I've wanted to write this post for a while. I'm glad to finally get around to it. It's got nearly nothing to do with traveling, but it does have to do with my other favorite thing to do: watch movies. Plus, it's another list. They tell me to include lists on my blog
This list is dedicated to recommending movies that I really like over movies that I feel are very overrated. Without further ado the Top 5 movies you should see instead of more famous but overrated ones:
1. Watch Scarecrow instead of Midnight Cowboy. Very similar films in terms of setup. Down and out hustlers hatching schemes and trying to eek out an existence. I much prefer the acting in Scarecrow. I've never been a big fan of Dustin Hoffman. Though he gives a quality performance as Ratso Rizzo, instead check out an early Pacino performance.
Just before Dog Day Afternoon, Pacino was in the midst of doing some great work before he became an overactor in the 80's. The real star is Gene Hackman. He was also in the midst of a great run and followed this up with another film I'll get to later on down the list. I'll take Hackman over the wooden Jon Voigt any day of the week. This is quality 70s realism. Midnight Cowboy now feels like a melodrama. In its day it got an X-rating and was a trend setter. But it doesn't hold up.
2. In the Valley of Elah instead of The Hurt Locker. Let me start with an apology. I've been a Katherine Bigelow fan since her Strange Days in 1995. Hurt Locker bored me. It didn't quite know what it wanted to be. There was a story in there somewhere, but I'm lost as to what's there to drag you in and hold you. I didn't care about any of the characters.
In the Valley of Elah, on the other hand, convinced me to care about its characters. It's based on a great article "Death and Dishonor" by Mark Boal. Check it out, but not at work. It was published in Playboy. The film version adds a superfluous Charlize Theron but otherwise I think they nailed it. Tommy Lee Jones oozes guilt and regret over his role in his son's death as he simultaneously investigates its physical cause. I think this film sells the effects of war on us humans beautifully and much better than its oscar-winning counterpart.
3. The Conversation instead of the Godfather films. So maybe you have to watch the Godfather films if you've never seen them. They're part of American film history. It's like reading The Scarlett Letter. You have to do it even if it's not the most pleasurable thing to do. I don't dislike the Godfather films. I just think that they are vastly overrated. If this list has not already clued you in, I'm a big acting guy. Give me a great performance over cinematic art any day. Many of my favorite films combine the two. I don't feel that way about the Godfather. It has Brando. Long past his prime and holding on by a thread. He'd long since become a charicature like Pacino and DeNiro are today. I love John Cazale. He's phenomenal. But he's in the film for 5 minutes and he's much more prominently featured in the Coversation. Al Pacino bores me in this film, he's emotionless, like an early version of Keanu Reeves. Diane Keaton, James Caan, Robert Duvall?? They're all servicable. I like them as character actors. I'm not a fan of a single film that one of them had to carry as the lead actor.
The Conversation features another great turn by Gene Hackman. I love this Hackman peformance. Cazale's at his best. It's a near pitch perfect film about paranoia, technology and lonliness. If you like Atonioni's Blow-Up, as I do, you may notice that this hits a similar tone. The Conversation features one of my all-time favorite endings. This is my favorite Coppola film.
4. Jackie Brown instead of Pulp Fiction. Sticking with the same director different film theme, I love Jackie Brown. It's a great love story hidden under a crime caper. Pulp Fiction is funny. It's cute. I like large portions of it. In the end there's not much there. There are a series of very quotable conversations and some great lines. But I feel a little vapid watching it. It's cool. It's hip. It's a fun bit of candy. The 15 minutes between Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega, excepted. And I'm convinced that's what led to Jackie Brown.
There are many things I love about this film. It's a love story. Between two middle-aged people. It's an interracial love story. It's a classic love story. They fall in love the moment they first set eyes on one another. But then no one went to see it and it's been forgotten and poor Quentin Tarantino had his creative heart broken and went back to making vapid hipster movies. If you like classic love stories. And as a bonus you want to watch one you may not otherwise see (because ick, they're old and wow, they're of different races) go rent it.
5. Get Carter instead of No Country For Old Men. Okay, these films are a bit far apart in years and the plots are very different, so why the comparison? It seems everyone loved NCFOM because of Javier Bardem's performance. I like it too. I hate the movie. Get Carter, the original Michael Cain film, is how to make a movie about a really bad guy. One of the points I'd like to make with this list is that certain films combine with certain performances to pull you in and invest you in the story they are trying to tell. NCFOM failed miserably at this, in my opinion. Okay, so he was a cool bad guy, so what? Why the heck am I watching this? I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't care what happened to any of them. And neither did the film. A couple hours just passed...
I'll take Get Carter. Michael Cain's carter is a souless killer. He watches people die with detatchment and indifference. The film makes sure we know he's a psychopath. But Cain's performance - full of anger and (I have to believe Heath Ledger borrowed this for his Joker) cruel laughter - delivers the film. We care what happens. We don't care about Carter. The film lets us know that too, but we do care that he gets his revenge. It's hard not to be pulling for it even as you detest Carter. For me, that's what NCFOM failed to do. Skip it, watch the original with Michael Cain at the peak of his chops.
I sort of see what you're saying about The Hurt Locker, but I have to protest a little. It's not a "story" at all. It's a character study. The quote that shows at the start of the movie "all war is a drug," is a thesis statement proved by the main character, played by jeremy renner.
ReplyDeletethe story is renner, and how a man like him IS the man he is, about the perverting and disfiguring power of violence on the individual. in recent years I've come to notice movies like this and begun to think of them as their own genre. No, there isn't a plot, but then the story arc of renner's character was written before the movie ever started. War made him who he was, and he liked it. and the only way he could continue liking it was continually upping the ante on his little adventures. I actually think it's quite ingenious.
plotlines are for people who are going to change or be changed. a character study like The Hurt Locker is more about how the character stays the same and changes those around him, or the environment in which he moves. thoughts?
-brendon
Love the comment. Very true. I think that you're right that maybe I didn't give it enough credit on my post. I think it's a very solid film.
ReplyDeleteIt is a character study. But I didn't love that character study. Much like with No Country For Old Men - which had almost nothing for me besides it's character study of Anton - the film never made me care (love/hate/yearn to know more) in any way about that character. For one, the film doesn't spend a whole lot of time with him. We get to see that he's an adrenaline junky. We get to see that his sense of self becomes as the fixer of violent things. I just didn't care about him. I didn't care if he changed or not and the film didn't make me stop and think when he didn't. I blame it in part on the acting. I blame it in part on the plotting of the film. I get that it's meant to be more of a faux-documentary. But I wasn't enthralled by anything it was documenting.
Get Carter is a great example of a character study that I LOVED.
If you've seen In the Valley of Ellah, I'd be curious to know what you thought of that. There's a character that doesn't change, but you get to know his pain, the way that his unflinching military personality destroyed not him but his son. I love Tommy Lee Jones. That's a huge part of it. With him, I came to care about why his son died, even if finding out wasn't going to lead anyone to change or grow, etc.