Movies I Own

In a way, one can only appreciate this knowing that it is the last film the Marx Brothers ever made together. It gives a touch of poignancy to the sentimental weariness of the Brothers. Chico is touching, perhaps for the only time, waxing nostalgic. It isn't much of a good comedy, but Harpo's turn as the sad clown is beautifully bittersweet. Playing it all out on his harp for the last time in cinema, he tugs at the heartstrings.

A rollicking fun romp by Lester, definitely one of the most fun filmmakers. It's got everything: sight gags, swordplay, Charlton Heston in a devil-beard, dogs acting as chess pieces, a fat guy running around in a bear suit - and, to top it all off, a catfight between Raquel Welch and Faye Dunaway! What more could you ask for?

One of the most joyous, vibrant expressions in the history of cinema. It's a masterpiece, an explosion of giddy surrealism. Clair and Picabia astoundingly pack a vast array of imagination and motion into just 22 minutes. There's so much on display here. All film lovers should experience this.

I find it rather fascinating that the DVD release of this film comes within close range of two recent cultural/societal phenomena: Harry Potter and Virginia Tech. And over the course of 'If....' you'll probably be reminded of both. One could produce a lot of connections and insightful conclusions from all that. I have to know this film better in order to do that, but right now I'll say that 'If....' is important viewing for thoughtful people who are up for a challenging, unconventional film.

Be patient. This is a film that works its magic on you not so much while you watch it as it does in the days... weeks... months... afterward. Its potency grows as it lingers in your memory. 'Kwaidan' isn't a horror film in the standard sense, but a hauntingly beautiful work of art, with some of the most exquisitely composed images I've seen. The sequence in which spirits slowly manifest themselves when a boy sings to them is absolutely sublime.

I have never seen anything quite like it. One of the most absorbing stories of the supernatural in all of film. It draws you into a world too haunting and compelling to forget.

Fascinating and often brutal portrait of a man gradually destroying himself by failing to get a grip on his own emotions. What a face Richard Harris has! You can spend the whole movie exploring its contours. If you've only seen him in the Harry Potter movies, you must watch him in his prime. He was a beast. Here he oozes primal brute force, perhaps comparable to Brando in 'A Streetcar Named Desire,' except more desperate, more needy. His outbursts are shocking. Rachel Roberts shows a vulnerable side that you can't really see in other movies like 'Picnic at Hanging Rock.' The relationship between the two of them is so infused with emotion and heartache. And those rugby scenes are quite vivid and intense, with the dirt and grime and blood and, oh, that thundrous sound!

Great fun! Swordplay and swashbuckling are wonderful, but quite another dimension is added to those great things when they are done by animals. A big southern-accented bear and a giant Scottish chicken beating the crap out of a bunch of rhinos. A suave fox crossing swords with a gravel-voiced alligator. A bumbling vulture getting a big pie thrown in his face by a vixen. The aforementioned bear getting about seven pies in the face during a smashing chase scene. And, of course, a fat badger doing battle with a fat slob of a wolf. Terry-Thomas as the bad guy's snake sidekick. Roger Miller as the country-singing rooster narrator. And Phil Harris (what a wonderful voice) as Little John the bear. Who gets to dance with the chicken. Oo-de-lally!

Agatha Christie's classic mystery is reimagined stylishly under the deft hand of director René Clair. The result is a damn good suspense film laced with impeccable dark comedy. The cast is superb, and there are also some interesting camera angles and framing to be found here.

Not until the second half does this film really start to become cinematic. Though much of this film is awkward and stagey, it contains much that is beautiful. Holding it all together is Topol, a very talented actor. Just watch the close-ups of his face in this film. That face alone says as much about the turmoil going on as the rest of the film does. It's one of the most moving images I have ever seen in film.

This is a gem. One of the quintessential Swinging London films, it perfectly embodies the spirit of the time and place in a dizzy, experimental style that could easily have become dated by now but still dazzles. And it is not easily forgotten, because it carries a substantial pathos under its giddy exterior. The music is lovely.

This is Mel Brooks's best film.

This is a great film. And not just because of the Beatles - it's Lester's filmmaking that really shines. If you want proof, watch his next movie after this one, 'The Knack.' It has no big-name stars and still resonates equally well. I love this guy's style.

Don't be fooled by this movie's horrible reputation. If you watch the uncut version in the original Italian with subtitles, you'll see that this is actually a wonderful, very lovely film. But if you can't tolerate Benigni prancing around going nuts, you might want to stay away from this.

From what I've seen, this is the best movie of 2005. It takes patience, but if you can get into it you're in for some of the most mesmerizingly beautiful filmmaking you'll ever see.

