I live in South Carolina, work for the government, read and sometimes review books, and love watching movies, discussing them, and occasionally writing about them. I love this site. I think I can already call it home.
Manhattan is easily my favorite, and one I never tire of seeing. I haven’t seen Interiors since it’s theatrical release, but it struck me then as an interesting if somewhat awkward film. Allen’s career has always reminded me of Robert Altman’s — he enters these long periods where he seems to have completely lost his mojo and then just when you’ve given up on him he comes up with a classic.
Bunuel’s “Un Chien Andalou” is probably the place to start; it’s had an incalculable influence on film and the great thing about it is that it doesn’t make anymore sense now than it did in 1928. Among recent films, one that often gets overlooked is Jim Jarmusch’s “Mysyery Train,” in which three stories that occur at the same time are told sequentially. “Pulp Fiction,” which was released later, took this device and fractured it even further.
Brian DePalma is, to me, a master filmmaker, and the fact that he’s ripped off Hitchcock time and again doesn’t matter that much. To me, it’s like variations on a theme, one composer filching from another and making something of his own, or Picasso painting and repainting Delacroix. He’s a great director in the purest sense in that his camera movements are so rich and fluid and interesting, and I love his humor, which is pitch-black.
My personal favorite of all his films is “The Fury,” one of the highlights of his great 1970s period, and also one of the darkest, in which he piled one classic sequence on top of another, ending with an extraordinary crescendo of gore.
No question about Gena. I saw the film at the theater when I was in high school and I was still blown away by it 20 years later. Otherwise, I tend to like the idea of Cassavetes more than the actual experience of watching him. He’s an indie hero, a man who did it his way and let nothing stand in his way, but I find a lot of his films just impossible to sit through. I’ve never been able to finish “Faces,” if only because all that improv acting just looks more and more fake and self-indulgent as it goes along, and rather far removed from whatever reality the director is trying to reflect.
Ulysses, Remembrance of Things Past, The House of Seven Gables, Lolita, Moby-Dick, Absalom, Absalom!, Howard’s End, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Rabbit Redux, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Dead Souls, Persuasion, Gilead, Wise Blood, War and Peace, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The House of Mirth, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Still Holding, Pale Fire, David Copperfield, The Sound and the Fury, The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Little Dorrit, The Day of the Locust, Bleak House, The Violent Bear It Away, Demons, Burr, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Franny and Zooey, Midnight’s Children, Money: A Suicide Note, A Handful of Dust, Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Angels, Angels on Toast, Nothing Like the Sun, The Verificationist, The Unconsoled, A Suitable Boy, The Corrections, Middlesex
Citizen Kane, Rules of the Game, Vertigo, Mikey and Nicky, The Godfather, The Heartbreak Kid, Viridiana, L’ Avventura, Inland Empire, Nashville, Blue Velvet, I Vitelloni, The Crying Game, La Belle noiseuse, Casablanca, Life Is Sweet, Seven Beauties, Children of the Paradise, Un Couer En Hiver, Manhattan, La Dolce Vita, The Searchers, The Apartment, Mon Oncle d’Amerique, Force of Evil, Lady from Shanghai, Shame, Mean Streets, Diary of a Country Priest, Now, Voyager, The Heiress, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Smiles of a Summer Night, Los Olvidados, The Phantom of Liberty, Orpheus, Raging Bull, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, White Heat, Curse of the Cat People, Taxi Driver, The Last Picture Show, Asphalt Jungle, The Maltese Falcon, Short Cuts, The Usual Suspects, Berlin Alexanderplatz, The State of Things, In the Course of Time, Down by Law, High and Low, Hara-Kiri, Trois Coleurs Trilogy, To Live, The Third Man, Crumb, The Long Goodbye, The Last Detail, Late Spring, History of Violence, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D., Portrait of Jennie, Ikiru, Peeping Tom, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, Chinatown, Winter Light, Through a Glass Darkly, Notorious, The Big Heat, Sunrise, Frankenstein, Duck Soup, Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Sullivan’s Travels, My Darling Clementine, Detour, Shadow of a Doubt, On the Waterfront, The 400 Blows, Psycho, Bonnie and Clyde, The Conversation, GoodFellas, ET, Pulp Fiction, Tokyo Story, The Fiancees, The In-Laws, Sideways, Sansho the Bailiff, Ugetsu
Probably Aguirre. I saw his first, “Signs of Life,” some months ago, and that was quite a powerful debut. I had to get someone to explain “Heart of Glass” to me; I think I nodded off at a key moment.
