Film List - what else I've been watching lately

A very quick and simple one again this month (feeling lazy again...). Penury has been keeping me home quite a lot recently, so - in addition to my planned 'Christmas treats' (I didn't quite get around to watching all of them, because a few got mislaid in my move to the new apartment, but I did watch most of them) - I've watched a fair few other DVDs over the past couple of months since I moved in here.

Here is a rundown.

Other Films I've Watched Recently


The Thin Man
(Dir. W.S. van Dyke, 1934)

One of the great drinking films - pretty terrible as a detective yarn, but it zings with great lines.

To Live And Die In L.A.
(Dir. William Friedkin, 1985)

Very brash, very 80s - rather like a more grown-up, edgier, more morally confused Miami Vice; and it has probably the best car chase ever.

The Longest Day
(Dir. Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Darryl F. Zanuck, 1962)
Epic, multi-faceted account of the D-Day landings that I remember from my childhood. Probably hadn't seen it in nearly 30 years, but it holds up very well.

Lola Montes
(Dir. Max Ophuls, 1955)

A random recent discovery in my favourite 'golden oldie' DVD store, and a very pleasant surprise: an unusual and stylish treatment of an extraordinary life, and Martine Carol is radiantly beautiful - if perhaps a little too determinedly enigmatic - in the title role.

La Cité des Enfants Perdus
(Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1995)

The story here is a bit of a meandering mess (requiring an awful lot of clunky exposition to make any sense of it at all), and not nearly so engaging as the macabre masterpiece that is Delicatessen; but there is some fantastic, dream-like imagery in this (as well as actual dream imagery), and two of the scariest ever renditions of Santa Claus.

Shane
(Dir. George Stevens, 1953)

One of the best Westerns ever, and one of the best bar fights.

The New Legend Of Shaolin
(Dir. Corey Yuen & Ying Wong, 1994)

Also known by numerous other names, including Five Founders of Shaolin, Legend of Future Shaolin, and Red Dragon, this is a delightfully cheesy Jet Li comedy martial arts flick that I discovered amongst a batch of DVDs bequeathed to me by a departing friend last year.

Singin' In The Rain
(Dir. Stanley Donen, 1952)

I loathe Gene Kelly, but there's so much else to enjoy in this silly tale of '20s Hollywood making the transition to talkies - notably Donald O'Connor's Make 'Em Laugh routine.

The Red Badge Of Courage
(Dir. John Huston, 1951)

A great version of Stephen Crane's classic Civil War novella, although it might have been even better had the studio not slashed almost an hour of footage. This is another one that I hadn't seen since I was a kid.

American Graffiti
(Dir. George Lucas, 1973)

Lucas's last good film (though not as good as his debut, THX 1138), a classic slice of small town Americana.

Kafka
(Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 1991)

A strangely overlooked minor classic, probably my favourite Soderbergh film after Sex, Lies and Videotape. I usually can't stand drippy Jeremy Irons, but his constipated lugubriousness is just right for playing Kafka here. And Lem Dobbs' script is brilliant at conjuring paranoia out of the most trivial incidents: in true Kafka style, the mundane details of life suddenly become fraught with potential menace.

Destry Rides Again
(Dir. George Marshall, 1939)

Jimmy Stewart at his best, and Marlene as the ultimate saloon chanteuse - wonderful!

Sideways
(Dir. Alexander Payne, 2004)

Another of the great drinking films - although the undertones of this are so dark, it's at times very uncomfortable viewing, it scarcely feels like a comedy at all. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church pull off a remarkable trick here in being likeably unlikeable.

A Walk In The Sun
(Dir. Lewis Milestone, 1945)

I'd never heard of this one before, but it turns out to be quite a diverting war film - made when the war was barely over. It's interesting in the narrowness of its focus (based on an autobiographical novel by Harry Brown), following a single US platoon through the 1943 Salerno landings and their first morning on Italian soil; interesting too in its lack of bravado or idealisation. These soldiers don't really know what's going on, and have lost their commanding officer; they're just improvising as best they can; some are dumb, some are cowardly; their senior sergeant suffers a nervous collapse and is unable to lead them - these are not things you commonly see in American WWII films, certainly not in those made during or shortly after the War. Director Lewis Milestone, of course, was also responsible for the classic All Quiet On The Western Front.

Nanook of the North
(Dir. Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)

A mesmerising documentary about the life of the Inuit. Nanook's family are constantly on the edge of losing their battle for survival in the harsh wilderness, and I'd forgotten that 'the great hunter' did in fact die a year or two after shooting finished, starving to death on a failed deer hunt.

Election
(Dir. Alexander Payne, 1999)

There are two marvellous performances from Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon in this scathing satire of small town ambitions adapted from a Tom Perrotta novel. This is one of my favourite American films of the last ten years or so. I hadn't previously clocked that it had the same director as Sideways - I should look out for more of this guy.