My favorite films

New Year's Even discussion last night led to the provocative and seldom-asked question: What is your favorite movie of all time? Such a difficult question, really, because the scope of movies is so broad, comparisons across genres are so quirky, and favorite is a surprisingly elusive concept. Favorite doesn't necessarily mean "best." There are probably movies we recognize as great that we don't necessarily love, and movies we love that we recognize as deeply flawed. I think, thought, that "favorite" movies of all time have to be ones we've enjoyed repeatedly on re-viewings and that we expect to and anticipate enjoying again in the future. Off the top of my head, a few films came to mind last night. First, Rules of the Game, which I consider perhaps the best film ever made and one that I've enjoyed re-viewing numerous times. I can join the legions and say that I have watched Citizen Kane numerous times and enjoyed it repeatedly; ditto for Some Like It Hot. For pure schmalz and sentiment, how can you not like It's a Wonderful Life? And what would our world be w/out Duck Soup? I've also enjoyed several viewings of Annie Hall - it holds up so well over time. Another one that I was just blown away by on re-viewing was The Godfather - when I came back to it for a second viewing I expected to be entertained by the overall story line and found instead that every single scene was stunning in composition and presentation - many great parts that combined to make an even greater whole. Others in the gathering offered their personal favorites, including, from EP, Wild Strawberries (which should more accurately be called The Wild Strawberry Patch) and , from JP, The Lives of Others, which she said was her favorite in recent years. I haven't re-viewed too many recent pictures, but I believe two, both of them (like Lives of Others) very dark, will hold up to the test of time: Pan's Labyrinth and The Secret in Their Eyes. And can there be a more smartly plotted film than The Sixth Sense? Two of us agreed on their worst film of all time (this doesn't mean trashy films that are obviously meant for the garbage bin but films that aspire to greatness): FK and I would put Kurosawa's The Lower Depths at the top (or bottom) of that list (with Daughters of the Dust in the running, too.) To show the oddity of film-making, though, The Seven Samurai could be another one of my all-time favorites.

42 - but who's counting?

As a dues-paying member of The Southern New England Brooklyn Dodgers Fan Club, how could I not like 42? Any retelling of the amazing story of Jackie Robinson's debut in Major League Baseball in 1947, breaking the shameful color barrier, is going to be worth watching - and worth retelling to generations who may not comprehend the magnitude of his accomplishment. Robinson's personal bravery and strong, dignified personality did so much to change the sport and to change our culture. All baseball fans of my era, particularly Dodger fans, are also somewhat familiar with the key episodes in Robinson's rookie season - the hostility from fans and in particular from racist plays such as teammate Dixie Walker and opposing manager Ben Chapman (Phillies), the withering media attention, the fortitude of Branch Rickey, the despicable silence of commissioner "Happy" Chandler. And everyone's aware of Robinson's great skills as a ballplayer - and how so many great black players followed him through the door that he and Rickey opened. So, yes, 42 reminded us of all of that and is a great movie to show kids and others. Wisely, it's not a biopic in the traditional sense - there's virtually nothing about Robinson's life before Rickey signed him. It's a story of two seasons, postwar - 46 is Montreal and his rookie season in Brooklyn. Sadly, the movie isn't really so great as a film: it's absurdly sanctimonious (cue the strings! cue the orchestra!), full of absurd set pieces (Rickey, way overplayed by Harrison Ford, bucking up Robinson's confidence again and again, for example), and in my view none of the actors looks like a ball player of the era and the company seemed to care very little about accurately re-creating the look or feeling of spring training or major league ball in the 1940s. A couple of good scenes - Robinson driven from his lodging in Florida by a gang of racists - aren't enough to outweigh the stodgy set pieces and the heavy-handed messaging Not a bad movie at all, but not nearly what it could have or should have been. On the DVD edition, Warner Bros cheaps out, taking plenty of time and space for innumerable promotional trailers and including only one crappy special addition - why not some clips showing Robinson in action or on camera?

