#37- The Departed

Quick recap: The film takes place in Boston, where a big time mobster-Frank Costello- owns the place. He does all the stereotypical things like murder people, snort cocaine and have his way with women. The story centers around two cops, one of whom is a mole for Costello and one who is in Costello’s gang, but is a mole for the police. With a synopsis like that, you know it won’t end well.

Fun (?) Fact: The film is actually a remake of the Hong Kong film, ‘Internal Affairs’ and the characters are loosely based off of real life mobster Whitey Bulger.

don’t cross this guy. Also- is that a goat or a dog?

My thoughts: I don’t know what it is about Americans loving the mafia, but it’s definitely a thing. Maybe it’s because the mobster life is so far removed from our own or maybe it’s because deep down, beyond all the murders and drugs, these guys just seem sort of badass. I’m only a casual fan of mafia culture, meaning ‘The Sopranos’ is my favorite tv show of all time but I have yet to see ‘The Godfather’. With that being said, as a casual fan, this movie is perfection.

For one thing, the actors did an amazing job making the characters come alive. Jack Nicholson was the perfect choice to play a murderous, unhinged mobster. Same with Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen playing members of the Boston Police. But the actor that really shone for me was Leonardo DiCaprio. His character was especially complex, seeing as how he had to be a mole for the police and yet convince Costello to let him in to his inner circle. I loved watching his downward spiral as he got closer to being found out by Costello. And in my opinion, his character had more to lose. Matt Damn played Sullivan, the cop who was also a mole for Costello. If he had been found out he would’ve had to look forward to jail time at most. Bill Costigan, played by DiCaprio would’ve at the very least been murdered. Being able to portray such a complicated character takes real talent.

As for the violence, I don’t see how someone can do a mafia movie without a large body count. This movie in particular had a final count of 22. What I really like about The Departed, though, is how realistic the violence is. No one has a chance to plead for their life or scream or threaten anyone. One shot and it’s over. I especially loved the final scenes with Sullivan and Corrigan. The whole movie had been leading up to this point and to see everyone get what is coming to them, good and bad, is perfectly poetic.

Final review: 5/5. It’s hard to say whether I prefer The Soprano’s view of the mafia or The Departed, but I love it either way.

Up next: Frenzy

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#35- Tsotsi

Quick recap: Tsotsi is a leader of a gang that spends its time robbing and killing people to get what they want. After doing some pretty messed up stuff, Tsotsi takes it further by shooting a woman, stealing her car and then driving away, only to realize there is a baby in the backseat. He makes a decision to abandon the baby but then changes his mind and decides to raise it. It’s like 3 Men and a Baby, except with a lot more violence and the baby almost dying.

The movies are much more similar if you are the kind of person to misunderstand movies and hate Tom Selleck

Fun (?) Fact:

The soundtrack was so interesting to listen to! I’d never heard this style before but it really adds to the mood of the film.

My thoughts: This movie was so hard to watch. I knew it wasn’t going to be a field of flowers and kittens but I wasn’t expecting something so bleak. The film takes place in a slum in Johannesburg, South Africa where crime is rampant and everyone is just trying to survive. The main characters in the film are so bad. In the first few scenes, they stalk a businessman onto his train and then crowd around him. They warn him that they are going to take his money and then one guy pulls out a very sharp, thin ice pick and shoves it into the man, killing him almost instantly. It’s such a cold way to die. One of the members confronts Tsotsi after the ordeal, saying that it makes him sick to kill someone like that. He is severely beaten for this. The point is, as bad as these guys are, they are also trying to survive, like everyone else.

Tsotsi is such a complex character. He seems emotionless at the beginning and yet he starts to crack a little after killing the businessman. After deciding not to abandon the baby after the carjacking, Tsotsi shows that he needs to feel a sense of love and belonging, just like everyone else. But after growing up in the slum, he doesn’t have the skills to care for a child. The baby is constantly crying, and after trial and error he realizes that he is hungry. In the only way he knows how, Tsotsi pulls a gun on a woman with a baby and forces her to breastfeed. It is her compassion and kindness to the baby that brings him to start to remember things about his own childhood.

It is revealed that Tsotsi’s real name is David and he once had a home with a mother and father. In one flashback, David’s mother is dying and she wants to hold his hand for comfort. His father comes in and orders David to go away. He runs and hides from his father and then watches in horror as his father viciously kicks his pet dog and breaks its back. It’s almost unbearable to watch this scene. David runs away and goes to live in a pile of cement cylinders.

showing the baby where Tsotsi came from

In the end, Tsotsi makes the right decision to return the baby back to his parents. Although the plot itself is riveting, it is the actors who really make the movie shine. Their performances are so authentic that it was hard to remind myself that this was only a movie and not a documentary. On a personal level, this movie made me really think about the kids I teach. Many of them grow up in unimaginable situations and it’s easy to forget that beyond the tough exterior is just a child who wants what we all want. The film is a great reminder that although there is plenty of evil in the world, there is compassion and decency to do the right thing.

Final review: 5/5. If you can stand the violence, this is required viewing.

Up next: A Fish Called Wanda

#33- The Ascent

Quick recap: The movie centers around two Soviet Partisans who go off in search of food for their group. Along the way, they are captured by Nazis and interrogated. And then everyone dies, except one guy who tries to kill himself but is unsuccessful. I’m not a fan of spoiling movies, but if you are looking for a good war movie where everyone is saved at the last second by their troop, this ain’t it.

