Winchester ‘73

Yojimbo

Gran Torino (2008, R)

Directed by: Clint Eastwood

Grade: B+

“Get off my lawn,” growls Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), a Korean War veteran and Gran Torino’s unlikely hero who aims his M1 Garand straight in the faces of the gang members fighting it out in front of his house.  At first, Walt doesn’t want anything to do with these people, Hmong immigrants who have recently taken over the neighborhood, leading to intense gang violence.  What’s more, his wife of fifty years has just passed away, the rest of his family is eager to claim his prized 1972 Ford Gran Torino, he’s sick and coughing up blood frequently, and he’s had enough of the gang warfare in his neighborhood.  Walt shows absolutely no respect for these people, instead staying off to himself on his front porch, drinking multiple cans of beer every day with his aging Labrador Retriever, Daisy, by his side.  He swears and sneers at any one who walks by, and dismisses the efforts of a young Catholic priest to get him to confess. 

 What’s ironic, even about these particular circumstances, is that Walt is actually a likeable protagonist, but only after we get to know him after a while.  The reasons owed to this are that we come to know his character so well (undoubtedly due to the Eastwood persona which, over the years, we have to come to readily identity with), and because he redeems himself by the second half of the film when he makes the decision to defend a Hmong family from a group of aggressive gangsters.

 Gran Torino is a wholly gripping and brutal drama, but more importantly, it’s a fitting eulogy to the acting/director career of Eastwood.  Even though the ending feels rushed and hasty, Eastwood has acted in and directed in one of his finest films in years.  Eastwood is undoubtedly one of the most successful and iconic film actors and directors of our time; nearly everything he put into Gran Torino was successful.  Yes, Gran Torino is harsh, serious, and vulgar, and it’s for those reasons that it may drastically lose appeal to audiences.  But the story here is something fresh, the characters are easy to identify with, and it’s nice to see a 78-year old Eastwood as rough and tough as ever.  Gran Torino isn’t at a level of flawlessness, but Eastwood has succeeded in pulling off another fine film under his belt.  B+

The Bear (1988, PG)

Directed by: Jean Jacques-Annuad

Grade: B

“The greatest thrill is not to kill, but to let live,” is the tagline to Jean-Jacques Annuad’s 1988 wilderness drama, the Bear.  Since this film, ultimately, is about how the hunter and prey come to respect each other, it’s recognizable about how the Bear is almost an anti-hunting more, or more appropriately an anti-poaching movie, due to this single line.  There are many instances in the Bear that attempt to provoke the human mind into sparing the lives of North America’s wildlife, but the last thing I want to do is to say anything that would be considered a major spoiler of this movie, so I’ll move on.

 The Bear, handsomely and exquisitely shot in the Dolomite Mountains of Europe (though the story is set in 1880s’s British Columbia) follows two parallel story arcs that intertwine together at many moments.  One is that of a recently orphaned bear cub, who is reluctantly taken in by an aged, scarred Grizzly.  Slowly, both animals start to bond with each other, and the aged Grizzly teaches the cub a few life lessons for survival in the wild (as Jack London wrote in his book White Fang, the law of the wild is to eat or be eaten).  The other story arc is that of two hunters who set out to hunt down the grizzly as the grand finale prize to their already successful hunt and this is where the first story arc intertwines with the second and makes things ever the more interesting.

 There is very, very little spoken dialogue in the Bear and the music and character development of the hunters is kept to a minimum.  But in total, this film still works very well.  I remained fully interested in everything that was going on, and in fact, the near-absence of dialogue and music is what I think made this film incredibly unique.  The cinematography, even if not absolutely brilliant, still conveys a true feeling of artistry.  

