Favourite Movies

[TheForbiddenDonut]

As I mentioned earlier, Ford's probably my favorite director -- the only major competitor would be Welles, but it's so difficult to compare Welles to Ford, if only because Ford enjoyed the luxury of being a respected director in Hollywood who was given considerable freedom and room to grow as an artist over 50 years, while every post-RKO film for Welles was a struggle just to get made.

i love Welles too. have you seen his European works? i'm absolutely in love with F for Fake and Chimes at Midnight.

I think Ford's work from 1939-1953 is just about the greatest sustained run any director's ever had, that I'm aware of (made even more impressive by the fact that he missed a good chunk of it due to the war). There are a couple of clunkers in there, but it's largely an uninterrupted string of masterpieces and near-masterpeices. Among my favorites from him are The Searchers (well, duh), Stagecoach, Fort Apache, How Green Was My Valley, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Judge Priest. But there are so many wonderful films even when you move past the canonical titles -- the aforementioned The Sun Shines Bright, Wagon Master, Seven Women, Pilgrimage, Mogambo, The Prisoner of Shark Island, etc. Even his failures I find fascinating. No director, other than perhaps Jean-Luc Godard, benefits more from increased exposure to his entire body of work. The more you see of Ford the more impressive his accomplishments become. One of the great American artists of any medium, I think.

i still have so much Ford to see (i've seen only seventeen of his films so far), but i'll echo your love for Fort Apache (one of Ford's most complex films, i'd say), How Green Was My Valley, and Wagon Master. also, The Searchers was the first Ford i ever saw due to its canonization, and i thought it was okay, but now i'm thinking that of all his films, that one would most benefit from context--not just that of Ford's filmography, but also the history of the classical Western and familiarity with Wayne's persona--and i can't wait to see it again.

I hesitate to create a list of my all-time favorite movies because it's so constantly changing (or growing, I should say). The two constants, the films I cherish more than any others, are Miller's Crossing by the Coen Brothers and Citizen Kane. Beyond that, some others that I really deeply love that come to mind right now are Only Yesterday (Isao Takahata), Late Spring, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Werckmeister Harmonies, Dust in the Wind, Mulholland Dr, Rio Bravo, Winter Light, Rainy Dog (Takashi Miike is an obsession of mine -- he's well known, of course, but I think he's one of the great directors of the last 20 years), The Wind Will Carry Us (though Certified Copy is certainly challenging this as my favorite Kiarostami), Rear Window, Sherlock Jr, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein), the Strawberry Blonde, The Best Years of Our Lives, and It's a Wonderful Life (I really love Capra and Wyler -- both have become victims of the post-auteurism critical landscape, but I think the critics were right the first time; they're brilliant filmmakers who are unfairly ignored these days). But there are really around a hundred or so films that are all about equally-equipped to vie for a spot on a top 10 or whatever favorite list, which is why I usually decline to submit such a list in discussions like this. Favorite directors is a little more manageable, though still pretty difficult.

great list. i haven't seen Strawberry Blonde (but it's high on my list), Only Yesterday, Rainy Dog, Fall of the House of Usher (have you seen Epstein's Couer fidčle? one of my all time favorites), i'm not yet exposed to Bela Tarr (wanna see Sátántangó really bad) and as for Hou, i've only seen four of his later films (Goodbye South Goodbye, Millennium Mambo, Three Times, and Flight of the Red Balloon). also i don't like the Coen bros too much but i really want to see Miller's Crossing.

as for Capra and Wyler, i agree to an extent. i'm going to start getting into Capra's earlier films (i've seen The Bitter Tea of General Yen and i watched Ladies of Leisure recently because i'm doing a year-long project of watching Barbara Stanwyck movies cuz she's my favorite classical Hollywood actress), but i do think that his most obviously sentimental stuff probably does deserve some criticism (Mr. Smith is kind of unbearable in its way). i do adore It's a Wonderful Life though. as for Wyler, i think he's an interesting guy. i love Dodsworth and Best Years, like The Westerner and The Letter, but most everything else has seemed pretty average to me, and Mrs. Miniver and Jezebel in particular i thought were pretty bad.

[Shaunbadia]

The Warriors
Little Nicky
Cloverfield
Scary Movie 2
Monsters Inc.
The Dark Knight
Thor
Bowling for Columbine
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Shaun of the Dead
Paul
Taken
Gran Torino
Beavis and Butt-Head do America
Undercover Brother

[Ragged_Clown]

Apologies in advance for the length of this post. I tend to ramble when discussing movies I'm enthusiastic about.

i love Welles too. have you seen his European works? i'm absolutely in love with F for Fake and Chimes at Midnight.

Yeah, I've seen pretty much everything from Welles. In general, I prefer the Hollywood work -- there was perhaps more creative freedom in Europe, but he had much fewer resources at his disposal and some of the shoots (such as Othello) were very chaotic. They're pretty much all wonderful to some degree, but the European works feel a little more scattershot to me, not quite as cohesive. But Chimes at Midnight is indisputably one of his best films, and probably the best Shakespeare adaptation I've ever seen.

i still have so much Ford to see (i've seen only seventeen of his films so far), but i'll echo your love for Fort Apache (one of Ford's most complex films, i'd say), How Green Was My Valley, and Wagon Master. also, The Searchers was the first Ford i ever saw due to its canonization, and i thought it was okay, but now i'm thinking that of all his films, that one would most benefit from context--not just that of Ford's filmography, but also the history of the classical Western and familiarity with Wayne's persona--and i can't wait to see it again.

The Searchers left me rather indifferent on first viewing as well, and somewhat baffled at its enormous reputation. It was my second Ford, following The Grapes of Wrath. I've now got 40+ Fords under my belt, and The Searchers' high placement in both Ford's work and American cinema in general seems entirely justified to me. It's definitely one of those pictures that benefits from a stronger familiarity with Ford's work and themes (and the iconography of the genre, as you say). It's one of Ford's most complex and personal pictures. Comparisons to Shakespeare pop up constantly in the literature on Ford, and this is one of his most Shakespearean works. I don't know if it's his best film or not, but it's certainly on the shortlist.

i haven't seen Strawberry Blonde (but it's high on my list)

The Strawberry Blonde is a huge personal favorite of mine. I love Raoul Walsh, he's one of the great directors of Classic Hollywood, and while I can certainly see the argument for White Heat or The Roaring 20s or something like that as his greatest film, this is my favorite. It's a pretty popular film and a number of people have championed it as a major work (Rosenbaum included it in his his AFI Alternative list, for example), but it's not the kind of picture that beats you over the head with its greatness, or some sense of importance of something. It's a low key slice of Hollywood Americana, and a sort of wistful look back at the turn of the century. A lot of those types of pictures were being made around that time -- Meet Me in St. Louis, Heaven Can Wait, even The Magnificent Ambersons to a certain extent -- but The Srawberry Blonde has a much lighter touch than those films, and the sense of nostalgia, while definitely present, is sort of pushed to the background and not dwelled upon. Cagney gives one of his most likeable and charming performances, and Rita Hayworth is a delight in one of her breakthrough roles, but Olivia de Havilland walks away with the film. She's probably my favorite actress of all-time, and this is one of her best early roles. Most of her early career at Warner was wasted on demure love interest parts in which she had very little to do other than look pretty (she eventually sued the studio over the roles she was being given), but she did have a good number of memorable performances from that era. After she won the lawsuit against Warner she started playing heavy, unglamorous dramatic roles, but she had a really deft, light comic touch that was utilized in several of her early pictures (such as in the intensely underrated screwball "It's Love I'm After). It's in this mode that she plays her feisty character in The Strawberry Blonde. So much of the pleasure that I derive from this movie is thanks to her and the chemistry between her and Cagney, and the way each of them sees through the false image that the other projects of themself. De Havilland presents herself as a staunch feminist against the institution of marriage and Cagney plays the part of a tough guy (despite the fact that he loses every scrap he gets in), but ultimately they're both just sweethearts, and the love that blooms between them as the film progresses is incredibly romantic without being cloying. It's a lovely film.

Only Yesterday, Rainy Dog,

Only Yesterday (along with It's a Wonderful Life) is probably the closest any of these other pictures are at cementing its place among my very favorite films alongside Kane and Miller's Crossing. It's a wonderful movie, less exciting and magical as most of the other Ghiblis but more moving and artistically satisfying. As for Rainy Dog, I don't know how familiar you are with Miike's work, but this is a long ways off from the kind of movie he's associated with. There's none of the absurdist, subversive humor, no extreme violence and bizarre sexual imagery, and the genre conventions are adhered to very seriously and respectfully. So it may not be terribly characteristic of his work (or at least his most famous work), but it's one of his best films, a lean and mean genre film about low level gangsters eking out meager livings in a rain-soaked Taipei. It's an early picture of his, made for a pocket change budget, but that suits the content of the film. It's not about powerful men, so the operatics of The Godfather or something like that would've been out of place. This is a movie about very unimportant criminals who die out on the streets in the rain and are forgotten, and Miike shoots it all without ornament, histrionics, or excessive visual flourishes. A small, stoic, and somewhat sad movie. Nuts and bolts filmmaking sprinkled with melancholy and a quiet, muffled lyricism.