The weird enshrinement of Walt Disney and Mary Poppins: Saving Mr. Banks

Just as you should read and study The Odyssey, preferably in the original Greek, before setting off on a reading of Ulysses, you should probably see and ponder Mary Poppins before you set out to see the new Disney movie Saving Mr. Banks. No, stop it - I'm just joking! But you might think, from the hagiographic tone of this film, that Mary Poppins is one of the great cultural monuments of our time. In essence, the movie is about Disney's 20-year quest to get Aussie-British author V.L. Travers to assign his company the rights to her books; as the movie opens, she's about to sign the contract, which gives her the right of final script approval - her agent says this is a first for Disney, and it's very unusual in any event. The very best scenes in the movie involve (some of) her meetings with the writer, composer, and lyricist team to go over some of the scenes, the art direction, etc. Travers, played very well by Emma Thompson, who adds value to any movie she's in even this one, is really funny in some of her bizarre critiques - insisting that film not include the color red, for example - and we learn from the closing credits that these working sessions were in fact recorded and the best scenes it seems are very closely based on fact. And that's where the movie goes off base; I would have enjoyed seeing a realistic account of how this team managed to put the project together even w/ her literally insane demands - but no, this is a Disney film, after all, so over time we see the writing sessions become increasingly Glee - choreographed, background score, and so on - why not just play it w/ the single studio piano? And we see Travers/Thompson become less irascible and increasingly relaxed, cool, eccentrically lovable. In other words - this film has a Hollywood, a Disney, ending. There are two other aspects to this film, neither of them good. Though Tom Hanks plays a credible Disney, it's totally bizarre to see him plead with Travers for the rights to this film - it will bring joy to children, and adults, everywhere, he says; he promised his daughter he would make this film, and a man doesn't break a promise to his children; and so on. It's impossible to know whether Disney is meant to be seen as such a cornball, or whether he's being a shrewd businessman. I suspect he was a shark - but I also suspect, for some weird reason, that this movie is meant to enshrine him as an affable genius. The less said about the many flashbacks to Travers's difficult Australian childhood the better, but let's just say I found the youthful T. and her eccentric but fatally flawed father insufferable, almost nauseating. Paul Giamatti, btw, is wasted in a dumb part as a limo driver who at one point literally sits on the ground digging holes w/ Travers as he talks about his "handicapped" daughter. (Later, in lieu of a tip, she gives him a list of famous people who had disabilities.) Travers may have wanted to ban the color red from her film, but it seems the studio wanted to ban the color black from this one. It's the most lily white casting I've seen in any movie in many years - right down to the extras. In a very long sequence at Disneyland with many crowd scenes, I saw not a single person of color. In fact, the only black person I can recall in the entire movie is the man who lifted the luggage from Travers's limo. Happiest place on earth indeed.

Hysteria and a charge of sexual abuse - The Hunt

Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt (2012) is absolutely gripping and will keep you engaged and on edge from its first shot (a group of drunken Danish middle-aged guys carousing at a wilderness hunting lodge) to its last, which I won't divulge. That makes it a totally successful psychological social drama, but whether that makes it a great movie or even a movie you'd want to see is another question. That depends on your capacity for enduring disturbance - and moral ambiguity. The film is in essence about a 42-year-old father, just divorced, apparently unsuccessful in whatever his career was (seems financially pretty comfortable) now working in a kindergarten (seems more like what we would call a preschool). Through a series of incidents, the man, Lucas (the excellent Mads Mikkelsen, also great in A Royal Affair) is charged with sexually abusing one of the children - we know that the charge is unfounded, and we also know that Lucas is very vulnerable to the charge, as man living alone, and known for kind of rough, physical play with the kids. By the nature of his job, there is body contact - we see in an early scene that he helps clean a child after the child has a bowel movement. So when a child wrongly accuses him (she's a very troubled young girl who'd seen a porno video that her teenage brother handed her) the charge quickly accelerates to hysteria - largely because the head of the school and a counselor handle this terribly - asking the girl leading questions; calling in all parents and asking them to watch for any signs of disturbance. One thing very disturbing about this story is the possible implication that charges of sexual abuse are often unfounded - I believe that's not true, that more than likely most incidents are never reported because of fear, shame, confusion. On the other hand, the film is a warning as to how a criminal charge can quickly become mass hysteria that can lead to ostracism or worse - that's really what the film is about, the effect of the incident and its aftermath on Lucas/Mikkelson, his family, his friends, the whole community. There are some incredibly tense and dramatic confrontations, one or two of them physical but most of them verbal, emotional - with typical Scandinavian understatement and then sudden bursts of passion and violence. This film would have a much wider audience if there were an American re-make, but that's unlikely given the sensitive and disturbing nature of the subject; it is a Golden Globes nominee and will possibly be an Oscar nominee as well. The Hunt may also recall for some the fine novel and British film Atonement, which also centered on an unjust charge of sexual abuse - though that one by a much older girl, who should have born some responsibility for her actions and instead carried the guilt inside of her for the rest of her life.

