Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Bob Racine's 100 Favorite Movies, Segment 3



GODS MUST BE CRAZY, THE (1 hr & 49 min, color, 1980)
A low budget masterpiece that mixes side-splitting farce, romance, outdoor adventure and pungent social satire into a most delectable and well-balanced combination!  The central character is an African Bushman who in his travels across the country to exorcise a curse, gets involved in white society’s alien system of justice, in the terrors of assassins on the run, in the work of scientists studying wild life and in the lives of two Caucasians who may be falling in love.  These disparate elements are handled at an enlivening pace and with aplomb by a genius of a director named Jamie Uys. 

GONE WITH THE WIND (3 hrs & 40 min, color, 1939)
Margaret Mitchell’s romance is set in Georgia during and after the American Civil War, her chief character Scarlett O’Hara (Vivian Leigh), the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, reduced by the war to poverty and a fight for survival.   Clark Gable is the devil-may-care war profiteer who fights what seems a losing battle for her affections, and Leslie Howard is the brooding aristocrat over whom Scarlett obsesses.  Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel also provide great supporting substance.  Director Victor Fleming comes forth with a rich, luscious, thoroughly entertaining narrative.  

GRADUATE, THE (1 hr & 45 min, color, 1967)
Mike Nichols turns Charles Webb’s book about a college grad (Dustin Hoffman) befuddled about his future into an unforgettable movie experience.  Smothered by family expectation, he is driven into an unlikely affair with a devious older woman (Anne Bancroft), and soon falls for her daughter (Katherine Ross).  Out of this dilemma a superb dead pan comedy/drama is constructed, ranging from hilarious to savagely serious to dolefully sad without ever losing its balance.  And contributing immensely to the poignancy of it is the vocal score by Simon and Garfunkel.  Wow!

GREAT ESCAPE, THE (2 hrs & 53 min, color, 1963)
Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, and Charles Bronson are all at their best in what is probably the most exciting escapade about prisoners of war to come out of the movie world.  A mass escape from a German stalag during World War II and its frenzied aftermath fill up almost three hours of viewing time – and justifiably.  Not a frame of celluloid is superfluous.  The film, keenly directed by John Sturges, is a model of pacing, editing, tone perfection and photography, and the writing deftly alternates between lightweight cat-and-mouse shenanigans and tense, chilling reminders of war’s high stakes.  And does it deliver!!!

GROUNDHOG DAY (1 hr & 43 min, color, 1993)
A bored and burned out weatherman (Bill Murray) finds himself reliving the same day of his life over and over again, as he covers an annual groundhog ceremony in a Pennsylvania town.  His deadpan, cheeky and oddball reactions to the experience comprise great comedy, with Andie MacDowell providing a nice soft spot in the role of the TV station assistant who falls for him.  How the repetition of events and the turns he takes change him and others around him forever is worth all of one’s emotional investment.  A prize from every angle!

HELP, THE (2 hrs & 15 min, color, 2011)
          Kathryn Stockett’s novel, set in Mississippi early in the Civil Rights movement, focuses upon a black domestic and nanny named Abileen (a magnificent Viola Davis) who with some reluctance shares the story of her drab life with a white woman journalist (Emma Stone) and shakes things up for three white households.  Her willingness to be interviewed inspires other black women to step forth.  It turns out to be a tale of exploitation, injustice and extraordinary courage, at once heart-wrenching but ultimately heart-warming.  Sharp direction and adaptation by Tate Taylor!

HIGH NOON (1 hr & 25 min, b&w, 1952)
A retiring U.S. marshal (Gary Cooper) is deserted on his wedding day by everyone in town including his new Quaker bride (Grace Kelly), when he decides to face off with, instead of run from, old adversaries seeking revenge.  Left without deputies, he makes out his last will and testament and goes to meet his enemies alone.  Before this we are focused upon a passel of vivid characters, all revealing volumes about themselves in a life-or-death crisis.  The script is ever so lucid, sounding out ideas about justice, social priorities and the essence of honor.  Admittedly my favorite western!