 From the very beginning, the cub himself is a very likeable onscreen character.  The unfortunate death of his mother, depicted in the very beginning of the film, should impact the audience nearly as much as the cub.  After a few days and nights of bad dreams and loose wanderings, the cub is able to overcome his grief when he runs into the wounded, aged Grizzly, who unenthusiastically takes him in.  As the cub follows the Grizzly, he learns a lot of lessons for life in the wild.  For examples, he licks the Grizzly’s bullet wound as a sign of deference, watches the Grizzly take down a deer, and gradually becomes more confident in himself. In the end, he is able to stand his own ground against an aggressive cougar (with some help from the older bear).

 Overall, the Bear works rather well as a tale of wilderness survival.  Beyond that, it can’t be seen to be worth of much value, but in its utter completion, the Bear is a worthwhile film for its appreciated integrity and effective humbleness. There’s a lot happening in the Bear’s short 94 minute running time, but the truth is that this film is the saga of the growing up of the cub, set against the conflicting clash between the hunter and the hunted.  B

Men of Honor (2000, R)

Directed by: George Tillman Jr.

Grade: C

Men of Honor: rightfully old-fashioned, rigorous and even at times frustrating inspirational drama that, towards the end, becomes burdened with an over-dramatic courtroom finale.  But determined acting from the two leads helps to keep the film wavering on a semi-correct track. C

Tootsie (1982, PG)

Directed by: Sydney Pollack

Grade: C

Seriously, Tootsie has got to be one of the most over-hyped comedies that I have seen.  Considering the film’s 10 Academy Award nominations and it’s induction into the National Film Registry for being ‘culturally significant’, it would seem perfectly apparent that I sat down to watch this film with high expectations.  Parts of Tootsie are funny and did make me laugh, but unfortunately, there are just enough awkward moments that made me feel all the more uncomfortable as I reclined in the chair.

The film finds Michael Dorsey, a down-on-his-luck actor who can’t seem to find an acting job.  So he dresses up as a woman, Dorothy Michaels, and soon becomes the biggest hit on TV’s latest Soap Opera.  Things spiral out of control when Michael, still disguised as Dorothy, falls in love with a co-worker named Julie, and Julie’s father falls in love with Dorothy. 

Believe me; Tootsie’s funny moments are sporadically present throughout the film.  But from the beginning, I didn’t care for Michael Dorsey as a character, and I also didn’t like how, from beginning to end, the film feels increasingly stagy and artificial in its execution.  Tootsie had a lot going for it: a simple, easy-to-follow storyline and a lot of talent in its stars (namely Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange and Bill Murray).  But in short, Tootsie is really nothing special, despite all of the acclaim that it has received, and to me, felt nothing more than a secure mixed-bag.  C

Heat (1995, R)

Directed by: Michael Mann

Grade: A

Heat operates like an action film that’s been made to actually work, and not just for the benefit of its audience, but also for the benefit of itself.   In a clearer sense, it’s easy to see how depraved Heat could have been, but because of all the rigorous energy director Michael Mann put into the project of making it a virtuous film, then we can even more easily see how much respect Heat really does earn.  As a result, Heat benefits itself by being an honest character study, rather than a hard-boiled action film such as the Die Hard or Rambo series. 

The film follows the lives of two men, one a brilliant cop (Vincent Hanna, played by Al Pacino) and the other a brilliant robber (Neil McCauley, played by Robert De Niro), over the course of several days in Los Angeles.  It’s the complications of the story that make Heat so complex, as Mann wisely allows the main stem of the plot to branch out into the supporting character setup and revisions, unexpected turns of events and the moral complications that ensure.  What’s important to note here is that we come to understand the major characters so well, and this is strengthened in every scene that comes after the last. 