Fall of the House of Usher (have you seen Epstein's Couer fidčle? one of my all time favorites)

I picked up the UK Blu Ray of Couer fidčle but haven't gotten around to it yet. But Epstein is a really exciting talent, a kind of mad scientist whose pictures are slowly trickling out (there's a box set of his work coming out in Europe later this year that I can't wait to get my hands on). The Three-Sided Mirror is probably a little more adventurous (it's experiments in non-linear storytelling still seem ahead of their time), but Usher is the most impressive of the work of his I've seen (unfortunately a rather small amount so far). It takes some major liberties with the Poe story (which apparently upset Luis Bunuel, who was AD on the film but ended up quitting), but it gets the gloomy heart of Poe perfectly, and there's a feeling of autumnal melancholy that is just overpowering. It was apparently a rather major film at the time (reportedly the primary influence on Dreyer's Vampyr) but was forgotten. One of the great things about DVDs is how they can rescue films and filmmakers from obscurity, as in the case of Epstein, or Mauritz Stiller, Dimitri Kirsanoff, Jacque Feyder, etc. It's a really exciting thing, though those days seem to be fading fast as the DVD industry continues to die out.

i'm not yet exposed to Bela Tarr (wanna see Sátántangó really bad)

Sátántangó is his most famous film, but I'm not convinced it's his best. It's the picture that made him an international art film superstar, but much of that can be contributed to its staggering length. Don't get me wrong -- it's an astonishing film -- but I think Werckmeister Harmonies is at least as great, and a much better intro to Tarr's work due to it being about 5 hours shorter. I watched Werckmeister first, and I was glad I had that primer before diving into the deep end with Sátántangó. Tarr's style is so exhausting on its own that I imagine it would've been pretty daunting to acclimate myself to it right out of the gate with the most extreme example of it in Sátántangó.

and as for Hou, i've only seen four of his later films (Goodbye South Goodbye, Millennium Mambo, Three Times, and Flight of the Red Balloon).

I love pretty much all of Hou's work, but his 80s films feel a bit more emotional and human to me. They're not as high concept or as ambitious as most of the 90s and 00s films, but they're more intimate and emotionally engaging (Cafe Lumiere was a kind of return to that style, as was Goodbye South, Goodbye to a degree). The style is just as bracingly minimalist but I find the work of that period more moving overall. Dust in the Wind is probably my favorite overall (although most of the movies I cited were really honorary designations -- I have favorite filmmakers moreso than favorite films). It's his most Ozuesque film, right down to the train imagery. Sublime film.

also i don't like the Coen bros too much but i really want to see Miller's Crossing.

Miller's Crossing is every bit a Coen Brothers film, so if you're allergic to their work you may not respond well to it (I'm a huge fan of their's). But definitely give it a shot -- I know there are a number of Coen skeptics who rightly consider it a masterpiece (David Thompson leaps to mind). It's probably most similar to The Man Who Wasn't There, but it's a little less arty and lacks the overt existentialism that animates that film. Mostly, it's a celebration of American crime movies and literature of the 30s and 40s (Dashiell Hammett is the key reference point) and prohibition era gangster mythology in general -- a kind of funeral dirge eulogizing this part of American culture. It's gorgeously shot, even more impressively written, and the film manages to work on an immediate, conventional level without ever losing sight of its more academic ideas and conception. The way the Coens are able to create characters who are clear genre archetpyes, but then move beyond that mechanical exterior and humanize them at the same time, is an impossible juggling act that they pull off effortlessly. If you're not generally a fan of the Coens I can't guarantee you'll like this, but you'll never get me to acknowledge it's anything less than a towering masterwork.

as for Capra and Wyler, i agree to an extent. i'm going to start getting into Capra's earlier films (i've seen The Bitter Tea of General Yen and i watched Ladies of Leisure recently because i'm doing a year-long project of watching Barbara Stanwyck movies cuz she's my favorite classical Hollywood actress), but i do think that his most obviously sentimental stuff probably does deserve some criticism (Mr. Smith is kind of unbearable in its way). i do adore It's a Wonderful Life though.

Capra's career unfortunately fizzled out not long after the war, for various reasons, but in his prime I think he was a really great director. The populist fables that he became famous for are perhaps dated (I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Deeds or You Can't Take it With You), but I do love Mr. Smith. What do you find unbearable about it? The miraculous and somewhat abrupt happy ending is a little hard to swallow, but Capra made sure to develop Claude Rains' character throughout the picture to at least make that change of heart somewhat believable. Stewart's grandstanding at the end is probably too preachy and didactic, but it's dramatically powerful all the same, and while the movie opens itself up to criticisms of pie in the sky optimism and hokeyness, it's also a very cynical look at American politics (especially for that time), and I think one of the reasons why the ending is so hard to take is because Capra is so good at depicting the flaws in the system. This is an aspect of his work that too often gets ignored -- a lot of the happy endings in his films end up being a bit unconvincing, but that's because, for the majority of their runtimes, they are extremely bleak and cynical. Anyway, It's a Wonderful Life is his best, most perfect movie, but he was a force in the 30s -- The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night (perhaps my favorite screwball), American Madness, Broadway Bill, Lost Horizon, etc. He single-handedly made Columbia a major studio, winning three Oscars and forcing people to take the studio seriously. That would be like somebody working at Republic and bringing them up to the level of the majors strictly because the quality of their work was impossible to ignore. I really love Capra's work, and I just find it disappointing that he's a bit of a punchline now, usually by people that haven't actually watched any of his films.

as for Wyler, i think he's an interesting guy. i love Dodsworth and Best Years, like The Westerner and The Letter, but most everything else has seemed pretty average to me, and Mrs. Miniver and Jezebel in particular i thought were pretty bad.

How much of his other work have you seen, out of curiosity? Wyler was probably more of a craftsman than an artist, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think the major reason why he's become sort of forgotten now is because he helmed so many prestige films, Oscar bait type movies, and some of his work is a little bloated and self-important (Ben Hur, his most famous film, is also one of his worst). But for the most part he oscillated between impeccably made entertainments (Wuthering Heights, The Westerner, The Good Fairy) and darker, more challenging fare (Dead End, Detective Story, Carrie). If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend The Heiress, which is probably his best film after Best Years and one of the darkest, most powerful Hollywood films of the era. And it's an incredible showcase for Ralph Richardson and Oliva de Havilland.

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

The Warriors
Little Nicky
Cloverfield
Scary Movie 2
Monsters Inc.
The Dark Knight
Thor
Bowling for Columbine
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Shaun of the Dead
Paul
Taken
Gran Torino
Beavis and Butt-Head do America
Undercover Brother

That's an...interesting list.

[TheForbiddenDonut]

Yeah, I've seen pretty much everything from Welles. In general, I prefer the Hollywood work -- there was perhaps more creative freedom in Europe, but he had much fewer resources at his disposal and some of the shoots (such as Othello) were very chaotic. They're pretty much all wonderful to some degree, but the European works feel a little more scattershot to me, not quite as cohesive. But Chimes at Midnight is indisputably one of his best films, and probably the best Shakespeare adaptation I've ever seen.

yeah i think at some level the scattershot-ness represents a new direction for him that he mastered extremely well (more montage-based than spatially based), but i do think there's a perfection that Kane and Ambersons achieve that something like Othello doesn't. Chimes at Midnight is the exception, and F for Fake is a completely different animal than anything else. i still need to see The Stranger, Mr. Arkadin, and The Immortal Story before i've finished his major works.

The Searchers left me rather indifferent on first viewing as well, and somewhat baffled at its enormous reputation. It was my second Ford, following The Grapes of Wrath. I've now got 40+ Fords under my belt, and The Searchers' high placement in both Ford's work and American cinema in general seems entirely justified to me. It's definitely one of those pictures that benefits from a stronger familiarity with Ford's work and themes (and the iconography of the genre, as you say). It's one of Ford's most complex and personal pictures. Comparisons to Shakespeare pop up constantly in the literature on Ford, and this is one of his most Shakespearean works. I don't know if it's his best film or not, but it's certainly on the shortlist.

yeah i can't wait to re-watch it. how much of Ford's silent work have you seen?

The Strawberry Blonde is a huge personal favorite of mine. I love Raoul Walsh, he's one of the great directors of Classic Hollywood, and while I can certainly see the argument for White Heat or The Roaring 20s or something like that as his greatest film, this is my favorite. It's a pretty popular film and a number of people have championed it as a major work (Rosenbaum included it in his his AFI Alternative list, for example), but it's not the kind of picture that beats you over the head with its greatness, or some sense of importance of something. It's a low key slice of Hollywood Americana, and a sort of wistful look back at the turn of the century. A lot of those types of pictures were being made around that time -- Meet Me in St. Louis, Heaven Can Wait, even The Magnificent Ambersons to a certain extent -- but The Srawberry Blonde has a much lighter touch than those films, and the sense of nostalgia, while definitely present, is sort of pushed to the background and not dwelled upon. Cagney gives one of his most likeable and charming performances, and Rita Hayworth is a delight in one of her breakthrough roles, but Olivia de Havilland walks away with the film. She's probably my favorite actress of all-time, and this is one of her best early roles. Most of her early career at Warner was wasted on demure love interest parts in which she had very little to do other than look pretty (she eventually sued the studio over the roles she was being given), but she did have a good number of memorable performances from that era. After she won the lawsuit against Warner she started playing heavy, unglamorous dramatic roles, but she had a really deft, light comic touch that was utilized in several of her early pictures (such as in the intensely underrated screwball "It's Love I'm After). It's in this mode that she plays her feisty character in The Strawberry Blonde. So much of the pleasure that I derive from this movie is thanks to her and the chemistry between her and Cagney, and the way each of them sees through the false image that the other projects of themself. De Havilland presents herself as a staunch feminist against the institution of marriage and Cagney plays the part of a tough guy (despite the fact that he loses every scrap he gets in), but ultimately they're both just sweethearts, and the love that blooms between them as the film progresses is incredibly romantic without being cloying. It's a lovely film.