HOURS, THE (1 hr & 54 min, color, 2002)
Michael Cunningham’s novel combines fact and fiction, challenging old notions about emotional extremities and how to confront them.  In three separate stories we meet three women: the author Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) embattled with chronic depression; a 1950s housewife and mother (Julianne Moore) too emotionally crippled to fulfill either role; and a 21st century gay woman (Meryl Streep) trying to rejuvenate the defeated spirit of a former male lover (Ed Harris) dying of AIDS.  The screenplay interweaves these narrative threads most ingeniously and with lyrical loveliness.

HUD (1 hr & 52 min, b&w, 1963)
An orphan kid (Brandon de Wilde) must choose between the respectable values of his Texas rancher grandfather (Melvyn Douglas) and those of his dissolute Uncle Hud (Paul Newman).  A tough, muscular drama, based upon a Larry McMurtry novel, and concerned with a deep-seated father-son rivalry!  A hoof and mouth epidemic brings the domestic sore to a head.  Newman and Douglas are tremendous, and Patricia Neal is quite infectious as an emotionally victimized housekeeper.   We are led gently into this den of distress by the deft touch of Director Martin Ritt.

HUSTLER, THE (2 hrs & 15 min, b&w, 1961)
The Faust legend is brought into the pool hall in Director Robert Rossen’s masterful drama of a soul in turmoil.  Our lead character is Fast Eddie (Paul Newman, never better), king of the pool table in his own back alley, until he takes on reigning champion Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), not knowing that in so doing he also takes on a scurrilous racketeer (George C. Scott) who owns Fats and demands the Devil’s due.  Piper Laurie is super-terrific as Eddie’s souse-y but wise and tragic girlfriend.  The total script is inspired and everything about the production clicks.

THE IMITATION GAME (1 hr & 54 min, color, 2014)
          Alan Turing was a mathematician who broke a vital Nazi code called Enigma to enable the Allies to win World War II, his story suppressed for decades for security reasons.  Bernard Cumberbatch gives an ingenious probing portrayal of him as a socially awkward and standoffish but persistent man in the face of his critics.  Triumph gave way to tragedy after the war when the discovery of his homosexuality led to his disgrace and eventual suicide at 41.  Graham Moore won an Oscar for the pithy and potent screenplay.  An affair of the heart as well as the scientific mind!

IN AMERICA (1 hr & 43 min, color, 2002)
We have here the most deeply moving tale of immigrants to our shores ever filmed, for my money.  The Irish family – husband, wife and daughters 10 and 7 – must face life in a substandard, drug infested tenement in NYC.  The crosspollination of their struggle with that of an African American man dying of AIDS leads to some small miracles.  Every scene, every setup, artistically and cinematically, is itself a miracle at the hands of Director/Writer Jim Sheridan.  The story makes me cherish everything that is dear to me.  A very special, sensitively conceived human drama!  

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1 hr & 50 min, color, 1967)
Sidney Poitier is a proud, professionally competent northern police detective who shows bigoted Mississippi town sheriff Rod Steiger how to solve a murder and throws Jim Crow racism back into the redneck teeth with a flourish.  Director Norman Jewison and Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, working from a John Ball novel, are our benefactors.  The film is full of high tension face-offs, and almost every scene is memorable.  The African American male image in movies has never been the same since this one was released in 1967.  It grabs and just will not let go. 

INSIDER, THE (2 hrs & 37 min, color, 1999)
Russell Crowe plays Jeff Wigand, the man who blew the whistle on Philip Morris for 60 Minutes after the company fired him.  Al Pacino plays Lowell Bergman, a CBS official who enrolls Wigand into telling all and gets entangled in a dilemma of his own.  Christopher Plummer plays the much involved Mike Wallace with uncanny accuracy.  Questions are raised in this superior docudrama that defy easy answers – about free speech and privileged communication.  And it is handled with good pacing and well-balanced, coherent scripting under Michael Mann’s firm direction. 

INHERIT THE WIND (2 hrs & 7 min, b&w, 1960)
Stanley Kramer’s excellent adaptation of the hit play, a fictional enlargement upon a factual event – the famous Scopes trial of the 1920s in a Tennessee town!  A public school teacher (Dick York) is arrested for introducing his class to Darwin’s theory of Evolution.  Spencer Tracy fills the shoes of the Darrow-like defense and Fredric March is the Bryan-like prosecutor.  Both men are tremendous.  Gene Kelly is the cynical Mencken-like journalist covering the big story.  Thought-provoking, ironically humorous, eloquent, explosive and uplifting!  What a feast!


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

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