What do you think?
Rate this book
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated
For almost thirty years, David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film has been not merely “the finest reference book ever written about movies” (Graham Fuller, Interview ), not merely the “desert island book” of art critic David Sylvester, not merely “a great, crazy masterpiece” (Geoff Dyer, The Guardian ), but also “fiendishly seductive” (Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone ).
This new edition updates the older entries and adds 30 new Darren Aronofsky, Emmanuelle Beart, Jerry Bruckheimer, Larry Clark, Jennifer Connelly, Chris Cooper, Sofia Coppola, Alfonso Cuaron, Richard Curtis, Sir Richard Eyre, Sir Michael Gambon, Christopher Guest, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Spike Jonze, Wong Kar-Wai, Laura Linney, Tobey Maguire, Michael Moore, Samantha Morton, Mike Myers, Christopher Nolan, Dennis Price, Adam Sandler, Kevin Smith, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlize Theron, Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski, Lew Wasserman, Naomi Watts, and Ray Winstone.
In all, the book includes more than 1300 entries, some of them just a pungent paragraph, some of them several thousand words long. In addition to the new “musts,” Thomson has added key figures from film history–lively anatomies of Graham Greene, Eddie Cantor, Pauline Kael, Abbott and Costello, Noël Coward, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Gish, Rin Tin Tin, and more.
Here is a great, rare book, one that encompasses the chaos of art, entertainment, money, vulgarity, and nonsense that we call the movies. Personal, opinionated, funny, daring, provocative, and passionate, it is the one book that every filmmaker and film buff must own. Time Out named it one of the ten best books of the 1990s. Gavin Lambert recognized it as “a work of imagination in its own right.” Now better than ever–a masterwork by the man playwright David Hare called “the most stimulating and thoughtful film critic now writing.”
This new edition updates the older entries and adds 30 new Darren Aronofsky, Emmanuelle Beart, Jerry Bruckheimer, Larry Clark, Jennifer Connelly, Chris Cooper, Sofia Coppola, Alfonso Cuaron, Richard Curtis, Sir Richard Eyre, Sir Michael Gambon, Christopher Guest, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Spike Jonze, Wong Kar-Wai, Laura Linney, Tobey Maguire, Michael Moore, Samantha Morton, Mike Myers, Christopher Nolan, Dennis Price, Adam Sandler, Kevin Smith, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlize Theron, Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski, Lew Wasserman, Naomi Watts, and Ray Winstone.
In all, the book includes more than 1300 entries, some of them just a pungent paragraph, some of them several thousand words long. In addition to the new “musts,” Thomson has added key figures from film history–lively anatomies of Graham Greene, Eddie Cantor, Pauline Kael, Abbott and Costello, Noël Coward, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Gish, Rin Tin Tin, and more.
Here is a great, rare book, one that encompasses the chaos of art, entertainment, money, vulgarity, and nonsense that we call the movies. Personal, opinionated, funny, daring, provocative, and passionate, it is the one book that every filmmaker and film buff must own. Time Out named it one of the ten best books of the 1990s. Gavin Lambert recognized it as “a work of imagination in its own right.” Now better than ever–a masterwork by the man playwright David Hare called “the most stimulating and thoughtful film critic now writing.”
1008 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
86 people are currently reading
1853 people want to read
About the author
David Thomson
66 books152 followersDavid Thomson, renowned as one of the great living authorities on the movies, is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, now in its fifth edition. His books include a biography of Nicole Kidman and The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. Thomson is also the author of the acclaimed "Have You Seen . . . ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. Born in London in 1941, he now lives in San Francisco.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
April 28, 2015
what this book is, really, is the world’s best jerk-off mag for cinephiles. david thomson is a british writer on film (and also shares a name with the shadowy figure investigating the meaning of ‘rosebud’ in welles’s masterpiece!), a great one, and this book is his ever-evolving masterpiece. but the title is kind of a lie. sure,the biographical dictionary of film includes some biographical & dictionarical (<-- good word, eh?) information, but mostly it functions as a kind of film journal by one of our most astute critics. he’ll riff for pages and pages on his favorite filmmakers (rivette, warhol, peckinpah, hawks, lang, godard) and then throw out stuff like this, his full review for richard donner:
“Mr. Donner has made some of the most succesful and least interesting films of his time. And one doubts it’s over yet.”
a great thing about having worked at the bookstore was that if i was going nuts over any author, i’d get our publicity guy to get ‘em for a signing. i did this with thomson (his book on nicole kidman) and only one person showed up. so i grabbed a bunch of employees and we sat there and listened to thomson speak. it ended up being great b/c that one guest was a TOTAL FUCKING PSYCHOPATH who very seriously laid out a theory that steven seagal – who was, as she described, an ‘off the books genius’, ‘master of the martial arts’ and must be considered some kind of spiritual guru guy b/c as he was knighted or sainted or whatever happens when the dalai lama rubs his snakeoil all over your forehead – was the great subversive artist of our time and deep messages could be read into all his work. said psychopath took it for granted that thomson would immediately agree with her. while we couldn’t help but snicker (in those days, we were always a little loaded on tecate and tequila at author readings), thomson, the consumate gentleman, attempted best he could, to answer seriously. she went on and on and on and kept interrupting him and we hadda tell her to zip it. and, as none of us had read his book on kidman, we all ended up sitting around for about an hour drinking more beer and talking (read: furiously debating) about the biographical dictionary. i remember vividly and fondly discussing fassbinder and welles and simon callow (who had recently been to the store for the second installment in his fantastic welles biography) and the lack of a mention in the biographical dictionary of kiarostami and makhmalbaf. i gotta check if they made it into the newest edition. david thomson is a seriously cool guy.
“Mr. Donner has made some of the most succesful and least interesting films of his time. And one doubts it’s over yet.”
a great thing about having worked at the bookstore was that if i was going nuts over any author, i’d get our publicity guy to get ‘em for a signing. i did this with thomson (his book on nicole kidman) and only one person showed up. so i grabbed a bunch of employees and we sat there and listened to thomson speak. it ended up being great b/c that one guest was a TOTAL FUCKING PSYCHOPATH who very seriously laid out a theory that steven seagal – who was, as she described, an ‘off the books genius’, ‘master of the martial arts’ and must be considered some kind of spiritual guru guy b/c as he was knighted or sainted or whatever happens when the dalai lama rubs his snakeoil all over your forehead – was the great subversive artist of our time and deep messages could be read into all his work. said psychopath took it for granted that thomson would immediately agree with her. while we couldn’t help but snicker (in those days, we were always a little loaded on tecate and tequila at author readings), thomson, the consumate gentleman, attempted best he could, to answer seriously. she went on and on and on and kept interrupting him and we hadda tell her to zip it. and, as none of us had read his book on kidman, we all ended up sitting around for about an hour drinking more beer and talking (read: furiously debating) about the biographical dictionary. i remember vividly and fondly discussing fassbinder and welles and simon callow (who had recently been to the store for the second installment in his fantastic welles biography) and the lack of a mention in the biographical dictionary of kiarostami and makhmalbaf. i gotta check if they made it into the newest edition. david thomson is a seriously cool guy.
September 19, 2017
I have the Fifth edition in hardbound format and it is sufficiently large and heavy to hold any door wide open. I grabbed the ebook sixth edition for my travelling convenience. Will either suit you? Please read on
Thomson is articulate, opinionated and often controversial. This book is organized by the individual's name and covers the whole spectrum of film-makers from actors to directors to executives, etc. While it is gives the impression that it is definitive, it really contains only those that Thomson wants to write about. Some entries are barely more than a paragraph; others are much longer including some essays that he wrote for publication separately.
I read it to expand my knowledge and vision as well as to pit my thoughts against his. We disagree as much as we fully agree, but I enjoy the challenge. It doesn't seem that Thomson does as much editing to his previous entries as he adds new ones. The best thing about any electronic edition is that you can search by movie title (to see all he has written about the actors) or by name (to see whom he links to other actors, directors, etc.). I am glad that I have it handy.
PS: I believe that I am one edition behind, but that won't bother me since most of my research is focused on the film classics.
Thomson is articulate, opinionated and often controversial. This book is organized by the individual's name and covers the whole spectrum of film-makers from actors to directors to executives, etc. While it is gives the impression that it is definitive, it really contains only those that Thomson wants to write about. Some entries are barely more than a paragraph; others are much longer including some essays that he wrote for publication separately.
I read it to expand my knowledge and vision as well as to pit my thoughts against his. We disagree as much as we fully agree, but I enjoy the challenge. It doesn't seem that Thomson does as much editing to his previous entries as he adds new ones. The best thing about any electronic edition is that you can search by movie title (to see all he has written about the actors) or by name (to see whom he links to other actors, directors, etc.). I am glad that I have it handy.
PS: I believe that I am one edition behind, but that won't bother me since most of my research is focused on the film classics.
Read
July 3, 2017following on from Kirk's 6 month roundup which is here
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
here is my 6 months of 2017
MODERN MAINSTREAM STUFF
The Best
Hidden Figures – this really does look like the Well Meaning Liberal Film of the Week but it gets past all that and is just altogether a delight
T2 Trainspotting – another one which had to overcome a lot of instant prejudice – how dare they! Etc etc – but they did, and it was a moody melancholic meditation on middle age in the rackety-but-lovely Danny Boyle cinematographic stylee
Denial – a dramatization of a libel trial over a book about Holocaust denial – yes, they surely sexed up the character of author Deborah Lispstadt by having the lovely Rachel Weisz playing her but they got themselves a great hugely creepy unpleasant and dramatically-thinner Timothy Spall to play the denier David Irving. Solid stuff but the movie does take on way too much.
The Martian – this is the movie everyone says Gravity was but wasn’t.
Hell Or High Water
Manchester By The Sea
The Not Bad
Gifted – great kid performance, best one since the kid in Room. Story is a bit sticky.
(Okay, a movie featuring a seven year old maths genius and a one eyed cat - what's your point? Sentimental? Come on, you know me by now. I'm not sentimental at all.)
Viceroy’s House – better than Gandhi and another movie which tries to cram in way too much history. Should have been a miniseries.
20th Century Women
La La Land
The Worst
Zero Dark Thirty – worst movie I’ve seen for a long while – torture porn in the guise of American political expediency. Kathryn Bigelow’s follow up to the excellent Hurt Locker is just horrible. Americans who wonder why the Muslim world hates them so much can start here.
The Edge Of Seventeen – some movies I see because I love the an actor or actress – in this case Hailee Steinfeld who was such a knockout in True Grit. Oh well, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and this was just another high-school-angst movie. She gets to fall over and jump around a bit.
The Neon Demon – I’m (a little bit creepily) also stalking Elle Fanning who is another great young actress but this was all flash and zero dark horror. Elle was good but the movie should be shoved in a cement mixer. Companion piece to Black Swan.
The Nice Guys – what was I doing watching this?
High-Rise - like the Neon Demon this was all stupid batshit atmosphere; source novel was from the time J G Ballard was cranking out one dystopia after another, each constructed around a Big Obvious Symbol of Modern Degeneration
How To Be Single – passes for a modern comedy, and such are the depths we have fallen to
The Hateful Eight – passes for a rebooted Western with that “crackling” Tarantino dialogue. Last time we heard the famous dialogue in a QT movie that was any good was Jackie Brown (1997)
Modern Indie Stuff
Paterson - I did like a movie called Paterson about a guy called Paterson who lives in Paterson. He’s a bus driver and he’s played by Adam Driver. Sorry, this does sound ridiculous, but the actual movie, in a faintly lobotomised way, is sweet, and as very little actually happens in it, it was my kind of thing. This is what happens in this movie:
Adult Life Skills – awful British indie – AVOID – made by people who need to have the basic concepts of comedy and acting explained to them
Lady Macbeth – cracking British Victorian melodrama with fab female lead. Nothing to do with Shakespeare! DO NOT AVOID!!
Hunt For The Wilderpeople - sweet indie from New Zealand; honestly, it’s gonna be hard for anyone to dislike this, you’d have to really set your mind to it. Nothing so original, you’ve seen the story a fair few times before, but it’s a minor treat
Wiener-Dog – alas, a very so-so follow up to Welcome to the Dollhouse which is one of my all time favourite movies – if you want a high-school-angst movie at all that is the all-timer.
The End Of The Tour – curious little drama about David Foster Wallace and a journalist following him around on a book tour. DFW fans will like it. Okay, I liked it too.
Birdemic – recommended to me as one of the worst movies of all time, and it really was! You have never seen special effects like the homicidal birds in Birdemic!
Horror
Don’t Breathe – in 2011 there was You’re Next, now this one – put some people in a house and see who kills who. Very strong atmosphere, excellent dog. This movie doesn’t remake the contours of the Western imagination but it’s pretty cool.
The Brood – early Cronenberg which I had never seen and how ignorantly happy I was in those pre-Brood days! But there was a saving grace – one of the DVD extras was an interview with Mark Irwin, the cinematographer, and his account of how the movie got made, the on-set battles with drunken Oliver Reed, and Mark’s adulatory relationship with Cronenberg was much better than this Godforsaken stupidity of a horror movie.
Train To Busan - everyone is right about this nifty zombie movie, it was tasty, tasty, very very tasty!
Blair Witch – what a confusingly titled follow up to Blair Witch Project… well, it got slated but it ain’t that bad. It’s really the same as the first film with added drones. The twentysomethings lost in the woods are just as annoying and you’re just as happy to see them die.
10 Cloverfield Lane – pretty much a movie with two twists to it and not much else. John Goodman looked so much like Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life that any moment I thought he’d explode.
Ms 45 – was waiting forever to see this early Abel Ferrara and it was…. Very strange. 80s horror movies are blighted now by the not-good gore effects. Maybe this one could do with a remake.
Kill List – crazy-ass British horror which does one of those From Dawn to Dusk-style hairpin turns from one genre (crime) to a whole other one (supernatural horror). Completely crap and highly entertaining.
Animation
Your Name – probably my favourite of the year so far. Wasn’t expecting a great deal from my first try at Japanese anime, and the gorgeous visual style just blew me right away. The deranged time-slip gender-bending plot is just right too.
Two Box Sets
The first one was Truffaut, featuring the complete Antoine Doinel movies – so these were
The 400 Blows – I saw this many years back and thought it was great; now I think it’s even greater. 5 of anyone’s stars.
Stolen Kisses – after the bittersweet perfection of The 400 Blows Truffaut descended into light comedy for the rest of his stand-in’s autobiographical escapades. His actor Jean-Pierre Leaud grew up from a sharp featured, bright but hounded boy into a totally annoying self-satisfied dork. But I can take the charm of light weight French social comedy from the 60s any day.
Bed and Board – was film number 3
Love On The Run -and by film number 4 you are quite sick of Antoine Doinel and you wish one of his wives or girlfriends might shove him off the Pont Saint-Louis. C’est vrai!
Then came a Herzog box set :
Even Dwarves Started Small – a must see just because it’s so bonkers. Cast is entirely made up of persons of restricted growth, who have violently taken over the asylum they have been forced to live in. I guess it’s another Metaphor for Society.
The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser
Stroszek
– these two feature Herzog’s weird discovery, the non-actor Bruno Schleinstein who had psychological issues. IMDB says He was very difficult to work with, though, sometimes needing several hours of screaming before he could do a scene.
Heart Of Glass - all of Herzog’s early movies are strange, with a slow motion stretched-time feel to them. I’m glad I saw them, ain’t going to be rewatching them any time soon
Other European movies
The Club - Chilean movie - paedo priests ensconced by the Catholic church in a remote house in a remote coastal town; then their secret gets out and everything goes all to hell
Clouds Of Sils Maria
Headhunters – this is a fairly crazed Norwegian thriller which is a whole lot of fun.
Son Of Saul – probably the only way you could ever make a movie about the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz was by tightly focussing on one guy and following him around for a couple of hours so that you didn’t have to actually try to reconstruct Auschwitz itself, as there are never any long or even medium shots; but I didn’t like it. I don’t like movies where you feel before you see them that you have to like them or you’ll think you’re a bad person.
Rome Open City
Women On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie
Catching Up With Stuff I Should Already Have Seen
Almost Famous
Alien Resurrection
Nativity!
Rabbit Proof Fence
The Belles Of St Trinians
Wall Street
Romancing The Stone
Sunshine
Julia
Classic Old Hollywood I Finally Got Round To, or, Whaddya Mean you never saw The African Queen?
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – with one famous exception the songs were so terrible, as would this movie be except for its two very starry stars
The Quiet Man – 5 stars of pure ridiculous Oirishness
The Ox-Bow Incident
Gilda – quite often I find these highly rated Hollywood greats to be total tripe when I get round to them; this certainly was
The African Queen – and sometimes they turn out to be utterly captivating and warm-hearted and just wow
Laura
The Lady Vanishes
Love Me Or Leave Me – man, what a miserable film in which Cagney abuses, belittles and controls Doris all the way to the end; how this movie was supposed to be entertainment I don’t know; could put it on a double bill with Ladybird, Ladybird, Ken Loach’s horrible examination of domestic violence
The Maltese Falcon
Sullivan’s Travels
Rio Grande
Letter From An Unknown Woman
The Lost Weekend
Keeper Of The Flame
The Docks Of New York - found this on youtube, so I watched it there, which was a first. 1928 silent, and really good. Victorian melodrama.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
here is my 6 months of 2017
MODERN MAINSTREAM STUFF
The Best
Hidden Figures – this really does look like the Well Meaning Liberal Film of the Week but it gets past all that and is just altogether a delight
T2 Trainspotting – another one which had to overcome a lot of instant prejudice – how dare they! Etc etc – but they did, and it was a moody melancholic meditation on middle age in the rackety-but-lovely Danny Boyle cinematographic stylee
Denial – a dramatization of a libel trial over a book about Holocaust denial – yes, they surely sexed up the character of author Deborah Lispstadt by having the lovely Rachel Weisz playing her but they got themselves a great hugely creepy unpleasant and dramatically-thinner Timothy Spall to play the denier David Irving. Solid stuff but the movie does take on way too much.
The Martian – this is the movie everyone says Gravity was but wasn’t.
Hell Or High Water
Manchester By The Sea
The Not Bad
Gifted – great kid performance, best one since the kid in Room. Story is a bit sticky.
(Okay, a movie featuring a seven year old maths genius and a one eyed cat - what's your point? Sentimental? Come on, you know me by now. I'm not sentimental at all.)
Viceroy’s House – better than Gandhi and another movie which tries to cram in way too much history. Should have been a miniseries.
20th Century Women
La La Land
The Worst
Zero Dark Thirty – worst movie I’ve seen for a long while – torture porn in the guise of American political expediency. Kathryn Bigelow’s follow up to the excellent Hurt Locker is just horrible. Americans who wonder why the Muslim world hates them so much can start here.
The Edge Of Seventeen – some movies I see because I love the an actor or actress – in this case Hailee Steinfeld who was such a knockout in True Grit. Oh well, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and this was just another high-school-angst movie. She gets to fall over and jump around a bit.
The Neon Demon – I’m (a little bit creepily) also stalking Elle Fanning who is another great young actress but this was all flash and zero dark horror. Elle was good but the movie should be shoved in a cement mixer. Companion piece to Black Swan.
The Nice Guys – what was I doing watching this?
High-Rise - like the Neon Demon this was all stupid batshit atmosphere; source novel was from the time J G Ballard was cranking out one dystopia after another, each constructed around a Big Obvious Symbol of Modern Degeneration
How To Be Single – passes for a modern comedy, and such are the depths we have fallen to
The Hateful Eight – passes for a rebooted Western with that “crackling” Tarantino dialogue. Last time we heard the famous dialogue in a QT movie that was any good was Jackie Brown (1997)
Modern Indie Stuff
Paterson - I did like a movie called Paterson about a guy called Paterson who lives in Paterson. He’s a bus driver and he’s played by Adam Driver. Sorry, this does sound ridiculous, but the actual movie, in a faintly lobotomised way, is sweet, and as very little actually happens in it, it was my kind of thing. This is what happens in this movie:
Adult Life Skills – awful British indie – AVOID – made by people who need to have the basic concepts of comedy and acting explained to them
Lady Macbeth – cracking British Victorian melodrama with fab female lead. Nothing to do with Shakespeare! DO NOT AVOID!!
