Future Classic Movies?

I spent a large proportion of the past Bank Holiday Monday listening to a BBC Radio2 poll ranking their Top 100 Favourite Albums. Basically what they did was take their Top 100 Most Played Albums (limited to one per artist) and asked listeners to rank them. The results were often surprising with a top five consisting of:

1. Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head
2. Keane – Hopes & Fears
3. Duran Duran – Rio
4. Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon (the only one a lot of people expected)
5. Dido – No Angel

Ahead of what a lot of people expected including in the top five:

The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Queen – A Night At The Opera
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
Led Zeppelin – Untitled fourth album

One of my thoughts were that different records live longer in the mind and memory, and possibly the heart than others. For example, I bought No Angel when it first came out (before the Eminem sample made it a hit), I listened to it a lot but haven’t listened to it in about five years. I first heard Rumours and Zeppelin’s fourth album when I was a kid and still listen to them all the time and see no reason why I won’t continue to for the foreseeable future. The conclusion, if they re-do this list in fifteen or twenty years time No Angel and A Rush Of Blood To The Head may not make the top 10 or even the top 100, but Rumours, The Dark Side Of The Moon, Sgt Pepper, Born to Run, Bridge Over Troubled Water and countless other classic albums will still be there.

This got me thinking about the current and recent movies that will be heralded as classics in the future and which will be forgotten. Skyfall will be watched a lot and may prove to be the best Bond ever but will be dismissed as just another Bond movie. The Dark Knight Rises will survive as part of, one of the best movie trilogies ever, but possibly the weakest link of the trilogy. The Artist may be considered a gimmick. Stoker, Cloud Atlas, We Need to Talk About Kevin and some great foreign language movies like Amour, Rust and Bone, The Skin I live In and In the House may be too obscure for the masses. Moonrise Kingdom is going to age well as is Argo so could be up there in popular opinion. I can’t make my mind up about Drive and Black Swan but hope I love them as much in years to come as I do now after two or three viewings and hope others feel the same about them. Margin Call and Zero Dark Thirty will possibly stand as testaments to the time but possibly not a time we will want to look back on too often or very fondly.

The conclusion, there hasn’t been a 12 Angry Men, The Godfather, Goodfellas or even Star Wars in recent years, the two closest are probably The Dark Knight and Inception. I’m not saying it is a bad time for film, in fact the opposite, while, the occasional all time classics seem a little few and far between the number of really good movies being made is greater than ever. I just long for a Citizen Kane, The Searchers or Casablanca, we are about due one. Or am I being cynical and some of the movies I have mentioned will find their way to the upper reaches of the IMDB top 250?

Update:

Want to read more on the subject? Check out THIS ARTICLE that picks up the baton from where I left off.

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1st Impressions and 2nd Viewings

There is something special about watching a movie for a second time. It doesn’t hold the mystery of the first viewing but it brings a certain nervous feeling as to how it will hold up to the scrutiny of a second look. I must have liked it the first time to be watching it again, but why did I like it, is it as good as I remember? It’s a little like a second date, you are worried about things going wrong. Like a second date, it is the time when you make some choices, do you have a future, or you are never going to see each other again. I am not usually one to change my mind. Ryan from The Matinee, is a great advocate of re-watching movies you don’t like first time around to give them a second chance. He is a hard person to disagree with, not only are his opinions spot on more often than not but he is embarrassingly articulate in expressing them, however I still tend to trust my first impression and judgment when it comes to movies. With all this in mind I have just re-watched two of my favourite films from the last few years, Black Swan and Drive.

Black Swan is pretty much as I remember it, the character Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) describes his take on Swan Lake as “visceral and real” that is how the movie feels while still existing in a dream like state. While it offers a huge debt to Italian giallo movies, it is its own beast electrified by amazing performances from Natalie Portman, (the underrated) Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel. When I first saw Drive last year I described it as “possibly the most stylish movie you will see all year“ and “Brutal but mesmerising” like with Black Swan my first impressions where spot on. The movie is slick and stylish and elevated by Ryan Gosling’s equally slick but economical staring role. Both movies have now found a place on my DVD shelf and will be enjoyed again in the not too distant future.

