Tag Archives: drama

#225-Closely Watched Trains

Quick recap:  A young man wants to lose his virginity but his inadequacy to perform is an issue. And also Hitler. Hitler ruins everything.

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Not sure why the girls weren’t all over him 😦

Fun (?)fact: According to IMDb, “Iva Janzurová turned down the part of Zdenicka Svatá, eventually played by Jitka Zelenohorská.”

MIND. BLOWN.

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This stamp scene. Oh my.

My thoughts: I thought France’s portrayal of teenagers took the ‘wtf’ cake, what with their sexual fluidity and sleeping with their mothers, but NO, Czechoslovakia has to burst in and ruin the whole thing for everyone. This is why we can’t have nice things, you guys.

Although the setting and characters are a little odd (Milos is an apprentice train conductor during World War II), the story itself is very relatable. Basically, Milos wants to get laid and even has a girl (Masa) who practically strips every time she sees him, but he doesn’t really want to make the effort to go through with it. Instead, he spends his time lamenting over how horrible life is, which is actually pretty accurate for teens these days. When he finally gets the chance to sleep with Masa, he orgasms early and both of them treat it like the world has just ended and Milos might as well go kill himself for sucking so badly. Which he does. But then a doctor tells him that premature ejaculation isn’t a big deal and he needs a ‘more experienced woman’ to help him out. As dramatic as Milos was (he definitely would’ve fit in at Degrassi), I liked him and wanted him to reach his goal. He does finally find a woman to help him out and everything is groovy. Masa even returns and forgives him and wants to try and sleep with him again.  Happy ending, right? And all totally relatable up until the point that Milos gets shot dead by Germans and his body carried off on a train, which subsequently explodes.

So, besides the ending, most of the movie was pretty funny. The other people working at the train station are bumbling idiots that try to help Milos by giving him advice, but who ultimately fail to fix anything. There was one scene where a conductor and receptionist have an encounter, where he ends up stamping her butt with official seals. The next morning the girl’s mother finds the stamps and parades her around town, showing her butt to anyone who will pay attention. She is angry that her daughter has been taken advantage of, but the girl loves the attention and finds the whole situation hilarious. For a movie that ends so tragically, I think it still holds up as a rather accurate portrayal of teenage life, if just a little dramatic.

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Final review: 4/5

Up next: Amadeus

 

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#224- 8 1/2

Quick recap: An acclaimed Italian director has lost interest in his upcoming movie, even though everyone needs him to wrap it up. 8 1/2 refers to the number of movies director Federico Fellini had made up until this point.

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I need this poster.

Fun (?) fact: As was the style with most Italian films at the time, sound was dubbed in afterwards. Fellini had the actors say random lines throughout the movie and then wrote the dialogue later.

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I also need Marcello Mastroianni, who played Guido Anselmi

My thoughts: Milestones are a lot of fun for me to celebrate on this blog, like the time I hit 200 movies or the time I watched Shawshank Redemption for the first time. And now, I’ve finally reached another momentous event-I have an opinion about director Federico Fellini! I watch Juliet of the Spirits a couple of months ago but now that I’ve seen two films of his, I think that entitles me to an opinion, and here it is:

He’s alright.

But really, I liked 8 1/2 much more than I liked Juliet of the Spirits. Juliet I think is more aesthetically pleasing while 8 1/2 has more that I can relate to. Not that I am a famed Italian director (as far as you know), but I understand lack of motivation and all the things that distract me from finishing what I start. Fellini got it too, and managed to turn this basic concept into a work of art. In the film, Guido Anselmi wants to direct a Science Fiction film but with slightly autobiographical characters. Everyone relies on him to make decisions (probably because he is the director), which just leads to him putting off tasks even more. He retreats further into his thoughts and his past as the movie progresses, which don’t help him to finish anything.

There’s a lot about 8 1/2 that I just didn’t get, mainly the religious stuff, but I loved the characters and how Anselmi treated all of them equally horrible- his mistress Carla, his wife Luisa, the Saraghina-a rough woman who did the rumba on the beach. But at the same time, Anselmi is so charming that it is hard to hate him for too long. I’m sure that if I watched 8 1/2 a few more times, it would mean even more to me, but I just don’t have time for that. For a first viewing, it’s still a damn fine movie.

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Final review: 4/5. All That Jazz got inspiration from this movie, which makes me appreciate it even more.

Up next: Who knows? Head on over to this list and pick out something for me to watch. Or not. It’s your life, after all.

 

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#222- Se7en

Quick recap: A serial killer uses the seven deadly sins as a motive to murder people

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Fun (?) fact: All of John Doe’s books were real, written just for the film. They took two months to complete, which is the estimated time Somerset said it would take to read them.