Hunt For The Wilderpeople - sweet indie from New Zealand; honestly, it’s gonna be hard for anyone to dislike this, you’d have to really set your mind to it. Nothing so original, you’ve seen the story a fair few times before, but it’s a minor treat
Wiener-Dog – alas, a very so-so follow up to Welcome to the Dollhouse which is one of my all time favourite movies – if you want a high-school-angst movie at all that is the all-timer.
The End Of The Tour – curious little drama about David Foster Wallace and a journalist following him around on a book tour. DFW fans will like it. Okay, I liked it too.
Birdemic – recommended to me as one of the worst movies of all time, and it really was! You have never seen special effects like the homicidal birds in Birdemic!
Horror
Don’t Breathe – in 2011 there was You’re Next, now this one – put some people in a house and see who kills who. Very strong atmosphere, excellent dog. This movie doesn’t remake the contours of the Western imagination but it’s pretty cool.
The Brood – early Cronenberg which I had never seen and how ignorantly happy I was in those pre-Brood days! But there was a saving grace – one of the DVD extras was an interview with Mark Irwin, the cinematographer, and his account of how the movie got made, the on-set battles with drunken Oliver Reed, and Mark’s adulatory relationship with Cronenberg was much better than this Godforsaken stupidity of a horror movie.
Train To Busan - everyone is right about this nifty zombie movie, it was tasty, tasty, very very tasty!
Blair Witch – what a confusingly titled follow up to Blair Witch Project… well, it got slated but it ain’t that bad. It’s really the same as the first film with added drones. The twentysomethings lost in the woods are just as annoying and you’re just as happy to see them die.
10 Cloverfield Lane – pretty much a movie with two twists to it and not much else. John Goodman looked so much like Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life that any moment I thought he’d explode.
Ms 45 – was waiting forever to see this early Abel Ferrara and it was…. Very strange. 80s horror movies are blighted now by the not-good gore effects. Maybe this one could do with a remake.
Kill List – crazy-ass British horror which does one of those From Dawn to Dusk-style hairpin turns from one genre (crime) to a whole other one (supernatural horror). Completely crap and highly entertaining.
Animation
Your Name – probably my favourite of the year so far. Wasn’t expecting a great deal from my first try at Japanese anime, and the gorgeous visual style just blew me right away. The deranged time-slip gender-bending plot is just right too.
Two Box Sets
The first one was Truffaut, featuring the complete Antoine Doinel movies – so these were
The 400 Blows – I saw this many years back and thought it was great; now I think it’s even greater. 5 of anyone’s stars.
Stolen Kisses – after the bittersweet perfection of The 400 Blows Truffaut descended into light comedy for the rest of his stand-in’s autobiographical escapades. His actor Jean-Pierre Leaud grew up from a sharp featured, bright but hounded boy into a totally annoying self-satisfied dork. But I can take the charm of light weight French social comedy from the 60s any day.
Bed and Board – was film number 3
Love On The Run -and by film number 4 you are quite sick of Antoine Doinel and you wish one of his wives or girlfriends might shove him off the Pont Saint-Louis. C’est vrai!
Then came a Herzog box set :
Even Dwarves Started Small – a must see just because it’s so bonkers. Cast is entirely made up of persons of restricted growth, who have violently taken over the asylum they have been forced to live in. I guess it’s another Metaphor for Society.
The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser
Stroszek
– these two feature Herzog’s weird discovery, the non-actor Bruno Schleinstein who had psychological issues. IMDB says He was very difficult to work with, though, sometimes needing several hours of screaming before he could do a scene.
Heart Of Glass - all of Herzog’s early movies are strange, with a slow motion stretched-time feel to them. I’m glad I saw them, ain’t going to be rewatching them any time soon
Other European movies
The Club - Chilean movie - paedo priests ensconced by the Catholic church in a remote house in a remote coastal town; then their secret gets out and everything goes all to hell
Clouds Of Sils Maria
Headhunters – this is a fairly crazed Norwegian thriller which is a whole lot of fun.
Son Of Saul – probably the only way you could ever make a movie about the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz was by tightly focussing on one guy and following him around for a couple of hours so that you didn’t have to actually try to reconstruct Auschwitz itself, as there are never any long or even medium shots; but I didn’t like it. I don’t like movies where you feel before you see them that you have to like them or you’ll think you’re a bad person.
Rome Open City
Women On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie
Catching Up With Stuff I Should Already Have Seen
Almost Famous
Alien Resurrection
Nativity!
Rabbit Proof Fence
The Belles Of St Trinians
Wall Street
Romancing The Stone
Sunshine
Julia
Classic Old Hollywood I Finally Got Round To, or, Whaddya Mean you never saw The African Queen?
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – with one famous exception the songs were so terrible, as would this movie be except for its two very starry stars
The Quiet Man – 5 stars of pure ridiculous Oirishness
The Ox-Bow Incident
Gilda – quite often I find these highly rated Hollywood greats to be total tripe when I get round to them; this certainly was
The African Queen – and sometimes they turn out to be utterly captivating and warm-hearted and just wow
Laura
The Lady Vanishes
Love Me Or Leave Me – man, what a miserable film in which Cagney abuses, belittles and controls Doris all the way to the end; how this movie was supposed to be entertainment I don’t know; could put it on a double bill with Ladybird, Ladybird, Ken Loach’s horrible examination of domestic violence
The Maltese Falcon
Sullivan’s Travels
Rio Grande
Letter From An Unknown Woman
The Lost Weekend
Keeper Of The Flame
The Docks Of New York - found this on youtube, so I watched it there, which was a first. 1928 silent, and really good. Victorian melodrama.
July 8, 2016
Following Kirk's lead here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I promised him my own films-so-far list. The first 6 months is a lot of me catching up with stuff - whaddayamean you never saw La Strada?? That kind of thing.
JANUARY
360
Multiple storylines, multiple stars, hated by critics drinking in bars
But it was all right, to quote Paul Simon, in a limited kind of way for an off night
Appropriate Behaviour
An American indie where we follow an awkward young woman around for a couple of hours – it could be Greta Gerwig as Frances Ha or it could be Desiree Akhavan as Shirin, I don’t care, it’s all good
A Pigeon sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence
An utter ineffable arthouse turkey, much bedrooled over by critics, may the devil rot their bowels
Shampoo
I never saw it, and no surprise, when I had seen it it was exactly like I thought it would be except less cynical.
Europa Europa
Julie Delpy does a good turn as a gorgeous teenager who befriends the Jewish-boy-passing-as-Aryan and turns out to be not nice at all, in fact a committed Nazi. Solid movie but not really essential.
La Strada
Here you find the beginning of a trend – me catching up on some major 60s auteur work. Fellini, no less – that’s like reading Thomas Mann or Italo Calvini – the real deal – and it was just strange. Mrs Fellini plays a heartbreaking child-woman with only half a brain and she is mesmerizing and almost heartbreaking except most of the movie is truly stupid and pompous and symbolic.
Fifty Shades of Grey
I had to see this (no, really) just to find out what the deal actually was – I ain’t going to read the book after all. There are a lot of tastefully photographed buttocks but no frontocks. Wimps!
Parkland
I’ve tried to stay away from the whole JFK mental whirlpool but this movie has kind of dragged me back towards the vortex of horror…. From reading about this I discovered that Vincent Bugliosi has written the worlds longest refutation of all conspiracy theories and the CT fans have rebutted his rebuttal and so on; anyway this was going to be a miniseries but turned into a decent movie which all the CT fans probably have evenings where they freeze every other frame to point out how completely inaccurate it is.
Joy
A great movie about mops. A pretty good movie about a woman trying to create her own business. Judged by more exacting standards, it’s an odd duck. I liked it. You can’t not like J-Law.
Love and Mercy
The Brian Wilson biopic which I steered clear of then capitulated. Being a major fan I did not want this to be anything less than brilliant, and – holy sandboxes and wind chimes, it is! It’s like they were actually there filming the Pet Sounds sessions!
Brooklyn
Gorgeous to look at and a movie with no unpleasant people in it at all. So, this movie is an antidote to everything else.
Amy
I had always written off Amy Winehouse as another modern r&b diva – until I bothered to listen to her album, which is full of retro-50s and 60s sounds and proper tunes. Again, I ummed and awed about seeing this, then I did. It’s so completely sad. She starts off so sassy and confident and sparkling , and she ends up carried out the house in a body bag, which they filmed and included.
February
45 Years
I couldn’t see what the deal was here – so he’s been in love before he married his wife? So who hasn’t ? But critics love aged actors being given entire films to themselves.
Carol
Hmm, Joy Carol, Brooklyn, Amy – I’m seeing a pattern. And here’s another – Angele Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Nicola Sturgeon, Theresa May.
This was another beautiful looking movie but for my money Blue is the Warmest Colour edges it out.
To Be or Not to Be
Catching up on old screwball comedies – this one was a landmark of tastelessness (making fun of the Nazis) & Carol Lombard was kinda funny but critics overplay Carol Lombard.
Honeymoon
Indie horror that was everything bad about indie horror
Breathless
Godard mostly sucks – I guess you can sometimes see his point, but, like Andy Warhol, you don’t want to be beat over the head with it for 90 minutes. He chose cute actors and he ran around in Paris and he loved gangster B movies. Yes, good for Jean-Luc. Next!
Nothing Sacred
Another 30s screwball – a fairly savage go at tabloid journalism; It Happened One Night is better, and Ace in the Hole is not a comedy and even better.
My Man Godfrey
Another 30s screwball - wow, you could write a huge diatribe about Hollywood comedy. Talk about class warfare – by the rich on the poor! These were the movies Dickens would have loved, ending up with a kooky rich guy saving the day.
March
The Grifters
A Jim Thompson novel into film and really rubbish, dull, limp, nasty and if they brained each other or shot each other who gave a flook.
The Magnificent Ambersons
Wow, Orson Welles, another critics darling, but not mine – this is so creaky and tiresome. Okay, so the studio hacked it up; so don’t keep going on about it then! Avoid.
The Falling
Strange story about mass hysteria or something amongst some British schoolgirls – seems to have been made so we have something to compare with Picnic at hanging Rock.
Kill Your Darlings
Had to see this when I was reading my Kerouac biography – what an odd slice of literary sleaziness to make a movie about. Quite well done and all, but, er, why ?
On the Road
As above – wow, this was awful. You know how they say some books are unfilmable? Sometimes they’re right. Don’t do it. This is why they say that.
Tower Block
British horror with no merit whatsoever except it has a performance by Jack O’Connell, the best young British actor of the moment. He is fierce.
April
Dear Diary
A loopy Italian meandering guy-films-his-own-life where you never know what’s coming next but it will be quite funny. I loved this – totally recommended.
I’m so Excited
Pedro Almodovar goes over the deep end – I can take quite a lot of camping around but this was way beyond my limits. Or was it just that it thought it was being hilarious and it wasn’t? Mr Almodovar’s earlier movies are totally recommended so this was a major disappointment.
Shanghai Express
This proves that – sadly – some old Hollywood “classics” which doggedly turn up in all lists of great movies are now UNWATCHABLE.
The Lady Eve
Another screwball, and hopefully the LAST – these movies, beloved of so many film buffs, are just dreadful, it must be said.
Spotlight
Excellent hard-core reporting movie which – as Avatar was the same plot as Pocahontas – has the same plot as All the President’s Men, and an equally downbeat ending. Must see!
The Big Short
This is another based-on-reality movie which is – with reservations – another must see. Some of the methods used to jazz up the boring bits where they have to explain what derivatives are were terrible (a girl in a bubble bath in 2015??) but still, this film mostly rocks, and it does explain a lot about the 2007 crash.
The Lady in the Van
See 45 years above, but I did grudgingly like this one!
Viridiana
Another one where film buffs swoon, and if it was 1959 I can see I would be swooning too, but it ain’t 1959.
May
Thieves Like Us
A beautiful empty Altman movie I had never seen. One of these where a) you really like it, b) you think it’s not a very good movie and c) you’ll never recommend it to anyone
Videodrome (rewatch)
Wow, this is unhinged – too many ideas, some of them really bad ones… But the video-slot-in-the-stomach and Debbie Harry acting is unarguable. This is probably a really terrible movie, but it’s too weird to tell.
The Double Life of Veronique
This one is stunning, featuring the breathtaking Irene Jacob. I think it’s like if Sliding Doors was rewritten by Thomas Aquinas. Must see!
Welcome to Leith
A documentary about some horrible American Nazis who try to take over a tiny little town. Interesting but after Catfish I’m not so sure I believe what I’m seeing in these documentaries.
Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer (rewatch)
Still as grim as I remembered and there aren’t many movies out there which strike this depressed disgusted blue collar tone, usually they like to art-house their serial killers. It’s an achievement, but a real unpleasant one. Not recommended!
The Survivalist
Irish indie about yes, a guy who’s survived a walking dead collapse of civilization but there aren’t any zombies, just a mother and a daughter who find his lonesome cottage and want to move in and eat his vegetables. The makers of this movie must have found out about the Walking Dead later, and gone awwwww….
L’Avventura
Another art house classic where rich Italians mooch around and do the moody staring. Not recommended.
Single White Female (rewatch)
There was so much casual nudity in this film, I had quite forgotten how things used to be, but aren’t now. I thought this one stood up really well. Recommended!
June
Sing Street
We went to the cinema for this one and loved it! Who wouldn’t? It’s the feel-like-a-teenager-again movie of the year. Recommended!
Do the Right Thing (rewatch)
Classic – totally recommended. This was when Spike Lee was great and not pompous. Every scene in this movie rings like a bell. And there are a lot of scenes. Energy, young cast, John Turturro, blah blah – must see!
Cruel Intentions (rewatch)
This is the teenage version of Les liaisons Dungarees (thank you spellcheck) and mostly it’s off the chart creepy and prurient, so if you want a cheesy did-that-just-happen did-she-just-say-that sex uncomedy starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer at her buffiest, this is the one stop shop.
Aguirre, Wrath of God (rewatch)
Hmmm, welllll, the march of time stomps cruelly onwards and it's hard not to guffaw inappropriately when guys get shot in unconvincing ways and particularly when one guy gets his head lopped off... Klaus Kinski lurching around the raft was good but really this may have just been a load of old bollocks.
La Haine (rewatch)
Red-hot movie of young French louts from the ugly poor suburbs of Paris - sort of a modern French version of Mean Streets - great central performance, wonderful camera leaping around, beautiful black & white - must see!
July
Independence Day : Resurgence
OMG – me and my daughter like to see these world-smashing bustblockers like San Andreas and The Day After Tomorrow but we should have listened to the rest of you on this turkey – it’s terrible.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I promised him my own films-so-far list. The first 6 months is a lot of me catching up with stuff - whaddayamean you never saw La Strada?? That kind of thing.
JANUARY
360
Multiple storylines, multiple stars, hated by critics drinking in bars
But it was all right, to quote Paul Simon, in a limited kind of way for an off night
Appropriate Behaviour
An American indie where we follow an awkward young woman around for a couple of hours – it could be Greta Gerwig as Frances Ha or it could be Desiree Akhavan as Shirin, I don’t care, it’s all good
A Pigeon sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence
An utter ineffable arthouse turkey, much bedrooled over by critics, may the devil rot their bowels
Shampoo
I never saw it, and no surprise, when I had seen it it was exactly like I thought it would be except less cynical.
Europa Europa
Julie Delpy does a good turn as a gorgeous teenager who befriends the Jewish-boy-passing-as-Aryan and turns out to be not nice at all, in fact a committed Nazi. Solid movie but not really essential.
La Strada
Here you find the beginning of a trend – me catching up on some major 60s auteur work. Fellini, no less – that’s like reading Thomas Mann or Italo Calvini – the real deal – and it was just strange. Mrs Fellini plays a heartbreaking child-woman with only half a brain and she is mesmerizing and almost heartbreaking except most of the movie is truly stupid and pompous and symbolic.
Fifty Shades of Grey
I had to see this (no, really) just to find out what the deal actually was – I ain’t going to read the book after all. There are a lot of tastefully photographed buttocks but no frontocks. Wimps!
Parkland
I’ve tried to stay away from the whole JFK mental whirlpool but this movie has kind of dragged me back towards the vortex of horror…. From reading about this I discovered that Vincent Bugliosi has written the worlds longest refutation of all conspiracy theories and the CT fans have rebutted his rebuttal and so on; anyway this was going to be a miniseries but turned into a decent movie which all the CT fans probably have evenings where they freeze every other frame to point out how completely inaccurate it is.
Joy
A great movie about mops. A pretty good movie about a woman trying to create her own business. Judged by more exacting standards, it’s an odd duck. I liked it. You can’t not like J-Law.
Love and Mercy
The Brian Wilson biopic which I steered clear of then capitulated. Being a major fan I did not want this to be anything less than brilliant, and – holy sandboxes and wind chimes, it is! It’s like they were actually there filming the Pet Sounds sessions!
Brooklyn
Gorgeous to look at and a movie with no unpleasant people in it at all. So, this movie is an antidote to everything else.
Amy
I had always written off Amy Winehouse as another modern r&b diva – until I bothered to listen to her album, which is full of retro-50s and 60s sounds and proper tunes. Again, I ummed and awed about seeing this, then I did. It’s so completely sad. She starts off so sassy and confident and sparkling , and she ends up carried out the house in a body bag, which they filmed and included.
February
45 Years
I couldn’t see what the deal was here – so he’s been in love before he married his wife? So who hasn’t ? But critics love aged actors being given entire films to themselves.
Carol
Hmm, Joy Carol, Brooklyn, Amy – I’m seeing a pattern. And here’s another – Angele Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Nicola Sturgeon, Theresa May.
This was another beautiful looking movie but for my money Blue is the Warmest Colour edges it out.
To Be or Not to Be
Catching up on old screwball comedies – this one was a landmark of tastelessness (making fun of the Nazis) & Carol Lombard was kinda funny but critics overplay Carol Lombard.
Honeymoon
Indie horror that was everything bad about indie horror
Breathless
Godard mostly sucks – I guess you can sometimes see his point, but, like Andy Warhol, you don’t want to be beat over the head with it for 90 minutes. He chose cute actors and he ran around in Paris and he loved gangster B movies. Yes, good for Jean-Luc. Next!
Nothing Sacred
Another 30s screwball – a fairly savage go at tabloid journalism; It Happened One Night is better, and Ace in the Hole is not a comedy and even better.
My Man Godfrey
Another 30s screwball - wow, you could write a huge diatribe about Hollywood comedy. Talk about class warfare – by the rich on the poor! These were the movies Dickens would have loved, ending up with a kooky rich guy saving the day.
March
The Grifters
A Jim Thompson novel into film and really rubbish, dull, limp, nasty and if they brained each other or shot each other who gave a flook.
The Magnificent Ambersons
Wow, Orson Welles, another critics darling, but not mine – this is so creaky and tiresome. Okay, so the studio hacked it up; so don’t keep going on about it then! Avoid.
The Falling
Strange story about mass hysteria or something amongst some British schoolgirls – seems to have been made so we have something to compare with Picnic at hanging Rock.
Kill Your Darlings
Had to see this when I was reading my Kerouac biography – what an odd slice of literary sleaziness to make a movie about. Quite well done and all, but, er, why ?
On the Road
As above – wow, this was awful. You know how they say some books are unfilmable? Sometimes they’re right. Don’t do it. This is why they say that.
Tower Block
British horror with no merit whatsoever except it has a performance by Jack O’Connell, the best young British actor of the moment. He is fierce.
April
Dear Diary
A loopy Italian meandering guy-films-his-own-life where you never know what’s coming next but it will be quite funny. I loved this – totally recommended.
