Day Thirteen: Big Fish

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #201
Year: 2003
Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Ewan McGregor and Billy Crudup

This is going to be a quick post because a) I have some things to do before I leave for Cleveland and b) my mind is completely preoccupied because the reason I'm going to Cleveland is to see Iron Maiden. Still, this was my favorite movie of all time for a while when I was like 15, so I guess I should give it a decent treatment.

I'll say the same thing when I get around to writing about Ed Wood, but Tim Burton is at his best here. He's using his Terry Gilliam-esque imagination to create a lush fantasy world – he's better at that than even Gilliam, methinks – without succumbing to the temptation to make into something marketable as a t-shirt at Hot Topic. He's playful and expansive without using white makeup, eyeliner and black leather. Whether this is "true" Burton in the eyes of his fans, I have no idea, but it's certainly his best movie. He even stays the hell away from Johnny Depp for long enough to shoot a movie (Helena Bonham-Carter still appears).

The reason that I've shied away from this movie as of late is how derivative it is of every movie that ever used vignettes to tell a story. It's done interestingly to the degree that we see the actual representation of how tall tales are told – the scene where time literally stands still when Ed meets his future wife at the circus is done beautifully – but it's hard to think of this as anything but Forrest Gump with magic. Still, Burton's deft sleight of hand convinces us to keep watching, and anything that manages to be entertaining at least within its own idiom is worthwhile.

Big Fish also holds the distinction of being one of, like, five movies that have made me cry. SPOILERS: When Ed dies and his son is there with him after all his doubts and resentment and it all falls away because he realizes the one story that Ed told that was true was that he was dying, it was way too much for 14-year-old me to handle, and I cried. That scene is still poignant, even if it no longer evokes my tears.

Maybe it means something that this was my favorite movie of all time when I was 15 but now I wouldn't even let it sniff my top 25. But maybe that something is that this movie hits kids because they're less cynical, and this is a beautiful movie. I'll show it to one of my little siblings and find out (not really).

The Good: When Ed tells his tall tales and we see the actual associated visual, it's always gorgeous, and again, Burton beating Gilliam at his own game. Honorable mention to the fact that this movie basically introduced the world to Billy Crudup and Marion Cotillard, who have both become reasons to go to the movies in their own right.

The Bad: Very derivative. By 2003, this movie didn't really need to be made. It was, and it was good, but still.

The Skinny: I can't possibly dub a movie that used to be my #1 unworthy of #201, so hell yes, it belongs.

Day Twelve: The Lives of Others

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #57
Year: 2006
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Starring: Sebastian Koch and Ulrich Mühe

I should preface my thoughts on this movie with a few things: I visited Europe in the summer of 2008, and of all the cities I spent time in, I spent the longest in Berlin. Of the time I spent in Berlin, I spent the most time in East Berlin. While I was in East Berlin, my group visited the Stasi Museum. This was a profound experience for me – both because one of my teachers fell in love with the tour guide ("Stasi girl," as we called her. Note to all: if you fall in love with a woman, learn her name.) but also because the experience was truly chilling. We learned that it was very likely that one in every two East Berliners in the 1980s were informants for State Security. We saw the brilliant ways Stasi agents would put homes and vehicles under surveillance – a watering can with a camera in the spout was the most memorable. To think that this kind of widespread spying of a government on its own people was happening so recently in the Western world is kind of astonishing, but reality is indeed stranger than fiction.

Another profound lesson I learned from the Germans I got to know while I was in their country was that they, unlike so many Americans, are willing to admit their past faults and condemn them with a heavy hand. If the American Civil War happened in Germany, the countless rednecks with Confederate flags on their trucks would be paying steep fines for their so-called free expression. The fascinating information I learned at the Stasi Museum in Berlin, paired with my understanding of the German people's willingness to condemn their nation's ugly past sins, made me very excited to see The Lives of Others, the debut film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. I knew the movie was about 1980s East Berlin and the stranglehold that the Stasi had on it, and I knew it was the kind of movie that could only be made by a German, in the German language, shot in Germany, and starring German actors. Any outside influence would serve only to make the whole experience less authentic.

