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An error has ocurred. Please try againCinephiles will not find any new films through this list. It is aimed at people who haven't seen many old films. It is meant as a kind of booster shot of film literacy, listing only the films that have been endlessly referenced and remembered by other films and media.
Criticisms are welcome: I'm only one man and I don't doubt I've made mistakes.
Sorted roughly by how essential it is to see the film if you haven't already.
Original lists can be found on the AFI's website here: http://www.afi.com/100Years/
Reviews
Nashville (1975)
Not unwatchable, but pretty boring
All the reviews for this movie seem to be either love it or hate it. Well, what about those of us who were just unimpressed? I didn't certainly didn't like the movie, but I didn't full-on hate it either. Maybe it's because I'm not an American, and thus am not connected to its themes?
Well, anyway, I was turned off by the opening. The whole thing of introducing the movie in the style of a country music commercial (I assume that's what was going on) felt like it was trying hard to be clever. Like, "Look at me! I'm a smart movie with lots of subversive satire to say!" Well, it wasn't clever. It was loud, obnoxious, and tedious. Am I supposed to be impressed by the insight that those commercials are garish and tacky?
The actual technique of the movie isn't bad. It jumps all over the place and shows off lots of different characters having their different stories. I'd probably enjoy it very much if the stories weren't totally boring.
The worst one is the reporter from the BBC. It seemed like every scene of hers went like this: she talks to someone; she tells them she's British; the person is bemused by her ignorance; she is shocked by something they say, which further shows her ignorance. It was kind of amusing the first time, but there wasn't much substance to it. And then she kept coming back. I get it, the lady reporter is an ignorant limey, can't you go a little deeper?
Then there was the bad singer. After her first scene, her story was obvious: no talent, but she gets ahead because she's willing to show some skin and will eventually be crushed to learn that's the only reason people listen to her sing. It could have been interesting, but you didn't get to see much of her life outside bad singing and showing cleavage, so when the penny dropped for her, I just thought, "Okay. And?"
The aging lady country singer was kind of interesting, I guess. I cringed a little out of embarrassment for her when she started rambling on stage, and it was kinda sad how she was clearly in poor health, but she insisted on still going out there. Maybe the movie would have been better if it had expanded on her story instead of throwing in a bunch of random people sleeping around, as if that makes for a worthy narrative.
The whole thing with the politician... I don't know, man. It was just white noise to me. I guess that might have been the point. He just spouts a bunch of slogans and then has a rally at the end. Maybe it's good satire if you care about American politics? Then again, I enjoyed All The King's Men, which takes a much harsher look at a populist politician, so that shouldn't have to be an obstacle to me enjoying it.
There were other stories, like Lily Tomlin cheating on her husband, but they were all forgettable. So much for the plot and characters.
I thought the songs were alright. I'm Easy was a pleasant tune, and the rest was nice enough country music. I think it wasn't worth bloating the film to over two and a half hours long, though. They could have cut most of them short to bring the film to a tidy two hours long.
Nashville is a pretty crummy and boring movie. I think no-one would want to watch it if it didn't have a reputation as a classic. It was at least better than the director's earlier film, M*A*S*H. I despised that one. Nashville at least presents a refinement of his technique. If only he could apply it to a story worth watching.
Mariah Carey's Merriest Christmas (2015)
Weird piece of ephemera
Mariah Carey is most famous for having the second widest range of any pop singer. Second only to Axl Rose from Guns 'N' Roses. And her Christmas special sucks.
Mariah Carey waves her hands about like an amateur instead of singing from the heart. She's a superficial diva, and she looks like she's made of porcelain. Her performances of classic Christmas carols, such as Joy to the World, Silent Night, and God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman, are soulless and uninspired. She has an irritating love of praising herself, even having a parody of Siri proclaim its love for her and her music.
In between the musical numbers are some lame comedy interludes about some dude dressed as Santa getting stuck in traffic on the way to the Christmas special. They're not funny. And in the end, he gets there and his costume turns out to be rubbish, so the real Santa takes over. This isn't even foreshadowed.
It's a mild and undiverting piece of television. It's on Netflix, for some reason, and I don't know why anyone would watch it. I watched it because I thought it looked like trash, and it was. It's the kind of thing that will be useful to future historians so they can piece together what people were doing outside the major events of our time. Otherwise, it's just this weird thing about a singer who I didn't know was still relevant by 2015.
Ben Hur (1907)
Bad, even for the time
It's true that film makers were still feeling their way in the 1900s, but that's no excuse for a film to be boring now. Look at "Le voyage dans la lune" or "The Great Train Robbery", both of which came several years before Ben-Hur 1907. Even "Sherlock Holmes Baffled", a silly trick film from 1900, is still amusing.
