1966: Movies Sorted By Tier
Submitted by jim on Wed, 09/22/2004 - 05:19
Tags:
Loved
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Really Liked
Seconds
... John Frankenheimer directs this tale of a late middle-aged guy who finds he's leading a shell of a life, and decides to start over. Turns out there's a company that will not only give him a new life, but a new body as well. I'm not going to say any more, except that if you told me Darren Aronofsky directed this, I would have believed you.The Sword of Doom
... If you were trying to start a friend on the samurai movies of this era, this might be a good one to start with. It's certainly at attention-getter. The darkest of the lot, with relatively copious action (keep in mind I wouldn't really say the genre is known for it's action, and the action you do get is often a staredown followed by one guy being dead after a quick blur of motion), and great performances. I still don't know how Tatsuya Nakadai made a purely evil character so interesting, but he pulled it off (same way Javier Bardem pulled it off in No Country for Old Men). The ending is a bit of a letdown, and I understand this is because the movie was intended to be the first of three, but it actually kinda works in its own way.Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
... Elizabeth Taylor got the cred (and the Oscar) for this movie, and she is quite good, but for my money Richard Burton is the standout here. That is probably not too controversial, so I'll stop there instead of also mentioning that Sandy Dennis probably gets the silver, leaving Taylor settling for bronze. Acidic psychological and verbal sparring that'll leave your eyes and ears blistered from repeated cringing, this is the movie that basically brought the current MPAA ratings system into play. I've often heard the world of academia is particularly cutthroat, so it's probably telling that Albee set his play at a university.Glad I Saw
Persona
... I'd have to watch this movie probably three to five more times before I could begin to discuss it in any kind of academic fashion. I caught whiffs of deconstruction, psychology, and existentialism, but I'm too far removed from college to be interested in writing a paper on the movie, and that's what it would take to approach any kind of intellectual appreciation of such a dense work. I had hoped on a first viewing I'd make a serviceable job of distinguishing between the literal and the symbolic, but apparently I failed miserably, as I thought our two women were one and the same, but of all the interpretations I've seen of this movie that one isn't even serious enough to warrant mention. So I'm out to sea. Nonetheless, stuck with my lowbrow narrative view of the proceedings, this was an engrossing tale of intimacy, jealousy, and identity and entertains even if you don't plumb it's considerable depths. And it has an entrancing opening sequence that could have been the cursed videotape from Ringu/The Ring. I half expected my phone to ring.Guilty Pleasures
- None Yet
Could Have Missed
- None Yet
Should Have Missed
- None Yet
El Sucko Grande
- None Yet
Unranked
Return of the Magnificent Seven
Cloned From:
I noticed you included How the Grinch Stole Christmas! here (both a TV movie and a short). I wonder, what is your criterion for including a short film on your lists? I've noticed that many people will include How the Grinch Stole Christmas or Sherlock, Jr. or A Close Shave, but not The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1958), or especially much shorter shorts like any of the 5-15 minute Warner Brothers or Disney shorts.
Where do you draw the line at what you'll mention with regard to short films?
I draw that particular line based solely on whim.
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought about the opening sequence of Persona when I first saw it!