Unsurprisingly, The Lives of Others is amazing. Immediately after it ended, my first thought was that this was the best German film I'd ever seen. My second thought was that it was the best foreign film I'd ever seen. In 140 bold minutes, von Donnersmarck transcended the best works of Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, and others for me. I'm not sure if I still have that opinion now that I've come down from it a bit, but I certainly don't think it's a ridiculous declaration.

The movie operates on two main levels: as a psychological examination of the watcher/watched relationship, and as a criticism of totalitarian rule and the flaws inherent in that system. The latter has been done a million times by a million writers, but the former brings up a more interesting series of questions. The combination of the two makes for one of the most fascinating premises for a movie that I've ever known.

I'm not going to bother with names for this synopsis since they are German and I would stumble upon them just typing them out, but in short, a playwright thought to be loyal is put under surveillance by the Stasi on a gut feeling that he may be disloyal, when the Stasi agent put in charge of snooping on him becomes sympathetic towards him and doesn't turn in any of the concrete evidence that the has against him. There's plenty more, including an important arc involving the playwright's actress girlfriend, who is a Stasi informant, but that's the general gist. The story itself is brilliantly told, but the film really shines as a study of characters – normal people, all – forced to live in a society that thinks it normal to spy on one's significant other and turn them in to be imprisoned if the situation sees fit. There's plenty of cynical German commentary on how they once were, and again, only Germany could make this film as powerful as it is.

Maybe I sound like a typical white American college-age snob when I say that I "get" this movie because I spent time in East Berlin, but I truly believe it. The fabric of that place is so indelibly stamped on The Lives of Others that I can hardly imagine enjoying it even half as much if I had never visited there. That being said, even that half-enjoyment would be enough to make this movie a masterpiece.

The Good: How incredibly German it is. I've harped on it already, but it couldn't be much more German, and that is its strength. Somehow I don't think calling Blue Collar Comedy Tour "incredibly American" would put it in the same category.

The Bad: HGW XX/7's character arc is a bit rushed. We don't really see how he goes from ruthless, cold-blooded Stasi company man to the guy who lets Dreyman get away with publishing an article about how East Germany causes suicide and then covers it up. It would be nice to know what the hell happened there.

The Skinny: Deserves its place. Unfortunately, "foreign" is not one of the genres that IMDb lets you sort lists by (And rightly so, "foreign" isn't a true genre, but that's another rant for another time), but if it were, I would expect to see The Lives of Others in the top ten. And it would deserve it.

Day Eleven: The Dark Knight

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #11
Year: 2008
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale and Heath Ledger

If Toy Story 3 is 2010's controversial list-ascender, then The Dark Knight is 2008's – and possibly the first truly shit-stirring one of all time. To summarize a two-year old story, The Dark Knight stormed into theaters on a swell of hype surrounding Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker which may or may not have killed him, it was universally loved, everyone got trigger-happy with awarding a 10/10 on the IMDb, and it was in the Top 10 within a couple of days. Some people said this was ridiculous and evidence that the Top 250 was useless, cooler heads said it would drop over time. Well, two years later and it dropped a little, but is still the eleventh greatest movie of all time. Is this right?

In short: hell fucking yes. I'm about to go on a tirade, but if you have good taste in movies, you won't complain with a single word that I say. If you can't get behind a brilliantly crafted, dark movie about Batman that unequivocally destroys just about every comic ever written about the Caped Crusader, you don't have a soul. If you don't like watching career performances by Christian Bale ("Batman voice" notwithstanding), Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, and above all, Heath Ledger, who deserved the posthumous Oscar he received for his role a thousand times over, then you don't deserve to have eyes. If you didn't jump the first time you saw the Joker's pencil trick, you shouldn't be going to the movies. Basically, if you can't see the merit in The Dark Knight being among the Top 250 movies of all time, you're crazy.

