Day Twenty: Amadeus

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #80
Year: 1984
Director: Milos Forman
Starring: Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham

This is my first go at tackling a movie that was in my personal top ten going into this blog, so try to bear with me. I won't say much about it, because I've exhausted the topic elsewhere, but this is the best biopic of all time, and it's only kind of a biopic. It earned an extremely rare double-Best Actor nomination at the Oscars that year for Tom Hulce, who plays a goofy but brilliant Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and F. Murray Abraham, who plays court composer Antonio Salieri, the self-described "patron saint of mediocrities." The movie is basically 180 minutes of fantastic acting – not only from the two leads but from Jeffrey Jones, who plays Austrian Emperor Joseph II – fused with some of the greatest music ever composed and a rich, compelling plot. And despite all that marvelous music, and snippets of new productions of several of Mozart's greatest operas, the film itself never devolves into musical theater. There's so much that can be said about this movie, but I feel like I've said it all before. This is one that I'm willing to talk up a storm about if there's interest though, so I'll make this one kind of audience-driven. If you want to know my thoughts on something regarding this movie, use the comments section and we'll get a dialogue going.

The Good: Basically flawless movie in my opinion, but the best things about it are the use of Mozart's music for the score, and the performances from Hulce and Abraham.

The Bad: The laugh is tough to get used to at first, and if you've seen it, you know what "the laugh" is. It's not so bad after a while though, and it was likely quite accurate. Also, Elizabeth Berridge is a pretty terrible actress, but somehow she grew on me through repeated viewings.

The Skinny: Personal top ten going in, so of course it belongs on the list.

Day Nineteen: Changeling

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #230
Year: 2008
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich

I'm beginning to think that there has never been anyone more important to Hollywood than Clint Eastwood. In the '60s, he gave us The Man With No Name. In the '70s, he gave us Dirty Harry, and began to try his hand at directing. By 1992 he had won his first Oscar as a director, and in the last decade, he has churned out masterpieces on a yearly basis, eclipsing directors less than half his age. And the man shows no signs of stopping. It's seriously expensive just to keep up with his movies as they hit the theaters.

For all his quantity, Eastwood compromises no quality. Changeling is no exception. The tone is mostly unique among Eastwood films, as we follow the mother of a lost boy – chillingly portrayed by Angelina Jolie in what has to be her best role ever, even if that is somewhat by default – through her battle with an aloof Los Angeles Police Department that passes off some other kid as her son and throws her in an asylum when she dares to defy them. With the help of a local Presbyterian minister played by John Malkovich, she exposes the corruption within the department, but continues to look for her son even when it seems like she'll never find him. The whole affair is heart string-tugging, but knowing it's a true story certainly helps.

I feel like Clint at least partly made this movie because the other movie he made in 2008 was Gran Torino and he found it more artistically satisfying to shoot a typical Clint Eastwood "I play a badass" movie and one of his most emotionally complex and beautiful films at the same time, but I could be crazy since in 2006 he made two Iwo Jima movies. Either way, there's no questioning the fact that he managed to make two masterpieces in 2008 that will go down in his catalog as classics of the Clint Canon.

The Good: Clint's direction is flawless, of course. Gorgeous shots everywhere and strong performances from the whole ensemble, and especially from Angelina Jolie. She out-acted Brad that year, and he played a backwards-aging Forrest Gump. Just sayin'.

The Bad: There really is no weak point to this movie. If anything, it's that we don't get time to become emotionally attached to the lost boy before his disappearance some twenty minutes into the movie, but even that is saved by Jolie's performance and how much she clearly cares about him.

The Skinny: #230 is way too low. I'm sort of a Clint fanboy, but I'd say this deserves to be Top 100, or, at the very least, it deserves to swap places with #145 Million Dollar Baby.

Day Eighteen: Chinatown

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #60
Year: 1974
Director: Roman Polanski
Starring: Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway

I'm kind ashamed to admit this, but there's almost certainly something I'm not getting here. I watched Chinatown today, and it wasn't bad. Jack Nicholson was his usually fantastic self, and Faye Dunaway did a serviceable job in her role as well. The noir feel was executed to perfection, and it would be easy to imagine this as a 1940s Bogart picture with oddly pristine Technicolor. But if it did indeed fall among those 1940s Bogart pictures, it would not be talked about in the hushed, reverential tones that it is now. It seems that the very fact that Chinatown is a neonoir and not a first wave noir film has given it some kind of all-time classic status. The problem is, it just isn't that good.

