"Everybody Looks Like Ants!"

THE CROWD

Year: 1928
Country: United States
Language: Silent
Number: 38
Written by: King Vidor, John V. A. Weaver
Director: King Vidor
Starring: James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark
Oscar nominations: Best Picture - Unique and Artistic Production*, Best Director - Drama*
*there were two best picture and best director categories that time

King Vidor's The Crowd is the story about a young and ambitious hillbilly named John, who at the age of twenty-one goes to New York City, where he finds himself as small and unimportant as all the other ants living there. He works in an office all day. But after one night out on the town with a fellow employee, John meets the love of his life, Mary, whom after one date with, he propose to. Even though their honeymoon was a dance on roses, their marriage is quiet the opposite, with two brothers-in-law that criticizes John all the time. And when their young daughter suddenly get hit by a truck and dies, John becomes so devastated that he looses his office job, and finds it very hard to find a new job.

French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was once asked why no one was making films about ordinary people. He then replied "Why remake The Crowd? It has already been done." The Crowd is indeed a movie about ordinary people, with all their ups and downs. Vidor also picked unknown amateur actors to play the roles of ordinary people, including his own wife, Eleanor Boardman as Mary. The cinematography is just amazing, with all the tall skyscrapers, all the big crowds, and all the identical office desks, which inspired Billy Wilder's famous opening scene in "The Apartment". The Crowd was suppose to have a dark ending, but the producers wanted a happy ending. So Vidor made seven different endings. And the ending he chose was a great ending, because it was not the perfect ending, but an ironic one, which I truly loved. Thumbs up.

Grade: B+

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"From A to B movies"

DETOUR

Year: 1945

Country: United States

Language: English

Number: 180

Written by: Martin Goldsmith, Martin Mooney

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer

Starring: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald

Edgar G. Ulmer, The King of B-Movies made a film noir called Detour, about a nightclub pianist named Al Roberts (Tom Neal) who hitchhikes all the way from New York to Los Angeles to marry his girlfriend Sue. On the road he's being picked up by a bookie named Charles Haskell Jr. But while Al drives by night, Charles suddenly dies. Al believes that if he tell the truth as it is, the police wouldn't believe him. So Al hides the body and take Charles' car and clothes, and heads for the east-coast. But on his way, Al himself picks up a hitchhiker, a woman named Vera (Ann Savage), who happens to know Charles, and know that Al is an impostor. So this means blackmail, if Al don't want himself caught.

Detour is a great Noir B-movie, with an unknown cast, and a down to earth plot and setting. Cheap, short and good. Even though it's as cruel to women as any other film Noir. But I did like the relationship between Vera and Al, or should I say, lack of chemistry. You would have thought that all the times they yell at each other they would have kissed and have sex on the floor already. But since this is a forties movie, you know it's not gonna happen. But there's a drunk scene where they almost do it, and that's close enough. I did like Detour, it's realisticly dark, and not as glossy as the other mainstream Noirs. Thumbs up.

Grade: B+

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"That Annoying Kid!"

THE KID WITH A BIKE

Original title: Le Gamin au vélo
Year: 2011
Country: Belgium/France/Italy
Language: French
Number: 1094
Written and Directed by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Starring: Thomas Doret, Cécile De France, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione
Cannes Film Festival: Grand Prize of the Jury, Golden Palm

The Dardenne brother's latest film The Kid with a Bike is the story about a 12-year-old boy named Cyril, who's recently been left in an orphanage by his father, who have suddenly disappear without telling Cyril where. Cyril then runs away from the orphanage and goes back to his father's apartment, only to find out that he's left. His father also sold Cyril's bike, which was bought by a woman Cyril meets at the clinic. The woman, Samantha, returns the bike to him, and she also tries to helps Cyril finds his father, and she also get attached to little Cyril and sometimes works as his foster mother.

The Kid with a Bike is a good idyllic indie film, with the great handheld camera, the same naturalism, and the same depth to it's characters. It is so good that I would have given it five stars, but like the Star Wars prequels, it was ruined by a kid. What a story needs to catch my interest, is that the protagonist neexd to be empathic, which in this case the protagonist isn't. Cyril is a restless kid that won't take a break for a second. He's rude. He never listens, and is stubborn. To say it more informal: He's a dick. I can't help it. But overall this film is digestible, and I really liked the other characters, and Cyril seems also to get better, but the first half is unforgivable. Thumbs up.