Walsh is a subject for further research for me. i've seen The Roaring Twenties (loved), White Heat (liked), They Drive By Night (loved), and Battle Cry (liked). Strawberry Blonde seems to be the favorite of most people i know. also have you read Dave Kehr's on Walsh? he's probably Walsh's most vocally supportive critic and his affinity for him is infectious:

As one of the great masters (and chief architects) of the invisible style, Walsh is of course more difficult to appreciate than more aggressive stylists like Welles or Kubrick, or even Borzage and Fuller. But once you attune yourself to the incredible fluency of his filmic language — his mastery of tempo, character placement, narrative proportion, his co-ordination of camera movement, movement within the frame, and cutting on action — his work becomes addictive. Just watching him manipulate the medium makes even the minor Paramount films of the mid to late thirties deeply fascinating to me. If there ever was a natural-born filmmaker, it was Raoul Walsh.

Only Yesterday (along with It's a Wonderful Life) is probably the closest any of these other pictures are at cementing its place among my very favorite films alongside Kane and Miller's Crossing. It's a wonderful movie, less exciting and magical as most of the other Ghiblis but more moving and artistically satisfying. As for Rainy Dog, I don't know how familiar you are with Miike's work, but this is a long ways off from the kind of movie he's associated with. There's none of the absurdist, subversive humor, no extreme violence and bizarre sexual imagery, and the genre conventions are adhered to very seriously and respectfully. So it may not be terribly characteristic of his work (or at least his most famous work), but it's one of his best films, a lean and mean genre film about low level gangsters eking out meager livings in a rain-soaked Taipei. It's an early picture of his, made for a pocket change budget, but that suits the content of the film. It's not about powerful men, so the operatics of The Godfather or something like that would've been out of place. This is a movie about very unimportant criminals who die out on the streets in the rain and are forgotten, and Miike shoots it all without ornament, histrionics, or excessive visual flourishes. A small, stoic, and somewhat sad movie. Nuts and bolts filmmaking sprinkled with melancholy and a quiet, muffled lyricism.

i'm really behind on Japanese cinema beyond Kurosawa, Ozu, and some Mizoguchi (i've seen one or two films apiece from most of the other major older directors like Naruse and Oshima). i've seen some Ghibli (a lot of Miyazakis and Grave of the Fireflies), but little else. Miike's name pops up a lot, and i'm probably gonna get around to him sooner or later. definitely jotting all these films down for further research.

I picked up the UK Blu Ray of Couer fidčle but haven't gotten around to it yet. But Epstein is a really exciting talent, a kind of mad scientist whose pictures are slowly trickling out (there's a box set of his work coming out in Europe later this year that I can't wait to get my hands on). The Three-Sided Mirror is probably a little more adventurous (it's experiments in non-linear storytelling still seem ahead of their time), but Usher is the most impressive of the work of his I've seen (unfortunately a rather small amount so far). It takes some major liberties with the Poe story (which apparently upset Luis Bunuel, who was AD on the film but ended up quitting), but it gets the gloomy heart of Poe perfectly, and there's a feeling of autumnal melancholy that is just overpowering. It was apparently a rather major film at the time (reportedly the primary influence on Dreyer's Vampyr) but was forgotten. One of the great things about DVDs is how they can rescue films and filmmakers from obscurity, as in the case of Epstein, or Mauritz Stiller, Dimitri Kirsanoff, Jacque Feyder, etc. It's a really exciting thing, though those days seem to be fading fast as the DVD industry continues to die out.

Coeur fidčle is one of the most beloved films at a film forum i frequent (and also extremely ahead of its time), but beyond it i have seen no Epstein films. there definitely seems to be a lot of new scholarship on him recently as one of the big experimental French filmmakers (among whom L'Herbier and Vigo are probably included). i'm very behind on silent cinema is the only thing, and i've only seen one or two films apiece from the major silent filmmakers.

Sátántangó is his most famous film, but I'm not convinced it's his best. It's the picture that made him an international art film superstar, but much of that can be contributed to its staggering length. Don't get me wrong -- it's an astonishing film -- but I think Werckmeister Harmonies is at least as great, and a much better intro to Tarr's work due to it being about 5 hours shorter. I watched Werckmeister first, and I was glad I had that primer before diving into the deep end with Sátántangó. Tarr's style is so exhausting on its own that I imagine it would've been pretty daunting to acclimate myself to it right out of the gate with the most extreme example of it in Sátántangó.

yeah, part of me thinks Werckmeister would be a better introduction, but Sátántangó has more weight to it as this sacred art film milestone that i'm just more curious for it. i'm not sure which one i'll get around to first. have you seen The Turin Horse yet by chance?

I love pretty much all of Hou's work, but his 80s films feel a bit more emotional and human to me. They're not as high concept or as ambitious as most of the 90s and 00s films, but they're more intimate and emotionally engaging (Cafe Lumiere was a kind of return to that style, as was Goodbye South, Goodbye to a degree). The style is just as bracingly minimalist but I find the work of that period more moving overall. Dust in the Wind is probably my favorite overall (although most of the movies I cited were really honorary designations -- I have favorite filmmakers moreso than favorite films). It's his most Ozuesque film, right down to the train imagery. Sublime film.

yeah it's just a shame that his earlier films aren't on DVD. i have two of his 80s films downloaded (A Time to Live, A Time to Die and City of Sadness), and will probably get around to them this summer. Cafe Lumiere looks like the 21st century Hou that i'll like the most.

Miller's Crossing is every bit a Coen Brothers film, so if you're allergic to their work you may not respond well to it (I'm a huge fan of their's). But definitely give it a shot -- I know there are a number of Coen skeptics who rightly consider it a masterpiece (David Thompson leaps to mind). It's probably most similar to The Man Who Wasn't There, but it's a little less arty and lacks the overt existentialism that animates that film. Mostly, it's a celebration of American crime movies and literature of the 30s and 40s (Dashiell Hammett is the key reference point) and prohibition era gangster mythology in general -- a kind of funeral dirge eulogizing this part of American culture. It's gorgeously shot, even more impressively written, and the film manages to work on an immediate, conventional level without ever losing sight of its more academic ideas and conception. The way the Coens are able to create characters who are clear genre archetpyes, but then move beyond that mechanical exterior and humanize them at the same time, is an impossible juggling act that they pull off effortlessly. If you're not generally a fan of the Coens I can't guarantee you'll like this, but you'll never get me to acknowledge it's anything less than a towering masterwork.

it looks like it would be among their best. of their work, i absolutely despise Blood Simple and think No Country for Old Men is the closest they've come to greatness. A Serious Man also looks great, but i haven't seen it yet. everything else i've seen i think has been pretty average, though i do need to see The Big Lebowski again, it's been several years.

Capra's career unfortunately fizzled out not long after the war, for various reasons, but in his prime I think he was a really great director. The populist fables that he became famous for are perhaps dated (I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Deeds or You Can't Take it With You), but I do love Mr. Smith. What do you find unbearable about it? The miraculous and somewhat abrupt happy ending is a little hard to swallow, but Capra made sure to develop Claude Rains' character throughout the picture to at least make that change of heart somewhat believable. Stewart's grandstanding at the end is probably too preachy and didactic, but it's dramatically powerful all the same, and while the movie opens itself up to criticisms of pie in the sky optimism and hokeyness, it's also a very cynical look at American politics (especially for that time), and I think one of the reasons why the ending is so hard to take is because Capra is so good at depicting the flaws in the system. This is an aspect of his work that too often gets ignored -- a lot of the happy endings in his films end up being a bit unconvincing, but that's because, for the majority of their runtimes, they are extremely bleak and cynical. Anyway, It's a Wonderful Life is his best, most perfect movie, but he was a force in the 30s -- The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night (perhaps my favorite screwball), American Madness, Broadway Bill, Lost Horizon, etc. He single-handedly made Columbia a major studio, winning three Oscars and forcing people to take the studio seriously. That would be like somebody working at Republic and bringing them up to the level of the majors strictly because the quality of their work was impossible to ignore. I really love Capra's work, and I just find it disappointing that he's a bit of a punchline now, usually by people that haven't actually watched any of his films.

i think Mr. Smith is just a little too much of that 'the little guy standing up against the system' sentimentality, but you're right about the cynicism (it was extremely controversial at the time and almost got Columbia into a lot of trouble as i recall). it used to be a favorite before i really delved into classical Hollywood cinema, and it's sort of gone down in my estimation because of how much it pales in comparison to the best films of the era (just because i re-watched it so recently, i'll give a shout-out to Only Angels Have Wings, from the same studio and with two of the same leads, which is such a towering masterpiece of a film that it leaves Mr. Smith looking like a middling entertainment). i should maybe give it a try another one of these days, but i'm currently more interested in his earlier work. i like You Can't Take It with You and It Happened One Night a good bit, and It's a Wonderful Life is easily one of the best films (that's a film that's so bitter and pessimistic it should ideally demolish the existence of the term Capra-corn forever).

How much of his other work have you seen, out of curiosity? Wyler was probably more of a craftsman than an artist, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think the major reason why he's become sort of forgotten now is because he helmed so many prestige films, Oscar bait type movies, and some of his work is a little bloated and self-important (Ben Hur, his most famous film, is also one of his worst). But for the most part he oscillated between impeccably made entertainments (Wuthering Heights, The Westerner, The Good Fairy) and darker, more challenging fare (Dead End, Detective Story, Carrie). If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend The Heiress, which is probably his best film after Best Years and one of the darkest, most powerful Hollywood films of the era. And it's an incredible showcase for Ralph Richardson and Oliva de Havilland.

i've seen the following, in order of preference:

The Best Years of Our Lives
Dodsworth
The Westerner
The Letter
The Little Foxes
Ben-Hur
Jezebel
Mrs. Miniver

he is a master craftsman for sure, but his success varies according to the kind of story he's working with. prestige/propaganda films like Ben-Hur and Jezebel suffer greatly, but The Best Years of Our Lives is one such prestige film that totally doesn't deserve any of the flack it gets from people who rail against the Academy. it's such a profoundly moving and deeply felt film that should not be written off as Oscar-bait. the Wylers i most want to see at the moment are The Big Country, Detective Story, and Roman Holiday, but there's probably plenty i'm forgetting.