Since Nicholson plays a private eye, it's only a matter of time before there's a mysterious death that needs investigating. The circumstances are peculiar – a waterworks mogul is found with salt water in his lungs although it appears he drowned in fresh water – and, of course, the people with the most motivation to kill him are eventually proved innocent. It's classic Scooby Doo stuff, nothing out of the ordinary. The overarching motivation for just about everyone's actions is a drought in Los Angeles County that requires the diversion of water resources and sees rival corporations and government institutions pulling all kinds of shady stuff to get what they want. This subplot is interesting, but also pretty confusing, especially for those of us who have never lived in a desert and don't know much about water politics – or rather, those of us whose experience with water politics is limited to reading Frank Herbert. Still, it keeps the plot from getting too bogged down in the endless parade of cops and snoops smoking cigarettes, wearing hats, and just generally unning through the Book of Murder Investigation Clichés.

The movie does have one truly phenomenal scene, and one that deserves all the praise it gets. I won't spoil too much, but when J.J. Gittes (Jack's character) does a little bit of snooping after dark and gets asked the question "You know what happens to nosy fellows?", the answer is completely brutal and amazing and dictates a lot of what happens throughout the rest of the film. I guess I would even say the flick is worth watching just for that.

I'm not trying to come down too hard on Chinatown. It isn't terrible, or boring, or anything like that. It just defies all logic that it's the sixtieth greatest movie of all time when it's basically paying tribute to a genre that came before it and, in general, earns far fewer accolades. It's a solid film, though, and Nicholson's performance especially is commendable.

The Good: Nicholson being Nicholson. This is maybe a top five performance for him.

The Bad: It doesn't do anything spectacular. This is the kind of movie you would walk out of the movie theater being satisfied with the way you spent your ten bucks but wouldn't even consider going back to see again.

The Skinny: If it deserves to be on the list, it needs to be way fucking lower than sixtieth. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt because I know if it were in the bottom ten I'd say that was okay. This brings up a point I've been meaning to make though – before too long, look forward to Travesty Week, where I'll take a week and just talk about movies that are universally acclaimed that I don't like. I'm going to hate on movies that everyone loves and get bitched at. It's going to be great reading!

Day Seventeen: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #242
Year: 1966
Director: Mike Nichols
Starring: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

Well, well, well. Two days, two movies in the bottom ten of this list, and therefore, two movies that will inevitably be dropped from the list in the next couple of years as more well-received movies come out. Fortunately for us, we're able to discuss this movie before it vanishes from the list – poof! – and is inevitably forgotten by time. This movie is worth discussing not particularly because it's one of the greatest movies of all time, but because it's one of the most unique.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? boldly challenges the viewer with scene upon scene that would certainly be considered "boring" today. In just over two hours of film, just over six hours of real time elapse. Four actors are billed, and only two additional people ever appear, each for less than a minute. There is almost no action, and what action there is – each time in the form of someone trying to strangle their spouse – gets broken up immediately by an interloper. All of the interest lies in the dialogue, which is entirely drunken and occasionally insane. Frankly, I can't even figure out if the movie was supposed to have a message, or if it was just to show an two couples getting absolutely shitfaced together and the older couple depressing the living hell out of the younger couple and showing them what little they have to look forward to.

If there was a message, I suppose it was that married life brings out the worst in (some!) people, and that alcohol can bring decades of suppressed rage to the surface. It could also be that some people, here being Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor's characters, are completely stark raving mad, crazy enough to – SPOILER ALERT! – invent a fictional child and let him grow for sixteen years in lieu of having one of their own. Either one of those messages is pretty terrible, so I'd prefer to think this is just a movie without any real message. I'm not saying movies are supposed to have messages or anything, this just really feels like one that would.

