My most reductive thought is this is Whiplash and Isabelle Huppert’s Erika is Miles Teller grown up. Her mother’s awfulness has turned her into someone who has no idea what counts as normal in society and she seems to feel a great deal of loneliness as a result. But there’s more.
This was a beautiful movie. There is a lot of hype surrounding this and the director, Wong Kar-Wai. This was my first Wong Kar-Wai movie, and it was a tremendous start. The look is stunning; the lighting makes so much work; the 75% speed shots looked great, along with the strobed, or low frame rate shots; the way the editing was cut differently in different moods. All of it comes together to make what I think is a masterpiece.
It seems like every friend of mine has told me this is a must-see over the years. I had never seen it, but I was on a collision course with this for a long time. I have been really coming to love John Carpenter movies and this one seems to be the most well-known, or at least at the top. So I was going to run into this no matter what. The Letterboxd Roulette suggestion from jcarp was perfect and forced my avoidance-plagued hand.
This was great. It’s not fast, but that’s fine. It has a lot of moral speechifying, which is fine. It has some classic characters, led by Alec Guinness and William Holden. Both are magnificent—Guinness as the efficient, ethical, and hard working British Army Colonel whose unit is captured and used to build the bridge, and Holden as the American who escapes the work camp only to reluctantly return with a squad of British commandos to blow the bridge up.
I saw this many years ago, when it was pretty new, and I didn’t pay much attention. It seemed boring and not about baseball in the way Major League was about baseball so I didn’t care. That meant I had some vague idea that the movie was about a groupie-type who slept with minor leaguers and also some career minor leaguer who set the home run record. Maybe something about a hot new pitcher.
Just an all time favorite of mine for so many reasons. The performances are bonkers. I wrote before that a great movie maker turned a couple of maniacs loose in their prime maniac years and it made for a brilliantly theatrical version of this story.
A second watch of this has made it all come together. This is a hell of a spy movie, complete with multiple twists, insane set pieces, bonkers scenarios, and a story that held my attention for a solid 2:15 runtime. Cary Grant is great, but. Eva Marie Saint is magnificent. I was caught off guard by how horny the movie is. There is a lot of sex talk for what I have always considered (maybe in error) a pretty prudish period in movie making, some really forward conversations, and a very on-the-nose final shot to bring it home.
Some quick thoughts that definitely contain spoilers on Civil War.
I am having a really hard time with this movie.
I didn’t like it. I might come around on it over time, but that initial viewing and the ending somewhat made me cringe. The message felt like Barry was being rewarded with the girl he really wants just because he needs it. But he’s violent! He thrashed the bathroom in the restaurant with her out at the table waiting! He’s bad and need desperately to get himself some help!
A lot of 1984, a lot of Kafka, a real noir, and great. I really liked this.
This movie came out when I was 10, and around that time I saw everything I could. We had a family friend who worked for a studio who could somehow call this megaplex in my town and get me and my friends in whenever I wanted. I think my parents were horrified, but I called all the time and she was always awesome and hooked me up.
Anyway, I saw everything that a kid might find at all interesting in those days. I never even heard of Brazil. That’s obviously on me, especially since I never heard of the movie until last year. But let’s forget about all that.