Time's Top 100

Time's two Richards, Schickel and Corliss, put together a list of the top 100 films of all time. It's a pretty good list (not as good as my list, of course), except they are cheating cowards: cheating, because they include trilogies and television miniseries in the list, and cowards, because they refused to rank them. They should know that scoffing at the rankings is the greatest pleasure one can derive from a top 100 list.

The trilogies thing is more annoying than usual in this instance because they applied it only when it served their purposes: The Apu Trilogy is on there as one film, as is The Lord of the Rings. Yet only Star Wars is there; why not include Empire or Jedi, the former of which is considerably better than Star Wars? And they split the difference on The Godfather, including parts one and two but jettisoning the third. Not that I blame them, of course, but still. It's the principle of the thing.

They copied 29 from my top 100 list, and my lawyer will be in touch with them: Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Band of Outsiders; Blade Runner; Bride of Frankenstein; Casablanca; Chinatown; Citizen Kane; Dr. Strangelove; The Godfather; The Godfather: Part II; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; Goodfellas; A Hard Day's Night; His Girl Friday; The Lady Eve; Lawrence of Arabia; The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; The Manchurian Candidate; Notorious; On the Waterfront; Pulp Fiction; Raging Bull; Schindler's List; The Searchers; Sherlock Jr.; Some Like It Hot; A Streetcar Named Desire; Sweet Smell of Success; and White Heat.

Why aren't Double Indemnity, The 400 Blows, In a Lonely Place, Out of the Past, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Taxi Driver, and Wings of Desire on my list? Revisions, revisions, revisions. Of course, I'd tear my hair out attempting to pick which films to bump.

These 19 are acceptable on anyone's top 100 list, though they didn't make mine: The Awful Truth; Bonnie and Clyde; Brazil; City Lights; City of God; The Crowd; Dodsworth; E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial; Farewell My Concubine; Ikiru; It's A Wonderful Life; Kind Hearts and Coronets; King Kong; Metropolis; Ninotchka; Once Upon a Time in the West; Star Wars; and Unforgiven.

I have reservations about these: Barry Lyndon was good, yes, but it also bored me to tears at times. I need to see it again. Chunking Express is good, yes, but Wong Kar-Wai's best film is In the Mood for Love. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is very good, but if you're going to put Bunuel on the list, there are many films that would come before this one, like That Obscure Object of Desire. Finding Nemo: Again, a really good film, but there are at least three Pixar films that are better than this one. The Last Command is a good film, and a great performance, but for this to be the only Sternberg film on the list is a crime. Miller's Crossing...I guess I just never saw what made this film so great. Almost all of the Coen brothers' movies I've seen are better than this. If you're going to pick a Disney movie, Pinocchio ranks around fourth; I'd have been happier with Beauty and the Beast. Are the film geeks going to take away my license to practice if I admit that Psycho never did it for me? I liked it, but it wasn't earth-shattering. The Shop around the Corner is not even close to Lubitsch's best; what about Trouble in Paradise or Heaven Can Wait? I need to see Singin' in the Rain again. I was unimpressed when I first saw it, back when I thought I didn't like musicals. Yojimbo is fun and funny, but there are at least a half-dozen other Kurosawa films that would go on before this one. And Detour is the essence of noir distilled into a film that works even when it shouldn't, but noir is full of films that are just as gripping and a lot more technically accomplished.

Can someone tell me what The Fly and Talk to Her are doing on a top 100 list?

I'm really happy they included these three, although I wouldn't have put them on mine: Dodsworth is one of the great forgotten films of the 1930s; The Legend of Drunken Master (a.k.a. Drunken Master II) is an oddball pick, but it feels right; and In a Lonely Place might just be Bogie's best performance.

I haven't seen The Apu Trilogy; Baby Face; Berlin Alexanderplatz; Camille; Charade; Children of Paradise; Closely Watched Trains; Day for Night; The Decalogue; 8 1/2; Invasion of the Body Snatchers; It's A Gift; Kandahar; The Man with a Movie Camera; Meet Me in St. Louis; Mon oncle d'Amerique; Olympia, Parts 1 and 2; Persona; The Purple Rose of Cairo; The Singing Detective; Smiles of a Summer Night; Swing Time; Tokyo Story; Ugetsu; Ulysses' Gaze; or Umberto D. A lot of them are on my Netflix queue.

I've never even heard of The Crime of Monsieur Lange, Leolo, Mouchette, Nayakan, Pyaasa, and A Touch of Zen. I'm ashamed of the gaps in my foreign film knowledge.

I stole this idea from Nick Davis, one of my favorite reviewers. Feel free to check out his top 100 list and his reaction to the Time list.

I Love the Smell of Movie Lists in the Morning

Channel 4's list of the Top 100 War Movies of All Time. Let the arguments begin!