[Mr Black]

Saw deliverance last night, that banjo playing kid frightened the shit out of me

[Ragged_Clown]

yeah i think at some level the scattershot-ness represents a new direction for him that he mastered extremely well (more montage-based than spatially based), but i do think there's a perfection that Kane and Ambersons achieve that something like Othello doesn't. Chimes at Midnight is the exception, and F for Fake is a completely different animal than anything else. i still need to see The Stranger, Mr. Arkadin, and The Immortal Story before i've finished his major works.

The Immortal Story is pretty minor I think, but Mr. Arkadin is pretty great and The Stranger is extremely underrated. It's commercial Welles, really the only picture he did that was a gun-for-hire project and one he didn't have a lot of personal investment in, and I think that's the main reason why it gets overlooked/underrated. But I think that aspect is one of the reasons it's fascinating. All of his formal talents (and they're on full display here) are poured into a conventional studio film. He embraces the pulpy genre trappings and commits himself to them, he doesn't try and transform it into an "Orson Welles Film" or try and subvert the material or something like that. Just tries to deliver a good commercial film and tell a good story. And there are a lot of great sequences in it that are vintage Welles, and the depiction of daily life in a sleepy, small town is perfect. And it's got one of my favorite Eddie Robinson performances, cool and methodical and intelligent. I think Welles could've been a lot more successful in Hollywood if he would've had better business sense and delivered this kind of picture to the studios a little more often, sort of like Ford would jump back and forth between personal projects and commercial ones. One for me and one for them, that sort of thing. I just can't help but wonder what kind of career he could've had if he'd been able to maintain a career in America.

yeah i can't wait to re-watch it. how much of Ford's silent work have you seen?

Not enough. A handful of the circulating Fox silents, the Westerns of which are wonderful (Just Pals may actually be my favorite, though 3 Bad Men and The Iron Horse are perhaps more immediately impressive);the later, Murnau-influenced films are good but are less Fordian. I haven't seen any of the earlier films from Universal. Bucking Broadway is included on the Stagecoach Criterion release but I haven't gotten to it yet. His silent work doesn't get a lot of attention, but, while nothing I've seen ranks among his very best work I don't think, it's still very impressive. Ford was such a visual director (no filmmaker could express as much as him with a single image) that seeing these silents feels like watching the essence of Ford, like it's him in his purest form. Just Pals was made in 1920, and watching it, you become aware just how much of his style hatched fully formed. He went on to make more mature and complex films, but a big part of his creative DNA was plainly visible right from the beginning.

Walsh is a subject for further research for me. i've seen The Roaring Twenties (loved), White Heat (liked), They Drive By Night (loved), and Battle Cry (liked). Strawberry Blonde seems to be the favorite of most people i know. also have you read Dave Kehr's on Walsh? he's probably Walsh's most vocally supportive critic and his affinity for him is infectious

I don't believe I've read any long-format pieces by Kehr on Walsh, but there was a long and enlightening discussion about him that popped up a couple of years ago on Kehr's blog that I read with great interest (I believe it was when that Errol Flynn at War set came out -- four of the five titles of which were directed by Walsh). I remember reading (I believe it was in that thread, though perhaps I read it elsewhere) and liking, in particular, Kehr's comparison of Walsh to Hawks and Ford (the three great American directors, according to Kehr), and how if Ford focused on the community, and Hawks on the small group, that Walsh was the poet of the individual. Walsh is a little more difficult than Hawks and Ford, and some of the other major classic Hollywood directors, because he never really gained much industry clout. He was a journeyman director his whole career, a studio workhorse, and he never arrived at a point where he could initiate his own projects, so it's a little more difficult to detect his style and ideas. But despite that, he was absolutely a giant, and even with a lousy script he could make a really great film (check out Pursued, a dreamlike Western/noir hybrid with a howler of a script -- it makes basically no sense -- that is nevertheless one of Walsh's best films). The only problem is most of his pre-Warner films are hard to find. Most of his work in the 30s was at Fox and is basically impossible to see right now -- perhaps some of it will start to surface now that Fox has apparently jumped on the MOD bandwagon. And most of his silent work has been lost, which is really disappointing as he reportedly did a lot of groundbreaking work in that era (and on the strength of the work that does survive, especially Regeneration, those reports would seem to be accurate).

i'm really behind on Japanese cinema beyond Kurosawa, Ozu, and some Mizoguchi (i've seen one or two films apiece from most of the other major older directors like Naruse and Oshima). i've seen some Ghibli (a lot of Miyazakis and Grave of the Fireflies), but little else. Miike's name pops up a lot, and i'm probably gonna get around to him sooner or later. definitely jotting all these films down for further research.

I'm not an authority on Japanese cinema by any means, but I do have a really strong appreciation and a more-than-casual knowledge of it, and Miike strikes me as the most impressive and effortlessly talented director to emerge there since the 60s. Unfortunately he's often written off as a provocateur and not taken all that seriously -- Tony Rayns is his most important and vocal cheerleader, but not enough of his effusive praise has penetrated the mainstream critical community here in the States. But at least he's famous enough that a lot of his work is readily accessible, so those interested can check him out and decide for themselves. His more recent work has become a bit less interesting to me, with exceptions (most notably Big Bang Love, Juvenile A). But his '95-'03 period is astonishingly rich. If you decide you want to explore his filmography and need some help navigating it, let me know and I'll give you some suggestions.

yeah, part of me thinks Werckmeister would be a better introduction, but Sátántangó has more weight to it as this sacred art film milestone that i'm just more curious for it. i'm not sure which one i'll get around to first. have you seen The Turin Horse yet by chance?

No, unfortunately not yet, but it's being released here next month. I was a little disappointed by The Man From London -- a good picture, but a big dropoff from his previous three -- but The Turin Horse looks to be a return to form, and Tarr has said it's his last film. I remember reading an interview in which he was asked why he was retiring, and he responded that once they see The Turin Horse, they'll understand. Can't wait.

yeah it's just a shame that his earlier films aren't on DVD. i have two of his 80s films downloaded (A Time to Live, A Time to Die and City of Sadness), and will probably get around to them this summer. Cafe Lumiere looks like the 21st century Hou that i'll like the most.

A City of Sadness and the Puppetmaster are the two big ones that I have yet to see. The Puppetmaster is apparently impossible to watch right now in anything close to resembling acceptable quality. I know A City of Sadness has a couple of different torrents floating around, but I keep hoping it gets a proper release at some point. I believe it was restored recently, and it's maybe his most famous work, but nothing yet.

it looks like it would be among their best. of their work, i absolutely despise Blood Simple and think No Country for Old Men is the closest they've come to greatness. A Serious Man also looks great, but i haven't seen it yet. everything else i've seen i think has been pretty average, though i do need to see The Big Lebowski again, it's been several years.

A Serious Man is great. Objectively, it's probably their most impressive film since The Man Who Wasn't There, but it's an easier film to admire than to love. Most of the qualities I value the most in their work are largely absent in that film. Of their four most recent pictures, my favorite is actually True Grit, which feels like a minor work, and probably is a minor work, but I adored it all the same. Overall I prefer their '90-'01 work, though. But I'm really looking forward to their upcoming film. It looks very promising, and as a Bob Dylan fan it's right in my wheelhouse.

i think Mr. Smith is just a little too much of that 'the little guy standing up against the system' sentimentality, but you're right about the cynicism (it was extremely controversial at the time and almost got Columbia into a lot of trouble as i recall). it used to be a favorite before i really delved into classical Hollywood cinema, and it's sort of gone down in my estimation because of how much it pales in comparison to the best films of the era (just because i re-watched it so recently, i'll give a shout-out to Only Angels Have Wings, from the same studio and with two of the same leads, which is such a towering masterpiece of a film that it leaves Mr. Smith looking like a middling entertainment). i should maybe give it a try another one of these days, but i'm currently more interested in his earlier work. i like You Can't Take It with You and It Happened One Night a good bit, and It's a Wonderful Life is easily one of the best films (that's a film that's so bitter and pessimistic it should ideally demolish the existence of the term Capra-corn forever).

Heh. Well like I said I'm a big fan of Mr. Smith, but even I wouldn't put it at the same level as Only Angels Have Wings. Make sure to watch American Madness if you haven't yet. It's really similar to his later, more popular movies, but it's a much more visceral film, definitely a highlight of his earlier work.

he is a master craftsman for sure, but his success varies according to the kind of story he's working with. prestige/propaganda films like Ben-Hur and Jezebel suffer greatly, but The Best Years of Our Lives is one such prestige film that totally doesn't deserve any of the flack it gets from people who rail against the Academy. it's such a profoundly moving and deeply felt film that should not be written off as Oscar-bait. the Wylers i most want to see at the moment are The Big Country, Detective Story, and Roman Holiday, but there's probably plenty i'm forgetting.

