Day: March 1, 2024

In HE’s judgment, 25 exceptional, high-quality films were released in 1959. (There were another 9 or 10 that were good, decent, not bad.) By today’s standards, here’s how the top 25 rank:

1. Billy Wlder‘s Some Like It Hot (released on 3.29.59)

2. Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest (released on 7.1.59)

3. John Ford‘s The Horse Soldiers (released on 6.12.59)

4. George Stevens‘ The Diary of Anne Frank (released 3.18.59)

5. Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (released on 12.17.59)

6. William Wyler‘s Ben-Hur (released on 11.18.59)

7. Alain Resnais‘s Hiroshima, Mon Amour (released in France on 6.10.59)

8. Lewis Milestone‘s Pork Chop Hill (released on 5.29.59)

9. Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (released on 7.2.59)

10. Francois Truffaut‘s The 400 Blows (released in France on 5.4.59)

11. Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (released on 4.4.59)

12. Sidney Lumet‘s The Fugitive Kind (released on 4.14.59)

13. Tony Richardson‘s Look Back in Anger (released on 9.15.59)

14. Grigory Chukhray‘s Ballad of a Soldier (released on 12.1.59)

15. Robert Bresson‘s Pickpocket (released on 12.16.59)

16. Robert Wise‘s Odds Against Tomorrow (released on 10.15.59)

17. Delbert Mann‘s Middle of the Night (released on 6.17.59)

18. Robert Stevenson‘s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (released on 6.26.59)

19. Fred Zinnemann‘s The Nun’s Story (released on 6.18.59)

20. Guy Hamilton‘s The Devil’s Disciple (released on 8.20.59)

21. Roger Vadim‘s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (released on 9.9.59)

22. Richard Fleischer‘s Compulsion (released on 4.1.59)

23. Val Guest‘s Expresso Bongo (released on 12.11.59)

24. Carol Reed‘s Our Man in Havana (released in England on 12.30.59 / stateside on 1.27.60)

25. J. Lee Thompson‘s Tiger Bay (released in March 1959)

Bonus:

Charles Barton‘s The Shaggy Dog (released on 3.19.59).

Jordan Ruimy: “Dune: Part Two is actually night and day compared to the 2021 Dune. I loved it. Dune 3, however, is actually going to be very different. Chalamet is going to be a dictator.”

HE: “I don’t want to see that film. Last night’s viewing was an eye-opener….transporting visual material delivered with profound stylistic pizazz. I don’t want to descend into a dictatorship.”

Ruimy: “It’s a very different book. More solemn, less action.”

HE: “I’m not saying the first Dune (’21) was Star Wars — it certainly wasn’t — but Dune: Part Two is analogous to The Empire Strikes Back. It was a similar kind of exciting, darkly-shaded, going-deeper quality.”

Ruimy: “It truly is.”

Yeah, I know — I should wait until next year (mid July of ’25) to do a “looking back at my beloved decade-old Trainwreck” piece.

Judd Apatow‘s film premiered big-time at South by Southwest on 3.15.15 (just shy of nine years ago) and opened commercially on 7.17.15.

But in my mind Trainwreck is actually ten years old now, as it was in pre-production in the late winter and spring of ’14, and began principal photography on 5.19.14 in New York City. So let’s celebrate the 10-year anniversary today…pull up a chair.

A good comedy is just as story-savvy, character-rich and well-motivated as a good drama. Good comedies and dramas both need strong third-act payoffs. Take away the jokes, the broad business and the giggly schtick, and a successful comedy will still hold water in dramatic terms.

And yet most comedic writers, it seems, start with an amusing premise, then add the laugh material, and then, almost as an afterthought, weave in a semblance of a story along with some motivation and a third-act crescendo that feels a little half-assed.

Remember Amy Schumer‘s eulogy at her dad’s funeral in Trainwreck? That was a great scene, and it was part of an excellent comedy.

Posted on 6.30.15: Trainwreck is dryly hilarious and smoothly brilliant and damn near perfect. It’s the finest, funniest, most confident, emotionally open-hearted and skillful film Apatow has ever made, hands down. I was feeling the chills plus a wonderful sense of comfort and assurance less than five minutes in. Wow, this is good…no, it’s better…God, what a relief…no moaning or leaning forward or covering my face with my hands…pleasure cruise.

I went to the Arclight hoping and praying that Trainwreck would at least be good enough so I could write “hey, Schumer’s not bad and the film is relatively decent.” Well, it’s much better than that, and Schumer’s performance is not only a revelation but an instant, locked-in Best Actress contender. I’m dead serious, and if the other know-it-alls don’t wake up to this they’re going to be strenuously argued with. Don’t even start in with the tiresome refrain of “oh, comedic performances never merit award-season attention.” Shut up. Great performances demand respect, applause and serious salutes…period.

I still think Schumer is a 7.5 or an 8 but it doesn’t matter because (and I know how ludicrous this is going to sound given my history) I fell in love in a sense — I saw past or through all that and the crap that’s still floating around even now. For it became more and more clear as I watched that Schumer’s personality and performance constitute a kind of cultural breakthrough — no actress has ever delivered this kind of attitude and energy before in a well-written, emotionally affecting comedy, and I really don’t see how anyone can argue that Schumer isn’t in the derby at this point. (A columnist friend doesn’t agree but said that Schumer’s Trainwreck screenplay is a surefire contender for Best Original Screenplay.)

Read more