It then becomes clear, to us, that Mann has introduced us to two of the most multifaceted characters in film history.  We ask ourselves, what motivates these two men?  What are they trying to gain?  Vincent contends with his own personal problems, and yet absolutely refuses to let his work get in the way of his personal life; he’s respected by the men on his team, and he stops at nothing to bring justice to Neil’s tight-crime syndicate.  Neil, on the whole, isn’t much different.  He’s a lonely individual on the inside, and he only really conducts bank robberies for his own purposes: what he wants is to retire with his girlfriend, and forget his past.  He keeps his guys well uniformed and together, but when strikes us most is how Neil is a more empathetic kind of movie villain, in that he, unlike so many other movie bad guys, actually cares for the members of his gang: he risks his own life when he draws a wounded Chris (Val Kilmer) out of the line of fire in the middle of a shootout, is honest everyone he meets (whether he has good or bad intentions), and makes Chris’s wife promise that she’ll give her husband a second chance after he walks out on her.  We are therefore able to come to a far more of an understanding with his character.  Vincent is a tightly-packed, classic LAPD cop who attempts to keep his emotions within himself and not to others; Neil is nothing less than a revolutionary crime figure.

Besides the character developmental aspects that truly prevail in Heat, we are also laid witness to how well furnished the film really is.  It’s obvious that just by watching Heat, even from a cold distance, that Mann had made sure that every detail, from the basic to the precise, was refined and distinguished to the give the film an accurate, callous, realistic feel for the combat of crime in L.A.  Mann offers us four brilliantly played scenes in Heat’s narrative: the opening armed robbery sequence, the coffee shop scene where Vincent and Neil confess their personal complications to one another (and yet still admit that they won’t hesitate to shoot the other if they feel the ‘heat’ coming around the corner), the celebrated shootout after Neil’s gang has robbed a bank, and the final sequences in which Neil exacts his final revenge, not knowing that Vincent has already cornered him in. 

This film has received so much praise for being the epic showdown between de Niro and Pacino on screen, but in reality, Heat is in need of greater recognition than for simply that: it’s so character driven, so story oriented, and so supremely fashioned that it seems as if Mann has crafted the tour de force of action crime dramas.  Indeed, Heat does have much more going for it than most other films of the genre for these very reasons.  Heat is successful as a both a work of art and as a work of entertainment, and, when it adds up as a tale of vengeance, reckoning, passion and redemption, it finds itself as one of the finest crime films of all time, for all time.  A

The Thin Red Line (1998, R)

Directed by: Terrence Malick

Grade: C+

The Thin Red Line is an enigma within itself: the characters are so complex, the narrative is interwoven with so many little subplots and evocations, and the end of the film, when it does come, concludes the piece with no, definitive repercussion.  So then I ask, what is the meaning of this film?  For a rapid response, I might suggest that the serene, opulent jungle of Guadalcanal was being unethically torn to shreds by war, and that the illustrious director Terrence Malick was going to great lengths to emphasize this throughout his film.  The truth, however, is that the Thin Red Line, for all its visual beauty and artistic values, and  is an incomplete motion picture, and as a result, everything, from the hard-to-understand characters, to the philosophical questions at hand, to the entire theme of the film, are all left with ambiguity. 

I’ll need to be candid; this is the first Malick film I have seen, and already, I do have a great deal of respect for the man.  Malick takes each of his film projects carefully, and he unquestionably refuses to treat filmmaking as anything less of an art.  Visually, as well as artistically, the Thin Red Line is absolutely exquisite, and it is from that perspective that Malick’s talent is displayed in full.  Malick shot over a million feet of film footage for the Thin Red Line, shooting from various locations in the United States, Australia and even on Guadalcanal itself.  The cinematography at hand here is of such unique, special importance, perhaps even to ‘special’ for an Oscar, and it’s the visual impact that make us wonder about whether or not the Thin Red Line is a war film at all.

While the mainstay of the Thin Red Line follows a company of American soldiers during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, the story is piece marked by individual character revisions, such as when we watch the perplexing Private Witt learn to honorably serve alongside his buddies in the Company after previously abandoning them to go find harmony while on AWOL with Pacific Islanders; the passionate Captain Staros who, despite deeply caring for his men, soon learns that sacrifices must be made in battle; the dedicated Private Bell who wishes only to return to his wife; the secluded Sergeant Welsh who only feels lonely “around people” and yet exhibits great gallantry in the thick of mortal combat to save the lives of the dying men around him; and the iron willed, harsh Colonel Tall who is willing to go to any expense of human life to attain victory.  Even if we don’t fully connect with any of these characters in any particular way (I’ll expand on that in a little while), they are what carry the lifeblood of the entire film.