I wouldn't really disagree with any of this. I think Wyler was, above all, a brilliant and sensitive adapter of other people's material and ideas. I don't think you'll find a consistent worldview or a strong sense of self-expression in his work, but he was a tremendous director when given the right materials to work with. I like all three that you mention -- The Big Country flirts with being one of those bloated films like Ben Hur but stops just short, and Roman Holiday is a frothy delight provided you find Audrey Hepburn as charming as I do. And Detective Story is one of his best. But do see The Heiress at some point. It completely knocked me out, and it's really a pretty shocking film, barbed and scabrous and genuinely disturbing. There's no physical violence, but the psychological warfare is pretty intense. A very dark film, in a way that the cotton candy noirs of the period never were (much as I love them). An unpleasant movie but a completely masterful one.

By the way, you mention that Stanwyck is your favorite of the classic Hollywood actresses -- what are your favorites of hers? I'm a pretty big fan of her as well -- one of the more versatile actresses of the period. Have you seen Remember the Night? Really wonderful, maybe the best thing Preston Sturges was ever associated with (and I say that as a HUGE Sturges fan).

[Shaunbadia]

That's an...interesting list.

I'm aware these are vastly different types of movies, but they happen to be the few that stick out in my mind and my DVD collection of my favourites from over the years.

[TheForbiddenDonut]

The Immortal Story is pretty minor I think, but Mr. Arkadin is pretty great and The Stranger is extremely underrated. It's commercial Welles, really the only picture he did that was a gun-for-hire project and one he didn't have a lot of personal investment in, and I think that's the main reason why it gets overlooked/underrated. But I think that aspect is one of the reasons it's fascinating. All of his formal talents (and they're on full display here) are poured into a conventional studio film. He embraces the pulpy genre trappings and commits himself to them, he doesn't try and transform it into an "Orson Welles Film" or try and subvert the material or something like that. Just tries to deliver a good commercial film and tell a good story. And there are a lot of great sequences in it that are vintage Welles, and the depiction of daily life in a sleepy, small town is perfect. And it's got one of my favorite Eddie Robinson performances, cool and methodical and intelligent. I think Welles could've been a lot more successful in Hollywood if he would've had better business sense and delivered this kind of picture to the studios a little more often, sort of like Ford would jump back and forth between personal projects and commercial ones. One for me and one for them, that sort of thing. I just can't help but wonder what kind of career he could've had if he'd been able to maintain a career in America.

the arc of Welles' career is really tragic and frustrating to me, and even though i think he did amazing work all throughout his career, the question of what he might have done if things had gone better for him in Hollywood always lingers for me. i'll check out The Stranger as soon as possible.

Not enough. A handful of the circulating Fox silents, the Westerns of which are wonderful (Just Pals may actually be my favorite, though 3 Bad Men and The Iron Horse are perhaps more immediately impressive);the later, Murnau-influenced films are good but are less Fordian. I haven't seen any of the earlier films from Universal. Bucking Broadway is included on the Stagecoach Criterion release but I haven't gotten to it yet. His silent work doesn't get a lot of attention, but, while nothing I've seen ranks among his very best work I don't think, it's still very impressive. Ford was such a visual director (no filmmaker could express as much as him with a single image) that seeing these silents feels like watching the essence of Ford, like it's him in his purest form. Just Pals was made in 1920, and watching it, you become aware just how much of his style hatched fully formed. He went on to make more mature and complex films, but a big part of his creative DNA was plainly visible right from the beginning.

the huge amount of silent films directed by directors primarily known for their sound work is daunting to me. like i want to complete the filmographies of so many directors (like Ford, Borzage, Walsh, etc.) but they did so much work in the silent era before they really hit their stride. i'll probably get around to his silents that are on DVD eventually and then go from there.

I don't believe I've read any long-format pieces by Kehr on Walsh, but there was a long and enlightening discussion about him that popped up a couple of years ago on Kehr's blog that I read with great interest (I believe it was when that Errol Flynn at War set came out -- four of the five titles of which were directed by Walsh). I remember reading (I believe it was in that thread, though perhaps I read it elsewhere) and liking, in particular, Kehr's comparison of Walsh to Hawks and Ford (the three great American directors, according to Kehr), and how if Ford focused on the community, and Hawks on the small group, that Walsh was the poet of the individual. Walsh is a little more difficult than Hawks and Ford, and some of the other major classic Hollywood directors, because he never really gained much industry clout. He was a journeyman director his whole career, a studio workhorse, and he never arrived at a point where he could initiate his own projects, so it's a little more difficult to detect his style and ideas. But despite that, he was absolutely a giant, and even with a lousy script he could make a really great film (check out Pursued, a dreamlike Western/noir hybrid with a howler of a script -- it makes basically no sense -- that is nevertheless one of Walsh's best films). The only problem is most of his pre-Warner films are hard to find. Most of his work in the 30s was at Fox and is basically impossible to see right now -- perhaps some of it will start to surface now that Fox has apparently jumped on the MOD bandwagon. And most of his silent work has been lost, which is really disappointing as he reportedly did a lot of groundbreaking work in that era (and on the strength of the work that does survive, especially Regeneration, those reports would seem to be accurate).

yeah that comments section discussion is what i was quoting. he has a long-format piece on Walsh in his collection that came out last year and it's really great. i associate Walsh with a restless energy that packs 5x as much detail and incident into one scene as the average director can manage. like They Drive By Night is a pretty short film, but you could probably make two films from its screenplay, cuz it's just so packed with rapid-fire dialogue.

I'm not an authority on Japanese cinema by any means, but I do have a really strong appreciation and a more-than-casual knowledge of it, and Miike strikes me as the most impressive and effortlessly talented director to emerge there since the 60s. Unfortunately he's often written off as a provocateur and not taken all that seriously -- Tony Rayns is his most important and vocal cheerleader, but not enough of his effusive praise has penetrated the mainstream critical community here in the States. But at least he's famous enough that a lot of his work is readily accessible, so those interested can check him out and decide for themselves. His more recent work has become a bit less interesting to me, with exceptions (most notably Big Bang Love, Juvenile A). But his '95-'03 period is astonishingly rich. If you decide you want to explore his filmography and need some help navigating it, let me know and I'll give you some suggestions.

you've reminded me that i neglected 13 Assassins when it was playing here, which bums me out a bit. and yeah, definitely fire off suggestions. i have so much Japanese cinema to get into.

No, unfortunately not yet, but it's being released here next month. I was a little disappointed by The Man From London -- a good picture, but a big dropoff from his previous three -- but The Turin Horse looks to be a return to form, and Tarr has said it's his last film. I remember reading an interview in which he was asked why he was retiring, and he responded that once they see The Turin Horse, they'll understand. Can't wait.

Jonathan Rosenbaum (if not my favorite critic, then the one i've read the most, since he's archived all his stuff online), now that he's retired, maintains a page on indiewire where he grades the recent movies he's seen, and of the 100+ films listed, Turin Horse is only one of two films that he gave an A+, which made me super excited since he seems to be the US authority on Tarr. also i have Turin Horse downloaded, but i'm definitely holding off until Werckmeister and Sátántangó.

A City of Sadness and the Puppetmaster are the two big ones that I have yet to see. The Puppetmaster is apparently impossible to watch right now in anything close to resembling acceptable quality. I know A City of Sadness has a couple of different torrents floating around, but I keep hoping it gets a proper release at some point. I believe it was restored recently, and it's maybe his most famous work, but nothing yet.

i just checked KG (are you familiar?)'s screencaps of Puppetmaster and their torrent looks to be really good quality to me.

A Serious Man is great. Objectively, it's probably their most impressive film since The Man Who Wasn't There, but it's an easier film to admire than to love. Most of the qualities I value the most in their work are largely absent in that film. Of their four most recent pictures, my favorite is actually True Grit, which feels like a minor work, and probably is a minor work, but I adored it all the same. Overall I prefer their '90-'01 work, though. But I'm really looking forward to their upcoming film. It looks very promising, and as a Bob Dylan fan it's right in my wheelhouse.

i thought True Grit was pretty good. i liked that it, for the most part, went easy on the cynicism for once and offered a straight-shooting genre film.

Heh. Well like I said I'm a big fan of Mr. Smith, but even I wouldn't put it at the same level as Only Angels Have Wings. Make sure to watch American Madness if you haven't yet. It's really similar to his later, more popular movies, but it's a much more visceral film, definitely a highlight of his earlier work.

will do!

I wouldn't really disagree with any of this. I think Wyler was, above all, a brilliant and sensitive adapter of other people's material and ideas. I don't think you'll find a consistent worldview or a strong sense of self-expression in his work, but he was a tremendous director when given the right materials to work with. I like all three that you mention -- The Big Country flirts with being one of those bloated films like Ben Hur but stops just short, and Roman Holiday is a frothy delight provided you find Audrey Hepburn as charming as I do. And Detective Story is one of his best. But do see The Heiress at some point. It completely knocked me out, and it's really a pretty shocking film, barbed and scabrous and genuinely disturbing. There's no physical violence, but the psychological warfare is pretty intense. A very dark film, in a way that the cotton candy noirs of the period never were (much as I love them). An unpleasant movie but a completely masterful one.

okay i just added Heiress to my (extremely long) list of films to-see. thanks for the rec!