I’m so Excited
Pedro Almodovar goes over the deep end – I can take quite a lot of camping around but this was way beyond my limits. Or was it just that it thought it was being hilarious and it wasn’t? Mr Almodovar’s earlier movies are totally recommended so this was a major disappointment.
Shanghai Express
This proves that – sadly – some old Hollywood “classics” which doggedly turn up in all lists of great movies are now UNWATCHABLE.
The Lady Eve
Another screwball, and hopefully the LAST – these movies, beloved of so many film buffs, are just dreadful, it must be said.
Spotlight
Excellent hard-core reporting movie which – as Avatar was the same plot as Pocahontas – has the same plot as All the President’s Men, and an equally downbeat ending. Must see!
The Big Short
This is another based-on-reality movie which is – with reservations – another must see. Some of the methods used to jazz up the boring bits where they have to explain what derivatives are were terrible (a girl in a bubble bath in 2015??) but still, this film mostly rocks, and it does explain a lot about the 2007 crash.
The Lady in the Van
See 45 years above, but I did grudgingly like this one!
Viridiana
Another one where film buffs swoon, and if it was 1959 I can see I would be swooning too, but it ain’t 1959.
May
Thieves Like Us
A beautiful empty Altman movie I had never seen. One of these where a) you really like it, b) you think it’s not a very good movie and c) you’ll never recommend it to anyone
Videodrome (rewatch)
Wow, this is unhinged – too many ideas, some of them really bad ones… But the video-slot-in-the-stomach and Debbie Harry acting is unarguable. This is probably a really terrible movie, but it’s too weird to tell.
The Double Life of Veronique
This one is stunning, featuring the breathtaking Irene Jacob. I think it’s like if Sliding Doors was rewritten by Thomas Aquinas. Must see!
Welcome to Leith
A documentary about some horrible American Nazis who try to take over a tiny little town. Interesting but after Catfish I’m not so sure I believe what I’m seeing in these documentaries.
Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer (rewatch)
Still as grim as I remembered and there aren’t many movies out there which strike this depressed disgusted blue collar tone, usually they like to art-house their serial killers. It’s an achievement, but a real unpleasant one. Not recommended!
The Survivalist
Irish indie about yes, a guy who’s survived a walking dead collapse of civilization but there aren’t any zombies, just a mother and a daughter who find his lonesome cottage and want to move in and eat his vegetables. The makers of this movie must have found out about the Walking Dead later, and gone awwwww….
L’Avventura
Another art house classic where rich Italians mooch around and do the moody staring. Not recommended.
Single White Female (rewatch)
There was so much casual nudity in this film, I had quite forgotten how things used to be, but aren’t now. I thought this one stood up really well. Recommended!
June
Sing Street
We went to the cinema for this one and loved it! Who wouldn’t? It’s the feel-like-a-teenager-again movie of the year. Recommended!
Do the Right Thing (rewatch)
Classic – totally recommended. This was when Spike Lee was great and not pompous. Every scene in this movie rings like a bell. And there are a lot of scenes. Energy, young cast, John Turturro, blah blah – must see!
Cruel Intentions (rewatch)
This is the teenage version of Les liaisons Dungarees (thank you spellcheck) and mostly it’s off the chart creepy and prurient, so if you want a cheesy did-that-just-happen did-she-just-say-that sex uncomedy starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer at her buffiest, this is the one stop shop.
Aguirre, Wrath of God (rewatch)
Hmmm, welllll, the march of time stomps cruelly onwards and it's hard not to guffaw inappropriately when guys get shot in unconvincing ways and particularly when one guy gets his head lopped off... Klaus Kinski lurching around the raft was good but really this may have just been a load of old bollocks.
La Haine (rewatch)
Red-hot movie of young French louts from the ugly poor suburbs of Paris - sort of a modern French version of Mean Streets - great central performance, wonderful camera leaping around, beautiful black & white - must see!
July
Independence Day : Resurgence
OMG – me and my daughter like to see these world-smashing bustblockers like San Andreas and The Day After Tomorrow but we should have listened to the rest of you on this turkey – it’s terrible.
March 26, 2010
This is an extremely irritating book. Read the entry on Bernard Herrmann if you want to see what I mean. In this entry the author, a mysteriously well-respected film writer,describes why he doesn't bother in his 1000-page biographical reference to film people, to include cinematographers, composers and scriptwriters! Discounting the importance of "the subsidiary arts, he sniffs "The best cameramen know that many millions can make good pictures." He does, however, have a lengthy entry on Johnny Carson, who had pretty much nothing to do with film at all, but he was a celebrity! I think "starfucking" is the technical term for this approach.
Read
July 3, 2017Following on from 2016, again here is my state of movie watching for the first half of 2017. Documentaries, foreign cinema, and horror did pretty well, older classics got a bit neglected. 48 films seen January thru June.
bold = five stars or nearly so
(r) = a rewatch; all others seen for the first time
Documentaries
Tower
Who thinks of making an animated documentary about the 1966 sniper attack at the Univ. of Texas Austin? But it's brilliant, riveting from beginning to end. I'm not even sure why/how this works so well, but it does. Highly recommended.
I am Not Your Negro
The actual voice of James Baldwin (and sometimes, his words read by Samuel Jackson) tells this account of race in America. The generous archive footage of Baldwin pays off as his eloquence is unmatched.
The Thin Blue Line (r)
Given the current golden age of documentaries we are in, some recent ones have surpassed Errol Morris' 1988 film of a wrongly convicted man on death row (Capturing the Friedmans & The Imposter being two such). But it's still pretty great. And making this film eventually resulted in the wrongly imprisoned Randall Adams getting his freedom.
Beware the Slenderman
Speaking of, this is a fantastic true crime story of two girls who become obsessed with an internet creation called Slenderman which somehow leads them to stabbing and nearly killing a third girl. Some time is spent on the origin of Slenderman, and this is moderately interesting, but the real strength is the psychological portrait of the two girls, mental illness, and the weird psychosis they shared. How the filmmakers talked their way into such intimate access to the two girls' families I'll never know. Very highly recommended.
Lambert & Stamp
Some bands don’t get a movie, or get just one (Led Zeppelin, The Song Remains the Same) and it sucks. The Who have got four and all are great to varying degrees. This is the story of Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp (brother of Terence), who came to manage The Who from their earliest days despite not having connections or any experience in the music business. It’s an impossible success story that actually happened. Townshend and Daltry are interviewed extensively and clearly revere the two, giving them a lot of credit for the band’s early momentum. Stamp is the central character (Lambert died in 1981) and proves a great charismatic storyteller. There’s much between the lines as the two were kicked to the curb after Tommy in 1969, and a never-resolved tension threads through the movie. For Who fans only, but I’m One (ha) and found it fascinating from the first seconds.
The Last Laugh
A documentary examining whether it’s ok to make jokes from the Holocaust. Which actually turns out to be a rather interesting discussion. One takeaway: I did not know there were so many Holocaust jokes that are really funny.
Prestige Movies That Come As Advertised
Manchester by the Sea
La La Land
Fences
My Cousin Rachel
Disappointments
The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith
You know the oft-told story of casting an unknown non-actor in a movie, and how often it turns out for the good? Well not always. The lead actor here was apparently discovered by the director's wife in an airport. But he is just not an actor, painfully stiff and with an emotional range that goes from obsequious to rage and back again, no nuance or shadings. And it really hampers any engagement with the story. Too bad, as it's an interesting story of a real life murder spree in Australia around 1900. But I was bored.
A United Kingdom
I'm going to do the reductive thing of comparing this to last year's movie Loving, both about real life interracial marriages, though the stories are very different. Loving worked because you felt you were watching the real Richard & Mildred Loving. But here the two main characters are pretty much saints without a human flaw, which minimizes one's emotional engagement.
The Other Boleyn Girl
Dismal, soap opera trash. Just awful, and thuddingly literal.
Cold Fish
Another go at Asia Extreme cinema. I had better luck last year with the Korean flick I Saw the Devil, which for all its flaws was pretty compelling. This Japanese film has some real filmmaking talent, but it devolves into an incoherent bloodbath. And the misogyny is impossible to ignore. There are three significant female characters, one a giggling psychopath (but subservient to the main psychopath), one a teenage brat, and one who is pretty much there to be abused by various other characters. So tired of this.
Foreign Language Cinema
A Touch of Sin
An anthology of four separate stories depicting life in modern China, all touched by a violent act. Recommended.
Julieta
Almodovar has got to be one of the three or four greatest living directors, right? Julieta tones down the more-is-more approach and finds he can do less-is-more just as effectively. This is a wonderful melodramatic story and one of his best. List Within List: here are the Almodovar films I’ve seen in rough order of preference:
Julieta
What Have I Done to Deserve This?
All About My Mother
Volver
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Broken Embraces
The Skin I Live In
Bad Education
Law of Desire
Toni Erdmann
I guess I’m the outlier on this German comedy that everyone else loves. I liked it but no it did not need to be two hours forty minutes. Still worth seeing though.
The Salesman
I’ve seen four films by Asghar Farhadi; this is probably the fourth best of the four but it’s still pretty great. His subject is modern Iran and modern Persians. My favorites are The Past and About Elly.
Your Name
Japanese animation about a teenage boy and girl who for periods of time switch bodies. Dramatic and funny and very poignant. Good stuff.
Spirited Away
Japanese animation by Hayao Miyazaki, another layered, complicated story about a girl stranded in a fantastical world. Not quite as great as Princess Mononoke but pretty close.
Black Book
A Paul Verhoeven World War II movie about a Jewish woman infiltrating Nazis in the Netherlands. This is good material for Verhoeven, while it does have his usual excesses that lean toward the lurid and sensationalistic, he strikes a clear-eyed unromantic tone that no American WWII movie can ever manage to do right. Better than you’d think.
The Seven Samurai (r)
What can I say? It's The Seven Samurai. I hadn't seen this in 25 years.
Vengeance is Mine (r)
Shohei Imamura is one of my two favorite Japanese directors. This is a character study of a real life serial killer in 1960s Japan. The tone is cold-eyed and impassive, but that's what Imamura usually does. I last watched this 20 years ago; it hasn't lost anything.
Army of Shadows
Jean-Pierre Melville film from 1969 about the French Resistance. Hard to pinpoint why this is surpassingly excellent. It's gripping from the first frames, and just feels authentic. Though not action packed, there's a feeling of grim desperation that permeates every scene. Beyond tense, highly recommended.
Old b/w Classics (or not)
[First a filmic PSA. It seems the term film noir has been so expanded over the years as to become almost meaningless, being applied to every movie made between 1940 & 1960 that is A) in black & white, and B) has any sort of dark storyline. Let's try to reign that in a bit. Thank you.]
Nightmare Alley
Not film noir. 1947 bizarro story of a carny hustler who decides he can do even better hitting high society and conning richer people. Ultimately it goes badly for him. Not bad, interesting material, but I've never been a big fan of Tyrone Power.
The Lineup
Not film noir. 1958 B-crime flick by Don Siegel about some nasty heroin smugglers going about their business. Unusual in that all the main characters are the heavies, the good guys and innocents are pretty much in the background. Mainly worth seeing for Eli Wallach's lead role as an aspirational sociopath. He's great.
Bureau of Missing Persons
Continuing my quest to see every Bette Davis movie. This one's a forgettable light drama.
The Fallen Idol
Good but not what I expected. A diplomat's boy idolizes the embassy butler played by Ralph Richardson, who's a bit roguish but not evil. There's a death, and will the butler get blamed? It's well made but the boy got on my nerves after awhile. ("Baines! Baines!" oh do shut up) The ending to me is tonally weird. Instead of dramatic it strikes a note of "oh, well that's ok then". Very odd.
Didn’t Fit Other Categories
Picnic at Hanging Rock (r)
The iconic enigmatic mystical we're-not-explaining-jack-and-you'll-like-it movie. Last saw it close to 30 years ago. We may change, Hanging Rock just endures.
The Wild Bunch (r)
As with Dirty Harry last year, another movie I've watched several times over the years but now have to amend from five-star status to four. Still the ultimate in Peckinpah Cinema, but it does drag in the middle and the uber-macho ethos wears a bit thin.
T2 Trainspotting
Sequels 20 years later are almost always a bad idea, so I was pleasantly surprised how enjoyable this was.
The Grey
One for my imaginary Atheist Film Festival (it can't be all Bergman, right?). A genuine bleak vision of the world. Liam and the wolves, you're ok by me.
Free Fire
I like Ben Wheatley, he'll try anything and with gusto. This is one of those pure cinema joints, a movie that's essentially one prolonged shootout. Characterization is thin but who cares? The actors are so good they sell it anyway. Thumbs up.
Horror Flicks
Get Out
Believe the hype. Everyone's talked about and written about this, but it really is that great. Jordan Peele (of Key & Peele) is a genuine director. So yeah, it's incisive about race and white liberals, paranoia and not-paranoia-if-they-really-are-after-me, AND it works as a horror flick (maybe not scary per se but tense as hell) AND it's really funny. And, I notice I've mentioned tone in several of these capsules, but here if the tone is wrong the whole movie would collapse, and they walk that edge unerringly. Go see it.
The Girl With All the Gifts
So, I don't get film distribution. A year ago I saw Train to Busan, a Korean zombie flick, in a cinema. (Great stuff, recommended.) But this movie, a British zombie flick (so no subtitles), with a known cast, and based on a bestselling book (also recommended), got only very spotty distribution in the US, and none in the Bay Area. Why? It's really good. Worth seeking out.
Lake Mungo
[23 on the Hanging-Rock-meter.] Cerebral Australian horror flick about a family who's daughter drowns but then seems to be somehow present in the family home. Made documentary style, low key and understated. Not bad.
Don’t Breathe
Excellent, way better than I expected. Three people habitually rob houses and their next target is the home of an older man, who's also blind. Despite how that sounds, in no time flat you will not be rooting for the homeowner. Amazingly tight storytelling with a nasty edge, kind of an early Wes Craven vibe. Also the less you know going in, the better.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter
Really interesting slow-burn horror flick set in a nearly empty girls' school. Not without flaws, a few plot holes, and near the end a supernatural element is tossed in that the film didn't really need. Still, this is long on style and atmosphere, and Kiernan Shipka and Emma Roberts really hold the screen.
Science Fiction-ish
Primer
The most cerebral indie low budget time travel movie you'll ever see. I suspect I could watch it ten times and still not completely understand what the hell happens in it. But more than worth the effort. It makes a good bookend to the Spanish time travel flick Timecrimes.
Colossal
This seemed to get mixed reviews, but I loved it. Totally original and the rare movie where you genuinely don't know what will happen next. Also very funny. Also it casually nails misogyny more precisely than a thousand other films. Anne Hathaway and giant monsters? Yes.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Not the sequel, the first one. I thought I had no interest in this, but positive word of mouth just would not shut up, and ok, they were right. Alot of fun and very funny and entertaining. Now, should I see the second one?
Wonder Woman
A mixed bag. I liked the first half, the stuff on the island and the fish-out-of-water scenes in London. The second half, eh, the implacable formula of excess CGI imposes itself. Plus World War I is just a weird mix with a superhero movie. Anyway, I'm glad it made a ton of money, just so we can dispense with the idiotic conversation of whether a woman can direct a superhero flick. Pfft, Patty Jenkins made Monster, one of the best films of the 21st century so far.
American or British Arty Indie Types
20th Century Women
Wonderful '70s time capsule of a single mother raising a teenage son in southern California. Great acting by everyone (especially Annette Bening), funny, poignant, insightful. Sample dialogue, after the son Jamie gets beat up--Mom: What was the fight about? Jamie: Clitoral stimulation.
Blue Ruin
Jeremy Saulnier's first film; he made Green Room, one of my fav. movies last year. A homeless guy finds out the man who killed his parents is being released from prison, decides to take revenge, and does. It plays out believably, homeless guy doesn't turn into an unkillable ninja but fucks up and half-asses his way toward revenge. And then the movie still has two thirds of its running time to go, and gets more interesting. Recommended.
Personal Shopper
So I liked this but I can imagine it will be easy for some to hate. It has many of the irritating quirks of Indie films, plus if you don't like Kristin Stewart, don't see it, she's in every scene. But I find her (usually) an interesting screen presence so it held my interest. But the same director (Olivier Assayas) made Clouds of Sils Maria, also with Stewart, and that one is truly amazing.
Ginger and Rosa
Two teenage girls in '60s London are best friends until one starts sleeping with the other's dad. Pretty good. Supporting role by Annette Bening, who I think just gets helicoptered into various movies to call everyone on their shit. Her scene is the best in the movie.
Toe to Toe
Had never heard of this, one of those movies around a sport (lacrosse) with two girls from opposite sides of the track who sort of become friends. But credit for being way grittier than you'd expect. Not bad at all.
The Falling
[78 on the Hanging-Rock-meter.] In a British girls' school in the '60s, there is suddenly an epidemic of fainting among the girls, and no one knows why. This didn't get much love but I thought it was pretty good, characters are sharply drawn. Just don't play a drinking game where you do a shot each time someone faints. That would not be good.
bold = five stars or nearly so
(r) = a rewatch; all others seen for the first time
Documentaries
Tower
Who thinks of making an animated documentary about the 1966 sniper attack at the Univ. of Texas Austin? But it's brilliant, riveting from beginning to end. I'm not even sure why/how this works so well, but it does. Highly recommended.
I am Not Your Negro
The actual voice of James Baldwin (and sometimes, his words read by Samuel Jackson) tells this account of race in America. The generous archive footage of Baldwin pays off as his eloquence is unmatched.
The Thin Blue Line (r)
Given the current golden age of documentaries we are in, some recent ones have surpassed Errol Morris' 1988 film of a wrongly convicted man on death row (Capturing the Friedmans & The Imposter being two such). But it's still pretty great. And making this film eventually resulted in the wrongly imprisoned Randall Adams getting his freedom.
Beware the Slenderman
Speaking of, this is a fantastic true crime story of two girls who become obsessed with an internet creation called Slenderman which somehow leads them to stabbing and nearly killing a third girl. Some time is spent on the origin of Slenderman, and this is moderately interesting, but the real strength is the psychological portrait of the two girls, mental illness, and the weird psychosis they shared. How the filmmakers talked their way into such intimate access to the two girls' families I'll never know. Very highly recommended.
Lambert & Stamp
Some bands don’t get a movie, or get just one (Led Zeppelin, The Song Remains the Same) and it sucks. The Who have got four and all are great to varying degrees. This is the story of Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp (brother of Terence), who came to manage The Who from their earliest days despite not having connections or any experience in the music business. It’s an impossible success story that actually happened. Townshend and Daltry are interviewed extensively and clearly revere the two, giving them a lot of credit for the band’s early momentum. Stamp is the central character (Lambert died in 1981) and proves a great charismatic storyteller. There’s much between the lines as the two were kicked to the curb after Tommy in 1969, and a never-resolved tension threads through the movie. For Who fans only, but I’m One (ha) and found it fascinating from the first seconds.
The Last Laugh
A documentary examining whether it’s ok to make jokes from the Holocaust. Which actually turns out to be a rather interesting discussion. One takeaway: I did not know there were so many Holocaust jokes that are really funny.
Prestige Movies That Come As Advertised
Manchester by the Sea
La La Land
Fences
My Cousin Rachel
Disappointments
The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith
You know the oft-told story of casting an unknown non-actor in a movie, and how often it turns out for the good? Well not always. The lead actor here was apparently discovered by the director's wife in an airport. But he is just not an actor, painfully stiff and with an emotional range that goes from obsequious to rage and back again, no nuance or shadings. And it really hampers any engagement with the story. Too bad, as it's an interesting story of a real life murder spree in Australia around 1900. But I was bored.
A United Kingdom
I'm going to do the reductive thing of comparing this to last year's movie Loving, both about real life interracial marriages, though the stories are very different. Loving worked because you felt you were watching the real Richard & Mildred Loving. But here the two main characters are pretty much saints without a human flaw, which minimizes one's emotional engagement.
