DAY 3
MIRACLE MILE (1989)
Steve DeJarnett managed to make a treasure largely forgotten. Thanks to Kino Lorber's blu ray edition, people are able to rediscover this hidden gem. Miracle Mile is a meet cute scenario that morphs into a countdown to the nuclear apocalypse. Most romantic nuclear annihilation movie of all time? You be the judge.
This review does a better job than me at selling it
A
CONTAGION (2011)
You don't really know what you're going to get when you pop in a Soderbergh movie. A heist picture, a biopic, a period piece, an action/revenge flick. Not to mention his variety of experimental films. The one thing you can count on is his precision.
Medical dramas that document pandemics, viruses, crises are in short supply. The good ones (see: And the Band Played On) in even shorter supply. The COVID-19 virus has gotten many people hunkering down and watching Contagion. A curveball of black humor toward Sode's movie.
More to come on a decade best of list (yeah, I know I know. I'm workin' on it)
A+
BLOODY MOON (1981)
After Friday the 13th, every studio was scrambling to cash in. 1981 saw an explosion of the slasher film. Jess Franco, the king of Euro sleaze, was commissioned to make one and the result was everything you would expect. Gratuitous nudity, copious violence, and enough sleaze to delight any patron of a 42nd street theater. The centerpiece of this sleazefest is the stone mill power saw sequence. You don't need me to go into any more detail than that to know if you want to see this or not.
B+
DAY 4
POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (2016)
The Lonely Island music videos produced in the late oughts and early 10s were a life raft to the largely unforgettable SNL skits from those decades. They tapped into what Spinal Tap tapped (no pun intended) into in the 80s. That they would make Popstar only furthers this.
The only other satire this decade that has made me laugh harder than this is What We Do In the Shadows.
A
UNCUT GEMS (2019)
Fourth time seeing this movie. In my Top 10 of the 2010's and just recently slipped into my Top 100.
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 (1974)
On par with Die Hard in terms of how it is able to squeeze so much tension tension from a fairly straightforward plot. A bunch of armed men hijack a subway car and demand a $1 million. It's constantly moving between the train, the cops up top, the control board, and the mayor's office. You see all aspects of the heist. Giving it a momentum that doesn't let up until the final frame.
First off, let's look at the crew: the movie is propelled with a great finger thumping, shoe tapping score by David Shire. Imagine being given the task to score both this and The Conversation in the same year. In charge of the editing is Jerry Greenberg. The guy behind The French Connection and Apocalypse Now. With these hands behind the editing, you know there is not a moment wasted and zero fat. The Director of Phtotography Owen Roizman shot The French Connection, The Exorcist, Network and Straight Time.
Secondly, let's look at the cast. Robert Shaw plays a take-no-shit villain who leads 3 other men. Two of which are played by Martin Balsam and Hector Elizondo. Our hero is Lt. Garver as played by Walter Matthau. An actor who really hit his stride in the 70s. (A year before this he played the titular character in Charley Varrick.) Tom Pedi plays an over the top station chief. Rounding out the cast is Jerry Stiller. Yes, George Costanza's dad plays one of the men on the control board. How much more New York can you possibly get?
Howard Hawks says you need three great scenes to make a movie. This one has at least a dozen. The flu ridden mayor may go down as one of the more honest portrayals of a politican on screen.
Joseph Sargent made one of the best one two punches in film history- before this, he made White Lightning. This movie has been mined from for the past 40+ years. Right down to the villain's ways of color coding their names. When people look at 70s crime films, Dirty Harry, French Connection, The Godfather and Taxi Driver inevitably come up. This film is every bit as worthy as those.
Gesundheit.
A+
UNSTOPPABLE (2010)
Ridley Vs. Tony. Take your side.
Ridley has never really impressed me visually. Everything post- Blade Runner...hell, everything post Alien has had a bland visual dynamic. I would choose Alien over anything Tony has done. Even from a directorial perspective, the atmosphere Ridley gives the film is unmatched. His better works after Alien were largely carried by interesting scripts: American Gangster (Steven Zaillian, Mark Jacobson), Prometheus (Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof), and woefully underrated and misunderstood The Counselor (Cormac McCarthy).
With Tony, you get a much more consistent visual pallette. When you pop in a Tony Scott directed movie you know it's a Tony Scott movie. Lots of blue filter. Smoke. I'm thinking specifically The Hunger and Beverly Hills Cop 2. The stuff he's done in his later career has him experimenting. Domino, Deja Vu, Man On Fire all being examples. In the last two, Tony finally finding his muse: Denzel Washington.
The cleverness of this movie is that it a runaway train movie without any of the heist baggage that would usually take up the first and second acts. Tony's complete control over the production from design to editing to pacing shows. The kinetic movement in his movies perfectly suit the script here.
Tony Scott unfortunately passed in 2012. He bowed out with one of the highpoints of his career.
A/A-
LOCAL HERO (1983)
After two pulse pounding train movies, this gentle whisper of a movie is exactly what I needed.
Mark Knopfler's score can almost be considered the main character of the movie. Local Hero is deliberately paced to emphasize the sleepy small town life against the pointlessness of corporate life and fast business. This ode to tranquility features beautiful scenery to accentuate the somber lullaby of rural Scotland.
A
I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! (1945)
No other filmmaker or in this case filmmakers were as consistent in terms of quality in the 1940s than the Archers. Consisting of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, their films sang with color and movement. A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Black Narcissus have all had varying spots in my top 100 at one time or another. And they are the go to films if I was ever was to show someone the vibrancy of a Technicolor film.
Powell's astounding knack for visuals and Pressburger's wit are here even with the film's black and white aesthetic. The balance of sincerity and playfulness with which the Archers give themselves this film grants it a unique feel. This film, like all of their pictures, is a siren song beckoning you to fall in love with. Your heart will ache with a love of what is possible in cinema after you watch a film of theirs. I know mine always does.
Paul Thomas Anderson cites this as the biggest inspiration for Phantom Thread. When you get to the end it will all make sense.
A
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