I wrote a letter to Gena Rowlands when he died. She sent a little card back and I still have it on my bulletin board. One other thing I should have pointed out: I tend to love him as an actor, particularly in Elaine May’s “Mikey and Nicky.”
Kundun, The Age of Innocence, Bring Out the Dead, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shine a Light — that’s definitely not banging the same drum, whatever else might be said.
All of Bunuel ought to be on Criterion, even the crap. Why is there no Los Olvidados on Criterion? I’m sure there’s a good reason, but really, come on, that great film needs a permanent home. There ought to be a “Mexican Bunuel” box from Criterion, focusing on the lesser but interesting films he made in the 1950s: Susana, Mexican Bus Ride, The Brute, Abismos de Pasion, and Illusion Travels by Streetcar.
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, El and Nazarin came from the same period, but they deserve the single disc treatment.
I’ve seen “Mikey and Nicky” more times than any other movie I can think of, and Cassavetes’ performance in it is to my mind the best ever captured on film. Better than Brando, better than DeNiro, better than you-name-it.
I can see your point, Wendy, to at least some degree. The material does not always seem to have engaged Scorsese, and is not always well served by his signature style. But when it does work, when the material does connect with him, his camera comes alive and the film takes on considerable intensity. I did not, for example, much care for The Aviator through the first half; it was a standard Hollywood biopic that seemed to have no real reason for being. When Howard Hughes gets in trouble, however, that’s when the movie suddenly woke up — here was the lone man with whom Scorsese has always identified, the outsider, not unlike Travis Bickle, the intensely, obsessively private man who finds himself having to wage war against his foes in public. It suddenly felt like a real movie, and a real Scorsese movie at that. I disagree with you strongly on The Departed, as I thought it was captivating from the first frame to the last, and yes, I did care rather a lot about the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. I thought William Monahan’s screenplay took the Chinese crime film on which it was based and crafted it into a Boston-Irish Catholic mob epic. Scorsese the film student was also in evidence, as it had strong noirish overtones of Polonsky’s “Force of Evil.”
Kubrick’s Lolita is definitely NOT better than Nabokov’s great novel, but it’s a noble attempt. He got the actors right, but the subtle yet hyper-literary structure of the novel defies any treatment on film.
Well, first of all, I disagree on the gender level for just this reason: I saw it at the theater, called my daughter and told her she HAD to see it, went to see it again with her, then she saw it again herself and wound up buying the DVD. So there’s a chick who loves it, if that means anything. I do tend to agree regarding Vera Farmiga’s character in The Departed. It wasn’t really very fleshed out. (She’s a great actress though — did you see her in “Down to the Bone”?) I guess we part company on whether the rest was macho schtick; I never got the feeling those characters were mere types. They seemed genuine to me.
One that I’ll mention here who doesn’t get much notice is Burnett Guffey, who did great work in B&W and color and was honored by his peers for both: Oscars for From Here to Eternity and Bonnie and Clyde. Others: The Harder They Fall, In a Lonely Place, All the King’s Men, and Birdman of Alcatraz. There’s also a generally unnotced Lang film he shot, Human Desire.
Wendy — Totally agree with your comment about filmmakers today having a morbid fear of slowing down. That’s why I love Olmi and Ozu, who adapt very easily to the pace of ordinary life and still make interesting films.
Kifah — I’m not saying it has to look like a landfill — but must it look like the set of Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” video? I’ve never been more disappointed in a picture than I was “Do the Right Thing,” as I was a total fan of Lee’s earlier work, which seemed so charged with life. “Do the Right Thing” by contrast just seemed to meander from thing to thing, and never seemed to have any point to make, and at the end, with those contrasting quotes from Malcolm X and MLK, it just seemed impotent. Some people liked that about it, I guess, that it offered no answers. But instead all you have is a movie that just kind of boils with directionless rage. The response the movie received from all corners totally baffled me. I know I’m alone in this. Anyway, I quite like a lot of Lee’s other films. My favorite is “Bamboozled.” I like him best when he knows what he wants to say and just says it.