The Other Boleyn Girl
Dismal, soap opera trash. Just awful, and thuddingly literal.
Cold Fish
Another go at Asia Extreme cinema. I had better luck last year with the Korean flick I Saw the Devil, which for all its flaws was pretty compelling. This Japanese film has some real filmmaking talent, but it devolves into an incoherent bloodbath. And the misogyny is impossible to ignore. There are three significant female characters, one a giggling psychopath (but subservient to the main psychopath), one a teenage brat, and one who is pretty much there to be abused by various other characters. So tired of this.
Foreign Language Cinema
A Touch of Sin
An anthology of four separate stories depicting life in modern China, all touched by a violent act. Recommended.
Julieta
Almodovar has got to be one of the three or four greatest living directors, right? Julieta tones down the more-is-more approach and finds he can do less-is-more just as effectively. This is a wonderful melodramatic story and one of his best. List Within List: here are the Almodovar films I’ve seen in rough order of preference:
Julieta
What Have I Done to Deserve This?
All About My Mother
Volver
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Broken Embraces
The Skin I Live In
Bad Education
Law of Desire
Toni Erdmann
I guess I’m the outlier on this German comedy that everyone else loves. I liked it but no it did not need to be two hours forty minutes. Still worth seeing though.
The Salesman
I’ve seen four films by Asghar Farhadi; this is probably the fourth best of the four but it’s still pretty great. His subject is modern Iran and modern Persians. My favorites are The Past and About Elly.
Your Name
Japanese animation about a teenage boy and girl who for periods of time switch bodies. Dramatic and funny and very poignant. Good stuff.
Spirited Away
Japanese animation by Hayao Miyazaki, another layered, complicated story about a girl stranded in a fantastical world. Not quite as great as Princess Mononoke but pretty close.
Black Book
A Paul Verhoeven World War II movie about a Jewish woman infiltrating Nazis in the Netherlands. This is good material for Verhoeven, while it does have his usual excesses that lean toward the lurid and sensationalistic, he strikes a clear-eyed unromantic tone that no American WWII movie can ever manage to do right. Better than you’d think.
The Seven Samurai (r)
What can I say? It's The Seven Samurai. I hadn't seen this in 25 years.
Vengeance is Mine (r)
Shohei Imamura is one of my two favorite Japanese directors. This is a character study of a real life serial killer in 1960s Japan. The tone is cold-eyed and impassive, but that's what Imamura usually does. I last watched this 20 years ago; it hasn't lost anything.
Army of Shadows
Jean-Pierre Melville film from 1969 about the French Resistance. Hard to pinpoint why this is surpassingly excellent. It's gripping from the first frames, and just feels authentic. Though not action packed, there's a feeling of grim desperation that permeates every scene. Beyond tense, highly recommended.
Old b/w Classics (or not)
[First a filmic PSA. It seems the term film noir has been so expanded over the years as to become almost meaningless, being applied to every movie made between 1940 & 1960 that is A) in black & white, and B) has any sort of dark storyline. Let's try to reign that in a bit. Thank you.]
Nightmare Alley
Not film noir. 1947 bizarro story of a carny hustler who decides he can do even better hitting high society and conning richer people. Ultimately it goes badly for him. Not bad, interesting material, but I've never been a big fan of Tyrone Power.
The Lineup
Not film noir. 1958 B-crime flick by Don Siegel about some nasty heroin smugglers going about their business. Unusual in that all the main characters are the heavies, the good guys and innocents are pretty much in the background. Mainly worth seeing for Eli Wallach's lead role as an aspirational sociopath. He's great.
Bureau of Missing Persons
Continuing my quest to see every Bette Davis movie. This one's a forgettable light drama.
The Fallen Idol
Good but not what I expected. A diplomat's boy idolizes the embassy butler played by Ralph Richardson, who's a bit roguish but not evil. There's a death, and will the butler get blamed? It's well made but the boy got on my nerves after awhile. ("Baines! Baines!" oh do shut up) The ending to me is tonally weird. Instead of dramatic it strikes a note of "oh, well that's ok then". Very odd.
Didn’t Fit Other Categories
Picnic at Hanging Rock (r)
The iconic enigmatic mystical we're-not-explaining-jack-and-you'll-like-it movie. Last saw it close to 30 years ago. We may change, Hanging Rock just endures.
The Wild Bunch (r)
As with Dirty Harry last year, another movie I've watched several times over the years but now have to amend from five-star status to four. Still the ultimate in Peckinpah Cinema, but it does drag in the middle and the uber-macho ethos wears a bit thin.
T2 Trainspotting
Sequels 20 years later are almost always a bad idea, so I was pleasantly surprised how enjoyable this was.
The Grey
One for my imaginary Atheist Film Festival (it can't be all Bergman, right?). A genuine bleak vision of the world. Liam and the wolves, you're ok by me.
Free Fire
I like Ben Wheatley, he'll try anything and with gusto. This is one of those pure cinema joints, a movie that's essentially one prolonged shootout. Characterization is thin but who cares? The actors are so good they sell it anyway. Thumbs up.
Horror Flicks
Get Out
Believe the hype. Everyone's talked about and written about this, but it really is that great. Jordan Peele (of Key & Peele) is a genuine director. So yeah, it's incisive about race and white liberals, paranoia and not-paranoia-if-they-really-are-after-me, AND it works as a horror flick (maybe not scary per se but tense as hell) AND it's really funny. And, I notice I've mentioned tone in several of these capsules, but here if the tone is wrong the whole movie would collapse, and they walk that edge unerringly. Go see it.
The Girl With All the Gifts
So, I don't get film distribution. A year ago I saw Train to Busan, a Korean zombie flick, in a cinema. (Great stuff, recommended.) But this movie, a British zombie flick (so no subtitles), with a known cast, and based on a bestselling book (also recommended), got only very spotty distribution in the US, and none in the Bay Area. Why? It's really good. Worth seeking out.
Lake Mungo
[23 on the Hanging-Rock-meter.] Cerebral Australian horror flick about a family who's daughter drowns but then seems to be somehow present in the family home. Made documentary style, low key and understated. Not bad.
Don’t Breathe
Excellent, way better than I expected. Three people habitually rob houses and their next target is the home of an older man, who's also blind. Despite how that sounds, in no time flat you will not be rooting for the homeowner. Amazingly tight storytelling with a nasty edge, kind of an early Wes Craven vibe. Also the less you know going in, the better.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter
Really interesting slow-burn horror flick set in a nearly empty girls' school. Not without flaws, a few plot holes, and near the end a supernatural element is tossed in that the film didn't really need. Still, this is long on style and atmosphere, and Kiernan Shipka and Emma Roberts really hold the screen.
Science Fiction-ish
Primer
The most cerebral indie low budget time travel movie you'll ever see. I suspect I could watch it ten times and still not completely understand what the hell happens in it. But more than worth the effort. It makes a good bookend to the Spanish time travel flick Timecrimes.
Colossal
This seemed to get mixed reviews, but I loved it. Totally original and the rare movie where you genuinely don't know what will happen next. Also very funny. Also it casually nails misogyny more precisely than a thousand other films. Anne Hathaway and giant monsters? Yes.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Not the sequel, the first one. I thought I had no interest in this, but positive word of mouth just would not shut up, and ok, they were right. Alot of fun and very funny and entertaining. Now, should I see the second one?
Wonder Woman
A mixed bag. I liked the first half, the stuff on the island and the fish-out-of-water scenes in London. The second half, eh, the implacable formula of excess CGI imposes itself. Plus World War I is just a weird mix with a superhero movie. Anyway, I'm glad it made a ton of money, just so we can dispense with the idiotic conversation of whether a woman can direct a superhero flick. Pfft, Patty Jenkins made Monster, one of the best films of the 21st century so far.
American or British Arty Indie Types
20th Century Women
Wonderful '70s time capsule of a single mother raising a teenage son in southern California. Great acting by everyone (especially Annette Bening), funny, poignant, insightful. Sample dialogue, after the son Jamie gets beat up--Mom: What was the fight about? Jamie: Clitoral stimulation.
Blue Ruin
Jeremy Saulnier's first film; he made Green Room, one of my fav. movies last year. A homeless guy finds out the man who killed his parents is being released from prison, decides to take revenge, and does. It plays out believably, homeless guy doesn't turn into an unkillable ninja but fucks up and half-asses his way toward revenge. And then the movie still has two thirds of its running time to go, and gets more interesting. Recommended.
Personal Shopper
So I liked this but I can imagine it will be easy for some to hate. It has many of the irritating quirks of Indie films, plus if you don't like Kristin Stewart, don't see it, she's in every scene. But I find her (usually) an interesting screen presence so it held my interest. But the same director (Olivier Assayas) made Clouds of Sils Maria, also with Stewart, and that one is truly amazing.
Ginger and Rosa
Two teenage girls in '60s London are best friends until one starts sleeping with the other's dad. Pretty good. Supporting role by Annette Bening, who I think just gets helicoptered into various movies to call everyone on their shit. Her scene is the best in the movie.
Toe to Toe
Had never heard of this, one of those movies around a sport (lacrosse) with two girls from opposite sides of the track who sort of become friends. But credit for being way grittier than you'd expect. Not bad at all.
The Falling
[78 on the Hanging-Rock-meter.] In a British girls' school in the '60s, there is suddenly an epidemic of fainting among the girls, and no one knows why. This didn't get much love but I thought it was pretty good, characters are sharply drawn. Just don't play a drinking game where you do a shot each time someone faints. That would not be good.
July 8, 2016
I decided to geek out and map every movie seen in a calendar year, just because. So here is my personal State of Cinema at the halfway point of 2016. Alas, starting in April real life has been interfering with my available time for such things as movies (and worse, my time for reading books), and continues to do so, so that I saw fewer films in April, fewer still in May, and a woeful total of one (One!!#$%) in the month of June. (I imagine that hasn’t happened in a couple decades at least.) Well, July is already slightly better, so with luck this will be an anomaly.
bold = five-star films or nearly so
(r) = a rewatch; all others seen for the first time
KIRK’S 2016 FILM INVENTORY PART UNO
January
The Hateful Eight
Post-Pulp Fiction I seem to be slightly off the conventional wisdom on Tarentino. While everyone gushed over Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, I thought they were good—good enough, anyway—but also seriously flawed. With The Hateful Eight, people tended to be a bit sniffy, but I loved every frame of it. I think Tarentino works best when he’s not trying to make any grand statement. The best western I’ve seen in several years.
A Woman Under the Influence
Some kind of good film, but merciful Zeus is it gruelling to watch. Cassavetes really was a unique talent. Worth it, but I won’t see it again. Gena Rowlands is something else, practically speaking in tongues. But I’d rather watch Gloria again.
Carol
Highly recommended.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
It didn’t suck! It was actually really good! And they killed [REDACTED]!
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Otto Preminger was a great director, but this is not a great film, or even a particularly good one. Avoid, and watch Anatomy of a Murder instead.
The Seven Five
Another of the truly great modern documentaries. This is about the most corrupt cop in the most corrupt precinct in 1970s New York. The anti-Serpico. And straight from the horse’s mouth, as most of it is told by said corrupt cop himself. This goes into my pantheon of great documentaries along with Grizzly Man, The Fog of War, The Imposter, and Capturing the Friedmans. See it.
Sisters of the Gion (r)
An early film by my favorite Japanese director, Kenji Mizoguchi. His usual theme, the degradation of women (Mizoguchi was a serious feminist even if the word didn’t exist then.) Not a classic but solid.
Mustang
Sometimes your spouse insists on seeing a film you’re reluctant about, and she’s right. My attitude here was Do I have to? I already hate the patriarchy, I swear! I thought it was going to be one of those worthy films where I would agree with all the sentiments expressed but would be an ordeal to watch. Wrong. A Turkish film (officially French; maybe they put up the money?) about five orphaned sisters living with relatives, whose house/ lives slowly, then more rapidly become an enforced marriage factory. I know, it sounds grim and depressing. And it does have a few grim moments, but it’s also life affirming, radiant, and somehow hopeful. The five girls, especially the youngest sister who becomes the eyes of the film, are defiantly engaging (or engagingly defiant?). And you won’t come away depressed, though you may be grateful you didn’t grow up a girl in Turkey. A real find.
Anomalisa
Animated film for grownups, much loved by critics. It’s ok, but the main character becomes such a prick I got tired of spending time with him.
Frances Ha
Great stuff. Between this and Mistress America, Greta Gerwig is definitely having a moment.
February
The Warriors (r)
Holds up fairly well all these years later. There's even a touch of idealism in that the gangs are all interracial.
The Revenant
The angry bear has a point.
LouLou (r)
Gallic charisma overload. Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu in a 1980 film about unlikely lovers. I'd watch Huppert read Ikea assembly instructions, and Depardieu can do boorish-yet-almost-charming like no one else. Both are at their peak. Highly recommended.
45 Years
Good, but the critics loved it more than me.
Hail Caesar
Comedy from the Coen bros. Amusing enough I guess, not terrible like Burn After Reading was.
Victim
Brilliant, even amazing. A 1961 British film about gay men being blackmailed. If there's an earlier film that tackles a gay storyline head on and does so sympathetically and without judgment, I'm unaware of it. Also, this isn't just worthy, it's great; plays out like a film noir, suspenseful throughout. More amazing: Dirk Bogarde played the lead, a gay man who was closeted at the time.
The Witch
Really really good. The ending doesn't entirely work for me, but a film that puts you entirely into its world. Another indie horror flick worth seeking out.
The General
Buster Keaton. I have trouble with most silent films, if I'm being honest, so I've probably only ever seen a dozen or so. This one is enjoyable.
March
Right At Your Door
Weird how even a 2006 movie can become dated. This is one of those what if… thrillers, and it’s not bad. But the big threat here is…a dirty bomb. Remember when that was a thing? Seems almost quaint now.
Triple 9
Bad cop flick, better than average.
The Heat
Buddy cop comedy, really funny.
The Rich Are Always With Us
Part of my ongoing quest to see every Bette Davis film. Only a supporting role here, in a not bad but unmemorable flick.
Police
Like LouLou, mentioned above, another French film from the ‘80s with Gerard Depardieu, here as an uncouth bull-in-china-shop cop. Rambling and episodic, plot being secondary to scene and atmosphere. Good if you like that sort of thing, which I do. Both of these seen at the sublime Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.
A Reflection of Fear (r)
Nifty psychological horror flick from 1972 with an amazing performance by Sondra Locke (convincing as a teenager though she was 28) as a sheltered, twisted but sympathetic young girl. Not a great movie but a stunning ending that’s way ahead of its time.
After Dark, My Sweet (r)
Still the best Jim Thompson adaptation I’ve seen, a desert noir with Jason Patric, Rachel Ward, and Bruce Dern. Never quite got its due, but genuinely great.
Deadpool
Kind of entertaining but also kind of terrible. I dunno, I guess it’s postmodern or meta or something because the lead character breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience? Whatever. Ok, it’s pretty funny in several places, but in the end the funny is outweighed by the stupid.
April
Once Upon a Time in the West (r)
Still pretty great, but over many viewings thru the years, I can say The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly remains the definitive Leone western. This one’s a notch below that. The best things are the beautifully drawn out opening sequence with Jack Elam and Woody Strode awaiting Bronson’s arrival, and the flashback reveal near the end that gives meaning to the mournful harmonica theme. In between it sags a bit.
Our Mother’s House
Peculiar British flick from 1967 of how seven siblings cope when their mother dies and they elect to tell no one and carry on. Less overt and icky than the similar The Cement Garden. The best treatment of this theme I’ve seen is The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.
Amreeka
Comedy/drama of Palestinian mother and son who move to Indiana. Warm and engaging.
Distant
Turkish film, didn’t work for me. Fell prey to many an arthouse movie achilles heel: willfully opaque, meandering, indifference to plot and narrative.
No End
Early Kieslowski film about a young widow facing grief and political tension. Not one of his masterpieces, but very watchable.
Keanu
Key & Peele look for a missing cat. Like their show, the laughs have about a 75% hit rate, which is harder to do than you’d think.
May
Red-Headed Woman
Maybe the most pre-code of any pre-code film I’ve seen. Jean Harlow plays a shameless vixen who sleeps her way to whatever she wants. And continues to do so, ‘cause if it ain’t broke… She does not: get any comeuppance; see the error of her ways; find redemption; apologize. 1932. Two years later, this film could not be made.
Green Room
As my wife said as we left the theatre, “that was refreshingly nasty.” There’s a certain type of almost-horror film (that which has the tone and feel of a horror film though no actual horror/supernatural elements) that I love when done right but that is exceedingly hard to do right. It’s a delicate balancing act, grim and uncompromising in its violence but without tipping over into gratuitous nihilism or trying to gross out the audience just because it can. Done wrong and you get something contemptible or boring, possibly misogynist, and you start to suspect the filmmakers are getting off on being shocking and congratulating themselves for it. It gets done wrong alot. One that did it right is a little-seen movie from 2010 called Red White and Blue. This is another. Green Room is about a really, really unlucky punk band that finds itself in the company of skinheads, witnesses something it shouldn’t, and finds exit options to be limited. Thrillingly good.
Love and Friendship
Jane Austen-ish comedy, very funny, very enjoyable.
Captain America: Civil War
Can we admit now that there are too many superhero movies? I mostly liked this one for some of the humor and character interaction, though the main conflict is pretty contrived. Good: Robert Ironman jr. (he’s playing himself, right?) and Spiderman. Less good: Captain America is kind of a prick. And why doesn’t anyone notice that Hawkeye and Black Widow are basically useless?
June
Tremors (r)
Holds up pretty well as a throwback to classic monster movies. The dialogue is funny and sharp, and the giant worm effects are surpisingly good. My wife was less than impressed though.
By year of release
This century: 21
1990s: 2
1980s: 3
1970s: 3
1960s: 3
1950s: 1
1930s: 3
1920s: 1
By country
US: 27
UK: 3
France: 2
Turkey: 2
Italy: 1
Japan: 1
Poland: 1
Obliterates the Bechdel Test: Mustang; Carol; Frances Ha; Sisters of the Gion
Furthest from passing the Bechdel Test: Once Upon a Time in the West; Triple 9; The Revenant
bold = five-star films or nearly so
(r) = a rewatch; all others seen for the first time
KIRK’S 2016 FILM INVENTORY PART UNO
January
The Hateful Eight
Post-Pulp Fiction I seem to be slightly off the conventional wisdom on Tarentino. While everyone gushed over Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, I thought they were good—good enough, anyway—but also seriously flawed. With The Hateful Eight, people tended to be a bit sniffy, but I loved every frame of it. I think Tarentino works best when he’s not trying to make any grand statement. The best western I’ve seen in several years.
A Woman Under the Influence
Some kind of good film, but merciful Zeus is it gruelling to watch. Cassavetes really was a unique talent. Worth it, but I won’t see it again. Gena Rowlands is something else, practically speaking in tongues. But I’d rather watch Gloria again.
Carol
Highly recommended.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
It didn’t suck! It was actually really good! And they killed [REDACTED]!
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Otto Preminger was a great director, but this is not a great film, or even a particularly good one. Avoid, and watch Anatomy of a Murder instead.
The Seven Five
Another of the truly great modern documentaries. This is about the most corrupt cop in the most corrupt precinct in 1970s New York. The anti-Serpico. And straight from the horse’s mouth, as most of it is told by said corrupt cop himself. This goes into my pantheon of great documentaries along with Grizzly Man, The Fog of War, The Imposter, and Capturing the Friedmans. See it.
Sisters of the Gion (r)
An early film by my favorite Japanese director, Kenji Mizoguchi. His usual theme, the degradation of women (Mizoguchi was a serious feminist even if the word didn’t exist then.) Not a classic but solid.
