It's not always that I sit down and write, and attempt to make sense. It's not that I never write anything that has a point, it's just that I find it easier not to make a point. But this time, I'm going to make an exception.
There's a very intriguing list. This one. I've always been fascinated by lists, ticking things off them, starting from the top, starting from the bottom, starting from the middle and working both ways, all kinds. And this list is no different. And now that I've seen 125 movies out of the 250 on the list, I can act quite knowledgeable about the subject of movies and movie-making. And also watching.
There is no way that I'm gonna dissect each of the 125 frame by frame, pointing out moments of brilliance and not-so-brilliance and all such. I don't even remember some of those movies too well. There's no way you're going to read it even if I do. So, only a select few movies. And maybe the one that I think should top the list.
Most of the top 50 movies are there because, well, they belong there. The LOTR series and Godfather series for their sheer technical brilliance and acting respectively. The early Star Wars movies for being the trend-setters they were. Citizen Kane, for the first movie to use a non-continuous screenplay. Shawshank, Usual Suspect, Se7en, Eternal Sunshine and other such movies for being the kind of movies that you watch, and come out shaking your head in wonderment. With all these wonderful movies up there, I never understood what Rear Window was doing at 13th. It's not nearly a murder mystery. Neither is it a full-fledged, heart strings-tugging love story. It's about a guy who broke his leg and had nothing better than to snoop into the neighbour's house through his window. Heck, it's indecent, if nothing else. All through the movie I waited and watched, and waited for something to happen. And then just like that, poof, the movie was over. What the...
It's not like I have anything against Hitchcock. Psycho was everything that the hype about it promised, Vertigo and North by Northwest had screenplays that motored along very nicely indeed. Rebecca too had a strong story to back it. Strangers on a Train is, in my opinion, the best Hitchcock movie I've seen. The whole concept on which the movie is based is quite novel, apart from the fact that it IS actually based on a novel, of course. And again, I never felt the time fly by as I was watching the movie. That takes quite some doing, I get bored easy most of the times. Which is what happened with Rear Window. And yet it's the highest rated Hitchcock movie. Clearly, my tastes are not refined enough.
Akira Kurosawa is the man who showed the world that the Japanese too can make movies, and then went ahead and showed the world how to make them. Shooting into the limelight with Rashomon, he went on to make other Samurai-based movies such as Yojimbo, Seven Samurai and Ran, the last one based almost entirely on Shakespeare's King Lear. Japanese movies are a different world by themselves, with the characters running around barefoot clutching their swords to their hips, the mostly expressionless protagonists with their Samurai stunts and of course, Sake. Quite different from the dour-faced, pinstripe-suited characters of the Hollywood movies, which alone is enough to make them worth watching.
In fact, most foreign films come as a refreshing change for someone who has watched Hollywood churn out near-similar fare year after year after year, citing the reasons of 'formula of success' and other such nonsense. Amelie was an incredibly nice feel-good movie, Life is Beautiful was well, beautiful, if only for the fact that it was a war movie and yet the war itself only formed a somber background to the individual's life that it affected, which was the focus of the movie. And then again, The Downfall managed to do both, concentrate on the war as well as the individual simultaneously. It helped of course that the individual in question was Hitler. But still. Hispanic movies have an obsession with drawing different story-threads and then joining them at one point. Credit to them though, that they do it seamlessly, with each story being great in their own right, eventually coming together to create the movie which is greater than the sum of its parts. Like what happens in Power Rangers. Or the New Zealand Cricket Team. Or City of Gods and Amores Perros, in the context of this post.
Stanley Kubrick is probably the man who has most movies in the Top 250. Not without reason too, on evidence of Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange and even Full Metal Jacket. It's just generally accepted that he's the man, notwithstanding the fact that I slightly slept through the second half of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just like it's accepted that Quentin Tarantino is the man. Based mostly on Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bills. Not that Reservoir Dogs is any less a Tarantino special, and even Sin City which he guest-directed with its graphic-novel feel throughout. Another movie that provided a welcome break from the usual.
All this apart, there are only two movies which I know by-heart, line by line, frame-by-frame. Apart from Minnale, I mean. Fight Club, for its sheer denial of everything that humans have ever worked for, century after century. It's not that the mere rebellious nature of the movie draws the hot-blooded teenager towards it, it's just got so much to say- things that were always around and that pass by us everyday and yet, we never realized, stuck as we are in our mind-set of following the flock. You have to see the movie enough times till you can say the lines along with it. Then, will you realize the impact of each of them, like the one in the description section of this blog. And then, once you've watched the movie, you go and read the book. And realize why the movie had to be a great one. The book just cannot be made into a bad movie.
And yet, for all that, if Fight Club can manage only second spot in my ratings, there must be something else which defines movie-making. Maybe it's not a technical wonder, maybe it's not got an edge-of-the-seat thriller story or a gut-wrenching emotional drama. Maybe it's not a movie which you can be inspired by, or maybe it is. But it's probably the lack of all these which make that movie what it is. The story is naked, told with a brutal simplicity and moving at break-neck speed. The book was a melange of different stories, the movie tries to pick out only one which has a workable chronology to it, and succeeds perfectly. The lines, its always the lines, are again, so simple that you wonder how they've never struck you before. There is enough of an emotional roller-coaster through the length of the movie to call it well-made. It's not without reason it's on top of my list. It's not without reason it is the heading of this blog.
After all, we're not stupid. At least, we're not that stupid - Mark Renton.