How will this years crop of movies cope with the scrutiny of a second viewing. Due to long runs in the cinema and how much I liked them, I have already seen Skyfall and The Dark Knight Rises twice and enjoyed them both the second time around. Of the other films I have enjoyed this year I expect Argo and Moonrise Kingdom to be as good as I remember them. I look forward to watching Haywire and Killer Joe again as most people I speak to didn’t enjoy them as much as me. The interesting one will be The Avengers, is it as good as I remember or is my impression formed from the fact that it exceeded my expectations rather than it was good on its own merits? Only time and a second viewing will tell.

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Driver

I have mentioned on many occasions the link between cinema and cars, but what is a car without a driver? Mel Gibson’s “man with no name” in How I Spent My Summer Vacation (aka Get the Gringo) is credited as Driver, but he is not the first or the best Driver; here are my top five characters called Driver (or The Driver):

FIVE: Driver (Dwayne Johnson) in Faster (2010): A throwback to both car and revenge movies from the 70’s. Dwayne Johnson is an archetypal antihero like Gator McKlusky in White Lightning. A man of few words, on a mission for revenge, the movie is far better than you would expect as its star, Johnson. Mostly likely to be seen driving: 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 

FOUR: The Driver, (Ryan O’Neal) in The Driver (1978): A minimalist classic about the best getaway driver in the business and the cop trying to catch him in the act. At its best in the chases and car related scenes notably the destruction of a Mercedes-Benz 280 S in a parking garage but not as cool or as slick as it thinks it is in the other scenes. It became the inspiration for many movies that followed as did Ryan O’Neal in the title role. Mostly likely to be seen driving: Anything with for wheels but notably: 1973 Chevrolet C-10 Pickup and 1977 Pontiac Firebird

THREE: The Driver (Clive Owen) in Ambush, Chosen, The Follow, Powder Keg, Star, Hostage, Beat the Devil, Ticker (2001-2002): Not actually a movie but well worth a place on the list. Along with Croupier (1998) this is where a lot of the Clive Owen for Bond talk came from. A series of web based BMW adverts with A list directors including: Tony Scott, John Woo, Guy Ritchie, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Kar Wai Wong, Ang Lee and John Frankenheimer. Aided by a supporting including Stellan Skarsgård, Gary Oldman, Danny Trejo and James Brown & Marilyn Manson (as themselves). With a great blend of action comedy and style they are that little bit more than just a series of car commercials. The idea is so good, so good that Luc Besson and Jason Statham took the idea and ran with it and thus, Frank Martin and the Transporter franchise began. Mostly likely to be seen driving: Various BMW’s from the early 2000’s

TWO: Driver (Ryan Gosling) in Drive (2011): When I first heard about Drive it was to be a Hugh Jackman action heist movie directed by Neil Marshall. While that could have been a great B movie, what we got from director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling was so much more. Reminiscent of Michael Mann’s underrated classic Thief (1981). Violent rather than action packed, but the real pleasure is the way it manages to be retro and completely up to date at the same time, it is the star making turn Gosling has been waiting for. Mostly likely to be seen driving: a stolen getaway car or 1973 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu

ONE: The Driver (James Taylor) in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971): A very different movie than the others on the list, where the others include violent action movies, Two-Lane Blacktop is an existential road movie, it is THE existential road movie. A time-capsule of the pre-Interstate Highway era and a metaphor for disaffected youth in a time when a nation and the world as a whole had lost its way and lost its innocence. This is life after Wyatt tells Billy “We blew it” in Easy Rider. The characters don’t have names in the true sense, they don’t need names! G.T.O (Warren Oates) drives a GTO, The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) looks after the car, The Girl (Laurie Bird) is the girl they pick up along the way, The Driver (James Taylor) is just that, the driver. Mostly likely to be seen driving: 1955 Chevrolet One-Fifty Two-Door Sedan

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The Tenth Best Picture Nomination

There has been much debate for the reasons and merits of having ten nominees in the best picture category. Having any number between five and ten makes a certain sense in the event there are no more than five suitable movies. The selection of nine when many worthy movies have been overlooked does however seem bizarre. Here are the nominated movies ranked in order of my preference (*denotes unranked as I haven’t seen the film):

The Artist
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
The Descendants
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
The Help
War Horse
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close*

Had there been ten nominations which would be the tenth selection? Here are my suggestions, many of which would be ranked above the nominated films:

Drive
The Guard
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The Skin I live in
Shame

Which would you chosen as the tenth nomination?

