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100 Best Movies (81-90) Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971) An incisive screenplay and excellent direction chillingly demonstrate why most gay relationships fail to last--straight and bi ones, too, for that matter. Sunrise (1927) Murnau's silent has just got to be more interesting than whatever you saw last weekend at the plex. The poetic cinematography by Oscar-winners Karl Struss and Charles Rosher makes Janet Gaynor's feat in ascending above a thankless role all the more amazing, and puts a definite thrill into George O'Brien's transformation from homicidal lout to reborn romantic. Sunset Blvd. (1950) This valentine to the vagaries of who's up and who's down in the crapshoot that is Hollywood was dipped in acid, giving the black comedy an acrid air of hard-won home truths. Sweet Smell of Success (1957) Power-crazed media figure comes to regret helping assorted ungrateful unknowns to become stars. A film so close to our own experience at Movieline, we have to go lie down now. |
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Swing Time (1936) Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Jerome Kern--all this, plus the art deco dream of the Big Apple. Sublime nonsense, but oh, that fancy footwork! The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed's vertiginous direction and Robert Krasker's eerie photography take the dark, Post-WWII story of a supposed good guy turned murderous war profiteer on the lam in Vienna, and make it so brilliantly black it's like a one-film negation of Victory in Europe. The 39 Steps (1935) The deceptive speed with which this charming thriller races along remains a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, yes, but also to two of the most charismatic players he ever worked with: Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) This story about how children look at and learn from the world around them, told through the lens of racial injustice in a Southern town, is proof that the best way for well-intentioned filmmakers to move audiences toward generosity is to curb Hollywood's natural inclinations--overspending, oversimplification, and over-reliance on cheap emotion. |
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Touch of Evil (1958) Well, more than a touch, actually. The whole subject is evil. Orson Welles, who plays a big, fat, corrupt cop, also directed. The result is a giant, baroque bad-mood piece in which everything is shot creepier-than-life. Certainly no other director would have dared to shoot Welles as unattractively as he appears here. The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) Greedy, seedy, badly dressed men behaving unforgivably in a desolate landscape. In other words, virtually our Bible on what to expect here in Hollywood. John Huston's finest hour, not least because he brooked no star nonsense from the cast. 100 Best Movies, Part 10 (91-100) |