Instead, this film is all about the four performances, which some have called four of the finest performances in film, a suggestion with which I will respectfully disagree, and about the marvelous script that the Edward Albee play of the same name lent them to work with. Richard Burton is on top of his game, Elizabeth Taylor is a little too melodramatic for me to stomach at times, Sandy Dennis is a little annoying but acts EXACTLY like a drunk girl so I'll give her props for that, and George Segal could have been a cardboard cutout of George Segal and the performance would have been of a similar caliber. There, I said it.

I won't call this movie overrated because, as far as I know, no one really rates it all that highly. (#242 is not THAT impressive, settle down) I won't call it great either, though. It only has a few tricks to pull out of the bag, and since they're executed at varying levels of greatness and not at a consistently high level, I can't give it the "masterpiece" tag. I just won't use the word that lightly.

The Good: Richard Burton's performance and the fantastic script.

The Bad: Cinematography is pretty awful. This could be a radio broadcast and I would be as riveted.

The Skinny: Soon it will be gone, and that will be just. Sorry, Virginia.

Day Sixteen: Shaun of the Dead

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #245
Year: 2004
Director: Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost

The bottom ten of the IMDb Top 250 is not a safe place to be for a film. They change on a daily basis, and anything that finds itself in that 250th spot can pretty much consider itself a goner since at least two or three movies that will become Top 250 staples are released every year. The bottom of the list also serves as a location where there's generally several movies that make you say "Huh, that's on the list?", and as great as Shaun of the Dead is, it's one of those movies.

Don't get me wrong, I would include Shaun in a personal top five comedy list along with cult classics like Office Space, Tommy Boy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the totally unfuckwithable The Big Lebowski. It's still a little bit jarring to see it on a list with the likes of The Godfather and Casablanca. I think it's a testament to the wisdom of IMDb users, though. On paper, Shaun of the Dead shouldn't be allowed to sniff a list like this: it's a romantic comedy spoof of zombie movies. That sounds either terrible or overly campy. Writing team Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg prevent either of those things from happening with their razor sharp that walks a line between poking fun at zombie movies and embracing the genre, never falling too far into either. In fact, this is probably my favorite zombie movie of all time, and it's not even a "true" zombie movie.

The voters have spoken and put it in that bottom section of the Top 250. Maybe it won't be there for long, but it deserves to be there forever. I don't have too much to say about it besides that a) I love it and it's one of only two zombie movies that I actually own on DVD, and b) it's the funniest non-Monty Python piece of British comedy, film or otherwise, ever to exist. My mind is a little preoccupied because I'm seeing Inception in about an hour, which is already at #3 – yeah, Number Fucking Three – on the Top 250, and I'm way too excited to overthink something that's on Comedy Central every week. If you somehow haven't seen this movie, please do. It's great.

The Good: The general expectation-defying greatness of the film in general.

The Bad: A few esoteric jokes don't work, but I think most comedies have something shy of a 1.000 batting average.

The Skinny: Well-deserved spot. Good on you, voters.

Day Fifteen: Annie Hall

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #133
Year: 1977
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen and Diane Keaton

There's only one correct answer to the question "What is the worst genre of film?" – romantic comedies. Even horror, a genre saddled with dozens of basement-quality releases every month, has a better batting average than rom-coms. In the history of film, I can count on one hand the number of movies given the romantic comedy tag that I would willingly sit through. Fortunately, Annie Hall is one of them.

A lot has been said about Diane Keaton's performance in this movie, how her character (and her character's fashion sense) liberated women in a totally new way. It's a little weird to think about that now in 2010 since there's a thousand hipster girls that act like Annie Hall that most of us probably wish didn't, but at the time, it's pretty obvious that she was doing something pretty new by wearing a shirt and tie and smoking marijuana before sex.

Her character is interesting, but far from the best part of the movie. That would be Woody Allen. And rightly so, seeing as he wrote, directed, and starred in the damn thing. As neurotic Jewish comedian Alvy Singer, he dominates the screen and completely runs the show not unlike Groucho in a Marx Brothers picture – who he cites several times as he shows his impressive knowledge of comedy history, which he holds in reverence. Nearly everything that comes out of his mouth brings laughs, which is shocking considering how much fucking talking he does. There seriously might be a words-per-minute for a movie character record in this film, but it's actually endearing, not obnoxious. That's to Allen's credit, as I can see the same character being annoying in a lot of actors' hands.