First, there are the movies that shouldn't be on the list at all. Rambo: First Blood, Part II shouldn't be anywhere on the list, not even at #100. Same with Cold Mountain. The Longest Day would be better titled "The Longest Movie"; and A Bridge Too Far could be called "A Movie Too Long." Kick them both off. Enemy at the Gates is just passable, certainly not top 100 material. Black Hawk Down in the top 10? Not in my book. Again, it's passable, but not great. The Thin Red Line is overrated hooey (I'm exaggerating for effect), and it shouldn't be on the list.

Then there's the placement. Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Grand Illusion are top ten material, and I think I'd put Gallipoli in there as well. Arguing about the placement is the most fun, and list-makers know that.

Then there's the whole question of what makes a war movie. Sam Fuller, the legendary director of such films as Fixed Bayonets! and The Big Red One, said "That's what war is about, killing and death and staying alive. I don't like war movies that are about the girl back home or politics or stealing gold or whatever the hell bullshit." I don't exactly agree with him, but I think battles should definitely be a major component. Simply taking place during a war isn't enough, so films like Gone with the Wind (which admittedly I haven't seen), Casablanca, The Birth of a Nation, Mrs. Miniver, The General, Empire of the Sun and others probably wouldn't count in my book.

And then there are the plain stupid items. I can't recall much war going on in Gladiator, and they call The Battle of Algiers a documentary.

How would your list be different?

Waking Mr. R

You may have climbed mountains. You may have been to France. You may have gone to an Ivy League school. You may have piloted a B24 Liberator over Berlin on a cloudy night during June 1943. But you've never roused Jonathan Rosenbaum's ass out of bed. Not like I have. I needed the phone number of another critic at the Reader. Their office was closed. I had Rosenbaum's cell phone number. So I called it, and the poor guy was sleeping. I felt completely mortified. May you see the Great Wall of China, but may you never wake one of your heroes up when he's trying to sleep in on a Sunday morning.

Enough Whining about My Life...

...and I don't feel like whining about the government. Wait. What does that leave to talk about?

I know: crazy bus people. While I was waiting for the bus this morning in the bitter spring cold, there were two people waiting with me, one young black girl and one elderly white woman. The elderly white woman sat quietly on the bench, until one point when she doubled over with crazy-woman cackling. This surprised me, but I'm a jaded city boy, so I didn't even blink. But the young girl was a little shocked by it: she stared. Big mistake. The crazy lady started talking to her, alternating between low rumbling and high-pitched birdlike chirping. The young girl ran away. I laughed, but not so much that the crazy lady would notice. I didn't want her to turn on me.

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Ever get to thinking about weird anniversaries? It was ten years ago tomorrow that I skipped my "graduation" from West Shore Community College. I was one class short of my associate's degree; I had dropped out of my statistics course earlier that semester. That semester, I was working full-time on the night crew at a local grocery store, as well as working part-time during the day at Radio Shack and going to school full-time. I used to sleep in my car in the parking lot, and there were some nice motherly types from some of my classes who would wake me up when I slept through my alarm. Ah, the good old days of sleep deprivation, overwork, and exhaustion.

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My mom got downsized, sort of. She works for a government-funded agency that regulates day care centers. She's been there for 15 years, driving her series of little red cars across northern Michigan. She learned that at the end of May they're cutting all of the full-time field agents (of which she is one) down to part time, getting rid of their benefits, and scuttling any saved vacation time they may have had. This will mean major changes, I think: maybe they won't be able to spend all summer at their campground, and both she and my stepdad will have to get part-time jobs to supplant her reduced income. I'm really sad for her, but she says she still loves the job enough to stick with it. And she's good at that—sticking with things. Hell, she still talks to me.

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And in the "news of the obvious" section, we have a study that links soft drink consumption to childhood obesity.

All That Stress for Nothing

I just got done spending three days being anxious about something that ended up not happening anyway. There's a jazz club here in Chicago called The Velvet Lounge, which is owned by a local legend named Fred Anderson, a 76-year-old saxophone player. He has to find a new home for his club because his landlord sold the property to developers, and he's trying to raise enough money to move. I, along with my friends Mike and Shawn, wanted to do a documentary about his efforts to find a new home, including the benefit concerts and whatever else comes up. So I stewed about it on Friday, but couldn't bring myself to call. The same thing happened Monday and Tuesday. Today I finally built up enough courage to call him, figuring that I would just leave a message on his answering machine. Well, he answered. I managed to explain what I wanted to do, and he (drum roll) said he was way too busy with everything to participate or to have a film crew underfoot.

Sigh. I wish I weren't so terrified of everything. I mean, it's just talking on the phone. It's not like he was going to yell at me or something. Even though I knew that, I still spent most of three days with a knot in my chest, worrying about making one stupid phone call. And to add to that, now I get to wonder what would have happened if I had called earlier and left a message instead of stammering my way through a conversation. I even had a script written out. Of course the result probably wouldn't have been any different, but that's not going to make me agonize over it any less.