We’re getting into an area where my memory is a little too leaky to marshal much of a defense, but I quite liked “Crash” and never really understood the kind of antagonism it seems to spark. I ought to see it again just so I can debate it at length, but I thought it was a very strong piece of work. I wonder if possibly that same film would be regarded differently if it had a different name on it. The fact that it was written by a TV writer leads to these kind of ad hominem arguments.
Thank God I made a dub of “Kings of the Road” ten years ago, when you could actually rent the film from Blockbuster. Widescreen, too, and for a dub it still plays well. Great film; Wenders at his best.
Rohmer is one of those directors who makes great films about subjects that sound as if they have no potential whatsoever. He makes films like “My Night at Maud’s” and “Chloe in the Afternoon” that are not about getting the girl, but which raise the question as to why we pursue the girl in the first place, what makes that girl so valuable, what is it we want with that girl, and what is it we want in general. He makes direct and intelligent films about moral and emotional confusion. His films feed you intellectually and emotionally. He’s a first class example of the proposition that a film can be deeply literary without being dull.
New to The Auteurs? You Belong Here over 3 years ago
I live in South Carolina, work for the government, read and sometimes review books, and love watching movies, discussing them, and occasionally writing about them. I love this site. I think I can already call it home.
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Your favorite Woody Allen's film? over 3 years ago
Manhattan is easily my favorite, and one I never tire of seeing. I haven’t seen Interiors since it’s theatrical release, but it struck me then as an interesting if somewhat awkward film. Allen’s career has always reminded me of Robert Altman’s — he enters these long periods where he seems to have completely lost his mojo and then just when you’ve given up on him he comes up with a classic.
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Inventive Narrative Structures over 3 years ago
Bunuel’s “Un Chien Andalou” is probably the place to start; it’s had an incalculable influence on film and the great thing about it is that it doesn’t make anymore sense now than it did in 1928. Among recent films, one that often gets overlooked is Jim Jarmusch’s “Mysyery Train,” in which three stories that occur at the same time are told sequentially. “Pulp Fiction,” which was released later, took this device and fractured it even further.
Go to Comment
What are the best Brian De Palma's films? over 3 years ago
Brian DePalma is, to me, a master filmmaker, and the fact that he’s ripped off Hitchcock time and again doesn’t matter that much. To me, it’s like variations on a theme, one composer filching from another and making something of his own, or Picasso painting and repainting Delacroix. He’s a great director in the purest sense in that his camera movements are so rich and fluid and interesting, and I love his humor, which is pitch-black.
My personal favorite of all his films is “The Fury,” one of the highlights of his great 1970s period, and also one of the darkest, in which he piled one classic sequence on top of another, ending with an extraordinary crescendo of gore.
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JOHN CASSAVETES over 3 years ago
No question about Gena. I saw the film at the theater when I was in high school and I was still blown away by it 20 years later. Otherwise, I tend to like the idea of Cassavetes more than the actual experience of watching him. He’s an indie hero, a man who did it his way and let nothing stand in his way, but I find a lot of his films just impossible to sit through. I’ve never been able to finish “Faces,” if only because all that improv acting just looks more and more fake and self-indulgent as it goes along, and rather far removed from whatever reality the director is trying to reflect.