Mustang
Sometimes your spouse insists on seeing a film you’re reluctant about, and she’s right. My attitude here was Do I have to? I already hate the patriarchy, I swear! I thought it was going to be one of those worthy films where I would agree with all the sentiments expressed but would be an ordeal to watch. Wrong. A Turkish film (officially French; maybe they put up the money?) about five orphaned sisters living with relatives, whose house/ lives slowly, then more rapidly become an enforced marriage factory. I know, it sounds grim and depressing. And it does have a few grim moments, but it’s also life affirming, radiant, and somehow hopeful. The five girls, especially the youngest sister who becomes the eyes of the film, are defiantly engaging (or engagingly defiant?). And you won’t come away depressed, though you may be grateful you didn’t grow up a girl in Turkey. A real find.
Anomalisa
Animated film for grownups, much loved by critics. It’s ok, but the main character becomes such a prick I got tired of spending time with him.
Frances Ha
Great stuff. Between this and Mistress America, Greta Gerwig is definitely having a moment.
February
The Warriors (r)
Holds up fairly well all these years later. There's even a touch of idealism in that the gangs are all interracial.
The Revenant
The angry bear has a point.
LouLou (r)
Gallic charisma overload. Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu in a 1980 film about unlikely lovers. I'd watch Huppert read Ikea assembly instructions, and Depardieu can do boorish-yet-almost-charming like no one else. Both are at their peak. Highly recommended.
45 Years
Good, but the critics loved it more than me.
Hail Caesar
Comedy from the Coen bros. Amusing enough I guess, not terrible like Burn After Reading was.
Victim
Brilliant, even amazing. A 1961 British film about gay men being blackmailed. If there's an earlier film that tackles a gay storyline head on and does so sympathetically and without judgment, I'm unaware of it. Also, this isn't just worthy, it's great; plays out like a film noir, suspenseful throughout. More amazing: Dirk Bogarde played the lead, a gay man who was closeted at the time.
The Witch
Really really good. The ending doesn't entirely work for me, but a film that puts you entirely into its world. Another indie horror flick worth seeking out.
The General
Buster Keaton. I have trouble with most silent films, if I'm being honest, so I've probably only ever seen a dozen or so. This one is enjoyable.
March
Right At Your Door
Weird how even a 2006 movie can become dated. This is one of those what if… thrillers, and it’s not bad. But the big threat here is…a dirty bomb. Remember when that was a thing? Seems almost quaint now.
Triple 9
Bad cop flick, better than average.
The Heat
Buddy cop comedy, really funny.
The Rich Are Always With Us
Part of my ongoing quest to see every Bette Davis film. Only a supporting role here, in a not bad but unmemorable flick.
Police
Like LouLou, mentioned above, another French film from the ‘80s with Gerard Depardieu, here as an uncouth bull-in-china-shop cop. Rambling and episodic, plot being secondary to scene and atmosphere. Good if you like that sort of thing, which I do. Both of these seen at the sublime Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.
A Reflection of Fear (r)
Nifty psychological horror flick from 1972 with an amazing performance by Sondra Locke (convincing as a teenager though she was 28) as a sheltered, twisted but sympathetic young girl. Not a great movie but a stunning ending that’s way ahead of its time.
After Dark, My Sweet (r)
Still the best Jim Thompson adaptation I’ve seen, a desert noir with Jason Patric, Rachel Ward, and Bruce Dern. Never quite got its due, but genuinely great.
Deadpool
Kind of entertaining but also kind of terrible. I dunno, I guess it’s postmodern or meta or something because the lead character breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience? Whatever. Ok, it’s pretty funny in several places, but in the end the funny is outweighed by the stupid.
April
Once Upon a Time in the West (r)
Still pretty great, but over many viewings thru the years, I can say The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly remains the definitive Leone western. This one’s a notch below that. The best things are the beautifully drawn out opening sequence with Jack Elam and Woody Strode awaiting Bronson’s arrival, and the flashback reveal near the end that gives meaning to the mournful harmonica theme. In between it sags a bit.
Our Mother’s House
Peculiar British flick from 1967 of how seven siblings cope when their mother dies and they elect to tell no one and carry on. Less overt and icky than the similar The Cement Garden. The best treatment of this theme I’ve seen is The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.
Amreeka
Comedy/drama of Palestinian mother and son who move to Indiana. Warm and engaging.
Distant
Turkish film, didn’t work for me. Fell prey to many an arthouse movie achilles heel: willfully opaque, meandering, indifference to plot and narrative.
No End
Early Kieslowski film about a young widow facing grief and political tension. Not one of his masterpieces, but very watchable.
Keanu
Key & Peele look for a missing cat. Like their show, the laughs have about a 75% hit rate, which is harder to do than you’d think.
May
Red-Headed Woman
Maybe the most pre-code of any pre-code film I’ve seen. Jean Harlow plays a shameless vixen who sleeps her way to whatever she wants. And continues to do so, ‘cause if it ain’t broke… She does not: get any comeuppance; see the error of her ways; find redemption; apologize. 1932. Two years later, this film could not be made.
Green Room
As my wife said as we left the theatre, “that was refreshingly nasty.” There’s a certain type of almost-horror film (that which has the tone and feel of a horror film though no actual horror/supernatural elements) that I love when done right but that is exceedingly hard to do right. It’s a delicate balancing act, grim and uncompromising in its violence but without tipping over into gratuitous nihilism or trying to gross out the audience just because it can. Done wrong and you get something contemptible or boring, possibly misogynist, and you start to suspect the filmmakers are getting off on being shocking and congratulating themselves for it. It gets done wrong alot. One that did it right is a little-seen movie from 2010 called Red White and Blue. This is another. Green Room is about a really, really unlucky punk band that finds itself in the company of skinheads, witnesses something it shouldn’t, and finds exit options to be limited. Thrillingly good.
Love and Friendship
Jane Austen-ish comedy, very funny, very enjoyable.
Captain America: Civil War
Can we admit now that there are too many superhero movies? I mostly liked this one for some of the humor and character interaction, though the main conflict is pretty contrived. Good: Robert Ironman jr. (he’s playing himself, right?) and Spiderman. Less good: Captain America is kind of a prick. And why doesn’t anyone notice that Hawkeye and Black Widow are basically useless?
June
Tremors (r)
Holds up pretty well as a throwback to classic monster movies. The dialogue is funny and sharp, and the giant worm effects are surpisingly good. My wife was less than impressed though.
By year of release
This century: 21
1990s: 2
1980s: 3
1970s: 3
1960s: 3
1950s: 1
1930s: 3
1920s: 1
By country
US: 27
UK: 3
France: 2
Turkey: 2
Italy: 1
Japan: 1
Poland: 1
Obliterates the Bechdel Test: Mustang; Carol; Frances Ha; Sisters of the Gion
Furthest from passing the Bechdel Test: Once Upon a Time in the West; Triple 9; The Revenant
Read
January 1, 2017[Update 12/31: saw four more movies before the merciful end of 2016, updated below. Nothing to add to the 'best of' lists. And on to 2017...]
(update now in comments--ran out of characters)
This mostly terrible year is nearly over, so time for part 2 of my personal State of Cinema, logging every movie seen in 2016. I’m posting this now as we are heading off to the UK in a few days and I don’t imagine having much computer time over the next two weeks. I’ll edit this at the end of the month with any last flicks seen before the end of the year. Part 1 (Jan. – June) is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
bold = five-star films or nearly so
(r) = a rewatch; all others seen for the first time
KIRK’S 2016 FILM INVENTORY PART DEUX
July
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
and
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
So this has been a particularly rough year, hitting its nadir this summer, and I decided I needed to see some stupid comedies. Popstar is the better choice here, another of those mockumentaries about a fake band. Of course they always get compared to Spinal Tap, and they never measure up to Spinal Tap; but I remember this as pretty funny. Mike and Dave, well, hmmm. The most interesting and positive thing is that the female costars are given equal weight in the script, and they run away with the movie. Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza are terrific. As to Mike and Dave, one is Zac Efron who continues the long line of pretty-but-vacant actors that stretches back to Tyrone Power and Victor Mature; the other is that guy who’s sometimes in Modern Family and I think was on the cover of the March issue of Punchable Face Magazine. Anyway, for the subgenre of movie titles that are also plot summaries, this is better than Zack and Miri Make a Porno but not as good as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
The Story of Temple Drake
Pre-code adaptation of Faulkner’s Sanctuary. Not exactly faithful to the source material but Miriam Hopkins goes to town as the tarnished southern belle. Also this may be the earliest film I’ve seen (1932) that deals frankly with rape. Worth seeing.
Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Really good. Finding a coherent narrative in the history of the Black Panthers is enormously difficult, this documentary did a better job than most. Vivid stuff.
Wings of Desire (r)
I hadn’t seen this in 20 years and wondered how well it would hold up. It’s still one of the best movies of the last 50 years. Everything works, even Peter Falk playing himself is somehow a perfect touch.
Late Spring
Only the second Ozu film I’ve seen, and I can’t deny he’s great but I’m more on the wavelength of Mizoguchi. Both deal with families and the wrenching emotions of life, but Mizoguchi is more willing to twist the knife and has a more specific point of view. But I know I should see several more Ozu films and I plan to. And this is a lovely film about a father and daughter relationship.
Our Little Sister
I’m officially now a fan of Hirokazu Koreeda. Like Ozu he makes unflashy films about families and regular people that have an accumulating power. This one about three adult sisters who find they have a teenage half-sister is just wonderful. Not a lot happens but every moment is interesting and engaging. Highly recommended, and I need to see more of this guy’s back catalog.
The China Syndrome (r)
I saw this the year it came out, 1979, so I may have set a personal record of 37 years between viewings. Yikes. Holds up amazingly well, it’s gripping, has a deft grasp of the politics and attitudes of the time, doesn’t hurry the story or overhype the drama. One of the last great films of my favorite cinematic decade.
Stake Land
Indie horror zombie flick, better than average. Has the hardbitten vibe of The Walking Dead. Sample dialogue: “It’s Sister Agatha. I thought she was dead.” “She is.” “What are you going to do?” “Kill that thing.” “Go with God.” “Lock the door.”
Lights Out
On the minus side, it’s slight and gimmicky, and relies too much on the ubiquitous jump scares. On the plus side, it has genuinely nuanced characters, clocks in at 81 minutes, and has a great ending (at least until they ruin it by making a sequel). Not essential viewing but decent.
August
It’s Love I’m After
Continuing my ongoing quest to see every Bette Davis movie. By now I’ve long since seen all the great and famous, and probably most of the good, so I begin to expect diminishing returns. Which makes this really a pleasant surprise. A sophisticated comedy from 1937, with Bette and Leslie Howard as theatre actors who are also a couple, often bickering due to his wandering eye. An impossibly young Olivia DeHaviland (21!) plays a hilariously demented theatre groupie who stalks Howard. This was a delight beginning to end, and might be better than the more famous Davis/Howard flicks (Of Human Bondage and The Petrified Forest). Trivia: Olivia and Bette became lifelong friends, bonding over mutual heartache—Olivia’s unrequited love for Michael Curtiz and Bette’s similar thwarted love for William Wyler.
Star Trek Beyond
I know some are a bit pissy about the latest Trek movies, but I like them. They’re actually closest in spirit to the original show; people forget, but while Star Trek could be cerebral in its ideas, it was very straight ahead/mixing it up in its narrative approach, and also funny. This one might be the third best of the three, but it’s still good. I’m holding out hope for a Gorn appearance in a future movie.
Dirty Harry (r)
I hate when this happens. I’ve probably seen this four or five times and loved it through the decades, but wow, suddenly the reality of police behavior in the real world became an obstacle to enjoying this the way I used to that I couldn’t overcome. Not to belabor the point, I’ve always known this was an unapologetic pro-vigilante movie, but this time around enjoying it as escapist fare was a bridge too far. Damnit. Still, the filmmaking craft is excellent, Don Siegel was an underrated director. The entire Kezar Stadium sequence is brilliant, and Andrew Robinson is one of the most sublimely despicable villains in film history. Also, to compare to another movie about a rogue cop from the same year of 1971, I still maintain this is superior to The French Connection. A minority opinion, I know.
Train to Busan
Korean zombie flick, epic in scale, deft in narrative, relentlessly paced. Fantastic, blew me away.
(rec)
Spanish zombie flick, also in the found footage genre. Great stuff, bleak, gripping, unnerving the whole way through, with a very engaging lead character.
September
Don’t Think Twice
A strange case of a movie that might be too well observed. This is a comedy/drama about improv comedy and a group of friends trying to make a living at it. Clearly made by people who know this world, and what struck me was how grim a struggle it can be. Full points for capturing this life, and to be sure it is often very funny. But I left the cinema wondering what I’d do if the only two occupations available to me were improv comedy and coal miner. I’m thinking, I’m thinking.
Girlfight
Indie flick about a woman boxer. The movie is ok, somewhat contrived, but as the vehicle that introduced Michelle Rodriguez to the world, that is one hell of an entrance.
I Saw the Devil
Korean thriller about a cop hunting a serial killer. The violence is extreme, and the first half of the movie unnecessarily leers at the female victims, to an extent that really pissed me off. But it is effective as a grim, relentless piece of work. I don’t think watching it makes you a better person though.
Snowden
I mean, it’s fine, competently made and all, but Oliver Stone directed this, and where’s the edge? Where’s the viewpoint to piss people off? I guess the days of Salvador and JFK are long gone.
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
One of those ‘one magical night’ movies, but it’s an indie so it’s two thirds of a pretty rough night and one third magical. It’s not bad.
October
Respire (Breathe)
I seem to have a thing for movies about toxic female friendships (The Dreamlife of Angels; Me Without You; Bedeviled). Here’s another, directed by the actress Melanie Laurent. Very good all the way through and then shattering at the end. Highly recommended.
Cameraperson
Kirsten Johnson is a cinematographer who has filmed many documentaries. Cameraperson is a collection of footage from those films. The clips seem randomly put together, they are not explained, there is no voiceover. So this is fragmentary by design, but it has a cumulative effect and eventually seems to reveal something of who Johnson is. Very offbeat, and memorable.
Son of Frankenstein
The third Frankenstein film (Karloff gave up the role after this one) is overshadowed by the previous two. And it’s not the classic they are, but it’s pretty good. Also, in a cast that includes Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Basil Rathbone, the highlight for me is Lionel Atwill as a one-armed police inspector who chews up any scenery that gets in his way. The ending is demented and hilarious, and I think it was even meant to be.
Tokyo Drifter
Delirious 1966 aesthetics meet a Yakuza film and the result is something bizarre. Not sure what to make of this entertaining mashup. A triumph of style over substance I haven’t experienced since I saw Dario Argento’s Suspiria.
God Bless America
Much like Idiocracy, this takes satirical aim at rampant American stupidity. Fair enough, but the targets are easy and the execution is lazy. Should have been better.
Orphan
This is the type of super-slick and super-polished horror flick that tends to get no respect, but I liked it. Granted it does resemble something on the Lifetime Movie Network, only with better acting, better writing, better production values. But it knows what it’s doing and does it well, plus Isabelle Fuhrman as the sinister child is a knockout.
Command and Control
Or, That Time a Socket Wrench Almost Blew Up Arkansas. Because that really almost happened. A documentary about a staggering near miss nuclear accident. Jaw-dropping.
River’s Edge (r)
The teen alienation movie from 1986, this holds up amazingly well. Based on a real murder in Milpitas, CA I remember reading about at the time. When it came out debate raged whether Crispin (“we’re like Starsky & Hutch”) Glover’s performance was great or awful. I dunno, but it leaves an impression. Vintage Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye, and Dennis Hopper playing Dennis Hopper.
Superfly
I mean, the acting is bad, the story is obvious, the pacing is sluggish. But it does have a certain gritty style and the Curtis Mayfield soundtrack is fantastic. All told, it’s far better than the other two Blaxploitation flicks I’ve seen, the mediocre Shaft and the truly awful Coffy.
Fail-Safe (r)
Still brilliant, still shattering. Makes a good bookend to Command and Control. Even Henry Fonda can’t fix this.
The Girl on the Train
Three-star book, three-star movie.
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell
Don’t ask.
The Creeping Flesh
Brit horror with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Dry and dull.
Halloween (r)
The original, previously unseen by my wife which made for an excuse to see it on a big screen at the Parkway Theater in Oakland. Despite the now-familiar tropes, still very effective. The small scale—essentially set on one street in a small town—and the always reliable gravitas of Donald Pleasance helps immeasurably.
Princess Mononoke (r)
I saw this the year it came out (1997), loved it but turns out I’d forgotten much of it. Still great, probably the most complicated and layered narrative in an animated movie I’ve ever seen. Rich and challenging in the best way. Our dog is named after the wolf called Moro (voiced by Gillian Anderson!).
The Handmaiden
Korean remake of Fingersmith. I probably liked the original miniseries better, but this is still pretty great, lush and delirious.
The Black Cat
Unhinged horror flick from 1934 with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Barking mad, just completely off its trolley. If you’re an American couple trapped in a sinister mansion in Hungary and the person most sympathetic to your plight is Lugosi, you’re not having a good vacation.
November
Black Sabbath
One of those horror anthologies with three separate stories. The first two are simplistic and obvious, the longer third one adds boredom to the mix.
They Live By Night
Great rural noir from 1948, Nicholas Ray’s first movie. Hard-as-nails dialogue, an atmosphere of pervading doom, electric chemistry between the two leads (Farley Granger & Cathy O’Donnell). I’d barely heard of this, but it’s a real find.
Arrival
Excellent cerebral science fiction, succeeds where Interstellar failed. Also it has the first genuinely alien aliens since Monsters. Denis Villeneuve is close to being a can’t-miss director for me, his last five films are all great or near-great.
A Field in England
Ben Wheatley decided the world needed a trippy psychedelic b/w movie about the English Civil War, so he gave it one. I couldn’t make heads or tails of this, but kind of liked it anyway. If nothing else, the guy who did Kill List and Sightseers makes films that don’t look like anyone else’s.
Night and Fog
Alain Resnais’ 32-minute documentary on the death camps. Lyrical voiceover paired with visceral visuals.
Moonlight
An out-of-nowhere sensation, or it deserves to be. A brilliant telling of a poor black kid’s life in three acts, from childhood to early adulthood. A masterfully observed narrative, transcendent acting, luminous cinematography, just stunning all around. One of the best of the year.
Shame
Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 film that predicts our life under Trump. What, you want a serious comment? Fine, I liked it, it has Bergman’s usual virtues, but it also screams ALLEGORY in a not-subtle way. So it’s very good but it won’t be among my favorite of Bergman’s films.
Shanghai Express
The plot’s a bit creaky, but you get to watch Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong and their wardrobes for 90 minutes. There are worse things.
Elle
I should know better than to watch a rape drama by Paul Verhoeven, but I was lured by advance rave reviews and my favorite living actress, Isabelle Huppert. Critics, man. So this is well made and all, and at the halfway point seems on its way to being a great film, but it just goes off the rails. The main character’s actions go from bizarre to ridiculous to laughable. Huppert holds it all together as long as she can, but eventually it just craters. Don’t believe the hype.
MacBeth
Orson Welles’ 1948 version, this is how you overcome a low budget. Apparently they had no money, so Welles went all in on the artificiality of the sets and instead of looking cheap, the master of deep focus had them looking otherworldly, as if the story were set in some Twilight Zone other dimension. It’s not without flaws, the Scottish accents are highly variable, and Welles’ own performance is somewhat monotone, but it’s visually arresting, and Jeanette Nolan is one of the more vital and dynamic Lady MacBeths I’ve seen.
The Edge of Seventeen
I loved this the way I loved Say Anything back in the day. That rare thing, a great teen comedy/drama. Hailee Steinfeld is all kinds of fantastic as the extroverted but insecure and spiraling main character. (Man I hope she doesn’t get Reese Witherspooned into dumb romantic comedies in the next several years.) The writing is great, everyone is nuanced and three-dimensional, even characters you assume will be outright villains, the tone is tightly controlled. Just great stuff, go see it.