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Top Ten Films 2011 – Redux

When I first published my top ten movies of 2011 I chose to do it a little differently to previous years by selecting films by their original release date and not the UK release date. This in theory should bring my selections in line with other top ten lists, however it presents a problem, in the UK we don’t get a some of the best movies until January. With this in mind I present my Redux Top Ten. It only has one change but it is a significant one:

1. The Artist – Telling the story of the transition from silent cinema to “talkies” isn’t a completely original one, but it is one that hasn’t been successfully told in a long time. The ingenious thing about The Artist is the way the story is told as a mainly silent film. With charismatic leading actors and a story that is both funny and touching it is a film I couldn’t help loving.
2. Hugo – To be called a family film these days usually means a silly kids films with a few in-jokes for older viewers but Hugo really is a film for all ages and will remain so for generations to come. A film for lovers of film by a director who truly loves his medium, he even made 3D work.
3. Drive – This is a movie that really shouldn’t work, there isn’t much plot, its old fashioned, overly violent, the leading man doesn’t have much dialogue. For some reason it does all work and like all the best movies it will haunt your memories long after you have seen it. It missed out to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as my movie of the month back in September but on reflection it is a better movie.
4. The Guard – What could easily have been yet another fish out water tale is elevated by prospective. Instead of focusing on Don Cheadle’s FBI agent the film is centred around Brendan Gleeson’s wiser than he first appears Irish policeman. The real star however is the script and more importantly the dialogue.
5. Senna – The first documentary to make my top ten of the year list. A fantastic and moving story of Ayrton Senna, a man who was possibly the greatest racing driver of all time, the true greatness of the film is the number of none F1 fans who also enjoyed it.
6. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – The BBC adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is possibly the best spy thriller I have ever seen, I think the movie may just be better.
7. We Need to Talk About Kevin – Not the easiest movie to watch but well worth the effort. Confidently directed and superbly acted (Tilda Swinton deserves an Oscar) but the real strength lies in the screenplay. Adapted from a novel with a near un-filmable format, it’s a miracle any film was made let alone such a good one.
8. Midnight In Paris – The premise is silly and clichéd but the execution is so charming and amusing that it gets away with all its potential faults. Especially rewarding for fans of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the “Lost Generation” but entertaining and enjoyable for any film fan. Woody Allen’s best movie in a very long time.
9. The Skin I live in – Beautifully shot, perfectly cast and brilliantly acted but most importantly Pedro Almodóvar back to his weird, bizarre best. Antonio Banderas is also back to his best and Elena Anaya deserves more roles like this.
10. Moneyball – with a screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin you expect a compelling story and snappy dialogue, I am happy to report both are present and are helped by Brad Pitt’s second great performance of the year. Reminiscent in part to The Social Network (also written by Sorkin) and that has to be a good thing.

You can see my original list HERE.

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Oscar Nominations Top Five Omissions

I have one more film (The Descendants) to see before I make my Oscar predictions. Until then, never one to agree with the academy, her are my top five omissions from this years nominations.

Best Motion Picture of the Year – Drive

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role – Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Achievement in Directing – Lynne Ramsay for We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published – Lynne Ramsay & Rory Kinnear for We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Documentary, Features – Senna

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2011 Films

All the films I saw at the cinema in 2011 ranked in order of preference:

1. Hugo
2. Drive
3. The Guard
4. Black Swan
5. Senna
6. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
7. True Grit
8. We Need to Talk About Kevin
9. Midnight In Paris
10. The Skin I live in
11. The King’s Speech
12. Moneyball
13. Stake Land
14. Kill List
15. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
16. Another Earth
17. Melancholia
18. Warrior
19. 127 Hours
20. The Way
21. Julia’s Eyes
22. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
23. Troll Hunter
24. 50/50
25. Source Code
26. Submarine
27. Super 8
28. 13 Assassins
29. A Lonely Place To Die
30. The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec
31. The Adjustment Bureau
32. X-Men: First Class
33. Thor
34. Captain America: The First Avenger
35. Limitless
36. My Week With Marilyn
37. The Inbetweeners Movie
38. Take Shelter
39. The Rum Diary
40. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2
41. The Ides Of March
42. Real Steel
43. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
44. Fair Game
45. Never Let Me Go
46. Blue Valentine
47. Tree Of Life
48. The Lincoln Lawyer
49. The Help
50. In Time
51. The Awakening
52. Sucker Punch
53. Fast Five
54. Hanna
55. Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark
56. Wuthering Heights
57. Contagion
58. The Fighter
59. Paul
60. Animal Kingdom
61. NEDS
62. Rabbit Hole
63. One Day
64. John Carpenter’s The Ward
65. Drive Angry
66. The Beaver
67. Beginners
68. Bridesmaids
69. Red State
70. Cowboys and Aliens
71. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
72. The Conspirator
73. The Art of Getting By
74. I am Number Four
75. Fright Night
76. Henry’s Crime
77. Blitz
78. Priest
79. Red Riding Hood
80. Oranges and Sunshine
81. Faster
82. 1920 The Battle of Warsaw
83. Win Win
84. Colombiana
85. Water for Elephants
86. Immortals
87. Battle: Los Angeles
88. 30 Minutes or Less
89. Hereafter
90. Biutiful
91. The Mechanic
92. The Thing
93. The Three Musketeers
94. Anonymous
95. Tomorrow, When The War Began
96. The Debt
97. Green Lantern
98. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
99. Footlose
100. Justice
101. Attack the Block
102. Apollo 18
103. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
104. Unkown
105. Scream 4
106. The Silent House
107. The Eagle
108. The Resident
109. Season of the Witch
110. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
111. The Hangover: Part II
112. Sanctum

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Top Ten Films 2011

1. Hugo – To be called a family film these days usually means a silly kids films with a few in-jokes for older viewers but Hugo really is a film for all ages and will remain so for generations to come. A film for lovers of film by a director who truly loves his medium, he even made 3D work.
2. Drive – This is a movie that really shouldn’t work, there isn’t much plot, its old fashioned, overly violent, the leading man doesn’t have much dialogue. For some reason it does all work and like all the best movies it will haunt your memories long after you have seen it. It missed out to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as my movie of the month back in September but on reflection it is a better movie.
3. The Guard – What could easily have been yet another fish out water tale is elevated by prospective. Instead of focusing on Don Cheadle’s FBI agent the film is centred around Brendan Gleeson’s wiser than he first appears Irish policeman. The real star however is the script and more importantly the dialogue.
4. Senna – The first documentary to make my top ten of the year list. A fantastic and moving story of Ayrton Senna, a man who was possibly the greatest racing driver of all time, the true greatness of the film is the number of none F1 fans who also enjoyed it.
5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – The BBC adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is possibly the best spy thriller I have ever seen, I think the movie may just be better.
6. We Need to Talk About Kevin – Not the easiest movie to watch but well worth the effort. Confidently directed and superbly acted (Tilda Swinton deserves an Oscar) but the real strength lies in the screenplay. Adapted from a novel with a near un-filmable format, it’s a miracle any film was made let alone such a good one.
7. Midnight In Paris – The premise is silly and clichéd but the execution is so charming and amusing that it gets away with all its potential faults. Especially rewarding for fans of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the “Lost Generation” but entertaining and enjoyable for any film fan. Woody Allen’s best movie in a very long time.
8. The Skin I live in – Beautifully shot, perfectly cast and brilliantly acted but most importantly Pedro Almodóvar back to his weird, bizarre best. Antonio Banderas is also back to his best and Elena Anaya deserves more roles like this.
9. Moneyball – with a screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin you expect a compelling story and snappy dialogue, I am happy to report both are present and are helped by Brad Pitt’s second great performance of the year. Reminiscent in part to The Social Network (also written by Sorkin) and that has to be a good thing.
10. Stake Land – A grim and often violent road movie from the team who gave us the direct to DVD zombie/rat/mutant classic Mulberry Street. Benefiting from its gritty realism and the constraints of a low budget it is intelligent and thoughtful whilst still being entertaining, and the vampires don’t sparkle in sunlight they burn! The best vampire movie since Let The Right One In (that topped my list two years ago).

A note on my selection: in previous years my top ten has been made up of films released in the UK during the calendar year. This time I have excluded films that were on general release in America in 2010 making my list more comparable with other best of the year lists (Stake Land is a bit of a grey area as it is listed as a 2010 movie but doesn’t appear to have been screened anywhere outside film festivals until 2011). I would like to have seen The Artist before compiling my list but despite the published December 30th release date it doesn’t appear to be on anywhere. Check back tomorrow to see how True Grit, Black Swan and The King’s Speech compare to this years movie in my full list of movies seen this year.