The very concept of this movie, not to mention the incredible feat of pulling off such seamless interaction of two film worlds, is amazing. This is a landmark work of cinema.

Faust meets the swinging sixties courtesy of Cook and Moore in this solidly intelligent and funny film. Two words: leaping nuns. Yes, I mean that literally.

Yes, it is deeply flawed; it promises something with the effect of an authentic well-told ghost story, and it does not quite deliver. But the performance of Alice Krige completely delivers. Here she shows her full potential as a great screen beauty as well as an exceptionally talented actress. Her embodiment of the haunting seduces even as it chills. It's perhaps my favorite performance ever. The cinematography by the great Jack Cardiff is tops as well. The cold, dark landscapes and the warm interiors are all bathed in the eerie glow of the haunt. Now if only they could have avoided those cheap shock moments with the rotting corpses and gone for a more deeply haunting image instead, this might have been a great film. It's still effective, though, and the tour-de-force that is Krige's very presence raises it to a level of something special.

In this entry, Columbus's mediocrity and lack of vision are (for the most part) covered up by the astounding visual treatment - the intricacy and fluidity of production design, architecture, and superb cinematography. The first hour or so is energetic and a lot of fun, up to a wonderfully kinetic quidditch game. After that everything sort of descends into boredom, but the visuals make this worthwhile. Plus Branagh and Harris, the latter so poignant, are exceptional in the first two performances of the series to actually register.

Of the first four, this is by far the best. A director with real imagination, a splendid visual structure, a tight and well-crafted story, fast-paced and exciting. Very intelligently conceived and executed.

I wish I could have been there to see this movie upon its original release in 1965 and watch how everyone reacted. This movie broke so many rules in its day, and even today one can't get over how it really holds true to its spirit of having 'something to offend everyone!' as the tagline reads. Really, nothing is sacred here, and the movie revels in its mischief as it delightedly mocks everything from funeral businesses to sexual morals to mother-love and obesity (those last two together in an absolutely jaw-dropping way). All in all a fantastic dark comedy, wonderfully shot, energetically acted (Rod Steiger is a standout), and often laugh-out-loud funny. And, believe me, this movie can still shock - just wait for that coffin-orgy scene.

Jeremy Irons playing the oboe. How great is that? Plus ravishing scenery and a score that is just heart-melting.

Leone is a master of cinema, and this is a great, epic last work. If it wants for anything, I wish it were even longer - and it runs for almost four hours as it is. Beautiful. A magnificent achievement.

A satire on religion - Christianity in particular - made by very secular Israelis. It has some bite, but overall the film is pretty much just as lazy as its two main characters - God and Jesus, who have spent the last 2,000 years lounging on the couch watching TV commercials for slippers. This is probably the most blasphemous movie I've ever seen - and I don't intend that statement as a criticism - but of course, since this is just a little Israeli movie, no one else has heard of it. Basically: God is a horny old man and feels up Joan of Arc; and Jesus, upon returning to Earth for the new resurrection, gets a blow job from a woman dressed as a nun - because, I suppose, a modern-day Judas needs to use more than just a kiss. A lot of deliberately controversial images for a film with such an ordinary moral: that people have to work to bring redemption for themselves (because the higher beings have issues of their own to work out). For all its potentially charged humor, this is a surprisingly, disappointingly mild film. Assi Dayan's 70s romantic comedy Beautiful Troubles packs much more zest, and he's done much more affecting acting work, such as in Amos Gitai's Devarim - which isn't all that great overall either, but what a shattering performance! Too bad he couldn't channel more of that energy to here.

But it is really quite funny to see Jesus portrayed as a modern-day Israeli.

I kind of wish this had been silent except for the music by the magnificent Georges Auric. The imagery is great, and Walbrook has the perfect look, but every time he speaks, things just get really cheesy. Aside from that, though, this is quite good.

Blake Edwards was actually quite skilled when it came to visual comedy. His staging might not be of the calibre of a master like Tati, but his scenes are composed impeccably. I love his long takes that utilize depth of field beautifully, making for cool, assured gag threads that, for physical comedy, are downright sophisticated. The contrasting auras of Niven and Sellers make for a film that is both elegant and funny.