December
Nocturnal Animals
A near miss. This has the kind of layered, complex narrative I like, and it’s beautifully made in all the particulars. But…while it’s buried deeply enough to leave plenty of room for deniability for those who want to defend it, for me the film has a nasty vibe that seems to say—Women…see what you make us do?... There’s just a whiff of something distasteful. But this will definitely be talked about by those who see it.
The Long Day Closes
Terence Davies’ elegy to my wife’s hometown of Liverpool. Quite beautiful, but I honestly feel like I’m not qualified to comment much. I think one needs to have grown up in England, or maybe even have grown up in Liverpool, to fully get on its wavelength.
As Tears Go By
An early Wong Kar Wai film, this is so ‘80s you expect Don Johnson to show up and arrest someone. Guys wearing mauve, check. Overbearing synthesizer soundtrack, check. Slow motion gunfights, check. There’s even an instrumental cover of “Slave to Love” and a cover with Chinese vocals of “Take My Breath Away”. All this and a young Maggie Cheung. Damn.
The Thing from Another World (r)
This holds up better than many of the ‘50s sci-fi classics, and oddly I think it’s the dialogue that makes the difference. Instead of pulpy and grandiose it’s low key and naturalistic, which more effectively pulls you into the story. The movie also uses the overlapping dialogue that Aaron Sorkin and Robert Altman’s ‘70s movies are known for. This has aged well.
Loving
The story of Richard & Mildred Loving who got arrested in 1958 Virginia for the crime of marrying each other. The eventual legal case ended miscegenation laws nationwide. In 1967. Because you can’t rush these things. The film is low key to a fault, without big emotional crescendos, and effective. The emphasis is that these were two simple people with no activist intent who just wanted to be left alone.
By year of release
This century: 49
1970s: 8
1960s: 8
1930s: 8
1980s: 6
1990s: 4
1950s: 3
1940s: 3
1920s: 1
By country
US: 61
UK: 6
Japan: 6
France: 5
Korea: 3
Turkey: 2
Italy: 2
Poland: 1
Germany: 1
Spain: 1
Sweden: 1
China: 1
I divided Best of Year lists into three, for best movies of 2016, best movies from other years seen in 2016, and best rewatches.
My Best New Films of 2016 (in the order seen)
The Hateful Eight
Mustang
Green Room
Our Little Sister
Train to Busan
Arrival
Moonlight (probably my film of the year)
The Edge of Seventeen
Best Films from other years seen in 2016
Victim (1961)
Frances Ha (2012)
Respire (Breathe) (2014)
The Seven Five (2014)
Best Films I Rewatched in 2016
Fail-Safe (1964)
The China Syndrome (1979)
Wings of Desire (1987)
After Dark, My Sweet (1990)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Finally, filed under Still No Level Playing Field in Sight: I watched 94 films. Six were directed by women, 88 were directed by men. Three of the six are on my best of lists above: Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven); The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig); Respire (Breathe) (Melanie Laurent).
(update now in comments--ran out of characters)
This mostly terrible year is nearly over, so time for part 2 of my personal State of Cinema, logging every movie seen in 2016. I’m posting this now as we are heading off to the UK in a few days and I don’t imagine having much computer time over the next two weeks. I’ll edit this at the end of the month with any last flicks seen before the end of the year. Part 1 (Jan. – June) is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
bold = five-star films or nearly so
(r) = a rewatch; all others seen for the first time
KIRK’S 2016 FILM INVENTORY PART DEUX
July
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
and
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
So this has been a particularly rough year, hitting its nadir this summer, and I decided I needed to see some stupid comedies. Popstar is the better choice here, another of those mockumentaries about a fake band. Of course they always get compared to Spinal Tap, and they never measure up to Spinal Tap; but I remember this as pretty funny. Mike and Dave, well, hmmm. The most interesting and positive thing is that the female costars are given equal weight in the script, and they run away with the movie. Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza are terrific. As to Mike and Dave, one is Zac Efron who continues the long line of pretty-but-vacant actors that stretches back to Tyrone Power and Victor Mature; the other is that guy who’s sometimes in Modern Family and I think was on the cover of the March issue of Punchable Face Magazine. Anyway, for the subgenre of movie titles that are also plot summaries, this is better than Zack and Miri Make a Porno but not as good as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
The Story of Temple Drake
Pre-code adaptation of Faulkner’s Sanctuary. Not exactly faithful to the source material but Miriam Hopkins goes to town as the tarnished southern belle. Also this may be the earliest film I’ve seen (1932) that deals frankly with rape. Worth seeing.
Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Really good. Finding a coherent narrative in the history of the Black Panthers is enormously difficult, this documentary did a better job than most. Vivid stuff.
Wings of Desire (r)
I hadn’t seen this in 20 years and wondered how well it would hold up. It’s still one of the best movies of the last 50 years. Everything works, even Peter Falk playing himself is somehow a perfect touch.
Late Spring
Only the second Ozu film I’ve seen, and I can’t deny he’s great but I’m more on the wavelength of Mizoguchi. Both deal with families and the wrenching emotions of life, but Mizoguchi is more willing to twist the knife and has a more specific point of view. But I know I should see several more Ozu films and I plan to. And this is a lovely film about a father and daughter relationship.
Our Little Sister
I’m officially now a fan of Hirokazu Koreeda. Like Ozu he makes unflashy films about families and regular people that have an accumulating power. This one about three adult sisters who find they have a teenage half-sister is just wonderful. Not a lot happens but every moment is interesting and engaging. Highly recommended, and I need to see more of this guy’s back catalog.
The China Syndrome (r)
I saw this the year it came out, 1979, so I may have set a personal record of 37 years between viewings. Yikes. Holds up amazingly well, it’s gripping, has a deft grasp of the politics and attitudes of the time, doesn’t hurry the story or overhype the drama. One of the last great films of my favorite cinematic decade.
Stake Land
Indie horror zombie flick, better than average. Has the hardbitten vibe of The Walking Dead. Sample dialogue: “It’s Sister Agatha. I thought she was dead.” “She is.” “What are you going to do?” “Kill that thing.” “Go with God.” “Lock the door.”
Lights Out
On the minus side, it’s slight and gimmicky, and relies too much on the ubiquitous jump scares. On the plus side, it has genuinely nuanced characters, clocks in at 81 minutes, and has a great ending (at least until they ruin it by making a sequel). Not essential viewing but decent.
August
It’s Love I’m After
Continuing my ongoing quest to see every Bette Davis movie. By now I’ve long since seen all the great and famous, and probably most of the good, so I begin to expect diminishing returns. Which makes this really a pleasant surprise. A sophisticated comedy from 1937, with Bette and Leslie Howard as theatre actors who are also a couple, often bickering due to his wandering eye. An impossibly young Olivia DeHaviland (21!) plays a hilariously demented theatre groupie who stalks Howard. This was a delight beginning to end, and might be better than the more famous Davis/Howard flicks (Of Human Bondage and The Petrified Forest). Trivia: Olivia and Bette became lifelong friends, bonding over mutual heartache—Olivia’s unrequited love for Michael Curtiz and Bette’s similar thwarted love for William Wyler.
Star Trek Beyond
I know some are a bit pissy about the latest Trek movies, but I like them. They’re actually closest in spirit to the original show; people forget, but while Star Trek could be cerebral in its ideas, it was very straight ahead/mixing it up in its narrative approach, and also funny. This one might be the third best of the three, but it’s still good. I’m holding out hope for a Gorn appearance in a future movie.
Dirty Harry (r)
I hate when this happens. I’ve probably seen this four or five times and loved it through the decades, but wow, suddenly the reality of police behavior in the real world became an obstacle to enjoying this the way I used to that I couldn’t overcome. Not to belabor the point, I’ve always known this was an unapologetic pro-vigilante movie, but this time around enjoying it as escapist fare was a bridge too far. Damnit. Still, the filmmaking craft is excellent, Don Siegel was an underrated director. The entire Kezar Stadium sequence is brilliant, and Andrew Robinson is one of the most sublimely despicable villains in film history. Also, to compare to another movie about a rogue cop from the same year of 1971, I still maintain this is superior to The French Connection. A minority opinion, I know.
Train to Busan
Korean zombie flick, epic in scale, deft in narrative, relentlessly paced. Fantastic, blew me away.
(rec)
Spanish zombie flick, also in the found footage genre. Great stuff, bleak, gripping, unnerving the whole way through, with a very engaging lead character.
September
Don’t Think Twice
A strange case of a movie that might be too well observed. This is a comedy/drama about improv comedy and a group of friends trying to make a living at it. Clearly made by people who know this world, and what struck me was how grim a struggle it can be. Full points for capturing this life, and to be sure it is often very funny. But I left the cinema wondering what I’d do if the only two occupations available to me were improv comedy and coal miner. I’m thinking, I’m thinking.
Girlfight
Indie flick about a woman boxer. The movie is ok, somewhat contrived, but as the vehicle that introduced Michelle Rodriguez to the world, that is one hell of an entrance.
I Saw the Devil
Korean thriller about a cop hunting a serial killer. The violence is extreme, and the first half of the movie unnecessarily leers at the female victims, to an extent that really pissed me off. But it is effective as a grim, relentless piece of work. I don’t think watching it makes you a better person though.
Snowden
I mean, it’s fine, competently made and all, but Oliver Stone directed this, and where’s the edge? Where’s the viewpoint to piss people off? I guess the days of Salvador and JFK are long gone.
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
One of those ‘one magical night’ movies, but it’s an indie so it’s two thirds of a pretty rough night and one third magical. It’s not bad.
October
Respire (Breathe)
I seem to have a thing for movies about toxic female friendships (The Dreamlife of Angels; Me Without You; Bedeviled). Here’s another, directed by the actress Melanie Laurent. Very good all the way through and then shattering at the end. Highly recommended.
Cameraperson
Kirsten Johnson is a cinematographer who has filmed many documentaries. Cameraperson is a collection of footage from those films. The clips seem randomly put together, they are not explained, there is no voiceover. So this is fragmentary by design, but it has a cumulative effect and eventually seems to reveal something of who Johnson is. Very offbeat, and memorable.
Son of Frankenstein
The third Frankenstein film (Karloff gave up the role after this one) is overshadowed by the previous two. And it’s not the classic they are, but it’s pretty good. Also, in a cast that includes Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Basil Rathbone, the highlight for me is Lionel Atwill as a one-armed police inspector who chews up any scenery that gets in his way. The ending is demented and hilarious, and I think it was even meant to be.
Tokyo Drifter
Delirious 1966 aesthetics meet a Yakuza film and the result is something bizarre. Not sure what to make of this entertaining mashup. A triumph of style over substance I haven’t experienced since I saw Dario Argento’s Suspiria.
God Bless America
Much like Idiocracy, this takes satirical aim at rampant American stupidity. Fair enough, but the targets are easy and the execution is lazy. Should have been better.
Orphan
This is the type of super-slick and super-polished horror flick that tends to get no respect, but I liked it. Granted it does resemble something on the Lifetime Movie Network, only with better acting, better writing, better production values. But it knows what it’s doing and does it well, plus Isabelle Fuhrman as the sinister child is a knockout.
Command and Control
Or, That Time a Socket Wrench Almost Blew Up Arkansas. Because that really almost happened. A documentary about a staggering near miss nuclear accident. Jaw-dropping.
River’s Edge (r)
The teen alienation movie from 1986, this holds up amazingly well. Based on a real murder in Milpitas, CA I remember reading about at the time. When it came out debate raged whether Crispin (“we’re like Starsky & Hutch”) Glover’s performance was great or awful. I dunno, but it leaves an impression. Vintage Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye, and Dennis Hopper playing Dennis Hopper.
Superfly
I mean, the acting is bad, the story is obvious, the pacing is sluggish. But it does have a certain gritty style and the Curtis Mayfield soundtrack is fantastic. All told, it’s far better than the other two Blaxploitation flicks I’ve seen, the mediocre Shaft and the truly awful Coffy.
Fail-Safe (r)
Still brilliant, still shattering. Makes a good bookend to Command and Control. Even Henry Fonda can’t fix this.
The Girl on the Train
Three-star book, three-star movie.
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell
Don’t ask.
The Creeping Flesh
Brit horror with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Dry and dull.
Halloween (r)
The original, previously unseen by my wife which made for an excuse to see it on a big screen at the Parkway Theater in Oakland. Despite the now-familiar tropes, still very effective. The small scale—essentially set on one street in a small town—and the always reliable gravitas of Donald Pleasance helps immeasurably.
Princess Mononoke (r)
I saw this the year it came out (1997), loved it but turns out I’d forgotten much of it. Still great, probably the most complicated and layered narrative in an animated movie I’ve ever seen. Rich and challenging in the best way. Our dog is named after the wolf called Moro (voiced by Gillian Anderson!).
The Handmaiden
Korean remake of Fingersmith. I probably liked the original miniseries better, but this is still pretty great, lush and delirious.
The Black Cat
Unhinged horror flick from 1934 with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Barking mad, just completely off its trolley. If you’re an American couple trapped in a sinister mansion in Hungary and the person most sympathetic to your plight is Lugosi, you’re not having a good vacation.
November
Black Sabbath
One of those horror anthologies with three separate stories. The first two are simplistic and obvious, the longer third one adds boredom to the mix.
They Live By Night
Great rural noir from 1948, Nicholas Ray’s first movie. Hard-as-nails dialogue, an atmosphere of pervading doom, electric chemistry between the two leads (Farley Granger & Cathy O’Donnell). I’d barely heard of this, but it’s a real find.
Arrival
Excellent cerebral science fiction, succeeds where Interstellar failed. Also it has the first genuinely alien aliens since Monsters. Denis Villeneuve is close to being a can’t-miss director for me, his last five films are all great or near-great.
A Field in England
Ben Wheatley decided the world needed a trippy psychedelic b/w movie about the English Civil War, so he gave it one. I couldn’t make heads or tails of this, but kind of liked it anyway. If nothing else, the guy who did Kill List and Sightseers makes films that don’t look like anyone else’s.
Night and Fog
Alain Resnais’ 32-minute documentary on the death camps. Lyrical voiceover paired with visceral visuals.
Moonlight
An out-of-nowhere sensation, or it deserves to be. A brilliant telling of a poor black kid’s life in three acts, from childhood to early adulthood. A masterfully observed narrative, transcendent acting, luminous cinematography, just stunning all around. One of the best of the year.
Shame
Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 film that predicts our life under Trump. What, you want a serious comment? Fine, I liked it, it has Bergman’s usual virtues, but it also screams ALLEGORY in a not-subtle way. So it’s very good but it won’t be among my favorite of Bergman’s films.
Shanghai Express
The plot’s a bit creaky, but you get to watch Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong and their wardrobes for 90 minutes. There are worse things.
Elle
I should know better than to watch a rape drama by Paul Verhoeven, but I was lured by advance rave reviews and my favorite living actress, Isabelle Huppert. Critics, man. So this is well made and all, and at the halfway point seems on its way to being a great film, but it just goes off the rails. The main character’s actions go from bizarre to ridiculous to laughable. Huppert holds it all together as long as she can, but eventually it just craters. Don’t believe the hype.
MacBeth
Orson Welles’ 1948 version, this is how you overcome a low budget. Apparently they had no money, so Welles went all in on the artificiality of the sets and instead of looking cheap, the master of deep focus had them looking otherworldly, as if the story were set in some Twilight Zone other dimension. It’s not without flaws, the Scottish accents are highly variable, and Welles’ own performance is somewhat monotone, but it’s visually arresting, and Jeanette Nolan is one of the more vital and dynamic Lady MacBeths I’ve seen.
The Edge of Seventeen
I loved this the way I loved Say Anything back in the day. That rare thing, a great teen comedy/drama. Hailee Steinfeld is all kinds of fantastic as the extroverted but insecure and spiraling main character. (Man I hope she doesn’t get Reese Witherspooned into dumb romantic comedies in the next several years.) The writing is great, everyone is nuanced and three-dimensional, even characters you assume will be outright villains, the tone is tightly controlled. Just great stuff, go see it.
December
Nocturnal Animals
A near miss. This has the kind of layered, complex narrative I like, and it’s beautifully made in all the particulars. But…while it’s buried deeply enough to leave plenty of room for deniability for those who want to defend it, for me the film has a nasty vibe that seems to say—Women…see what you make us do?... There’s just a whiff of something distasteful. But this will definitely be talked about by those who see it.
The Long Day Closes
Terence Davies’ elegy to my wife’s hometown of Liverpool. Quite beautiful, but I honestly feel like I’m not qualified to comment much. I think one needs to have grown up in England, or maybe even have grown up in Liverpool, to fully get on its wavelength.
As Tears Go By
An early Wong Kar Wai film, this is so ‘80s you expect Don Johnson to show up and arrest someone. Guys wearing mauve, check. Overbearing synthesizer soundtrack, check. Slow motion gunfights, check. There’s even an instrumental cover of “Slave to Love” and a cover with Chinese vocals of “Take My Breath Away”. All this and a young Maggie Cheung. Damn.
The Thing from Another World (r)
This holds up better than many of the ‘50s sci-fi classics, and oddly I think it’s the dialogue that makes the difference. Instead of pulpy and grandiose it’s low key and naturalistic, which more effectively pulls you into the story. The movie also uses the overlapping dialogue that Aaron Sorkin and Robert Altman’s ‘70s movies are known for. This has aged well.
Loving
The story of Richard & Mildred Loving who got arrested in 1958 Virginia for the crime of marrying each other. The eventual legal case ended miscegenation laws nationwide. In 1967. Because you can’t rush these things. The film is low key to a fault, without big emotional crescendos, and effective. The emphasis is that these were two simple people with no activist intent who just wanted to be left alone.
By year of release
This century: 49
1970s: 8
1960s: 8
1930s: 8
1980s: 6
1990s: 4
1950s: 3
1940s: 3
1920s: 1
By country
US: 61
UK: 6
Japan: 6
France: 5
Korea: 3
Turkey: 2
Italy: 2
Poland: 1
Germany: 1
Spain: 1
Sweden: 1
China: 1
I divided Best of Year lists into three, for best movies of 2016, best movies from other years seen in 2016, and best rewatches.
My Best New Films of 2016 (in the order seen)
The Hateful Eight
Mustang
Green Room
Our Little Sister
Train to Busan
Arrival
Moonlight (probably my film of the year)
The Edge of Seventeen
Best Films from other years seen in 2016
Victim (1961)
Frances Ha (2012)
Respire (Breathe) (2014)
The Seven Five (2014)
Best Films I Rewatched in 2016
Fail-Safe (1964)
The China Syndrome (1979)
Wings of Desire (1987)
After Dark, My Sweet (1990)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Finally, filed under Still No Level Playing Field in Sight: I watched 94 films. Six were directed by women, 88 were directed by men. Three of the six are on my best of lists above: Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven); The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig); Respire (Breathe) (Melanie Laurent).
July 9, 2020
As a cinephile who has perhaps seen at least 2000 films predating 1970 alone, I felt like this volume should be in my small collection of books on film. My approach has been to read it as one would a book, starting at page one. It being the work of a single film critic, it is subjective — one man’s opinion. What I found is that Thomson can write well with considerable insight one moment, only to be bafflingly ignorant the next. His style also relies heavily on the rhetorical question. By the way, mine is the third edition, published in 2002. Not that that should matter too much, as it covers at least ninety of the last one hundred and twenty years (and I predict that those most recent twenty years won’t produce many classics).
Thomson has a lot of preconceived ideas of about cinema; what should constitute a good or great film. It is not enough, for instance, to be entertaining (and that means “entertaining” to Thomson). An example is Wes Anderson, whom he dispenses with in three very short sentences: snark alert!
At times he is very obtuse, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what he’s getting at. He can start out an entry seemingly hostile and then later on be praising. Hey, I’m not reading this as your therapist, dude! Talk about conflicted…
It’s this lack of consistency that is so irritating. Then there is his prejudices about female actors. He seems to have crushes on certain mediocre or merely competent ones (such as Rebecca De Mornay, Candice Bergen, or Melanie Griffith) and mostly dismissive of better ones (such as Faye Dunaway). Then, out of the blue, he writes an insightful entry on Kate Hepburn.