Go to Comment
Who do you read? over 3 years ago
Ulysses, Remembrance of Things Past, The House of Seven Gables, Lolita, Moby-Dick, Absalom, Absalom!, Howard’s End, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Rabbit Redux, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Dead Souls, Persuasion, Gilead, Wise Blood, War and Peace, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The House of Mirth, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Still Holding, Pale Fire, David Copperfield, The Sound and the Fury, The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Little Dorrit, The Day of the Locust, Bleak House, The Violent Bear It Away, Demons, Burr, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Franny and Zooey, Midnight’s Children, Money: A Suicide Note, A Handful of Dust, Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Angels, Angels on Toast, Nothing Like the Sun, The Verificationist, The Unconsoled, A Suitable Boy, The Corrections, Middlesex
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favorite films? over 3 years ago
Citizen Kane, Rules of the Game, Vertigo, Mikey and Nicky, The Godfather, The Heartbreak Kid, Viridiana, L’ Avventura, Inland Empire, Nashville, Blue Velvet, I Vitelloni, The Crying Game, La Belle noiseuse, Casablanca, Life Is Sweet, Seven Beauties, Children of the Paradise, Un Couer En Hiver, Manhattan, La Dolce Vita, The Searchers, The Apartment, Mon Oncle d’Amerique, Force of Evil, Lady from Shanghai, Shame, Mean Streets, Diary of a Country Priest, Now, Voyager, The Heiress, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Smiles of a Summer Night, Los Olvidados, The Phantom of Liberty, Orpheus, Raging Bull, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, White Heat, Curse of the Cat People, Taxi Driver, The Last Picture Show, Asphalt Jungle, The Maltese Falcon, Short Cuts, The Usual Suspects, Berlin Alexanderplatz, The State of Things, In the Course of Time, Down by Law, High and Low, Hara-Kiri, Trois Coleurs Trilogy, To Live, The Third Man, Crumb, The Long Goodbye, The Last Detail, Late Spring, History of Violence, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D., Portrait of Jennie, Ikiru, Peeping Tom, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, Chinatown, Winter Light, Through a Glass Darkly, Notorious, The Big Heat, Sunrise, Frankenstein, Duck Soup, Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Sullivan’s Travels, My Darling Clementine, Detour, Shadow of a Doubt, On the Waterfront, The 400 Blows, Psycho, Bonnie and Clyde, The Conversation, GoodFellas, ET, Pulp Fiction, Tokyo Story, The Fiancees, The In-Laws, Sideways, Sansho the Bailiff, UgetsuGo to Comment
Favorite Werner Herzog Film over 3 years ago
Probably Aguirre. I saw his first, “Signs of Life,” some months ago, and that was quite a powerful debut. I had to get someone to explain “Heart of Glass” to me; I think I nodded off at a key moment.
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JOHN CASSAVETES over 3 years ago
I wrote a letter to Gena Rowlands when he died. She sent a little card back and I still have it on my bulletin board. One other thing I should have pointed out: I tend to love him as an actor, particularly in Elaine May’s “Mikey and Nicky.”
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JOHN CASSAVETES over 3 years ago
She’s also great in “Love Streams,” a late Cassavetes film that is quite moving.
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the hate corner over 3 years ago
Kundun, The Age of Innocence, Bring Out the Dead, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shine a Light — that’s definitely not banging the same drum, whatever else might be said.
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Good Bad Films over 3 years ago
I thought “Cable Guy” was so funny I immediately re-watched it. Never really grokked all the hating.
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Movies That Should Be In the Criterion Collection over 3 years ago
All of Bunuel ought to be on Criterion, even the crap. Why is there no Los Olvidados on Criterion? I’m sure there’s a good reason, but really, come on, that great film needs a permanent home. There ought to be a “Mexican Bunuel” box from Criterion, focusing on the lesser but interesting films he made in the 1950s: Susana, Mexican Bus Ride, The Brute, Abismos de Pasion, and Illusion Travels by Streetcar.
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, El and Nazarin came from the same period, but they deserve the single disc treatment.
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Good Bad Films over 3 years ago
Worst film of the 1980s: “Do the Right Thing,” a pointless inter-racial screaming contest set in the cleanest ghetto you’ll ever see.
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the hate corner over 3 years ago
Worst film of the 1980s: “Do the Right Thing,” a pointless inter-racial screaming contest set in the cleanest ghetto you’ll ever see.
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JOHN CASSAVETES over 3 years ago
I’ve seen “Mikey and Nicky” more times than any other movie I can think of, and Cassavetes’ performance in it is to my mind the best ever captured on film. Better than Brando, better than DeNiro, better than you-name-it.
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the hate corner over 3 years ago
I can see your point, Wendy, to at least some degree. The material does not always seem to have engaged Scorsese, and is not always well served by his signature style. But when it does work, when the material does connect with him, his camera comes alive and the film takes on considerable intensity. I did not, for example, much care for The Aviator through the first half; it was a standard Hollywood biopic that seemed to have no real reason for being. When Howard Hughes gets in trouble, however, that’s when the movie suddenly woke up — here was the lone man with whom Scorsese has always identified, the outsider, not unlike Travis Bickle, the intensely, obsessively private man who finds himself having to wage war against his foes in public. It suddenly felt like a real movie, and a real Scorsese movie at that. I disagree with you strongly on The Departed, as I thought it was captivating from the first frame to the last, and yes, I did care rather a lot about the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. I thought William Monahan’s screenplay took the Chinese crime film on which it was based and crafted it into a Boston-Irish Catholic mob epic. Scorsese the film student was also in evidence, as it had strong noirish overtones of Polonsky’s “Force of Evil.”
