Films

Now this feels like a slightly strange one to write. Thinking of it, oddly, I don’t have so many emotions/associations with a lot of films or series. Sure some touched me more than others, some made me laugh a lot, some made me smile, some made me cry, but unlike music or books, I’m not sure I associate many with shaping me or life events. Also, it will be in a very strange order. It led me to wonder (considering a ‘blog’ page on art, but not sure I will do that) about which arts I connect the most with. And sure, music is number one, and literature number two. Yet, films, paintings….you could argue that I am not too much into visual arts? Not sure that’s true though, as aesthetics are very very important to me (and I’m firmly in the camp of style AND substance – why choose one when you can have both, although at a push you could even argue I value style over substance, does that make me slightly vain?), and I couldn’t truly name my favourite painter or painting. While yeah, I can’t remember who has directed most films, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, my favourite directors are probably David Lynch and Tim Burton. Perhaps Tarantino, and the Coen brothers too. So below (still debating whether to do a separate film and series page…maybe[in the end I sensibly did]), things will be classified in a weird way, though I may start at the beginning. I was never a big film goer, wasn’t brought up going to the cinema much, sure, I saw a lot of the Disney classics of my childhood (Rox et Rooky, etc.), and only way I saw films as an adult bar a few exceptions was at film watching sessions in Engineering school (we had that in an amphitheater) and then either on TV or on DVDs. After I started working, I consumed a lot of DVDs. And eventually I tried to watch most of the classics. But I haven’t really watched many recent films, the only recent one was earlier this year, a French film that was recommended to me due to its soundtrack’s composer. And I liked both the film and the sountrack, as I will relate below. Anyway so….

Le Trou Noir (The Black Hole): I mention this because it was the first non Disney film I remembered. Or rather it WAS a Disney film as it turns out, but not the usual animated. I just remember it as being quite traumatic….Science-fiction it was, but a madman and crazy robots, is that really a children’s film? I don’t know.

And then I don’t remember a film until Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang. As a teenager, lots of stuff I didn’t know (one of the first films partly themed on AIDS, though it wasn’t named thus in the film), but a great performance by Denis Lavant (that scene of him dancing in the street to David Bowie’s Modern Love is an absolute classic), and also a remarkable one from Juliette Binoche, without forgetting Michel Piccoli.

All the other significant or enjoyed films came so much later in my life, so yes don’t mind the order, or weird thematic grouping. There will be no rhyme or reason and I might not even explain a lot.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Starring Forest Whitaker, who I like very much. And also pigeons. Just a very cool film.

The Crow. (the one Brandon Lee died in during the course of filming. RIP) . Of course, because of the soundtrack including The Cure (and a pretty good cover of Joy Division’s Dead Souls by Nine Inch Nails). And a measure of goth aesthetics. There’s some sweet characters like young Sarah and the cop, and the ending made me cry a couple of times. ‘Real love is forever’. It’s true, you know.

La Haine. A French monument. The opening sequence is another classic. Tough watch maybe, but yeah it’s a good film.

Man Bites Dog (C’est Arrivé Près de Chez Vous). A…. Belgian classic with Benoît Poelvoorde. It’s a bit special and contains rather warped humour, but one of the reasons I mention it is also because of the very strong Belgian accent. I mean, I watched it in French, but with English subtitles and I was VERY grateful for those subtitles….

Billy Elliot. Just enjoyed this, very touching, and while it doesn’t have much in common with Mauvais Sang, similarly the scene I remember is with dancing in the street (hang on….so no wonder I DO like dancing in the streets/metro to music when in the right mood, it’s funny how revisiting some things, I can see how I relate to this and that and yeah, it’s who I am!), this time to the Jam’s Town called Malice.

Fargo. I could add a few Coen Brothers films, but this one is probably my favourite. Frances McDormand is just amazing….and that scene with the woodchipper….

And while I’m with Frances McDormand, much later, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, is also excellent.

