Random Thoughts

2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick. 1968. ⚅

The end is nigh! For this blog series.

I think… I haven’t seen this movie since the 80s? I think I saw it in a movie theatre? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did. And then on VHS later.

When thinking back on it, there’s so many scenes I vaguely remember, like the guy jogging in that circular space ship thing… and the obelisk monkey thing… and Daisy Daisy…

What I’m saying is that it has to be (at least) a visually striking film.

But it might still not be much cop. Let’s find out.

[twenty-five minutes pass]

Oooh! They just did the line that Colourbox sampled here:

It’s always so weird seeing scenes with dialogue you’ve heard a million times in various songs…

Anyway. This is really quite spiffy. The monkey thing was all kinds of deep (people injecting mary jane into their eyeballs and smoking LSD and such back in 1968 would have their minds blown), and the space station and docking thing is exquisite. It’s just the right pace, too: The grandeur of the movie is also in how deliberately it moves.

[forty-five more minutes pass]

I had totally blanked on the structure of the movie… it’s pretty brave having these clear sections with no overlapping characters to identify with. Sure, there’s some infodumps to carry us through (the briefing, the interview), but it feels oddly natural.

The work with all the rotating rooms (for filming) is amazeballs. No wonder everybody thought Kubrick faked the moon landing.

[the end]

I like it. It’s amazing how emotional Kubrick made that HAL lobotomy scene. *sniffle* And I really love how unemotional he made the astronauts — it’s like they’re professionals or something. Whenever I’ve seen a space movie from the past decade it’s like “”We’ve momentarily lost communication with Earth AAAARGH WE”RE ALL GONNA DIE!! NO COMMUNICATION!!!! WHERE”S MY SHOTGUN!!1!! We’re all cannibals now AND I”M GOING TO EAT YOU!!! NOOOOOO!!! YOU WEREN”T THERE FOR ME WHEN I GREW UP YOU”RE NOT MY FATHER oh communication has been re-established; let’s continue on to Mars”” in every single one of them.

The stoicness (stoicity? sure, that’s a word now) of the humans is an effective counterweight to the saga.

It’s so oddly structured, though, that I wonder whether the HAL conflict was added as a sweetener between all the cosmic stuff, or whether the cosmic stuff was added to give the HAL stuff more weight? Or perhaps it was always going to be this odd; Clarke isn’t a very good writer…

Anyway, it’s wonderful. Doesn’t feel like it’s seven hours long at all.

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

Citizen Kane. Orson Welles. 1941. ⚂

I have seen this movie a number of times before — I’m not a complete moron. (Note: “Complete”.) But it’s been several decades, and I just remember some flashes of a huge, empty house, and a sled being thrown into an incinerator? Oh, now it’s coming back to me… I must have seen this as a child: I remember the emotional impact of that scene. Oh, and the general sadness.

But nothing about what this movie is about, really. I think it’s based on William Randolph Hearst? Comics fans have a different view of Hearst than most people, I think: Hearst papers carried Krazy Kat, and any sane editor tried to get rid of it as fast as possible, because everybody hated that fag stuff (I’m quoting). But whenever Hearst noticed them dropping it, he insisted that it be put back into the newspaper. Fuck editorial independence: George Herriman was a fucking genius! Hearst was right and all the editors were wrong.

Anyway!

[roll movie]

[ten minutes pass]

Of course, Citizen Kane is traditionally voted The Best Movie Ever in any film poll, but it’s just on a (shared) #2 here. And after then first ten minutes I’m confused as why it’d be on any “best of” lists: I’ve seldom seen such a massive infodump opening anywhere. It’s boring as fuck!

[fifty more minutes pass]

OK, after the infodump is over, all the shots look fantastic! Almost every single one is like “IT”S LIKE A CUT-RATE SVEN NYKVIST SHOT! ONLY TWO DECADES EARLIER!” It’s really pretty.

But this is my third movie today, and I’m slightly tipsy. I’m really having a problem with just recognising Welles (as Kane) from one shot to the next. He looks so different from when he’s in his 20s to when he’s in his 30s (?) that I had to look it up on imdb to see whether there were several people playing him and there apparently isn’t?

Much confuse.

[twenty minutes pass]

OK, I officially don’t get it.

There isn’t anybody that dares say the think this movie is boring.

So I guess I’ll be the one: This shit is tedious. The storyline … of a semi-self-made (but not really) man turning his newspapers to trash to attract readers, and then… er… becoming a politician? And having a mistress? Who’s a singer? … and… er…

Nobody explained why we’re supposed to even care?

For every shot that’s interesting, there’s three scenes of people nobody could possibly be interested in jawing at each other.

I can see that somebody would like this: There’s always somebody. But 100%? That’s ridiculous. It’s a movie you’re supposed to find to be genius?

The lowest grade on Metacritic is 90!

[the end]

OK, I’m going to be almost as controversial as saying that Shawshank Redemption sucks, or Spielberg sucks: This isn’t a very good movie.

There. I said it.

There’s a whole bunch of turgid scenes in here, and the storyline just isn’t very interesting. We’re given no reason to care about the ridiculous opera career or why Kane cares about it. Or, indeed, pretty much anything here. It’s supposed to be a tragedy; sure, but you need a reason to care about the protagonist, and… I missed it?

On the other hand, I’m really drunk now, so I may be wrong. It’s possible! Who are you going to believe: Several hundred sober film critics that say that this is a 10/10 movie, or drunk me that says that this is a bit naff?

I know; it’s a difficult choice.

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

8½. Federico Fellini. 1963. ⚅

I watched this (wow) six years ago, and it’s a wonderful movie.