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Movies That Should Be In the Criterion Collection over 3 years ago
Two great films by Atom Egoyan: Exotica and Ararat.
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Films that are better than the books that they are are based on over 3 years ago
Kubrick’s Lolita is definitely NOT better than Nabokov’s great novel, but it’s a noble attempt. He got the actors right, but the subtle yet hyper-literary structure of the novel defies any treatment on film.
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the hate corner over 3 years ago
Well, first of all, I disagree on the gender level for just this reason: I saw it at the theater, called my daughter and told her she HAD to see it, went to see it again with her, then she saw it again herself and wound up buying the DVD. So there’s a chick who loves it, if that means anything. I do tend to agree regarding Vera Farmiga’s character in The Departed. It wasn’t really very fleshed out. (She’s a great actress though — did you see her in “Down to the Bone”?) I guess we part company on whether the rest was macho schtick; I never got the feeling those characters were mere types. They seemed genuine to me.
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The Great Cinematographers over 3 years ago
One that I’ll mention here who doesn’t get much notice is Burnett Guffey, who did great work in B&W and color and was honored by his peers for both: Oscars for From Here to Eternity and Bonnie and Clyde. Others: The Harder They Fall, In a Lonely Place, All the King’s Men, and Birdman of Alcatraz. There’s also a generally unnotced Lang film he shot, Human Desire.
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the hate corner over 3 years ago
Reading Ebert’s new book on Scorsese just now. Hope to post more later.
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the hate corner over 3 years ago
Wendy — Totally agree with your comment about filmmakers today having a morbid fear of slowing down. That’s why I love Olmi and Ozu, who adapt very easily to the pace of ordinary life and still make interesting films.
Kifah — I’m not saying it has to look like a landfill — but must it look like the set of Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” video? I’ve never been more disappointed in a picture than I was “Do the Right Thing,” as I was a total fan of Lee’s earlier work, which seemed so charged with life. “Do the Right Thing” by contrast just seemed to meander from thing to thing, and never seemed to have any point to make, and at the end, with those contrasting quotes from Malcolm X and MLK, it just seemed impotent. Some people liked that about it, I guess, that it offered no answers. But instead all you have is a movie that just kind of boils with directionless rage. The response the movie received from all corners totally baffled me. I know I’m alone in this. Anyway, I quite like a lot of Lee’s other films. My favorite is “Bamboozled.” I like him best when he knows what he wants to say and just says it.
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JOHN CASSAVETES over 3 years ago
Yeah, unless you point out that he’s Max Fischer’s dad.
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When I say "A Perfect Film", What One Film Pops Into Your Head First? over 3 years ago
Rules of the Game
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the hate corner over 3 years ago
We’re getting into an area where my memory is a little too leaky to marshal much of a defense, but I quite liked “Crash” and never really understood the kind of antagonism it seems to spark. I ought to see it again just so I can debate it at length, but I thought it was a very strong piece of work. I wonder if possibly that same film would be regarded differently if it had a different name on it. The fact that it was written by a TV writer leads to these kind of ad hominem arguments.
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Age / Level of education? (An informal poll) over 3 years ago
I’m…eh, fuck it, who cares. Old, ok?
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YOUR FAVOURITE "ROAD MOVIE" ? over 3 years ago
Thank God I made a dub of “Kings of the Road” ten years ago, when you could actually rent the film from Blockbuster. Widescreen, too, and for a dub it still plays well. Great film; Wenders at his best.
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ROHMER over 3 years ago
Rohmer is one of those directors who makes great films about subjects that sound as if they have no potential whatsoever. He makes films like “My Night at Maud’s” and “Chloe in the Afternoon” that are not about getting the girl, but which raise the question as to why we pursue the girl in the first place, what makes that girl so valuable, what is it we want with that girl, and what is it we want in general. He makes direct and intelligent films about moral and emotional confusion. His films feed you intellectually and emotionally. He’s a first class example of the proposition that a film can be deeply literary without being dull.
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Films you love but most people hate. over 3 years ago
Crooklyn, Girl 6, Titanic, Kansas City Bomber, The Cable Guy
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