The Frame

Welcome to My Study

You’re always welcome to enjoy the things that I’ve found. Here are some things I’ve enjoyed lately:

After watching SO MANY stupid movies, I’ve decided to take control of my movie-watching again. I’m not trying to be a snob about it - I just don’t want to wake up one day and find myself at Ghost Rider II. Which apparently will be a real thing soon.

So I took to the internet. I once thought IMDB’s Top 250 Movies was a good place to start, but after seeing that Inception was listed as the 11th greatest movie ever made that list was out, needless to say. I found this spreadsheet of the 1000 Greatest Movies “as voted by 2,138 critics, filmmakers, reviewers, scholars and other likely film types” at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They.

So far, it hasn’t let me down.

No surprise, Citizen Kane, is number one. And one of my favorites, Vertigo, is number two. I’ve started with the Top 50.

Needless to say, in the last six weeks, I’ve watched some amazing films. Here are some thoughts on a few of them:

Seven Samurai: I thought it would be a little more sober in tone - I couldn’t understand why the samurais thought everything was so funny. Kikuchiyo was an interesting character. You want to write him off as a goof off, but you can’t. I need a film type to explain it to me. There were some great shots of the battle scenes through the fences, etc. that I thought were pretty cool and maybe even innovative for the period but I don’t know anything.
2001: A Space Odyssey: Talk about not knowing anything - this movie made me feel dumb, but at the same type I could enjoy it visually. I was fascinated by the monolith. It was at once the least and most interesting object conceivable. A black slab. Plopped down in the middle of a movie. No further explanation. It could be argued that the monolith was pretentious or indulgent or whatever. I thought it was awesome. If I were in film school and had to write an essay on the movie, I’d mine the significance of space food. Why all the scenes of eating in space?
L’Avventura: When I finished it, I thought, Meh, but then as time went on, it really stuck with me. It haunted me. It was so empty and subtle, but I keep going back to it. I’ve been recalling lines (“Why should we be here talking, arguing? Believe me Anna, words are becoming less and less necessary; they create misunderstandings.”) and scenes (knocking over the ink well, the smiling in the mirror). Something about it reminds me of a Maguerite Duras book - its subtle emotional intensity, perhaps, or its disjointed narrative. Visually, it was beautiful.
Lives of Others: Loved it. I loved the visual pun - or perhaps more - where the stasi dude’s writing seemed to be more than mere recording, but almost like he was writing a play involving the characters he was spying on. The close ups of the typewriter striking the dialogue, his mapping out the apartment. The stasi was the silent director, controlling their lives.
Other movies I’ve enjoyed: The Searchers, Assassination of Jesse James, Temple Grandin, Passion of Joan of Arc, Batman (Tim Burton’s). Kicking and Screaming was pretty good.