Random Thoughts

I watched this movie last year.

The Ascent. Larisa Shepitko. 1977. ⚃

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

Hey! It’s a Kurosawa movie without samurais? Hm! I’m wondering whether I’ve seen anything like this before… Yeah, like No Regrets For Our Youth. Which wasn’t particularly good.

I read a tweet the other day that panned some well-liked movie and there was a reply from somebody that said something like “it takes a lot of guts to criticise something so famous”, which just blew my mind. Like… guts how? In my opinion, there’s little point in reiterating a consensus opinion — that’s just tedious. And it’s way scarier to slate something non-famous, because then your (probably wrong) opinion is the only one out there.

So here goes: Kurosawa sucks.

There. I said it. Let the healing begin.

And as usual with Kurosawa, nothing’s particularly wrong about the movie, but everything is solidly pedestrian: The cinematography seems to consist of… well, just having the camera guy take random shots, without much thought for framing or mise-en-scène.

The plot (a guy who is dying from cancer and partying/coming to terms with his wasted life) is a huge cliché.

The acting is as subtle as cement mixer.

So who voted for this?

Mostly younger directors? Huh. (And Martin Scorsese.) And it’s not in the critics’ top 100.

Heh. This is on a list of ten most overrated films at the Telegraph.

Oops! Spoilers! Tsk tsk.

Total pantomime.

If you compare with Ozu’s movies from around the same time (dealing with many of the same themes), this is just embarrassing.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse… it does!

Up until the guy dies (oops spoilers) the movie is tolerable, but then there’s another hour of bureaucrats arguing about stuff, and it’s just distilled tedium. Kurosawa probably meant for this to be a biting commentary of bureaucracy, I guess, but it’s just… awful.

Hey! There’s one single negative review on Rottentomatoes.

The last seven hours of this are risibly awful (⚀), but the first nine hours were just normal dopey stuff (⚂), so let’s even that out to:

生きる. Akira Kurosawa. 1952. ⚁

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

Huh… that looks odd. Has this movie been cropped?

Nope; that’s 1.85:1.

Oh, I’ve seen this before! But it must have been a long long time ago. Perhaps on a VHS in the early 80s?

Heh, did Coppola start featuring Frederic Forrest this early? He cast him as leading man in the first couple of Zoetrope Studio movies, One from the Heart and Hammett, tanking them in the process. Man, that’s inexplicable casting…

Hey! I remember this scene…

Oh god. A surveillance agent that plays jazz at home? That’s his character?

Very techno.

I’m just… kinda bored with this movie already, and I’m just half an hour in.

That’s what I want my kitchen to look like!

It’s Han Solo!

Enhance! Enhance!

OK, it’s less boring now.

Bored now.

Again.

So Coppola got to make this (based on a script he wrote almost a decade earlier, after seeing Antonioni’s Blow Up) after the first Godfather movie was a huge success? This just seems really self indulgent — there’s moments of excitement, and then there’s half an hour of tedium.

The problem is that the characters are just so uninteresting. So they have dreams like this, which are devoid of depth or originality. It’s like an American kid’s idea of “art film”… which is what this is, given the Blow Up inspiration. (And then there’s the surveillance thing, which is what makes it a thriller.)

Very UK/US centred list…

Anyway, this is very much a movie of its time, and it’s got many of the stylistic tics that worked for other directors at the time. And it’s got some clever bits (and a couple stupid EC-comics/O. Henry like twists). But… it’s just not very interesting.

The Conversation. Francis Ford Coppola. 1974. ⚂

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

This Bergman movie wasn’t on the previous directors’ Top 100, but it was on the critics’ list. And it was a pretty glaring omission, so it’s nice that it’s on the 2022 list.

I’ve blogged about this movie before, but I got a 2K version, so I’m gonna rewatch it.

I haven’t seen this movie that many times — this is probably my fifth, which is only once per decade, or something — but I just love these actors. They’re playing it naturalistic, but the performances are just adorable.

Of course, an important part of the charm of this movie is the dream of a Swedish upper class country house with a large, complicated family.

I’m not as riveted by this movie as I was the last time around. I mean, I’m mostly loving it, but the dream sequences are pretty hokey…

But it’s still a wonderful movie.

Heh. Walter Hill had this on his list?

That’s a good list.

Wild Strawberries. Ingmar Bergman. 1957. ⚅

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.