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An error has ocurred. Please try againBut in the few cases it has, complex characters as well as new social relations have emerged – mostly for the better. Here is a list of films that capture the long historical haul for equal rights for women or those that capture "women space" in the most powerful ways...
This is my attempt at capturing what films are helpful in this regard so that I can recommend them to people who share this interest with me and are interested in joining this community of like-minded folks throughout the world...
Reviews
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Frankly, I don't get it
''He that lives upon hope will die fasting.'' - Benjamin Franklin
Frankly, I really don't get the praise for this film. It wouldn't even be in my Top 250.
The only thing my spouse has been able to glean from researching the topic on the internet is that psychologically people seem to like the film more and more upon repeated viewings. Well, that and Morgan Freeman's calming voice.
Not that challenging cinematically and a bit of a fantasy that pawns itself off as gritty realism, to be honest.
Not to be an alarmist, but part of me wonders whether this film would be Exhibit A should the country ever descend into a fascist dictatorship much like "From Caligari to Hitler" by Siegfried Kracauer examined German film during the rise of the Nazi's after World War I. There is something going on on a group psychology level here that bears examination.
O Lucky Man! (1973)
Revisiting films of my youth, my opinion has changed
My somewhat slow, long-term project of revisiting films of my youth that impacted me took me back to that staple of campus films societies at Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1970's, O Lucky Man!, where I first saw it.
Unfortunately, it has not dated well, at least in my opinion. (I know, I used to have a romanticized memory of the movie in my head as well.)
Seeing it again after many, many more years of film-viewing I see this movie as being too long by at least a third. I think it could have really benefited with stricter editing choices and a firmer hand on the story -- which is ironic since Lindsay Anderson himself allegedly kept telling Malcolm McDowell (and presumably the crew) that they needed to do that very same thing.
There's nothing wrong with being ambitious -- and normally I'm a sucker for an ambitious "failure," ESPECIALLY by Hollywood standards -- but they lost the story for some of the anti-establishment points they were trying to make way too inconsistently to hold focus or interest.
There are too many other reasons for falling short to mention here, but not the least of them is that it features the high-water mark of the career of Malcolm McDowell who was at the peak of his international fame between the two Lindsay Anderson films and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (although also very good later in Time After Time).
Once his stock fell after the collapse of the British film industry and he was displaced to the United States (along with a very nasty cocaine habit), his career never fully recovered and seems to have tainted some of Anderson's legacy with him. History, as they say, is written by the winners and McDowell (though, admirably, he cleaned up and turned his life around) hasn't been on the winning end. And just to be clear, I like McDowell.
The cast is terrific (including a very young Helen Mirren who looks amazingly similar to Jennifer Lawrence of today) which is why I give it a 5, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone other than for film history purposes (British New Wave film, the 1970's, Lindsay Anderson, etc.).
The Goode Family (2009)
Mike Judge turns the mirror on my tribe and I love it
I only discovered "The Goode Family" (TGF) this past week and have been gobbling up past episodes with abandon through YouTube. What a hoot they are.
Nobody remembers that the term "political correctness" was actually coined by the Left before it was hijacked by the GOP and the right-wing in the late '80's. Originally it was meant as a humorous check on ourselves and a term of endearment and self-mocking rather than the derisive put-down of others it mutated into. I like to think that TGF is a continuation of that gentle spirit of PC which softens the edges of political rhetoric that can cut deeply and easily alienate.
Episodes around the politics of being a "football family," public radio, One Earth food stores (a stand in for Whole Foods), eco-terrorism, graffiti tagging and cult icons of frugality and consumer waste hit many of the right spots. For someone who has spent the majority of his adult life in Madison, WI, New York City and Seattle, WA while visiting Portland/Eugene, OR and Berkeley, CA, these shows really do touch on life in these communities no less in need of skewering than people in suburbia or Texas.