The 20 best films I saw in 2013, part III - 7 documentaries

Completing my list of the 20 best movies I saw in 2013 - once again it's been a great year for documentaries which have clearly moved ever closer to the mainstream of cinema in the past few years, thanks in part I think to increasing use of and familiarity with personal documentary video on social media and YouTube, the ready availability of good documentaries on Netflix and other media that bypass commercial theater distribution, and the ever-increasing portability and affordability of videocameras. Here are the best documentaries, many of them disturbing and unsettling, a few of them uplifting as well, that I saw this year (listed alphabetically):

Five Broken Cameras. A fine and disturbing Palestinian documentary made up of footage by an amateur videographer who started out buying a camera to film family birthday parties etc. and ends up filming various marches, public events, and encounters with the Israeli military - without meaning to, he becomes the unofficial chronicler of the struggles in his village; as the title tells us, he has had his camera smashed and destroyed during at least 5 encounters - each one chillingly captured live.

The Imposter. A weird film about about a family whose 14-year-old son disappeared - and then three years later a kid shows up who claims to be their son. Very mysterious and unnerving, and will leaving you thinking, and puzzled, right up through the end and beyond.

Last Train Home. A terrific documentary from China that shows the lives of a family of garment workers who migrate from a seemingly idyllic countryside into the extremely over-crowded city in order to earn enough to survive. Relation between parents and daughter, seeking her independence, is very powerful and sad.

Marwencol (2010). An excellent and thoughtful look at the work of a great outsider artist, Mark Hogancamp. Sad and disturbing in some ways, but also triumphant, as the artist gains recognition for her very peculiar oeuvre.

Searching for Sugarman. By far the best-known documentary on this list, the excellent story about an obscure American singer-songwriter, Rodrigues, who for some reason became hugely popular in South Africa - and who completely faded from public life, to the point where there were rumors of suicide, or death during a show. Turns out - not so.

Stories We Tell. Sarah Polley is emerging as one of the most talented and innovative directors; this semi-documentary, which uses a lot of recreated footage, tells the story of her family, with many secrets revealed, to her and to us, during the course of the making of this movie. Unlike so many family documentaries, this one is not filled with misery and abuse. The relationship w/ her father is very moving.

This Is not a Film. An Iranian documentary made surreptitiously by a filmmaker whom the censors have confined to his apartment. He takes great risks and pushes the limits of censorship, and some very disturbing sequences, particularly toward the end of the film, show the dangers dissident artists face every day in repressive societies.

The 20 best films I saw in 2013 - continued (foreign and classic)

Continuing with the 20 best films I saw in 2013: yesterday I posted on five contemporary or near-contemporary English-language films, and I will add 8 films to the list today - some foreign-language, some classic, some both:

The best classic/foreign-language films I saw in 2013 (listed alphabetically):

A Hijacking. This terrific Danish film from 2013 makes a good counterweight to the bloated, action-drenched Captain Philips (perhaps a case study of the difference between U.S. studio films and indie, foreign films) - tells the story of Somali hijacking primarily seen from the POV of the corporate chief who wrestles with crushing moral and strategic decisions as he negotiates to free the hostages and the ship.