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It’s just never a good idea to mention how close you are to retirement

My thoughts: Se7en is a good movie in that, ‘I’m into serial killers, but not INTO serial killers’ kind of way. I love me a well done murder mystery (despite having never seen CSI or Law and Order), and this movie satisfies all the things I love about the genre: creative death, a sarcastic detective and a fascinating journey to the library.

The biggest aspect that separates Se7en from other crime movies is that it manages to make the villain an actual villain. Hannibal Lecter is a gruesome killer, yet somehow I found myself rooting for him. This guy (John Doe)  was so insane and the murders so brutal that I was 100% on the cops’ side. I also liked that there wasn’t a storyline to delve into John Doe’s past and explain what made him do the things he did. Dude’s a lunatic and that’s all there is to it.

Despite the creativity of the murders, the rest of the movie is your run of the mill police procedural. There’s even a montage of Somerset and Mills analyzing the clues separately, their stereotypes brightly on display. Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is a hardened detective, literally 6 days from retirement while his partner Mills  (played by Brad Pitt) is the cocky young detective who throws Somerset for a loop. It’s like the Odd Couple, but more boring because the two figure out they need each other pretty quick. The mystery of who’s the killer is solved rather easily and I was relieved that it wasn’t anyone we had already been introduced to. For the couple of people who haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil the it. All I’ll say is that the case isn’t wrapped up as nicely as you think it is.

Another reason that sets this movie apart from others of its kind is its darkness. There is no happy ending (sorry, SPOILER ALERT) and I was left on my own to search for meaning- Is it that we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t? Is it that sometimes when you feel you have triumphed you have really lost? Or is it that despite Brad Pitt being a beautiful man, even he can’t pull off a goatee and frosted tips? The mystery endures.

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Final review: 4/5. It’s definitely a gruesome film and not one I’m going to go out and buy on DVD any time soon.

Up next: 8 1/2

 

 

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#218- Detour

Quick Recap: There are many reasons why hitchhiking is a bad idea, one of them being that you might be accused of murder.

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Or it might be Rodney Dangerfield. You just never know!

Fun (?) fact: Tom Neal, who played the main character Al, was convicted of killing his wife in 1965. I’d add something witty here, but that’s just sad and Tom Neal was an asshole.

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Tom Neal is an example of someone you wouldn’t want to pick up.

My thoughts: As I have most likely mentioned before (but am currently too lazy to verify), I have an extreme fear of being accused of a crime I didn’t commit. There are some people who go so far as to save all their receipts for the sole purpose of having an alibi in case they are in a situation that would warrant it, but (as mentioned before) I’m too lazy to do that. Plus, knowing my luck, if I did keep all of my receipts and was accused of a crime, the prosecution would probably use that as evidence that not only was I guilty, but that it was premeditated. And exhibit B would probably be this entire paragraph, so it’s for the best that I get on with the review and stop incriminating myself.

So…..Detour. IMDb calls this film one of the best B-movies ever made, which, on the surface sounds like an oxymoron. I get it, though. Director Edgar G.Ulmer had a very small budget and instead of trying to create what would’ve been really bad scenery, he just had fun with it. Case in point, the beginning of the movie shows Al hitchhiking his way west and later heading east. There wasn’t a budget to show both directions, so Ulmer simply reversed the film. The result is Al hitching with his left thumb and riding in cars where the driver is on the right side. There are also many scenes where Al is staring off into the distance as his voice explains what he is thinking. Low budget, yes, but the story is simple enough to have not needed an expensive set.

The main plot of the film is about as outlandish as you might expect: Al hitchhikes to LA to reunite with his girlfriend and along the way gets picked up by a really rich guy. The rich guy dies and Al realizes that if he calls the police, it’s going to look really suspicious. So he instead buries the body, switches identities and continues on his way. Being the idiot that he is, Al picks up his own hitchhiker, who just happens to be a woman that knew the dead rich guy and now she is in on what happened. The two fight about what to do and in one of the best (worst?) scenes I’ve encountered on this list, the woman locks herself in a hotel room to call the police on Al. On the other side of the door, Al pulls as hard as he can on the phone cord and when that doesn’t work, kicks down the door. That’s when he finds the cord wrapped around the woman’s neck and she too is dead. Rotten luck, indeed. It’s such a wonderfully silly story, but somehow, it works. The acting wasn’t great but it didn’t need to be to get the point across.

Final review: 4/5. And thanks to the Hayes code which stipulates that murderers aren’t allowed to get away with their crimes, Al is picked up at the end of the movie and brought to justice.

Up next: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

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