Finally: the list are my favourite films of the year not necessarily the best ten films of the year, so please don’t tell me the list is wrong but feel free to share your favourite films of the year.

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2011 – The Year Of The Car Movie

I grew up in the 80’s watching classic 70’s car movies like Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and The Driver (1978) (not to be confused with Road Movies like Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Vanishing Point (1971)). These movie became deeply unfashionable for a time but thanks changing taste and directors like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino they are experiencing something of a renaissance. There have been four such movies so far this year:

Fast Five

Moving away from the fun and guilty pleasures of the early movies I declared the Fast & Furious franchise dead after the terrible Fast & Furious (2009) but then out of nowhere came Fast Five. Amazingly it is actually a surprisingly good film. Returning cast members are joined by some new faces including “The Rock” (now using his real name, Dwayne Johnson) playing a tough (aren’t they all in these movies) cop on the trail of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing original, innovative or clever about the movie, it is dumb even by the standards of the series but surprisingly good fun and possibly the best of the franchise. Car highlight: 1970 Dodge Charger. Classics to see if you like this: The Italian Job (1969) – Point Break (1991)

Faster

Dwayne Johnson again, this time on the wrong side of the law in a revenge pic. Simply known as Driver, Johnson‘s character is released from prison after ten years and immediately jumps behind the wheel of a classic Chevrolet Chevelle SS and speeds of on a killing spree of revenge. Again the movie lacks originality but is well made surprisingly well acted and very watchable. Car highlight: 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle SS. Classics to see if you like this: White Lightning (1973) – Walking Tall (1973)

Drive Angry

With its supernatural themes Drive Angry is very different to the other movies on the list. In Faster, “Driver” serves his time in prison before seeking revenge, in this movie, the improbably named John Milton (Nicolas Cage) doesn’t have time to wait, he breaks out of Hell to save his granddaughter and avenge the killing of his daughter. Given the name of the movie and the presence of some great muscle cars there is surprisingly little car action and the narrative is a mess but it gets away with it because it is such good fun, the presence of the gorgeous Amber Heard and the brilliant William Fichtner doesn’t hurt, the pointless 3D does! Car highlight: 1969 Dodge Charger. Classics to see if you like this: The Devil Rides Out (1968) – Race with the Devil (1975).

Drive

Another character known as Driver but a very different movie to Faster. The “Driver” (Ryan Gosling) of this movie is a Hollywood stunt man who moonlights getaway driver. I’m not sure how, or if I even want to classify this movie, if I did I would have to call it describe it as an art house movie pretending to be an action crime drama. Violent and brutal but perfectly cast and beautifully filmed (by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn) it is one of my favourite movies of the year. Car highlight: 1973 Chevrolet Chevelle. Classics to see if you like this: The Driver (1978) – Thief (1981).

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Movie of the Month: September 2011

The best month of movies that I can remember in a long time, this is what I have seen:

The Art of Getting By: A well made and well acted coming of age drama that is engaging but lightweight.

Fright Night: Fun but ultimately pointless remake of an 80’s comedy/horror that was fun but pointless.

Kill List: Bonkers, bizarre and seriously fucked up horror/thriller that is strangely good.

Apollo 18: Yet another crappy “found footage” horror.

Troll Hunter: Brilliant but as silly as it sounds, the antidote to crappy “found footage” horror movies.

Colombiana: A week plot and silly premise but surprisingly enjoyable revenge thriller.

A Lonely Place To Die: Sadly overlooked thriller that sees a group of climbers take on the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands and a pair of truly sinister kidnappers.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: The BBC adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is possibly the best spy thriller I have ever seen, I think the movie may just be better.

30 Minutes or Less: Some good moments but a silly idea and not enough laughs let this action adventure comedy down.

Drive: Possibly the most stylish movie you will see all year, if you are not yet aware of who Ryan Gosling is you soon will be. Brutal but mesmerising.

Warrior: MMA (mixed martial arts) is the fastest growing sport in the world, the first credible mainstream movie about the sport offers us nothing new that we didn’t see in Rocky 35 years ago, it is predicable and clichéd but so well made, compelling and engrossing that it really doesn’t matter.

I previous months Kill List, Troll Hunter and A Lonely Place To Die would have been good enough be awarded movie of the month, but all are surpassed by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Drive and Warrior, all of which have a good chance of making my top ten movies of the year. Its really tough to choose between them as they are all very different but one does just edge it, the movie of the month is:

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