The people who complain about its high position are the same people complaining about Toy Story 3's high position. They probably all work for the American Film Institute – which, by the way, is a stronghold of backwards, conservative cinematic evil. The logic for wanting to keep The Dark Knight out of the top ten is the same logic that says the screenplay to Casablanca will never be bested so we might as well all stop trying. It's a logic that precludes any action movie, summer blockbuster, or, God forbid, comic book movie from ever being good enough to earn the kind of praise that The Dark Knight has earned. The only problem with this is that all the praise that the film has earned – and there have been heaps of it – has been completely justified. It is one of the most awe-inspiring achievements in the history of cinema, sacrificing none of its enormous visual and mythological scope in its quest for getting great performances from its cast and telling a great story with images and words. I hate to name-call, but the only people who can't appreciate this movie are elitist snobs, and that's coming from an elitist snob.

The Good: Heath Ledger's performance stands out as the best thing about the movie, but really everything about it is fantastic.

The Bad: Uh...I got nothing. Seriously, hate to be a fan boy, but what's not great about this movie? The Batman voice, I guess?

The Skinny: Deserves its spot. Would probably be even higher than #11 in my personal canon.

Day Ten: Million Dollar Baby

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #145
Year: 2004
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank

Alright, this is going to be a fairly short post as I am quite tired. I'll lead off with the kicker: This is probably my least favorite Clint Eastwood movie that I've seen, considering both acting and directing. However, it's the one that makes me respect him the most, because you can feel him stretching his limits and operating outside of his comfort zone. For a guy who cut his teeth in spaghetti westerns, had his most famous role as a rogue cop, won his first directing Oscar with a western, and inspires cries of "Whoa, badass!" in every performance, a movie where he plays a boxing trainer – albeit a somewhat grizzled and hardened one – who (gasp!) cries and is faced with the decision of whether to pull the plug on the person he loves most in the world is miles outside of the box. That alone deserves commendation.

While I was very impressed by Million Dollar Baby, I simply enjoyed watching it less than other Clint flicks. It caught me somewhat off guard. Maybe I shouldn't be so anxious to compare movies to other works by their stars and directors, though. If we let Million Dollar Baby stand on its own as a singular entity and lose all the baggage of the man behind it, it holds up a lot better. It's a little Oscar-baiting, sure, but it's still very good. Hilary Swank is great as a boxer who came from nothing only to return to it after a title bout paralyzes her, and she probably deserved all the hardware she took home for the role. Morgan Freeman is his typically lovable self as an ex-boxer and partner of Clint Eastwood, whose Frankie Dunn is the most emotionally complex character he has ever played.

It's best to consider Million Dollar Baby a drama that happens to have Clint Eastwood in it rather than a Clint Eastwood movie, because someone wanting to see a "Clint Eastwood movie" may not be pleased with the results. For someone who wants their heart-strings tugged on a little bit and doesn't mind feeling crummy after watching something, this is a much better bet.

The Good: Hilary Swank's performance. Not overrated in the least.

The Bad: The cinematography is ridiculously dark a lot of the time. I know it's a dark movie, Clint, but I don't need a million shadows in every shot to remind me of the fact.

The Skinny: This is one that I'm kind of battling with on whether it should be included in the Top 250 or not. It's a good movie, but it definitely only exists to bring home Oscars. It's executed far better than Crash or Slumdog Millionaire or something like that, but it still feels kind of borderline. I think I'd include it on the list but put it closer to #250 than #150.

Day Nine: Die Hard

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #109
Year: 1988
Director: John McTiernan
Starring: Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman

On the Netflix page for Die Hard, the first critic's review listed is that by Roger Ebert, who smugly puts the film in its place with a blurb saying that its "inappropriate and wrongheaded interruptions reveal the fragile nature of the plot and prevent it from working." No one cares, Roger. Perhaps you missed the memo, but Die Hard is a movie about a badass cop being as big of a badass as humanly possible while fighting a dozen evil, German terrorists. It's an unspeakably masculine action movie with its own testosterone supply, and it therefore precludes itself from answering to any criticism that presupposes it to be anything else.

With twenty-plus years of reflection and three sequels, it probably goes without saying that Die Hard succeeds in its mission to kick the ass of every person that watches it. But the very fact that this is an action movie that relies heavily on gun battles, state-of-the-art-for-their-time explosions, and a script that bestowed "Yippee ki-ay, motherfucker!" into the American lexicon raises some eyebrows. Can a pure adrenaline rush of a movie be discussed alongside, say, Casablanca?