Still, I do find him refreshing in his opinions on some directors, such as Allen, Bergman, and Fellini. For many critics and fans, these guys are infallible geniuses; for me, much of their work does not age well and they have become easy targets for the parodists over the years. Elsewhere, he may trash directors I find creative and refreshing.
Perhaps his most baffling opinion is on Kubrick (someone who apparently does not fulfill his preconceived notions about what Kubrick should have been doing, although there are other directors whom he could have trashed for the same reasons). He especially despises "A Clockwork Orange" and makes it central to his diatribe; of course, this is just one film. His takes follow..."2001": trite sensibilities, its vacuity, intellectual pretensions. "Full Metal Jacket": an abomination. "Eyes Wide Shut": a travesty. He only likes "The Shining", but barely mentions "Dr. Strangelove" in passing, with no mention at all of "Paths of Glory" and "Barry Lyndon"! This is definitely, what, anti-cherrypicking? There is a website called "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?" that number-crunches hundreds of critic and filmmaker lists of the best films of all time. Currently, Kubrick had five films in the top 100 and two others in the top 500. I leave it to the reader to come to their conclusions. Personally, I suspect that Thomson has let some emotion affect his critical eye, and the cause of that emotion can only be speculated upon. (Other sacred cows skewered include Billy Wilder and Orson Welles.)
His choices on whom to include or exclude can also be baffling. For no explicable reason he includes obscure figures whose work is almost impossible to view; is this some form of showing off about his street cred with other critics? (For example, Axel Corti.) It’s more difficult to gauge whom he might have overlooked unless he or she is one of your favorites and is glaringly missing. (No Jeff Goldblum or Penelope Cruz, sorry.) As I believe other reviewers have noted, there are preciously few cinematographers and screenwriters featured; surely we could have more entries for them and fewer of the obscure directors and actors? (In his entry on composer Bernard Herrmann, he calls screenwriters "feeble bystanders" and says that "photography itself is more the miracle than what individuals do with it." This is a breathtakingly stupid comment for someone who wants us to take him seriously as a film critic.)
Okay, he does say this is a personal selection, but behold then the conceit of calling it a "dictionary". It's not like a compiler of a dictionary can say, you know, I don't like that word, so I'm going to leave it out. Kieran Hickey gets over a page; who? you may ask. He was Thomson's best friend and died of an embolism. His tender tribute is touching, but this is not the place for it - perhaps a personal memoir instead, David? The book could have been titled "The New Biographical Listing of Who David Thomson Wants to Write About, Mostly Actors and Directors, With a Few Token Others Included Who Would Be Glaringly Missing Otherwise".
At times, he is merely petty: he is inordinately upset that Michael Caine was given a knighthood. What does that have to do with his acting ability? IMO, he should be more upset that there is still a monarchy that awards these things. Others have noted the inclusion of inappropriate entries, such as Johnny Carson, or perhaps his lengthy essay on Graham Greene, who contributed only a few screenplays; not nearly as many as, say, William Goldman. And he wants us to know that he considered the real-life Garbo ordinary and dull.
How can one write an entry on George C. Scott and not mention his performance in Dr. Strangelove?
So, in summary, a mixed bag. (My examples are merely the tip of the iceberg.) Still, he has made me curious about those films I have overlooked; hopefully, tracking them down will not be a disappointment. Of course, with Thomson’s erratic views, who knows? More like 2 and a half stars, come to think of it.
Thomson has a lot of preconceived ideas of about cinema; what should constitute a good or great film. It is not enough, for instance, to be entertaining (and that means “entertaining” to Thomson). An example is Wes Anderson, whom he dispenses with in three very short sentences: snark alert!
At times he is very obtuse, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what he’s getting at. He can start out an entry seemingly hostile and then later on be praising. Hey, I’m not reading this as your therapist, dude! Talk about conflicted…
It’s this lack of consistency that is so irritating. Then there is his prejudices about female actors. He seems to have crushes on certain mediocre or merely competent ones (such as Rebecca De Mornay, Candice Bergen, or Melanie Griffith) and mostly dismissive of better ones (such as Faye Dunaway). Then, out of the blue, he writes an insightful entry on Kate Hepburn.
Still, I do find him refreshing in his opinions on some directors, such as Allen, Bergman, and Fellini. For many critics and fans, these guys are infallible geniuses; for me, much of their work does not age well and they have become easy targets for the parodists over the years. Elsewhere, he may trash directors I find creative and refreshing.
Perhaps his most baffling opinion is on Kubrick (someone who apparently does not fulfill his preconceived notions about what Kubrick should have been doing, although there are other directors whom he could have trashed for the same reasons). He especially despises "A Clockwork Orange" and makes it central to his diatribe; of course, this is just one film. His takes follow..."2001": trite sensibilities, its vacuity, intellectual pretensions. "Full Metal Jacket": an abomination. "Eyes Wide Shut": a travesty. He only likes "The Shining", but barely mentions "Dr. Strangelove" in passing, with no mention at all of "Paths of Glory" and "Barry Lyndon"! This is definitely, what, anti-cherrypicking? There is a website called "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?" that number-crunches hundreds of critic and filmmaker lists of the best films of all time. Currently, Kubrick had five films in the top 100 and two others in the top 500. I leave it to the reader to come to their conclusions. Personally, I suspect that Thomson has let some emotion affect his critical eye, and the cause of that emotion can only be speculated upon. (Other sacred cows skewered include Billy Wilder and Orson Welles.)
His choices on whom to include or exclude can also be baffling. For no explicable reason he includes obscure figures whose work is almost impossible to view; is this some form of showing off about his street cred with other critics? (For example, Axel Corti.) It’s more difficult to gauge whom he might have overlooked unless he or she is one of your favorites and is glaringly missing. (No Jeff Goldblum or Penelope Cruz, sorry.) As I believe other reviewers have noted, there are preciously few cinematographers and screenwriters featured; surely we could have more entries for them and fewer of the obscure directors and actors? (In his entry on composer Bernard Herrmann, he calls screenwriters "feeble bystanders" and says that "photography itself is more the miracle than what individuals do with it." This is a breathtakingly stupid comment for someone who wants us to take him seriously as a film critic.)
Okay, he does say this is a personal selection, but behold then the conceit of calling it a "dictionary". It's not like a compiler of a dictionary can say, you know, I don't like that word, so I'm going to leave it out. Kieran Hickey gets over a page; who? you may ask. He was Thomson's best friend and died of an embolism. His tender tribute is touching, but this is not the place for it - perhaps a personal memoir instead, David? The book could have been titled "The New Biographical Listing of Who David Thomson Wants to Write About, Mostly Actors and Directors, With a Few Token Others Included Who Would Be Glaringly Missing Otherwise".
At times, he is merely petty: he is inordinately upset that Michael Caine was given a knighthood. What does that have to do with his acting ability? IMO, he should be more upset that there is still a monarchy that awards these things. Others have noted the inclusion of inappropriate entries, such as Johnny Carson, or perhaps his lengthy essay on Graham Greene, who contributed only a few screenplays; not nearly as many as, say, William Goldman. And he wants us to know that he considered the real-life Garbo ordinary and dull.
How can one write an entry on George C. Scott and not mention his performance in Dr. Strangelove?
So, in summary, a mixed bag. (My examples are merely the tip of the iceberg.) Still, he has made me curious about those films I have overlooked; hopefully, tracking them down will not be a disappointment. Of course, with Thomson’s erratic views, who knows? More like 2 and a half stars, come to think of it.
June 14, 2016
What is and what is NOT a reference book? And is this one? I'm disinclined to say yes. It's closer to Kenneth Anger than to any kind of "dictionary."
But why do I feel uncomfortable calling this opinionated listing of star bios a "reference" when I don't feel so hesitant to class as references, say, Leonard Maltin's or Leslie Haliwell's or George Sadoul's opinionated movie guides?
It might have to do with the greater comprehensiveness in titles covered in the others, but also perhaps there's a tendency to equate "dryness" with pure reference. Thomson is anything but dry, and it's his strong opinion, personal quirks and conjectures that sometimes make me feel uncomfortable with thinking of this well-loved tome as reference. It lacks the pretense of academic disinterest. Indeed, this is a book by a fan, or a heckler as the case may be.
I think of these entries more as personal essays. He does say some outrageous things that might mislead the impressionable, that Cary Grant is the greatest movie actor for instance. Let's face it, that's downright absurd, and even irrelevant. He almost undermines his credentials to comment on film history by saying such things. But it's Thomson's flamboyance that makes this tome popular and fun, and, yes, indeed it is a reference because the bios contain the expected vitae stuff.
Despite Ben Affleck's recent artistic successes, ya still gotta love Thomson for the dead-on and devastating bon-mot he hurls at Affleck, as: "criminally lucky to have gotten away with everything so far." And he gets kudos from me for elevating an Eleanor Powell dance number as his "desert island" viewing choice, should he ever be damned to a prison cell for eternity and allowed only just one movie scene to play over and over.
(KR@KY, amended 2016)
But why do I feel uncomfortable calling this opinionated listing of star bios a "reference" when I don't feel so hesitant to class as references, say, Leonard Maltin's or Leslie Haliwell's or George Sadoul's opinionated movie guides?
It might have to do with the greater comprehensiveness in titles covered in the others, but also perhaps there's a tendency to equate "dryness" with pure reference. Thomson is anything but dry, and it's his strong opinion, personal quirks and conjectures that sometimes make me feel uncomfortable with thinking of this well-loved tome as reference. It lacks the pretense of academic disinterest. Indeed, this is a book by a fan, or a heckler as the case may be.
I think of these entries more as personal essays. He does say some outrageous things that might mislead the impressionable, that Cary Grant is the greatest movie actor for instance. Let's face it, that's downright absurd, and even irrelevant. He almost undermines his credentials to comment on film history by saying such things. But it's Thomson's flamboyance that makes this tome popular and fun, and, yes, indeed it is a reference because the bios contain the expected vitae stuff.
Despite Ben Affleck's recent artistic successes, ya still gotta love Thomson for the dead-on and devastating bon-mot he hurls at Affleck, as: "criminally lucky to have gotten away with everything so far." And he gets kudos from me for elevating an Eleanor Powell dance number as his "desert island" viewing choice, should he ever be damned to a prison cell for eternity and allowed only just one movie scene to play over and over.
(KR@KY, amended 2016)
February 6, 2014
Excellent writing and infuritating opinions. Well, about half of them. I'm pretty sure just about anyone into film would disagree with a lot of what Thomson says, likes or dislikes. He trashes five of my top film heroes -- Huston, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky and Fellini. His comments on the Marx Brothers are bizarre, almost coming off like a personal vendetta. He pens an elegy to W. C. Fields that suggests he admires the performer more than the films, which, in many cases may be a correct assignation of critical attention but, still, seems a bit of a cop-out. His opinions on Chaplin are disturbing, to say the least, and lead one to start formulating evidence that what we have in Mr. Thomson is a professional crank. He doesn't even mention Teshigahara, Tarr, and many others you or I might have thought were essential (which he admits in the prologue).
However. No one has written better on the extremely difficult subject of Orson Welles. Thomson's fresh takes on figures like Hawks, Capra, Bogart, Lang, Hitchcock, Truffaut, Bogdanovitch, Preminger, Wilder, Mackendrick, the Hepburns, and too many other to mention, are invaluable and often feel like delightful personal re-discoveries, leading one back to the films (which should be the prime goal of any film book, right?).
However. No one has written better on the extremely difficult subject of Orson Welles. Thomson's fresh takes on figures like Hawks, Capra, Bogart, Lang, Hitchcock, Truffaut, Bogdanovitch, Preminger, Wilder, Mackendrick, the Hepburns, and too many other to mention, are invaluable and often feel like delightful personal re-discoveries, leading one back to the films (which should be the prime goal of any film book, right?).
December 31, 2011
As it states, this is a collection of film-related biographies organized in alphabetic order. It is great to look up an actor or director and see what Thomson has to say about him/her. He is very opinionated and, as others, will note, not attempting to include everyone. So far, even when his opinion doesn't coincide with my own, I enjoy his presentation.
Another month and I am still enjoying his perspective and insights. The Oscar nominations were a great excuse to see who Thomson has chosen to include. I found the listings given to Kidman and Portman very interesting. One nice feature of this format it the irresistability of the adjacent bios. I might not have looked up Lucille Ball immediately but Thomson offers a lot of insight into her career and significance.
This has become my start for most things cinematic. As an ebook it is very handy to keep nearby and,at least with the Kindle, its searchability makes it a must for almost any hunt for detail. Again, Thomson has his point of view, but I find that it is usually clearly stated and useful.
Another month and I am still enjoying his perspective and insights. The Oscar nominations were a great excuse to see who Thomson has chosen to include. I found the listings given to Kidman and Portman very interesting. One nice feature of this format it the irresistability of the adjacent bios. I might not have looked up Lucille Ball immediately but Thomson offers a lot of insight into her career and significance.
This has become my start for most things cinematic. As an ebook it is very handy to keep nearby and,at least with the Kindle, its searchability makes it a must for almost any hunt for detail. Again, Thomson has his point of view, but I find that it is usually clearly stated and useful.
June 5, 2024
I have read almost every edition of this book since the late eighties/early nineties. This is what I wrote in 2012…
Perhaps you have wondered "How could I ever possibly know as much as Mr. Jones does about film? And who is the one critic he respects even when he thinks the critic may be allowing their strange obsession with Nicole Kidman to override their critical thinking ability?"
This is the book by the critic David Thomson, the best film journalist I have ever read. Funny, acerbic, passionate about the medium and possessing poet's skill in expressing his opinions, Thomson is someone I don't always agree with, but always read nonetheless.
…I don’t disagree with any of this but I am currently (2024) reading the latest edition. Maybe I’ll change my mind?
Perhaps you have wondered "How could I ever possibly know as much as Mr. Jones does about film? And who is the one critic he respects even when he thinks the critic may be allowing their strange obsession with Nicole Kidman to override their critical thinking ability?"
This is the book by the critic David Thomson, the best film journalist I have ever read. Funny, acerbic, passionate about the medium and possessing poet's skill in expressing his opinions, Thomson is someone I don't always agree with, but always read nonetheless.
…I don’t disagree with any of this but I am currently (2024) reading the latest edition. Maybe I’ll change my mind?
April 27, 2009
Best toilet book for film nerds.
October 8, 2014
Utdrag frå innlevering i delemnet Opplysningssøking:
Det er ikkje så mange biografiske filmleksika på marknaden, og Thompson sitt har støtt hatt ivrige tilhengarar. Det filmhistoriske spennet han opererer med er vidt, og med åra har jamvel det geografiske spennet vorte merkbart vidare. Likevel: det er fleire klare manglar og svakheiter ved denne boka som handbok.
For det første manglar boka eit register, og som om ikkje det var ille nok, er det heller ingen kryssreferansar. For det andre er det berre ein måte å finne ut kor mange som er biografert på, og det er å telje. Dei aller fleste artiklane handlar om filmregissørar og skodespelarar, men nokre komponistar og produsentar er óg med, og i eit par høve jamvel folk forfattaren har vore på kino med opp gjennom åra. Filmografiane i artiklane varierer frå selektive til komplette fram til trykkedato.
Med andre ord er omfang og dekning uklare storleikar, og det går hardt ut over nytteverdien eit slikt verk kunne (for ikkje å seie burde) hatt, og det er neppe nokon som vil velje Thompson som det einaste filmleksikonet i biblioteket sitt. Likevel har boka nok ivrige lesarar til å stadig bli utgjeven på nytt, og dette er ikkje heilt utan grunn. Ordet 'biographical' i tittelen kan nemleg like gjerne referere til forfattaren som til emnet. Det er med andre ord ein sterk tendens i teksten. Det norske Pax leksikon er eit anna oppslagsverk med ein klar tendens og ivrige tilhengarar, men der PL har ein utvitydig politisk ståstad er Thompson sin meir estetisk. Det er vel neppe mange andre leksikografar som vil finne på å til dømes meine at Woody Allen burde skrive manus for Martin Scorsese, eller at Errol Morris ville bli meir som Chris Marker om han berre let seg besette av Ken Burns.
Det er altså ikkje slik at ein bør oppsøkje Thompson for eksakt biografisk kunnskap. Om boka er brukande til noko, er det som supplement til eigenlege filmhandbøker (som td Ephraim Katz' eittbandsverk). Thompsons biografiske filmleksikon er ei påstått handbok som krev store forkunnskapar av lesaren. Både mangelen på register, språknivået og det ulne utvalet gjer boka meir eigna som koselesnad for cinefile enn som eigenleg handbok.
Det er ikkje så mange biografiske filmleksika på marknaden, og Thompson sitt har støtt hatt ivrige tilhengarar. Det filmhistoriske spennet han opererer med er vidt, og med åra har jamvel det geografiske spennet vorte merkbart vidare. Likevel: det er fleire klare manglar og svakheiter ved denne boka som handbok.
For det første manglar boka eit register, og som om ikkje det var ille nok, er det heller ingen kryssreferansar. For det andre er det berre ein måte å finne ut kor mange som er biografert på, og det er å telje. Dei aller fleste artiklane handlar om filmregissørar og skodespelarar, men nokre komponistar og produsentar er óg med, og i eit par høve jamvel folk forfattaren har vore på kino med opp gjennom åra. Filmografiane i artiklane varierer frå selektive til komplette fram til trykkedato.
Med andre ord er omfang og dekning uklare storleikar, og det går hardt ut over nytteverdien eit slikt verk kunne (for ikkje å seie burde) hatt, og det er neppe nokon som vil velje Thompson som det einaste filmleksikonet i biblioteket sitt. Likevel har boka nok ivrige lesarar til å stadig bli utgjeven på nytt, og dette er ikkje heilt utan grunn. Ordet 'biographical' i tittelen kan nemleg like gjerne referere til forfattaren som til emnet. Det er med andre ord ein sterk tendens i teksten. Det norske Pax leksikon er eit anna oppslagsverk med ein klar tendens og ivrige tilhengarar, men der PL har ein utvitydig politisk ståstad er Thompson sin meir estetisk. Det er vel neppe mange andre leksikografar som vil finne på å til dømes meine at Woody Allen burde skrive manus for Martin Scorsese, eller at Errol Morris ville bli meir som Chris Marker om han berre let seg besette av Ken Burns.
Det er altså ikkje slik at ein bør oppsøkje Thompson for eksakt biografisk kunnskap. Om boka er brukande til noko, er det som supplement til eigenlege filmhandbøker (som td Ephraim Katz' eittbandsverk). Thompsons biografiske filmleksikon er ei påstått handbok som krev store forkunnskapar av lesaren. Både mangelen på register, språknivået og det ulne utvalet gjer boka meir eigna som koselesnad for cinefile enn som eigenleg handbok.
September 9, 2017
I'm going to pretend I finished, but keep reading for as long as I have the loan of the book. Best bit so far: Thomson writes 'em like he sees 'em. He appreciates intelligence in woman; always the sign of an intelligent man. Emily Blunt - "It's been a long time since an actress made a career for herself because she was smart and funny and so mocking of second-rate material." Brenda Blethyn. Cate Blanchett. Joan Blondell. He wonders if Gena Rowlands may have been the true talent in the Cassavetes clan. Lena Horne: "Who has the gloom and the sensuality, the class and the bitchiness, the blood-curdling diction and the killer instinct?" Thomson skewers Hollywood, "...think of Casablanca if Lena Horne turned up on Paul Heinreid's arm and no one bothered to notice. Then try telling yourself the old bromide that Casablanca was 'sophisticated.'" When I don't agree (as with Olivier) he gives me stuff to allow me to reconsider. He calls Jeff Bridges the closest we get to Robert Mitchum, although I think Mitchum always just played Mitchum. Thomson thinks Tom Hanks is charming and reliable; that Harrison Ford is a "limited, anxious actor." Great lines and comparisons. Maria Ouspenskaya "if there had been no Maria, Hollywood would have had to invent one." For Peter O'Toole "clearly there is a great biography to be written-but can it be believed?" John Cusack has been adorably promising for 30 years. Singular iconic roles - Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, "alight with shining, menace and tragedy." Is there an actor as beautiful and as dangerous as he has been? Watch Ladyhawke, a gorgeous film (cinematographer Vittorio Storaro), costarring Michelle Pfeiffer and a young Matthew Broderick. Preferably watch it with the sound off. On Alan Rickman: "If you ever find yourself in a room of waiting and silent women, you have only to whisper Alan Rickman and the place will be abuzz in the time it takes to light a match." George Sanders: "Nabokov pinned helpless in Locustland." Highly and happily recommend checking this book out of your library system, and spending your film time wisely.
