Disappointing... yet brilliant

LFF#1: End Of Watch

Cop movies have suffered from the current golden age of TV. There’s something about police work, its daily grind, its different-but-similar incidents, and the chat when nothing is happening, that fits 13 or 24 hours better than two. End Of Watch goes down the kind of LA streets and alleys between one-story clapboard houses and chain-link yards as (the impossibly great) The Shield and more recently (excellent) Southland. It’s actually very close in feel to the latter, being about uniforms rather than detectives, incidents not extended cases. Mostly. But that’s not to dismiss it: this is a terrific buddy movie about two good, if slightly cocky, cops. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña do a great job in capturing that way men communicate with their friends, without crossing the line into formuliac banter. There are some good jokes at the expense of white people. This is a funny movie. It’s also somewhat anxiety-inducing. Some of the plot developments are a bit obvious, the bad guys a bit over the top and having the characters filming themselves a bit tired. But I liked it a lot, and loved the ending.

Which of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Ever Made are worth skipping an episode of Revenge to see?

1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958, USA)

In short: Pensioned-off San Francisco cop becomes obsessed with glamorous but damaged young woman. Then something happens that pushes him into behaviour that is frankly screwy…

The S&S voters love it because: It suggests that at the heart of every solid American citizen there is a pervert waiting to spring out. And that’s a theme many critics will never get tired of. According to S&S, the clunkiness of some of the plotting only makes it even stranger, and therefore better. It’s also one of the most referenced and ripped-off movies ever made, leaving its traces on the work of directors as different as Chris Marker and Paul Verhoeven. 

Is its reputation earned?: Hitchcock’s thriller about obsession, phobias, blondness, the (very common) desire to transform the person you’re with into the person you want, all makes for a more punter-friendly top film than former No1 Citizen Kane. For critics, there’s always been plenty to ponder on the lines of whatever psychological theory is current at the time, plus there is the pleasure of watching James Stewart, who in the 1930s was the embodiment of American sincerity and good heartedness, getting properly weird. What should be the big twist is dropped in far earlier than any modern director would dare. It’s a quite beautiful film, too. 

At all likely to make anyone consider ditching Revenge and watching this instead?: Even now, Hitchcock doesn’t need the support of an institution like the BFI to connect with the audience – no director ever had a better grasp of what made audiences work.

Which of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Ever Made are worth skipping an episode of Revenge to see?

2. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941, USA)

In short: Why did Charles Foster Kane, wildly rich, charismatic, idealistic, never short of a dazzling idea, died a defeated man? The answer is compellingly pieced together through flashbacks.

The S&S voters love it because: The endless behind the scenes gossip, technical flash and the legend of Orson Welles, the boy genius crushed by Hollywood and his own vanity.

Is its reputation earned?: According to the voters, Kane is no longer the greatest film ever made… which would seem to make some kind of sense because it is possibly the third best movie Orson Welles directed, after Touch Of Evil and the lost version of The Magnificent Ambersons. Over-praised for its technical breakthroughs, Citizen Kane has probably suffered from the idea that is something that people should watch, rather than want to watch. When you actually see it, you realise it is cracking tale of power, inspiration, betrayal and disappointment. It is a lot of fun. The only serious flaw is Orson Welles’ bizarre faith in the ability of his prosthetics and make-up people. Both Welles, only 26 when he made this, and co-star Joseph Cotton struggle in their horribly unconvincing old man get-ups.

At all likely to make anyone consider ditching Revenge and watching this instead?: Conspiracies, publicity stunts, the madness of the very rich, the same actors playing their younger and older selves – Kane and Revenge have a surprising amount in common.

Which of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Ever Made are worth skipping an episode of Revenge to see?

3. Tokyo Story (Ozu Yashiro, 1953, Japan)

In short: An elderly couple decide to visit their (ungrateful) grown-up children in the Japanese capital. A lot of what might now be termed passive-aggressive behaviour ensues.

The S&S voters love it because: The restraint, and the humanity, plus the formal precision of the shots.