Grade: B-

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"Twilight in 3D"

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

Original title: Låt den rätte komma in
Year: 2008
Country: Sweden
Language: Swedish
Number: 1071
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl

Forget Twilight, True Blood and all the other gay vampires, and watch the Swedish vampire flick "Let the Right One In" by Tomas Alfredson instead. In this film we follow the twelve-year-old boy, Oskar who's an outcast, who the other kids always bullying and hits. On the playground one evening where he lives, he meets a girl named Eli, a thin and ice cold child, who's also his new neighbor. And what's worse, is that she's a vampire which means that's she feeds on blood in order to survive, and it's her father who has to kill innocent people and tap their blood, so that his daughter don't have to draw suspicion by doing the killing herself.

Yes, there's a love story between Oskar and Eli, but it's loaded with so much innocence because they are kids. I love that the director tells us so little. The word vampire is barely mentioned. It's a sad story about two outcasts, which is the opposite case with Twilight where it's a forced love story with nothing but sexual attraction that is displayed in five movies. We know that Oskar and Eli belongs together and it's clear from the start, but they can't be together, which is a real tragedy, which is sad. While Bella and Edvard on the other hand gets a designer house in the middle of the forrest. I also like the tone of the film, and the cinematography of an ice cold Sweden. And there's a lot of satisfying violence as well. A vampire movie as it should be. Thumbs up.

Grade: B+

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"A Screenwriter's Inception"

ADAPTION.

Year: 2002
Country: United States
Language: English
Number: 1008
Script: Charlie Kaufman, Donald Kaufman
Director: Spike Jonze
Starring: Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox
Oscar wins: Best Supporting Actor (Chris Cooper)
Oscar nominations: Best Actor (Nicholas Cage), Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Adapted Screenplay 

Charlie Kaufman is probably one of the few screenwriters around that is known for being a screenwriter, without being a director too. He have also done the extraordinary thing of being more famous than the directors he's worked with, and for once we have a writer that gets the credit he deserves. Do you remember who directed "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind"? Adaptation is his semi-autobiography, his eight and a half. It's a great insight of how a writer thinks. It's all of Kaufman's thoughts, his writer's blocks that drives the story.

This is the story: The successful screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage), who's had a great success with the script for "Being John Malkovich" is having problem with adapting Susan Orlean's (Meryl Streep) best selling non-fiction novel "The Orchid Thief" into a screenplay. The novel focuses on her investigation around the orchid-stealing red neck, John Laroche (Chris Cooper) who seems to have a great passion for Orchids. A passion that Susan wished she had. But the book ends with something that seems to be an unfulfilled love affair hidden in the subtext, which seems to be the problem with the story, since nothing between Susan and John not really happens, which Charlie find hard to adapt. So instead he decides to write a screenplay about himself trying to write the screenplay, which of course is the movie itself.

Adaptation is loosely based on Kaufman's own experiences of trying to adapt the novel. With loosely it means that for instant that Charlie also has a twin brother named Donald (also Nicholas Cage) who's a big fan of structured Hollywood storytelling, and sees the famous story guru Robert McKee (Brian Cox) as his idol. While Charlie wants to be as independent and original as possible. Donald Kaufman does not exists. It's clearly one of Charlie's personalities, an inner struggle between the structured story telling and the original and pessimistic storytelling, with on-screen narration where Charlie constantly thinks for himself "I'm fat, I'm ugly, I'm Bald".

It's a wonderful meta film, or something deeper than that. Like a screenwriter's Inception. It's a story about a story under development, it seems to take form while we watch it, a character written story. Remember when Jeff Daniels played a character on the silver screen in Woody Allen's "Purple Rose of Cairo" that suddenly jumps out of the screen and into the real world. In Adaptation it feels like the opposite, that the writers jumps into the screen to fix the movie and give us the ending we desperately need. And it also show us all the storytelling techniques and cliches that no matter how hard we try, we can't hide from them.



Other things besides the amazing screenplay is the amazing cast, with Nicholas Cage in one of his greatest performances, who kind of resemblance Gene Wilder's character in The Producer, in sense of look and lack of self confidence. Cage does a great job in giving us two different performances, with such a big contrast, but at the same time a great comical chemistry, because they are in-fact twins. Meryl Streep give us as always a superb performance, but it's Chris Cooper who steels the show, with his southern accent, missing front teethes and with a red neck attitude that is a great contrast to his love for orchids. He really deserved that Oscar.

My conclusion of Adaptation is that it's a great meta meta film, with one of the most original screenplays that jokes about the story structure itself, by breaking it on purpose. It's specially a treat for those who have read Robert McKee's book to look at this film with admiration and wondering. But it doesn't matter if you have read the book or not, because his lectures in the film give us a great insight into his theories. Adaptation is simply a screenwriter's joy, and it's also an inspiring film for those who might want to become a writer, no matter what medium. Thumbs up.