Donnie Darko. It’s a decent film and has a cool soundtrack, really.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I don’t remember that much of it….which is probably apt given the theme? Just remembered liking it, and the idea behind. Sometimes wishing to restart, erase those mistakes and start anew, re-meet the same person. And also it has Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. And I like Carrey, though probably more in Man on the Moon (and weirdly, The Cable Guy) than, say, The Mask.

Now that I have decided to make a separate page on Series, I can’t mention Twin Peaks (although yeah, Fire Walk With Me qualifies and I love it). So, yeah David Lynch. Where do I start. Not sure, or what do I like there? The surrealist aesthetics, the oddballness, the fact that you can draw your own conclusions/interpretations and that they may absolutely not be what he had in mind, or did he have anything in mind, or is it just pure art? My favourites? Maybe Wild At Heart, Mulholland Drive and the fantastic Lost Highway.

I’m really jumping from one thing to another, and I haven’t even really started on the older favourite classics yet. So, next. Four Lions. Again, Chris Morris will probably have his own section in the Series page, but this is both hilarious and scary, Chris Morris’ genius at work.

More recent classics. The Usual Suspects? Yes, it’s very good.

So what’s my favourite Tarantino film? I guess still Reservoir Dogs. A must watch (though I think I also like Kill Bill more than most people do).

Really randomly, again Monty Python will have a big Series mention, but also belong to the film categories. Sure, Life of Brian is an all time must-watch, The Meaning of Life has some classic scenes (Mr Creosote), but somehow my own favourite of their films remains Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

I’m leaving aside a few Sci-Fi classics, but hard not to mention the Alien series. The original remain the most striking, but I do like some of the other ones. Including Alien Resurrection, although maybe it’s because I find Winona Ryder quite cute in that.

Trainspotting? Yeah, another cult film, and another great soundtrack. Must see/hear.

I mentioned Tim Burton (an obvious goth aesthetics favourite), but where do I start or end? Edward Scissorhands obviously, but I also liked the much more recent Alice in Wonderland. His work on animated stuff though is just amazing, so I would like to highlight The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride.

I am not a big fan of horror movies, but somehow Saw is worth a mention, I remember watching this at my mate Simon’s and found it excellent more than scary, just very very well done. The rest of the ‘franchise’ probably not worth your time.

A little trip towards music films? If you only own one Concert film, make it, obviously The Cure in Orange. As far as I know it’s still only available in VHS and the old LaserDisc, so good luck getting a copy of that at the moment.

Staying with music, Walk The Line, the Johnny Cash biopic made a very positive impression on me. Wonderful characters, touching stories. On top of the music itself.

I’ll leave many very good proper classics out before this turns out into a list of films I liked instead of films I REALLY liked and impressed me.

Apocalypse Now (might as well go for the Redux Version). It’s great, it’s epic, it’s got a bit in French, and it’s got two of my favourite actors in Robert Duvall and Marlon Brando. Features one of the all-time classic lines ; ‘I like the smell of Napalm in the morning’.

As far as films actually starring Marlon Brando are concerned a Streetcar Named Desire is another all-time legendary film(with an unsettling conclusion), and On The Waterfront a must-watch.

As for Robert Duvall, I DO like him in the Godfather films (worth their own mention), but his master work as an actor was actually Tender Mercies for which he got an Oscar.

He also first appeared as Boo Radley in the superb To Kill a Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck.

And while I’m with favourite actors, Humphrey Bogart maybe my absolute favourite. And appears in many excellent films like The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, and some of my top ones like Casablanca and, To Have and Have Not. With the equally wonderful Lauren Bacall. ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?’.

Gandhi is a long and epic classic, actually this one I watched in a cinema when it was released so a lot earlier than most of the films mentioned above. Just remember the scene when he is killed at the end. Bit shocking too.

And I am really following a weird stream, as this brings me to one I nearly forgot, The Last Emperor, another epic historical one, that I watched with school as a teenager and was quite striking. So yeah, watched it in French, so should really be Le Dernier Empereur.

