A Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#550-501)

This is the 10th part of the Top 1000 list.  The introduction can be found here.  This might be the only group of 50 in the Top 1000 without a single Hitchcock, Spielberg, Kurosawa or Woody Allen film among them.
Except for the four films at the bottom, these are all a 91 which is mid-range ****.  The bottom four films are all 92.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2004

Miles Raymond: Come on, man. You know. Hemingway, Sexton, Plath, Woolf. You can’t kill yourself before you’re even published! Jack: What about the guy who wrote Confederacy of Dunces? He committed suicide before he was published. Look how famous he is!

My Top 10

1. Sideways
2. A Very Long Engagement
3. Closer
4. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
5. Finding Neverland
6. Million Dollar Baby
7. Shrek 2
8. The Motorcycle Diaries
9. Baadasssss!
10. Spider-Man 2

note:  A solid Top 5 but a much weaker second 5.  The rest of the list is down below with none of them among the award nominees that are fully reviewed.

 

Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#800-751)

All of these films except the last one is an 88.  The last one is an 89.  All are low ****.  The introduction is here.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2003

“Then Merry heard of all the sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like a ring of steel. ‘But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund’s daughter.” (p 823)

My Top 10

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2. Mystic River
3. City of God
4. American Splendor
5. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
6. Nowhere in Africa
7. Whale Rider
8. Big Fish
9. Bubba Ho-Tep
10. Matchstick Men

note:  A strong Top 5 but the second 5 is fairly weak.  But it does still have several (weaker) films on my complete list down at the bottom, minus the #13 (Cold Mountain) and #16 (The Secret Lives of Dentists) which are reviewed because of awards.

 

A Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#1000-951)

This is the start of my Top 1000 Countdown, the 1000 best films made in the first Century of Film (1912-2011).  A reminder that the introduction should probably be looked at first and will answer any questions about abbreviations.

Every film in this group of 50 earns an 86, which is high ***.5.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1997

A primer on great screenwriting: using characters as they existed in the book but doing what you have to do to compress the story and get it to come out right on scene. In other words, there is no scene like this in the book.

My Top 10

1. L.A. Confidential
2. The Sweet Hereafter
3. The Ice Storm
4. Jackie Brown
5. Oscar and Lucinda
6. The Wings of the Dove
7. Wag the Dog
8. Donnie Brasco
9. Absolute Power
10. The Winter Guest

note:  A great Top 5 and very good Top 10.  My list continues down at the bottom.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1990

“And now all that is over, and that’s the hardest part.  Today everything is very different.  No more action.  I have to wait around like everyone else.  I’m an average nobody.  I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”  (p 284)

My Top 10

1. GoodFellas
2. The Grifters
3. Dances with Wolves
4. Presumed Innocent
5. The Hunt for Red October
6. Reversal of Fortune
7. White Hunter Black Heart
8. Misery
9. Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
10. Awakenings

note:  Once you get past the top two, it’s not nearly as strong as 1989 but it would hard to be that good.  There is, however, a large number of films on my list outside of the Top 10 (barely making the list but making it nonetheless) which are all listed down at the bottom.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1976

“Deep Throat moved closer to Woodward. ‘Let me explain something,’ he said. ‘When you move on someone like Haldeman, you’ve got to be sure you’re on the most solid ground. Shit, what a royal screw-up!'” (p 220)

My Top 10:

1. All the President’s Men
2. Solyaris
3. Carrie
4. Voyage of the Damned
5. The Outlaw Josey Wales
6. The Shootist
7. Marathon Man
8. The Last Tycoon
9. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings
10. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

Note:  There has been a change since my Nighthawk Awards, with The Shootist moving up into the Top 10.  If it seems like a big leap, that’s because #6-10 aren’t all that strong and in a good year many of them wouldn’t make the list.  The only two films on my list that aren’t in the Top 10 are both reviewed below because of nominations: Bound for Glory and Family Plot.

 

A Century of Film: Westerns

 

The Genre:

Westerns are a uniquely American art form.  It has been said that the three things America has contributed to world culture are baseball, Jazz and Westerns.  The very start of Westerns goes back to the start of narrative story-telling in American film with The Great Train Robbery perhaps the first great narrative American film.

I had written a paragraph about what I see as the basic Western (as opposed to the sub-genres listed below) but then I found this bit on page 195 of The Rough Guide to Westerns that summed it up much better than I had:

Pulp writer Frank Gruber says there are seven essential Western plots:

1. The Union Pacific story (the railroad/stagecoach comes to town or wagon train adventures)
2. The ranch story (conflict between ranchers or ranchers vs. others)
3. The empire story (an epic version of the ranch story)
4. The revenge story
5. The cavalry and indians story
6. The outlaw story
7. The marshal story.

Those pretty much sums it up.  The fifth one is a specific sub-genre below and the third one really kind of fits into the “Epic” sub-genre.  But otherwise, those are pretty much the films that don’t have a sub-genre.  Ironically, most of the films starring the biggest Western stars (also listed below) aren’t in any of the sub-genres but fit those basic story types.  You can also get much more detailed by going here, though most of what is down below you will only find here which is why I wrote all this.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2008

No one knows how to bring you back around better than Danny Boyle.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Slumdog Millionaire  **
2. The Dark Knight
3. Wall-E  *
4. Milk  *
5. Revolutionary Road
6. Rachel Getting Married
7. Let the Right One In
8. I’ve Loved You So Long
9. Happy-Go-Lucky
10. The Visitor
11. In Bruges
12. Iron Man
13. Doubt
14. Burn After Reading
15. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
16. A Christmas Tale
17. The Reader
18. The Wrestler
19. Changeling
20. Paranoid Park