There's a very intriguing list. This one. I've always been fascinated by lists, ticking things off them, starting from the top, starting from the bottom, starting from the middle and working both ways, all kinds. And this list is no different. And now that I've seen 125 movies out of the 250 on the list, I can act quite knowledgeable about the subject of movies and movie-making. And also watching.
There is no way that I'm gonna dissect each of the 125 frame by frame, pointing out moments of brilliance and not-so-brilliance and all such. I don't even remember some of those movies too well. There's no way you're going to read it even if I do. So, only a select few movies. And maybe the one that I think should top the list.
Most of the top 50 movies are there because, well, they belong there. The LOTR series and Godfather series for their sheer technical brilliance and acting respectively. The early Star Wars movies for being the trend-setters they were. Citizen Kane, for the first movie to use a non-continuous screenplay. Shawshank, Usual Suspect, Se7en, Eternal Sunshine and other such movies for being the kind of movies that you watch, and come out shaking your head in wonderment. With all these wonderful movies up there, I never understood what Rear Window was doing at 13th. It's not nearly a murder mystery. Neither is it a full-fledged, heart strings-tugging love story. It's about a guy who broke his leg and had nothing better than to snoop into the neighbour's house through his window. Heck, it's indecent, if nothing else. All through the movie I waited and watched, and waited for something to happen. And then just like that, poof, the movie was over. What the...
It's not like I have anything against Hitchcock. Psycho was everything that the hype about it promised, Vertigo and North by Northwest had screenplays that motored along very nicely indeed. Rebecca too had a strong story to back it. Strangers on a Train is, in my opinion, the best Hitchcock movie I've seen. The whole concept on which the movie is based is quite novel, apart from the fact that it IS actually based on a novel, of course. And again, I never felt the time fly by as I was watching the movie. That takes quite some doing, I get bored easy most of the times. Which is what happened with Rear Window. And yet it's the highest rated Hitchcock movie. Clearly, my tastes are not refined enough.
Akira Kurosawa is the man who showed the world that the Japanese too can make movies, and then went ahead and showed the world how to make them. Shooting into the limelight with Rashomon, he went on to make other Samurai-based movies such as Yojimbo, Seven Samurai and Ran, the last one based almost entirely on Shakespeare's King Lear. Japanese movies are a different world by themselves, with the characters running around barefoot clutching their swords to their hips, the mostly expressionless protagonists with their Samurai stunts and of course, Sake. Quite different from the dour-faced, pinstripe-suited characters of the Hollywood movies, which alone is enough to make them worth watching.
In fact, most foreign films come as a refreshing change for someone who has watched Hollywood churn out near-similar fare year after year after year, citing the reasons of 'formula of success' and other such nonsense. Amelie was an incredibly nice feel-good movie, Life is Beautiful was well, beautiful, if only for the fact that it was a war movie and yet the war itself only formed a somber background to the individual's life that it affected, which was the focus of the movie. And then again, The Downfall managed to do both, concentrate on the war as well as the individual simultaneously. It helped of course that the individual in question was Hitler. But still. Hispanic movies have an obsession with drawing different story-threads and then joining them at one point. Credit to them though, that they do it seamlessly, with each story being great in their own right, eventually coming together to create the movie which is greater than the sum of its parts. Like what happens in Power Rangers. Or the New Zealand Cricket Team. Or City of Gods and Amores Perros, in the context of this post.
Stanley Kubrick is probably the man who has most movies in the Top 250. Not without reason too, on evidence of Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange and even Full Metal Jacket. It's just generally accepted that he's the man, notwithstanding the fact that I slightly slept through the second half of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just like it's accepted that Quentin Tarantino is the man. Based mostly on Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bills. Not that Reservoir Dogs is any less a Tarantino special, and even Sin City which he guest-directed with its graphic-novel feel throughout. Another movie that provided a welcome break from the usual.
All this apart, there are only two movies which I know by-heart, line by line, frame-by-frame. Apart from Minnale, I mean. Fight Club, for its sheer denial of everything that humans have ever worked for, century after century. It's not that the mere rebellious nature of the movie draws the hot-blooded teenager towards it, it's just got so much to say- things that were always around and that pass by us everyday and yet, we never realized, stuck as we are in our mind-set of following the flock. You have to see the movie enough times till you can say the lines along with it. Then, will you realize the impact of each of them, like the one in the description section of this blog. And then, once you've watched the movie, you go and read the book. And realize why the movie had to be a great one. The book just cannot be made into a bad movie.
And yet, for all that, if Fight Club can manage only second spot in my ratings, there must be something else which defines movie-making. Maybe it's not a technical wonder, maybe it's not got an edge-of-the-seat thriller story or a gut-wrenching emotional drama. Maybe it's not a movie which you can be inspired by, or maybe it is. But it's probably the lack of all these which make that movie what it is. The story is naked, told with a brutal simplicity and moving at break-neck speed. The book was a melange of different stories, the movie tries to pick out only one which has a workable chronology to it, and succeeds perfectly. The lines, its always the lines, are again, so simple that you wonder how they've never struck you before. There is enough of an emotional roller-coaster through the length of the movie to call it well-made. It's not without reason it's on top of my list. It's not without reason it is the heading of this blog.
After all, we're not stupid. At least, we're not that stupid - Mark Renton.
3 comments:
Absolutely second your opinion.
I too watched Rear Window with a lot of expectations only to be disappointed.
And trainspotting, you bet. :-)
Very nice selection of movies. Gotta say these guys (movies) deserve to be in the top 250.... each for exactly the points you mentioned. :)
Power rangers??????????????????
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