~~Fun (?) Fact:~~ Depressing fact: The director of this film, Larisa Shepitko, died in a car accident a couple of years after ‘The Ascent’ was released, so this was her last movie.

My thoughts: In case the hint hasn’t been picked up yet, I’ll just go ahead and say that this was a DEPRESSING movie. Depressing in the sense that after it finally ended, I curled up in a ball and regretted ever doing this list, but then I looked at cat pictures and felt a little better. I’m still going to need a few years of therapy.

As I have stated before, I don’t like to look up information about the movie before watching it ,so all I had to go on was that 1) this is a war movie and in the war movies I have seen, everything is gritty but then people get rescued and the Americans always come out on top. GO USA. and 2) the movie is called ‘The Ascent’, which I took to mean that the Soviets would climb out of their situation and everything would be ok. Boy, was I wrong. The film is in black and white and most of the scenery consists of snow and trees. There is barely any music, except when someone is about to be tortured or about to die. That alone would be depressing enough but then there are the characters. Besides the partisans, the Nazis capture an old man who has been working for them but who they no longer trust, a woman who helped hide the two men and who has young children to care for by herself, and a child. One of the partisans decides to step up and admit that he orchestrated everything but of course that does no good. The other partisan begs for his life and is allowed to join the Nazi police. He is immediately told to help walk the prisoners, his friends, to the gallows where he puts a noose around everyone’s neck and helps them to be executed. Seeing his terrible choice, he attempts to hang himself several times but is unable to die. He considers escaping but knows he would be shot dead on the spot so he is left to endure staying at this camp.

I think what got under my skin the most was the lack of violence and torture shown. At one point, one of the partisans has a star branded into his chest. I was thankful to not have to watch that but instead the camera focused on his face which was so much worse. In the scene at the gallows as everyone is hung, the camera focuses on a young child forced to witness the deaths. As he sees everyone hanging, he sheds a tear and it’s just awful. I don’t claim to know much about war movies but this different perspective combined with the saddest ending ever, makes for me, a more realistic view of war. Nowadays, directors try to top each other with the goriness but this movie, made in 1977 does the opposite and creates scenes I can’t get out of my head.

The most poignant part of the film was the scene in which the interrogator kept trying to get information and the partisan only answered in response, ‘What were you before the war?’ It was a question I had never thought about before, that the Nazis were, at some point, regular people with regular jobs and families, not the monsters that they eventually became. War is hell, y’all.

Final review: 5/5. I really wanted to give ‘The Ascent’ a 1 because it bothered me so much, but that’s precisely why it needs a 5. Schindler’s List is seen as the go to ‘World War 2’ movie, but my vote is for this one as essential viewing.

Up next: Metropolis

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#31- Splendor in the Grass

Quick Recap: Girl and Boy date. Girl loves Boy, and Boy doesn’t know what he feels except horniness. Boy breaks up with Girl because of said horniness and Girl goes insane. Both lower their expectations significantly and marry other people. A classic tale of romance, indeed!

Memes are hilarious still……right?

Fun(?) Fact: In real life, the actor who plays Warren Beatty’s father is only 13 years older than Beatty. It must have been a very hard 13 years.

I don’t even.

My thoughts: Sex is bad and you should never have it unless you are married. Then again, Deanie, played by Natalie Wood, refused to put out and she ended up in a mental asylum. So…..sex is good! Have lots of it and with lots of different guys! And everyone knows that the best place to meet young suitors is your oil tycoon father’s New Year’s Eve party. That’s what Bud’s sister, Ginny, did! But she also died in a car accident years later, which no one was surprised by. So who the hell knows what the point of this movie is?

Trying to start an orgy with your brother just a few feet away is the classiest way to go

When the synopsis of the movie included the word melodrama, I curled up into a little ball while nightmare-ish visions of ‘Written on the Wind‘ danced around my head. But, while that movie’s ‘melodrama’ consisted of nothing more than a guy going crazy because he couldn’t have children, this one took the description and owned it. SO.MUCH. MELODRAMA.

The point is driven home so many times how much Deanie is in love with Bud. She has pictures of him plastered to her wall and kisses them goodnight often. Instead of paying attention in class, she spends the time doodling her name over and over again with Bud’s last name attached. She patiently waits in his car while he finishes football practice. That kind of adoration will never end well. As for Bud, I think he loved Deanie too, but he also wanted to get in her pants so it was hard to tell. And speaking of getting into pants, Deanie’s mom was all over who was and was not in her pants. She has several conversations with the poor girl about not going too far because it would ‘spoil’ her and no man wants that. And for added proof we see the high school slut that all guys sleep with because they don’t want to ‘spoil’ their girlfriends. Despite all the over the top emotion about love, Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty acted so perfectly and natural that I could see various people I knew from high school in this same exact situation.

Beatty and Wood did such a superb job making their characters likeable and able to be sympathized with that I kept hoping they might end up together. Even though that would’ve been a very bad idea indeed. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending with the two of them marrying other people except that I guess teenage love is fleeting and even though it sucks when it ends, we all move on at some point. And if we can’t move on, we get shipped to the mental asylum.

Final Review: 4/5. I’m still not a fan of melodrama but I loved the actors and was especially impressed by Pat Hingle, who played Bud’s father. He was so intense and real that I would watch the movie for his performance alone. Also, I had no idea Warren Beatty looked like this:

oh my.

Up next: The Host at Alamo Drafthouse. It’s going to be a good one!

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1001 Movie Nights

Tag Archives: drama

#37- The Departed

#35- Tsotsi

#33- The Ascent

#31- Splendor in the Grass

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