More Than One Lesson

dir. Irvin Kershner

Our tastes change as we get older. That’s not necessarily something to either mourn or celebrate; we just have to learn to accept the fact that as we evolve both biologically and psychologically, we’ll experience and respond to the world differently (I don’t care for jelly now that I would’ve devoured as a child, but I also am much more tolerant of pop music than I was while in college). Revisiting the (only) Star Wars trilogy (that matters) now, I find that I grow impatient with the pacing of A New Hope and that I don’t respond as well to the sentimentality of Return of the Jedi. On the other hand, each rewatch of The Empire Strikes Back solidifies its reputation as not even the finest Star Wars film or as one of the finest sci-fi films, but as one the finest films of all time without qualifiers. It’s easy to make the joke that Empire is better because it’s darker, but that belies an honesty and a much more accurate truth – that Empire was a film that understood its universe, its characters, and both the narrative and emotional stakes in play. Empire has stood the test of time thanks to, yes, a phenomenal script and director, but also because its focus was not on how to explore its genre, but how its genre could be used to explore and supplement truths and investments that ring true outside of any single medium or time. Depending on what version you watch, it’s also the one installment least tainted by its creator’s needless tinkerings.

dir. Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola’s film is Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” melted into Picasso’s “Guernica”. The ultimate war movie that defined how to do Vietnam for all time. The opening shots of predatory helicopters, coiling napalm clouds, and exploding jungles, framed by Jim Morrison’s guttural need for “a stranger’s hand in a desperate land,” is at once a deeply visceral revelation of the innate, troubling beauty of war violence, a condemnation of the wanton destruction of the primitive, and, by the movie’s end, the seeds of the demise of one nation’s innocence in the dark jungles of another land. This mythology is borne on the back of Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard, who sails up the Nung in a PBR, headed for his Army-sanctioned target, the mad Colonel Kurtz – Marlon Brando as corpulent jungle Buddha, all sweaty philosophy and petty narcissism. The movie remains, nearly 40 years later, the epitome of uber-bravura filmmaking, 16 months of it, with Sheen, Brando, Robert Duvall, and Dennis Hopper (as a kind of drugged-out John the Baptist with a Nikon F) all adding to the pastiche of ambivalent duty, rock and roll, and the darkest corner of the American psyche.

dir. Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is almost more of a thought than a story. Whispered narration weaves in and out of glimpses of one man’s childhood. All of these disparate moments swirl around a central theme – the contrast between grace and law, symbolized in the main character’s memory by his mother and father, respectively. The film dares to ask life’s biggest questions, all through the simple lens of a young boy. The film is ever moving, ever searching, and consistently humbled by any answers it seems to find. Malick’s fluid direction and Emmanuel Lubezki’s entrancing cinematography make this one of the first masterpieces of the new millennium.

dir. Peter Jackson

While it can be difficult to separate the three films that make up the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it is the first that bears the biggest burden. In The Fellowship of the Ring, director Peter Jackson must set the stage, introducing us not merely to the characters and the story, but to the world of Middle Earth itself. Combining every element of filmmaking, both new and old, Jackson creates a very real and tangible world; one that can be both beautiful and unforgiving. It is fantastical, yet often feels like it could be in our own backyard. This place of imagination brings out the child in us, eager to go on an adventure and explore new places and meet new people. And as our heroes encounter Elves, Dwarves, Wizards, Goblins, and many others, the audience is drawn deeper and deeper into a magical reality that somehow manages to feel like home.

Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows is an effective little creature feature about a young woman trapped on a rock in the ocean, two hundred yards from shore and terrorized by a huge great white shark. As the tide rises and the rock slowly begins to disappear, our heroine must figure out how to outsmart the shark and get back to the beach. Everything is fairly straightforward and the film is sturdily-made, featuring a handful of thrills and a sustained tension throughout.

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In this minisode, Tyler and Josh discuss the 1963 winner of Best Picture, Tom Jones.

In an age and culture where “bigger” is almost always better, the titular giant in Steven Spielberg’s The BFG illustrates that big is nice, but does come with some trouble. Visually gorgeous with a handful of grin-inducing moments, but dragged down by a sleepy tone, this could be said of the film itself.

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If you can maneuver around the initial wall of overly-warm sentimentality that stands thick in the middle of Little Boy, and if you don’t mind the multiple themes tossed at you like a juggler trying to impress a children’s birthday party, then you’ll eventually get to a colorful-if-shaky treatment of that most nagging of Christian mandates: “Have faith.”

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“Beauty isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

So says a particularly incisive fashion designer in Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon. The quote is a bit on the nose, but certainly seems to be the mantra of Refn himself. His films have always been visually striking, even when treading familiar narrative ground. Refn’s ability to marry sound and image, crafting an overall tone that is both jarring and haunting, distinguishes him as one of the most unique directors working today. And while I haven’t always responded to the stories Refn has chosen to tell – and felt them to be somewhat incongruous with the style with which he tells them – The Neon Demon seems like the film he was born to make. Finally, the vapid shallow beauty inherent in Refn’s preferred filmmaking choices matches that of the characters we’re watching. The film is ultimately gorgeous, meditative, and extremely trashy, making it one of the most interesting cinematic experiences of the year.

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Tyler and Josh discuss George Cukor’s My Fair Lady, the winner of Best Picture for 1964.