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

Taxi Driver. Martin Scorsese. 1976. ⚅

OK, let me just tell you where I’m coming from: I don’t like Martin Scorsese’s movies. All the ones I can recall seeing are about uninteresting morons that do uninteresting and stupid things. They’re usually competently shot, with a cast of actors that make watching the movies not sheer torture, but

And I loved the way Hollywood collectively stuck up their middle fingers at The Irishman this year by nominating the film in every possible category, and then not giving it a single award. That’s savage!

OK?

But I haven’t seen this film since the 80s. Perhaps it’s the Scorsese movie that’s actually any good?

[fifty minutes pass]

This movie is really good! It’s possible that I’ve never seen it before, because none of it is familiar to me, and these shots are so iconic that I think I’d have remembered? Anyway; as usual with Scorsese, it’s about some moron, but this time he’s actually insane! Psychotic! It’s like he could kill Cybill Shepherd any moment! I’m not sure whether that’s what Scorsese is going for here, or whether he imagined that we would sympathise with this deranged person (probably?), but I’m here just going “EEEP!” and enjoying myself.

I’ve never seen De Niro better than he’s here — he’s completely believable (within the context of this pretty unrealistic framework). The cinematography is so engaging — all the saturated nighttime colours. Love it.

[the end]

OK, there’s nothing as shocking as seeing Harvey Keitel with long hair and muscles. NOTHING!

Anyway, this was really good. At first I didn’t quite know where they were going with the Jodie Foster sub-plot. Was this going to be the usual “Nazi (or whatever) killer protagonist — but he’s kind to dogs, so it’s all deep and stuff: See, it’s so deep!” thing? And… It kinda is? But it kinda isn’t. I know, that’s very erudite.

And, just let me say: Foster, at thirteen, doing those scenes: Eep. But it sounds like it wasn’t as creepy as it’s in the movie:

But what you did in that movie is so incredible and you had to do scenes with De Niro. Were you nervous? Were you scared?

Well, I made a lot of movies before then. So I had probably made way more movies than Robert de Niro and Martin Scorsese at that point. I’d probably made, I don’t know, 10 or 11 movies. So I wasn’t nervous. I think I was too young to be nervous. But, um, Robert de Niro decided to sort of take me under his wing and he would continually take me out to coffee shops and run the lines with me, sort of in character, and then do improvs, which I didn’t 100 percent understand, but by the time we really started shooting, I really understood what he had done.

It does have some of the same problems that Apocalypse Now has: It depicts somebody that the filmmakers are critical of (Kilgore, Travis), but inevitably makes them seem really cool. I’m guessing that a significant portion of men have modelled themselves explicitly on this scene:

He is, of course, a schizophrenic guy rehearsing killing a random politician… but doesn’t he look cool doing it?

And… I now understand why Scorsese is a thing: He made this one good movie, and people are fantasising that his other movies are good. You can see the same syndrome with, say, Kenneth Branagh and even actors like Nicolas Cage, where they made some really strong stuff early on, and then everybody… overrates… their later work, even if they haven’t made anything worthwhile in decades.

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

Apocalypse Now. Francis Ford Coppola. 1979. ⚃

I’ve seen this a couple of times before? But back in the 80s. I remember being quite taken with most of Coppola’s movies at the time — I even liked One from the Heart and Rumble Fish (well, sort of).

Sitting down to watch this, though, I have some misgivings: It’s a film so mythologised that I’m thinking that it can’t possibly be any good.

We’ll see.

[rolls movie]

[half an hour passes]

It’s a pretty entertaining movie. It’s obviously made by a bunch of hippies that want to ridicule the military, but I think they kind of end up glamorising it instead? Sure, Kilgore (so on the nose) is insane, but isn’t he… kind of cool? Don’t you want to be him? There’s a commitment to masculine excess that trumps the impulse towards satire…

Oh the irony.

[forty minutes pass]

Aha! This is the scene JJ Abrams saw and then decided to start making movies.

[another hour passes]

I have to admit that my attention started wandering. It’s now reached the outskirts of Paris. I mean, er… Obviously, Coppola is going for an audience identification thing, so we spend a lot of time with these goofy, stoned guys in (and out) of uniform. I think it’s probably quite successful? But I don’t feel it. I’m mostly just annoyed by their antics. But that’s on me! The stoned goofy performances are good; they seem like fun guys to hang out with. Except for the killing. But I was bored by a most of these character building scenes.

And the stuff like having Clean killed while the tape from the mom was running is more than a bit obviously pandering. But, fine. I think melodrama is fine. It’s not annoying, and I like the cinematography.

[the end]

There are virtually no negative reviews of this movie, but here’s one:

He compares the movie with this scene from Blazing Saddles:

I … don’t quite get it? Hm… the rest of the review is actually pretty cogent: The movie is idiotic, but it looks pretty cool (I’m paraphrasing ever-so-slightly).

I wouldn’t go quite that far… there’s a bunch of powerful scenes… but… it never makes clear why I should be interested. I mean, beyond the cool premise and the cool napalm shots.

This is, scarily enough, just the same thing I wrote up there after having seen half an hour of this film:

Coppola, a typically feckless Hollywood liberal, probably took on the project thinking of himself as an anti-war moralist and a stern foe of American imperialism. But the film owes most of its vitality to the fundamental pictorial excitement of combat scenes and reflects Milius’ reactionary ideology with peculiar clarity.

(I’m assuming “liberal” is used as the antonym of “leftist” here.)

I’ve read Heart of Darkness, and it’s a better book than this movie is er a movie.

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