School gives the transition to a film worth a mention for a very different reason: Les Fugitifs. Starring Pierre Richard. I don’t particularly remember it being good or anything, but there was this scene, just after saying the main protagonist’s daughter was a pupil in a school for ‘problem children’, and then they drive up the street to….our school (think I watched that with my sister who was in the same school), cue gasps and laughter. We had absolutely no idea, so it came as a shock (another one seen in a cinema so I DID go sometimes I guess).

Randomly and not linked with anything above, but a disturbing classic: Deliverance. Yeah, duelling banjos and all that.

I did write some ideas so moving back and forth, Dead Man’s Shoes. And beyond that a lot of the works from Shane Meadows, and/or films featuring the amazing Paddy Considine. But yeah, this one (and A Room for Romeo Brass) is probably the best. Paddy is incredible in it.

Quite a few films featuring Jack Nicholson are worth a watch, most notably One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest and Kubrick’s reinterpretation of The Shining.

Jimmy Stewart is another endearing actor, you might fancy Hitchock’s Rear Window featuring the beautiful Grace Kelly, and of course It’s a Wonderful Life is an all-time classic that will bring a warm glow to your heart in the end.

I watched quite a few westerns for a year or two, on a mate’s advice, and yes I remember in the old days I enjoyed the atmosphere it entailed, the exploration of new lands, riding on the big empty spaces. The genre is inequal, there are a few well known classics, but I’ll highlight Seven Men From Now. It’s not too long so doesn’t overstay its welcome, the plot is sound and enticing, and it features the marvellous Lee Marvin. Who you can also find playing two different roles in the excellent Cat Ballou for which he won an Oscar.

One last one for the road, because it is actually the last film I have watched so far, only this year: Intouchables. A French and relatively recent film (oh it’s from 2011? For some reason I had in my mind that it was a lot more recent). Advised to me on the strength of Ludovico Einaudi’s music (a modern yet classical pianist). And I loved the music, because that week, when I watched it I felt very connected to my emotions and the lovely piano pieces hit the spot beautifully and touched me. But I also watched a nice film with some endearing characters. I’ve been lucky that most time one person or another recommended a series or film to me that I was not aware of, it’s more often than not hit the spot. Or maybe I just know people of taste.

Well, I think I’ve covered a lot of ground there, quite an eclectic selection, and I enjoyed just revisiting some of these mentally even if briefly. I’ll add any significant one I forgot if ever they come to me.

I knew I’d forgotten some important films like…

The Deer Hunter. It’s a great film, it’s got De Niro (who I like a lot though I did not mention Taxi Driver to not overload, and other films he’s in that I liked but not loved) but really it’s all about the end in Saigon, with Christopher Walken and Russian Roulette.

Serpico. Must be something I really like about some Italian-American actors. Al Pacino this time (again, no mention of Scarface above, or others, etc…). Another essential film, this time about police corruption.

A Clockwork Orange. Completely different, think I watched this one with school, oddly. Ultraviolence? It’s another disturbing one though satyrical. I read the book later, which adds a chapter that changes the conclusion completely. But that’s the interesting thing about film adaptations: it’s better when they lead to a different take while keeping only some of the elements.

Japanese films. A late add-on there. Of course Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is an absolute classic (re-reading, how many times have I used that word in this page? And I just removed a couple…) I got exposed to in teenage years, but not sure I fully appreciated its value then. Most Japanese films I watched actually happened thanks to studying a bit of Japanese at engineering school. Our teacher, though pure breton, had lived there and was totally passionate about the culture and regularly showed us films. And while this is in a distant past, and I couldn’t remember much of the subtleties or reasons why, the impressions remained, and I loved a lot of these films for all their peculiarities. One I remember was Tampopo (again, don’t ask me about the plot, and for some reason I only truly remember a ‘noodle’ scene that was quite hilarious). And while I can’t now name a particular single film, I was quite fond of anything by Takeshi Kitano.