According to the IMDb's thousands of users, the answer is yes. There aren't many movies like Die Hard on the Top 250 – there's really none, in fact, unless you count The Bourne Ultimatum. But Bruce Willis as John McClane breathed life into the action genre not by breaking the mold and trying to do something more arty or film-school-chic with it, but simply by executing the living hell out of it. There's nothing new or state-of-the-art in Die Hard. There's just 133 minutes of an unbelievably awesome cop killing twelve terrorists with superior firepower. That's all. It succumbs to some clichés of the action genre, but isn't too cheesy to take seriously, and the ending is perfectly satisfying. For action movie fans, it's hard to imagine any other film being the genre's holy grail. For movie fans who aren't particularly interested in action flicks – yours truly included – it has everything that makes the genre so safe and familiar while still knocking you down with its endless barrage of explosions and gunfire at every corner. It's even reasonably well-acted.

If every action movie was as good as Die Hard, perhaps the genre's name wouldn't be a derogatory term used to describe whatever Michael Bay is working on. Since that's never going to happen, if you want to watch an action flick, you may as well start here.

The Good: "Yippee ki-ay, motherfucker!" 'Nuff said.

The Bad: Wasn't a big fan of how the TV crew was portrayed as a bunch of bumbling child endangerers. That's not how (most) journalists act, promise!

The Skinny: Deserves its spot. Yippee ki-ay.

Day Eight: Kind Hearts and Coronets

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #187
Year: 1949
Director: Robert Hamer
Starring: Alec Guinness and Dennis Price

It is, of course, natural that on an undertaking so massive as watching the entire IMDb Top 250, that even for a serious film fan, there would be some movies on the list that carry with them absolutely no expectations. For me, Kind Hearts and Coronets is one such film. Aside from a very intriguing blurb about one actor playing eight members of a noble family on Netflix, I knew nothing about this movie going in. In an era where everything is analyzed and overanalyzed by any dummy with Internet access – this dummy included – it's a rather nice luxury to watch a movie without any preconceptions of it whatsoever.

What I got with Kind Hearts and Coronets was an exceedingly well-executed black comedy that laid the groundwork for a number of elements of modern film, namely the one-actor-as-many-characters device and the man-convicted-of-a-crime-he's-innocent-of-when-he's-really-guilty-of-another plot twist. For a movie that is so rarely talked about, it certainly feels influential. And considering the little talk one does hear about it revolves around Alec Guinness' multiple performances, thankfully, that is not the movie's only strong point.

The plot is simple enough, but again, executed brilliantly. Dennis Price plays Louis, a young man (and if we're being honest, a total dandy – I'm sure they tried to cast Oscar Wilde's ghost before Price stepped up) whose mother has been disowned by her noble family for marrying a commoner. When they refuse to let her be buried in the family cemetery, Louis decides to kill everyone standing between him and the dukeship. Through a series of inventive death gags – in one of the most memorable, a cousin fond of photography has the paraffin in his dark room swapped out for petroleum – he finally reaches his goal, only to find another obstacle in his way once he is knighted. The script is sometimes dated, but quite a few of the jokes were still able to earn my laughter, and Louis is a satisfying if unspectacular narrator.

Somehow, it feels like there isn't too much that can be said about this movie. It's extremely enjoyable, but there doesn't seem to be much under the surface, and it feels more like a fun way to spend two hours than a masterpiece capable of spurring debate. Does that make its inclusion in the Top 250 wrong? In some ways, it feels so, but the fact that I can't name any movie that has taken its formula or its many devices and done them any better or, perhaps more importantly, any earlier does enough to justify its position to me. Masterpiece is too strong a word for it, but Kind Hearts and Coronets is still a very good movie worthy of more praise than it seems to receive.

The Good: The cliché answer here is Alec Guinness' eight performances, and while they're great, the pacing and plot of the movie shines through. While even the best older movies can seem slow-paced or boring to modern audiences, this film is neither.