Is its reputation earned?: If ‘great’ makes you expect grand, epic, visually overwhelming, then Tokyo Story might come as a bit of a surprise. It’s a quiet film about family in which for a lot of the time nothing big is happening on the surface. Even calling it a drama suggests you’ll get letting-it-all-out Tennessee Williams-style moments. There are none. It might make you cry, but not in a bullying Steven Spielberg manner - seeing an old man drink his tea becomes heartbreaking. It’s a wonderful, wonderful film, although I think that the same director’s Late Spring – 15 on the Sight & Sound list – is even better.

 At all likely to make anyone consider ditching Revenge and watching this instead?: In a rather better world than we have, alas.

Which of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Ever Made are worth skipping an episode of Revenge to see?

4. La Regle du Jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939, France)

In short: Beautifully made French country house farce. With, it turns out, an edge.

The S&S voters love it because: It gives them the chance to chuck around the term ‘Popular Front’ as if assuming that everyone is au fait with the complex politics of interwar France. Also, you can always assess director Jean Renoir’s artistic debt to his dad, top post-impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste.

Is its reputation earned?: La Regle Du Jeu is an excellent film, but if you stumbled across it on TV one afternoon, you could well miss a lot of what the critics get excited about. Once you know that this film, with its sympathetic Jewish characters and satirical view of the ruling classes, was released in 1939 and was hugely controversial, it all starts to seem a bit  more urgent. But should you need to do homework before seeing a film? 

At all likely to make anyone consider ditching Revenge and watching this instead?: Mais non.

Which of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Ever Made are worth skipping an episode of Revenge to see?

5. Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (FW Murnau, 1927, US)

In short: Big-hearted melodrama about the encounters between a rural couple and the influence (good and bad) of the big city. To say any more would be to risk spoiling the plot.

The S&S voters love it because: Of director FW Murnau’s combination of daring technical innovations (this is one of the films used to argue that the invention of sound set the artform back years) and an elemental story about basic values.

Is its reputation earned?: Like Man With A Movie Camera and The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, Sunrise was made right at the end of the silent era*, but it is much closer to what I would have expected of that time than either of those two films. There is a lot of eye acting going on, some swooning and that mixture of slapstick and tragedy that is still used in Bollywood but not mainstream American or European films. It’s a very sweet film, and contains one of the most unambiguously good characters (The Wife) you’ve ever seen on screen. The city sequence is entrancing.

At all likely to make anyone consider ditching Revenge and watching this instead?: No, but anyone who really loved The Artist should consider giving this a go.

*Sunrise is even less silent than other ‘silent’ movies – it was actually released with a recorded soundtrack, but has no audible dialogue.

Which of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Ever Made are worth skipping an episode of Revenge to see?

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968, UK)

In short: The dawn of man – weird shit happening in space – computer goes mad – wow, man…

The S&S voters love it because: It’s pure image making. This is the big-budget Hollywood director as uncompromising artist, taking the corporate dollar and going nuts with it.

Is its reputation earned?: Take your pick, 2001 is either -

a) Cinema’s most visionary moment, a story told with elegantly moving pictures, exquisitely chosen music and the far edges of the human imagination that could only be a movie, and only truly works if you see it on a (really) big screen.

Or b) Exactly the kind of superficially impressive but ultimately meaningless meanderings you get from a totally indulged artist. For every great moment, there is one when an old-fashioned producer would have gone, ‘This is bullshit, Stan.’ It is very long, and feels longer. Also, for all its attempts to get to the beginning and end of everything, what it mostly does it foreshadow the shape of advertising to come.

Or c) both

At all likely to make anyone consider ditching Revenge and watching this instead?: It’s not exactly appealing to the same pleasure triggers. But probably of all the films on this list, it’s the one most guaranteed a continuing audience.

Killing Them Softly

Director Andrew Dominik

Stars Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn

USA 2012

Language English

1hr 37mins

Colour

Louisiana-set modern noir

 There’s a lot of talk here. The characters talk themselves into doing something stupid, talk about their never-to-be realised dreams, talk about the job, talk about terms and conditions, talk through a narcotic haze, talk through a drunken stupor, talk through shattered teeth, talk too much to the wrong people, talk someone into colluding with their own murder, talk about love, even. And soundtracking all of that is the talk of the people in power and wanting power, via rolling news on TV screens ignored in bars and motel rooms in the dramatic autumn of 2008 as Obama closed in on an election win and George Bush’s pro-market administration committed itself to massive government intervention in the economy.