It's a little weird to see a romantic comedy – even though it is a great one, and probably the best – this high on the IMDb Top 250, but it does what every romantic comedy tries to do and actually succeeds. Men who watch this movie will fall in love with Annie Hall, and women who watch this movie will fall in love with Alvy Singer. Or perhaps I should say intellectual men will fall in love with Annie Hall rather than whatever brainless, boob-flaunting Megan Fox character is popular at the time, and intellectual women will fall in love with Alvy Singer instead of Gerard Butler and Patrick Dempsey's buff, five-o'clock-shadowed manly men who are still kind of sensitive even though they're giant douchebags.

Please pardon the cynicism and elitism that drips from that last sentence, but Alvy Singer has kind of put me in the mood.

The Good: Alvy Singer. He's what every smart, funny, interesting guy should want to be, maybe without all the neuroses.

The Bad: Like a Marx Brothers movie, sometimes the movie just exists as a vehicle for Woody Allen to tell jokes. Only in a Marx Brothers movie, that's expected and all you're really there for. Here, it sometimes feels cheap.

The Skinny: #133 sounds perfect to me. I really need to start disagreeing with this list more.

Day Fourteen: The Professional

Ranking on IMDb Top 250: #35
Year: 1994
Director: Luc Besson
Starring: Jean Reno and Natalie Portman

It's only Day Fourteen of this blog, but it's hitting me. I'm seeing way too many good movies to properly appreciate them. I used to have a personal top ten movies list. I was satisfied with it, and only a few movies jostled position or challenged to enter the list. I watched a new movie every few weeks, and a few of them would demand re-viewings. Most of those re-viewings showed me that the movie wasn't quite top ten material because of how much I loved my top ten.

That's all out the window now.

Now, I watch a movie just about every day that I think could be top ten material. Then, I don't rewatch it, because I have to watch another movie the next day. Then, that movie becomes something I ponder as possible top ten material. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I only bring this up because I know for a fact that I'm being unfair to The Professional by not thinking about it in terms of where it might belong in my all-time favorites canon. It is two hours of awesomeness with four – count 'em, four – absolutely phenomenal performances, a plot that wasn't worn out yet in 1994, and some of the best cinematography I've ever seen, and certainly the best of any action movie I've seen. (Those close-ups! My God!)

I say it's unfair to this movie because I truly believe that if I had time to sit down and watch it again next week, and didn't have to watch all kinds of other movies in the time between, it could legitimately make a run at my top five. The problem is that I'll never know – or won't know for another 230+ days, anyway. I should probably be making a list of movies to reevaluate when I finish the blog. The Professional would probably top such a list.

In any case, Luc Besson's action thriller is so much more than its genre lets on, and we get the unique treat of seeing the birth of one of the greatest actresses of our time in Natalie Portman's performance as twelve-year old Mathilda, a girl who moves in with a hit man after her whole family was gunned down by corrupt DEA officials. Unlike Chloe Moretz's Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass, she appears to have been profoundly affected by the death of her family and plays the character as a twelve-year old girl would actually act in her situation, the fucked-up things she's seen and wants to do notwithstanding. On the many occasions where Mathilda cries, the tears look very genuine, and Luc Besson's camera work lets us see them from mere centimeters away. In fact, despite the fact that she has since grown up and become an Oscar nominee, this may be Natalie Portman's best performance. There's a whole 'nother blog post waiting to be written about the Mathilda character's premature sexualization and push into adulthood, but I'll leave that one for the true film auteurs.

But Portman's not alone. Jean Reno is sympathetic as Leon, Gary Oldman is vicious as Sam, and Danny Aiello is as Italian as humanly possible as Old Tony. They all add to the fabric of this French-made, English language masterpiece. I can't wait to watch it again sometime in 2011. Hopefully I'll love it as much as I did tonight.

The Good: Portman's performance, Besson's cinematography, and the beautiful dichotomy of "Fuck yeah!" moments and touching moments.

The Bad: If something about this movie was bad, I guess I missed it.

The Skinny: #35? Absolutely fair.