The Bad: Louis, while a likable character, is way too much like Oscar Wilde to take seriously at times. It's hard to believe that someone who is as likely to wear a flower in his hat or break into poetry would also be capable of shooting a man point blank.

The Skinny: Deserves to be on the list, though possibly a bit lower.

Day Seven: Toy Story 3

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #6
Year: 2010
Director: Lee Unkrich
Starring: Tom Hanks and Tim Allen

There's probably no more controversial movie on the Top 250 than Toy Story 3. It's not that the most people would argue with its presence in the Top 250. It's simply that it's so high. I'm sure when I go back and re-read this blog in 10 years, this movie will have dropped to somewhere in the 200s and I'll have a good laugh about where the Internet movie community was during the summer of 2010.

Personally, I saw Toy Story 3 at its midnight premiere on June 18th, and I loved it. Its final twenty minutes or so nearly made me cry multiple times. (Incidentally, the last movie to nearly make me cry was Up, Toy Story 3's predecessor in the Pixar canon.) It very well may be the best Pixar movie, and I think it's certainly the best movie in the Toy Story trilogy. In my opinion – and yes, from here on out, I'm kind of going to be playing Devil's advocate – the concerns that so many have voiced with its high placement on the list have nothing to do with its quality as a film. It's because of reasons that the high-and-mighty bashers would never admit: it's an American animated movie, it's wildly popular, and it's from 2010.

Yes, the movie elite would like to have us believe they're unfailingly open-minded, but seeing a movie that doesn't satisfy certain "classic" criteria in the top ten films of all time makes their skin quiver. Never mind that Pixar has completed its fifteen year quest to fuse the fantastical elements inherent in any animated movie with earnest emotion and a universal but never heavy-handed message. It can't be that a movie that shot to #1 at the box office and appeals primarily to the age 0-110 demographic could also be one of the best ever made. Could it?

I may not be the best or most impartial judge – my life's milestones have more or less lined up with those of Andy, the film's only human protagonist – but I say it could. I'm not a sentimental person. I can probably count one hand the number of items I still own that I owned before my teenage years, if I can be bothered to think of any at all. But that doesn't matter. Andy is a sentimentalist, and that's enough. In the film's final scene (SPOILERS, but seriously, has anyone not seen this movie at this point?), Andy is forced to look Sheriff Woody in the smiling, plastic face and give him to a preschool-aged girl who wants to take care of him. In an extremely genuine moment that never descends into melodrama, Andy slowly passes the toy off and says (pardon the long quote) "Now, Woody, he's been my pal for as long as I can remember. He's brave, like a cowboy should be. And kind, and smart. But the thing that makes Woody special, is he'll never give up on you...ever. He'll be there for you, no matter what."

My eyes started to sting as tears worked their way into them. It's difficult to imagine a more perfect scene. Not in an animated movie or a movie made in 2010 or in a movie that was tops at the box office in its opening weekend, but in a movie. Any movie. Is #6 a little high on the IMDb Top 250 for this film? Perhaps, but it's merely because there's more than five movies better than it, and not at all because it has any shortcomings of its own. Toy Story 3 exists because there are still people out there who want to make movies that are both entertaining and enlightening, that can satisfy the heart and the mind, the young and old, and because there are still people who want to go to movies like that. It's a slap in the face to Hollywood cynicism, and a great equalizer of a film that aligns the world into two camps: people who loved it, and idiots.

I'm rambling, so I'll leave it at this: Toy Story 3 is damn near perfect, and if you somehow haven't seen it yet, you owe it to yourself to do so. That's all.

The Good: The emotion and the message. Ever since Ratatouille, the balance between family fun and heartstring-tugging has been swaying towards the latter, and this may be the fullest embrace of that yet.

The Bad: The "I don't think those were Lincoln Logs" joke got no laughs in my theater. And rightly so. Leave those jokes for Shrek 5.

The Skinny: Fuck the haters, I can get behind Toy Story 3 at #6 just like I could get behind The Shawshank Redemption at #1. No, it isn't my personal sixth favorite movie ever, but it has everything I look for in a movie and more. If the consensus is that this is the sixth best movie of all time, so be it. The general public could do a lot worse.