By the way, you mention that Stanwyck is your favorite of the classic Hollywood actresses -- what are your favorites of hers? I'm a pretty big fan of her as well -- one of the more versatile actresses of the period. Have you seen Remember the Night? Really wonderful, maybe the best thing Preston Sturges was ever associated with (and I say that as a HUGE Sturges fan).

oh man, i bought the TCM vault DVD of Remember the Night recently but haven't watched it yet cuz DVD-R's don't play on my laptop. when i hook up my DVD player again i'll definitely watch it. Leisen's been getting a lot of attention on my film forum and i'm extremely eager to see more of his work. No Man of Her Own, another Leisen/Stanwcyk collaboration was recently issued by Olive Films and i'm eager to get it.

i haven't seen as many of her films as i'd like (i'm dedicating the year to her and am planning on having a lot more done by the end of it), but my favorites would be: Ball of Fire, Clash by Night, Forty Guns, Night Nurse, and of course her established classics (Double Indemnity, The Lady Eve). Baby Face is great but primarily a curiosity because of how taboo it is, and i also like the two Capra collaborations of hers that i've seen (Ladies of Leisure and Bitter Tea), as well as Annie Oakley by George Stevens (nothing special but good fun). i recently bought a collection of her films that includes her two Sirk collaborations, though apparently There's Always Tomorrow is in the wrong aspect ratio, so i'm gonna have to download it

[The Thompsons]

Saw deliverance last night, that banjo playing kid frightened the shit out of me

This scene probably did as well:

[Mr Black]

well I expected a bit of sodomy to be honest, it wasn't really disturbing as such

[Ragged_Clown]

the arc of Welles' career is really tragic and frustrating to me, and even though i think he did amazing work all throughout his career, the question of what he might have done if things had gone better for him in Hollywood always lingers for me. i'll check out The Stranger as soon as possible.

Yep, it's unbelievably frustrating. He probably brought a lot of it on himself -- he made a lot of enemies in Hollywood with Kane and then completely alienated RKO with the "It's All True" documentary. That doesn't make it anymore disappointing, though. He's probably the most gifted filmmaker I've encountered, but his career was badly compromised. His body of work is still extraordinary, but one can't help but wonder what if...

yeah that comments section discussion is what i was quoting. he has a long-format piece on Walsh in his collection that came out last year and it's really great. i associate Walsh with a restless energy that packs 5x as much detail and incident into one scene as the average director can manage. like They Drive By Night is a pretty short film, but you could probably make two films from its screenplay, cuz it's just so packed with rapid-fire dialogue.

Oh yeah, I'd definitely agree with that. Perhaps it's a carryover from the precode days, when filmmakers regularly crammed an absurd amount of story into 60 or 70 minute runtimes. Walsh is certainly never wanting for incident, and while he may not always hit a home run, he's never boring.

If you're looking for suggestions for when you decide to dig deeper into his work (though you've already seen my two favorites!), I would definitely watch High Sierra and Colorado Territory. High Sierra is one of his great gangster films, and it's, along with Wyler's great Dead End, probably the major film in which Bogart was settling into his persona and stepping out of what he referred to as the "snivelling bastard" role he played for most of the 30s. He then remade the film as a Western with Colorado Territory, which is even better. Walsh is probably best known for his gangster films, but he was at least as good with Westerns (his deep focus visual style was given endless possibilities with the genre), and, with all due respect to Pursued and The Big Trail, I think this is his best Western. Kehr referred to Walsh as a poet, I believe, and this is the most poetic of all the pictures I've seen of his.

you've reminded me that i neglected 13 Assassins when it was playing here, which bums me out a bit. and yeah, definitely fire off suggestions. i have so much Japanese cinema to get into.

13 Assassins is very good but not terribly characteristic of Miike, and not among his best. Over the last 6 or 7 years a lot of his pictures have become a bit impersonal. He still makes idiosyncratic films, but he also does a lot of more mainstream work such as this, and even the films that are more typical of him tend to suffer a bit by comparison to his earlier films. He's become more of a formalist -- I even saw an interview where he admitted that he feels like he's lost something since his earlier work and tries to compensate for it with technique. But 13 Assassins is still well worth watching. It sort of reminds me of True Grit -- both are fairly respectful classical genre films made by directors known as genre pranksters/deconstructionists. It's extremely well made and the 45 minute action scene to close the film is amazing. Watching it on the big screen probably would've been quite an experience.

One of the difficult things about getting into Miike's work is how vast and diverse it is, which also makes it difficult to make suggestions about where to start. Some favorites of mine (aside from Rainy Dog) that will give you a good intro to his work, from one end of the spectrum to the other, would be: Ley Lines, The Bird People in China, Young Thugs Nostalgia, Dead or Alive 2: Birds, Audition, Gozu, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Blues Harp, Box, Graveyard of Honor, and Big Bang Love, Juvenile A. Also, if you have a strong stomach, check out Visitor Q. It's one of his best films (Tony Rayns has suggested that it will be remembered as his masterpiece), but it's also one of the most deeply disturbing films I've ever seen. I watched it when I was still pretty new to Miike's work, and knew very little about it, and I remember being physically nauseous after it was over. As long as you brace yourself I think you'll be fine (I had no idea what I was getting into), but it is pretty strong stuff.

And Dead or Alive 2: Birds is probably the single film that best represents all of the wildly disparate strands of Miike's work -- the lyricism and nostalgia, the Pythonesque absurdism and flights of fancy, the violence, the Godardian experiments with form, etc. It feels like a trashier, more vulgar Pierrot le Fou to me.

Jonathan Rosenbaum (if not my favorite critic, then the one i've read the most, since he's archived all his stuff online), now that he's retired, maintains a page on indiewire where he grades the recent movies he's seen, and of the 100+ films listed, Turin Horse is only one of two films that he gave an A+, which made me super excited since he seems to be the US authority on Tarr. also i have Turin Horse downloaded, but i'm definitely holding off until Werckmeister and Sátántangó.

Yeah, The Turin Horse has gotten raves from pretty much everybody. It looks to be Tarr's style taken to it's extreme. And it'll be the first Tarr to be relased on Blu Ray, which will be a huge benefit given how visual his movies are.

i just checked KG (are you familiar?)'s screencaps of Puppetmaster and their torrent looks to be really good quality to me.

I don't believe I know of KG. My understanding was that the only available editions of the Puppetmaster were all identical to the Region 1 DVD by Fox Lorber, which is just atrocious -- completely unwatchable picture quality, much of the film swamped in darkness, and it's cropped to 1.33:1. If there's a version out there that's actually serviceable, please direct me to it!

i thought True Grit was pretty good. i liked that it, for the most part, went easy on the cynicism for once and offered a straight-shooting genre film.

Yes, not just for the Coens but for Westerns in general these days. Very little of the revisionism that is generally present in every Western that's been made since the 70s. I also loved the gorgeous final 15 minutes where it shifted from a good film to a great one -- nobody else would've played the night ride sequence like that. It lends itself toward suspense but they play it for poetry (Glenn Kenny compared it to Murnau). I also feel like they really tapped into the story. It's only the second novel they've adapted, so clearly they have a strong connection to it. It's interesting to look at the four recent pictures together and chart the increasing spirituality of them -- No Country and Burn After Reading being pretty nihilistic, but with A Serious Man you get hints at something more divine, a cosmic order that we're just not privy to. And then with True Grit there's an unmistakable order to the world. The revenge angle is minimized in this version -- they elide the father's death completely and reduce Chaney to a pathetic creature, and Mattie never really displays any strong emotion, never has any tearful recollections of her father or anything like that (these things do occur in the earlier John Wayne film). It's played more like a business transaction in this version, with Mattie being an agent of justice (signaled in the opening monologue when Mattie says "there's nothing free in this world but the Grace of God"). Chaney committed this crime and therefore has to pay for it with his own life, and Mattie is there to collect the payment -- it's all handled rather dispassionately. The Coens even change the scene near the end where Mattie falls into the snake pit so it makes more thematic sense (having the recoil of the gun when she shoots Chaney directly cause her to fall, making her own vengeance directly responsible for the loss of her arm).

oh man, i bought the TCM vault DVD of Remember the Night recently but haven't watched it yet cuz DVD-R's don't play on my laptop. when i hook up my DVD player again i'll definitely watch it. Leisen's been getting a lot of attention on my film forum and i'm extremely eager to see more of his work. No Man of Her Own, another Leisen/Stanwcyk collaboration was recently issued by Olive Films and i'm eager to get it.

There does seem to be a lot of renewed interest in Leisen lately -- I actually just ordered that "No Man of Her Own" DVD yesterday. Everything I've seen of his has been great, with the two highlights being Midnight and, especially, Remember the Night. This is a great showcase for Stanwyck too -- she really gets to show her range, starting out more comedic but becoming more serious as the film progresses. Its a much more dramatic and romantic film than Sturges was generally known for, but it's immaculately structured (a perfect screenplay, really), and Leisen gives to it a wonderful elegance while still keeping it fairly light. One of the best romantic comedies I've ever seen.

i haven't seen as many of her films as i'd like (i'm dedicating the year to her and am planning on having a lot more done by the end of it), but my favorites would be: Ball of Fire, Clash by Night, Forty Guns, Night Nurse, and of course her established classics (Double Indemnity, The Lady Eve). Baby Face is great but primarily a curiosity because of how taboo it is, and i also like the two Capra collaborations of hers that i've seen (Ladies of Leisure and Bitter Tea), as well as Annie Oakley by George Stevens (nothing special but good fun). i recently bought a collection of her films that includes her two Sirk collaborations, though apparently There's Always Tomorrow is in the wrong aspect ratio, so i'm gonna have to download it

I still haven't watched Clash by Night or Night Nurse despite owning the collections they're in -- I'll have to get to them sometime soon. Glad to see you mention Forty Guns, though. I love that film, one of my favorite Fullers. And There's Always Tomorrow is fabulous. I'm lukewarm to Sirk, but this is the best of his I've seen. It's more a Fred Macmurray film than a Stanwyck one, but she still makes a big impact as a lonely middle-aged woman even if it is a supporting role. I haven't seen the open matte DVD you're talking about, but it's such a gorgeously shot film that I imagine it would suffer greatly by having its compositions butchered like that. Definitely track down a widescreen version, either on DVD or via backchannels (there's a beautiful DVD from the "Masters of Cinema" label in the UK that's pretty cheap).

