Movie Notes: All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Director: Lewis Milestone

This is a very powerful anti-war film.  The film convincingly immerses the viewer into the terrors of the war, and it feels very raw.  It's obvious that the pain of the war was still felt when the movie was made.  It evokes the pain so obvious in the literature of the period.

The only real draw-back is in the too earnest speeches given periodically by Lew Ayres are out of character with the otherwise authentic feeling of the movie.

Movie Notes: Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Director: Kathryn Bigelow

This was definitely the award season movie I was most looking forward to seeing, and it really didn't disappoint.  This is really difficult story-telling because of all political land mines surrounding the plot, but I thought the filmmakers did a great job.  It didn't seem to me a political film, in an agenda-driven sense, but rather a story about one person's drive and commitment to a cause making sure that cause happens.  Jessica Chastain is very good in the role of catalyst and crusader.

I can't recommend it to everyone because it's a dark bloody movie about dark and bloody things.  However critical the advanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA may have been in finding bin Laden, they're not fun to watch.  They shouldn't be fun to watch: they're terrible and dehumanizing.

Neither is it appropriate to make revenge-fantasy porn about bin Laden's death, and this movie carefully avoids that.  I thought it illustrated the raid pretty fairly, and while I think bin Laden's death was just, it's still terrible to kill people, and the movie shows that.  The sequence with the interpreter walking through the house near the end of the raid contrasted very well with the special forces' machine-like efficiency.  I thought that was very emotionally effective.

Anyway, good movie, even if it looks like it's on the outs this award season.

Movie Notes: Animal Crackers

Animal Crackers (1930)
Director: Victor Heerman

The Marx Brothers second film is a chaotic, cracklingly funny, bizarre and confusing chain of events full of shady characters, an empty plot, and shallow characters.  In other words, it's epitomical of their best work.

Not everything these guys do makes me laugh.  Some gags make me laugh long after the scene is over.  I imagine on different nights, different scenes would strike me as funny, some nights maybe none of them would strike me as funny.

Oh, one last thing, it's nice to see Zeppo have a comedic moment.  The dictation scene is quite funny.

Movie Notes: Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane (1941)
Director: Orson Welles

It took me a few viewings of Citizen Kane before I could appreciate it as entertainment.  Knowing that it has been declared "the best movie" by so many people actually gets in the way of just enjoying it for its own sake on its own merits.  It's not only an interesting movie, it's an entertaining one.

It's technical brilliance is well documented, but the element of the movie that I want to mention here is that it strikes me as a very honest film by Welles.  I like art that seems to mirror the inner reality of my life, and I think Kane does that because Welles exposes his own troubled soul in exploring the life of Charles Foster Kane.  Where the movie seems a bit cold is where he perhaps withdrew a little to protect himself.