Richard Lester at the helm, kooky Christie and tightly-wound Scott, swinging London style (but set in San Francisco) - it has all the ingredients for a perfect swinging sixties screwball comedy. Instead, it's a great swinging sixties screwball tragedy. It's bleak, and so sad, and it's all shown with a glossy, stylish surface, which makes the underlying sadness all the more potent. Nicolas Roeg's cinematography magnifies the gloss to the point where the quick flashback/flash-forward editing, by Antony Gibbs, scrutinizingly dissects it so that we can see through it and feel the emptiness inside. (The two of them later teamed up again for Roeg's 'Walkabout.') Julie Christie is simply luminous, yet poignant with subtle pain. It's amazing to see how Lester deepens over the course of the sixties, that he directed two of the most gleeful films of the decade ('A Hard Day's Night' and 'The Knack') and also one of the saddest (this one) - all three of which are among the decade's best. A wonderful marker of the downturn of the 1960s - it's an excellent companion piece and foil to 'The Graduate.'

A spirited and delightful comedy of manners, this film caused a sensation in its day but, from the looks of some other contemporary comments, is looked down upon and seen as dated by a lot of viewers these days. That's quite a shame, since its energy and humor are a joy to experience. The movie is viscerally entertaining and kinetic in a way I've rarely seen in any earlier film; the fox hunt sequence is particularly astounding. Visually and story-wise, this is rather like 'Barry Lyndon,' only more fun. 'Tom Jones' is - and I love saying this about films from the sixties and before - a total blast.

Do we really lead our own lives, or are we just characters in a movie? And who's in control? Here we have a man whose life becomes intertwined with the film within the film. It's a rough, crazy, darkly comedic thriller that is overall rather brilliant. Peter O'Toole is stunning as the larger-than-life director who enjoys playing god with his cast, crew, and especially the title character.

The liar and the truth-teller. Dreams and reality. Logic versus understanding. The storyteller, the showman, the exhibit, the performer, the scribe. Science, experience, perception, religion, belief. What is real, what is imagined, what is fabricated, what is dreamt. The relationships, the overlaps, the tensions, between all of these - that is this film, this achievement of Herzog and Bruno S., that gives us this amazing story and makes us ponder its existence as truth or storytelling or showmanship. Why does this man fascinate us so? His background is a mystery, and people have been so often compelled to invent stories to 'explain' it. This need to believe something when no one really knows. 'The enigma.' 'Every man for himself and God against all.' From all that we see, how do we choose to see it - what do we choose to believe? This film, for me, defies explanation.

A haunting and harrowingly beautiful meditation on the almost literal hell on earth created by war - land ravaged and burnt, raging infernos of flaming oil billowing from the ground. The end is sobering: 'Has life without fire become unbearable for them? ... Now they are content. Now there is something to extinguish again.' Is that what life is? This is another amazingly poetic and transcendent work by Herzog.

I have no idea why I didn't grasp the fact that John Renbourn, one of my favorite musicians, was on the soundtrack of this movie the first time I saw it. As for the film, it's trippy, bizarre, surreal, beautiful, confounding... in short, pure Herzog.

Topol is one of my favorite actors, and this American Film Theater production of Bertolt Brecht's play is a tour-de-force for him. He's always wonderfully off-center, and he delivers one of the greatest comeback lines I've ever heard: 'What makes you think that I EVER eat my cheese absentmindedly?'

One of the most breathtaking visual films in recent memory, its design beautifully and astoundingly spans at once the expanse of the cosmos and the intimacy of the smallest life-forms. The movie can be seen as either extremely profound or ridiculous, depending on how you read into it (for me it's a little of both), but regardless, this is a wondrous cinematic experience.

A very fine film co-directed by one of Israel's most compellingly offbeat writers, Etgar Keret (whom I met once, actually). Despite a few clichés here and there, this is overall a quite enthralling work. And it's great to see veteran Israeli actors Assi Dayan and (especially welcome) Zaharira Harifai.

Simply dazzling. What a thrill!

This most definitely needs a second viewing. It's the hardest to follow of Lester's films that I've seen (though it's not quite 'avant-garde' as it's described on the video box), but its potency as anti-war satire definitely comes across. In that regard, the film is devastating, even though it's a comedy. This is among the films that have struck me hardest with the tragic futility of war, the others being Paths of Glory and Lessons of Darkness. A very absurd film, which is key to why it works.

What a sweepingly beautiful film! The art direction and cinematography are marvelous - such vivid colors and amazing effects, particularly that astounding staircase. So wonderful, and so, so classic.

Plot-wise, I couldn't manage to keep track of how the characters were connected to each other, who was in love with whom, etc. But this is just so beautiful to watch. It's just a stunning ... meditation ... on space ... time ... memory ... love ... colors ... shifting ... visual ... layers ... See, I really shouldn't even try to articulate it, since whatever I'd say would turn out to be just a bunch of nonsense. So words, or at least my words, can't even come close to doing this experience justice.