[TheForbiddenDonut]

Yep, it's unbelievably frustrating. He probably brought a lot of it on himself -- he made a lot of enemies in Hollywood with Kane and then completely alienated RKO with the "It's All True" documentary. That doesn't make it anymore disappointing, though. He's probably the most gifted filmmaker I've encountered, but his career was badly compromised. His body of work is still extraordinary, but one can't help but wonder what if...

there's a sense in which his reckless lifestyle is intertwined with his genius. and it seems to be taken for granted that his kind of grand ambition and egoism could never become a stable Hollywood director. from what i know of him, it's hard for me to imagine his career turning out differently. he just doesn't strike me as the kind of man who could ever have settled down and struck a compromise with the industry.

If you're looking for suggestions for when you decide to dig deeper into his work (though you've already seen my two favorites!), I would definitely watch High Sierra and Colorado Territory. High Sierra is one of his great gangster films, and it's, along with Wyler's great Dead End, probably the major film in which Bogart was settling into his persona and stepping out of what he referred to as the "snivelling bastard" role he played for most of the 30s. He then remade the film as a Western with Colorado Territory, which is even better. Walsh is probably best known for his gangster films, but he was at least as good with Westerns (his deep focus visual style was given endless possibilities with the genre), and, with all due respect to Pursued and The Big Trail, I think this is his best Western. Kehr referred to Walsh as a poet, I believe, and this is the most poetic of all the pictures I've seen of his.

i'm going to see The Big Trail very soon. High Sierra has been on my list for a while, and i'm also extremely eager to see The Thief of Bagdad, which seems to be his most lauded silent. i also own The Lawless Breed in a pretty fine Western set. speaking of Walsh Westerns, have you seen Along the Great Divide?

13 Assassins is very good but not terribly characteristic of Miike, and not among his best. Over the last 6 or 7 years a lot of his pictures have become a bit impersonal. He still makes idiosyncratic films, but he also does a lot of more mainstream work such as this, and even the films that are more typical of him tend to suffer a bit by comparison to his earlier films. He's become more of a formalist -- I even saw an interview where he admitted that he feels like he's lost something since his earlier work and tries to compensate for it with technique. But 13 Assassins is still well worth watching. It sort of reminds me of True Grit -- both are fairly respectful classical genre films made by directors known as genre pranksters/deconstructionists. It's extremely well made and the 45 minute action scene to close the film is amazing. Watching it on the big screen probably would've been quite an experience.

One of the difficult things about getting into Miike's work is how vast and diverse it is, which also makes it difficult to make suggestions about where to start. Some favorites of mine (aside from Rainy Dog) that will give you a good intro to his work, from one end of the spectrum to the other, would be: Ley Lines, The Bird People in China, Young Thugs Nostalgia, Dead or Alive 2: Birds, Audition, Gozu, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Blues Harp, Box, Graveyard of Honor, and Big Bang Love, Juvenile A. Also, if you have a strong stomach, check out Visitor Q. It's one of his best films (Tony Rayns has suggested that it will be remembered as his masterpiece), but it's also one of the most deeply disturbing films I've ever seen. I watched it when I was still pretty new to Miike's work, and knew very little about it, and I remember being physically nauseous after it was over. As long as you brace yourself I think you'll be fine (I had no idea what I was getting into), but it is pretty strong stuff.

And Dead or Alive 2: Birds is probably the single film that best represents all of the wildly disparate strands of Miike's work -- the lyricism and nostalgia, the Pythonesque absurdism and flights of fancy, the violence, the Godardian experiments with form, etc. It feels like a trashier, more vulgar Pierrot le Fou to me.

i had several chances to see 13 too, but Miike just wasn't on my radar at all at the time. i'll add all those to my list (a friend of mine really enjoys The Happiness of the Katakuris). also, the Miike film i hear about most is Ichi the Killer. do you recommend it? also any comparison to Pierrot le fou (one of my favorites) is enough to sell me on anything.

I don't believe I know of KG. My understanding was that the only available editions of the Puppetmaster were all identical to the Region 1 DVD by Fox Lorber, which is just atrocious -- completely unwatchable picture quality, much of the film swamped in darkness, and it's cropped to 1.33:1. If there's a version out there that's actually serviceable, please direct me to it!

Karagarga is an invite-only tracker (i don't have the power to invite anyone yet, i'm afraid) that has pretty much everything you could ever hope to find. sadly, however, their rip of Puppetmaster is from the Fox Lorber DVD. the screenshots looked fine to me until i investigated DVDBeaver, which shows a lot more of the issues with picture quality. i hate that imdb doesn't have any info on the film's aspect ratio, which i run into with a lot of films whose torrents i find in fullscreen (recently, Elaine May's A New Leaf and a lot of late-period Otto Preminger's The Human Factor). i might just have to settle for the existing torrent, because it really seems like the only thing that's available. sorry to get your hopes up!

Yes, not just for the Coens but for Westerns in general these days. Very little of the revisionism that is generally present in every Western that's been made since the 70s. I also loved the gorgeous final 15 minutes where it shifted from a good film to a great one -- nobody else would've played the night ride sequence like that. It lends itself toward suspense but they play it for poetry (Glenn Kenny compared it to Murnau). I also feel like they really tapped into the story. It's only the second novel they've adapted, so clearly they have a strong connection to it. It's interesting to look at the four recent pictures together and chart the increasing spirituality of them -- No Country and Burn After Reading being pretty nihilistic, but with A Serious Man you get hints at something more divine, a cosmic order that we're just not privy to. And then with True Grit there's an unmistakable order to the world. The revenge angle is minimized in this version -- they elide the father's death completely and reduce Chaney to a pathetic creature, and Mattie never really displays any strong emotion, never has any tearful recollections of her father or anything like that (these things do occur in the earlier John Wayne film). It's played more like a business transaction in this version, with Mattie being an agent of justice (signaled in the opening monologue when Mattie says "there's nothing free in this world but the Grace of God"). Chaney committed this crime and therefore has to pay for it with his own life, and Mattie is there to collect the payment -- it's all handled rather dispassionately. The Coens even change the scene near the end where Mattie falls into the snake pit so it makes more thematic sense (having the recoil of the gun when she shoots Chaney directly cause her to fall, making her own vengeance directly responsible for the loss of her arm).

yeah, it's my suspicion that the Coens are moving in a new direction recently. i dunno if i'd put that closing sequence on Murnau's level, but it is pretty gorgeous stuff. it's also some of Roger Deakins' best work, easily. the one moment that struck me as too cynical was the racist cruelty of the Native American hanging being played for laughs.

There does seem to be a lot of renewed interest in Leisen lately -- I actually just ordered that "No Man of Her Own" DVD yesterday. Everything I've seen of his has been great, with the two highlights being Midnight and, especially, Remember the Night. This is a great showcase for Stanwyck too -- she really gets to show her range, starting out more comedic but becoming more serious as the film progresses. Its a much more dramatic and romantic film than Sturges was generally known for, but it's immaculately structured (a perfect screenplay, really), and Leisen gives to it a wonderful elegance while still keeping it fairly light. One of the best romantic comedies I've ever seen.

Midnight looks excellent. curiously, i've read that both Sturges and Wilder were unhappy with Leisen's adaptations of their material, which is one of the factors that spurred each of them into directing. also i have a huge thing for classical Hollywood films set at Christmas time. The Shop Around the Corner and Meet Me in St. Louis are all time favorites, and i'd be surprised if Remember the Night doesn't join their ranks.

I still haven't watched Clash by Night or Night Nurse despite owning the collections they're in -- I'll have to get to them sometime soon. Glad to see you mention Forty Guns, though. I love that film, one of my favorite Fullers. And There's Always Tomorrow is fabulous. I'm lukewarm to Sirk, but this is the best of his I've seen. It's more a Fred Macmurray film than a Stanwyck one, but she still makes a big impact as a lonely middle-aged woman even if it is a supporting role. I haven't seen the open matte DVD you're talking about, but it's such a gorgeously shot film that I imagine it would suffer greatly by having its compositions butchered like that. Definitely track down a widescreen version, either on DVD or via backchannels (there's a beautiful DVD from the "Masters of Cinema" label in the UK that's pretty cheap).

yeah i'm aware of the MoC DVD. i wish i had more incentive to order their DVDs (i only own their amazing Dr. Mabuse set) when i can just grab a torrent. we'll see though. also Forty Guns is super amazing. like The Big Red One, it reminds me how elegant Fuller can be at his very best (the beautiful funeral sequence, like the concentration camp/music box scene at the end of The Big Red One, is extremely moving and is wonderfully atypical of his bluntness and stylistic bombast. if you're into Fuller, i would also recommend Park Row, if you haven't seen it yet.

[Ragged_Clown]

there's a sense in which his reckless lifestyle is intertwined with his genius. and it seems to be taken for granted that his kind of grand ambition and egoism could never become a stable Hollywood director. from what i know of him, it's hard for me to imagine his career turning out differently. he just doesn't strike me as the kind of man who could ever have settled down and struck a compromise with the industry.

That's entirely possible. Hollywood was never really kind to that kind of genius -- Sternberg and Stroheim strike me as similar artists and they had the same kind of problems with their careers. As much as I adore Classic Hollywood and think it was an amazing system, there were definitely some casualties along the way.

i'm going to see The Big Trail very soon. High Sierra has been on my list for a while, and i'm also extremely eager to see The Thief of Bagdad, which seems to be his most lauded silent. i also own The Lawless Breed in a pretty fine Western set. speaking of Walsh Westerns, have you seen Along the Great Divide?