All of this verbiage fills out a rather simple and very traditional crime story, starting with an amateurish stick-up of an illicit card game. That leads to the arrival of veteran hitman Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) in bleak, ruined New Orleans to tidy up the Mob’s mess (not the city’s). His potential targets include the two losers who pulled the job (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) and anxious charmer who runs the game (Ray Liotta). Along the way, he subcontracts some work to sleazy, love-struck Mickey (James Gandolfini).

It’s a story about men – there is only female role of any size, and she’s (of course) a hooker. That’s partly why it has been compared, not unreasonably, to Glengarry Glen Ross.

So Killing Them Softly is a smart movie, well written and inventively filmed. It’s funny in places, and depressing in others. The heavyweight cast doesn’t disappoint. And yet, and yet, even though it is commendably short, it gets sluggish in the middle, too much bloody talk. And all that politics in the background, plus the devastated setting, hints at something deeper, but this is ultimately fairly glib. It deals with dismal prospects of those at the bottom of the criminal food chain, but with nothing of the sociological depth or emotional wallop of series four of The Wire. It’s enjoyable, but there was a crime movie better than this every other week in the 1940s.

Which of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Of All  Time are likely to tempt you to skip an episode of Revenge in order to see them?

What am I up to? A sort-of explanation

7. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956, US)

In short: Much like E4’s Revenge, The Searchers deals with the corrosive effects of trying to get back at the people who have harmed the ones you love. Big John Wayne spends years and years travelling around the West looking for his niece, who was taken by the injuns who massacred her family. But what will he do if he finds her and she has gone native?

The S&S voters love it because: Two things, really – the none-more-epic landscapes, and seeing the embodiment of mid-20th century manhood delve into his dark side.

Is its reputation earned?: I used to think I hated John Wayne, and not just because Public Enemy told me I should. Then I saw the astonishing films (Red River, Rio Bravo, even El Dorado is pretty good) he had made with Howard Hawks and wondered whether my problem really was with the director who had made Wayne an icon, John Ford. Yes, The Searchers is a big movie: big vistas, big stars, big issues. It’s the murderous rage at the heart of the pioneer spirit explored by two of the great American mythmakers, with some unforgettable images. But god, does it go on. It’s supposedly only two hours long but feels like many more. You’ll be saddlesore. Obsessive people are often crashingly dull and Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is a man you would flee from at a bar.

At all likely to make anyone consider ditching Revenge and watching this instead?: No. And who could blame them? John Wayne doesn’t even get the Revenge face right.

Which of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Of All  Time are likely to tempt you to skip an episode of Revenge in order to see them?

An explanation for this exercise can be found here

8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, USSR)

In short: Self-proclaimed experimental film covering life in a Soviet city (actually Moscow, Kiev and Odessa) over a day, told with a full bag of camera and editing techniques of the kind most people think were only invented in the 1960s/1980s. Contains birth, life, death, nudity, power stations and lots of trams.

The S&S voters love it because: It’s visually dazzling, it’s very meta (it shows its own editing process, as well as filming, projection and the audience) and it’s a tragic memento of the thrilling artistic possibilities opened up by the Russian Revolution and firmly stomped on by Joe Stalin.

Is its reputation earned?: The last couple of times I saw some of Man With A Movie Camera I was at art museums – the film is a staple element in the story of modernism and the Soviet avant-garde. But although it’s certainly full of shimmering montages of machines at work, seeing a couple of minutes playing above a Moholy-Nagy painting means you miss on how this sort-of documentary works. Revolutionary in both form and content it may be, but it’s also perfectly structured. There are lots of surprises, too, in the Soviet life it shows us, with openly visible class differences, two-piece swimsuits, lots of state-of-the art bobs, and a general sense that fun matters as much as hard work.* It’s staggeringly inventive and rather uplifting.

At all likely to make anyone consider ditching Revenge and watching this instead?:: While kids always complain that old movies are too slow, Roger Ebert has pointed out that Man With A Movie Camera has as many fast cuts as a Michael Bay movie. Now, if you can only get them to forget it is black and white and silent…

 

 

*Particularly eye catching in this post-Olympic moment are the pre-Leni Riefenstahl slow-mo athletics scenes