Day: July 24, 2015

Like many others I’ve been inspired by that much-derided BBC list of the 100 Greatest American Films to assemble my own roster. Except I can’t pare it down to 100 — the best I can do is 160, and even with this number I’ve had to cut dozens and dozens. It’s not a fun thing to do because over and over again you’re saying “no, no, naaah, hasn’t aged well, no longer, naaah, don’t think so.” And every one of the films that’s been “naahed” was pretty good if not great to start with. On its own terms, I mean.

I’ve broken my list into groups of ten. There are several great films I’ve left out because I’ve never liked watching them very much so there. If a film bothers me on some level, it gets tossed — I don’t care how “great” everyone else says it is. I’m not saying there aren’t 200 or 300 more films that could easily be on someone else’s list. I’m saying these are my choices, and it wasn’t easy.

The most daunting part was choosing The Best American Film Of All Time, which it not a rock or a boulder but a dream, a passing fancy, a thought bubble in the mind of God. Or whatever…a film that expresses something vital and enduring about the American experience or character or attitude. But that sounds pretentious and tedious. Every and every greatest film choice on this list is a keeper, but the very best is…oh, the hell with it. I’m choosing The Treasure of The Sierra Madre (’48) but tomorrow I might select Dr. Strangelove or Zero Dark Thirty or 12 Angry Men or Tender Mercies. No guarantees, nothing rock solid. The top tier of any list is always debatable.

The definition of an “American” film is one principally funded by an American company.

HE’s Top Ten Greatest American Films: (1) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, (2) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, (3 & 4) The Godfather & The Godfather, Part II (5) The Graduate, (6) Election, (7) Zodiac, (8) Rushmore, (9) Pulp Fiction, (10) Some Like It Hot.

Greatest American Films (11 to 20): (11) North By Northwest, (12) Notorious, (13) On The Waterfront, (14) Groundhog Day, (15) Goodfellas, (16) Out Of The Past, (17) Paths of Glory, (18) Psycho, (19) Raging Bull, (20) 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Greatest American Films (21 to 30): (21) Annie Hall, (22) Apocalypse Now, (23) Strangers on a Train, (24) East of Eden, (25) Bringing Up Baby, (26) The African Queen, (27) All About Eve, (28) The Wizard of Oz, (29) Zero Dark Thirty, (30) Only Angels Have Wings.

Greatest American Films (31 to 40): (31) Repo Man, (32) Heat, (33) Red River, (34) Drums Along the Mohawk, (35) Gone With The Wind, (36) Rebel Without a Cause, (37) Ben-Hur (38) The Best Years of Our Lives, (39) The Big Sleep, (40) Shane.

Greatest American Films (41 to 50): (41) Rear Window, (42) Bonnie And Clyde, (43) The Bridge On The River Kwai, (44) Casablanca, (45) Chinatown, (46) Citizen Kane (47) Marnie…kidding! I really mean Duck Soup, (48) King Kong, (49) 12 Angry Men (50) The Informer.

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“A new Vacation movie is scheduled to be released — or allowed to escape — on July 29. To judge by the obvious, pitiful, frenetic, stupid raunchiness of its trailer, it belongs to the genre known as ‘post-humoristic.’ The movie declares itself to be a remake of National Lampoon’s Vacation, the 1983 classic of obvious, pitiful, frenetic, stupid innocence. But the words ‘National Lampoon’ are never mentioned in the trailer. National Lampoon now seems damned to the point that its name isn’t even worthy of being attached to a summer cineplex dump-fill featuring the Hangover wimp dentist as leading man and a Chevy Chase cameo.” — from a 7.23 Hollywood Reporter piece by former author, satirist, Republican Party reptile and former National Lampoon editor P.J. O’Rourke.

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My first reaction when I heard about last night’s Lafeyette theatre shooting was…I was going to say I almost shrugged but that’s not quite true. I felt horrible about the two women killed (particularly for 33 year-old Jillian Johnson, who could have been Sasha Stone‘s younger sister) and those who were shot but thankfully survived, but I wasn’t shocked or surprised. Nobody was. And nobody will be the next time this happens and the time after that. There have been 204 mass shootings so far in the U.S. this year. Two effing hundred and four. Society will always have to cope with pathetic loons like John Russell Houser, but how did he get hold of a gun? Easy — this is America, son, and we don’t block the sale of guns to anyone if we can help it. Because people have a right to protect themselves from home invaders and attacking Apaches and…hell, the government itself! Over 90% of Americans strongly favor in-depth background checks. May the D.C. legislators who’ve voted against this time and again suffer long and painfully — may their karma catch up with them.

(l.) Sasha Stone look-alike Jillian Johnson, 33, and (r.0 Mayci Breaux, 21 — both killed last night during the Lafayette theatre shooting.

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Alex Gibney‘s Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (Magnolia, 9.4 in theatres/on demand) will, of course, be regarded as absolutely necessary viewing for anyone intending to see Danny Boyle, Aaron Sorkin and Scott Rudin‘s Steve Jobs the following month (i.e., 10.9), which of course would be everyone and everybody in the entire fucking world. Outside of certain Middle Eastern regions, that is. Everyone in the digitized, industrialized Western hemisphere.

For reasons best not explained most of the critical community is giving high-fives to Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (Paramount, 7.31). Many of them are capitulating because they don’t want to seem like cranky, ivory-tower soreheads or because they genuinely don’t mind that big-scale Hollywood films have all but given up on the concept of serious action realism — that the action genre has devolved into the aesthetic of Grand Theft Auto cyborg cartoons, and that one of the last action thrillers to really re-set the realm was Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men. That movie set a super-high action bar for the 21st Century, and 98% of the summer popcorn actioners made in its wake have rigorously avoided trying to match or top it.  

Yes, MI:5 is a much more complex and “likable” film than James Wan‘s Furious 7, and to be fair it has a wondrously thrilling beginning (the much-hyped, real-deal scene in which Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt hangs on to the side of an ascending airplane) and an amusing, relatively satisfying final 25 minutes.  But most of it, directed and written by Chris McQuarrie, is, like Furious 7 and unfortunately unlike McQuarrie and Cruise’s smaller scale but much more believable Jack Reacher, a cyborg actioner — a running, chasing and confronting thriller made for people who despise genuine, real-deal action flicks and prefer, instead, the comfort of cranked-up digital delirium.

Call me stubborn but I want the real thing, and there are very few traces of that precious substance in MI:5. No sense of gravity or threat — no anchor, no limits, no rules, nothing but cold calculation. (Except for that wonderful hanging onto the plane thing — I could watch that scene over and over.) In a nod to Jacques Tati MI:5 could be retitled Tom Cruise’s Playtime, and for many people this is exactly what makes a good action film these days, which is to say a sense of totally slick escapist wankery from start to finish.

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Italian Vanity Fair has reported that during a recent visit to the Giffoni Film Festival Mark Ruffalo said he’d be returning to Italy in a few weeks when Thomas McCarthy‘s Spotlight plays at the Venice Film Festival. I don’t know if Spotlight (Open Road, 11.6) will duck Telluride and go straight to Toronto but at least the Venice engagement seems solid. Spotlight is about the Boston Globe‘s reporting about Catholic priest sex abuse allegations in the Boston region 14 and 15 years ago. Ruffalo costars with Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James, Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci and Liev Schreiber.