The story is fragmented and would only make sense if you already knew it. (Which, to be fair, was likely at the time; Ben-Hur was as popular then as Harry Potter is now.) The chariot race is pathetic, being nothing more than the horses passing the camera several times until the movie ends. It would have been difficult to film an exciting chariot race within the limitations of the time, but this was not a good workaround. The only saving grace of this movie is that, like others of the time, it is short, barely ten minutes long.
Ben-Hur 1907 is proof that crappy cash-ins have been around even in the early days of cinema. We are fortunate it has survived, if only because that prevents any mystique from being attached to it, as has happened with films like "The Great Gatsby (1925)".
Pixels (2015)
A better tribute to the arcades than Wreck-It Ralph
Pixels was better than I expected. My brother loves Adam Sandler, so he's dragged me through some pretty bad movies. But Pixels was okay. It would be good for kids and people who like classic video games and are also sympathetic to the Happy Madison style of film making. Certainly, there are worse ways to spend an hour and forty five minutes.
As a homage to arcade games, it far surpasses the otherwise decent Wreck-It Ralph. The problem with Ralph was that it used video games as window dressing to tell the well-worn story of the outsider who finds meaning and self-respect. Pixels actually works the video game motif into the storyline such that the story wouldn't work without it.
Some people seem to have problems with how unlikely the plot is and how far-fetched many of the bits in the movie are. It's really not a problem. The movie signposts at several points that it is not to be taken seriously, usually in the form of a character verbally noticing the illogic. Normally, this kind of dialogue irritates me, since it is rarely funny, but it was done well here, especially because the things being commented on needed to be commented on.
The movie made me laugh a couple of times and was rarely unpleasant. It lacks the onslaught of juvenile sex jokes that categorise and ruin many of Adam Sandler's other movies. It managed to pass the threshold of being acceptable entertainment. Which makes it one of the best Adam Sandler films I have yet seen.
On that note, it seemed like Sandler was putting a bit of himself into his character. Both were promising talents in their younger days, but squandered that talent and became undistinguished presences in their neighbourhoods by middle age. Unlike his character, I doubt that Pixels signifies a reflowering for Sandler, since there mustn't be much motive for him to do better than his lowest common denominator comedies. Still, perhaps he can surprise us one day...
Adventures of the Gummi Bears: The Fence Sitter/Night of the Gargoyle (1985)
The Gargoyle is the greatest Disney villain of all
Watch that little guy in action. He's such a horrid little sprite and he loves every minute of it. His joy is infectious. He runs circles around the good guys and cackles at their inability to stop him. He can only be stopped with magic, and even then, only when he gets distracted by his main mission. (And even so, he nearly succeeds, losing by less than a minute!)
The Gargoyle should have gotten a spin-off series. Maybe some kind of juvenile black comedy series about him being shuttled around the world assassinating people.
Night of the Gargoyle is the absolute best episode of The Gummi Bears. The episode it's paired with, The Fence Sitter, isn't too bad either.
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
The worst George Lucas Star Wars film
I actually like the Star Wars prequels. The Phantom Menace was one of my most treasured films as a child and I still enjoy it today. Most of the criticism levelled at it is accurate, though I think its detractors exaggerate how bad those flaws make the film. Leonard Maltin gave it three out of four stars and said, "Not a lot of heart, but certainly a lot of fun in Saturday matinée serial fashion." I think that's the fairest appraisal I've read.
Attack of the Clones, however, I would never defend. The key problem is the infamously atrocious romance between Anakin and Padme, which takes up far too much of the running time. Most of it is boring and the rest is just cringeworthy. (Though the "I don't like sand..." speech is memorable and a lot of fun to mock.) As a child, these scenes were unspeakably dull, and even now they are barely tolerable.
Of course, if the rest was brilliant, it would be worth the slog. Unfortunately, the film's best scenes all happen before the romance scenes start, and the climax on Geonosis is only mediocre, even judged in its own right. The large scale lightsaber fight in the arena is tedious, emotionally empty without even the arguable positive of having flashy choreography. The battle becomes even less involving when the clones show up and we get a typical sci-fi war zone. The duel against Count Dooku is okay, but then there's a lot of waffle and then the movie's over. Great.
The highlight of the movie is the car chase through Coruscant near the start. There is some amusing banter between Obi-Wan and Anakin and the chase itself is thrilling enough. It's all downhill after that, though, with the scenes on Kamino feeling sterile, and then the aforementioned bad scenes.
I hold that the Star Wars prequels are badly underrated by the most vocal Star Wars fans, but I can only say that Attack of the Clones may be slightly overrated, if only because haters pass it over in favour of tearing TPM apart. In every way, Attack of the Clones is an inferior film and it deserves a bit more flack than it gets.
Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe (2016)
Mediocre cinema, with a frustrating perspective on autism
Just some disclosure: I have mild autism, the part of the spectrum formerly known as Asperger's Syndrome. Personally, I don't think it's useful to consider Asperger's as autism. There is a world of difference between the wordless, gurgling, infantile severely autistic and the kooky weirdo Asperger's people. This kind of inclusive diagnosis throws off statistics, and when people like those in this documentary say that 1 in 250 children are diagnosed with autism, and present this as a horrible thing, I take it as an insult; I know that they are thinking of the severely autistic, who are difficult and a little frightening, but I get the sense that they don't see a difference between that and people like myself.
Anyway, the documentary itself: it is not an all-out anti-vaccine screed. It specifically targets the triple strand MMR vaccine. More to the point, it argues that the particular vaccine as currently produced has major problems that those higher up refuse to do anything about. The film sums up its agenda at the end, and since it asks the viewer to have their children receive the single strand vaccines instead, it is clearly not saying to never vaccinate your children. The problem, of course, is that this nuanced view is not what most people, particularly its primary audience of those who already refuse to vaccinate, will take from it. The film doesn't help its case here, since the parents it presents hold this general anti-vaccine view, and it shows a couple of PSAs that warn against vaccines overall, rather than targeting the suspect MMR.
Andrew Wakefield is the director, and he also presents himself as one of the main interview subjects. He does an excellent job of selling himself: not knowing beforehand, I thought he was the most sensible subject in the film and thought the director would have done well to focus more on him. Well, he's clearly a scientist/activist, not a cinema man. If he is sincere in his intentions, he could have done a lot to improve his film.
For instance, he spends at least a third of the film on "heartbreaking" stories from parents of autistic children. This is mainly communicated through the parents telling the camera about how difficult it was. I don't have enough space to discuss the film's perspective on autism at length, but suffice to say that I don't feel it made a convincing case that it is something to worry about. The black boy who accidentally got a double dose of the MMR vaccine was a prime candidate to demonstrate how horrible autism is. His facial expression looks mentally disabled and spends all of his screen time watching Blues Clues on a laptop. However, the film gives greater prominence to a white boy who is only mildly autistic. This boy was undoubtedly difficult to raise, but, judging by what we are shown of him, he could easily get a decent job and live a good life if someone taught him social skills. I found it offensive that the film equated this level of autism with honestly severe cases and it undermined the film's presentation. And here's a thought: why doesn't the film show the effects of measles, mumps or rubella? If autism is so much worse, it couldn't hurt to show it, and it gives parents a better chance of making an informed decision about what is best for their children.
Vaxxed rubbed me the wrong way when addressing autism head-on, but that is not the whole film. At heart, this is a conspiracy story in the mould of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Whether or not you agree with its conclusions, Moore's film was entertaining and excellent cinema. The same cannot be said of Vaxxed. That's inevitable, since the implications of its conspiracy aren't as drastic (what's scarier, your child getting autism or being sent overseas to die for a meaningless, profit-driven war?) but there is still much room for improvement in the presentation. The driving narrative device of the film is the surreptitiously recorded confessions of Dr. William Thompson, but the film is neither dynamic enough to turn his whistleblowing into a compelling conspiracy narrative, nor is it neutral enough to be intellectually convincing. It's possible Wakefield watered down his original vision to make the film commercial: perhaps he added the emotional arguments because he heard that's what convinces people, and just isn't talented enough a director to simplify scientific issues without becoming dumbed down.
As is probably evident, I don't have strong opinions on the vaccine debate, though I feel that they could come up with a better argument against than autism. It's not really necessary to see the film if you can get an objective summary of its contentions. Namely, the MMR vaccine may cause autism, this being less likely if given later; there aren't strict enough regulations for vaccines relative to other pharmaceutical products; and there is corruption in the CDC, an example being their attempted cover-up of the alleged link between the MMR vaccine and autism. I have tried to judge this film as a self-contained work, since I lack the knowledge and interest required to address the factuality of its content.
In short, I disagree with its presentation of the problematic nature of autism and, as cinema, it is about average. Hardly worthy of the controversy it stirred up. 5 out of 10.
Inauguration Road: St. Louis Kids & the Obama Inauguration (2010)
A document of the time
As with any minor documentary, this is about presenting ideas rather than achieving a satisfying style. In this case, it explores the social landscape of one section of America leading up to Obama's inauguration, as well as gathering a bunch of cute children and having them give their thoughts on then-contemporary politics. Mostly, these kids try to talk beyond their knowledge, stating that there are problems with the Iraq War, the economy and such. Standard application of the whole "through the eyes of innocence" thing. The presentation is too on the nose at times: when talking about taxes and money, the image shows dollar signs, and later dollar bills, drifting across the screen. Tacky. Interestingly, it makes a note of the litter left by the crowd after the inauguration and has some of the children remark on it. Not an angle that usually comes up when reflecting on these events.
All in all, it is a record of the time it portrays. It isn't remarkable, but it is a worthy addition to the pile of material for future historians.
On a side note, I watched this because I'm friends with one of the girls in it. She was so cute then!