Manly Footwear: There is a light snow falling outside, lovely and gentle the way snow can be, a new President was just inaugurated, the dogs are sleeping, and I’m sitting by the window trying to figure out Gertud. Not that the movie is unintelligible, or even opaque, the way avant-garde films often try to be—the … Read more
Manly Footwear: I am not surprised I’d never seen this film, or even heard of it except in the most tangential way, but I am a little chagrined, because it is not only stylistically remarkable, it is morally edifying to watch, not something I can say about many of the movies on the list of … Read more
Manly Footwear: My first reaction to seeing this movie on our list was a pleasant wave of nostalgia, followed quickly by a discomforting reminder of the Troubles Woody Allen has had in his personal life, and finally the realization that I don’t really know what happened with regards to his daughter Dylan, and will never … Read more
Manly Footwear: I realize this might sounds batty, but this John Ford Western reminded me of Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States. It is the story of a the end of one kind of masculine, American archetype, and the rise of another, but also it is about how the latter archetype–the … Read more
I have seen Jaws enough times—not as often as The Shining, or It’s Wonderful Life, to choose examples from elsewhere on the top 100 list—but often enough that I can, like many US citizens of a certain age, quote great, salty chunks of dialog from it. I was not sure that it truly belonged on … Read more
Manly Footwear: Another film that I knew very little about, although I knew the director, Mizoguchi, from having seen Ugetsu many years ago. The pacing of this film is both perfectly elegant—“one-shot-one-scene”; long takes with deliberate, broad motions often occurring in the background; intensely deliberate mise-en-scène that nonetheless evokes spontaneity and naturalness—and perfectly jarring, given the relentlessly sad … Read more
Manly Footwear: I both knew and did not know what to expect from Greed. I knew it was a tragedy, and that the making and subsequent mangling of the 10 hour long original cut was also a tragedy, and that there were at least 2 semi-restored versions, one that was 4 hours, the other 2. I … Read more
Manly Footwear: It’s so easy to make fun of this movie, and so tempting, even while watching it, that it’s even easier to forget how really successful it is. I almost wrote, “how great it is,” but that would require considerable redefinition of the word “great” in the context of the other movies on this … Read more
Manly Footwear: Comfortina asked if this movie, like so many we’ve already watched, was about a descent into madness. I said I couldn’t remember, I wasn’t even sure I’ve ever seen the whole thing, but probably—we then checked the list, and of the films we recognized, MANY were about people descending into madness. We talked … Read more
Manly Footwear: This is the first of several movies on the list that I have seen so many times, and is such a part of the motion picture ecosystem, I worried I would not be able to see it clearly. And I was right, it is all but impossible to separate all the other times … Read more