The first half of the film, which is reasonably commendable, devotes itself to the Battle of Hill 210 in Guadalcanal.  The battle scenes are disparate of other war films in that they manage to make clear the revulsions of battle in an entirely new (and perhaps uncompromising) way.  A little over a half hour into the movie, following necessary character establishment scenes at a native village and aboard a ship, the Company lands on Guadalcanal and treks across beautiful country, coming across two dismembered American soldiers with their entrails sprawled before them and their limbs mangled and bloodstained.  This is only the first glimpse into the harrowing combat that is sure to come: at the Battle of Hill 210, Welsh braves enemy fire to deliver morphine to a dying, bleeding soldier; an overwrought, grief stricken Sergeant reports back to the Company about how the rest of his squad has been killed; and seven men are sent alone in the face of machine gun fire to secure a bunker.  Seeing the terror held in their eyes as bullets whiz above their heads and Japanese banzai attackers charge them with bayoneted rifles from the higher ground, makes us realize that no one can truly understand what it is like to be in combat without actually being in it ourselves.  Undeniably though, the film’s most prevailing moment comes in the mopping up operation when the surviving members of the Company overwhelm a Japanese position in a village, as the vultures fly overhead in the sky, the defeated Japanese either hug the dirt begging for mercy or kill themselves, and the American soldiers realize that the victory they have attained came far less swiftly then they possibly could have imagined.

Yet, even as the Thin Red Line demonstrates instances of sheer power and forte, it just as soon begins to reveal what is ultimately so maddening about it.  Immediately frustrating about the film is how Malick distances the general feel of the audiences, thus making the film feel truly remote and isolated as if it were in its own world.  Even as I appreciated all of the character development that I spoke of in the third paragraph, I still did not care for any of characters, because each individual character, as developed as he is, is really almost selfish and antagonistic.  When one of their deaths did come, I assume that I was supposed to care for his demise, and yet, I felt nothing.  Equally unsatisfying is how Malick intersperses the scenes with repetitive shots of the flora and fauna of the island.  While I am kind to imply that the lush, establishing camera shots featuring this are indeed much appreciated, I must oppose with the fact of how Malick doesn’t hesitate to impede the film’s progress by showing the same shot repeatedly throughout the entire film of that massive tree against the sky, or of the natives swimming gracefully in the clear blue water.  Showing us this once is enough, but after Malick continually places these shots in the film, the story flow is recurrently interrupted.

The terms ‘maddening’ and ‘frustrating’, however, both find an entirely new meaning in the second half of the movie.  Whereas the first half of the film is worth praise, the second is not.  I would have been happy with the movie had it stopped at the conclusion of the Battle of 210 and actually made decisions regarding the outcomes of the characters.  Instead, Malick draws the movie on to unnecessary overlength, and slows things down when we are left watching separate characters wandering around aimlessly as their philosophical thoughts are told in voice over.  It is perhaps because of this that the Thin Red Line feels thoroughly inconclusive at its end, considering that hardly any of the characters are able to find answers to their questions that they’ve been rambling on about in voiceover throughout the storyline.  As a result, the dramatic effect of the first half of the Thin Red Line is obscured by the second half.

Malick is such a visionary director, and it is evident throughout the Thin Red Line that Malick put in extensive effort to make the film look lush and vivid in the standpoint that Guadalcanal is a blissful paradise scarred by the aftermath of combat, even as the impassive storyline meanders without any clear resolution.  With the Thin Red Line, Malick has, in some places, crafted cinematic exquisiteness, even if the film, as a whole, is more than hard to relate to.  C+