Films I Watched This Week — Feb 3–9, 2025
The Hill (1965)
Prisoners convicted of service offenses such as insubordination, AWOL, or theft are subject to excessive psychological punishments in Sidney Lumet's powerful and uncomprising film, The Hill, starring the great Sean Connery. The film is set in a British military prison in South Africa during WWII, where British prisoners are repeatedly forced to climb up and down a man-made hill of sand and stone in the center of a prison camp while carrying loaded duffle bags in the blistering heat and sun. Sidney Lumet made a modern Sisyphus adaptation, an existentialist tragedy about the uphill trials we must suffer through to find any semblance of honor or peace in the time of corruption, war and injustice.
Alien (1979)
Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is a slow-burning masterpiece of dread and horror with brilliant visual aesthetics, impeccable production design and magnificent performances by the entire cast. What Ridley Scott does is have the film take its time and allow us to wait for the inevitable. The films steady pacing is deliberate giving us the time and the space to learn how the monster evolves and the steps of its metamorphosis. Today’s monster movies immediately rush into the action and skip the build-up, only giving us the pay-off. What makes the performances in the film so believable is the age of the cast which range from 29 (Veronica Cartwright) to 53 (Harry Dean Stanton). You immediately believe these characters would find themselves in such a predicament, as they look the part as blue collared labored workers who were hired to run a commercial shipment of ore to Earth. Modern films today would cast characters way to young to play the roles of beaten down union workers running a big dirty space rig, especially without including an older superior to direct them. What makes Ridley Scott’s Alien so disturbing and frightening are its Freudian themes of birth and death, and the repressed sexual fears of our own mother containing sadistic agendas of her own. If you are familiar with the artwork of H.R. Giger, many of his drawings are very sexual and organic by nature. Since he was one of the main art designers of the film, he brought his artistic style to the story, which creates a much more unsettling psychological look on sex and reproducing. These erotic characteristics represent the creature’s purpose to kill, giving it its reason to continue reproducing in order for it to survive. The sexual metaphors are hidden all throughout the film: The hole in the spaceship which Kane discovers is shaped similar to a vaginal opening. The egg hugger which attaches itself to the face of Kane represents a form of male rape. The seven astronauts awaking from their pods suggest re-birth. And the iconic chest bursting scene that became a staple in science fiction horror represents giving birth. The film also seemed to play around with the concept of gender swapping, having the men giving birth and the Nostromo being controlled by an all-powerful female computer called ‘Mother.’ The most obvious one is the character of Ellen Ripley as she was considered at the time as being one of the first ‘masculine’ female heroes to hold her own in a male dominated action genre. Next to Dallas’s shocking death in the air ducts, the climax in Alien is one of the most terrifying scenes in the entire film. Probably because Ripley finds herself most vulnerable getting undressed and exposing her female sexuality for the first time, something that she repressed earlier throughout the story. These are just some of the many fascinating themes that make Alien the quintessential film in science fiction horror. Each scene builds upon the last to create a sense of dread, anxiety and fear. Just like the shark in Jaws, you hardly ever see the Alien, but its presence looms large. There's a sense of claustrophobia and helplessness that just adds to the atmosphere, knowing that there's literally nowhere to run and no one to call out to. Like the tagline says: “In space, no one can hear you scream.”
Alien (1979) is on MY TOP 300 FILMS LIST
Boys Don't Cry (1999)
Boys Don’t Cry is a romantic American masterpiece, a 'Romeo and Juliet' on the prairie that is set in a trailer-park. Director Kimberly Pierce developed a disturbing and haunted true-crime tragedy which immediately absorbs the viewer with the strong acting, the deception, the romance and the betrayal. Tina Brandon was not a lesbian or a crossdresser. She was a girl who thought of herself as a boy, and the moment she left Nebraska and moved to the town of Falls City in 1993, that is how she wanted to present herself. By then she become Brandon Teena and we realize we must use the male pronoun in describing him. Pierce finds the perfect note, never asking us to judge any of the characters, but to see them for who they really are; flawed human beings placed in a harsh, violent and prejudice world. Tom and John are not presented as one-dimensional killers but complex, disturbed individuals who were brought up around poverty, inherited ignorance and antisocial behavior. Boys Don’t Cry is a stirring and harrowing true story that commemorates the life and unjust death of transgender teen Brandon Teena.
Topper (1937)
Cary Grant and Constance Bennett play a young, happy-go-lucky couple who love to party. But after a car accident kills them both, they discover that they haven't done enough good deeds to earn a trip to heaven. To remedy this problem, they decide to help their old uptight boss, Cosmo Topper, live a little. Topper (1937) is a whimsical little screwball comedy that became a such a huge hit at the time of its released that it was followed by two sequels (Topper Takes a Trip and Topper Returns) and a television series which ran for two seasons. But nothing beats the original with Cary Grant. I find it to be quite an underrated supernatural comedy and possibly one of my favorite ghost wreak havoc plotlines next to Ghostbusters and Ghost. The camera tricks are fun to see (the fade ins and fade outs) and the tire changing sequence is still brilliant even today. Don't think too much into the logic of it and you will have a blast.
Alambrista! (1977)
It is a story that happens every day, told here in a harsh, groundbreaking work of realism, a young Mexican man illegally crosses the border to the United States in search of work. Exploited by his American employers, Roberto labors in harsh conditions for insufficient wages and fails to make enough money for his family. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s inaugural Caméra d’Or in 1978, ¡Alambrista! (The Illegal, 1977) is a harsh and uncompromising political work that still remains one of the best films ever made on this continuously relevant topic.
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Takashi Yamasaki’s Godzilla Minus One returns to the roots of what gave the original story its timeless weight: Post WWII nuclear war. Godzilla Minus One also does much more than that. It explores combat PTSD, military shame, national guilt, and Japan's struggle to forgive itself and its government for past mistakes. In the original film, Godzilla was used as a metaphor for the dangers of nuclear weapons, being inspired by the recent atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that traumatized the Japanese people. In this 2023 modern take on the creature, Godzilla seems to symbolize the unresolved guilt and shame carried by the survivors of the war. The film concludes on a hopeful note, offering redemption for its main protagonist and the country as a whole. The film states that only through forgiveness can one preserve the future, and in the end, the story offers hope and redemption for both the characters and the nation as a whole.
Say Anything... (1989)
"Why’d you come to the party with Lloyd Dobler?”
"He made me laugh.”
When I go to the movies, I tend to identify with the characters. When it comes to watching a romance, I naturally will bring cyncism because the characters are not worthy of my investment in the story. Many, if not most high school comedies, are crass, vulgar, and not confident enough to approach the material maturally. Cameron Crowe's Say Anything (1989) is the exception and one of the best movies made about young love. It is a mature telling about the transition from teen to adulthood, with a seminal John Cusack performance whose Lloyd Dobler has rightfully become an icon of the genre.
Hang 'em High (1968)
After a gang of men unsuccessfully attempt to lynch Clint Eastwood for a crime he did not commit, he is determined to seek revenge against his tormentors. Starring a bad-ass cast of legends like Clint Eastwood, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper, Hang em High is an entertaining romp of a western and Eastwood's first American film
made under his new Eastwood Production Company in the States.Ran (1985)
Throughout his career, William Shakespeare’s stories have always fascinated director Akira Kurosawa, and he has adapted many of his best works to Japanese culture. He adapted Macbeth into Throne of Blood, Hamlet into The Bad Sleep Well and King Lear into Ran. Akira Kurosawa once stated “Hidetora is me,” and there is some evidence in his 1980 film Ran that Lord Hidetora serves as a stand-in for Kurosawa. A lot of critics have stated that the bleak story of the aging Hidetora was a character Kurosawa could only be able to relate to more in his later years of life. Throughout his subsequent years, Kurosawa became more preoccupied with the themes of death, mortality, and had a more pessimistic outlook on human nature and justice. It was also in these years that his eyesight was beginning to fail him, and he even attempted suicide. Even though he announced Ran was to be his very last film, he made one more titled Dreams; but many consider Ran to be his swan song. While Kurosawa’s earlier samurai epics were more adventurous, lighthearted, and full of humor, Ran was cold, remote, violent, and horrifying. There are several parallels to the story of King Lear within Ran, including an old king who is driven mad after unwisely dividing his kingdom (among sons, not daughters). There is a body guard and protector, plus a loyal fool to keep the king company. There is the kings sons whose greed, betrayal, and lust for power only lead to bloodshed. There is finally the reveal of Lady Kaede, the evil seductress who orchestrated and incited the entire war for personal vengeance, purposely plunging all of them into hell.
Ran (1980) is on MY TOP 300 FILMS OF ALL TIME LIST
Evil Does Not Exist (2023)
Evil Does Not Exist (2023) is a beautiful yet unsettling film exploring the conflicts between men and nature and how humans have a delicate balance with their environment. The title, like its ending, remains ambiguous but suggests a sort of environmentalist parable on how evil can come from the actions humans make, which can forever impact the balance between people vs. the natural world.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)
The Beauty and the Bloodshed is a astonishing documentary that follows the life of artist Nan Goldin and the downfall of the Sackler family, the pharmaceutical dynasty who was greatly responsible for causing the opioid epidemic which killed over 450,000 people in the past two decades. Goldin, a well-known photographer whose work often documented the LGBT subcultures and the HIV/AIDS crisis, founded the advocacy group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2017 after her addiction to Oxycontin and near fatal overdose of fentanyl. P.A.I.N. specifically targets museums and other arts institutions to hold the art community accountable for its collaboration with the Sackler family and its well publicized financial support of the arts. Since P.A.I.N.'s activities most of the targeted museums have severed all ties with the Sackler family, and in 2021, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy.
The Ipcress File (1965)
Michael Caine is Harry Palmer, an agent for the Ministry of Defense investigating the disappearances of high-level scientists in 1965's The Ipcress File. This espionage thriller was described as a sexpionage, though completely devoid of sex onscreen, and of being "anti-Bond" for its unglamorous and downbeat depiction of Bond-style high-tech gimmickry. Michael Caine's coolly restrained performance and irreverent attitude make his Harry Palmer less of an action hero and more of an anti-hero thrown into the plot of a political film noir.
Belle de Jour (1967)
Severine is a sexually repressed and deeply unsatisfied Paris housewife, who finds erotic liberation through psychosexual fantasies working at a part-time brothel. She is a woman who has it all: a handsome upscale husband, a luxurious bourgeois home and wealthy aristocratic friends. And yet something is still missing. In the evenings she rejects her husbands advancements for lovemaking, and never seems to be sexually aroused by his light touches and gentle caresses. Her desires that she secretly craves for are not so ladylike, in fact, they are rather rough and crude masochist fantasies of being gagged, flogged, raped and pelted with mud by several different men, while at the same time being called such obscene names as ‘tramp’, and ‘sl*t.’ There is no explicit sex in Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour and hardly any on-screen nudity, probably because most of the sexual fetishes and pornographic fantasies are projected through the viewer’s imagination. The psychological pathology for Severine’s unusual behavior is another mysterious layer added onto the story which makes Belle de Jour such a captivating odyssey. Severine's deep-rooted fetishes in sadomasochism aren’t really answered, except through small glimpses of her childhood, which show that she may have been a victim of sexual abuse when she was just a young child.
Belle de Jour (1967) is on MY TOP 300 FILMS OF ALL TIME LIST
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