While I wouldn't say that the series is yet a subcultural must-see, it bears watching and deserves getting picked up and given more time to develop. TGF reminds me of the first season of Seinfeld where they were just getting characters and themes established. While not as out-and-out shocking and stupid (in a funny way) as Beavis & Butthead, TGF is clever and there is some potential here for very good humor.
Djöflaeyjan (1996)
Not as good as Cold Fever, Baddi worse than bad
I go out of my way to view foreign/independent film (I know, we're a vanishing breed) and rented this video at a neighborhood store that has a pretty good foreign selection mostly on the power of having seen COLD FEVER, which I enjoyed.
While I appreciate "dark comedies" as much as the next person -- and am a huge fan of Aki Kurasmaki (so I have some familiarity of Scandinavian film sensibility) -- it was a mistake to have placed so much of the film's success around a character as thoroughly unlikable as Baddi.
While he dominates the screen with charmless, witless and appalling behavior that knows no bounds (premised on his contact with "America"), most of the other characters are used as props and are nobly antithetical, i.e., they have a conscience. But for the most part, as a whole they cannot counterbalance the effect that the Baddi character has on the film.
That is a shame because there appeared to be some good potential character driven aspects to the story that were wasted.
The Woman Chaser (1999)
Patrick Warburton, aka Putty, in faithful pulp fiction
I saw this film at this year's Seattle International Film Festival. It was one of the films I had been looking forward to as I had heard about it in the NYTimes program ads for the NY Film Festival.
The cinematography is pretty good and the b/w grain is outstanding. Another mention has to go to the soundtrack as it is some of the better cocktail/lounge music mixed with some other stuff (I think Latin) that was also very good at contributing to the feel of the picture. I've heard that they are debating releasing the film only in color and otherwise balking at sticking to the b/w release, which would really be a shame because this film really is complemented by the b/w print.
But the film really belongs to Patrick Warburton. I loved him as David Putty on SEINFELD, but I think he was able to get the same comic element to this character while stretching into new territory. It's hard to believe someone could get so much out of squinting his eyes, but somehow he manages the feat.
While the rest of the cast are relatively unknown, they contribute in very nice ensemble, character-acting ways to the feel of the film.
It's not a *great* film, but if you are looking for something outside of the mall, cineplex fare that will dominate the summer film season, this is definitely worth a look.
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965)
A Perfect Bellydancing Football Film
Happened to catch this movie on cable (the Fox Movie Channel) for those curious few.
It's a clever, 60's comedy with then-youngsters Richard Crenna and Shirley MacLaine that had the perfect blend of interests for my partner and myself -- football (for me) and bellydancing (for her). An early (1964) forerunner of later football films THE LONGEST YARD and M*A*S*H and a somewhat worthy successor to the Marx Brothers with a surf guitar beat. Throw in an able cast of well-known actors (Jim Backus, Peter Ustinov, etc.) with the tweaking of the Notre Dame football legacy and it's a nice little "lost" chestnut of a film that hasn't been shown often enough.
Cradle Will Rock (1999)
Hello? Antonio Gramsci, anyone?
As evidenced by many of the other comments in this index, American movie audiences have the attention span of a gnat and tolerate ambitious filmmaking to very little extent. It is little wonder that Hollywood tries to do very little that doesn't come pre-packaged in a little product tie-in marketing campaign.
What is the role of the artist in a capitalist society?
It was a question that the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci dedicated himself to asking and exploring (wait, wasn't he a character in the film? :^) ). This film made me pick up and read Gramsci again and I saw many similarities of ideas and themes.
Is the film great? No. But at the dawn of a new century and in the shadow of WTO protesting and worldwide distrust of relentless globalization the film asks questions that rarely make it to mainstream audiences through any other medium. The film suggests, like WTO in Seattle, that there is historical precedence for the belief that there are cracks in the consensus and not everyone is on board with what is going on in the new global economy. And great art CAN come from those who are consciously political and creating from their everyday life experience.
(BTW, Cherry Jones is quite a find.)