The Thief of Bagdad is his most famous surviving silent, definitely. Regeneration has it's share of supporters too, though. One of the earliest gangster films. Scorsese is a huge fan. And yeah I've seen Along the Great Divide. It's well worth watching, but I don't think it's one of his best works.

i had several chances to see 13 too, but Miike just wasn't on my radar at all at the time. i'll add all those to my list (a friend of mine really enjoys The Happiness of the Katakuris). also, the Miike film i hear about most is Ichi the Killer. do you recommend it? also any comparison to Pierrot le fou (one of my favorites) is enough to sell me on anything.

I've never seen anybody else make the Godard comparison except for Big Bang Love, but I've always felt there were some similarities, and Dead or Alive 2 is one of the most Godardian of all of his films. The ending, especially, which becomes moving because of a gesture on the part of Miike himself, who makes his authorial presence in the film felt very directly -- you'll understand when you watch it. And I was skeptical about Happiness and avoided it long after I'd become a Miike convert because it looked like the kind of movie that was calculated to shock, but it's really not perverse or mean-spirited or anything like that at all. It's actually a really sweet-natured movie, and the humor is not so much dark and twisted as it is goofy and strange (a book could and should be written about Miike's sense of humor).

Ichi the Killer is an interesting film. I think he was attempting a kind of essay film on the nature and expectations of movie violence. It's difficult to explain without spoiling it, but it's definitely more than just an incredibly violent and over-the-top yakuza film. I'm not sure he was entirely successful, though. The movie is all over the map tonally, and whatever he's trying to say gets a little lost in the sheer force of the violent imagery. Not one of my favorites, but it is a key film for him.

Midnight looks excellent. curiously, i've read that both Sturges and Wilder were unhappy with Leisen's adaptations of their material, which is one of the factors that spurred each of them into directing.

Wilder was particularly critical of him, I believe, and I think he even made some nasty comments about Leisen's homosexuality. I think a lot of it was just frustration that they had to hand their material over to someone else, especially someone who perhaps didn't have the same feel for comedy that they themselves did (Wilder certainly had no problems handing his scripts over to Lubitsch). I've heard a story that Leisen dropped a scene from a Wilder script because an actor objected to it, and this infuriated Wilder. Sturges was I think a little less critical, but he had been wanting to direct in Hollywood for years. I know he was upset initially with Remember the Night, but I think part of this was because he had apparently been told by the producer that he would be able to direct it. Instead the project was handed to Leisen and Sturges was predictably bitter. I do remember reading that this was the only film he wrote but didn't direct that he ended up owning a print of, which suggests he warmed to it over time.

yeah i'm aware of the MoC DVD. i wish i had more incentive to order their DVDs (i only own their amazing Dr. Mabuse set) when i can just grab a torrent. we'll see though. also Forty Guns is super amazing. like The Big Red One, it reminds me how elegant Fuller can be at his very best (the beautiful funeral sequence, like the concentration camp/music box scene at the end of The Big Red One, is extremely moving and is wonderfully atypical of his bluntness and stylistic bombast. if you're into Fuller, i would also recommend Park Row, if you haven't seen it yet.

For what its worth, MoC is one of the labels most deserving of support. The quality is superb -- Criterion level -- and every sale counts for their titles. They released a priceless set of Naruse films that had the promising subtitle "Volume 1." But Volume 2 has never come and looks like it never will, and Volume 1 is now out of print. That's a direct result of a lack of sales, of course. The industry is really hurting right now, and these small companies releasing niche titles are feeling the brunt of it -- they've promised more Epstein so long as Coeur fidčle sells, but I'm not sure how well it is. Anyway, I'm definitely not trying to be preachy or anything, but if you're looking for an incentive to toss some business their way, there it is.

And yeah, Park Row is actually my favorite Fuller. Love love love that film.

[TheForbiddenDonut]

all that about MoC makes me feel terrible. you single-handedly inspired me to order the two Sirks on that label + Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together. i'm probably gonna order a ton of stuff from Olive Films later this summer as well.

Park Row is also my favorite Fuller, with Pickup on South Street, Forty Guns, and The Big Red One close behind it. Fuller's one of my all-time favorites.

too exhausted to respond at length to anything else, but i will definitely be taking all your recs into account. thanks!

[Ragged_Clown]

all that about MoC makes me feel terrible. you single-handedly inspired me to order the two Sirks on that label + Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together. i'm probably gonna order a ton of stuff from Olive Films later this summer as well.

Ha. Well that certainly wasn't my intention! I didn't mean to come off as lecturing or whatever -- I've pirated my share of media over the years, so I'm not about to get self-righteous about it. They're a great company, though, and I'm probably a little more invested in their success than other labels because the people who run/created it are regular posters at a movie board I frequent. It's a real labor of love for them. If you decide to pick up anything else from them, usually the cheapest option is to order directly from them at www.eurekavideo.co.uk/offers/offers.html -- they post monthly sales that often have great prices (with free worldwide shipping), and they're a pleasure to deal with.

All of the Olive Films stuff are at pretty decent prices over at importcds.com, by the way.

[TheForbiddenDonut]

lol, it's not that i feel guilty, just that it really makes me sad when such excellent companies aren't doing well financially, and as one of the minority of folks who is definitely interested in what they're selling, there's no reason why i shouldn't send something their way every so often instead of doing so much torrenting. also i've been putting off making a purchase for ages and your post pushed me over the edge.

which movie board, if you don't mind my asking?

[Ragged_Clown]

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/

[TheForbiddenDonut]

ah, thought so. i've browsed there before, but never joined. the level of technical knowledge that a lot of the members there have is a bit daunting to me.

also thanks a lot for the tip on importcds. Olive has a lot of great stuff coming soon, like those two 70s Godards and Johnny Guitar.

[Ragged_Clown]

ah, thought so. i've browsed there before, but never joined. the level of technical knowledge that a lot of the members there have is a bit daunting to me.

It's an interesting board. There's a lot of stimulating discussion there, and it's an amazing one-stop source of DVD/Blu Ray related news and information. Some of the better posters have left over the last couple of years for whatever reason, unfortunately.

also thanks a lot for the tip on importcds. Olive has a lot of great stuff coming soon, like those two 70s Godards and Johnny Guitar.

Yep, and there's going to be even more coming out. They've licensed the Republic catalogue from Paramount, which is really exciting -- perhaps The Sun Shines Bright will finally surface. If you order anything from importcds make sure to use the code to get an extra 10% off (SAVE10 or something like that). The shipping's pretty steep there but it still comes out to 50+% off the retail price of the Olives.

[jet]

Yep, and there's going to be even more coming out. They've licensed the Republic catalogue from Paramount, which is really exciting -- perhaps The Sun Shines Bright will finally surface.

woah i didn't know this. i would probably piss my pants with excitement if The Sun Shines Bright and The Quiet Man got blu-ray releases

[Ragged_Clown]

woah i didn't know this. i would probably piss my pants with excitement if The Sun Shines Bright and The Quiet Man got blu-ray releases

They've got the rights to them, and they've already announced Rio Grande for Blu (along with several other Republic titles -- Johnny Guitar, Force of Evil,etc.), so hopefully we'll get them before too long. It'd just be a matter of having decent source material. There was a bizarre dust-up over the last couple of days on the Criterion forum linked a few posts ago that involved somebody associated with Olive in some capacity, and he basically stated that due to some over-the-top criticism of the quality of their release of Ingmar Bergman's Face to Face, they're no longer releasing anything if the print quality is less-than-ideal. He explicitly said the company is sitting on Nicholas Ray's "The Savage Innocents" for this reason. The Lionsgate DVD of The Quiet Man looks brutal -- completely destroying a gorgeously shot movie -- which leads me to believe it's in need of restoration. So I'm not optimistic about that one, but we'll see.

[jet]

yeah the Quiet Man dvd i watched was pure shit. doesn't ruin the film of course, you can still tell it's absolutely gorgeous and up there with Ford's best but watching it just makes you want to see it in decent quality. i wouldn't know if the poor quality of it is only cuz it's from a low quality transfer or if the available prints are actually really bad but if what you say is the case then that's a real shame. i wouldn't be surprised if the source needs to be spiffed up a little but from what i remember the dvd just looks like a crappy telecine job or whatever cuz the problems weren't scratches or duplication grain or whatever you'd be able to see on a decent transfer of a poor source. but i really know practically nothing about that kind of stuff so yeah

i would buy it even if they just scanned whatever is available though cuz man that dvd sucks. at least we're getting Johnny Guitar, which is probably my favorite Ray

[celinasinha]

My favorite Movies are:-

1.The Dilemma

2.Company Men

3.No Strings Attached

4.The Mechanic

5. The Roommate

[Lionel Hutz]

I'm bumping this as we somehow haven't had a thread about it recently

[LarryTheBarfly]

Well since it is bumped, I'll chime in.....

In no order (off the top of my head)

-The Fugitive
-First Blood
-The Dark Knight
-Jason and the Argonauts
-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
-Jackie Brown
-That Thing You Do!
-The Lion King
-Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
-TMNT (1990)

[The Thompsons]

That's also an interesting list.

[D DEBBS]

Favorite film: Carrie (1976)

Favorite Comedy: Dr. Strangelove

Favorite director: Quentin Jerome (yes, it's Jerome...I read his bio on-line) Tarantino

favorite animated film: My Neighbor Totoro