June 25, 2019
I discovered David Thomson through reading Roger Ebert's 'Great Movies' review of the Italian Neo-realist classic 'Bicycle Thieves', in which Thomson was quoted. He was critical of the film, as he is of many classic films and filmmakers who are generally held in high regard. This may be his greatest work, a film dictionary consisting largely of actors, actresses, and directors, with a little bit of biography for each one, accompanied by Thomson's own critical insights and provocative opinions. They may anger you, but their purpose is to challenge the status quo and to encourage you to think more deeply about your own reasons for liking or disliking whatever films. This is a book you'll want to skim through, stopping to savour the most important entries, therefor it could be easy to miss some great filmmakers who you're unaware of. As a result, I'd recommend having a historical overview of cinema alongside this book on your shelf, to make sure you don't miss anything out. It's not perfectly written, as Thomson integrates the dense credits listings into his prose that makes them tedious to read unless you skim through, and he can be criticised for neglecting some important areas, such as animation and contemporary asian cinema, but I guess that's inevitable in a book that's required to cover so much ground. Is he the most astute film scholar around, or a contrarian fraud as the article below suggests? Whichever, this is an indispensable reference book that belongs on the shelf on any serious cinephile, regardless of how much you agree with him.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/com...
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/com...
September 6, 2022
Thomson is a complete tool. His clear deep misogyny showed in his descriptions of any young actress. He basically made fun of both Jennifer Lawrence and Audrey Hepburn. He doesn't even write about James McAvoy, one of the best actors of this generation. I would NOT recommend this to anyone.
July 24, 2019
I may as well review this book now, since I think I will keep reading it forever. The most charming, exasperating, wistful dictionary to wander through--the entries are pretexts for David Thomson's now cantankerous, now luminous memories of fleeting pleasures, sustained grudges, unanswerable loss.
January 17, 2022
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is a series of biographical entries on major figures in cinema, including directors, producers, writers, and (of course) actors. The first edition was written in the 70s, the most recent edition came out in 2014. The entries cover the whole of film history, from DW Griffith to Emma Watson. They are organized alphabetically.
Entries range from a short paragraph to near essay-length for the important (or controversial) figures. Entries vary in quality. Some are little more than lists of the films the director has made or the actor has been in (especially for newer entries) but others are brilliant explorations of what a director contributed to film, or what an actor meant to pop culture. Even the short entries often have at least one insightful observation, a new way of looking at what an actor does and why they are (or never will be) meaningful.
The author is opinionated, and their opinions will frequently surprise you: preferring Jennifer Aniston over Amy Adams? Lukewarm on Meryl Streep? A strong defense of John Wayne, but a venomous denunciation of John Ford? You won't always agree with him, but his knowledge of film is overwhelming, his arguments are lucid and well-reasoned, and his writing is fantastic.
He is unapologetically critical. My girlfriend and I take great pleasure in watching a movie and then reading his entries on the director, the producer, the main actors. The book is like having a judgemental, opinionated, knowledgeable film student friend, who offers deep and complicated opinions on the obscure and the blockbuster alike. If you love film then I strongly recommend you purchase this book and keep it under your coffee table; at the very least it will prompt discussion!
Entries range from a short paragraph to near essay-length for the important (or controversial) figures. Entries vary in quality. Some are little more than lists of the films the director has made or the actor has been in (especially for newer entries) but others are brilliant explorations of what a director contributed to film, or what an actor meant to pop culture. Even the short entries often have at least one insightful observation, a new way of looking at what an actor does and why they are (or never will be) meaningful.
The author is opinionated, and their opinions will frequently surprise you: preferring Jennifer Aniston over Amy Adams? Lukewarm on Meryl Streep? A strong defense of John Wayne, but a venomous denunciation of John Ford? You won't always agree with him, but his knowledge of film is overwhelming, his arguments are lucid and well-reasoned, and his writing is fantastic.
He is unapologetically critical. My girlfriend and I take great pleasure in watching a movie and then reading his entries on the director, the producer, the main actors. The book is like having a judgemental, opinionated, knowledgeable film student friend, who offers deep and complicated opinions on the obscure and the blockbuster alike. If you love film then I strongly recommend you purchase this book and keep it under your coffee table; at the very least it will prompt discussion!
dnf
October 28, 2019I have no way, and quite frankly, no desire to rank this not only because I just leafed through it, but because it is entirely one man’s opinion and who am I to judge it? It is extensive and well-researched, surely, but Thomson also has a real knack at finding ways to decimate some of America’s most beloved Hollywood figures. It’s p. entertaining because of how casually it is done, but it also leads me to believe he is a highly pretentious hipster prick. I received the fifth edition through ILL and it’s supremely interesting to see 10 years later how quickly some people have fallen from good graces, others catapulting to much greater success and others still not being included at all. In all fairness, I’m far from an expert and truthfully only recognized half of the entries, but even with the info provided it’s hard not to laugh at how quickly tables can turn in this industry. Someone also went through this copy and put a tiny little post-it note of “Sir” before anyone born in England, so that was something.
September 24, 2018
I'm not sure how many versions of this huge book there are, but I've pretty much read all I need from the 2002 edition and the 2013 edition. I think Thomson can be kind of mean sometimes when giving his opinion on actors/actresses, but I sometimes memorize what he has to say about people I love, so I guess I shouldn't be a hypocrite. I recently got out the 2013 version, and kind of liked that more, maybe because I've owned the 2002 version since it became available and wanted more. However, he adores Nicole Kidman (wrote a biography about her some years ago) and my Mom hates her, so some food for thought. I particularly like what he wrote about Ralph Fiennes, Brad Pitt, James Franco, Emily Blunt, and Jennifer Lopez.
March 19, 2024
A veritable who's who of everyone who was ever important in the film industry. In today's era of IMDb and Wikipedia, what sets this apart from internet sources? This book is famous for its commentary on each of the personalities contained therein, giving subjective coverage and criticism of each person's career. In some cases, it's barely more than a list of movie appearances, which makes it no more useful than an IMDb profile. In other cases it offers multiple pages of commentary, where he repeatedly offers the overdone cinephile perspective that American movies are lowbrow trash to the point of nauseam. It's good resource for learning more about the classics and French filmmakers (so many French entries...) but not much else.
January 28, 2011
Also new on bookstore shelves comes the fifth edition of David Thomson’s now heavyweight reference book, “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.” (Knopf). Thomson began this series thirty-five years ago and each edition of this highly respected series gets bigger and heavier with age. This new edition – which Thomson threatens to be the last – features one-hundred new additions to the ranks filmmakers and actors whose careers are reduced to sometimes biting, detailed, opinionated but always complete descriptions of the breadth and impact of their cinematic careers. (The book is so new, and au currant, that it even has references to some of Oscar’s 2011 picks like “The Social Network” and “The King’s Speech”!)
As a great film critic, (New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic) Thomson cuts to the bone in describing an actor or director’s merit, sometimes influenced by the long view of history, and he is not afraid to sugarcoat anyone’s work for the benefit of legacy or his audience. (Failing Gregory Peck because he “wants to be respectable,” for example.) Throughout the book, he reveals deep opinions alongside small details and nearly unknown facts that create a compelling portrait of the broad scope of the characters, the nature of the times and a long view of films that many have come to love and cherish. To his credit, in this age of celebrification, Thomson sticks strictly to one’s professional work.
As a historian, Thomson is concerned that the modern age, with all its attendant technological innovations, may have eviscerated the core of the movie-going experience. “Whereas people once went to the pictures the way they went to the baker’s (i.e. weekly),” he states in his biography of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, “they now make specific decisions to see films that have been made to match up to their supposedly loftier expectations.” He right, of course, that audience fragmentation is here to stay, but does that mean that the need for a book like this is diminished, or is it, in fact, more necessary than ever? Not a substitute for imdb or Wikipedia, but, for real film buffs, a better version of each.
As a great film critic, (New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic) Thomson cuts to the bone in describing an actor or director’s merit, sometimes influenced by the long view of history, and he is not afraid to sugarcoat anyone’s work for the benefit of legacy or his audience. (Failing Gregory Peck because he “wants to be respectable,” for example.) Throughout the book, he reveals deep opinions alongside small details and nearly unknown facts that create a compelling portrait of the broad scope of the characters, the nature of the times and a long view of films that many have come to love and cherish. To his credit, in this age of celebrification, Thomson sticks strictly to one’s professional work.
As a historian, Thomson is concerned that the modern age, with all its attendant technological innovations, may have eviscerated the core of the movie-going experience. “Whereas people once went to the pictures the way they went to the baker’s (i.e. weekly),” he states in his biography of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, “they now make specific decisions to see films that have been made to match up to their supposedly loftier expectations.” He right, of course, that audience fragmentation is here to stay, but does that mean that the need for a book like this is diminished, or is it, in fact, more necessary than ever? Not a substitute for imdb or Wikipedia, but, for real film buffs, a better version of each.
September 4, 2011
Tinseltown titans
***
A modern classic by one of filmdom’s most erudite scholars, if you can afford only one tome on the lives of Tinseltown titans, this would be it.
***
Any film dictionary worth its celluloid is going to have articles about the Cary Grants and Katharine Hepburns, but what about the industry’s second bananas and grade Z thespians? They don’t get any more no-name than an anonymity like Richard Donner, whose two sentence biographical sketch informs the reader that this man has the dubious distinction of making some of the “…least interesting films of his age.” ‘Nuff said! The difference between a good reference book and a great one is that the latter contains the good, the bad and the boring, not to mention everything in between. Now in its fifth edition, this paperweight of a book has accumulated mass with each new iteration, the present volume containing no fewer than 1,076 pages. Many surprises delight, as people you don’t really associate with the movies per se make appearances within. A case in point would be Abraham Zapruder, who was just another guy with a home movie camera, but was catapulted to fame when he inadvertently caught the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on tape. Then again, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers weren’t so much movie actors as they were singing cowboys who happened to be in the movies. Regarding the latter duo, author Thomson reveals not only his incisive commentary but a biting wit as well, with his observation that these guys were “…less handsome than their horses but rated as singers on the principle that that whining sounds sometimes keeps restless cattle calm.” Simply put, this book is a must have for any serious cinephile.
Review by Michael F. Bemis, St. Paul, MN
***
A modern classic by one of filmdom’s most erudite scholars, if you can afford only one tome on the lives of Tinseltown titans, this would be it.
***
Any film dictionary worth its celluloid is going to have articles about the Cary Grants and Katharine Hepburns, but what about the industry’s second bananas and grade Z thespians? They don’t get any more no-name than an anonymity like Richard Donner, whose two sentence biographical sketch informs the reader that this man has the dubious distinction of making some of the “…least interesting films of his age.” ‘Nuff said! The difference between a good reference book and a great one is that the latter contains the good, the bad and the boring, not to mention everything in between. Now in its fifth edition, this paperweight of a book has accumulated mass with each new iteration, the present volume containing no fewer than 1,076 pages. Many surprises delight, as people you don’t really associate with the movies per se make appearances within. A case in point would be Abraham Zapruder, who was just another guy with a home movie camera, but was catapulted to fame when he inadvertently caught the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on tape. Then again, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers weren’t so much movie actors as they were singing cowboys who happened to be in the movies. Regarding the latter duo, author Thomson reveals not only his incisive commentary but a biting wit as well, with his observation that these guys were “…less handsome than their horses but rated as singers on the principle that that whining sounds sometimes keeps restless cattle calm.” Simply put, this book is a must have for any serious cinephile.
Review by Michael F. Bemis, St. Paul, MN
May 20, 2014
I love this book the way I love Christgau's Record Guide, The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, and any other guide to anything full of opinions, attitude, and passion. I think I like all of these because they attempt to give you a consistent view of the entire world of their subject: pop music, baseball players, and film. None of them really do it because each of them is written by someone who is consistently opinionated, passionate, and attitudinal about everything. (Even Bill James, who uses a statistical system to rate ballplayers, can't help but hate Rogers Hornsby, no matter what the stats say). In being so consistently idiosyncratic, they help me decide how I feel about each film, record, player. And find new ones to think about.
So this newest edition of Thomson's book tells me why I should hate summer blockbusters and love the small and detailed and different and fun. And I get mad every three pages or so, because, you know, I like a lot of summer blockbusters, and Ocean's Eleven, and Moonrise Kingdom. And I occasionally chuckle in agreement over the good or bad. And find something new to seek out on almost every page.
My only complaint with this book is that he rushed it (and its predecessors) out without doing much editing of the entries--just adding new films and attitude to Scorcese, Allen, etc. Of course, if he had to edit all the entries, would we have the new ones? Every page you start from gives you a new view of a massive world of movies. And I really should watch more Howard Hawks.
So this newest edition of Thomson's book tells me why I should hate summer blockbusters and love the small and detailed and different and fun. And I get mad every three pages or so, because, you know, I like a lot of summer blockbusters, and Ocean's Eleven, and Moonrise Kingdom. And I occasionally chuckle in agreement over the good or bad. And find something new to seek out on almost every page.
My only complaint with this book is that he rushed it (and its predecessors) out without doing much editing of the entries--just adding new films and attitude to Scorcese, Allen, etc. Of course, if he had to edit all the entries, would we have the new ones? Every page you start from gives you a new view of a massive world of movies. And I really should watch more Howard Hawks.
March 21, 2015
Back when you could still walk into most bookstores (not to mention take them for granted), David Thomson's THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM would be one of those big, heavy, shelf-worn books that no one ever seemed to buy but which everyone seemed to keep picking up and thumbing through. In fact, before I finally owned up and purchased my own copy of this daunting collection of filmmaker bios/criticism, I did my fair share of bumming from "the store's copy."
Indeed, way back in my hungrier and more wide-eyed High School days, I would often ditch school and hang out at a nearby Waldenbooks where I would spend hours ravenously reading through this tome; though I seriously wondered why Thomson had not yet included a section on Quentin Tarantino, not once during those sessions did I ever believe that what I was doing was wrong in that these people that Thomson HAD written about were obviously still so much more important and interesting than anyone I could ever learn about in school.
All these years later, David Thomson's book STILL makes me feel that way. Cool-headed yet relentless, nuanced yet dismissive, astute yet dewy-eyed, Thomson's writing sweeps you up in a whirlwhind of passion and urgency where you only realize after the fact that Thomson has not only a been a bit cruel for having compiled this massive collection of hearsay and hypercritical opinions but actually kind of crazy. Highly recommended.
Indeed, way back in my hungrier and more wide-eyed High School days, I would often ditch school and hang out at a nearby Waldenbooks where I would spend hours ravenously reading through this tome; though I seriously wondered why Thomson had not yet included a section on Quentin Tarantino, not once during those sessions did I ever believe that what I was doing was wrong in that these people that Thomson HAD written about were obviously still so much more important and interesting than anyone I could ever learn about in school.
All these years later, David Thomson's book STILL makes me feel that way. Cool-headed yet relentless, nuanced yet dismissive, astute yet dewy-eyed, Thomson's writing sweeps you up in a whirlwhind of passion and urgency where you only realize after the fact that Thomson has not only a been a bit cruel for having compiled this massive collection of hearsay and hypercritical opinions but actually kind of crazy. Highly recommended.
July 18, 2013
An unfathomably highbrow book written by one of the grouchiest men to take on the subject of filmmaking. The title is also extremely misleading, as I would expect something labeling itself a 'dictionary' to carry a certain level of objectivity. No such luck; if it was going to be one opinion piece after another, it should be called 'David Thomson's Opinion of Film History'.
And what an opinion it is. Only those with the most ironclad critical credentials are lavished with multiple paragraphs espousing their contribution to film history, and just about the only contemporary maker to approach Thomson's pantheon is, as you could guess from the cover, Paul Thomas Anderson. This facile view that contemporary filmmakers are somehow not as good as classical (re: older, French) filmmakers is just hogwash.
Of course, a lot of times you find yourself grudgingly agreeing with Thomson, even as he seems to take the most painfully pessimistic critical view he can in the majority of the entries. He's not liable to ruin your appreciation for your favorite film, you're more liable to come away thinking that this guy doesn't know how to have a good time during a movie.
Also, someone else noted on Goodreads that there is almost no deference given to screenwriters, producers, cinematographers, production designers, editors... but somehow Johnny Carson gets an entry?
And what an opinion it is. Only those with the most ironclad critical credentials are lavished with multiple paragraphs espousing their contribution to film history, and just about the only contemporary maker to approach Thomson's pantheon is, as you could guess from the cover, Paul Thomas Anderson. This facile view that contemporary filmmakers are somehow not as good as classical (re: older, French) filmmakers is just hogwash.
Of course, a lot of times you find yourself grudgingly agreeing with Thomson, even as he seems to take the most painfully pessimistic critical view he can in the majority of the entries. He's not liable to ruin your appreciation for your favorite film, you're more liable to come away thinking that this guy doesn't know how to have a good time during a movie.
Also, someone else noted on Goodreads that there is almost no deference given to screenwriters, producers, cinematographers, production designers, editors... but somehow Johnny Carson gets an entry?
Read
June 19, 2009Read the STOP SMILING interview with author David Thomson
The 21st Interview: David Thomson
by José Teodoro
David Thomson is a historian, critic and the author of several books on movies of tremendous influence, among them The Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Whole Equation and, most recently, Have You Seen…?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films and Try To Tell the Story: A Memoir. He’s contributed to publications such as Film Comment, Salon and the Guardian. His prose remains highly distinctive among critics, at once bold and intimate, often addressing an individual movie in a context that aligns it to “the movies” as a single, vast cultural phenomenon. Even Thomson’s novels, such as Suspects, which offers interconnected cameo biographical portraits of fictional characters from dozens of movies, speak to a fearsome obsession with the cinema and an urge to consider and articulate the peculiar nature of its spell and how it reflects and distorts our world.
Read the complete interview...
The 21st Interview: David Thomson
by José Teodoro
David Thomson is a historian, critic and the author of several books on movies of tremendous influence, among them The Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Whole Equation and, most recently, Have You Seen…?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films and Try To Tell the Story: A Memoir. He’s contributed to publications such as Film Comment, Salon and the Guardian. His prose remains highly distinctive among critics, at once bold and intimate, often addressing an individual movie in a context that aligns it to “the movies” as a single, vast cultural phenomenon. Even Thomson’s novels, such as Suspects, which offers interconnected cameo biographical portraits of fictional characters from dozens of movies, speak to a fearsome obsession with the cinema and an urge to consider and articulate the peculiar nature of its spell and how it reflects and distorts our world.
Read the complete interview...
January 5, 2014
David Thomson is a wholly engaging writer who is also a blowhard--and I say that with reverence. His opinions are fixed and numerous, and he dismisses actors and directors he doesn't like with a wave of his hand. But what a wave! His entry on Cary Grant, for example, begins, "There is a major but very difficult realization that needs to be reached about Cary Grant--difficult, that is, for people who like to think that they take the art of film seriously." And what is this realization? He tells us at the end of the paragraph: "He was the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema." He's right about Cary Grant and about so many others--and even when he's not, he's never dull. This is the kind of 900-page book that you keep around and pick up every once in a while to remind yourself how good it is. Thomson will also cause you to expand your Netflix queue so you can add films about which he has written. Invaluable for film fans.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews