Films I Watched This Week — Dec 9–15, 2024
Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
Robert Bresson's tragic masterpiece The Diary of a Country Priest tells the story of a young priest who becomes a failure. The young man's face looks withdrawn throughout the story as he becomes strained trying to carry out the responsible duties of a priest at his new local parish. Believing God has sent him to the small town of Ambricort to help his local population during the cold and bleak winter, he does his best to make a positive influence within his community. But when arriving his flock mock him, spread cruel gossip about him being a drunkard and eventually drive him to the bitter point of defeat. He offers the people in his parish his help but they refuse to accept, with only one attending his weekly mass purely for sinful intentions. The priest cannot understand the hate and hostility his townspeople feel towards him and so he writes his thoughts down in a daily journal. The priest lives on a strict diet of only bread, soup and cheap wine, because his stomach cannot hold down any meats or vegetables. He often looks very tired, weak and sick, coughing up blood, and on one occasion becomes faint and collapses outside and into the mud. Diary of a Country Priest has been called by many as one of the greatest Catholic films ever made. The film centers on a tragic character of faith who inhabits a cruel sinful society that sets out to destroy him. Robert Bresson is considered one of the great masters in the art form of the cinema and most of his films center around the harsh themes of pain, redemption and human cruelty. Even though Robert Bresson was raised in a strict Catholic upbringing he eventually became an Agnostic and focused his Catholic teachings within the framework of several of his films. In his book, "Sculpting in Time", legendary director Andrei Tarkovsky describes Bresson as "perhaps the only artist in cinema, who achieved the perfect fusion of the finished work with a concept theoretically formulated beforehand." The priest of Ambricort starts out as a ambitious man who truly believes in what he is doing, but within time and with the slow failing of his health he not only comes to lose his ambition as a priest, but he loses his faith in God as well.
Diary of a Country Priest (1951) is on MY TOP 300 FILMS LIST
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
To Kill a Mockingbird is a socially conscious message movie that eliminates its black characters while delivering a simplistic message on overcoming racism. Yet it is also much more than that. It is a fable. A memory. A perception of history through the eyes of a innocent 7 year old child who is remembering her father, a heroic man of great integrity and character. Gregory Pecks' Atticus Fitch is one of the great performances of the cinema. Yes, the character of Atticus is considered idealistic, but Peck's performance takes him deeper, creating a struggling father and lawyer who makes legal mistakes with his case, having many moments of doubt. To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic, a significant example of a child's experiences and observations of a racism and injustice making the film a excellent informative period piece for all ages.
Spacked Out (2000)
Casual sex. Drug use. Violent behavior. Selling illegal contraband. Self-harm. Abortions without any parental involvement. Wow. The teenage girls in Spacked Out inhabit a moral void similarly to the lead characters in Larry Clark's Kids. They ride high on their friendship, clinging to one another in a society that has failed them. Where their families are absent and their existences are undervalued, it encourages these youths to spiral out of control. All of their life authority figures have let them down. They drift through life without direction, guidance or support, masking low self-esteem with loud talk and out-sized attitudes. What a powerful film.
Two English Girls (1971)
François Truffauts Two English Girls is a tender bittersweet tale, written by Henri-Pierre Roche, the same author who wrote Jules and Jim. Truffaut effortlessly exercises both a funny and tragic love triangle, exploring twentieth century manners within the confines of a coming of age story.
Street of Shame (1956)
Street Of Shame is a story of various prostitutes of different age groups who work together in a brothel in Tokyo. Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi made the subject of prostitution a frequent theme throughout his work because it drew from roots in his own life. Mizoguchi was known to frequent brothels, not simply to purchase favors but to socialize with their workers. These brothels made a great impression on the director, particularly because his own sister Suzo who raised him, was ultimately sold by their father as a geisha, which frightfully mirrors the tragic fate of the women in the film.
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
The Boy and the Heron is another spectacular achievement by the legendary master Hayao Miyazaki. Breathtaking visuals and a world full of unbelievable creatures fighting to survive the harshness of life, the film is a fantastic piece of art. The story weaves together tonal elements drawn from Miyazaki's entire filmography, drawing many similar themes like grief, environmentalism, family, war, humanism, and the conflicting worlds of reality vs. fantasy. The film seems to have departed from Miyazaki's cutesy child-like representations and has aligned itself more closely to a more violent style similar to Princess Mononoke.
Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell was unfairly treated when it was first released by Raimi fans, mostly because it wasn't Rated R, so it didn't have all the gory nastiness his earlier Evil Dead classics had. Plus it had shoddy, quite dated CGI, but the special effects in the early Evil Dead movies aren't too pretty in the realistic department either. And yet, isn't that what gives it their charm? Aside from the film not being so gory and having no Bruce Campbell, the dark comedic touches are still there and equally as effective. Seeing the film today it gives me a much better appreciation for the film. It's not his Evil Dead trilogy, but no films will be.
The Death of Stalin (2017)
The Death of Stalin is a hilariously smart black satire that makes us laugh at the absurdities while giving us glimpses of our own truths. From assassinations, backstabbings, and firing squads, the film gives us one of our darkest chapters in modern history and makes it funny.
Oliver! (1968)
Oliver is a splendid old fashioned Hollywood period piece with magnificent costuming, spectacular set designs and ensemble dancing. My favorite film adaptation has always been the 40's David Lean classic, which had a darker, harsher more expressionist tone. Lean's gritty postwar pessimistic vision was more intune to Charles Dickens reflection of 19th Century England. So I was a bit shocked to see the way Carol Reed (the director of the Third Man) softened and sentimentalized the story of Oliver. It wasn't long into the picture of Oliver that I forgot about all that because the music is so good, the sets are a wonder to behold and the performance of Ron Moody is such a lighter and more delightful departure than the more menacing performance done brilliantly by Sir. Alec Guinness.
First Man (2018)
First Man is more than just a film about America’s space race. It is a captivating look at grief.
Afire (2023)
A interesting summer comedy drama focusing on one of the most obnoxious, resentful, bitter and highly judgemental jerks I seen in movies in a while. A mix of the social relationship dynamics of Eric Rohmer and the awkward black comedy elements of Alexander Payne. A entertaining, if amusing character study that takes a sudden dark turn.
Nosferatu (1922)
To watch F.W. Murnau's silent horror masterpiece Nosferatu is to see the vampire movie before it became a pop icon of jokes, skits, books, and over 100 different films. When Nosferatu was first released in 1922, the company Prana had to declare bankruptcy after Bran Stoker's widow Florence Stoker, sued for copyright infringement and won. The court ordered all existing prints to be burned, but one copy of the film had already been distributed around the world. This print was duplicated over the years, kept alive by a cult following, making Nosferatu one of the first real "cult films". Nosferatu is the greatest of all vampire films, its style which came about through German Expressionism, presenting a hypnotic dream-like intensity. Max Schreck's portrayal of Dracula was more demonic, similar to an animal than a human being. He has bat-like ears, rat-like claws, and fangs that sit in the middle of his mouth like a rodent. His walk and body movements are similar more to a spider waiting patiently to attack its prey. Murnau's version of Dracula is the version I think of when the word "vampire" is mentioned. A tortured monster who must feed and nourish off the living, not out of pleasure but out of necessity.
Nosferatu (1922) is on my TOP 300 FILMS LIST
Tótem (2023)
Totem is a tender life-affirming film about a seven-year-old girl, gradually realizing that her father is dying, as the family gathers for what is likely his last birthday party. Despite the celebratory atmosphere, she picks up on the underlying sadness and tension around her. She understands that the day is about saying goodbye, even though the adults try to shield her from the full truth. The film is about celebration. It is about hope. It is about sadness. And most importantly, it is about family.
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
A delightfully cheerful screwball comedy involving mistaken identity on Christmas Eve, with Barbara Stanwyck stealing the show. The baby swapping was absolutely hilarious!
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Mike Flanagan took the impossible task of making a film that works both as a sequel to Stephen King's novel and Stanley Kubrick's adaptation. Flanagan achieves connecting both main stories flawlessly, exploring troubling issues like generational alcoholism and post tramatic stress disorder while also offering up some nostalgia for the fans of the original film. Doctor Sleep being passable would have come as a pleasant surprise for me. That it turned out to be great is nothing short of a miracle!
P.S. Aside from the film already being overly long I still recommend seeing the directors Cut.
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