Grade: A

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"Ever considered taking an Airplane?"

MONSTERS

Year: 2010
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English, Spanish
Number: 1082
Director: Gareth Edwards
Starring: Whitney Able, Scoot McNairy

Monsters is a science fiction film that takes place in a not so distant future, where NASA have found life on one of Jupiter's moons. A probe is launched to collect samples, but crashes upon re-entry over Mexico, and a new alien life form begins to develop into an octopus-like creature which is spreading fast. And half of Mexico is quarantined as an "infected zone", and the US and the Mexican military struggles to exterminate the aliens without causing collateral damages . The plot is set some years later in the unaffected Mexico, where alien attacks is quiet usual, in which we follow the Photographer Andrew Kaulder, who's tries to get good pictures of the situation, but he gets another mission: to get the chief editor's daughter, Sam, in safety back to the US. Getting away with boat is impossible, so they have to go through the infected zone.

Monsters is after my opinion one of the worst, and least thought off science fiction scripts that I've ever seen! I'm not a nerd, but this is one of those films where lack of common logic is ruining the film experience. My essential question is: Isn't there any air plains? Why not go south and take a boat from Honduras for example? Why go through the infected zone when you know it's dangerous? I tell you why: because it's an excuse for a love story between Klauder and Sam, which is perhaps the only thing that makes this film worth it's D+. All this lack of logic wouldn't have mattered if there was any good action scenes, or scenes where anything is at risk and damages the characters, but there isn't any. The journey through the infected zone seems to be a walk in the park where the only thing that matters is their love life. The aliens are horrible, or in this case not horrible enough and doesn't do any harm to the main characters for some reason. There's no conflict in this movie!



It seems to be one of those science fiction movies that wants to be a metaphor for a political subject matter. Like with District 9 is an alien metaphor for the South African apartheid regime. Monsters seems to wanna be a movie based on the military war against the Mexican Drug Cartels, which causes many civilians their lives. District 9 seemed to have a clear message, while Monsters seems to have no one, except the fact that the aliens are people too, and it's the war which cause their anger. So the message is to let the Drugs Cartels be left alone? That's not a very pleasant thought. Monsters is not a popcorn flick, nor is it a political thriller, it's just a love story that could have been a simple road movie, or better, a Motorcycle Diary. Thumbs down. And it certainly don't deserve to be included in this book!

Grade: D+

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"As Little as Possible"

CHINATOWN

Year: 1974
Country: United States
Language: English, Cantonese
Number: 584
Script: Robert Towne
Director: Roman Polanski
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Diane Ladd

Oscar wins: Best Original Screenplay
Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound  

Roman Polanski's Chinatown, or should I rather say Robert Towne's Chinatown, because it's he who wrote the excellent script and the story. Chinatown is one hell of a film noir, and Polanski really gives Towne's script the treatment it deserves, by making it indeed very authentic and also true to it's genre, supported by a great cast and a believable structured corrupt cooperation that destroys the city and makes the life tougher for the common man.

Chinatown is set in a 1930s Los Angeles where the former police officer J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) whom after quitting the police department in Chinatown is now working as a private detective, where no serious jobs like adultery suspicion is quiet normal. But one day, a woman named Evelyn Mulwray (Diane Ladd) suspects that her husband, Hollis is cheating on her. After following, Hollis around the city and finally takes a picture of Hollis with another woman, which is printed in the paper the day after, Gittes meets a woman who claims to be the real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). This means that woman in the start was an impostor, who was paid to set Gittes up into a even bigger mess than just one simple adultery case, but involves every one at the top.



Chinatown is a well structured story, with all the right elements of a great mystery film, that escalates from the lowest unimportant investigation to the worst cases of political corruptions, that can possible be imagine. It also contains many great twists, and even one of the most horrifying twists in movie history. The cinematography is just perfect, it give us a dried out Los Angels with no water, like a desert. It's not the L.A. we're used to. The performances are just marvelous, with Jack Nicholson in the lead as a tough and fearless detective, who's not afraid to use violence. And with the noir godfather himself, the director John Huston, playing the creepy and corrupt Noah Cross, a role that certainly should have gotten an Oscar nomination.

All the good things I've written so far, might sound like an A+ review, so if you feel it's weird that I give it a B stars instead of an A. The reason why is because I found it a little boring, and literary dry because of the cinematography, but then again it's suppose to be dry, but then again it wouldn't feel right to give it full score. I must always follow my gut-feeling. But after watching it for the third time, my view have improved since the two previous times. Thumbs up.

Grade: B+

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