1956: Movies Sorted By Tier
Submitted by jim on Thu, 03/31/2005 - 05:43
Tags:
Loved
The Burmese Harp
... Man, if all Kon Ichikawa's movies are this good, he is woefully, woefully underrepresented on DVD. I only got to see this because friend made me a copy of a bootleg, and I'm sure happy he did. A great post-war movie. A Japanese platoon's harp-playing mascot travels through post-WWII Burma to rejoin his platoon in prison camp. Needless to say, the journey transforms him. Great characters and cinematography, if a touch melodramatic, but that's how I like it.Really Liked
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
... I think if you tried to stretch most Twilight Zone episodes beyond half-an-hour they'd look pretty thin. But this movie, which *feels* like a TZ episode (even if it had nothing to do with that great show), is fully fleshed and quite thrilling, even almost fifty years later. I do think they wussed out on the ending, but it's forgivable.A Man Escaped
... Minimalist, yet riveting. A French resistance officer is imprisoned by the Nazis. He regularly hears the sounds of machine guns as other prisoners are executed. The whole of the movie focuses on his escape attempt, in painstaking detail. You spend a fair amount time watching this guy chip away as his door, improvise ropes, etc. It sounds like a how-to manual, and in a way it is, but the result provides quite a bit of dramatic tension. I was a bit put off by him having to go to such great lengths to hide his pencil, but apparently he can hide the rest of his escape equipment under his mattress with no worries, and I was also a bit distracted by him getting a new shirt in a care package (the Nazis allowed care packages?!) and instead of shredding for rope the gross bloody shirt he's been wearing since he was imprisoned months ago, he shreds the new one! I guess it's true: prison makes barbarians of us all.The King and I
Glad I Saw
The Searchers
... When I first started watching these John Wayne westerns (Rio Bravo, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and this so far) my assumption was that I was more a Clint Eastwood fan. That turns out not to be so true, as I've really enjoyed Wayne in all of them. But what I've discovered is that I really am more of a Sergio Leone fan than a John Ford fan. I enjoyed this movie, but this is yet another example of where my personal enjoyment level doesn't match up to a movies quality (or at least reputation). The Searchers is beautiful to look at, Wayne was excellent, and I appreciated the Indians not being portrayed as cardboard-cutout villians. I think two things bugged me: the comic relief was a big distraction, and I think Ford blinked when it came to the end of the search. [Update: I talked to my wife about this review, and she turned me around on the ending (she's a more sophisticated viewer than I am). I had thought that Natalie Wood's reaction at the end undermined the ambiguity of her earlier scenes, but she thought it all played out perfectly. She prefers Ford to Leone. "Meatier" is how she describes his movies. She agrees with me about the comic relief though.]Guilty Pleasures
- None Yet
Could Have Missed
- None Yet
Should Have Missed
- None Yet
El Sucko Grande
- None Yet
Unranked
Around the World in Eighty Days
Forbidden Planet
Giant
The Ten Commandments
Cloned From:
Sounds like the version you saw of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the one with the ending that the studio insisted on. The film was reissued years later with the ending Siegel wanted... the film ends with the highway scene.
Yeah, John Wayne was pretty darn good. Just how good is shown in a movie like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance where he dominates the film despite a heavyweight like Jimmy Stewart being in it.
Oh, the highway scene would have been a MUCH better place to end! I wish I'd seen that version. Thanks for setting me straight.