1902 - Fun in a Bakery Shop
1912 - The Musketeers of Pig Alley
1922 - Grandma's Boy
1932 - You Said a Mouthful
1942 - The Arctic Giant
1952 - Limelight
1962 - Cape Fear
1972 - The Last of the Red Hot Lovers
1982 - Two Portraits
1992 - And Life Goes On
2002 - Unknown Pleasures
2012 - The Paperboy
2022 - Tori and Lokita
I'm glad that you're reading this, but the truth is that the next three minutes of your time would probably be better if you just watch Fun in a Bakery Shop a couple of times. It's smart. It's silly. It's the perfect runtime.
I wish I could say that about every film.
Unfortunately, I can't.
At a little under 20 minutes, The Musketeers of Pig Alley still outran its welcome for me. This one has been on my list to watch for at least 20 years, maybe 30. It's often listed as the first gangster film. I was disappointed. I should have been able to enjoy this for its staging and location shooting, but I couldn't get into it at all. I was bored.
Grandma's Boy, if nothing really special, is at least pleasant and mildly amusing for most of its runtime. Harold Lloyd plays a lovable loser who gets a magic charm from his grandma that allows him to act tough. It's not top tier silent comedy, but it does everything right and is better than most movies.
Joe Brown gets a lot of hate on Letterboxd and the general vibe there is that You Said a Mouthful is a tedious bore just barely saved by Ginger Rogers. But that was not my reaction. I thought that the film was genuinely funny in places. Joe invents an unsinkable bathing suit. Joe inherits his aunt's black servant boy (who becomes the star of the film). Joe gets mistaken for a champion swimmer, then wins the competition and wins the girl. It's all ridiculous, but purposefully so, never stupid. I liked it.
I grew up playing the video game Rampage, a game about giant monsters destroying buildings. The past couple of years, I have finally started to explore kaiju movies. The Arctic Giant is a wonderfully animated Superman short featuring the discovery of a dinosaur that gets transported to and put on exhibit in Metropolis. Nothing could go wrong, right? Well, not if you like seeing buildings get smashed by a giant beast.
I wanted to love Limelight. I ended up liking it with a sort of cold respect. I could see the emotional arc that Chaplin so clearly wanted me to see, but I couldn't feel it. That might be my failing and not the film's, but there wasn't much else to hang my hat on here. I did love the choreography of the comic (and ballet) performances, pretty much every dream sequence and the final act.
I already wrote about Cape Fear.
I showed The Last of the Red Hot Lovers at work as part of this year's Eric Swan Memorial Series. I miss Eric. I wish I could have talked to him about why he liked this one. I think that he generally must have been a fan of Arkin's schtick, his comedic persona. But I think there's also something in this film about being "constitutionally unable" to follow through on wicked intentions that resonated with Eric.
Two Portraits is a pair of short biographical films in conversation with each other. The first film is a single shot, played out in slow motion, of an elderly man walking towards the camera in what looks like an airport terminal. While this image plays, a voice speaks facts about a father, presumably the man in the image. The second film is a shot of a woman reclining on a yard chair as a shadow approaches and envelops the frame. A woman, presumably the woman on screen, reads diary entries. There is a third shot, a bridge shot between these two, between the two films, that features a man walking up steps with a woman below. The audio is a conversation between these two persons.
There's a cumulative effect to all of this that is undeniably powerful. I have found myself thinking about this short film more than I have most other films I've seen this year. It's "about" how we remember people, how persons relate to one another in space and time, how we misunderstand each other, and the ways in which we either live for others or live for self.
The best film I've seen recently is And Life Goes On. It's ridiculous that I have avoided Kiarostami most of my life even though Taste of Cherry was a very important film for me as a young cinephile. I think I was a little disappointed by Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), and I didn't want to be disappointed by his earlier work. I shouldn't have been afraid. And Life Goes On is a rare perfect film. This might seem like a strange comparison, but Kiarostami here reminds me of Fred Rogers more than anyone else, in his sympathy towards children, but maybe even especially in his metafictional moments, pointing out that everything on camera is playfully constructed, that this is a fiction meant to instruct and to entertain, that 'make believe' can heal.
I don't hate the 21st century, but you wouldn't know that based on my response to the following three films, the worst of this 2s series.
Unknown Pleasures starts strong, and I really don't hate the film, but it also just becomes a little too on-the-nose. China is moving into the future. There is no future for these Chinese youth.
I'm seriously embarrassed for everyone involved in The Paperboy. I just realized that this the 2nd time I've picked a late career Nicole Kidman performance (the last one being 2011's Trespass during the last cycle). Why is she so disgusting?
I wanted to love Tori and Lokita, but instead, it just made me angry at the Dardennes. At this point, "a Dardenne" is just another formulaic subgenre. There's something grating to me about the mixture of faux-realism and carefully constructed melodrama. This film feels false.
I have made a vow to never watch another new Christopher Nolan film. I am now vowing to never go see another new Dardenne picture. Meh.
I did get distracted by a couple of non-2 films. These were both watched for my library film discussion group.
Lady Cocoa (1975)
Wedding in Galilee (1987)
I don't really have anything to say about either one of them. Lady Cocoa had a few fun moments, but was ultimately a disappointment. I can't write about Wedding in Galilee yet since Ben might read this and I think he's planning on watching it.
I also just (belatedly) finished watching The Commissar for Soviet Club. It's a lovely and humane film. It is also sometimes heavy-handed in its style and too obvious in establishing its themes.
Finally, I re-watched Ball of Fire (1941) with the family recently. It's one of my favorite comedies and has a smart enough and generous enough script that I'm willing to forgive Wilder's cynicism elsewhere. Stanwyck's character (the titular 'ball of fire') is simultaneously charming and atrocious. The entire plot is contrived and condensed to fit into a Hollywood 2 hours, but her character's arc from selfish survivor who has made it ("Third Avenue girl in the Major League at last") to someone who can see the dignity in earnest cornball affection stripped of all posturing and artifice. It's a move from street smarts to a deeper wisdom as she comes face to face with the vulnerability of the undisguised love given to her by a group of dopey old book-smart men. In the end, she decides that it's worth losing the world to maybe gain her soul at last.
Okay, onward to the 3s!!!