Holy Motors. A completely unusual, in fact unique, contemporary French film that's more or less about an actor who has to take on 12 (or so) roles during a long and complex evening, leading him through Paris at night and into some very odd places and predicaments. Not for everyone, but one of the best experimental narratives I've seen in some time.

The Human Condition. A Japanese WWII saga - sometimes considered one of the longest films ever made, and maybe best to think of it as a 6-part series. A stunning account of a young man's journey from innocence to experience as he gets drafted into the Japanese army, sent to the China front, and put in the middle of many extraordinary challenges. The arrival of the POWs as conscripted labor in the mines is one of the greatest scenes in cinema.

Kid with a Bike. Another great contemporary film from the Dardenne brothers, in Belgium, who have made an extraordinary career examining the lives and troubles of working-class families in the industrial towns of the Belgian-French borderlands. See this one and see all their films if you haven't already (especially The Child). 

The Loneliest Planet. A contemporary film shot in the Caucasus, follows a couple on a hiking adventure that leads to one shocking confrontation that will change their lives forever. Very beautiful film to watch as well. 

Rocco and His Brothers. A great Italian postwar family melodrama, that follows a group of brothers who leave the wretched poverty of southern Italy for what they hope will be a new and more prosperous life in Rome. A great saga, and an incredibly interesting look at street life and family life in Italy in that long-gone era.

Shoeshine. Like Rocco, a neo-realist Italian postwar melodrama, this one focusing on a few of the street urchins struggling to get by - incredibly sad, and amazing to think how these children had to live and thrive. Anyone who ever thinks society doesn't have an obligation to provide welfare, sustenance, and education to all children should be made to see this film.

The Southerner. A Renoir made-in-USA rarity that's yet another melodrama and has some of the finest en plein air cinematography ever. No doubt the war and his exile in America kept Renoir from obtaining a higher level of greatness, but his American films are still on a par with some of our best.

The 20 best films I saw in 2013: Contemporary English-language

Looking back, I realize that a watched a lot of very good films this year - most at home, on dvd or streaming - and I also realize that it's hard to judge among films of different types, all of which I've enjoyed. So I'll present my list(s) of the 20 best films I saw in 2013 into groups, starting with:

The best contemporary English-language films I saw in 2013 (listed alphabetically):

Frances Ha. I've been up and down on director Baumbach, but definitely a fan of Frances Ha, a terrific movie about a young woman in NYC trying to find her way as an artist, daughter, friend, girlfriend - and seems to me to very much capture the mood and spirit of a segment of the under-30 generation. Greta Gerweg terrific in the title role, and the film has a nice understated quality - and a sense of what NYC really looks like, not scrubbed clean as it is in so many movies and TV shows, e.g. Sex and the City, Seinfeld, anything by Woody Allen.

Happy-Go-Lucky. One of the most likable films in years, totally carried by the great performance of Sally Hawkins in the title role, and a very smart script, in the British manner.

Much Ado About Nothing. One of the very best Sheakspeare on film I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. A terrific transposition to contemporary LA - hard to belief how effective and credible the words of Shakespeare (largely unaltered in this screenplay) can sound in a contemporary setting. The subplot humor comes across far better than in an production of this play I've ever seen, and it's nice for once to hear S. played in American English.

Nebraska. I've been a big fan of Alexander Payne's films; in Nebraska he takes a new direction - working from an original screenplay rather than from an adapted novel - for a "buddy" movie, a father-son movie, and road-trip movie, that breaks with convention in many ways and is consistently moving and surprising. Some terrific subtle humor, and beautiful wide-screen b-w cinematography that captures the look and feel of isolated, dying Plains State small towns. (For whatever reason, 3 of the 5 films on this list are shot in black-and-white - go figure.)

Zero Dark Thirty. Fast-paced, dramatic, and intelligent account of the hunt for and killing of OBL. Obviously not a documentary but at times has the sense of veracity and real-time that documentaries convey. Examines the tough decisions interrogators and agents had to make regarding use of torture, physical and psychological, to extract info that could save lives of others.